{"id":26869,"date":"2015-07-07T01:00:18","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T05:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26869"},"modified":"2015-06-29T20:46:44","modified_gmt":"2015-06-30T00:46:44","slug":"qotd-laws-as-blunt-instruments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/07\/07\/qotd-laws-as-blunt-instruments\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Laws as blunt instruments"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>On June 25th, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation seized the venerable San Francisco escort website, <em>MyRedbook<\/em>, under the usual vague and evidence-free charges the US government always uses when it wants to destroy peaceful businesses who have hurt no one. This time [&#8230;] the pretenses are \u201cmoney laundering\u201d and \u201cracketeering\u201d, but others cases include \u201cconspiracy\u201d, \u201cmail fraud\u201d and \u201ctax evasion\u201d. You may believe that these are actual crimes, but the truth is they aren\u2019t (except on paper); they\u2019re simply <a href=\"http:\/\/maggiemcneill.wordpress.com\/2013\/02\/22\/blunt-instrument\/\" target=\"_blank\">blunt instruments<\/a> defined so vaguely that any competent prosecutor can jam nearly any business into one or more of them. Here\u2019s how it works: \u201cracketeering\u201d can mean criminals operating a legitimate business, like when a mobster owns a restaurant. So a \u201cracketeering\u201d charge usually means \u201cwe think you committed crimes but can\u2019t prove them, so we\u2019re just going to <em>assume<\/em> you\u2019re a criminal and prosecute you for owning a regular business.\u201d Any money you\u2019ve deposited is then called \u201cmoney laundering\u201d on the grounds that you deposited \u201ccriminal proceeds\u201d from your imaginary crimes into your legitimate account; \u201ctax evasion\u201d is based on the pretense that you have failed to pay taxes on imaginary income they can\u2019t prove you actually made; \u201cconspiracy\u201d means merely <em>talking about<\/em> committing the imaginary crimes, and so on. And if you believe that the targeted business is protected by the presumption of innocence, <a href=\"http:\/\/maggiemcneill.wordpress.com\/2014\/07\/25\/nice-while-it-lasted\/\" target=\"_blank\">think again<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Maggie McNeill, <a href=\"http:\/\/maggiemcneill.wordpress.com\/2014\/07\/11\/bread-and-circuses\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Bread and Circuses&#8221;, <em>The Honest Courtesan<\/em><\/a>, 2014-07-11.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On June 25th, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation seized the venerable San Francisco escort website, MyRedbook, under the usual vague and evidence-free charges the US government always uses when it wants to destroy peaceful businesses who have hurt no one. This time [&#8230;] the pretenses are \u201cmoney laundering\u201d and \u201cracketeering\u201d, but others cases include [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,9,10,41,13],"tags":[282,520,417],"class_list":["post-26869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-law","category-liberty","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-fbi","tag-prostitution","tag-victimlesscrime"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6Zn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26869"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26870,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26869\/revisions\/26870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}