Category Archives: Constitution

Thinking About Teen Drinking

The War on Drugs

One of the sub-sets of the War On Drugsâ„¢ is the continuing, and pretty well fruitless, effort to prevent people under the age of 21 from drinking. Brad, the Unrepentant Individual, points out yet another episode in this continuing and puritanical folly in Alabama.

If the bill becomes law, people could drink draft beer only at a bar, restaurant, private club or other retail establishment licensed for beer sales by the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Board, said Sen. Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, the bill’s sponsor.

There’s so many reasons that this is not just stupid, but morally repugnant, swirling through my head that I hardly know where to begin. I think I’ll just toss out a list of thoughts at this point and all and sundry are welcome to join in the conversation.

  • Obviously, all you have to do is drive across the state line to one of the states that borders Alabama, buy a keg and drive it back to Alabama. Since this is interstate commerce, I don’t think there is anything that Alabama can do to prevent this, provided that you meet all the legal requirements to buy alcohol in the other state and consume, or possess, alcohol in Alabama. Even if you don’t, let’s stop and think about how well Prohibition worked.
  • The intent, acccording to Singleton, is to cut down on teen drinking at parties. This won’t do a darn thing to prevent, or diminish, teen drinking. Nothing. What it does is to prevent me from perfectly legal and ethical activity on the off chance that I might do something wrong. That is hardly a presumption of innocence until I’m proved guilty, now is it? This is like the media companies (Sony, anyone?) who want to prevent legal copying of music because you might make an illegal copy.
  • I’ve lived, and travelled, in Europe. One of the immediate things you notice is that Europeans don’t have the same puritan attitudes towards kids drinking as many Americans do. In Germany, for example, kids can, and do, go buy beer for their parents at the local store. And, teenagers go into bars and have a beer. I haven’t studied this, or looked up any statistics, but my personal observation was that they handled it much better than American kids do. Probably because it’s not treated as taboo.
  • It’s a bit hypocritical to insist that a 16 year old can drive a car, an 18 year old can assume the responsibilities of adulthood, including writing contracts, joining the military and voting, but you aren’t responsible enough to drink alcohol until you’re 21.
  • My experience as a teenager says that making it forbidden just guarantees that the kids go off somewhere secluded and drink anyhow. Alternatively, they’ll find some Washington Fake ID (which is very high-quality and difficult to identify as fake nowadays) and have easy access to a club. The worst option is most likely the secluded drinking because now you have a bunch of drunk teenagers driving from wherever the party was. This is blatantly going to result in disaster, whether they hurt themselves or someone else. They will need the help of someone like this DWI lawyer in Austin, TX. Jason Katims who would hopefully be able to lessen the charges against them, but it’s unlikely that they would get away it completely and could face time in prison. That’s so much better. Great plan guys. You don’t have to be a driver to know that getting behind the wheel after having a number of drinks is never the answer. It comes as no surprise to find that companies like Countrywide Testing exist, in the hopes of preventing teenagers (or anyone for that matter) getting behind the wheel after they’ve been drinking. It is not worth risking the lives of others and even yourself when it comes to drink driving. If you are someone who has found themselves in a situation like this, do some research into something like illinois dui (if you live in this state) and see what advice you can get from a professional DUI lawyer. Everyone, regardless of age should know better. It is always best to be safe than sorry, especially on the road.

Mike, at No Angst Zone, has an excellent rant in response to this topic. Although I have to say that I think a bit of angst is showing through Mike. ;-)

Eric
Security executive, work for Core Security, veteran, kids, dogs, cat, chickens, mortgage, bills. I like #liberty #InfoSec #scotch, #wine, #cigars, #travel, #baseball
http://www.securitycigarsfud.com/

Public Rights vs. Private Contracts

Free Speech, Individual Rights

The Washington Post typically devotes the back pages of its Sunday Outlook section to short articles written by local community activists and others expressing their opinion about various issues of interest to the Metro DC area. This morning, one of those articles, titled My Rights Aren’t A Matter Of Address regarding the alleged threa to individual rights posed by Homeowners Associations or, as the author refers to them Property Owner Associations.

Virginians are proud of the commonwealth’s role in the founding of the country and the formation of the ideals and rights that define us as Americans.

From George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, to Thomas Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom to James Madison’s role as the father of the Constitution, Virginians have been at the forefront of declaring and protecting individual rights.

Increasingly, however, these rights are being undermined or stripped by a form of government that the Founders did not foresee: the property owners association (POA).

The Constitution and Virginia law specifically recognize and protect the display of political yard signs on a homeowner’s property, yet a POA can and often does strip people of this right to free speech. All Americans have the right to express their support for a political party or candidate in the form of a yard sign from Super Cheap Signs.

There is one problem with the entire premise of this argument. The Constitutions of the United States and Virginia to protect an individual rights to freedom of speech, but they only protect it against the action of the state. There is no such thing as a right to free speech that applies to private entities. If you are on my property, I have the right to stop you from engaging in speech that would otherwise be protected if you were on your property and I were a police officer. And this is where POA’s come in.

POA’s are entirely a creation of contract. Groups of homeowners come together and form an organization that will accomplish certain goals. Typically, this includes maintaining some standard rules of esthetics for the community, contracting for trash removal, and maintaining property that is owned by the POA members in common rather than by any one person.

When you buy a house that is part of a POA, you agree to certain rules and regulations. These rules can be as mundane as what day you put your trash can out or what color you can paint or front door. Or, they can be as rigid as telling you that you cannot put a sign of any kind in your front yard. In fact, if your front yard is actually POA property, which is true of many townhouse communities here in Northern Virginia, then the property really isn’t yours anyway.

Its evidently clear that the author of the article does not recognize this simple fact:

During holiday seasons, homeowners in my development are encouraged to decorate their homes with, say, Halloween scenes or Christmas decorations. Shouldn’t Election Day be treated as an important holiday for democracy? In my community, putting the issue to a vote has been suggested, but I disagree with this approach. What the Constitution gives, neither my POA nor my neighbors should be able to take away. Moving into a POA-ruled neighborhood should not mean moving out of America.

Property owners associations in Virginia have the legal right to prohibit homeowners from displaying political signs in their own yards. Homeowners are bound by the contracts they must sign to live in POA-regulated neighborhoods, and they agree to sacrifice some rights at the gates to the community. But it should not be within the reach of a POA to establish covenants that deny homeowners a constitutional right. Limitations on the size, number and duration of sign displays might be reasonable, but prohibition is not.

If you don’t like the rules that a particular POA has then you have several options. For one thing, you don’t have to move there to begin with. In Virginia, sellers are legally required to give buyers a copy of the POA rules and buyers are given an opportunity to review those rules and back out of the contract without penalty. If you’re in a POA and you don’t like the rules, or how they are being enforced then get involved in your community and get the rules changed. What you don’t need to do, though, is what the author of the article advocates:

To stop free-speech infringements by POAs, the Virginia General Assembly should follow the example of these states. Legislation has been introduced in both the House and Senate in Richmond, and a bill should be passed and signed into law. The efforts of our neighborhood’s founding developers to create attractive, homogeneous enclaves should not trump the efforts of the Founders to declare and protect the rights we enjoy as Virginians and as Americans.

Ah yes, if you don’t like the way the world is, just get the government involved and force everyone else to change. Unfortunately, that seems to be becoming the American way.

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Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com

It’s NOT about RACE

Individual Rights, The War on Drugs

A frequent canard of black activists, liberal advocates, “justice” advocates etc… is that there are “sentencing disparities between powder and crack cocaine”; followed of course by “Clearly because crack is seen as a black drug, these harsher sentences must be racially motivated”.

It is repeated so often that even some responsible conservatives (and a LOT of libertarians)who really should know better, think there is something there.

Only it’s not true. In fact it’s not even the slightest bit true.

It’s not about race; it’s about power, and control.

It is all predicated on a technical detail, that isoften overlooked; and that most don’t understand even if they see it.

See, most people think you should sentence people based on the amount of drugs they have or are trying to sell etc… Which makes sense to a degree. Most people further assume that this amount is based on the number of doses of the drug. This is just intuitive on most folks part; because they think of “one pill, one dose” etc…

Here’s the problem though; in this country, drug related sentencing is generally calculated based on the weight of the drug INCLUDING THE CARRIER; not by the dose.

By that I mean, the actual active ingredient of the drug is generally only a small part of the weight they charge you on, because the weight of all the inactive ingredients is counted as well.

If I mixed 7 grams of cocaine into 1 oz of baking soda, 1 oz of milk sugar; I would be charged as if I had 63 grams of cocaine (which would be a minimum 10 year sentence); even though there is only 7 grams of actual cocaine there.

So why are sentences for crack “so much higher” in comparison to powder?

Crack actually contains a relatively small amount of cocaine by weight, vs. powder cocaine, and the sentencing laws ONLY CONSIDER WEIGHT.

A person with a gram of coke, has maybe 4-6 doses (less for a heavy user); and 1-2 grams would be a typical days usage for a habitual user; with up to about 5 grams for the most serious users (Richard Pryor level).

A person with a 1 gram dime rock of crack cocaine has only about 1/8th to 1/4 gram of actual cocaine in it (there isn’t a lot of consistency in dosage). A crack user will go through anywhere from 5 nickle rocks (1/16th to 1/8th gram of coke) to 10 solid rocks (a $20 2 gram or so rock with between 1/4 and 1/2 gram of actual coke) in a day (from $25 to $200) depending on how much they can buy; and how much tolerance they have built up (10 solid rocks in a day would probably kill a new user)

Thats as little 5/16 of a gram of coke, to maybe 5 grams; about the same as a days use of powder cocaine; but the total weight is from 2.5 to 20 grams.

The sentence is calculated on the total weight, therefore one days worth of crack is counted as anywhere from 2.5-20 times as much drug as one days worth of powder.

And you are sentenced as if you have 2.5 to 20 times as much of the drug.

Of course this doesnt just apply to cocaine.

No-one ever talks about sentencing disparity in LSD, which typicaly has a dosage of less 25 to 50 micrograms, which is one 2000th of a gram in weight; but which is often absorbed into tablets or a piece of heavy paper that may weigh more than a gram.

This means that someone who has five doses of LSD in 1 gram tablets is charged as if they had several hundred, to several thousand doses.

There are dozens of hippies serving 25 to life in prison right now for selling as little as 5 doses of LSD to DEA and FBI agents.

Then there’s MDMA, which has the same issue. Regardless of your race, some MDMA drugs can have vital side-effects on anyone. So much so that people may even decide to order an MDMA test kit here to establish what they’ve taken, as it may not be what they initially thought it was. But all these drugs end up having the same issue.

It’s not about race; it’s about inflating the numbers of the drug enforcement agencies; and inflating the records of district attorneys. It’s about power, money, and control; pure and simple.

Chris Byrne
I am a cynically romantic optimistic pessimist. I am neither liberal, nor conservative. I am a (somewhat disgruntled) muscular minarchist… something like a constructive anarchist.

Basically what that means, is that I believe, all things being equal, responsible adults should be able to do whatever the hell they want to do, so long as nobody’s getting hurt, who isn’t paying extra

http://anarchangel.blogspot.com

Hooked On Takings

Constitution, General

According to this report in the New York Times, the use of eminent domain to advance private development is the dirty little secret of commercial real estate.

Bank of America agreed to join the developer Douglas Durst in 2003 in building a 54-story tower in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, giving a psychological and economic lift to a city that was still reeling from the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Mr. Durst said he would not have been able to negotiate with Bank of America or other prospective tenants had the state not authorized him to use eminent domain, a redevelopment tool that is coming under fire in the wake of a United States Supreme Court ruling last June in a Connecticut case.

Now under construction at 42nd Street and the Avenue of Americas, the Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park, as the project is known, was decades in the making as the Durst family assembled the site. Ultimately, only two buildings remained, but their owners kept raising the price, Mr. Durst said.

Eventually, the state told Mr. Durst that if he found an anchor tenant the buildings could be condemned even though the site was not in a blighted neighborhood. That threat alone was enough to break the impasse. “Once we had that ability, we were able to quickly come to a resolution on the two properties and meet Bank of America’s schedule,” Mr. Durst said.

Let’s be clear about what happened hear. While not as well-known or flamboyant as Donald Trump, the Durst family is one of the largest commercial real estate developers in New York City, if not the nation. When they ran into two building owners who realized that the laws of supply and demand gave them an advantage, thus refusing to sell at a rock-bottom price, they called on their cronies at Gracie Mansion and in Albany to forcibly take their property from them. Now, I’m sure that the owners of those buildings are quite different from the Kelo’s and other citizens of New London who were the subject of last year’s Supreme Court decision, but theft is theft and that’s exactly what this is and it doesn’t really coincide with how this guide on Inboundrem talks about prospecting for real estate clients should be done correctly in today’s market.

What is more interesting, though, is the extent to which the use of eminent domain has become common place in the commercial real estate development business. With the backlash that has come from Kelo, however, the article goes on to point out the delicate situation that developers and government officials find themselves in:

Using eminent domain for private projects has long been a divisive issue, but never more so since the Supreme Court upheld the right of officials in New London, Conn., to condemn homes and businesses to increase the tax base of one of the state’s poorest cities.

That decision, coupled with reports of abuses in places like the predominantly African-American community of Riviera Beach, Fla., where plans called for replacing thousands of homes with upscale condos, has prompted a onslaught of legislation, both federal and state.

In other words, when Kelo was handed down, ordinary Americans began to realize what was happening and what could happen to their property. They responded by pressuring their elected representatives to do something about it:

In November, the House of Representatives approved a bill by F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin, that would penalize government agencies for using condemnation powers for private projects by denying them economic development funds for two years. Legislation has been introduced in 27 states, and more is coming, said Larry Morandi, the director of the environment, energy and transportation program of the National Conference of State Legislatures

That hasn’t stopped them from trying to justify what they’ve done, of course:

But around the country, developers and city officials say weakening or destroying the power to condemn property will seriously undermine efforts to rehabilitate decaying cities and might even hinder the rebuilding of New Orleans. Without eminent domain, the Inner Harbor, which played an essential role in Baltimore’s success in building its tourist industry, could not have been redeveloped, said Ralph S. Tyler, the city solicitor.

The fact that you stole someone’s property to do it doesn’t matter does it ? Apparently not.

One business group that has opposed restrictions on eminent domain is the Partnership for New York City, whose members include most of the city’s top developers. Kathryn S. Wylde, the president and chief executive of the group, said her members opposed any efforts to alter condemnation procedures through federal or state legislation. “When you add restrictions on development, you are never quite sure what the results are going to be,” she said. “We want to avoid political reaction to an issue that adds more problems and obstacles to economic growth.”

Hmmm, and when you create a legal environment where people’s property can be taken away from them on the whim of a government official who happens to be in the pocket of a big developer what kind of result will that create Ms. Wylde ?

If one thing is clear from this article it is that these commercial developers have become dependent upon the government to get them the land they need to build their projects, and politicans have become dependent on campaign contributions from the developers. The end result is a world where your property isn’t really yours anymore.

Cross-Posted at Below The Beltway

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Doug Mataconis
http://www.belowthebeltway.com

The Difference Between Reverend Nagin and Reverend Robertson

Individual Rights

Yesterday as you may or may not know, New Orleans Mayor For Life Ray Nagin had some interesting comments at the annual MLK Jr. parade. In addition to his publicized “chocolate New Orleans” comments (for which he has a lame excuse), he said God sent hurricane after hurricane because He did not approve of us being in Iraq “under false pretenses”. Finally, at the beginning of his speech, he had a conversation with Dr. King himself and they talked about everything from the Federal response to Katrina to the state of black America. Some in the blogosphere are comparing Nagin to Pat Robertson, but there are some very important distinctions that need to raised here, and these distinctions make all the difference.

The first major distinction is that Pat Robertson only hosts a TV show and has a limited following even among evangelical Christians whereas Ray Nagin is the mayor of a major American city. When Pat Robertson starts talking about God, I have the choice to turn “The 700 Club” off. However, I have to wait up to four years to remove Ray Nagin from office, or I did have the means to remove Ray Nagin from office until Louisiana Dictator Kathleen Blanco and her poodle, Secretary of State Al Ater, canceled New Orleans’s mayorial elections until further notice. Nagin can do far more damage due to his position of power than the crank Pat Robertson can with his television audience.

Another major distinction is that Robertson never made race an issue with his remarks, whereas I fear that Nagin’s racist remarks can possibly set the stage for race riots when black residents begin returning to New Orleans en masse. The black community in New Orleans has made the Katrina aftermath all about race from day one. They have alleged everything from a racist conspiracy to blow the leeves deliberately (if so then why were white Old Metarie and Lakeview flooded as well) to a racist conspiracy to keep blacks out of New Orleans (which Nagin alluded to yesterday). The black community and leadership in New Orleans has not condemned not just Nagin’s racist remarks but has not refuted the conspiracy theories, therefore these conspiracy theories and racist feelings have legitimacy among the black population of New Orleans.

The best way to bring New Orleans back and honor Dr. King’s dream is to vote Nagin out of office when Dictator Blanco finally sets an election date or is forced to by the Feds. Only then can New Orleans begin to rebuild for the benefit of all of the residents that make what has been termed a racial and cultural “gumbo” by former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial.

Kevin Boyd
I’m one of the original co-founders of The Liberty Papers all the way back in 2005. Since then, I wound up doing this blogging thing professionally. Now I’m running the site now. You can find my other work at The Hayride.com and Rare. You can also find me over at the R Street Institute.
https://thelibertypapers.org/2005/11/22/a-bit-about-kevin/
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