THE STEALING OF AMERICA
Jul 22, 2014 12:42:49 #
The Stealing of America by the Cops, the Courts, the Corporations and Congress
John W. Whitehead
Rutherford Institute
July 22, 2014
Call it what you willtaxes, penalties, fees, fines, regulations, tariffs, tickets, permits, surcharges, tolls, asset forfeitures, foreclosures, etc.but the only word that truly describes the constant bilking of the American taxpayer by the government and its corporate partners is theft.
Were operating in a topsy-turvy Sherwood Forest where instead of Robin Hood and his merry band of thieves stealing from the rich to feed the poor, youve got the government and its merry band of corporate thieves stealing from the poor to fatten the wallets of the rich. In this way, the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. All the while, the American Dream of peace, prosperity, and liberty has turned into a nightmare of endless wars, debilitating debt, and outright tyranny.
What Americans dont seem to comprehend is that if the government can arbitrarily take away your property, without your having much say about it, you have no true rights. Youre nothing more than a serf or a s***e.
In this way, the police state with all of its trappingsfrom surveillance cameras, militarized police, SWAT team raids, truancy and zero tolerance policies, asset forfeiture laws, privatized prisons and red light cameras to Sting Ray guns, fusion centers, drones, black boxes, hollow-point bullets, detention centers, speed traps and abundance of laws criminalizing otherwise legitimate conductis little more than a front for a high-dollar covert operation aimed at laundering as much money as possible through government agencies and into the bank accounts of corporations.
The rationalizations for the American police state are many. Theres the so-called threat of terrorism, the ongoing Drug War, the influx of i*****l i*******ts, the threat of civil unrest in the face of economic collapse, etc. However, these rationalizations are merely excuses for the growth of a government behemoth, one which works hand in hand with corporations to profit from a society kept under lockdown and in fear at all times.
Indeed, as I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the real motivating factor behind erecting a police state is not to protect the people, but to further enrich the powerful. Consider the following costly line items, all part of the governments so-called quest to keep us safe and fight terrorism while entrenching the police state, enriching the elite, and further shredding our constitutional rights:
$4.2 billion for militarized police. Almost 13,000 agencies in all 50 states and four U.S. territories participate in a military recycling program which allows the Defense Department to t***sfer surplus military hardware to local and state police. In 2012 alone, $546 million worth of military equipment was distributed to law enforcement agencies throughout the country.
$34 billion for police departments to add to their arsenals of weapons and equipment. Since President Obama took office, police departments across the country have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouf**ge and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft. While police departments like to frame the acquisition of military surplus as a money-saving method, in a twisted sort of double jeopardy, the taxpayer ends up footing a bigger bill. First, taxpayers are forced to pay millions of dollars for equipment which the Defense Department purchases from megacorporations only to abandon after a few years. Then taxpayers find themselves footing the bill to maintain the costly equipment once it has been acquired by the local police.
$6 billion in assets seized by the federal government in one year alone. Relying on the topsy-turvy legal theory that ones property can not only be guilty of a crime but is also guilty until proven innocent, government agencies have eagerly cashed in on the civil asset forfeiture revenue scheme, which allows police to seize private property they suspect may be connected to criminal activity. Then whether or not any crime is actually proven to have taken place, the cops keeps the citizens property. Eighty percent of these asset forfeiture cases result in no charge against the property owner. Some states are actually considering expanding the use of asset forfeiture laws to include petty misdemeanors. This would mean that property could be seized in cases of minor crimes such as harassment, possession of small amounts of marijuana, and trespassing in a public park after dark.
$11,000 per hour for a SWAT team raid on a government dissident. The raid was carried out against Terry Porter, a Maryland resident who runs a welding business, is married with three kids, is outspoken about his views of the government, and has been labeled a prepper because he has an underground bunker and food supplies in case things turn apocalyptic. The raiding team included 150 Maryland State Police, FBI, State Fire Marshals bomb squad and County SWAT teams, complete with two police helicopters, two Bearcat special response vehicles, mobile command posts, snipers, police dogs, bomb disposal truck, bomb sniffing robots and a huge excavator. They even brought in food trucks.
$3.8 billion requested by the Obama administration to send more immigration judges to the southern border, build additional detention camps and add border patrol agents. Border Patrol agents are already allowed to search peoples homes, intimately probe their bodies, and rifle through their belongings, all without a warrant. As one journalist put it, The surveillance apparatus is in your face. The high-powered cameras are pointed at you; the drones are above you; youre stopped regularly at checkpoints and interrogated. For example, an American citizen entering the U.S. from Mexico was subjected to a full-body cavity search in which she was subjected to a variety of invasive procedures, including an observed bowel movement and a CT scan, all because a drug dog jumped on her when she was going through border security. Physicians found no drugs hidden in her body.
$61 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, one of the most notoriously bloated government agencies ever created. The third largest federal agency behind the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense, the DHSwith its 240,000 full-time workers and sub-agencieshas been aptly dubbed a runaway train.
$80 billion spent on incarceration by the states and the federal government in 2010. While providing security, housing, food, medical care, etc., for six million Americans is a hardship for cash-strapped states, its a gold mine to profit-hungry corporations such as Corrections Corp of America and GEO Group, the leaders in the partnership corrections industry. Thus, with an eye toward increasing its bottom line, CCA has floated a proposal to prison officials in 48 states offering to buy and manage public prisons at a substantial cost savings to the states. In exchange, the prisons would have to contain at least 1,000 beds and states would have to maintain a 90% occupancy rate for at least 20 years. This has led to the phenomenon of overcriminalization of everyday activities, in which mundane activities such as growing vegetables in your yard or collecting rainwater on your property are criminalized, resulting in jail sentences for individuals who might otherwise have never seen the inside of a jail cell.
$6.4 billion a year for the Bureau of Prisons and $30,000 a year to house an inmate. There are over 3,000 people in America serving life sentences for non-violent crimes. These include theft of a jacket, siphoning gasoline from a truck, stealing tools, and attempting to cash a stolen check. Most of the non-violent offenses which triggered life sentences were drug crimes involving trace amounts of heroin and cocaine. One person imprisoned for life was merely a go-between for an undercover officer buying ten dollars worth of marijuana. California has more money dev**ed to its prison system than its system of education. State spending on incarceration is the fastest growing budget item besides Medicaid.
93 cents an hour for forced, prison labor in service to for-profit corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victorias Secret. What this forced labor scheme has created, indirectly or not, is a financial incentive for both the corporations and government agencies to keep the prisons full to capacity. A good portion of the 2 million prisoners in public facilities are forced to work for corporations, making products on the cheap, undermining free laborers, and increasing the bottom line for many of Americas most popular brands. Prison labor reportedly produces 100 percent of military helmets, shirts, pants, tents, bags, canteens, and a variety of other equipment. Prison labor makes circuit boards for IBM, Texas Instruments, and Dell. Many McDonalds uniforms are sewn by inmates. Other corporationsMicrosoft, Victorias Secret, Boeing, Motorola, Compaq, Revlon, and Kmartalso benefit from prison labor.
$2.6 million pocketed by Pennsylvania judges who were paid to jail youths and send them to private prison facilities. The judges, paid off by the Mid Atlantic Youth Service Corporation, which specializes in private prisons for juvenile offenders, had more than 5,000 kids come through their courtrooms and sent many of them to prison for petty crimes such as stealing DVDs from Wal-Mart and trespassing in vacant buildings.
$1.4 billion per year reportedly lost to truancy by California school districts, which receive government funding based on student attendance. The so-called solution to student absences from school has proven to be a financial windfall for cash-strapped schools, enabling them to rake in millions, fine parents up to $500 for each unexcused absence, with the potential for jail time, and has given rise to a whole new track in the criminal justice system dev**ed to creating new revenue streams for communities. For example, Eileen DiNino, a woman serving a two-day jail sentence for her childrens truancy violations, died while in custody. She is one of hundreds of people jailed in Pennsylvania over their inability to pay fines related to truancy, which include a variety of arbitrary fees meant to rack up money for the courts. For example, [DiNinos] bill included a laundry list of routine fees: $8 for a judicial computer project; $60 for Berks constables; $40 for summary costs for several court offices; and $10 for postage. So even if one is charged with a $20 fine, they may end up finding themselves on the hook for $150 in court fees.
$84.9 million collected in one year by the District of Columbia as a result of tickets issued by speeding and traffic light cameras stationed around the city. Multiply that income hundreds of times over to account for the growing number of localities latching onto these revenue-generating, photo-enforced camera schemes, and youll understand why community governments and police agencies are lining up in droves to install them, despite reports of wide scale corruption by the companies operating the cameras. Although nine states have banned the cameras, theyre in 24 states already and rising.
$1.4 billion for fusion centers. These fusion centers, which represent the combined surveillance and intelligence efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement, have proven to be exercises in incompetence, often producing irrelevant, useless or inappropriate intelligence, while spending millions of dollars on flat-screen televisions, sport utility vehicles, hidden cameras and other gadgets.
In sum, the American police state is a multi-billion dollar boondoggle, meant to keep the property and the resources of the American people flowing into corrupt government agencies and their corporate partners. For those with any accounting ability, its clear that the total sum of the expenses being charged to the American taxpayers account by the government add up to only one thing: the loss of our freedoms. Its time to seriously consider a plan to begin de-funding this beast and keeping our resources where they belong: in our communities, working for us.
John W. Whitehead
Rutherford Institute
July 22, 2014
Call it what you willtaxes, penalties, fees, fines, regulations, tariffs, tickets, permits, surcharges, tolls, asset forfeitures, foreclosures, etc.but the only word that truly describes the constant bilking of the American taxpayer by the government and its corporate partners is theft.
Were operating in a topsy-turvy Sherwood Forest where instead of Robin Hood and his merry band of thieves stealing from the rich to feed the poor, youve got the government and its merry band of corporate thieves stealing from the poor to fatten the wallets of the rich. In this way, the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. All the while, the American Dream of peace, prosperity, and liberty has turned into a nightmare of endless wars, debilitating debt, and outright tyranny.
What Americans dont seem to comprehend is that if the government can arbitrarily take away your property, without your having much say about it, you have no true rights. Youre nothing more than a serf or a s***e.
In this way, the police state with all of its trappingsfrom surveillance cameras, militarized police, SWAT team raids, truancy and zero tolerance policies, asset forfeiture laws, privatized prisons and red light cameras to Sting Ray guns, fusion centers, drones, black boxes, hollow-point bullets, detention centers, speed traps and abundance of laws criminalizing otherwise legitimate conductis little more than a front for a high-dollar covert operation aimed at laundering as much money as possible through government agencies and into the bank accounts of corporations.
The rationalizations for the American police state are many. Theres the so-called threat of terrorism, the ongoing Drug War, the influx of i*****l i*******ts, the threat of civil unrest in the face of economic collapse, etc. However, these rationalizations are merely excuses for the growth of a government behemoth, one which works hand in hand with corporations to profit from a society kept under lockdown and in fear at all times.
Indeed, as I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, the real motivating factor behind erecting a police state is not to protect the people, but to further enrich the powerful. Consider the following costly line items, all part of the governments so-called quest to keep us safe and fight terrorism while entrenching the police state, enriching the elite, and further shredding our constitutional rights:
$4.2 billion for militarized police. Almost 13,000 agencies in all 50 states and four U.S. territories participate in a military recycling program which allows the Defense Department to t***sfer surplus military hardware to local and state police. In 2012 alone, $546 million worth of military equipment was distributed to law enforcement agencies throughout the country.
$34 billion for police departments to add to their arsenals of weapons and equipment. Since President Obama took office, police departments across the country have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouf**ge and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft. While police departments like to frame the acquisition of military surplus as a money-saving method, in a twisted sort of double jeopardy, the taxpayer ends up footing a bigger bill. First, taxpayers are forced to pay millions of dollars for equipment which the Defense Department purchases from megacorporations only to abandon after a few years. Then taxpayers find themselves footing the bill to maintain the costly equipment once it has been acquired by the local police.
$6 billion in assets seized by the federal government in one year alone. Relying on the topsy-turvy legal theory that ones property can not only be guilty of a crime but is also guilty until proven innocent, government agencies have eagerly cashed in on the civil asset forfeiture revenue scheme, which allows police to seize private property they suspect may be connected to criminal activity. Then whether or not any crime is actually proven to have taken place, the cops keeps the citizens property. Eighty percent of these asset forfeiture cases result in no charge against the property owner. Some states are actually considering expanding the use of asset forfeiture laws to include petty misdemeanors. This would mean that property could be seized in cases of minor crimes such as harassment, possession of small amounts of marijuana, and trespassing in a public park after dark.
$11,000 per hour for a SWAT team raid on a government dissident. The raid was carried out against Terry Porter, a Maryland resident who runs a welding business, is married with three kids, is outspoken about his views of the government, and has been labeled a prepper because he has an underground bunker and food supplies in case things turn apocalyptic. The raiding team included 150 Maryland State Police, FBI, State Fire Marshals bomb squad and County SWAT teams, complete with two police helicopters, two Bearcat special response vehicles, mobile command posts, snipers, police dogs, bomb disposal truck, bomb sniffing robots and a huge excavator. They even brought in food trucks.
$3.8 billion requested by the Obama administration to send more immigration judges to the southern border, build additional detention camps and add border patrol agents. Border Patrol agents are already allowed to search peoples homes, intimately probe their bodies, and rifle through their belongings, all without a warrant. As one journalist put it, The surveillance apparatus is in your face. The high-powered cameras are pointed at you; the drones are above you; youre stopped regularly at checkpoints and interrogated. For example, an American citizen entering the U.S. from Mexico was subjected to a full-body cavity search in which she was subjected to a variety of invasive procedures, including an observed bowel movement and a CT scan, all because a drug dog jumped on her when she was going through border security. Physicians found no drugs hidden in her body.
$61 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, one of the most notoriously bloated government agencies ever created. The third largest federal agency behind the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense, the DHSwith its 240,000 full-time workers and sub-agencieshas been aptly dubbed a runaway train.
$80 billion spent on incarceration by the states and the federal government in 2010. While providing security, housing, food, medical care, etc., for six million Americans is a hardship for cash-strapped states, its a gold mine to profit-hungry corporations such as Corrections Corp of America and GEO Group, the leaders in the partnership corrections industry. Thus, with an eye toward increasing its bottom line, CCA has floated a proposal to prison officials in 48 states offering to buy and manage public prisons at a substantial cost savings to the states. In exchange, the prisons would have to contain at least 1,000 beds and states would have to maintain a 90% occupancy rate for at least 20 years. This has led to the phenomenon of overcriminalization of everyday activities, in which mundane activities such as growing vegetables in your yard or collecting rainwater on your property are criminalized, resulting in jail sentences for individuals who might otherwise have never seen the inside of a jail cell.
$6.4 billion a year for the Bureau of Prisons and $30,000 a year to house an inmate. There are over 3,000 people in America serving life sentences for non-violent crimes. These include theft of a jacket, siphoning gasoline from a truck, stealing tools, and attempting to cash a stolen check. Most of the non-violent offenses which triggered life sentences were drug crimes involving trace amounts of heroin and cocaine. One person imprisoned for life was merely a go-between for an undercover officer buying ten dollars worth of marijuana. California has more money dev**ed to its prison system than its system of education. State spending on incarceration is the fastest growing budget item besides Medicaid.
93 cents an hour for forced, prison labor in service to for-profit corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victorias Secret. What this forced labor scheme has created, indirectly or not, is a financial incentive for both the corporations and government agencies to keep the prisons full to capacity. A good portion of the 2 million prisoners in public facilities are forced to work for corporations, making products on the cheap, undermining free laborers, and increasing the bottom line for many of Americas most popular brands. Prison labor reportedly produces 100 percent of military helmets, shirts, pants, tents, bags, canteens, and a variety of other equipment. Prison labor makes circuit boards for IBM, Texas Instruments, and Dell. Many McDonalds uniforms are sewn by inmates. Other corporationsMicrosoft, Victorias Secret, Boeing, Motorola, Compaq, Revlon, and Kmartalso benefit from prison labor.
$2.6 million pocketed by Pennsylvania judges who were paid to jail youths and send them to private prison facilities. The judges, paid off by the Mid Atlantic Youth Service Corporation, which specializes in private prisons for juvenile offenders, had more than 5,000 kids come through their courtrooms and sent many of them to prison for petty crimes such as stealing DVDs from Wal-Mart and trespassing in vacant buildings.
$1.4 billion per year reportedly lost to truancy by California school districts, which receive government funding based on student attendance. The so-called solution to student absences from school has proven to be a financial windfall for cash-strapped schools, enabling them to rake in millions, fine parents up to $500 for each unexcused absence, with the potential for jail time, and has given rise to a whole new track in the criminal justice system dev**ed to creating new revenue streams for communities. For example, Eileen DiNino, a woman serving a two-day jail sentence for her childrens truancy violations, died while in custody. She is one of hundreds of people jailed in Pennsylvania over their inability to pay fines related to truancy, which include a variety of arbitrary fees meant to rack up money for the courts. For example, [DiNinos] bill included a laundry list of routine fees: $8 for a judicial computer project; $60 for Berks constables; $40 for summary costs for several court offices; and $10 for postage. So even if one is charged with a $20 fine, they may end up finding themselves on the hook for $150 in court fees.
$84.9 million collected in one year by the District of Columbia as a result of tickets issued by speeding and traffic light cameras stationed around the city. Multiply that income hundreds of times over to account for the growing number of localities latching onto these revenue-generating, photo-enforced camera schemes, and youll understand why community governments and police agencies are lining up in droves to install them, despite reports of wide scale corruption by the companies operating the cameras. Although nine states have banned the cameras, theyre in 24 states already and rising.
$1.4 billion for fusion centers. These fusion centers, which represent the combined surveillance and intelligence efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement, have proven to be exercises in incompetence, often producing irrelevant, useless or inappropriate intelligence, while spending millions of dollars on flat-screen televisions, sport utility vehicles, hidden cameras and other gadgets.
In sum, the American police state is a multi-billion dollar boondoggle, meant to keep the property and the resources of the American people flowing into corrupt government agencies and their corporate partners. For those with any accounting ability, its clear that the total sum of the expenses being charged to the American taxpayers account by the government add up to only one thing: the loss of our freedoms. Its time to seriously consider a plan to begin de-funding this beast and keeping our resources where they belong: in our communities, working for us.
Jul 22, 2014 13:07:10 #
buffalo wrote:
The Stealing of America by the Cops, the Courts, t... (show quote)
I am definitely NOT calling you a liar, but this is unbelievable.
Even if we v**ed all the current bums out of office (which we won't). It would do little to correct the problems. You have identified some serious problems; where do we go to find solutions. Don't tell us to v**e the democrats out and the republicans in. I would just shift the money pockets a little.
Jul 22, 2014 13:10:37 #
buffalo wrote:
The Stealing of America by the Cops, the Courts, t... (show quote)
John White head is a religious zealot who thinks all laws should just be Gods laws which are of course , open to interpretation by John Whitehead. A lot of these twisting of facts can be disputed with reality, most of which already have been. Whitehead is just another in a long line who seek to gain following through fear and distortion.
Jul 22, 2014 13:24:27 #
robert66 wrote:
John White head is a religious zealot who thinks all laws should just be Gods laws which are of course , open to interpretation by John Whitehead. A lot of these twisting of facts can be disputed with reality, most of which already have been. Whitehead is just another in a long line who seek to gain following through fear and distortion.
That makes me feel a little better, but in every ridiculous lie runs a grain of t***h.
Jul 22, 2014 13:31:53 #
robert66 wrote:
John White head is a religious zealot who thinks all laws should just be Gods laws which are of course , open to interpretation by John Whitehead. A lot of these twisting of facts can be disputed with reality, most of which already have been. Whitehead is just another in a long line who seek to gain following through fear and distortion.
Can you logically, and factually, refute any of his claims, or are you just blowing more smoke?
Jul 22, 2014 14:29:31 #
Old_Gringo wrote:
Can you logically, and factually, refute any of his claims, or are you just blowing more smoke?
I think there is at least a grain of t***h in all of the points he made. Just because he is or may be a religious zealot is certainly not a reason to dismiss him out of hand. He brought up some points that concern me such as,the prison industrial complex, the militarization of so many police forces and the war on drugs.
The genesis of a lot of these problems is our method of dealing with drugs. We have done an unbelievable amount of damage to our entire system with this "war on drugs."Not just to our system but to the systems of our neighbors as well and now we are reaping the rewards that accrue to governments that act in such a cavalier manner with no thought toward the eventual and foreseeable result.
We now have all of these children coming across the border because of the shift in localities of the people who keep us supplied with drugs. This is a bad situation but it can get worse if we don't come to our senses and decriminalize the drugs.
Jul 22, 2014 14:30:49 #
robert66 wrote:
John White head is a religious zealot who thinks all laws should just be Gods laws which are of course , open to interpretation by John Whitehead. A lot of these twisting of facts can be disputed with reality, most of which already have been. Whitehead is just another in a long line who seek to gain following through fear and distortion.
Then just keep your head in the sand, bob. I live in a rural town of 18,000 pop., total population countywide of 35,000+/-. I have witnessed the police and sheriff forces becoming militarized. I have witnessed the unwarranted seizure and confiscation of property and the selective enforcement of laws. If you are caught driving with an invalid license or have a roach (butt of a joint) or ant type of paraphernalia on you ir in your car. You are arrested and your car is impounded. If you are poor, you set in jail. If you are rich and from the right side of town, you can get away with anything.
One thing Whitehead did mention in his article is our private, FOR PROFIT prison system that lobbies state and federal legislatures for more and more laws with stricter penalties. Private prisons are like motels. They are not built to set empty.
It is gullible dupes like you that cling to the old belief that law enforcement is there to protect and serve the citizens. Not any more. Fines have become a source of revenue.
Grace Scott, One thing that could be done is to get corporate influence out of government. Take the money out of politics. Make lobbying illegal.
Jul 22, 2014 14:45:57 #
buffalo wrote:
Then just keep your head in the sand, bob. I live ... (show quote)
I agree with getting corporate money and influence out of government and I agree with limiting lobbying but I don't think it is a good idea to take lobbying away entirely. It is impossible for our representatives to be as informed on as many topics as they need to be in order to do their jobs. lobbying is a good tool and maybe the only one that can keep them informed and up to speed on a lot of things.
There use to be some laws in place that did a good job of controlling payoffs, if we brought those laws back and strengthened them some we could have the system without the extreme corruption.
Jul 22, 2014 14:58:24 #
Jul 22, 2014 15:48:54 #
buffalo wrote:
The Stealing of America by the Cops, the Courts, t... (show quote)
Exactly to the point but why do we have to spend spend spend on police Swat and other agencies. Because we have some 315 million guns on the street right now and we have no idea who has them or where they got them. It's because the bad guys have had a larger arsenal than the good guys.
Jul 22, 2014 15:59:42 #
tdsrnest wrote:
Exactly to the point but why do we have to spend spend spend on police Swat and other agencies. Because we have some 315 million guns on the street right now and we have no idea who has them or where they got them. It's because the bad guys have had a larger arsenal than the good guys.
Bulls**t! The vast majority of which are legally owned by responsible citizens. Are the police really the good guys?
Jul 22, 2014 16:05:34 #
buffalo wrote:
Bulls**t! The vast majority of which are legally owned by responsible citizens. Are the police really the good guys?
YES!!! Most of them are good guys. There are bad apples in the barrel, and that gives all of them a bad name.
Jul 22, 2014 16:09:56 #
grace scott wrote:
YES!!! Most of them are good guys. There are bad apples in the barrel, and that gives all of them a bad name.
Then does a few bad apples in the barrel of the citizenry give them ALL a bad name and the law an excuse to consider them all public enemy #1? All gun owners should be considered terrorists? Does it give them the excuse to confiscate property not connected to any crime, just their assumption?
Jul 22, 2014 16:16:37 #
grace scott wrote:
YES!!! Most of them are good guys. There are bad apples in the barrel, and that gives all of them a bad name.
Police are no different from other people you give them toys and they want to play with them. It used to take one person to serve a summons now it takes a swat teem. Is it because the people are harder to serve? No it's because the departments have these new weapons and they hire a lot of people and train them to use the weapons and there aren't enough real crimes to justify maintaining the swat team so they spend an exorbitant amount of money serving warrants with swat teams just to give the swat teams something to do and pretend to have a need for them.
Jul 22, 2014 16:37:21 #
arvadaian wrote:
Police are no different from other people you give... (show quote)
Have you ever noticed that any entity supported with tax money, the object is to get bigger and bigger. The school, city, county, state or fed NEVER cuts back.
In 2013 Texas spent an average of $8,400 per student. Teacher annual salaries averaged $48,110. With classroom size limited to 20 pupils that comes to $168,000 per classroom. What do schools do with the remaining $120,000 after paying teachers? Too many money managers. Yet they up school property taxes every year.
Cities never cut back on salary increases, hiring, vehicle and equipment purchases (especially for their police departments) they just up property taxes. The same with counties. Our local PD and sheriffs departments are all t***sitioning to Tahoes from Ford Crown Vics. City and co unty employees got a 3.5% col. Too many money managers. What did they do? Raised property taxes.
The same with state and federal.
When my expenses- gas, groceries, utilities AND taxes go up, I have to cut back. Why can't they?
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