We live in a Deliverance nation. If the government wants your money, they’ll take your money – simple as that.
Rustem Kazazi, 64, was recently relieved of his life savings – $58,100 – by the US Customs and Border Protection “service.” The money was found in his possession – and that was enough to take it from him, without so much as a traffic violation alleged.
Kazazi was traveling by air to his native Albania and – stupidly, but not illegally – brought the cash with him to the airport, intending to use it to buy a retirement home on the Adriatic coast. He packed the money in neat bundles, put it in his carry-on luggage. During his “screening” by the Heimat Sicherheitsdeinst – Homeland Security, rendered in the appropriate German – the money was found and that was all it took to take it.
No charges were filed against Kazazi – and he’s never been convicted of anything. But his money’s gone.
Under the asset forfeiture laws recently defended by the chief law enforcer of the country, Attorney General Jeff Sessions – it is not only acceptable but meritorious to simply take people’s life savings without any legal process whatsoever – beyond the mere grabbing of the money by law enforcers, that is.
Possession of cash – any amount, there is no defined amount below which it is deemed not-illicit and beyond which it is deemed illicit – provides all the warrant necessary to simply take the money. Could be $58,100 or $5,800 or $580 or $58. It doesn’t matter. You have money. They want your money.
Now get up against that tree.
Kazazi is attempting to recover his funds via a lawsuit, with help from the Institute for Justice. But the vile fact is this is not some backwoods aberration. It is the policy of the government generally; it is defended by the highest law enforcement authority in the country and by the president himself.
That horrible little man – Sessions – has gloated openly about the delights of taking money from people without having to deal with the inconvenience of charging and then convicting them of a criminal act first. He and other defenders of asset forfeiture regard the mere possession of cash as ipso facto proof that those possessing it are “drug dealers.” He is not only unconcerned about due process – about establishing via proof, in court, that a person committed a crime – he is contemptuous of it. And by dint of that, Sessions has established himself as no better than the crazed hillbilly in the 1972 movie.
If we want your money, we’ll take your money.
Worse, actually.
Because it is not some isolated horror, deep in the backwoods. The hillbilly in the movie didn’t have a badge to go with his gun – and Ned Beatty’s character could have defended himself, physically. Legally.
It is illegal to defend oneself against the likes of the Heimat Sicherheitsdeinst, the U.S. Customs “service” and, of course, Attorney General Sessions. We must simply bend over the log and accept what’s coming.
Weeee!! Weeeee!!
If there’s an upside, it is that Kazazi’s case is receiving national coverage. People’s eyes may begin to open. Reading about Kazazi’s ordeal, learning that his ordeal is common, that it is legal; that a similar thing could just as easily happen to any of them – perhaps after getting pulled over for some minor traffic offense on their way to the bank with the day’s receipts from their business, or with an envelope of cash with which they’d intended to buy a used car they’d found listed in the classified.
It may rouse them from their torpor, get them to thinking about something other than fuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhtttttttball for a change. About the horrific fact that the government now asserts the authority to seize money at will, in any amount, just the same as any street thug.
It may occur to them that the government has become thuggery codified. Made official, “legal.” Which will serve the very good purpose of delegitimizing the government, causing it to be held – rightly – in contempt by the people.
If ever there were justification for resistance, this is it. Are we to accept being robbed – literally – just because the robbers wear government-issued outfits? If the government can simply take our money at will, what else can it do? What have we been reduced to?
It is embarrassing.
In the movie, Ned Beatty’s character – the one who gets raped by the crazed hillbilly – is as despicable as the hillbilly because he cooperates in his own defilement. He “drops them panties” and then – as ordered – “squeals like a pig.”
I wonder how long Americans will continue to squeal.
. . .
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Hi Eric,
The US is arguably the most corrupt government on earth. The genius of “our” system is that the most destructive corruption is rendered palatable to the masses by declaring it to be “policy”. The type of petty corruption that the “good government” types obsess over actually serves a socially beneficial function as it allows the “little guy” to sidestep the onerous requirements in place that make it nearly impossible to make a living. The large scale “corruption as policy” that occurs in the US is socially destructive as it favors the elite and politically connected over the little guy. The idea that paying a bribe to avoid a traffic ticket is somehow more dangerous to society than the destruction of property rights, contract, due process, etc… that favor the likes of ADM, Goldman Sachs, greedy government agencies, etc… is obscene.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Cross posted:
MFP Commentary:
Welcome to criminal thugs, in blue, running your life and calling themselves “government”.
~MFP
(Damn spam filer)
missourifreepress.com/2018/06/07/if-we-want-your-money-well-take-your-money/
Thanks, MFP!
PS: That acronym has another meaning for me (a good one) and I bet you know what it is!
I was pulled over about six months ago by a young cop for a tail light. As he returned to my car with the citation, he actually asked me if I was carrying any large amounts of cash. I smirked at him and said (sarcastically) “I’ve got twenty bucks in my wallet. You want it?” He kind of glared at me, but backed off.
Now I’m an old white guy in my early 60’s. I probably reminded him of his dad or something. It probably wan’t the smartest thing to say, but the question genuinely pissed me off. One can only guess what might have happened to someone younger or more vulnerable.
Dan, smirking is contempt of cop. You are lucky the bastard did not beat you for your lack of respect towards your betters.
A good question to ask the porker would be How do you define large amounts of cash? Followed by Is it illegal to have said amount of cash on one’s person?
Skunk, how do you define a large amount of cash?
Back in ’74 after fuel prices had doubled the wife and I were sitting at the house with NO money….or food. A 2 day haul would leave us $20 over the priced of fuel so the truck sat, just as we were.
The wife finds a $20 in a pair of my jeans that had been washed and stuck back in the drawer. We cheered. I ran(rubber heels)to the grocery store and bought what we needed to make chilibeans and cornbread, a righteous meal for a few days if you’re a good cook, and we both were. We even bought a cheap case of beer($3.50 or so)and had a feast. That was the year we began gardening in earnest.
FF 20 years and I commonly traveled with 10 grand I used at auctions. In west Tx. a lot of people hoarded cash. It could be a long time without rain…..such as 1950-1957 when it was nearly non-existent here. Books have been written about it.
Over a taillight, that’s such a crazy line of questioning..I’ve never gotten the “any large amounts of cash” question. What state do you live in Dan? I don’t get how it’s supposed to be OK for them to go straight to that.
Down in VA off 81 on a late night speeding stop I got the “any drugs? When was the last time any drugs were in the car? What if I wanted to do a search” “No” “Why not” “Know my rights” “hmph”
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” ~ Frederic Bastiat
There was an asset forfeiture in my area a few years back where the IRS confiscated the funds in the bank account of a restaurant owner because she was depositing less than $10,000 in cash at a time. The reason? Some keen eyed bank employee sent up a red flag because these deposits were all under the $10,000 threshold for reporting cash deposits to the Feds, so she must have been structuring the deposits to hide something.
This restaurant was in a resort area where cash is king, and she was merely depositing the cash from each days business.
In August of 2013, the owner of Mrs. Lady’s Mexican restaurant in Arnolds Park, Carole Hinders, had about $33,000 seized from her checking account by the IRS despite not committing a crime.
The reason? She had been depositing less than $10,000 at a time.
“How can this happen?” Hinders told the New York Times. “Who takes your money before they prove that you’ve done anything wrong with it?”
Larry Salzman with the Institute for Justice, who is helping Hinders, explained the case in a video.
“Federal law requires banks to report cash deposits greater than $10,000. The federal government used civil forfeiture to seize Carole’s bank account, claiming by making small deposits, she was evading that requirement.”
http://whotv.com/2014/10/29/irs-seizes-iowa-restaurants-money-despite-not-doing-anything-wrong-case-gets-national-attention/
This case did get attention from the national media, and John Stossel had her on his show, but nothing has changed and the once popular business has since closed.
People still wonder why the Feds don’t want any kind of drug legalization? It has nothing to do with protecting anyone. The same old rule applies: FOLLOW THE MONEY.
I have also been railing against this despicable act of “law enforcement” for years, too. The best I’ve been able to do was to alert one of our local talk-radio personalities to this action, and he’s also on the bandwagon.
Oklahoma (where I usually reside) has been one of the worst offenders in this act. When the local District Law Enforcer, sometimes also called the District Attorney, is called to task about this, his lame response is: “you are wanting to limit the tools in my toolbox.” This is akin to admitting that they use this tactic to impoverish the defendants before trial, to coerce them into signing a confession before going to trial, and then accepting their money as a “contribution to law enforcement causes.” Yes–those quotes memorialize the exact words of our local District Attorney.
He would prefer to impoverish those that have to defend themselves against his dubious claims, so that he can shoot the fish in the barrel. He doesn’t want to take the cases to trial, where he might have them tossed out. Worse yet, he participates in the federal program for currency theft, so that these cases, if they go to trial, can be prosecuted under the federal statutes that have even less protections of defense for the victim.
It’s simply the way Texas takes whatever we have of worth…..legally. I’m ashamed to be in the same state as these who would defend it. Back in the 50’s and 60’s Texas was a place where the population in even large cities did what they wanted and didn’t take shit off govt.
That began to end quickly when Tricky Dick created the DEA which created a war where none had been. The reason drugs of any sort the Fed deemed illegal suddenly became a huge source of stolen money by the badged thugs.
Texans are now people who think people like me are simply radical since 3/4’s of them are from some other place, one of the reasons the fed imported millions of people from war torn countries who, for the most part, were victims of the US military. Oh, hell, I’m preaching to the choir.
“It may rouse them from their torpor, get them to thinking about something other than fuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhtttttttball for a change.”
LOLOLOLOL whew, thanks for the laugh Eric. Americans are sheep.
My pleasure, Fred!
The fuuuhhhhhtttball thing depresses me. I go to the gym and other places where men go and all the men talk about is some got-damned “game.” Meanwhile I read about what men used to discuss. Politics, philosophy – or just current events. Instead, today, most are at the level of 12-year-old boys, obsessed with athletes. It is worse mind poison than huffing glue.
LOL I was on big cons’t jobs in NYC and it was all about yankees knicks jets giants. sickening to be around them
Hi Anonymous,
It is. Thank god I have a couple of friends who don’t give a flip about fuuuuhhhhhhhtttttball. Interestingly, they’re both independent businessmen with real skills in the real world.
Yo! Dat be me Brudda!
eric, this is the reason I’ve always wanted to go into space. No doubt you know the authors I have read. I like the idea of those who don’t have the balls to go to places you can shoot the finger to those who want to be “PO Lease”. You won’t want to be the guy after a lot of us on a virtually unpopulated planet.
I’ve gone toe to toe with man DOT. Where are your logs? I don’t log because I work for a construction company and don’t venture over 150 miles. Gears whirring. So, how do does your company keep hours for you. The don’t. I turn in my hours every week and they take my word for it This pisses him off since it’s the law and he wants to give me shit.
I’ve never been caught in another state and won’t be now but I would have for my ex company since they were friends. We hunted, fished, drank and partied together. Oh, that pisses them off saying you keep up with your hours but I can say I just got in the truck a half hour ago and they say “So you drove 60 miles in half an hour?” Referring to my home yard. No dipshit, I came from a work site 15 minutes ago where I’d been operating equipment. I got in this truck 30 minutes ago and will probably run 250 miles today. They can’t prove I’m going to run 600 miles(and I dont have to say where I’m headed) and load and unload my rig……twice.
It’s this shit like this that screws so bad with people trying to do a job and have electronic logging.
It increases costs for customers and decreases pay for operators but loads the state’s coffers. FEAFEFH’s.
Dear 8,
“… this is the reason I’ve always wanted to go into space. No doubt you know the authors I have read. I like the idea of those who don’t have the balls to go to places you can shoot the finger to those who want to be “PO Lease”. You won’t want to be the guy after a lot of us on a virtually unpopulated planet.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Explosion
“The Blieder drive, a faster-than-light drive system, has permitted the population of Earth to colonize the galaxy. Each planet has become the home for a particular social group…
The final planet, K22g, has developed an unusual social system. The population call themselves Gands (after Gandhi) and practise a form of classless, philosophically anarchic libertarianism, based on passive resistance (“Freedom – I won’t!” and “Myob!”); and a moneyless gift economy based on barter and favor-exchange, using “obs” (obligations). To perform a service for somebody “lays an ob” on them; they can then “kill the ob” by returning the favor.[1]
As the planet’s population are demonstrably non-hostile, the officials have to approve shore leave, which brings the crew into contact with the anarchist natives.
Many find reasons to stay on the planet, refusing to return to the ship. The officials have to get the ship back into space before they lose so many that the ship will never fly again.”
One of my favorite SF stories of all time.
Bevin, I don’t know where to begin. I was an accolade so long ago it seems I was born to it. Probably, I was born to something else.
I’m not smart enough to engineer an answer to this conundrum. If I could, I would
I don’t pretend to be the baddest of the bad….and I’m not, but I’d fight to the end to get what I’m willing to die for. I realize I won’t be the beneficiary of freedom but I’d give what I have to give for others to do so.
Freedom and peace b
I, too, find it “unpleasant” that men of a certain age are so involved with sports and little else. When I see a 50-year-old wearing the jersey of his favorite player in public I think “imbecile.”
Aw come on, it’s a male bonding thing, that’s all. It provides something to chit-chat about. When I go to family events, there’s always some talk about such and such a team, or player.
What else would you have men talk about? Oh, yeah, maybe they should talk about their feelings. Or worse, politics. Or perhaps they should talk about cars? That’s better, talking about cars that can go 50 mph faster than any speed limit; about the thrill of speeding, or perhaps how to outrun the police.
Talking about it is fine, obsessing over it and wearing your favorite player’s jersey seems a bit lame.
ET, “What else would you have men talk about?”
Unintelligent conversations are for unintelligent men.
I am not what you would call a “car guy”* but I come here to Eric’s site because of the philosophical conversations that go beyond cars. Something I have rarely witnessed in a “sportsball” conversation.
*While I do not have an engineering mindset I can and do appreciate great engineering and admire those who can produce such things.
Good morning, Skunk!
Amen. What I mean when I ululate fuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhtttttball! is the general obsession with sports, “the game.” As if “the game” had any meaning beyond transitory entertainment. But these geeks agonize over the details, parse and ponder the strategy of “their” team. Dissect its doings. Hero worship the players. Are elated when “we” win; deflated when “we” lose. Some guys have literally no other interests besides “the game.” Or “the game” is the focus of their lives and pretty much all they want to talk about.
It’s bizarre. And, sad.
Talking about sports feeds into the “bread and circuses” box that our leaders prefer us to stay in. Men who have no hobbies other than watching sports on TV ARE a problem. I am surprised by the number of men who have NO hobbies, sit in front of the TV and ingest sports programming. let’s face it–professional sports teams and their players are merely “entertainers”, maybe at the top of their craft, but will not make one bit of difference to our society’s future. It is refreshing to see the backlash that the NFL is taking for their players making political statements on their playfields. The state of American manhood is evident in the number of men who cannot make basic household and car repairs, even not being able to change a tire. I see this, even among STEM engineers who have no idea how to perform basic mechanical or electrical tasks. American males have been “de-masculinized”–a problem that will affect us all…
Bread and circuses.
Welcome to the new Rome.
you are right and gun owners the biggest cowards. US gun owners should donate their guns to the Palestinians who are not afraid to die for their freedom. the only way to stop this govt is to kill the people behind it or imprison them on a glacier in the north pole. since more then half the people get a govt check it will never happen.
it will go down in history where the most heavily armed people in world history were genocided thru immigration with out firing a shot. the second amendment aint about hunting or what primers to use. it was to take down the govt if it is out of control the govt has passed that point
Of course, you’ve shot several of them by now, right? If not, then just STFU about how everyone but you is a coward, SPQwhatever. Provocateurs like you are easy to spot.
SPQR70AD…. Did you pay your taxes this year? Yeah……..thought so. KEYBOARD WARRIOR FOLKS!!! Watch out!!! I bet you’re a Mall Ninja too.
Absolutely criminal.Welcome to the now America.
Hi Fred,
Th question arises: If this is acceptable – and we put up with it – why shouldn’t we accept government workers fucking our wives and daughters, too? Just because they can – and because we’re too afraid and weak to stand up to it.
the govt may not be banging our daughters but they forced us to send them to school with kneegrows and brainwashed the girls to worship ugly ropeheads
Actually, Eric, in most states they CAN “fuck your wives and daughters” and it is ILLEGAL for you to stop them by virtue of their badge.
In one notable exception, however, the State of Indiana passed a law enabling citizens to defend themselves against cops who are themselves committing felonious acts. The law’s sponsor cited a hypothetical example — if you found a uniformed cop raping your wife, you would be able to stop him under the new law, but without the law it would be illegal for you to intervene.
Naturally, the cops are opposed to the law…
You are correct. The Indiana legislature changed the law because its state “supreme court” ruled that it was illegal to defend ones self against criminal acts committed by police officers. The court ruled that any offenses by police officers would have to be adjudicated in court “after the fact”. The Indiana legislature, in its wisdom actually did the right thing and restored the right of self-defense against rogue police officers.
Do you think such a law would stop a man? Anyone trying to do that to my wife, kids, friends, etc… won’t ever do it again, uniform or not.
America is truly without any hope. Voting at this point in time is in vain. Trump can’t control or do much of anything about people’s civil rights.
Hi Laura,
Trump could get rid of the cretinous Jeff Sessions. That would send no small message, especially if he were to accompany the firing with a statement of outrage regarding the attorney general of the United States showing contempt for the most basic due process.
But then he would come back to Alabama, damn it!
Hi ARU,
True! We’ll need to find a “safe space” for him… I am thinking the Ross Ice Shelf…
eric, so right you are about Trump. In regards to robbing people of their guns he said “I’m all for going after the guns first and worry about due process later. Of course the victim would be the only one worried about “due process” and terms that’s now a moot point…..for govt.
We’ve never seen a bigger liar in the WH and that’s a pretty bad bunch of liars. He hasn’t done a single thing he promised and has done everything he said he wouldn’t do. The US of A(holes) has gone off the reservation it created. And honestly, I never imagined he would stop wars or create a better atmosphere for “citizens”. I wish someone would ask him about “sovereign citizens”. Probably he’s need an aid to explain the term.
…and you think hilary would have been better? The guns would have been gone after the first school mass shooting in her administration. Trump is no saint, but is infinitely better…Trump is a “showman” and sometimes says things that are inappropriate, but the alternative to him would have been much worse.
Hi Anarchyst,
I agree with you. As bad as Trump has been in some ways, he’s been a finger in the dike in other ways. No question in mind that, had she acquired power, there would have been serious attempts made to outlaw/confiscate privately owned firearms. And the 54.5 MPG fuel economy fatwa would have been pushed down our throats. And without intending to, Trump has helped to further undermine the legitimacy/public trust in government – and that is a very good thing!
The biggest finger in the dyke was keeping another Bolshevik off of the Supreme Court. Imagine a President Her with the SCOTUS in her pantsuit pocket.
anarchyst, nobody here thinks that Hillary would have been better. Congratulations on posting something new that you haven’t been pasting up everywhere for 8 years, but try not to get too stupid with it, OK?
The lament of most thinking people is that it’s a damned shame that the only choices were between damnedifyado and damnedifyadon’t.
Ed, your bias is showing. I don’t trust ANY politician. as for your comment, YOU are the one who is “geting stupid” by not giving the man a chance. He has done more to reign in the EPA and other government agencies than the last 8 presidents, or so. OPEN YOUR EYES and stop watching MSNBC. we had that with 0’bama and mccain. Trump is an outsider and an insider and knows the way the game is played. If you don’t like what I post GFY…
Great, you just wrote another stupid screed you can paste on every forum you infest. Just change the name of the guy calling you on your bullshit.
Seriously, you need a new handle. There’s nothing anarchistic about your little act. Go ahead and drag out another one of your 2,000 word, 8 year old posts and pin it up here. It’ll be about as relevant as anything else you try to pass off as wisdom.
BTW, “rein” is the word you’re groping for. “Reign” doesn’t fit what you were struggling to say.
Hi Anarchyst,
It is so frustrating… Trump places people like us in the position of defending the lesser of two evils. And that is tough for principled people, even people who incline toward coherence. Trump has been better than Hillary in several ways, but piecemeal and not coherently. For example: He did attack the individual mandate, but talks about replacing (not getting ride of) Obamacare. He delayed/dialed back CAFE… but hasn’t challenged the idea of either thing.
That’s the real problem with Trump. He has no core principles. None that have been articulated, at any rate. He is a typically American mish-mash of utilitarian opinions, inclining (in his case) toward a “pro business” gestalt. It is literally a gestalt. A kind of unconscious leaning-toward. Nothing he could coherently defend/explain in the way we would.
This is why he’s vulnerable – and why the left is so much more successful (always). The left is coherent. Dishonest, manipulative, certainly. But very principled in its relentless focus on the collective, to be herded by their elites.
Indeed, sessions is a worthless swamp denizen.
Trump doesn’t want to. He is that narcissistic, child-man, con artist, just as the media portrays him. Like in Hollywood, any publicity is good publicity to him.
Of course, the same thing /could have been\ said about the last 15 presidents. Calvin Coolidge being the last one who actually understood the job and did his best to follow The Constitution. (I might give Carter a pass on that since he was primarily a ventriloquist’s dummy and had no concept of either the presidency or The Constitution.) But the media had not lost all its baby teeth yet so even ones they hated did not get hit as hard as they are hitting this, much too easy, target of opportunity.
I find that even those who supported Trump and voted for him will defend that only by “But Hillary would have been worse!” Would she really? On balance?
You are certainly correct though, that “America is truly without any hope.” That pair was obviously the best most in this country thought should hold the job.
Yes, hilary would have been much worse…a continuation of IRS abuses against conservative groupsand more. A hilary administration would have been a continuation of the abuses during the 0’bama administrations. Don’t forget that congress, as useless as they are, can counter any act by trump.
Everything I said about Trump is true, it’s already come to pass. His human abuses of war on innocents, both abroad and here are Fact. Military and WOD’s alike.
Don’t put words in my mouth. I didn’t mention Hitlery since she was the loser and hopefully won’t live another 4 years…..or 3 or even 3 minutes would be fine with me.
The fact that the collective “we” in speaking of the non-govt. workers, always have a choice of bad and worse for any public office has been in place before I ever got here. Two psychopaths with different methods of reaching the same goals, making money for people who already have too much of it except the pols who come in broke and leave billionaires.
And speaking of abuses, I hope we never see another group as mean, evil, with no morals or need to dominate as Shrubco. Now that’s a bunch of psychopaths that really need to be gone. That’s the bunch that realized world war and the slavery of those who pay for it. Everybody since has been running with their playbook.
It was evident quickly, as I said at the time, that the Dems “found” Shrubco’s playbook and were learning new things fast.
He’s got a purty wallet.
One thing I’ve noticed is that those who work in the government seem to have is this overwhelming sense of doing good no matter what they do and no matter what evidence is shown to them…. they are so brainwashed and charged up by the propaganda around us that they really do think of themselves as heroes…. I can just imagine the horrible creature who took this poor guys life savings, having a drink after work and telling his friends and family what a tremendous thing he achieved at work today…… makes me feel sick… Not sure if anyone is watching, but id recommend Billions- brilliantly hilights this, how these government workers can do anything and yet give speeches and pep talks about how it is for the greater good, when they are really all just working go further their own personal and political goals, and just basically leeching off the rest of society which is basically just trying to get on in life by doing real work….
When “asset forfeiture” was first being proposed as a “crime fighting tool” to be used in the “war on (some) drugs”, I vigorously protested the use of this blatantly unconstitutional tactic as an assault on constitutional principles.
My friends and associates immediately lambasted me for my views, calling me “soft on crime” in the “war on (some) drugs”, despite my prescience in predicting EXACTLY the scenario we presently live under…
Now, “the chickens have indeed come home to roost”. American “law enforcement” (I use that term loosely) has become no better than bands of “highwaymen” (criminals “under color of authority”).
Most people are unaware that a perverse incentive exists within this abuse of authority. Most jurisdictions reduce the budgets of their police departments by the amounts secured (actually stolen) under their asset forfeiture programs.
It is long overdue to end this abuse…
Don’t see people rebelling over this. They’ve accepted the principle that theft, if prettied up with other names like taxes or fees or speeding tickets, is fine if done by people with the official gang uniforms.
This is no different in principle than a speeding ticket, in that someone harming no one else has violated quasi-religious “laws”.
Welcome to the next baby step in making the state worship minimum security prison we all live in more overt.
If it hasn’t been stricken from the Internet due to Kevin Spacey’s acting, check out the movie “21.” There’s a scene when they go through ’90s airport security with hockey bags full of poker chips and bundles of cash under their clothes. Imagine trying that stunt today. But they’re only looking for guns and 4 oz bottles of shampoo, right?
Hi RK,
I can remember that world, the ’90s… when America was a Libertarian paradise in relation to what it has become today.
I can remember my dad handing me drink coupons before a flight back to school. I wasn’t 21 at the time but no one carded me, no one seemed to care. After all, I was in the smoking section.
Of course I don’t know that the stewardess who ran the drink cart was much older than I was. Probably should have tried to get her number…
I was at a ‘Rite Aid’ drug store a few months ago and a couple guys clearly in there mid 60’s were buying a case of beer and a bottle of whiskey (and I guess intending to continue the Saturday afternoon libations they had already embarked upon).
Then, and I kid you not, the cashier asked them for their ID!!
I was behind them and stunned by this, but, these guys action was priceless. One guy exclaims ‘What? Are you shitting me?’
I mean, he was seriously confused.
The cashier then proceeds to tell them how it’s new policy because ‘you can never be too sure of someone’s age, we have to make sure that everyone is over 21.’
I mean, wow. Sure, perhaps we couldn’t tell if they were 65, or 67, or maybe even only 55. But FFS, they’re clearly over 21! Anyone with an IQ above room temperature should be able to confidently make that determination without the need of asking for an ID.
I really fear for the future of Amerika.
Tis a state law in TN….you could be 105 and tottering on your deathbed but you’d still get carded….sheep.
Walmart does this shit in Tx. and some others do too. Some require you to swipe your DL.
I have a standard comeback “That’s ok, I’ll buy it somewhere else at which another clerk shows up and whispers to the idiot they just hired trying to keep that job. Then I check out without another word.
Really? You think a 68 year old trucker is going for this shit? No way in my version of the worst hell.
I have considered saying “I’ll be back”. God help em all if I’m serious. First, i’d want the badged thug crowd to arrive when I came back. My vision is good, my aim is true. Let me introduce you to AFR. Green is good.
8, in Virginia, the state owns the liquor business, wholesale and retail. At my local store, I was asked once for ID, “You got your ID with you?”. I said, “No, but I’ve got a note from my mama”.
If they can’t tell an old white-headed man from a teenager, they need to just quit and go home.
Hi Ed,
The last time this happened to me, it was at Kroger’s. A bottle of wine along with a full load of groceries. Middle-aged man (me) obviously well past 21 to any person capable of exercising judgment. The grown woman – about my age – manning the register asked for my ID. I was not in a good mood and while I understand that the person behind the counter is just a rule-following robot, trained to behave as an imbecile, I refuse to accommodate this insufferable imbecility. I told her: I am not giving you my ID (no “sorry,” why should I apologize?) and if you can’t sell me the wine, I don’t want any of this stuff.
I walked away, leaving a shopping cart full of groceries on the conveyor built.
Maybe I am a rude person. But sometimes, rudeness is one’s only option.
Rude, maybe, but necessary if we’re to teach manners to these people. Good for you. I’ll bring you a bottle of wine next time I’m out there in your area.
Most people, working behind the counter are not too bright anyway, especially if they spent their early years flipping burgers and waiting at the drive through.
The IQ of Americans appears to be lowering.
Now how did that come about? (snicker)
It’s been over 20 years when coming back from Lake Fork I stopped at a convenience store and gassed up. When I went to pay the kid there had no automatic change figuring device or didn’t know how to use it. He was so confused about subtracting what I owed from the cash I gave him I would have had two full tanks and extra money. I had to explain it to him and he still didn’t understand but I doubt he kept that job anyway. OTOH, a kid that was about 10 walked up to me and said I was putting the wrong fuel in the pickup seeing as to the big sticker inside the door that says Diesel Fuel Only. I thanked him and told him it wasn’t a diesel now, it was a big Rat motor. I didn’t explain to him hoping he’d find out for himself what a Rat motor was.
He did have that look that said “you’re talking nonsense” but said nothing…..good boy.
Hi Mrfnuts,
In New Mexico the server is not required by law to ask for ID but, if they do ask, it is illegal to sell alcohol to a customer that does not have a current, valid (according to the state), form of ID. Walgreens insists that all of the cashiers card people every time, even if they are regulars and even if they are obviously over 21. I asked one of the cashiers why he carded me every time I came in and he told me that the management monitors the registers and he will be disciplined if he does not. Truly sick.
I like to drink beer at a local brewery and one of the bartenders always asks for ID if any new customer comes in, even if they are 70 years old. I asked her why she did this. She told me it was the law. So, I checked and she was wrong. I gave her the relevant statute and the name and number of the lead attorney for the Bureau of alcohol, tobacco and gaming (that such an entity exists is appalling) so she could confirm what I told her. It made no difference, she still cards anyone she doesn’t know and still claims to be “just following the law”.
I expect that in a few years, drinking without a license will become a crime. Or, more accurately, that many states will make it a legal requirement for every server to card everyone, no matter their apparent age or whether they are know to the server, and that they must refuse service if the customer cannot produce a “valid” ID. I challenge anyone to find a single area of human life that GovCo does not claim a right to regulate. Funny, I thought “we” fought a war to defeat “totalitarian” regimes.
Jeremy
G Washington was most ready to kill farmers who made distilled spirits. Why? He was paid well since he forced the surviving farmers/distillers to pay govt. for the right to distill. It’s simply gone downhill since then.
And BTW, the US of A(holes) is still one of the few western countries to forbid the distillation of spirits without explicit permission of the feds that can only be had by paying the pols and bureaucrats their “due”, i.e., blood money since that’s how Washington “enticed” them to acquiesce. Cue Fishheads.
Approximately nobody knows the law. This includes cops and lawyers. Law is a handmedown telephone game thing. It really doesn’t exist any more except for those people who can afford the few lawyers that know the law.
The idea of looking up the law is too much effort for most. So they believe it is whatever they are told. Once they accept that, new data that shows it isn’t can’t penetrate because they would have to admit error of listening to the first person.
You could even see off friends and family all the way to the boarding gates. Times have changed, mostly for the worse.
You should have been here in the 1950s and 1960s. Thinking back, it was like being on another danged planet.
Hi Jason,
I have seen pictures, heard stories… I wish I had been there…
Dear Jason,
I was about to say the same thing.
Lol.
That much change in a mere 20 years. We must wonder what’s coming in the next 20.
You may not wish to know.
That is if we survive this presidency without a war with Russia, which is unlikely given the warmongering neo-cons who control the White House.
If I had my way John Bolton would have a couple concrete blocks chained to his ankles and tossed into the Potomac.
Hi John,
Howe about one block? I’d like to see him tread water/struggle for a bit before he slips under the surface…
That would be fine with me.
Tape over his mouth and nose too.
John Bolton. Jeff Sessions. The vision of one being strangled to death with the entrails of the other. One can dream can’t they?
I remember earlier than that, when there was no airport “security” I used to fly the Eastern (rip☹️) air shuttle between Boston and Newark when I was a student in the 60’s. Just run up and jump on the plane, easier than riding the subway! Looking back now that I’m and old fart I still can’t believe we’ve gotten to this point, the frog in boiling water analogy definitely applies. As our generation fades away the present generation of sheeple won’t look up from their I-whatevers long enough to realize how effed they are.
I remember the $19 and $29 Peoples Express flights. It was like boarding a bus. Then the stewardess would roll the cash register down the aisle. Ah, good times.
Hi Mike,
I was in college in the mid to late 80’s and I remember posts on the bulletin board offering plane tickets for sale. They weren’t legally tied to a particular person back then.
Cheers,
Jeremy
Hah!!! Scary to think that the 1990s under Clinton and his hag wife were “the good old days,” but in many ways they were. You could buy a brand-new AK-47 in the cosmoline for $195 back then. There weren’t surveillance cameras everywhere, and the NSA wasn’t monitoring every single electronic communication you made. The Federal budget actually had a surplus and the national debt was under $5 trillion. Cops still had .38 revolvers and shotguns instead of MRAPs, Kevlar, and M-4s with 30-round magazines.
Of course, don’t forget that Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the cops sticking a machine gun in five-year-old Elian Gonzalez’s face happened in the 1990s, too…
Hi X,
Yup.
There was scattershot tyranny in the ’90s, but now it’s so routinized most of us have become habituated to it. As an example of this, imagine taking a video recording of TSA at the airport today and – if you could – time-traveling with that back to 1995 and showing it to people.
They’d assume if was a bad dystopian sci-fi movie and probably ask where Stallone was…
X, eric, and the transgressions since 9/11 simply fly under the radar except for internet press.
Several years ago a bill hit the Tx. lege to allow DPS to use facial recognition photography at their DL offices. It was resoundly…..voted down. End of that story except 3 years later somebody finally sniffed out the truth, they simply ordered the cams, had them installed and went since there is NO accountability in Law Enforcement….or any other part of govt.
In the criminal Just Us nearby court offices I found myself with about 6 armed fools who probably couldn’t have hit their own asses, but they “suddenly” recalled they didn’t have my pickture. Which one? The shot up my ass or down my throat. So I’m herded into another room to toe the line and get a pic taken(didn’t even get a copy). It was the old facial recognition cam. Next time I went to the DL to reup there was the same setup and it’s still there today in every DL I’ve been in. And of course in this “free” state they get not only your thumbs but all 10 digits, Soon we’ll have the Primitive Babdis doing a public service of washing feet so they can get toes too and a desk to stop by and give a blood sample they’ll check for every known drug and say it’s “just’ for DNA.
Yep Hunter, it’s Fear and Loathing everywhere concerning the US of A(holes).
I viewed Ruby Ridge is the first firing shot ordered by George Herbert Walker of the New World Order. It sent chills down my spine followed by visceral anger at my neighbors who intended on reelecting that scumbag. Waco was plain messed up and the Oklahoma City Bombing was a setup. I will never forget the message sent by the government to Elian Gonzalez and the support for the Communist Castro regime that would follow. In the 90’s you could see what was coming. At least I did.
Hi Swamp,
Followed shorty by the execution of Donald Scott in an attempt to seize his land for the Park Service.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJk9tdY-bvs
Jeremy
I remember when you could save money buying a round trip, rather than a one-way, airline ticket. You’d save even more selling the back half of the ticket using the classified ads, which was possible because the airlines didn’t check your ID back then. So in a perverse way, 911 was a gift to the airlines.
I think that stopped in the mid 1990’s. I remember having to show ID in the late 1990s prior to 911.
Did team members stuff money down their pants to get past airport security?
Mike Aponte, the basis for the Fisher character, says that they did carry most of the money on their persons when going through airport security. This is because cash was easily recognized by security through the x-ray machine. If they had a lot of chips, they stored them in carry-on bags. Mike says that security usually didn’t realize the number of chips that were actually there (BlackJackInfo.com).
http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/21mitblackjack.php
If it hasn’t been stricken from the Internet due to Kevin Spacey’s acting, check out the movie “21.” There’s a scene when they go through ’90s airport security with hockey bags full of poker chips and bundles of cash under their clothes. Imagine trying that stunt today. But they’re only looking for guns and 4 oz bottles of shampoo, right?
The TSA is a joke, albeit an expensive one of American taxpayers. They couldn’t find their own anuses with a flash light.
Hi John,
I can’t go near airports any more. Seeing those geeks in their blue costumes makes me see red.
TSA/Thieving Sex Assaulter.
Hundreds spent with 0 results, 400 convicted and sent to prison and 0 terrorists caught.
The degradation of Americans is now complete.
I have no sympathy or love for those who willingly put up with being fondled and groped by idiots with room temperature IQs.
I meant to say hundreds of billions spent….
I’m too pessimistic to think people are going to wake up. If it doesn’t DIRECTLY affect them, they shrug and move on. Worshipers at the Temple Of The Sainted Swine will continually cry “Fight it in court. Don’t resist. They’re just doing their job.” and the Holy Warriors for Tolerance will just barely squeak if the affected person is of a protected class. If the person is marginally affluent, unprotected, or otherwise part of the oppressive class, they shrug and say “That’s what you get, oppressor!”
Jethro Sessions: an ignorant, redneck hill billy, who obviously received his law degree from the back of a comic book when he ordered the sea monkeys and X-ray glasses. His conception had nothing to do with his legal father. Belonging too one of those southern religious sects that fondle venomous snakes for jollies and praying for nuclear Armageddon to swallow up the faithful and take them physically up to some great Motel 6 in the sky to sit next to an invisible deity that doesn’t exist.
There is nothing at all positive to say about this poor excuse for a human being. He is an authoritarian, statist, ignorant little gnome with a backwoods law degree that any near literate could obtain. He fits in nicely with the rest of the tRump administration of nepotism, neo-cons and war mongers.
Sessions is the anathema of liberty. He is a thief and a scoundrel.
As the Attorney general of the United States, he is charged with protecting our liberty and freedom, not violate them. Sessions could care less.
An idiot of the first degree. A mental midget. An example of genetics gone wrong…horribly.
Maybe his mother dropped him on his head or mixed some “shine” with his milk, or what ever cause as much brain damage as he now suffers.
I can only imagine what Hunter S. Thompson would have to write about this legal imposter.
Dropping a new born on its head doesn’t explain why he looks like a Gremlin. Inbreeding does. His dad stated “let this place die off peacefully” at the end of the movie Deliverance.
OH, man I’d like to see an “expose'” from Hunter on this obvious retarded, perverted POS. Hunter will be remembered by people like us who will always exist no matter how we’re hunted. I was introduced to his writing via Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It was at that point I felt “legitimized”.
When I was 21, when I was a truck driver, a college student and war protestor, I got on the “list” that follows me today.
I was inculcated into a more extreme group of people who just didn’t give a shit…..as I didn’t by that time. My list of wild and crazy “fuck you and don’t give me any shit and we’ll be friends forever” kind of people.
At an age 20 years younger than the guys in Hangover, we did even crazier shit than that. My theme song has probably been, since I was about 8, “I Fought the Law” and the law won eventually or so they thought and the very reason we got raided in 2016, two old retired people whose main sin was being honest, brutally honest.
Ask me what I think. I don’t give a shit who you are or what you think you are, i’ll give you my honest answer. For those full of shit, it’s brutal. For those who CAN see the forest in spite of the trees, it’s just my opinion. There are few who fit into that last category.
I was once told by an older man I as “too honest” and he wasn’t passing judgement, merely pointing out few can deal with truth.
Hunter S. Thompson, may you continue to haunt the evil bastards that are screwing up the planet.
They all need to be dosed with LSD and Bud.
And some ether.
FEAR and LOATHING!
I’ve tried to tell people for 50 years LSD increases your intelligence and now studies involving other, more natural forms of psychedelics are showing I was right.
The DEA(just got nauseous, seriously)won’t allow researches in this country to legally possess LSD so all studies are done with other things such as “Rooms”.
The other side of the coin is the national alcohol producer association that will do anything to keep people from legally having such as pot and mushrooms since every study done in other countries( and ones done in states of the US where pot is legal) show psychedelics and THC consumption decreases alcohol and Opioid sales.