Volstead Act Collapse, II-34

 

Why did Germany Crash before mid-1927?

SEC. 34. All records and reports kept or filed under the provisions of this Act shall be subject to inspection at any reasonable hour by the commissioner or any of his agents or by any public prosecutor or by any person designated by him, or by any peace officer in the State where the record is kept, and copies of such records and reports duly certified by the person with whom kept or filed may be introduced in evidence with like effect as the originals thereof, and verified copies of such records shall be furnished to the commissioner when called for.

SEC. 35. All provisions of law that are inconsistent with this Act are repealed only to the extent of such inconsistency and the regulations herein provided for the manufacture or traffic in intoxicating liquor shall be construed as in addition to existing laws. This Act  shall not relieve anyone from paying any taxes or other charges imposed upon the manufacture or traffic in such liquor. No liquor  revenue stamps or tax receipts for any illegal manufacture or sale shall be issued in advance, but upon evidence of such illegal manufacture or sale a tax shall be assessed against, and collected from, the person responsible for such illegal manufacture or sale in double the amount now provided by law, with an additional penalty of $500 on retail dealers and $1,000 on manufacturers. The payment of such tax or penalty shall give no right to engage in the manufacture or sale of such liquor, or relieve anyone from criminal liability, nor shall this Act relieve any person from any liability, civil or criminal, heretofore or hereafter incurred under existing laws.
The commissioner, with the approval of the Secretary of the Treasury, may compromise any civil cause arising under this title before bringing action in court; and with the approval of the Attorney General he may compromise any such cause after action thereon has been commenced.

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Section 34 ran counter to Bill of Rights Amendment 4: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated... It clearly invited minions to trespass "at any reasonable hour" and make off with records and assets. This happened in  October 1924 and the resulting income tax case made it to the Supreme Court in 1927.(link) 

Section 35 added to the legal travails of Charleston attorney and alleged bootlegger Manly Sullivan whom the feds convicted of 1922 tax evasion, but who won on appeal in 1926 before being haled before the Supreme Court in 1927.(link) 

German volume of trading peaked sharply in 1927

A large number of such cases, many involving state and federal officials operating in the niche formerly occupied by distillers, brewers and international pharma companies, were affected by these Supreme Court cases. Already submarines--used to haul drug cargo since 1916--were spotted in the Hudson river in 1924. That was the year German inflation abated and the Democratic platform decried the "spreading of heroin addiction among the youth." 

The decision to vacate the Circuit court's ruling and jail Sullivan coincided with market breaks and banking problems in many European countries that had only just waged a major war over enjoyable drug markets and were still fighting over reparations. Many of them owned affiliated companies in the U.S.A. This whole business of politicians angling for ways to equivocate ordinary vices into victimless "crimes" as pretext for resorting to the violence of law had by 1927 taken on the characteristics of a globalized financial crisis. Nobody at the time could envision where this was headed.

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Good reading: 

Taylor, Arnold H.; American Diplomacy and the Narcotics Traffic, 1900-1939: A Study in International Humanitarian Reform. Durham: Duke University Press, 1969. Details of the way Germany led the world in the production and distribution of chemical drugs exist mainly in State Department publications. Trade in drugs is regarded as frightening, mainly by people who have never set eyes on any of the drugs politicians feel require control by deadly force--which is somehow appealing. The topic is burdened with an aura of taboo that discourages contemplation of unintended financial and economic consequences and forters the proliferation of appalling lies and humbug. 

Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.

Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the usual beautiful daughter of a scientist touting prohibition and racial collectivism in America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)

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Tagged: prohibition, confiscation, asset forfeiture, initiation of force, blackouts, energy crisis, liquidation, liquidity, bankruptcy, Crash, Depression, communism, inviting attack, treason, economic collapse,

Volstead Act Collapse, II-33

Economic collapse & communism everywhere

 April Fools' Day, 1932

SEC. 33. After February 1, 1920, the possession of liquors by any person not legally permitted under this title to possess liquor shall be prima facie evidence that such liquor is kept for the purpose of being sold, bartered, exchanged, given away, furnished, or otherwise disposed of in violation of the provisions of this title. Every person legally permitted under this title to have liquor shall report to the commissioner within ten days after the date when the eighteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United States goes into effect, the kind and amount of intoxicating liquors in his possession. But it shall not be unlawful to possess liquors in one’s private dwelling while the same is occupied and used by him as his dwelling only and such liquor need not be reported, provided such liquors are for use only for the personal consumption of the owner thereof and his family residing in such dwelling and of his bona fide guests when entertained by him therein; and the burden of proof shall be upon the possessor in any action concerning the same to prove that such liquor was lawfully acquired, possessed, and used. 

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The straw that broke the camel's back, consolidating the stock market Crash and launching the Great  Depression was a ruling by Federal Judge Louis Fitzhenry that anyone who bought or possessed a bottle of beer could be sentenced to five years in prison. This interpretation of Volstead Sec. 33 was in light of the Jones Increased Penalties Act signed by Calvin Coolidge 2 days before Herbert Hoover's inauguration.The five in the Jones "Five & Ten" law made practically everything a felony, and by extension, failure to inform the police of a felony made practically all Americans into stool pigeons or felons. 

Already in late August the New York Times and 20 other papers had begun publishing prosecutor Mabel Willebrandt's series on how deeply The Inside of Prohibition enforcement wove its tentacles into the penal, tax and banking system. Police, Customs and Prohibition agents turned out to be such superb organizers of profitable mischief that Willebrandt made sure they were required to inform on each other. The 1929 market downturn began as August ended. 

Lysander Spooner had ironically observed of the dry laws in Boston 54 years earlier: 

One answer is that if the fact that the use of liquors tends to poverty and pauperism be a sufficient reason for prohibiting the sale of them, it is equally a sufficient reason for prohibiting the use of them; for it is the use, and not the sale, that tends to poverty. The seller is, at most, merely an accomplice of the drinker. And it is a rule of law, as well as of reason, that if the principal in any act is not punishable, the accomplice cannot be. --Vices are Not Crimes, XXI

But superstitious hysteria cares little for the restraints of reason and causality. Reality made it explicit that laws making a crime of production and trade are what tend to poverty, with practically every country of Europe, Asia and South America confirming that truth. Neither the use nor sale of anything caused as much poverty as did tax-enforced Prohibition when it unleashed The Great Depression! Judge Fitzhenry blurted out his lamentable decision on 21NOV1929, after the Dow Jones averages had dropped by over a third and a New York banker, two Philadelphia brokers and a grain dealer committed suicide. Then, on 26NOV1929 Judge Fitzhenry was in the news again:  

Federal Judge Louis Fitzhenry today issued a statement to correct an opinion handed down yesterday which, he said, either by inadvertent use of a word or by misquotation, conveyed the impression that he held any person knowing of another's possession of liquor to be a felon. (...) "I don't believe I said possession was a felony, but if I did it was incorrect," he said. "However any person witnessing a violation of the Jones Act without reporting it would be a felon." 

Anyone can visit online newspaper archives and see that The Crash came as soon as word went out of a huge bank-subsidized liquor and drug smuggling syndicate suffered 35 simultaneous raids from Atlantic City across Long Beach to Montauk Point October 16, then worsened as police, Customs, NY banking department personnel, bankers and tycoons were dragged down by dope, bank fraud and murder cases from the US, to England and Germany as commerce was increasingly made a crime.

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Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.

Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the usual beautiful daughter of a scientist touting prohibition and racial collectivism in America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)

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Tagged: prohibition, confiscation, asset forfeiture, initiation of force, blackouts, energy crisis, liquidation, liquidity, bankruptcy, Crash, Depression, communism, inviting attack, treason, economic collapse,

Volstead Act Totalitarianism, II-32

 

Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another. --Lysander Spooner

SEC. 32. In any affidavit, information, or indictment for the violation of this Act, separate offenses may be united in separate counts and the defendant may be tried on all at one trial and the penalty for all offenses may be imposed. It shall not be necessary in any affidavit, information, or indictment to give the name of the purchaser or to include any defensive negative averments, but it shall be sufficient to state that the act complained of was then and there prohibited and unlawful, but this provision shall not be construed to preclude the trial court from directing the furnishing the defendant a bill of particulars when it deems it proper to do so. 

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Following Assistant Attorney-General Mabel Willebrandt's example, prosecutors routinely "stack charges" against a defendant, thus building a very long potential prison sentence if convicted, and then approach the defendant with a "plea deal" that would result in a guaranteed, substantially reduced charge and sentence if the defendant agrees to plead guilty to the reduced offense. By stacking income tax charges onto prohibition cases prosecutors circumvented the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the Bill of Rights. This last was "the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury." 

Mixing revealed faith with the forcible restraint of men leads into the fallacy of equivocation. If innocent vices are wrongly transubstantiated into crimes, then the coercive initiation of force is just as easily distorted into a "right." But it is precisely to protect individual rights--moral claims to freedom of action, rather than to impose barbaric superstitions--that we place the means of coercive enforcement into the hand of government and limit it by law. Otherwise, as Lysander Spooner observed: 

...government would be utterly impracticable, if it were to take cognizance of vices and punish them as crimes. Every human being has his or her vices. Nearly all men have a great many. And they are of all kinds—physiological, mental, emotional, religious, social, commercial, industrial, economical, etc., etc. If government is to take cognizance of any of these vices, and punish them as crimes, then, to be consistent, it must take cognizance of all, and punish all impartially.

This Spooner recognized as impossible in 1875, when Comstockist abuses were at their furious peak. Yet this same jurist, so often misquoted and falsely maligned as an anarchist, observed that a healthy distinction between vices and crimes is essential if we are to have a functioning government. 

Such a thing as a government formed by voluntary association would never have been thought of if the object proposed had been the punishment of all vices impartially; because nobody wants such an institution, or would voluntarily submit to it. But a government formed by voluntary association for the punishment of all crimes is a reasonable matter; because everybody wants protection for himself against all crimes by others, and also acknowledges the justice of his own punishment, if he commits a crime.

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Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.

Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the usual beautiful daughter of a scientist touting prohibition and racial collectivism in America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)

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Tagged: prohibition, confiscation, asset forfeiture, initiation of force, blackouts, energy crisis, liquidation, liquidity, bankruptcy, Crash, Depression, communism, inviting attack, treason, economic collapse,

Volstead Act Totalitarianism, II-30, forfeiture.

 

The 1929 Crash occurred as investors realized asset-forfeiture meant Great Depression

317 SIXTY-SIXTH CONGRESS. Sess. I. CH. 85. 1919.

SEC. 30. No person shall be excused, on the ground that it may tend to incriminate him or subject him to a penalty or forfeiture, from attending and testifying, or producing books, papers, documents, and other evidence in obedience to a subpoena of any court in any suit or proceeding based upon or growing out of any alleged violation of this Act; but no natural person shall be prosecuted or subjected to any penalty or forfeiture for or on account of any transaction, matter, or thing as to which, in obedience to a subpoena and under oath, he may so testify or produce evidence, but no person shall be exempt from prosecution and punishment for perjury committed in so testifying.

SEC. 31. In case of a sale of liquor where the delivery thereof was made by a common or other carrier the sale and delivery shall be deemed to be made in the county or district wherein the delivery was made by such carrier to the consignee, his agent or employee, or in the county or district wherein the sale was made, or from which the shipment was made, and prosecution for such sale or delivery may be had in any such county or district.

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These Sections of Part 2 use "person" to mean individual or corporation. Both can be coerced and the Fifth Amendment is effectively suspended except as a reward exempting a "natural person" from penalties in exchange for becoming an informant against other targets of allegations. The Constitutional rights enumerated in the 4th and 5th Amendments [The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself...] are declared alienable privileges to be dangled as bait to gull people into helping agents to rob gangs organized largely by "former" or off-duty cops. Still, perjury charges can be brought against "artificial person" corporations (which can neither be jailed or killed in reprisals) and hapless individuals who recalled once having had inalienable rights. 

Here we are homing in on the lessons in Vices are Not Crimes by Lysander Spooner.(link) Spooner noted that the meddlesome habit of declaring that vices are crimes and demanding deadly force solutions are often advanced on economic grounds: that making trade and production into crimes makes prosperity. Spooner asks, then, of the causes of the Depression which the Panic of 1873 anticipated back when Comstockism made the postal monopoly into a way to criminalize birth control information, meddle in trade and censor mail.(link) 

Was it their vices that turned the adult portion of those 20 millions out of doors without employment, compelled them to consume their little accumulations, if they had any, and then to become beggars—beggars for work, and, failing in this, beggars for bread? Was it their vices that, all at once, and without warning, filled the homes of so many of them with want, misery, sickness, and death? No. Clearly it was neither the drunkenness, nor any other vices, of these laboring people, that brought upon them all this ruin and wretchedness. And if it was not, what was it?

This is the problem that must be answered; for it is one that is repeatedly occurring and constantly before us and that cannot be put aside.

There you have the first inkling that the American crashes, crashes that occurred after China banned opium and was then attacked by British dope sellers and their government, might be causally related. 

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Good Listening: The Darcy Gerow Podcast featured Tim Moen, former "Leader" of the Libertarian Party of Canada, struggling and stammering for a pretext to send men with guns to force Canadian women into the involuntary labor of reproduction. With "libertarians" like these, who needs fascists? (link)

Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.

Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the usual beautiful daughter of a scientist touting prohibition and racial collectivism in America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)

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Tagged: prohibition, confiscation, asset forfeiture, initiation of force, blackouts, energy crisis, liquidation, liquidity, bankruptcy, Crash, Depression, communism, inviting attack, treason, girl-bullying,

Volstead Act Totalitarianism II-28

Enforcement drives & market Crashes coincided in 1907, 1929, 1987, 2008

SEC. 28. The commissioner, his assistants, agents, and inspectors, and all other officers of the United States, whose duty it is to enforce criminal laws, shall have all the power and protection in the enforcement of this Act or any provisions thereof which is conferred by law for the enforcement of existing laws relating to the manufacture or sale of intoxicating liquors under the law of the United States.

SEC. 29. Any person who manufactures or sells liquor in violation of this title shall for a first offense be fined not more than $1,000, or imprisoned not exceeding six months, and for a second or subsequent offense shall be fined not less than $200 nor more than $2,000 and be imprisoned not less than one month nor more than five years.

Any person violating the provisions of any permit, or who makes any false record, report, or affidavit required by this title, or violates any of the provisions of this title, for which offense a special penalty is not prescribed, shall be fined for a first offense not more than $500; for a second offense not less than $100 nor more than $1,000, or be imprisoned not more than ninety days; for any subsequent offense he shall be fined not less than $500 and be imprisoned not less than three months nor more than two years. It shall be the duty of the prosecuting officer to ascertain whether the defendant has been previously convicted and to plead the prior conviction in the affidavit, information, or indictment. The penalties provided in this Act against the manufacture of liquor without a permit shall not apply to a person for manufacturing nonintoxicating cider and fruit juices exclusively for use in his home, but such cider and fruit juices shall not be sold or delivered except to persons having permits to manufacture vinegar.

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Bullet-riddled auto of Henry Virkula, June 8, 1929

Four days earlier, Wisconsin voted overwhelmingly to repeal State Prohibition Laws (link) 

After this fifth State voted to get rid of violent dry laws, in nearby Minnesota Henry Virkula, a  candy store owner out for a drive with his wife and children, was ambushed and shot to death by customs agents. The federal agents perpetrating the cold-blooded ambush and murder were given "all the power and protection" afforded them by the Volstead Act. The killer, Emmett J. White was acquitted, thanks to the bloodthirsty howling of organized  mystical fanaticism. Patrolman James Cox, who killed Archie Eugster the following day near Detroit, was also acquitted.

The Constitution of the United States had been transformed into an instrument for abetting and protecting with impunity the armed robbery and gratuitous murder of a husband and father in front of his wife and children. The same sort of thing still happens practically every week, only with suspicion of plant leaves rather than beer serving as pretext. Nowadays the papers call these things asset forfeiture and killings protected by qualified immunity. 

Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.

Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the usual beautiful daughter of a scientist touting prohibition and racial collectivism in America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)

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Tagged: prohibition, confiscation, asset forfeiture, initiation of force, blackouts, energy crisis, liquidation, liquidity, bankruptcy, Crash, Depression, communism, inviting attack, treason, girl-bullying,

Volstead Act Totalitarianism II-27

 

Where the initiation of deadly force leads(link)

SEC. 27. In all cases in which intoxicating liquors may be subject to be destroyed under the provisions of this Act the court shall have jurisdiction upon the application of the United States attorney to order them delivered to any department or agency of the United States Government for medicinal, mechanical, or scientific uses, or to order the same sold at private sale for such purposes to any person having a permit to purchase liquor the proceeds to be covered into the Treasury of the United States to the credit of miscellaneous receipts, and all liquor heretofore seized in any suit or proceeding brought for violation of law may likewise be so disposed of, if not claimed within sixty days from the date this section takes effect.

SEC. 28. The commissioner, his assistants, agents, and inspectors, and all other officers of the United States, whose duty it is to enforce criminal laws, shall have all the power and protection in the enforcement of this Act or any provisions thereof which is conferred by law for the enforcement of existing laws relating to the manufacture or sale of intoxicating liquors under the law of the United States.

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Robbers with badges?(link)

Here we have condemnation proceedings of a sort where goods, assets are seized and forfeited to men with guns who may then tie them to railroad tracks or sell them as described by Lysander Spooner in 1868. The men with guns are protected from all liability for death and damage arising from their use of deadly force wielded to prevent production and trade (baaad) through violence (goood). 

As time goes by, new pretexts are added to allow gunmen to rob passengers, pedestrians, drivers or deliverymen without so much as bringing any charges or benefit of arraignment. What happens when the race goes not to the ablest at production, but to the most ruthless at brutality?(link) 

Financial panics? (link)

Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.

Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the usual beautiful daughter of a scientist touting prohibition and racial collectivism in America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)

Brazilian blog…

American blog…

Tagged: prohibition, confiscation, asset forfeiture, initiation of force, blackouts, energy crisis, liquidation, liquidity, bankruptcy, Crash, Depression, communism, inviting attack, treason, girl-bullying,

Volstead Act Totalitarianism II-26

 

Superstition, Pseudoscience and Sumptuary Law Looting

SEC 26. When the commissioner, his assistants, inspectors, or any officer of the law shall discover any person in the act of transporting in violation of the law, intoxicating liquors in any wagon, buggy, automobile, water or air craft, or other vehicle, it shall be his duty to seize any and all intoxicating liquors found therein being transported contrary to law. Whenever intoxicating liquors transported or possessed illegally shall be seized by an officer he shall take possession of the vehicle and team or automobile, boat, air or water craft, or any other conveyance, and shall arrest any person in charge thereof. Such officer shall at once proceed against the person arrested under the provisions of this title in any court having competent  jurisdiction; but the said vehicle or conveyance shall be returned to the owner upon execution by him of a good and valid bond, with sufficient sureties, in a sum double the value of the property, which said bond shall be approved by said officer and shall be conditioned to return said property to the custody of said officer on the day of trial to abide the judgment of the court.

 The court upon conviction of the person so arrested shall order the liquor destroyed, and unless good cause to the contrary is shown by the owner, shall order a sale by public auction of the property seized, and the officer making the sale, after deducting the expenses of keeping the property, the fee for the seizure, and the cost of the sale, shall pay all liens, according to their priorities, which are established, by intervention or otherwise at said hearing or in other proceeding brought for said purpose, as being bona fide and as having been created without the lienor having any notice that the carrying vehicle was being used or was to be used for illegal transportation of liquor, and shall pay the balance of the proceeds into the Treasury of the United States as miscellaneous receipts. 

All liens against property sold under the provisions of this section shall be transferred from the property to the proceeds of the sale of the property. If, however, no one shall be found claiming the team, vehicle, water or air craft, or automobile, the taking of the same, with a description thereof, shall be advertised in some newspaper published in the city or county where taken or if there be no newspaper published in such city or county, in a newspaper having circulation in the county, once a week for two weeks and by handbills posted in three public places near the place of seizure, and if no claimant shall appear within ten days after the last publication of the advertisement, the property shall be sold and the proceeds after deducting the expenses and costs shall be paid into the Treasury of the United States as miscellaneous receipts.

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Sumptuary looting leads to crashes, recessions

Nowadays we see the same thing occurring. Instead of wine, beer or The Demon Rum, crooked politicians send dirty cops to rob people at gunpoint while shouting at some other Avatar of Satan or Assassin of Youth. The trick is to let cops engage in literal armed robbery with variable rewards by looting in hopes this will entice more predatory and violent volunteers into risking unequal but apposite reprisal force no less deadly. Just as in 1929 under the brand new Five and Ten law making light beer a felony dry agents, snoops and entrapment manhunters, the confiscation of ships, cash, bank accounts, airplanes, brokerage firms, farms, ranches, homes and other real property completely reversed the money-supply-expanding effect of depositing the profits of production and trade. 

AFTER the collapse, asset forfeiture magically decreased

The result, as in 1907-12, 1920-23, in 1929-33 in 1969-75, 1987-92 and 2008 was recession. This is because prosperity comes from people saving/investing their earnings and leveraging the money supply upward. Brutes bent on policing for predation cause money to flee banks and brokerages and individuals to rot in prisons or graveyards. The resulting liquidity crunches trigger a wave of bankruptcies and recession. This happens over and over again as people are tricked into voting for the initiation of force. 

Good reading: Adventures of a Physicist, by Luis Alvarez. One of the world's greatest scientists offers a peek behind the scenes. 

Find out the juicy details behind the mother of all economic collapses. Prohibition and The Crash–Cause and Effect in 1929 is available in two languages on Amazon Kindle, each at the cost of a pint of craft beer.

Brazilian Sci-fi from 1926 featuring the usual beautiful daughter of a scientist touting prohibition and racial collectivism in America’s Black President 2228 by Monteiro Lobato, translated by J Henry Phillips (link)

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Tagged: 18th Amendment, altruism, collapse, Constitution, libertarian, political clout, prohibition, pseudoscience, repeal, spoiler votes, superstition, totalitarianism, Volstead Act, war,