QUOTE OF THE DAY
Washington Post: Asset seizures fuel police spending
Police agencies have used hundreds of millions of dollars taken from Americans under federal civil forfeiture law in recent years to buy guns, armored cars and electronic surveillance gear. They have also spent money on luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.
The details are contained in thousands of annual reports submitted by local and state agencies to the Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Program, an initiative that allows local and state police to keep up to 80 percent of the assets they seize. The Washington Post obtained 43,000 of the reports dating from 2008 through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Wall Street Journal: Criminalizing Political Speech in Wisconsin
The criminalization of politics is bad enough—just ask Texas Gov. Rick Perry—but a new turn to target citizens as well threatens to permanently warp our political discourse. Like it or not, federal courts will have to intervene to uphold Americans’ First Amendment rights against win-at-any-cost politics.
Politico: A maze to opt out of Obamacare individual mandate
There are dozens of ways to escape Obamacare’s individual mandate tax — but good luck figuring that out come tax season.
Tens of millions of Americans can avoid the fee if they qualify for exemptions like hardship or living in poverty, but the convoluted process has some experts worried individuals will be tripped up by lost paperwork, the need to verify information with multiple sources and long delays that extend beyond tax season.
Americans still have a great faith in the power of individual effort to make one’s own breaks and climb the ladder of success. At the same time, though, they are worried about what the future holds with just 30% confident that the next generation will be better off than the current one. That’s right around average for advanced economy but far gloomier than South Korea (52) and emerging Asian nations such as Vietnam (94%) and China (85%).
CARTOON OF THE DAY
