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AMERICANS ARE PUTTING UP WITH A SPIRALING GESTAPO STATE
By Paul Craig Roberts
Special to the Los Angeles Times
What will become of "law and order conservatism" now that we know
that our law-enforcement agencies -- from the Justice Department to
local police forces -- can be as criminal as the miscreants that they
are supposed to pursue?
Unspeakable acts of cold-blooded murder and fabricated evidence now
routinely characterize everyday acts of law enforcement in the United
States.
In Malibu, Calif., a 30-person raiding party of sheriff's deputies,
federal drug agents and the California National Guard broke into the
home of Donald Scott and shot him dead. Scott, it turns out, was a
reclusive man, heir to a European fortune, whose $5 million, 200-acre
ranch was targeted by federal agents under drug-forfeiture laws. No
drugs or marijuana plants were found, but an alert Ventura County
prosecutor, Michael Bradbury, did find that the raiding party had an
appraisal of Scott's ranch, along with notes on the sale price of
nearby property. Gideon Kanner, a Los Angeles law professor who has
examined the case, concluded that the feds thought Scott might have a
wife who indulged in drugs and decided to see if they could bag a $5
million piece of property for the Treasury.
In pre-democratic times, this was known as "tax farming". Government
officials simply seized whatever they could and raked off a
commission. Today, the commission is in the form of the
bureaucracy's budget. Ever since President Reagan's budget director,
David Stockman, invented "budget savings" from tougher Internal
Revenue Service and drug enforcement, the pressure has been on these
marauders to farm more revenues. The results are mounting abuses of
citizens and occasional deaths.
What will be done about it? Nothing. Scott, awakened from sleep by
the sound of his door crashing in, made the mistake of walking out of
his bedroom with a gun in his hand. The military force got off with
a self-defense plea. Shades of Waco, Texas, where the FBI and the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms folks killed 86 men, women
and children, while the attorney general took all the credit to show
how tough she is.
Noted defense attorney Gerry Spence told the Montana Trial Lawyers
Association in July that he had never been involved in a case with
the federal government in which the government had not lied and
manufactured evidence to gain a conviction. "These are not the good
guys", he said. "These are people who do what they believe is
necessary to do to bring about a conviction." The law gets hung with
the victim.
What, you might protest, about the Los Angeles and Detroit
convictions of police officers who beat black motorists? Aren't
these signs that checks and balances work and that we are free from
the arbitrary application of power that medieval serfs had to endure?
Alas, these police offers were not done in because they abused their
power, but because they were charged with racism and violating the
civil rights of a member of a "preferred minority". As incredible as
it may seem, in the United States only blacks have any protection
from abusive state power. They have a special, racial civil-rights
shield. The rest of us must make do with happenstance.
Formally, a person could protect himself by getting rich. But today
that just makes you more of a target. Witness the fates of
billionaires Michael Milken and Leona Helmsley -- and of Donald
Scott. Politically ambitious prosecutors need drama, and they don't
get that from the local drug pusher. Federal drug agents are not
going to waste their time and risk their lives rounding up Jamaican
drug gangs (who shoot back) -- especially when inner-city juries may
not convict either out of fear or feelings of racial solidarity --
when they can pick soft targets like Scott.
Nothing makes it clearer that the United States is no longer a
"nation of laws" than federal wetlands regulations. These "laws"
have been created entirely by bureaucrats and courts. All over
America, people are finding their uses of their property circumvented
and themselves in jail because of these regulatory police and their
"laws".
Recently, the Clinton administartion said: "Congress should amend the
Clean Water Act to make it consistent with the agencies' rule-
making." And Sens. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and John H. Chaff, R-R.I.,
have introduced a bill to codify all the wetlands regulations that
are being enforced without any legal basis.
Note that the two senators did not introduce a bill to stop unelected
bureaucrats from illegally creating laws and running all over our
constitutional protections. Not even a wrist slap. To hell with the
U.S. Constitution, say the senators. Let's pass a law that future
courts will use to give carte blanche to the regulatory police.
Let's ennoble the bureaucrats. Divine rule cannot be blocked by
special-interest lobbying.
Roberts, former assistant Trasury secretary, is chairman of the
Institute for Political Economy.