Good boy, zero for conduct...
With the passage of House Bill 195 into law, the State of Louisiana has banned the use of cash in all transactions involving secondhand goods. State representative Ricky Hardy, a co-author of the bill, claims that the bill targets criminals who traffic in stolen goods.

But of course, pawn shops--and not rented stalls at local church flea markets--are notorious as places that criminals frequent to convert stolen goods into quick cash. So what gives? Are the authors of the bill and those who voted for it ignoramuses--or are they deliberately obscuring the real purpose of the bill?
The answer is clear once we examine the other provisions of the bill. In fact, the bill goes far beyond banning cash transactions.

So the aim of the bill is not to aid law enforcement in apprehending criminals, none of whom would be ever stupid enough to turn over such information. The real intent is to feed government's insatiable hunger for tax revenues by completely stripping law-abiding citizens of financial privacy in secondhand transactions, every detail of which is fed directly into police files.
This troubling development in Louisiana parallels the intensification of the war on cash by the Federal government. Last month it was reported that the U.S. Justice Department ordered bank employees to snitch to the cops on customers who withdrew $5,000 or more. In a speech, assistant attorney general Leslie Caldwell exhorted banks to “alert law enforcement authorities about the problem” so that police can “seize the funds” or at least “initiate an investigation”.

@темы: link, US, Blacklisted news, Dictatorship