Throughout Motive‘s annual Webathon, through which we ask our most loyal prospects to contemplate making a tax-deductible donation to the 501(c)3 nonprofit that makes our print and pixels and audio and visuals doable, it has turn into a practice to showcase a class of our work that, maybe counter-intuitively for the needs of fundraising, has the very worst results on end-user blood strain.
I’m speaking, in fact, about these many, many, MANY instances of undeserving people tasting the crushing boot of an unforgiving state. Pop your favourite beta blocker, maintain your tranquilizers, and put together to emit steam. BUT FIRST!
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“That is your probability,” Motive Senior Editor Jacob Sullum tweeted Friday, close to the underside of an infuriating thread, “to take a stand towards vengeful officers who abuse the regulation to punish individuals for constitutionally protected speech.”
Sullum was referencing a chunk that Motive started overlaying manner again in 2017, persevering with all the best way to final month: A citizen-journalist in Laredo, Texas, named Priscilla Villarreal, was arrested and charged with two felony counts of “misuse of official data” for the journalistically (and constitutionally) fundamental act of asking cops for factual particulars about some lethal incidents. Villarreal’s case, through which the rights-offending officers have been protected by the odious authorized doctrine of Certified Immunity, has gone all the best way as much as the Supreme Court docket (Sullum joined a court docket transient in her assist).
Watch Billy Binion’s video report about Villarreal’s case, and be aware that, as Sullum says, “Given the tendency of cops and prosecutors to abuse the regulation in service of grudges towards individuals who annoy them, there are sure to be extra instances like these, and you may be assured that Motive will likely be there to clarify the stakes.”
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“In the course of the peak of the pandemic summer season of 2020,” Eric Boehm wrote in our March 2024 challenge, “the proprietors of the Burning Bridge Tavern labored with native officers in Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, to host a sequence of out of doors gatherings for the neighborhood.” You may by no means guess what occurred subsequent!
Burning Bridge bought slapped with a bunch of citations by the Pennsylvania Liquor Management Board (PLCB), in fact, however the true gut-punch got here throughout liquor-license renewal time:
Seems, over the previous two years the PLCB has pushed dozens of Pennsylvania institutions that racked up pandemic-associated citations to signal “conditional licensing agreements” to resume their liquor permits. In some instances, these agreements have pressured the sale of licenses—however most often, as with Burning Bridge, they’ve added further situations to the license that would stop a future renewal from being authorised.
These renewal-conditions can have knock-on results similar to making insurance coverage ruinously costly. All for the sin of offering some much-needed neighborhood throughout a time of social isolation and authorities overreach. Boehm’s article, you will be completely satisfied to know, was learn into the file at a listening to of the Pennsylvania Senate.
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Motive‘s Christian Britschgi likes to defend the little man whereas filling the remainder of us with white-hot rage. How concerning the Ohio pastor who was (as soon as once more!) criminally charged for sheltering homeless individuals in his church? Or the California couple whose 22-foot-tall cellular residence was deemed by the California Coastal Fee as being six toes too excessive for optimum close by beach-viewing, so needed to be torn down? Or the vineyard in in any other case homelessness-pocked Santa Clara County that was fined $120,000 for permitting the winery supervisor and household stay in a trailer on the property?
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Billy Binion is a one-man coronary heart attack-enabler. There’s the household that was wrong-house flashbang-grenaded by the FBI but couldn’t sue for damages; the person who served two years on bogus fees allegedly cooked up by a corrupt prosecutor who ordered incriminating proof be destroyed and but was granted immunity from go well with. The small nonprofit that, as a result of it owned $2,543 in again property taxes, had its property seized by the town and bought to a personal investor. The girl who owed $3,863 in property taxes, then had the county seize her residence, promote it, and pocket a revenue of $102,636. The record goes on, and on, and on.
Please donate to Motive to maintain Billy Binion sizzling on the path of governmental misconduct!
C.J. Ciaramella makes a speciality of legal injustice instances, similar to cops beating up a deaf man, an officer capturing a blind and deaf canine, a pair having $8,000 and their firearms seized over a misdemeanor drug possession raid, and authorities being gratuitously merciless to households whose family members die behind bars.
Final however under no circumstances least, Lenore Skenazy is the one best supply for AYFKM tales springing from that ugly intersection between helicopter parenting and the carceral state. Three selection headlines from the final 12 months: “Mother Jailed for Letting 10-Yr-Previous Stroll Alone to City,” “Cops Known as on 8-Yr-Previous Youngster for Being Exterior,” and “Mother and father Investigated for Letting 7-Yr-Previous Get a Cookie From the Retailer.”
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There is no such thing as a journalistic enterprise in the USA that does extra to focus on particular person instances of injustice on the hand of an overweening state. Heartbreaking/infuriating as these tales are, additionally they often result in precise justice for the victims, and even adjustments in regulation; all whereas creating extra new libertarians who cannot consider we stay in a rustic like this.
Assist us create a world the place peaceful individuals can stay free with out worry of getting their individual or property aggressed by the deadly-force monopolist.
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