Tuesday Talk
Posted by Michelle Moquin on April 3rd, 2012
Good morning!
Illinois Traffic Stop Of Star Trek Fans Raises Concerns About Drug Searches, Police Dogs, Bad Cops
Last December, filmmaker Terrance Huff and his friend Jon Seaton were returning to Ohio after attending a “Star Trek” convention in St. Louis. As they passed through a small town in Illinois, a police officer, Michael Reichert, pulled Huff’s red PT Cruiser over to the side of the road, allegedly for an unsafe lane change. Over the next hour, Reichert interrogated the two men, employing a variety of police tactics civil rights attorneys say were aimed at tricking them into giving up their Fourth Amendment rights. Reichert conducted a sweep of Huff’s car with a K-9 dog, then searched Huff’s car by hand. Ultimately, he sent Huff and Seaton on their way with a warning.
Earlier this month, Huff posted to YouTube audio and video footage of the stop taken from Reichert’s dashboard camera. No shots were fired in the incident. No one was beaten, arrested or even handcuffed. Reichert found no measurable amount of contraband in Huff’s car. But Huff’s 17-and-a-half minute video raises important questions about law enforcement and the criminal justice system, including the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, the drug war, profiling and why it’s so difficult to take problematic cops out of the police force.
THE STOP
The stop itself happened Dec. 4 on Interstate 70 in Collinsville, a town of 26,000 people just outside of St. Louis. Law enforcement officials say this stretch of highway is a drug-trafficking corridor. The account that follows is based on Huff’s video, the unedited dashboard footage from Reichert’s vehicle and a Huffington Post interview with Huff.
After pulling Huff over, Reichert approaches Huff’s car and asks him for his license, registration and proof of insurance. Huff complies. Reichert then asks Huff to step out of the car, because he says he can’t hear him over the noise from the highway. Huff complies. Before talking to Huff, Reichert asks Seaton for ID as well, which Seaton isn’t obligated to produce, but does.
Reichert then tells Huff he pulled him over for weaving across lanes. Huff says in his video that this is a fabrication. But he didn’t challenge Reichert’s claim at the time because, “I was from out of state, and I didn’t want any trouble.”
After running a check on Huff’s license, Reichert tells Huff he’ll let him off with a warning, and the two men shake hands. Legally, Huff is now free to go. But just as Huff is set to get back into his car, Reichert says, “Let me ask you a question real quick.” Huff agrees.
It’s here that Reichert adds, seemingly as an afterthought, that Seaton appeared nervous and apprehensive. He then asks Huff a series of what law enforcement officers call “rolling no” questions about whether Huff is transporting any drugs, weapons or cash. Huff says “no” to each.
In his interview with HuffPost, Huff asks, “If he thought Jon was nervous, and that might indicate drug activity, why did he wait so long to bring it up? And why did he wait until he had basically told me I could go?”
“It’s a common tactic,” says John Rekowski, the public defender for Madison County, where the stop took place. “[Officer Reichert] thinks he’s doing something legally significant there. He thinks he’s establishing that everything that happens after the handshake is consensual, because after that, Huff was technically free to go. But of course he isn’t free to go.”
If Huff had ignored Reichert’s “Let me ask you a question real quick,” gotten into his car and driven off, Rekowski says, there’s no way Reichert would have let him leave. “And in Illinois, the definition of a detainment is that you aren’t free to leave.”
Collinsville Police Chief Scott Williams, who has seen the dash cam video, tells HuffPost “I don’t have any reason to doubt the integrity of any of our officers. But we’ll do our due diligence and look into that. If we find that any of our officers is taking shortcuts or violating someone’s civil rights, that officer will be fired.”
HuffPost was unable to reach Reichert for comment.
During the questioning, Reichert tries several times to get Huff to admit to having marijuana in his car, even if only a small amount for personal use. Huff says he has none. “I would just like to go on my way if I could,” he tells Reichert. Reichert says that he’s going to bring his K-9 out of the car to do an outside sweep.
Reichert pats down both Huff and Seaton and takes the dog around the car twice. He tells Huff that on the second trip, the dog has “alerted” to the presence of drugs, but did so at the front of the car, out of the view of Reichert’s dashboard camera. He explains that because the front of the car is downwind, the drug scent would most likely register with the dog at the front of the car.
The dog’s alert gives Reichert probable cause for a thorough hand search of Huff’s car, as well as Huff and Seaton’s luggage and personal belongings.
Reichert finds no drugs. He does claim to find “shake” — marijuana residue — beneath the seats of Huff’s car. That, Reichert says, must have been why the dog alerted. Reichert never collected any of the alleged shake for testing, however, and Huff says now it’s nonsense. After an hour of questioning and searching by Reichert, Huff and Seaton leave Collinsville with only a warning for an unsafe lane change.
THE FORFEITURE CORRIDOR
Asset forfeiture is the process by which law enforcement agencies can take possession of property suspected of being tied to illegal activity. Under these laws, the property itself is presumed to be guilty of criminal activity. Once the property has been seized, it’s up to the owner to prove he obtained the property legitimately.
In about 80 percent of civil asset forfeiture cases, the property owner is never charged with a crime. And in Illinois — like many states — the law enforcement agency that makes the seizure gets to keep the cash or the proceeds of the forfeiture auction (in Illinois, the prosecutor’s office gets 10-12 percent).
Critics say civil asset forfeiture is rife with poor incentives, and violates the Fifth Amendment’s protection against seizure of property without due process of law. Police can seize a car, cash, even a home on the flimsiest of evidence.
Madison County, Ill., where Huff was pulled over, is bisected by I-70 just outside of St. Louis. Interstates are a particularly rich ground for forfeiture. Law enforcement officials say that’s because interstates are ideal for drug running.
Critics say it’s because police can target out-of-state drivers, who are more likely than local residents to accept a police officer’s baseless accusations and turn over their property, rather than refuse and face arrest, multiple returns to the state for court dates and thousands of dollars in legal expenses. Sometimes winning the property back can exceed the actual value of the property.
Faced with that choice, it isn’t difficult to see why innocent people would opt to hand over their cash and head home.
“The joke around our office is that all you need for probable cause in Madison County is an Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, or Florida license plate,” says Rekowski, the public defender. Collinsville defense attorney Jessica Koester says she’s seen the same thing. “If you’re from out of state, they’re simply going to find a reason to pull you over.”
Local news reports indicate that Illinois law enforcement agencies along the I-70 corridor have ramped up their forfeiture efforts in recent years. Rekowski said one tactic police use is to put up a sign for a “drug checkpoint” roadblock ahead. In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court said such checkpoints are illegal; roadblocks are legal for DWI checks, but not for narcotics checks. But Rekowski says that isn’t the point.
“They put the sign up so there’s only one exit you can take to avoid it. Then they pull over and search anyone who tries to exit before the roadblock.”
That tactic too is constitutionally suspect. Police can’t pull a driver over merely for exiting before an announced (and illegal) drug checkpoint. “But, of course, that isn’t why they’ll say they’ve pulled you over,” Rekowski says. “They’ll say you crossed two lanes to get to the exit, or switched lanes without signaling, or that you cut someone off.”
The Edwardsville Intelligencer reported in 2010 that the Madison County State’s Attorney’s Office has reaped a half-million dollars from the policy over eight years, which at the prosecutor’s take of 10-12 percent suggests a total bounty of $4.5 million to $5 million. Madison County Assistant State’s Attorney Stephanie Robbins, who handles forfeiture cases for the office, told local paper the Telegraph in 2010, “Law-abiding citizens have nothing to worry about.”
But maybe they do. Jerome Chennault, a Nevada resident had the misfortune of driving through Madison County on his way home after visiting his son in Philadelphia.
Chennault said he had withdrawn $22,870 in cash to take with him before leaving Nevada, which he had intended to use for a downpayment on a home. After he was pulled over for following another car too closely, Chennault gave police permission to use a drug dog to sweep his car. The dog then “alerted” to the bag containing Chennault’s cash.
Police found no actual drugs on Chennault or in his car. He was never charged with a crime. But the dog alert itself was enough to allow police to seize Chennault’s cash. Over the next several months, Chennault had to travel to Edwardsville, Ill., at his own expense to fight in court for the return of his property. He had to put up a bond equal to 10 percent of the value of the property taken from him in order to secure it.
Cheannault won in court. His money was returned. But he won’t be reimbursed for his travel or his legal expenses.
Similar stories have been reported along other forfeiture corridors across the country. In Teneha, Texas, police reportedly routinely pull over cars from out of state (the highway is popular for drivers, flush with cash and jewelry, going to and from casinos). A Nashville TV station recently reported on a stretch in Tennessee where the vast majority of police stops were of suspected drug runners leaving the city, meaning the police apparently preferred to let the drugs come into the city so they could seize the cash on the way out.
“When we saw the Huff video in our office, we just laughed,” Rekowski says. “Not because it wasn’t outrageous. But because it’s the kind of thing we see all the time. The stop for a so-called ‘inappropriate lane change,’ the games they play in the questioning, the claims about nervousness or inappropriate behavior that can’t really be contradicted. It’s all routine.”
According to Koester, the defense attorney in private practice, “The dog alert that happens off-camera isn’t unusual either. You see that all the time.”
Koester and Rekowski say the Huff stop has all the markings of a forfeiture fishing expedition. “You see where he asks if [Huff] is carrying large amounts of U.S. currency,” Rekowski says. “It’s pretty clear what they’re after. These kinds of cases put my kids through college.” He laughs, then adds, “I’m only half joking.”
THE DRUG DOG
HuffPost showed the video of Huff’s stop to two K-9 experts. Gene Papet is executive director of K9 Resources, a company that trains detection dogs, including police dogs. Papet found a number of problems with the way Reichert handled his dog.
“Just before the dog alerts, you can hear a change in the tone of the handler’s voice. That’s troubling. I don’t know anything about this particular handler, but that’s often an indication of a handler that’s cuing a response.” In other words, it’s indicative of a handler instructing the dog to alert, not waiting to see whether the dog will alert.
“You also hear the handler say at one point that the dog alerted from the front of the car because the wind is blowing from the back of the car to the front, so the scent would have carried with the wind,” Papet says. “But the dog was brought around the car twice. If that’s the case, the dog should have alerted the first time he was brought to the front of the car. The dog only alerted the second time, which corresponded to what would be consistent with a vocal cue from the handler.”
Russ Jones is a former police officer with 10 years in drug enforcement, including as a K-9 officer. He’s now a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of current and former cops and prosecutors who favor ending the war on drugs. “That dog was going to do what ever (Officer Reichert) needed it to do,” Jones says. “Throughout the video, the dog is looking for handler feedback, which isn’t how it’s supposed to work.”
In the 2005 case Illinois v. Caballes, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that having a drug dog sniff the exterior of a vehicle during a routine traffic stop does not violate the Fourth Amendment. But in a dissent to that opinion, Justice David Souter pointed to mounting evidence that drug dogs aren’t as infallible as police departments often claim. Souter noted a study that the state of Illinois itself used in its briefs showing that in lab tests, drug dogs fail 12.5 to 60 percent of the time.
Since then, more evidence has emerged to support Souter’s concerns.
The problem isn’t that the dogs aren’t capable of picking up the scent, it’s that dogs have been bred to please and interact with humans. A dog can easily be manipulated to alert whenever needed. But even with conscientious cops, a dog without the proper training may pick up on its handler’s body language and alert whenever it detects its handler is suspicious.
In one study published last year in the journal Animal Cognition, researchers rigged some tests designed to fool dogs into falsely alerting and others designed to trick handlers into thinking a package contained narcotics (it didn’t). Of the 144 total searches performed, the dogs falsely alerted 123 times. More interesting, the dogs were twice as likely to falsely alert to packages designed to trick their handlers than those designed to trick the dogs.
In 2011, the Chicago Tribune published a review of drug dog searches conducted over three years by police departments in the Chicago suburbs. The paper found that just 44 percent of dog “alerts” led to the discovery of actual contraband. Interestingly, for Hispanic drivers the success rate dipped to 27 percent, again supporting the theory that drug dogs tend to confirm the suspicions (and, consequently, the biases) of their handlers.
A 2006 statistical analysis (PDF) of police dog tests by University of North Carolina law professor Richard Myers concluded that the dogs aren’t reliable enough to provide probable cause for a search.
HuffPost obtained the records for one Illinois state police K-9 unit for an 11-month period in 2007 and 2008. Of the 136 times this particular dog alerted to the presence of drugs during a traffic stop over that period, 35 of the subsequent hand searches found measurable quantities of illegal drugs.
See accompanying article for a more thorough analysis of the K-9 records:
____________________________________________________________________________________
An analysis of the K9 records shows that only 25.7 percent of the drug dog’s “alerts” resulted in police finding a measurable quantity of illicit drugs. Just 13 percent resulted in the recovery of more than 10 grams of marijuana, generally considered an amount for personal use, and 10.4 percent turned up enough drugs to charge the motorists or their passengers with at least one felony. Read more here.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Jones, the former narcotics and K-9 officer, said those sorts of numbers are why he now opposes the drug war. “Ninety percent of these dog-handler teams are utter failures. They’re just ways to get around the Fourth Amendment,” he says. “When I debate these people around the country, I always challenge the K-9 officers to a double-blind test to see how accurate they and their dogs really are. They always refuse.”
These figures strongly suggest that while the Supreme Court has ruled that there’s nothing invasive about an exterior drug dog sniff of a car, in truth, the dog’s alert may be nothing more than the dog confirming its handler’s hunches — which is exactly what the Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect against.
THE BAD COP
If drug dog searches and poorly incentivized forfeiture policies are bad ideas in general, both can be particularly damaging when utilized by an unscrupulous police officer. And Michael Reichert has both a reputation and a documented history of questionable scruples.
“All the departments around here are bad when it comes to these searches, but he’s really the poster boy,” says Rekowski, the public defender. Another defense attorney, who didn’t wish to be quoted by name, went further: “The guy is a menace to society.”
In a 2005 case, U.S. v. Zambrana, U.S. District Judge Michael J. Reagan overturned a federal drug conviction because he didn’t find Reichert’s testimony credible.
Reagan’s assessment of Reichert’s methods and credibility is blunt. He calls Reichert “polished” and his testimony “rehearsed, coached and robotic as to be rote.” He continues, “It was a generic, almost default performance not dependent upon the facts of this case, but suitable for any case in which Reichert might testify to having found reasonable suspicion.”
In that case too, Reichert’s stated reason for pulling Zambrana over was that Zambrana crossed over a lane divider. According to Reagan’s opinion, Reichert also stated that the motorist appeared “nervous,” like Huff, and again nearly let the driver go (he told Zambrano he was “free to leave.”) Then, again nearly as an afterthought, Reichert started in with the “rolling no” questions. Reichert described Zambrano’s refusal to consent to a search as “suspicious.”
Reagan writes that Reichert is so confident in his ability to observe body language to detect deceit, he appears to be a “human polygraph.” Reichert taught a class on how to conduct roadside searches, which Reagan wrote could easily have been titled, “How to avoid the warrant requirement in searching a vehicle.”
Reagan’s opinion, along with the fact that Reichert was also convicted on federal charges of selling knockoff designer sunglasses, led to Reichert’s dismissal from the Collinsville Police Department in 2006. But with the help of the police union, Reichert sued to get his job back.
In subsequent hearings, the local state’s attorney’s office said it didn’t trust Reichert, as did the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Illinois. Reagan and the state circuit court judge also made clear that they felt Reichert was untrustworthy.
Despite these concerns, in March 2009, an Illinois appellate court ordered Reichert rehired.
In much of the country, discipline and dismissal of police officers is governed by union-negotiated contracts. Some states have a “police officer bill of rights,” which affords police accused of misconduct and criminal acts more rights than are afforded other citizens. Others send officer misconduct cases to union-negotiated arbitrators. Federal law also protects police from being fired for refusing to answer questions in a misconduct investigation, even if their answers can’t be used against them in any ensuing criminal case.
Police watchdogs say all of this makes it extremely difficult to fire even cops with long histories of misconduct.
These concerns have been raised at police and sheriff departments across the country, including in King County, Wash.; Maywood, Calif.; Gary, Ind.; Cincinnati, Covington, Texas, Aurora, Colo., San Diego; Spokane, Wash., Louisville, Ken.; Milwaukee; and the entire state of Florida.
By spring of 2009, Reichert was back on the job in Collinsville. Soon after, federal prosecutors raised new concerns about Reichert’s credibility. Those too were dismissed.
In January 2011, Williams gave Reichert the Chief’s Award of Merit (PDF), and in April 2011, he was named Officer of the Month. For the latter, Reichert was cited for making six arrests and seven citations out of 166 total incidents. According to Williams, “incidents are dispatched calls for service. They range from traffic crashes to domestic disputes and everything in between.”
Despite Reichert’s past, Williams said he sees no reason to question the officer’s integrity.
As for Huff, he said he just wants to raise awareness, so fewer people are subjected to the same sorts of searches he and Seaton were.
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April 3rd, 2012 at 6:39 am
The GOP and Tea Party don’t give a flying f*** about constitutionality. That’s why they are attacking abortion laws in every state and on the federal level.
They care even less about the human right to health care.
April 3rd, 2012 at 6:41 am
It’s too easy for any honest person with thinking ability. Using the law to force someone to strip because they supposedly violated a traffic law is not constitutional.
April 3rd, 2012 at 6:43 am
Obama know about Marbury. His point has nothing to do with the power to strike down laws. His point is that if conservatives argue that the judicial branch should show great deference to Congress and exercise restraint in using judicial review, which they do, that principle must apply for laws they dislike as well as ones they like.
If your judicial philosophy only applies when it suites your political philosophy, it’s not really your judicial philosophy, it’s just a rationalization of your political philosophy. It’s about rhetorical honesty.
April 3rd, 2012 at 6:46 am
Right wingers complain when their pet laws are struck down and are never consistent, such as whining when Federal judges overturn voter ID laws. Yet they embrace any law struck down that advances their issues.
April 3rd, 2012 at 6:47 am
There is a big difference between testing a law to determine if it conforms to the Constitution and whether that law advantages or disadvantages one group or another.
Justice Scalia’s comments that Congress cannot be “trusted” to “fix” the Constitutional aspects of the law that might remain if portions are struck down IS judicial overreach.
April 3rd, 2012 at 6:47 am
Talk about double standards. For the last 50 years Republicans have constantly complaining about activist judges.
However when a Democrat say the same thing, suddenly it is offensive.
What a bunch of Hypocrites
April 3rd, 2012 at 6:50 am
Scalia and Thomas attended a fundraiser hosted by one of the law firms that were going up against Obamacare in front of the Supreme Court. The arguing attorney for that law firm sat between the two during the dinner and the speakers talked about overturning Obamacare.
Thomas’s wife has made lots of $$$$ fronting for people who want to overturn Obamacare.
What needs to happen: They need to recuse themselves. Congress needs to pass a law that the Supreme Court must follow the same rules of ethics as the other Federal Judges. (Right now there is very little oversight).
April 3rd, 2012 at 6:51 am
There is a reason attorney’s rack up untold amounts of hourly fees on every issue imaginable.One side takes on the other and the arguments are seldom clear cut or there would be no need for their “services”
April 3rd, 2012 at 6:53 am
The Grand Old Party wants to give the top 10% all of their taxes back through loopholes and tax evasion policies while demonizing and further depriving the least haves among us – who are the majority.
The GOP lack of moral compass is that they lack concern or empathy for the greater good of the country as a whole. Whose backs worked and sweated to enrich the top 10% may I ask – could it be the other 90% of your countrymen?
April 3rd, 2012 at 6:54 am
Who votes for a party whose philosophy is in a perfect world rich people should be richer and the poor Should have little to nothing.
April 3rd, 2012 at 6:55 am
I actually like it when people bring this up because it points out the growing inequality that is now inherent in our tax system. The number that don’t pay taxes has been growing over the last 30 years.
Duh – less people are paying taxes because they are slipping into poverty and unless something is done to correct the situation it will get worse. F+F.
April 3rd, 2012 at 6:57 am
Who votes for a party that espouses their version of biblical law and the need for all of us to be their kind of “Christian”?
April 3rd, 2012 at 6:58 am
Conservatives reduce everything to “Why I should keep more of my money.”
That’s a fine philosophy, but let’s not pretend it isn’t completely greedy, selfish, egotistical. If the GOP does indeed have moral standards against which they hold themselves, they’re either failing completely or have moral standards that have nothing to do with love, charity, goodwill, or anything else that Jesus taught.
And from health care to global warming, they will tell any lie no matter how obvious to preserve their advantages and prevent better policies from helping more Americans. It’s a morality, it’s just selfish and egotistical morality.
“Never mind that America’s progressive tax system already requires the top 10% of earners to pay 71% of federal income taxes ”
Classic conservative fallacies:
1) Focus on INCOME TAX, ignore other tax. It makes the poor look worse, don’t worry if it’s a lie.
2) Focus on the numbers right NOW, in a vacuum, because the rich are paying less and taking home more than at any time in the last 100 years, so if you provided context it would make them look bad.
So, I will add “irrational” to “Selfish” and “Egotistical.” High moral standards indeed.
April 3rd, 2012 at 6:59 am
Our govt. is not in debt because of entitlements, it is in debt because we had a brilliant president who decided we could fight two wars and cut the tax rate….while the bills magically paid themselves.
Clinton had us on a great fiscal path….IN THE BLACK…the economy was booming with that social spending and strong middle class pulling the US out of debt.
Then here comes the republicans….cutting taxes for the rich, cutting services and support systems for the poor and down we fell. NO REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT has ever made the economy better.
And when Bush 1 realized that the responsbile thing to do was raise taxes during a war, he got voted out of office because he failed on his mission, which is make the rich richer and keep the poor poor, and let the middle class struggle to keep us afloat.
It trickles down….right down to them the rich few.
April 3rd, 2012 at 7:02 am
How come the GOP advocates Oil Subsidies, which the Oil Companies clearly don’t need. How is that not interfering in the free enterprise system or picking or choosing loser as the accuse Obama of doing when he supported the GM?.
To the GOP America is great when it only works for the wealthy, but when the rest of us want it to work equally as well for us we are somehow advocating class warfare.
April 3rd, 2012 at 7:03 am
Who votes for a party that advocates that “Real Love” is letting someone starve to death or die of “pre-existing conditions”. It’s allowing a woman to die in childbirth rather than abort a fetus.
It’s based on the assumption that the poor are poor because they are lazy and the wealthy are rich because they are hard-working.
April 3rd, 2012 at 7:04 am
No wealth is created in a vacum. Every wealthy person is a PART of a SYSTEM that provides a climate for affluence. When taxes are paid the SYSTEM benefits.
Roads are built and maintained, health care is addressed, and people are educated who then become part of the SYSTEM that supports us all That’s how healthy systems function.
Right now we have wealthy greedy PARASITES who are sucking the lifeblood out of the system, at the EXPENSE of all. Corporate welfare is no less desirable than any other form of “handouts”.
April 3rd, 2012 at 7:05 am
The ‘left’ is far from being perfect, but -throughout the years all over the world, it has always been the ‘left’ who saw to it that social well-being was there for everyone, not just for those who can pay.
The well-being of any nation is measured by the standard of living of ALL, not just the ’1%’ers.
April 3rd, 2012 at 7:06 am
I am a hard core liberal female who started washing dishes when I was 14, waitressed my way through college, and repaid $50,000 of loans early.
I busted my butt, and I happen to be a 1%er, however, I spend every moment I can giving back, and protesting loudly, because I absolutely understand that the opportunities that were granted to me who not have been available to me without the paths that were forged for me.
As a woman on Wall Street 25 years ago, I was somewhat of an anomaly. However, I never gave up my liberal viewpoint, understand that while I worked hard, I also happened to be in the right place at the right time.
And, I hope along the way I perhaps persuaded a few people to look at things with a broader mind. I am now 45 years old and I feel it is my time to give back. I applauded OWS, even though my husband still works on Wall Street.
I understand the dangers of an eroding middle class, and I can promise you that I give all I can financially, vocally, and emotionally, I am the dissenting voice at dinner parties.
But I’ll take that hit, because a lot more people took a lot harder hits before me. I am not apologizing for my situation, but I will argue the adage “where you sit, depends on where you stand”.
April 3rd, 2012 at 7:07 am
The Bush government spent itself into bankruptcy by propagating illegal wars that it paid for with borrowed money.
April 3rd, 2012 at 7:09 am
Who would expect anything different from GOP spin doctors?
The constant justification for giving more to the rich gets to wear thin when the rich caused the economic meltdown we experience over and over. When they choose to send the poor off to fight their wars.
The poor didn’t create this mortgage crisis. Nor did they profit from it like wall st did. Did wall st ever have to give back the profits? Did any actually get prosecuted or more than a slap on the wrist.
Now we make the case to give more tax breaks to the rich that seem to bend and abuse the moral compass at every turn only to forgive and forget every time they get caught with their hand in the middle and lower class cookie jar.
Do we want a right wing radical such as Rick Santorum to be our nations moral compass? Is that what the GOP best of the best has to offer? or Michelle Bachmann… all these candidates claim that God speaks to them personally or through them?
That is the stuff for evangelical side shows that part the fools and the weak from their money… the elevated live off the poor.
This is not the back bone of America. The Middle class.. the less than 1 percent that is America. and the rich keep asking for more, more, more…..
April 3rd, 2012 at 7:09 am
Ditto Troy. By 2016, one half of our Federal Debt will be from two sources, Bush’s unpaid for wars and Bush’s unpaid for tax cuts. Our problem is NOT liberals, our problem is right wing delusions.
April 3rd, 2012 at 7:11 am
Tax Day is in just two weeks and this year the Senate will vote on whether the ultra-rich will finally pay their fair share.
Up for a vote is Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s “Paying A Fair Share Act” which would make it so millionaires and billionaires paying lower tax rates than the middle class would have to pay a 30 percent effective tax rate.1
Already, the support for this bill has been huge. Earlier this year we delivered over 50,000 petitions to Sen. Whitehouse in support of his bill to tax the ultra-rich. And new polls show over 73 percent of Americans support the Buffett Rule — a rule making sure people like Warren Buffett don’t pay a lower tax rate than their Secretaries.2
But it’s not Sen. Whitehouse and progressive champs like him that we need to convince. If we’re going to make the Buffett Rule the law of the land, we need to convince moderate Democrats and even some Republicans.
In addition to your letters, a number of our affiliates will have secretaries and other 99ers deliver petitions in person to Senators’ district offices to send the message home.
Right now, a dozen Senators are already signed on as sponsors. Many more agree, but haven’t signed on yet.
Help us get the cosponsors we need to break a filibuster and pass the Buffett Rule. Every letter you send helps because whether your Senator fights for the 1% or the 99%, they all know that if you’re willing to write them a letter, you’re willing to talk to friends and family about why the ultra-rich should pay their fair share.
And in an election year, showing politicians that we know their voting record and are willing to speak out is the best tool we have to make change.
Sincerely,
David Elliot
USAction / TrueMajority
April 3rd, 2012 at 1:12 pm
Now they can take your money and with STARK’s OK,strip search you too.
April 4th, 2012 at 6:42 am
How to Get More Mileage from Your Frequent-Flier Miles
Cashing in frequent-flier miles for the flights that you want can be devilishly difficult. Ways to overcome the barriers…
Use different airlines for different legs of the journey. In the past, frequent-flier trips essentially had to be round-trips between two destinations on one airline or its partners—that’s how the programs offered awards tickets.
Today most airlines offer awards tickets per flight. So if you can’t find both the outbound and return awards seats you want at the frequent-flier price you want on one airline,
you can search for a flight for each leg separately on two different airlines, assuming that you have enough miles on both airlines.
Add a third leg. On some airlines, you might be able to add an extra destination without increasing the number of required frequent-flier miles.
For instance, on Delta you could fly from New York City to London, then a few days later, from London to Paris on the same airline or one of its partner airlines, and then from Paris back to New York City.
However, airlines are increasingly phasing out this practice.
Participate in the Southwest, JetBlue or Virgin America frequent-flier program.
These airlines do not impose limits on the number of available awards seats on a flight. Any seat that is available for cash also is available for frequent-flier miles.
There is a downside—the number of miles required for an awards ticket increases with the cash price of the ticket.
Still, participating in one of these three programs is a great way to ensure that you can get an awards ticket even to popular destinations and/or during busy travel times.
Call a reservations agent. Airlines now impose fees for booking awards tickets over the phone—usually around $25 per passenger for the entire trip—but calling an agent can make sense when you’re having trouble finding the best ticket.
Good reservations agents not only know the ins and outs of the awards seat booking system, they also often have options available to them that are not available to customers through the airline’s Web site.
These include cobbling together trips using partner airlines…changing planes in less obvious airports…or perhaps even unlocking seats that are not listed on the site as awards seats.
You pay nothing if the reservations agent can’t find a solution that satisfies you and you don’t book a ticket.
Book early, book late or book holiday flights.
The single best time to find an awards seat is 330 days before the flight, when these seats first enter the system.
However, additional awards seats often enter the system within two weeks of departure.
Awards seats also tend to be plentiful for people willing to travel on Christmas or Thanksgiving Day rather than during the week before or after.
Redeem British Airways miles on the airline’s partner, American Airlines. British Airways (BA) now charges extremely steep fuel surcharges.
A “free” round-trip flight between the US and London could cost upward of $500—on top of the frequent-flier miles required. That includes unavoidable taxes, but it’s mostly the fuel surcharge.
Many other foreign airlines charge fuel surcharges, too, though most are nowhere near as steep as those of BA.
To avoid these massive surcharges, redeem BA miles for flights on American Airlines, a BA partner airline that does not impose fuel surcharges.
Source: Tim Winship, editor-at-large of SmarterTravel.com.
He has spent nearly 25 years in the travel industry and helped develop and manage frequent-travel programs for Singapore Airlines, All Nippon Airways and Hilton Hotels.