From Cold River to Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics Michael Ignatieff, Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics. A genuinely interesting book about why someone with tenure at Harvard might be crazy enough to run for high public office, and then what it is like to lose somewhat ignominiously.
- The Price We Pay — more praise for Harold Crooks’ film documentary
- Corporate Deadbeats: How Companies Get Rich Off Of Taxes
- Finally, financial crime begins to embarrass Delaware
Kofis “They’re manipulating all of us.”
Under the federal Equitable Sharing Program, police have seized $2.5 billion since 2001 from people who were not charged with a crime and without a warrant being issued. Police reasoned that the money was crime-related. About $1.7 billion was sent back to law enforcement agencies for their use.
Often the cash is seized from motorists (carrying costs now exceed liquidity premium, I suppose). There is this too:
- Only a sixth of the seizures were legally challenged, in part because of the costs of legal action against the government. But in 41 percent of cases — 4,455 — where there was a challenge, the government agreed to return money. The appeals process took more than a year in 40 percent of those cases and often required owners of the cash to sign agreements not to sue police over the seizures.
- Hundreds of state and local departments and drug task forces appear to rely on seized cash, despite a federal ban on the money to pay salaries or otherwise support budgets. The Post found that 298 departments and 210 task forces have seized the equivalent of 20 percent or more of their annual budgets since 2008.
There is much more here, by Michael Sallah, Robert O’Harrow Jr., and Steven Rich at The Washington Post, give them a Pulitzer.