Well, come on. He's got a Spanish last name and he doesn't speak English. Of course he's a criminal.
How the fuck did that post as "W"??? It was me.
Government overreaching on forfeiture goes well beyond drug crimes and is plainly unjust. As in many things in the criminal law area, when the Government wants to get you, they can crush you.
#2: The feds are watching your computer, B, and they want you to know that the president agrees.
The thing is, if this guy is telling the truth, he and his buddies are ruined -- this is life-savings amounts of cash. That's disgusting.
I still think of myself as liberal with a strong focus on civil liberties, rather than libertarian, because I can't see why providing universal health insurance makes this sort of crap more likely, but man, I know where the libertarians are coming from on this sort of story.
. As in many things in the criminal law area, when the Government wants to get you, they can crush you.
Or, you know, in the WOT, during which someone the govt. got someone to actually give up his citizenship.
End-user drug deals are typically carried out with amounts of money in the range that almost all people carry. Does this mean that anyone who has their wallet searched as part of an unrelated action can have the money seized, on the theory that they could have planning to use that $20 to buy a couple dime bags? Or is there some cutoff above which you're carrying "too much money" and have a presumption of guilt? (There are such defined limits, such as the ban on carrying more the $10k internationally.)
Looks like we all agree about the hideousness of this guy's forfeiture, and of how embarrassing it can be when we start typing our responses in the "Name" line, something I've done more often than I can count.
Yeah, but why is caring about this stuff exclusive to libertarians? Aren't we liberals also pretty opposed to the War on Drugs (tm) and to violations of the fourth amendment?
(Okay, I admit it. I had to look up which fucking amendment it was. But I know that that whole "unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause" thing is a constitutional issue.)
I find this especially appalling because the District Court, having heard testimony, went the other way, and found that the government hadn't proved the connection. The Eighth Circuit overruled the trial court; so they're not just saying that "in these circumstances a court may find that your conduct is so suspicious that the state can confiscate your money," they're saying "in these circumstances your conduct is as a matter of law so suspicious that the state can take your money, and you don't even have a chance to offer your own explanation of the facts; even being able to offer an explanation that a district court judge finds 'coherent and plausible' won't save you."
Awful. I took a look at Judge Colloton's bio, and can't decide which of the many jobs he's had is the better predictor for this nonsense.
It's only too bad that there was no one on the ballot n 2000 who would have appointed better judges than this . . .
(Unfair? Maybe. But the LBJ-appointed judge got it closer to right).
That's on a par with disabled elderly people being tossed out of public housing because their grandchildren are caught with drugs. [Which the courts have also upheld.]
Somehow, all these "wars" have lately taken on a Felliniesque quality. No WMDs? Pish, tush, there's still justification because there might have been. No drugs, just cash? Ah, well, anyone who carries cash around must be dealing drugs.
I, fortunately, only have $12 in bills and $2.43 in coins in my purse. Which used to be enough to buy half an ounce of really good grass or a couple of tabs of LSD, so the Feds had better confiscate it, lest I discover time travel, go back to Woodstock and take the brown acid.
Oh. I forgot. That won't happen. I'm a white woman with a law degree and a Prada purse...
You have a Prada purse? No wonder you don't have any cash.
Injustice!
But what I don't get is: who supports this sort of thing? Libertarians hate it of course, as do most (all?) Dems, but don't somewhere between many and most Republicans also think this sort of thing is crazy? There's a significant libertarian-leaning wing in the party, with a strong emphasis on personal liberty, etc. I guess I could see some right-wing moralists (or outright racists?) supporting this sort of thing, but Jeebus, you'd think even they would generally want to see at least some evidence of a drug connection before taking people's money. (Well, not racists, for whom minority+cash probably itself removes all reasonable doubts as to guilt.)
Also, not having read the case, 10 makes me want to vomit.
Is it crazy to think of forceful resistance? I have been more and more often recently, and I actually do worry that it means I'm going crazy. (But not as crazy as this, so I guess I'm okay?)
Dr B - It was a gift from my sister. I don't use it, because it is incredibly impractical. It will hold either my wallet and cellphone or my wallet and glasses or my glasses and cellphone. That does not begin to describe the crap I carry with me on a regular basis. I keep trying to sell it on eBay, with no luck.
The thing I actually use is a black nylon tote-bag I got for free for buying Clinique cosmetics. My status-conscious sister think's it's a Kate Spade - I saw one of those recently, and my freebie looks just like their $200 bag. Minus the label, of course.
But I could fit all that money into the Prada bag and time-travel into the past and buy acid if I left out the cellphone.
Right. I've become a big fan of buying a couple of knockoff $10 bags on the street in New York every couple years.
here's a significant libertarian-leaning wing in the [Republican] party, with a strong emphasis on personal liberty, etc.
No, there's really not. That's a big myth, as the past half-decade has demonstrated. There's a big propertarian wing of the Republican Party, but that's about it.
17-
Well, there's a significant libertarian-leaning wing in the people I know who vote republican, and they certainly seem to think these values are embodied (imperfectly, certainly) by the Republican party, at least in part, and I also see a lot of the same sentiments echoed in republican intellectual circles (stop snickering) -- columnists, editorials, right-leaning think tanks, professors, etc. etc.
How many times can I possibly type "certainly"?
Well, there's a significant libertarian-leaning wing in the people I know who vote republican,
Ask them what they mean beyond "tax cuts and no eminent domain." If they come up with more, ask them to order them from most important to least important. I bet "tax cuts" come at the top of the list.
What I can't get over is that by the title of this post, LB obviously associates opposing this more strongly with Libertarians than with her own party, even though everybody here strongly agrees.
Is there a feeling Democrats don't oppose this? Maybe not enough?
We don't oppose this strongly, or at least we didn't during the Clinton Administration. Henley has a post somewhere about (IIRC) secret trials for certain drug cases; I believe that he said that the program started under Clinton.
This sort of issue is more central to Libertarians than it is to Democrats -- we both care about it, but Libertarians think it's central, while Democrats think it comes well after universal health care. And I'm a Democrat, but with stories like this I can really appreciate Libertarians' priorities.
18: But they're wrong. I mean, the current R party is all about big government and fuck individual rights and all the rest of it. Your friends are insane.
14: The problem, of course, is that forceful resistance => proof that, in fact, you are indeed a criminal and therefore the state was right to take your assets.
LB or CharleyC might know better than me, but I believe there was a Supreme Court case (or at least a Circuit Court case) where a husband used a car to solicit prositution and the car was subject to civil forfeiture, even though the car was in his wife's name.
"Uh honey, I got arrested for solicitation and, um, they took your car too."
15: You wouldn't get any cell phone reception that far back in the past anyway.
More generally: What concrete evidence do we have that the Democratic party actually supports universal healthcare? Could this be a case of social democrats projecting their own views onto their chosen party just as the libertarians do onto theirs?
26: Major Dem. politicians all have health-care plans that approach UHC, albeit in complex and screwy ways. Based on that, I believe they think UHC is good policy, and are just worrying about how to sell it.
26: Well, there was the whole healthcare reform thing back under Clinton. And there's the fact that certain Democratic senators are making noise again about the importance of healthcare. Maybe not universal, but potentially getting there eventually.
25: Well, if she'd kept him satisfied, he wouldn't have had to go to a prostitute, now, would he? So clearly she's at least partly to blame.
But you mean a real universal single-payer program, right?
What? Are you a commie or something? Fuck no. We have to have means tests, and paperwork, and lists of preferred providers, and all the rest of it to make sure that people don't just go have surgeries they don't really need!
Bastards. Government shouldn't be punishing people without proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. They're the effing government. They have enough advantages without letting them impose punishments (or stuff like forfeiture that's awfully hard to distinguish from punishment) on a preponderance standard. And then for a Court of Appeals to bend an already-weak standard of proof even further in the goverment's favor is just obscene.
THat sounds like its due a lot more to democrats' general lack of confidence in usians liking leftist policies than their own lack of like of said policies.
THat sounds like its due a lot more to democrats' general lack of confidence in usians liking leftist policies than their own lack of like of said policies.
My answer to 23 is that Libertarians, like Greens or Socialists are free to express positions of principle because they are nowhere close to having power and never will be.
Do you believe Democrats care less about this on the whole?
Well, Gore is in favor of single-payer. Feingold is in favor of some decentralised scheme, and not against single payer. I think you can assume Feingold and Kerry, and maybe Edwards is in favor of singlepayer, but don't think it's politacally viable. Warner I have no idea.
HRC may well be sincerely against singel payer. My read on HRC is that rather than being unprincipled, she's a DLC idiologue, who'll be centrist even when going left is more obviously politically smart, and who will spend politcal capital to stop progressive policies.
Richardson is DLC, but mainly unprincipled. Warner I don't know.
24- they're wrong?!? Look, my point wasn't that R. governments have demonstrated anything like libertarian tendencies -- they haven't, and I suppose that's what you're getting at. But what I'm saying is: I have friends who think these things, and they vote republican. And there is pretty good reason to believe they are not alone (see above). So, my initial statement is correct: there's a significant libertarian-leaning wing in the Rep. party. Maybe they're stupid to be there, okay I can buy that. But that doesn't obviate my point, which is: who the hell is pushing for policies like this? What interest group is it? I guess it's the Republican "tough on crime" contingent, but there's no FUCKING crime here. I mean, I guess what I'm really getting at is the fact that this smacks of blatant racism (since, as 12 points out, NOBODY puts up with this if it's the white girl with the prada purse getting hassled), and... is that really what's going on here? Is it that simple, or is there a more charitable explanation?
Clinton may well be against this particular ruling, but he was no good on civil liberties, esp. as far as the drug war. I suspect you could say the same for most of the dems who'll run for president.
I think the 'libertarian' wing of the Republican party is very largely libertarian about things that nice middleclass or rich people want to do, and not libertarian at all about the rest of us. Civil forfeiture laws don't worry them because they can't picture being in a position that looked shady.
how much do police agencies make off of these seizures? (i mean in gneral, if they take 125k every day, that adds up.). could be a way of jurisdictions funding police without raising taxes/cutting nice programs/whatever
38- Sure, so maybe they don't energetically fight policies like this, but that doesn't mean they support them either. What I don't understand is who is pushing for this? Who thinks it's a good idea? (And I'm searching hopefully for a serious answer other than "closeted racists".)
36: It's racism and classism. It's what LB says in 38: your average Republican just figures that only guilty people get in trouble with the law in the first place. Unless, of course, the person in trouble is someone's teenage kid, in which case things like due process become very important indeed.
I would also argue that saying "a lot of libertarians vote Republican b/c they *think* the Rs are libertarianish" is not quite the same as saying libertarianish values are a significant part of the *party*. I think of the party as the platform and the decision-makers, not the voters.
I think of the party as the platform and the decision-makers, not the voters.
commie
Okay, so we maybe have a plurality of major Democrats who kind of support something like universal health care, but who don't think it's politically feasible, and we have a significant, powerful figure in the party (possibly a whole wing of it) that is willing to spend political capital to defeat the idea.
Let me tell you -- I'm not completely confident that universal healthcare is going to be the first thing on the agenda. In fact, I suspect that the agenda is basically going to be cleaning up the most egregious messes left by the Republican party, then sitting back and allowing themselves to be slandered and spat upon so that the Republicans can come back in and do it again -- because, you know, the USA is just naturally Republican and all we can do is try to stave off the very worst.
(And I'm searching hopefully for a serious answer other than "closeted racists".)
The thing is, are you a 'closeted racist' if you only care about problems that you think are likely to restrict your own freedoms, rather than those of poorer, probably browner, people? It doesn't require racial hostility, just complacency about problems that affect people who are 'Not Our Kind, Dear.'
And yeah, I meant to include classism along with racism, and I understand it could be both. What I'm trying to uncover is: is there any legitimate rationale for this? Who is supporting it, other than racists/classists, etc.?
44- Again, but is it just "averting our eyes from the evil done by the government to other people (and thank god they're not coming for us)", which is honestly what your description sounds like, or do somesignificant interest groups for some reason really support this? (And who and why?)
Because the 'War on Drugs' was hyped as a way of keeping 'our children' safe, and this sort of thing looks tough and effective.
43: Well, that's based on my awesome mindreading skills. What we do know is that Kerry and Feingold has plans that would help people right away, and arguably take us closer to single payer in the long term. The others will present plans next year. They may be bold or cautious, and may or may not work against evenually getting single payer.
So it's the soccer moms that are to blame?
49: And their husbands, but yeah, I think that's the demographic this is aimed at.
50- the soccer moms strike again. Damn 19th Amendment!
15: You wouldn't get any cell phone reception that far back in the past anyway.
But you could stop off on the way back and invent the cell phone.
BTW, the New Yorker has a Malcolm Gladwell piece about the social structure of pensions, and the history of why this country's system is so unfair, incomplete, and such a drag on business. The conclusion near the end, about the class solidarity of the managers, is great.
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060828fa_fact
39: I'd be astonished if the actual amount of money they seized to start with wasn't more than the amount of money entered into evidence.
who the hell is pushing for policies like this? What interest group is it?
Um, that would be the reliably Republican-voting interest group which just legally stole at least $125,000 of someone else's money.
The idea that universal health care needs selling is mind-boggling.
re: 56
The massive lobby machine that campaigns against universal health care is pretty effective, though.
To the point where people will i) admit that private medicine as currently extant in the US is expensive, and ii) doesn't deliver greatly improved health outcomes, while still maintaining that it is 'better' than universal systems that are cheaper and more effective.
In response to the several people who have wondered about where the parties stand on this sort of thing, there is about a 2 to 1 bipartisan consensus in favor of just about any Drug War outrage in the House. Most Republicans fall on the WoD side, as you'd expect given their penchant for law and order rhetoric, though there are some exceptions such as Ron Paul, R-TX. The Democrats are more or less evenly split on the issue, though the WoD-supporters include some highly influential legislators such as Charles Rangel, D-NY.
So the political juice is overwhelmingly in favor of crushing anyone involved with any drugs other than alcohol, tobacco, and coffee. Given the disjoint between Democratic voters' preferences on the Iraq war and the votes of their nominal representatives, I'm pessimistic that anything but a lot of primary challenges will shift the legislative votes in favor of the will of the voters.
44-47: But the thing is, the keeping "our" children safe from drugs is, at bottom, classist and racist.
In other words, Brock, yeah: I honestly think that at bottom a lot of these egregiously classist/racist practices depend on classism/racism, yes. Not of course the "I want all Mexicans to go to jail" type (although the Great Immigration Debate has shown us that there are an astonishing number of people who do, in fact, feel free to say this in public), but the passive unthinking type that thinks of "them" as a threat to "us" and "our children."
crushing anyone involved with any drugs other than alcohol, tobacco, and coffee
Except for well-off white people and their children: Rush Limbaugh, GWB, the various congressional wives who've admitted to prescription drug dependencies, etc. (Actors, I think, fall into the disreputable category--at least if they're any good, they do.)
the Great Immigration Debate has shown us that there are an astonishing number of people who do, in fact, feel free to say this in public
Did you catch today's news from Burlington County, PA? "You're ignorant, disgusting and lazy. Go somewhere else and give us back our town." is the most inflammatory line quoted in the article, I think.
(via The Poor Man -- speaking of which, the Mineshaft crowd have got to be able to make something of this -- if we cannot it will shake deeply my faith in the coherence of reality.
""You're ignorant, disgusting and lazy" is pretty inflammatory, yeah, but I'm not sure it out-inflames "You spread germs."
Mary Goff, 32, was clearly on top of her inflaming form last Sunday.
There's no such thing as Burlington County, PA. That nonsense was going on in New Jersey across the river from Philly.
The mayor of Hazleton has no idea what he's doing. The population of that city went down by like 70% over most of the last century, and now it's increasing by leaps and bounds, and he's unhappy? Who does he think is going to move into all those deserted buildings, yuppies? I think he was hoping that in another 20 years Hazleton would become considered part of the Poconos.
Sorry Pennsylvania -- did not mean to insult you by calling you xenophobic. And damn! That's my state's got the Mary Goff cooties!
Actually, this is my favorite line from the article:
pastors planned to return on the first day of school to make sure immigrant children attended without harassment.
Gosh, I sure miss Little Rock. Don't you?
re: 59
Yeah. A huge amount of 'think of the little children'-type hysteria basically comes down to a combination of snobbery and racism.
Gosh, I sure miss Little Rock. Don't you?
Replay! everyone gets to relive my youth. Next stop, Vietnam!
Next stop, Vietnam!
Been there, done that. When do we get to the fuel shortage and the worrisome flu epidemic?
When did the Vietnamese start speaking Arabic?
A huge amount of 'think of the little children'-type hysteria basically comes down to a combination of snobbery and racism.
But paradoxically, I usually hear it when I do out of the mouths of young mothers, or other unreflective members of groups I belong to, such as my extended family. So confronting these beliefs always feels like bullying to me, and I have a sense it would look like that to onlookers. I know they're not the instigators of these thoughts, but I can never catch these tropes coming out of the mouths of people "my own size," so to speak.
Next stop, Vietnam!
I'm not sure what makes you think we're replaying things forwards.
Next stop, the Dust Bowl!
Woo-hoo -- does that mean popular music and literature are going to become much, much better?
re: 71
Well, unfortunately, it's no coincidence that the UK newspaper most associated with that sort of view -- the Daily Mail -- is also the one with the largest female readership.
That sort of hysteria is quite deliberately marketed at that audience.
Yeah. A huge amount of 'think of the little children'-type hysteria basically comes down to a combination of snobbery and racism.
I don't think that's quite true; I suspect it gets much more complicated very quickly. It's not so much that that those people are bad as these people are not bad. People think that they have other reasons not to worry about certain groups. And the sad truth is that they're probably right--if you're well-off or even middle class, you may well have access to programs or just societal structures that help to correct people who step off the appropriate path.
Woo-hoo -- does that mean popular music and literature are going to become much, much better?
Great days for clowns too.
re: 75
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying.
Something like: it's not that people think poor people are bad but that they think not-poor people are better?
77, I would describe it more in terms of these responses:
1) "Oh, look, it's a person from the same background as myself. He has virtually no chance of raping and murdering me or abducting my child. I can feel safe around him."
2) "Oh, look, it's a poor person. He probably won't commit any crimes against me, but better safe than sorry."
77: Yes, pretty much. I just addressed this argument on another thread -- let me copy what I said there over.
I just had this conversation -- a problem with discussing this sort of racism is that it's hard to do with fervor because you end up defending possible malfactors.
I think of it as the Beau problem: the brother of a woman I knew at MIT was a major pot dealer on campus. He was a professional, not just reselling odds and ends from personal use, who was paying tuition with the money. Lovely guy, very pleasant, and never had a run in with the cops, nor expected to. On the other hand, a black kid from Bed Stuy who dealt the same quantity of pot would probably end up in prison.
The question is, what am I outraged about? I'm not outraged that Beau isn't a convicted felon - I liked him, and don't wish him ill. But I have a difficult time getting all outraged about racism when someone who is a law-breaker gets arrested and convicted: if we leave aside for the moment the wisdom of the drug-war generally, then the guy from Bed Stuy belongs in jail.
Still, the treatment of the two equivalent offenders is wildly different by race, and that's a problem, no matter how hard it is to pinpoint where exactly to get outraged.
Another way to put it is that people favor across-the-board harsh law enforcement (gotta keep criminals in their place), with exceptions and loopholes to make sure that nice people don't get punished.
re: 77
Ah, in that case I think you're wrong!
I can't speak specifically for the US, but in the UK I hear pretty virulent distate for the poor and the working classes which is often justified by 'fears' about crime and drugs or, in an Orwellian twist, worries about the 'racism' of the working classes.
Something like: it's not that people think poor people are bad but that they think not-poor people are better?
No, I don't think morality enters into it. I think people sort of realize that the rich family of an alcoholic can buy his way out of a lot of trouble for a long time until he grows up. Because of that capital, his family can minimize the total harm to others from direct actions of the alcoholic, and can police that alcoholic in a way that most families cannot. I don't think that's the way it gets discussed, but I think that's what's at work.
re: 81
Again, I think you're bending over backwards to justify snobbery and racism. I don't think rational calculations of potential harm come into it at all. Or, at the least, they aren't a primary factor in people's emotional response to crime and the fear of crime.
82: I think, because it's the capital that allows the rich family to mitigate harms, police the alcoholic, and even get private treatment for the alcoholism, it's very hard to strip out the class issue. As for racism, I wouldn't deny that it ends up being a part of the conscious justifications for policy actions, but I'm less sure how straightforwardly it actually informs those policy actions. (I'm sure it plays a part.) I note, for example, that the latest drug fear craze relates to meth useage; I, at least, think of meth as an almost exclusively white drug.
I think people sort of realize that the rich family of an alcoholic can buy his way out of a lot of trouble for a long time until he grows up. Because of that capital, his family can minimize the total harm to others from direct actions of the alcoholic, and can police that alcoholic in a way that most families cannot.
The last six years have certainly disproved that.
Actually, I was going to jump on whoever made the "capital" excuse for not worrying about the crimes of the upper class, but isn't Tim basically right? If you're well-enough off, you can get treatment for your kid with mental illness, or a drug problem. If he drinks, he probably does a fair bit of it at private parties, where he might trash a friend's house, or at a frat house, where we expect to hear yelling (and see crap strewn on the lawn); he's less likely to be out drinking, or drunk, in public. If he sells drugs, he has a car and your house and doesn't look odd with a cell phone; that is, he can do it more discreetly. If he gets in trouble, you can ask around and pull in favors and if you can't get him off completely, you can probably get him into some kind of program that will seriously reduce his sentencing. And you probably live in a neighborhood with decent police protection, so if he does wander around drunk and shouting, the cops will show up and take him home.
Whereas if you're poor, you use public spaces a lot more. If you're drunk doing laundry at the laundromat, people see it; if you're drunk doing laundry at home, they don't. And there's not as much police protection in your neighborhood, so if you're out drunk you're not going to get an escort home. If the cops do show up, they'll arrest you, which doesn't connote safety and caretaking; it connotes a threat. If you get arrested, your folks are less likely to have contacts with lawyers and so forth.
I'm thinking even of court dates. When my nephew had to go to hearings before his trial, his entire family (most of whom are, in fact, really poor but also very close knit) *took time off work* to show up at the hearing, which the judge specifically commented on as showing that he had a supportive family. If you can't take time off work (or aren't close-knit enough, or don't have enough extended family) to make a showing at the courthouse, that looks bad. My dad got everyone he knew--important local political figures, teachers, college profs--to write letters to the court testifying to my nephew's character. Etc., etc.
That said, all those things *still* have race and class inflections.
"I think, because it's the capital that allows the rich family to mitigate harms, police the alcoholic, and even get private treatment for the alcoholism, it's very hard to strip out the class issue."
You think that the reason why the middle and upper classes express the things they do about the poor and the working classes is because they think that -- while everyone is equally likely to do bad things -- the bad things done by the poor are more likely to be harmful because they don't have the means to mitigate the harm that results?
A book I would highly recommend that is pertinent to this discussion is Courtroom 302, Steve Bogira. Very, very good.
Interestingly, one's children are more likely to be molested by an acquaintance or family member -- thus, by definition, someone "like them."
Also, I don't know about you, but I commit petty theft in my circle of friends all the time. Of course, I'm one of those "poor people."
They may not be right to think that, and they may be insincerely self-deceiving in thinking that. But they do, at least in the US, think that.
It's like my story about Beau, above. Beau was a nice white kid who wasn't going to hurt anyone -- sure, pot's illegal, but what harm does it do if some nerds unwind by getting stoned? His black counterpart in Bed Stuy, on the other hand, is an inner-city drug dealer, part of the network of crime and violence that eats away at the poor. Even if they commit exactly the same crimes, people perceive the harm from the middle-class criminal as wildly less than from the poor criminal.
LB -- because of the class issues discussed above, there is an argument to be made that people's perception of the inner-city drug dealer's crimes as causing greater harm thatn the MIT drug dealer's crimes is accurate.
OK. It just seems like an alien (and deluded) point of view to me.
It seems to come down to:
'We live in a structurally unfair society in which the costs and penalties borne by the poor for crime are higher than those for the rich... so, fearing and despising the poor is a rational point of view.'
It seems to get things arse-backwards.
86: I think we pay too much attention to explicit moral explanations for things in this country. I think people see similar actions and different outcomes, per B's comment, and come up with a moral explanation for something that is much more mechanical. Relatedly, I think we're doing the same thing when we say racism and classism when we should say race-inflected and class-inflected (again, per B).
It seems to get things arse-backwards.
Absolutely. I do not mean by 90 to say that I find harsher punishment of the inner-city drug dealer than of Beau just.
90: But it's wrong. Because the *reason* that drugs are a bigger problem in poor communities isn't because more people use them; it's because all the things that make using drugs not such a big deal are absent. No jobs, no police protection, nothing to *do* other than hang around and get high. Suburban and rural kids do it for the same damn reason.
In other words, it's true that drugs are a bigger problem for the poor; but it's not because the poor use drugs more. It's for the same reason that *everything* is a bigger problem for the poor.
LB -- because of the class issues discussed above, there is an argument to be made that people's perception of the inner-city drug dealer's crimes as causing greater harm thatn the MIT drug dealer's crimes is accurate.
But not a strong argument, because people feel the same way about property crimes, where the middle-class version of the crime does immeasurably more harm than the lower-class version (car theft versus pension theft) but is still regarded, emotionally, as less evil.
It's less threatening. If someone spray paints the side of my house, I paint over it. If I can't afford the time or money to do it, and no one else in my neighborhood can either, then suddenly the neighborhood looks like a slum, and then even if I *can* afford to do it, why bother? Everyone else's house is tagged too.
92 gets it right, I think. We want to explain everything in moral terms. Because we want to believe in individualism and equality. If we're all equal and all free to do whatever, then anything that happens is in our control. If it's good, it's because we're good people; if it's bad, it's because we're not.
Car theft is easier to see and understand and emotionally grasp than pension theft. The distinction between a lot of pension theft-type white collar crimes and scare-quote legitimate un-scare-quote business practices is usually quite tricky to explain.
someone breaking into your house to steal tvs and jewelry also feels really violative in a way whitecollar criminals just don't do.