How Many of Us Are Federal Criminals?

With all the attention that's been paid lately to long federal sentences for drug offenders, it's surprising that a far more troubling phenomenon has barely hit the media's radar screen. Every year, thousands of upstanding, responsible Americans run afoul of some incomprehensible federal law or regulation and end up serving time in federal prison.
What is especially disturbing is that it could happen to anyone at all -- and it has.
We should applaud Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), then, for holding a bipartisan hearing on Friday to examine how federal law can make a criminal out of anyone, for even the most mundane conduct.
Federal law in particular now criminalizes entire categories of activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison. This is an inevitable result of the fact that the criminal law is no longer restricted to punishing inherently wrongful conduct -- such as murder, rape, robbery, and the like.
Moreover, under these new laws, the government can often secure a conviction without having to prove that the person accused even intended to commit a bad act, historically a protection against wrongful conviction.
Laws like this are dangerous in the hands of social engineers and ambitious lawmakers -- not to mention overzealous prosecutors -- bent on using government's greatest civilian power to punish any activity they dislike. So many thousands of criminal offenses are now in federal law that a prominent federal appeals court judge titled his recent essay on this overcriminalization problem, "You're (Probably) a Federal Criminal."
Consider small-time inventor and entrepreneur Krister Evertson, who testified at Friday’s hearing. Krister never had so much as a traffic ticket before he was run off the road near his mother's home in Wasilla, Alaska, by SWAT-armored federal agents in large black SUVs training automatic weapons on him.
Evertson, who had been working on clean-energy fuel cells since he was in high school, had no idea what he'd done wrong. It turned out that when he legally sold some sodium (part of his fuel-cell materials) to raise cash, he forgot to put a federally mandated safety sticker on the UPS package he sent to the lawful purchaser.
Krister's lack of a criminal record did nothing to prevent federal agents from ransacking his mother's home in their search for evidence on this oh-so-dangerous criminal.
The good news is that a federal jury in Alaska acquitted Krister of all charges. The jurors saw through the charges and realized that Krister had done nothing wrong.
The bad news, however, is that the feds apparently had it in for Krister. Federal criminal law is so broad that it gave prosecutors a convenient vehicle to use to get their man.
Two years after arresting him, the feds brought an entirely new criminal prosecution against Krister on entirely new grounds. They used the fact that before Krister moved back to Wasilla to care for his 80-year-old mother, he had safely and securely stored all of his fuel-cell materials in Salmon, Idaho.
According to the government, when Krister was in jail in Alaska due to the first unjust charges, he had "abandoned" his fuel-cell materials in Idaho. Unfortunately for Krister, federal lawmakers had included in the Resource Recovery and Conservation Act a provision making it a crime to abandon "hazardous waste." According to the trial judge, the law didn't require prosecutors to prove that Krister had intended to abandon the materials (he hadn't) or that they were waste at all -- in reality, they were quite valuable and properly stored away for future use.
With such a broad law, the second jury didn't have much of a choice, and it convicted him. He spent almost two years locked up with real criminals in a federal prison. After he testified Friday, he had to return to his halfway house in Idaho and serve another week before he is released.
The other hardened criminal whose story members of Congress heard Friday is retiree George Norris. A longtime resident of Spring, Texas, Norris made the mistake of not knowing and keeping track of all of the details of federal and international law on endangered species -- mostly paperwork requirements -- before he decided to turn his orchid hobby into a small business. What was Norris's goal? To earn a little investment income while his wife neared retirement.
The Lacey Act is an example of the dangerous overbreadth of federal criminal law. Incredibly, Congress has made it a federal crime to violate any fish or wildlife law or regulation of any nation on earth.
Facing 10 years in federal prison, Norris pled guilty and served almost two. His wife, Kathy, describes the pain of losing their life savings to pay for attorneys and trying to explain to grandchildren why for so long Poppa George couldn't see them.
Federal criminal law did not get so badly broken overnight, and it will take hard work to get it fixed. It is encouraging that members of Congress such as Reps. Scott and Gohmert are now paying attention to the toll overcriminalization takes on ordinary Americans. Congress needs to begin fixing the damage it has done by starting to restore a more reasonable, limited and just federal criminal law. Friday’s hearing was an excellent first step.

A Toilet Paper Tax....AreYou Kidding Me?

OK, I said this would be a Non-Partisan blog and I meant it. My first rant is going to be about a bill introduced by Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore). The bill is H.R. 3202 Water Protection and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Items disposed of in waste water, such as toothpaste, cosmetics, toilet paper and cooking oil will be subject to a 3% excise tax, while water beverages will be hit with a 4% tax, “because these products wind up in the water stream and require clean up by sewage treatment plants,” according to the bill. The taxes are designed to be collected at the manufacturer level. Of course, we all know what this means. The tax is passed on to us the consumers, in the form of higher prices on the goods produced.The legislation also cites “climate change mitigation” as a justification for imposing the taxes. The new tax is supposed to bring in $10 billion a year.Now you might wonder if the title of this post is a little misleading. I can assure you it's not. I have read the entire bill, unlike most of our elected officials, and it clearly lists on page 6, "The term ‘water disposal product’ means any of the following: soaps and detergents, toiletries, toilet tissue, water softeners, and cooking oils.Now I'm all for cleaning up our waste water systems. There are some provisions in this bill that are good. Such as "NO LABELING RECOMMENDATIONS TO DISPOSE BY FLUSHING.—In licensing any biological product under this section, the Secretary shall ensure that the labeling for such product does not include any recommendation or direction to dispose of the product by means of a public or private waste water treatment system, such as by flushing down the toilet.’’Meaning no labels on drugs or biological products can instruct the consumer to dispose of the product by flushing it down the toilet. I guess what it boils down to is this. Are we all willing to keep accepting more and more taxes just because the government tells us it's needed to help combat climate change? I'll always do my part to help the environment, but where do we draw the line? Is my toothpaste or toilet paper really causing global warming? I'll leave that for the scientists to decide. But I do know that the price of toilet paper is already out of control considering what it's used for.

Equal Opportunity Offender

My name is Kevin Branscom and I'm a government watchdog. I am a registered Democrat but I will always call it like I see it. That means ALL politicians are fair game and there will be NO partisan politics on this blog. I will only post blogs about subjects I have researched and you can be assured that the information you get here will be factual. That being said, I will provide my own opinion of the facts and encourage you to do the same. I created this blog because I am sick of all the liberal and conservative blogs that only give you the information that supports their side of the political spectrum. The title of this post says it all. I am an equal opportunity offender. If you are a Democrat you will not like some of the things I have to say. If you are a Republican you will not like some of the things I have to say. If you are an American you may not agree with what I say but you will support my freedom to express myself. Which is a freedom we are slowly losing each day. I have a pretty hectic schedule and won't be able to update this blog everyday, but I will notify everyone on my Facebook list when a new blog is posted. Please feel free to add me to your Facebook if you want the updates. That's all I got for now I hope this blog is a success and opens a lot of eyes.

Kevin