Refusing to pay a bribe is also a refusal to participate in a racket. Local police can be extremely petty and extremely violent [1]. If a police officer told me he'd let me off for a bribe, I would probably pay it. I wouldn't be paying to get what I want. Rather, I would be paying to avoid the appearance that I disapprove of the bribery (and the possibility of resulting reprisal).
E: And, of course, I would report that bribe as soon as it was safe to do so. And, of course, I'm referring to a scenario where I, as an individual private citizen, am told to pay money to a person with a gun who controls my immediate safety... which, importantly, brings us to the second half of this comment:
But this isn't that.
A high-level exec at one of the world's most powerful companies paying off a local LEO for a permit instead of, IDK, contacting the State or the Feds, is beyond inexplicable.
[1] https://oklahoman.com/article/5666549/woman-recognizes-attac...
The problem is that, at least in many jurisdictions, gun permits basically only exist as a means for police to solicit bribes. There's literally an entire industry of people whose job is bribing police departments to get gun permits. C.f.: https://www.google.com/search?q=nyc+concealed+carry+bribes
In practice the may-issue policy has repeatedly proven to be an irresistible opportunity for graft. Despite this some states continue to maintain may-issue policies, including California and New York.
The criteria should be clear and contestable in court. Like it or not, it's a constitutional right and the law should be "shall issue" (unless good reason not to -- and I'm all for reasonable "good reasons not to").
This is why even as far back as the early 1800's it was not uncommon for local sheriff's to mandate a leave your guns at the sheriffs post at the edge of town policies. Yet, the local barkeep could still have a shotgun under the counter. Town was the public square, where the local bar, while a public establishment, was a private proprietorship.
Many of these type of rights extend from the pre-US castle doctrine laws which summed up shortly basically conferred the concept, that a person is king of their castle, the states rights should be significantly curtailed, when it comes to a personal private property. More modern day utilization tends to just boil it down to self defence, in ones private property, but historically it held a view which helped shape many of the personal liberties that were incorporated into the Bill of Rights.
Since nearly the foundation of the USA public possession has always been seen as a privilege extended by the state. In earlier times this was generally pathwork local law and the local sheriff view of guns carried in their town. Now it is generally more formalized via a state based licencing scheme.
A good read on rulings that imply it is a privilege:
https://www.governing.com/topics/public-justice-safety/tns-c...
Converse to the last paragraph though is that while precedence and the lack of challenges early on to public restriction lead to the concept of public possession being a privilege, the subject is now in modern day being battled out in the courts, and there have been some rulings ignoring history policy precedence
A good read on rulings that imply it is a right:
https://reason.com/2014/12/05/is-concealed-carry-a-privilege...
With all that being said, may issue is fraught with corruption and unnecessarily restrictive, in my state we have a shall issue and it works well, especially coupled with our strong castle doctrine laws. So well, that at the entry of my state an anti-gun group put up a billboard that said "Visitor's Warning - Florida residents can use deadly force". The billboards actually has the opposite effect than the group had intended so they removed them.
I would be a proponent of each state going to a shall issue system and extending the public privilege to a national recognition and reciprocity system, much like the state's driver licence systems are. That being said, it's fairly consistent that the state has almost since the beginning seen public possession as a privilege extended and not an absolute right.
A good read on the subject and precedence for public gun carry, from a purely historic perspective is this article:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gun-control-old-west-...
on a completely tangential rant, class 3 FFL transfers, require a sheriff's signature and are just as rife with corruption and cronyism. I used to live in a county where the local sheriff was very vocal about the fact that he would not sign for class 3's, yet every deputy or buddy, cousin or uncle had one. I would love to see the local law enforcement sign off requirement, for Class 3 be removed and rather just make it a duty to inform local law enforcement that one is in possession of a class 3.
Right or privilege, it should not be conditioned by bribes. And when a LEO is involved in a bribery case their punishment should start at several times that of the other (non-authority) person because it seems like that right/privilege comes at the end of extortion.
It is also notable, that gun control also fell under that same set of "State's rights" contributing to the original Civil War, and to hell with the well soap boxed dolts who insist that the only issue the Civil War was predicated on was Slavery. It wasn't. It was only indirectly so because the framework for expansion of Slavery was seen as falling under the banner of State's rights at the time, just as much as gun control itself was also seen as falling under State's rights. It's not a dog-whistle, it's what it bloody was.
Tangent aside, it basically boils down to the fundamental division of "rural v. Urban" in the United States, and to be frank, I side with the ruralites. Just because a bunch of people gather together in one place should not generate some emergent privilege that everyone loses an explicitly granted right except law enforcement. Period. Gun control almost universally arises out of some group being uncomfortable with another group having guns, and the group that's uncomfortable tends to be fine and dandy letting the authorities strut around with them, and would be unlikely to carry anyway; much like how pro public-transit folk seem to be more than okay with onerous vehicle regulation, but balk when the same laws or tenets are applied to them. Better to just not throw anyone under the bus at all.
Call me a yokel if you want. I've seen too much flung in the way of wrapping up other folk's rights in my lifetime in the name of public safety with no signs of a return in sight. Until I see some loosening up, or some honest give and take, I"m in the "not one more inch" camp.
With all that being said, I see magazine capacities, foregrip bans, scary gun cause it is plastic and black and those kind of rulings as a direct affront to the 2A because they apply to stuff in my home, I would be a felon if I lived in those states, literally one day I would be legal and the next I am a felon. With no recourse, even the Automatic Weapons Ban in the 80's allowed for the FFL 3 classification and the tax stamp to keep the weapons one already owned and while I am not advocating for a grandfathering of reasonable capacity magazines, and black rifles I am citing that in the AWB there was at least a path to keep your existing stuff legal.
I believe that I am level headed (at least I like to believe that I am), because I am first and foremost a pacifist but I acknowledge the logic that if someone is trying to harm you, you have a right to not be harmed. I respect devout pacifist and totally understand their logic, that the principle of pacifism is more important to them than self defense because violence flows from a few wells, fear/insecurity, despair/desperation, anger and jealousy. They believe to neutralize violence you are not violent against those that are in one of those states, rather one should be merciful on their them due to their torment, and that mercy is show in love for them and all people. I honestly admire that level of pacifism but don't know if I can ever get there, I get it, I accept that these are the primary drivers of violence but it's hard to be that principled and understanding while standing down the barrel of a gun. As VanZant so aptly put it in "gimme 3 steps", "Well it ain't no fun staring straight down a 44". I may be able to in a situation involving only myself, but with my wife and kids I just cannot see myself getting there. Thus I only carry a firearm when I am with my family. I used to be anti-handgun when I was young and would have been fine with a ban on them. It was not until later in life that I realized that people will literally, pick up a stick and kill someone else, so while handguns primary purpose is human on human violence, I realize that it is just an object and ascribing the violence to the object only blurs what we all need to fix as humans and that is man's inhumanity to man.
I'm not sure what you think "bear" means in "the right to keep and bear arms."
The Constitutional right to own a firearm doesn't mean much if you're not allowed to have it outside of your home.
And that is the current arguments being made, as their is the implication that by the preamble about the state needing the people to be armed to supply the militias if needed, that if they were called into the militia they would almost certainly not be baring arms on their property. We also have to take into account history, and historically the government did not strictly control open lands they were considered open lands or communal so pre-1900's carry laws being what they where, generally only applied to entering and leaving town, pretty much everywhere else no one has beef with someone having a gun. Times have changed, federal uninhabited land is shut off from the people for the most part and rights generally don't extend there anymore, as well town is a whole lot bigger now. These are arguments being made in support that the framers actually meant the right was "in public"
It's not a matter of what I think it means, it's a matter of what the supreme court thinks it means. So far they have been a mixed bag, the inherent self defense ruling was good but honestly should have been a no brainer. Given that one of the founding fathers was killed in a dual, and duals up until the 1900's where pretty much considered mutual self defense.
I think the ninth court hosed the decision on the Federal Assault Weapons Ban as this directly affected guns of similar features but different looks one could own or features that could be placed on guns. None of that really bothered me as a Browning BAR 300 win-mag with a modified magazine for high capacity would absolutely dominate the battlefield, but the key there is the precedent because by being able to ban pieces of the gun (because they only recognize the receiver as the legal gun), they have set the path for the current bans on magazine capacity and that is concerning because if it stands based on precedent, the 7 round magazines restriction, can legally be reduced to 1 round magazines, in effect only legalizing single shot weapons and while I know in the movies and video games, everyone dies from the first shot, the reality is a higher percentage of people survive shoutouts than die from them, even after receiving multiple gunshot wounds.
I wish people had a better sense of this earlier social arrangement.
It was the most conservative of approaches to gun possession and was imposed by the town elders who wanted to regulate and order behavior in the public sphere.
Now we find ourselves in bizarro world where firearms politics are exactly flipped: a free wheeling "let-do" policy is championed by "conservatives" and a highly regulated policy is championed by "liberals".
In reality, a historical perspective shows us that the ownership of modern weapons by average citizens is off the charts liberal. That is absolutely where it sits on a political spectrum of rights. It is, historically, the prerogative of the most conservative and reactionary interests to prohibit/restrict arms.
All that to say: I prefer the conservative approach. I, too, was very young once and very excited to exercise my rights and privileges ... I open-carried regularly, had a CCW, etc., and the result was a lot of discomfort and bad feelings. Carrying a firearm is a provocative act and it makes sense that conservative actors in a community would try to keep that at bay.
I think some of that has to do with the everreal presence of government in today's day and age. In the wild west, well it was the wild west. Other than the long arm of the law there was very little government or regulation, people did not feel the need that the founding fathers did. In all reality they were pretty free.
Contrast that with today and we have moved more and more issues to the federal level, we have pretty much abandoned the republic for an empire and now we are pushing social issues and regulation to a federal level. This does not end well, it never has.
When we has 50 strong independent governments that had more to do with peoples day to day lives and the federal government just stepped into the states business or rights issues, people had 50 shots at finding a representative government. Not so today, as more and more, the states (governmentally) look like cookie cutters of one another. I think this has set the "all or nothing", "I am not giving one inch" mentality that pervades discussion today, on almost every subject and it is coming from both sides. At a certain point, one side or the other is going to believe they need to stand up to federal government, because they no longer have a representative government and the ones that have guns tend to be of the mentality that those chickens are coming home to roost for their side.
To be honest even classic liberalism is dead, both are progressives when it comes to free trade, and unification of regulations across the globe.
Driving is also a privilege, yet no one has to bribe anyone to get a drivers license.
I believe the state of the law is that either concealed carry or open carry must be available. They can't both be may-issue, but one can be if the other isn't.
And I tend to agree that that's enough to satisfy the argument "it's a constitutional right".
They implement it as a wink and nod end run around the 14th amendment. The whole purpose is so that the states can play dumb when the towns "accidentally" install sheriffs/police chiefs who turn out to be racist and deny all the irish/blacks/latinos their rights.
Rights are for everyone. Government privileges always end up favoring particular groups for personal or political reasons. To demote a right to a privilege is to prefer this kind of favoritism over equal protection of the laws.
If "blue" states just didn't like guns, then they would simply ban all CCW permits. But they do like guns -- as long as the "right" kind of people have them and the guns look the "right" way.
There's a pesky amendment that prevents that so they settle for restricting "undesirables" (a definition which is a moving target over time).
http://www.joebrower.com/PHILE_PILE/PIX/RKBA/CCW_shall_issue...
Now, that map is 18 years old and things may have changed a little since then, but I doubt it's changed much. This is why, as mentioned above, "may issue" is ripe for graft and corruption.
It was introduced by a Republican, garnered bipartisan support, and enacted by (then governor) Ronald Reagan, with support from the NRA, with the espoused claim of "not harming a single honest citizen."
Arguably, 1967 is not today, but even to people like myself, who try my absolute damnedest to look for non-racial motives where others ascribe racially motivated malice, it looks like it was just designed to disenfranchise Black Panthers of the same 2A right as their white peers.
Here is a picture that seems, almost, to come from am alternate reality:
https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-...
"Throughout the late 1960s, the militant black nationalist group used their understanding of the finer details of California’s gun laws to underscore their political statements about the subjugation of African-Americans. In 1967, 30 members of the Black Panthers protested on the steps of the California statehouse armed with .357 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns and .45-caliber pistols and announced, “The time has come for black people to arm themselves.”"
...
"The display so frightened politicians—including California governor Ronald Reagan—that it helped to pass the Mulford Act, a state bill prohibiting the open carry of loaded firearms, along with an addendum prohibiting loaded firearms in the state Capitol. The 1967 bill took California down the path to having some of the strictest gun laws in America and helped jumpstart a surge of national gun control restrictions."
And it's dubious that this is true for other regulations against "assault weapons".
One is that the AWB wasn't a racist provision of the overall bill. The gun control measure was not rooted in racism.
The second is that the bill as a whole wasn't "rooted" in racism. It certainly was a bad bill that had terrible consequences, and we should undue a lot of the damage it did, but the intent of the bill was, in part, to help the black community (and it had support from many people in the black community at the time). Horribly misguided in hindsight though.
The crime bill was designed to stop the "super predators" (to quote two democrat presidential candidates). It was a racist depiction of black men. It included a provision to outlaw scary black guns. You can't really divorce the two and pretend they're not related.
On a side note, the nice thing about sheriffs being elected is they don't have to listen to a god damn thing the state tells them to do (within confines of law obviously). They work directly for the people of their community.
It's a way of allowing rich limousine liberals to get security guards with guns, while denying the common person the same right.
So much for equal rights, some I guess are more equal than others!
"The Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act (LEOSA) is a United States federal law, enacted in 2004, that allows two classes of persons—the 'qualified law enforcement officer' and the 'qualified retired or separated law enforcement officer'—to carry a concealed firearm in any jurisdiction in the United States, regardless of state or local laws, with certain exceptions."
Often those bodyguards are ex-NYPD, which is how they got the concealed permit in the first place.
The whole point is demonstrating a need for a concealed weapon, not qualification or competency.
To be clear, the argument that is being played out is not on owning weapons, that has been decided. The argument that is being played out is does the spirit of the 2A incorporate a conferred right to carry in public. History and precedent dating back to the early 1800's says it does not. But there is that tricky "bare" part in the 2A as the spirit of the law would assume that they were not just protecting the right to "bare" them on one's own private property, given the pre clause about people needed to be armed so that the militias had a good supply of armed men, to ensure a free state.
On a related note, I see magazine restrictions as a more direct affront to the 2nd amendment. If they stand, then it can be abstracted to the amount (any amount) of ammunition can be restricted, which means the most restrictive states can and will outlaw everything, but single shot weapons to comply with the letter of the 2A rather than the spirit.
Restricting CCWs in a manner that would absolutely not fly for free speech, voting, or some other right isn't the issue. The issue is that some states have set up discretionary license issuing schemes that in practice violate the 14th amendment.
There are restrictions on free speech in public, I cannot yell fire into a crowd, I cannot incite a riot, I cannot tell people to vote for Jo Jorgensen while I am waiting in line to vote. Same with voting, I cannot vote twice even if my freedom of expression wants to.
This issue at hand is with those rights, they do not logically make sense to extend the spirit of the law via allowing some of those prohibited things via privileges.
This is why the 5th is such a good parallel, because I have an inherent freedom of movement but I don't have an inherent right to do it via the public roads, using an automobile. I have the privilege to do so via a licence. Now I can own an auto, I can offroad all over my property, that is my right but as soon as I hit the public pavement it becomes a privilege.
going back to the first, I can yell fire in my house all day long that is my right, but if I pick up the phone and utilize the public networks via dialing 911 and yell fire it is a very different situation. Again, it just does not make sense for the 1st to have some of it's limitations extended into privileges.
My overarching point is the 2A issue is not settled, many tend to take one stance or the other, but it is very much in flux, that will decide if the 14A issue is really a moot point.
You can have long guns, stored properly in NYC afaik.
It's quite involved and expensive ($200 tax per round on anti-tank rounds just to start with), but it's not impossible. Just prohibitive in cost.
If that were so clear, we wouldn't have all of the litigation and laws around the 2A as we do.
Ask New Jersey. They explicitly allow retired LEO to have CCP. Meanwhile the law is so complicated and it's so unusual for even security guards to get a CCP that they sometimes get arrested anyway even with the permit: https://reason.com/2020/03/10/new-jersey-security-guard-arre...
This is phrased like a legal argument but it's missing all the important parts.
1.The tricky bit is knowing the right amount of the bribe to pay.
Pay a Senator or a member of the House too little and you have made a powerful enemy.
Pay too much and they figure that they have a sucker that they can keep milking. And of course, you have also wasted a couple of extra million that could have been directed to another Senator....
2.The bribes are structured as payments via "lobbyists" or as "campaign donations"
3.In every country bribes are structured just well enough to evade local scrutiny.
Thus in Indonesia it is suitcases of cash.
In the US it is directorships of companies or well paying board jobs for children of politicians or investments in a politicians son-in-laws hedge fund.
In the EU it's the same situation as well. I mean this situation [0] with Neelie Kroes is quite suspect as well, isn't it?
>Taxi app Uber, which continues to battle regulatory clamp downs and legal confrontations in Europe, has appointed a former VP of the European Union’s executive arm, the European Commission, to its public policy advisory board as it looks to grease the gearbox of its regional fortunes.
The ex-VP in question, former digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes — who stepped down from her role in the European Union’s executive body in November 2014, after serving a five-year term in digital policy (and some 10 years in all as a European Commissioner) — was a vocal supporter of Uber during her time in post.
Prior to leaving office in 2014, for example, Kroes loudly condemned a ban of Uber in Belgium, publicly proclaiming that “Uber is 100% welcome in Brussels and everywhere else as far as I am concerned.”
I believe this kind of corruption is endemic in the Western world. For most "normal" voters this kind of corruption is quite invisible I believe, in contrast to people being payed directly a suitcase of money.
---
[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/06/uber-appoints-former-ec-vp...
(And a difference with the CEO, that you probably missed, is that they have more likely than not done these kind of bribes themselves).
...but the bribing and the situation described (including similar calculations) goes on every day, in every single country, since forever.
So to compare it to conspiracy theory takes a lot of gullibility on the good intentions, clean hands, and lawful operating of businesses, politicians, local officials, and/or the rich. Or maybe a better word would be "naivety".
This is not "Elvis is Alive", "The KKK killed Kennedy" or "PizzaGate".
This is all too common, everyday, corruption.
This kind of reminds me of the UC admissions bribery scandal. There are legally approved ways to bribe schools and politicians, so if one is inclined to do so, at least follow them. But in both cases the idiots in question have gone about it in a flagrantly illegal fashion. I am not condoning the practice, but merely recognizing the system as it actually functions.
That provides huge incentives for the most corrupt to rise to control the institutions they’re supposedly policing.
It would be more analogous if the donations were somehow made to the Sherriff department's budget.
New York is a may issue state which generally/usually means a local law enforcement official will make a judgment call. Some have a blanken no issue policy, others sometimes waive that blanket no issue policy if they can be persuaded.
It's good that you and I both live in countries like that; but, in some countries, you report your bribes on taxes, they're so common.
From the other comments in this thread, it's suggesting that the CCW permit process in California is very bad and broken and these bribes have been an illegal method of actually getting CCW permits.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Ac...
> Regarding payments to foreign officials, the act draws a distinction between bribery and facilitation or "grease payments", which may be permissible under the FCPA, but may still violate local laws. The primary distinction is that grease payments or facilitation payments are made to an official to expedite his performance of the routine duties he is already bound to perform.
It was an absurd experience. The training material kept repeating that I absolutely could not bribe a non-US official. However, in my country ALL officials are non-US and bribery is also illegal so what were they trying to tell me with this "non-US" criterion?
The message I got from training course is that bribery is bad (I knew that), bribery is illegal (I knew that) but it's okay if I bribe a US official (really?).
Such a payment is considered a grease payment (and not a bribe), which is lawful under FCPA.
(Looks like they're Australian: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25194634)
https://www.ag.gov.au/system/files/2020-09/factsheet-2-the-f...
Upon giving it a little more thought it turns out that only 2 of the top 10 oil companies are American. So, yeah, my bad.
Show me the incentives and I will show you the outcome.
So a new captain comes on board and first port they get in he refuses to do this - they refuse to let them in the port - they were out at sea without resupply 20 days and running out of food... the company had to fly in a different captain to relieve this guy and he told me by day 2 weeks in they were already joking around how the captain could have an accident ...
Can you give any examples of those countries? Countries with high amount of bribing tend to also be countries with large off-the-record economies, therefore I am skeptical of that proposition.
FYI in the US, you can claim tax deductibility on bribes paid in foreign countries iff they are not legally classified as bribes in the respective local laws.
> Can you give any examples of those countries?
Germany used to be like this, but it they changed the law many years ago. I don't know if there are any such countries remaining. The article below is from 1995, when bribes were still tax-deductible.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1995-08-06/germany-w...
Extortion is mainly demanded from businesses, but local residents may also have to pay “taxes” or renta to access their homes. No business sector is spared, and goods and professional services may be demanded instead of, or in addition to money. Large businesses and transport operators have dedicated employees to negotiate extortion fees, which are built into >their financial models. Implicit risk starts as soon as someone is targeted to pay, and it rises if they are unable to pay or the renta charged increases. Those who refuse to pay are killed.
https://www.internal-displacement.org/sites/default/files/in...
By the way Apples head of security isn’t the only one. Nanci Pelosi has had a CCW for a long time while simultaneously fighting to suppress gun ownership in her own city and state.
While I agree it sucks that some rich and powerful people seem to live by a different set of rules, it's not like she had a permit just for kicks.
But I’m not rich and powerful, so.
I recall Sherif telling my dad if he shot someone, to make sure the body was in the house pointing toward the inside. That way he wouldn’t be arrested.
So we were under constant assault, and if we tried to defend ourselves we had to make sure everything was “perfect” so as not to get arrested.
Complete insanity.
Moved away as fast as possible.
I’m not allowed to defend myself. At least not with a big check list to ensure I don’t goto jail.
I recall advise like keep a bat and glove in car at all times. Glove is the “reason” you have something to defend yourself with.
Nonsense games to protect yourself because some Pampered people don’t think you should be allowed to.
I wasn't debating the merits of the CA shall issue policy.
In other words, don't pick a fight where there isn't one.
No one was arguing otherwise. The comments you were replying to were clearly about the hypocrisy of anti-gun politicians.
> In other words, don't pick a fight where there isn't one.
Indeed.
Well at one point he went on about thanking local government officials, and that he would be sure to give them gifts for approving the project.
The translator wisely left that part out.
Confused, the CEO later asked why, then was shocked to learn that bribery is a bad thing in America.
Google Fu is weak, so haven’t been able to find the original source. (May have been a Japanese language book)
Well. At least openly talking about it.
Pretending it doesn't work in Americaa is ostrich syndrome. Just the first google result to prove my point. https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2020-10-22/tr...
Whether it's legal or illegal is almost aside the point, someone can choose between either breaking some arcane, unenforced US law, or potentially spending months/years in some hellhole of a third-world jail or prison while the Embassy slowly negotiates a release. And in some places, that's assuming someone doesn't just "disappear" or get robbed and shot on the spot.
It'd often be better to get fired and federally charged than to risk what your company advocates. In a worst case scenario, at least you know what you're getting, at least you'll have competent legal defense, and at least there will be a high -- virtually unprovable -- standard of evidence required for a federal jury to indict.
Then we get pulled over in Mexico with a VP with us and it's a totally different reality on the ground.
Most companies want you to pay the cop to not take you to jail on fake charges.
The don't want you to pay the M. Resources (or at least not officially).
International Conglomerates keep 'Sunshine Funds' - i.e. money off the regular books in overseas accounts for this activity.
It's part of doing business in 1/2 the countries around the world, literally impossible to do business without it.
That would be conspiracy. No, absolutely this does not happen. Now, at the micro level it does happen that individual executives rope their employees in to fraud at their direction. But absoutely no "company" anywhere "advises" its employees to pay bribes as a matter of policy.
There's little difference between bribes and highway banditry in some places, and not playing along will very likely not end well for you.
Recourse in cases of abuses of power is already hit-and-miss in so-called "civilized" countries. I wouldn't count on it in countries that can't even agree on who's in charge somewhere.
It's one thing to be a boy scout, but it's another entirely to get accused of severe, frivolous charges while abroad, or to drive up to an armed cartel/militant roadblock, and then say "I'm sorry, bribes are against corporate policy and illegal in my country" when asked for $50.
Shame on any company for creating a clause like that and risking their employees lives instead of just remaining silent on the matter. Make no mistake, bribery isn't optional in many parts of the world, it's a robbery by a uniformed official.
A bribe needed to get a lucrative contract for your company: not ok.
Paying off a local cop so he won't throw you in jail for no reason: totally ok.
The US is concerned with preventing the former, not the latter. I would be surprised if any US company is advocating people pay the first kind of bribe, at least publicly, as that's quite illegal in the US (I'm sure it happens, but as quietly as possible). But I would not be surprised if US companies tell employees to pay the second kind of bribe, as well they should.
Courtside tickets to an NBA game? Not okay.
"Your vehicle does not have the permits. You need to come with me" at gunpoint in sub-Saharan Africa? That's a matter of life and death, potentially.
So lets dial back the absolutes, huh?
> What is the Difference Between Bribery and Facilitation Payments?
> Facilitation payments are different from bribes in that they’re offered or solicited in return for a service a person or a company is entitled to receive. In contrast, bribes are offered in return for undue and illegal advantage. [0]
Do we know if these executives were deserving of the CCP? It would appear they were, from the post’s link:
> Sung—second in rank only to Sheriff Laurie Smith in the sheriff’s office—is accused of deliberately holding back four concealed carry weapons (CCW) permits for Apple’s security team until the Cupertino-based corporation agreed to donate 200 iPads worth about $75,000 to the Sheriff’s Office, Rosen said. Sung and Jensen allegedly worked together to solicit the exchange of CCW permits for the tech donation from Apple.
The much larger corruption seems to be on the LEO side to me. Which of the two actors swore an oath to uphold the law?
If it wasn’t for clickbait, the headline would focus on the LEO.
[0] https://www.ganintegrity.com/compliance-glossary/facilitatio...
Like issuing a concealed-carry permit to a non-felon ex-Navy corporate executive.
OP describes a ransom, not a bribe. Charge the govt official who demanded the ransom, not the citizen entrapped in the scheme.
The sheriff deputies fucked up. The CCW applicants fucked up. Everyone got caught and everyone is going to suffer the consequences.
From the usual IANAL crowd: "I saw it on the internet, so it must be true."
And if you're an actual lawyer, internet rules dictate that anything you know is trumped by a Wikipedia link.
Or, perhaps it's that those editors who distort other areas of the wiki to fit their political biases aren't interested in law. It could be either or both (or neither, but I'm biased towards myself;)
jbuzbee is referring to international travel training you go through if you apply to travel to/through a "red"/"restricted" country. They are not referring to the generic "don't take a bribe for a contract" training.
Not always. If the local laws don't classify it legally as bribe you can pay it and even claim it on your taxes as cost of doing business.
Can I ask if you are an attorney - because this is absolutely 100% false. You are spreading misinformation here.
If your employer fires you for paying a facilitation fee to advance a routine govt action or travel then you should absolutely sue them.
I used to work for a company with a similar policy and training. "Airport tax" was how it was expensed, even if you weren't flying.
In many countries everyone has to pay a facilitation fee (aka bribe) for routine govt actions.
These are for things like:
obtaining permits, licenses, or other official documents to qualify a person to do business in a foreign country; processing governmental papers, such as visas and work orders; providing police protection, mail pickup and delivery, or scheduling inspections associated with contract performance or inspections related to transit of goods across country; providing phone service, power and water supply, loading and unloading cargo, or protecting perishable products or commodities from deterioration; etc
How in the WORLD to folks giving legal advice here not have even this basic understanding of the law?
But also, it seems like it's a bit of a grey area:
"As a general principle of the Foreign Corrupt Practises Act (FCPA), in the United States, firms and businesses in the US are prohibited from making any payments to foreign officials for routine governmental action. However, any payment that does not effect the decision of the foreign official is not considered a bribe. For example, a businessman in the States may make a payment to a government official to expedite a deal or transaction. Such a payment is considered a grease payment (and not a bribe), which is lawful under FCPA.
In this regard, it becomes necessary to understand when an amount paid turns from a grease payment to a bribe, which is illegal under law. This is a grey area under the law which is still to be clarified. There are numerous factors that could play a role in demarcation between the two, which include: the amount of payment, the frequency of the payment, the status/level of the foreign official to whom the payment has been made, the outcome of the case regarding which the payment was made, etc."[1]
The training at my company is pretty strict about never making any "grease payments", so certainly there's some doubt.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act#...
"Call Legal if the police officer in Nicaragua is threatening to throw you in jail without arrest until you give him cash" is a reasonably sure way to put yourself at further risk/in grave peril.
However, if you need to pay a "facilitation fee" to exit the country (called routine govt action) that is not about securing business or getting a competitive advantage such as a customs waiver, then paying the fee may be permitted (for a number of reasons).
What I think US folks don't realize is some dept's overseas basically pay their staff through these unofficial fees, they set some rates for service, but nothing goes through treasury and no enabling legislation exists. But they also don't get money from their treasury to operate (or its stolen by folks above them) so that's how they keep operating.
In Russia prior to USSR, facilitation fees is how all officials earned money, that was the official policy. That's only 100 years ago that is was not even considered corruption / bribery. Obviously that disease is still festering in Russia and the country as a whole is paying a grave toll for it.
Lastly, do keep in mind that as a local you can probably tell is a payment can be declined withoit repercussions, but as a foreigner you don't really know.
It will take one person dying because of this policy for apple to be sued to hell and back.
American Express GBT, BCD Travel, CWT, FCM Travel, they all offer it. It's usually expensed as "Consulting" or "Advisory", however never separated in invoiced line-items.
Every single large tech organisation has made lip-service commitments publicly to not accept bribes, but also operate in countries where it's the absolute norm. How is that handled? Through an intermediary.
Oh so they are stuck somewhere during a business trip? In that case, they would contact their company for assistance.
Alternatively, it's just a job. The penalties tend to go as far as firing the employee. If it's a life and death situation that's an ok outcome. I mean, if we insist in discussing these convoluted scenarios...
Tomato, tohmahtoh
Especially if said person is an LEO in a country famous for above-the-law LEOs.
Principles are easy to have from the safety of a keyboard. How many of us would keep them in a real world situation?
If the sheriff said gimme the iPads or I'll blow your brains out, that's another story. But I guess that's not what happened here.
FWIW, it would be just as bad of a look if instead the head of security’s wife was engaged in this scheme at her own workplace. And Apple would be 100% correct to still terminate their relationship for fear of bad press
Your question is difficult to answer, but I ask in return: Is a general propensity to engage in an act sufficient to excuse it?
I will concede that "every person has their price". At some point we cross the line from "asking for a bribe" to "engaging in extortion" to "direct threats of violence".
Moyer ran the ethics and business conduct programs. Is there an expectation that someone in that position does have a durable set of principles, and a price higher than a CCW permit?
The appropriate consequences for the involved parties are, of course, along completely different ethical lines.
>> But this isn't that.
This sort of thing won't ever stop because of a few convictions, same deal with the college admissions scandal. It just raises the price.
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2017/04/25/nypd-gun-license-bri...
I can definitely see how some people get suckered into bribes sometimes (especially with armed, intimidating police), but it doesn't seem like that is the case here.
The State or the Feds don't issue CCWs in California. Chief local law enforcement officers only, which means sheriffs and police chiefs.
> The State or the Feds don't issue CCWs in California. Chief local law enforcement officers only, which means sheriffs and police chiefs.
No, but they do investigate other LEO agencies for corruption. See: the article.
Meanwhile Apple is short dozens of security guards to have a full detail necessary to protect the lives and wellbeing of the highest ranking executives in the country.
The head of security at Apple is charged with protecting the lives and wellbeing of the top execs.
He performed exactly as the incentive structure recommends.
Which laws were being overlooked by the bribe is not relevant.
Knowing about public corruption, and not reporting it, is tantamount to racketeering. No matter how much power you have.
This is why things like anonymous tip lines and whistleblower laws exist. You are encouraged, in general, to report misconduct. But there are very specific situations where it's illegal to not report misconduct.
Now it is clear that reporting criminal acts to eg. the FBI is very risky; if the officer is politically aligned to the politically and societaly dominant party, and you are not, you're toast.
That isn’t a bribe, it’s extortion.
As an aside it’s hilarious that Apple wants concealed carry permits for its staff while replacing the gun emoji with a water pistol. Just goes to show a corporation’s marketing is nothing to do with what it really believes.
You can argue that they should have gone straight to the DA, and you might even be right, but the only way for this problem to get fixed is by cleaning house at the police department, not by scolding Apple for trying to work with corrupt officials.
Keep in mind that it's incredibly rare for any DA to go against the police, so this case is already unusual. We'll have to wait and see if they actually have the evidence / wherewithal to see this one through rather than just settling out of court for a slap on the wrist.
Edit:
I actually agree with the comments suggesting that Apple and similar companies will learn from this experience and will use it as an example when trying to ensure that it doesn't happen again, and in that sense, it's important that they be punished too.
I think the point I'm trying to make is that, on a moral level, the police department comes off looking way worse than Apple here, and their punishment should be higher.
Police are given a special position in society where we essentially trust them to conduct themselves professionally and uphold the law fairly. When that trust is misplaced, the checks are slow and unreliable, and corrupt cops can cause a whole lot of mayhem while we're waiting. So if you're going to go after police corruption, you'd better hit hard. It's really, really bad for society to have police who are so comfortable asking for bribes this openly.
It's also bad for companies like Apple to feel like they can just pay the bribes to grease the wheels, but it's a different kind of bad. It's a "We should punish Apple to discourage a tragedy of the commons" kind of bad, while police openly asking for bribes is a "betraying the public trust" kind of bad.
It sounds like it was the Employees alone.
So your solution is other, probably lesser-trained, individual Apple employees should be concealed-carrying so they can respond to a workplace shooting? Let's ignore that Apple probably doesn't allow this in the first place but even if they did I would not want to work in an environment where my coworkers were walking around with guns all the time. I have no problem with guns or CCW but in the workplace is a different story for me.
> Sheriff Laurie Smith, who has the authority to issue CCW permits, has not been charged with a crime.
Either i. the sheriff knew about/was in on this scheme and must be put in prison or ii. the sheriff didn't know about how her number two was soliciting bribes using her authority to grant/deny licenses and must resign because that is just gross negligence.
Which one is it?
“Sheriff Laurie Smith’s family members and some of her biggest supporters held a celebration of her reelection as sheriff in Chadha’s suite,” Rosen said.
She's definitely not painted in a good light, that's for sure.
Sadly you can't force anybody to resign for gross negligence, even if it was true.
Actually, denying the permit via an illegal action (requesting a bribe) is not a lawful denial and would result in the violation of your equal protection rights.
If you weren't propositioned with a bribe, then true, it wouldn't be apparent why you were denied.
Now, could it still end badly? Sure. If they are willing to break the law for a bribe, then why not take it further if they find out you are recording.
Therefore no matter how much you might be within the right, I would personally not be willing to record the police unless it was under the direction of another police force that was ready to barge in.
Present this to a lawyer and watch them work their magic.
Good luck!
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_2201016?guccounter=1&guce...
You're really trying very hard to downplay the risk of gathering this evidence. If you are discovered and you gathered evidence, you might have that evidence confiscated or you might just be dead. If you are discovered but didn't manage to get the evidence, you might be charged with wiretapping. (Or they might just kill you anyway.) Even if all works out in the end, you're looking at a legal battle. (Most people don't want to be the one fighting a case that sets precedence even if federal courts largely seem to rule in their favor.) And all that struggle is for evidence that might not even convince anyone to start an investigation and/or may not be admitted to court.
Which raises the question, why did it happen this time?
My best guess is that the Santa Clara DA did the math, said, "I'm in a liberal part of a liberal state where people overwhelmingly support BLM and distrust the police. How can I best generate some positive publicity for myself?"
The concealed permits mess has been well-known for ages. So it wasn't a question of the DA having just learned about it and becoming shocked. And going to the Feds wouldn't have helped much since they don't care too much (else they would have acted ages ago). The question is why the DA decided to make an issue of it.
This type of corruption is even more endemic in other countries and I'm sure many companies would find it easier to just pay the bribe than comply with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, but that's why the act was written in the first place.
To me this seems it would make the "or else" really difficult to think past. What can they do? If they detonate the leadership structure of some department by going on the offense, what is the likelihood they hurt their own ability to work with LEO types in the future? That would be a really hard position. But maybe there are details we just don't have here.
All I see is the fact that the Apple employee didn't initiate the bribe, the sheriff's office demanded it (extorted it) and the employee was put in the unfortunate immediate situation of either not getting their lawfully permitted license, or paying the bribe.
At the end of the day it's bribery so of course the employee deserves to be charged (and Apple if it approved it in any way), but the sheriff's office officials deserve much harsher punishment quite clearly.
...or immediately going to the FBI.
So that they can make an end run around the 14th amendment, deny all the blacks, deny all the mexicans, deny all the chinese while the state looks the other way, or at least that's what the tacit understanding was ~70yr ago when people were voting for politicians who supported these policies.
I simply went to court and the officer never showed up, but I didn’t see any of the other people pulled over that day in court either (while reasons could explain this away I find it hard to believe of the 7 people I observed none of them paid the fine or took a driving course from the comfort of their own home to be done with it)
IMO, discretion for this sort of thing should be with a judge, not a cop.
How would a judge or a cop have any impact on a situation without a conviction? They wouldn't know any better without additional data.
“Guns for Thugs - Sheriff Arms Pimp”
Oh they just weren't "supposed" to ask for bribes. Nothing illegal here, just a honest guy going above and beyond on his job to keep America safe.
Federal judges have consistently ruled that recording public officials in the performance of their duties is a right under the first amendment. As a member of the public, you can record your interactions with police without their consent.
You can do it without their consent, but can you do it without their knowledge?
It is much less clear that it applies to a private conversation with a senior officer in a police station.
> conversation with a senior officer in a police station
Are you seriously suggesting that conversing with a public official at their place of work about official business doesn't qualify as part of their official duties?
(Aside, two party consent is a genuinely broken system for a wide variety of reasons. I consider violating it to be a laudable act of civil disobedience.)
Attorneys argue things like this all the time. And Judges rule on their arguments.
What I’m asking about is whether any existing ruling makes this point clear.
I think it would be hard to argue that a conversation with a CCW applicant in which you ask for stuff in exchange for issung a CCW isn't acting in an official capacity. The only person who can issue it is the person holding that office. Not to mention, the calendar/schedule/sign-in book should have a memo a out the purpose of the visit (the pretext he was called down to the station).
You do sometimes see cases where a police union defends an officer accused of some crime, but that's usually because they're putting up some BS story about how they actually were doing their duty, eg an officer busted in possession of drugs who tries to argue it was actually an undercover investigation of the drug scene.
Edit: Since you wouldn't respond... denying a permit under a shall-issue scheme would require proof that they didn't meet the statutory requirements instead of providing the issuer with the ability to hide their reason behind an arbitrary excuse.
I didn't respond because I was asleep (??)
> Please explain how this same scenario would work under a shall-issue scheme?
It doesn't matter: Soliciting bribes is against the law.
Everything else is just arguments about if a particular arrangement makes bribery more or less likely.
If you bribe someone to get something that you're not qualified for, that is clearly wrong on the part of both the applicant and the permit approver.
But if you're being denied something you should get, unless you bribe them, I am more sympathetic to the applicant.
He was the chief security officer of the biggest company in the world. He absolutely had many other options.
I don't see any Apple apologists here in the comments. Who are you referring to?
You do realize that your comment here is exactly what "apologists" means, right?
The only legal option I can see is "move out of CA", which probably means get another job. Which, you know, people sometimes do if they feel strongly about the right to carry, but likely wasn't in his set of considered options.
> He was the chief security officer of the biggest company in the world.
Oh, you're suggesting he use Apple to, uh, "lean on" the sheriff? That seems much worse. One might even hope that was not one of his possible options, even as CSO...
You didn't consider "report it to the DA, state police, or FBI" as an option?
> Oh, you're suggesting he use Apple to, uh, "lean on" the sheriff? That seems much worse. One might even hope that was not one of his possible options, even as CSO...
I absolutely did not read this in the GP's post. Whether it is what he meant or not, it's an ungenerous take. A more generous take is that with the resources available to him, reporting a bribe solicitation to the appropriate authorities is much less risky than it would be for (say) a random citizen of San Jose.
To say the least! He has the entire weight of the Apple legal department behind him, and that isn't something any sheriff's department would take on lightly.
> I absolutely did not read this in the GP's post. Whether it is what he meant or not, it's an ungenerous take.
I can confirm I didn't mean this! That's a stupid idea.
I don't really understand how randallsquared got that from what I said.
> the employee was put in the unfortunate immediate situation of either not getting their lawfully permitted license, or paying the bribe
In this context, "options" mean "options to fulfill the CCW licensing goal".
Reporting it to the DA, state police, the FBI, or anyone else wouldn't further the CCW licensing goal (though it might fulfill others, and I'm certainly not arguing against it!).
Similarly, saying he had other options (for "getting their lawfully permitted license") because he was the CSO of the biggest company in the world may well have other meanings I didn't catch, but reporting bribe solicitations is not one, unless the dialogue had already veered from it's previous aim.
I think that is artificially closing the options.
Firstly, and most obviously - he could report the illegal activity by the sheriff and wait.
Secondly, he could sue, and ask the court order the licenses be granted immediately if there was a time-critical need.
There's probably other options available for relief too, and I'm pretty sure the Apple legal department could think of them!
Ah. I took the quote to be the prompt for your reply, as mentioned above.
> Secondly, he could sue, and ask the court order the licenses be granted immediately if there was a time-critical need. There's probably other options available for relief too, and I'm pretty sure the Apple legal department could think of them!
In spite of Moyer being CSO for Apple, I hadn't realized that Apple Corporation was paying the bribe!
You are right that with the company directly involved, there are more options, and it was my misreading/skimming of the article which led me to the wrong conclusions, there.
How could that possibly be the only option?
Sue the sheriff's department is an obvious one, as is contact the FBI.
> Oh, you're suggesting he use Apple to, uh, "lean on" the sheriff? That seems much worse. One might even hope that was not one of his possible options, even as CSO
What?
No of course not.
Off the top of my head:
* Get Apple's lawyers advice (which would not be "pay an illegal bribe")
* FBI
$100K’s of dollars (>> 10% of the total project cost) have been extracted from us by various bureaucratic processes that are outside what is explicitly specified by the law.
I am confident that this would not have happened if we were well politically connected, and had friends that worked at PG&E.
I honestly don’t know if we were “just supposed to know” that we needed to make some specific charitable or political donation or something like that, because no one has explicitly solicited a bribe from us.
If it were legal to offer bribes, I could go online, and search for information on who to pay off, and to what ends.
Even better, California could fix the law to eliminate these gray areas. In the Apple case, they could move from “may issue” to “shall issue”.
In my case, there could be bounds on permit review durations, and also the cost / benefit of “environmental” regulations: if some ask is too expensive homeowners could “buy credits” by doing something else that would be more effective for the same amount of money.
To be clear, the money they extracted from us for “the environment” will substantially increase our carbon footprint, impact on local wildlife and on the watershed — we planned to voluntarily spend that money to mitigate those impacts because we’re extremely concerned about the environment. Now, we’ve been forced to waste it in low impact ways. I’m not upset that we were forced to spend the money. I’m upset it was wasted.
Your ideas come across as pretty naive and out of touch with how bribery works in the real world. Which is okay, not everyone is an expert on everything. But your comment would come across a lot better if you had used some tentative language instead of definitive language on a topic it is clear you don't know much about in the real world.
Bribes are rarely solicited in the real world, so that's the first place you theory falls down. I've only rarely had someone say something that could even vaguely be construed as soliciting a bribe. They aren't dumb, after all. Instead what usually happens is you get a run-around for unspecified reasons until you offer the bribe. You submit the paperwork and they tell you it is filled in incorrectly but don't tell you what part is wrong or how to fill it in correctly. The nurse only checks on you once a day until you give her an envelope of cash. The accountants auditing your books ask for receipts of every single everything until take them to dinner and offer them a present for all the hard work they've done so far. The fire department finds all kinds of ways to not certify your new office for occupancy until you give them some "coffee money".
The second problem with you theory of bribery is the offering bribes changes the structure of compensation dramatically. The expectation of receiving bribes becomes part of the expected total compensation for a position. But this gray money -- the delta between official compensation and bribes -- becomes a revenue stream that everyone above you on the hierarchy can and will tap into.
In practice this means you have to pay a huge bribe to get any job. Where I live, to get a job as a police officer, or a nurse, or a flight attendant, you have to pay a bribe to whoever is hiring. Not a small bribe. Like a year of salary. Which means either you come from a family rich enough to have that kind of money laying around or borrow money from a money-lender.
How do you get the money to pay back the money-lender? By taking bribes, of course.
Your boss knows approximately how much you're making in bribes each month and will expect you to pass it along every month. After all, he borrowed a ton of money to pay a bribe to get his promotion and needs to pay off that debt.
And if you're complaining about >10% of the total project cost going to bureaucratic processes, your idea would result in 30% or more of the total project cost going to bribery. Since that's exactly what happens here.
Edit: I just noticed you are also in Vietnam. So sad for such an otherwise lovely place.
Once it became common knowledge that some officials were extracting bribes, it would be simple to jail them.
After all, if I paid a bribe, and it was legal to pay it, but illegal to receive it, I’d certainly document the payment as well as I could.
After the house was built, you can bet I’d try to recoup my funds, and also figuratively burn the county office to the ground by pursuing every option I could in the press and in court.
I don’t think I’m naive as you think. The officials in this area behave exactly as you describe. The difference in my situation is that, if there was concrete evidence of bribery at the planning office, it would be prosecuted and it would make headlines (just as the bribery case in the article did.)
Local governments that withhold building permits and corruption at PG&E have become so politically contentious that the state government has had to repeatedly intervene.
I too would like to erode confidence in our public servants.
Governments do stuff like this all the time. In fact constituents get mad when they don't. The Planning Commission is considered derelict in its duty if it just gives away a building permit without getting something good from the developer in return (park, street cleaning program, extra BMR units, promise to use union labor).
SFMTA considers corporate philanthropy, coverage of unprofitable neighborhoods, and low-income discount programs when deciding who gets the permit to run scooters in San Francisco.
If it is bribery when a government agency asks a permit applicant to spend a bit on the agency's mission, then there's a lot more to prosecute all over the Bay Area.
But at least these things happened in public, through a semi-transparent process of development permits with public consultations. The process is semi-fixed, the incentives are off, but it's not a straight up bribe behind closed doors.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco-accused-...
Ironically, the article also compares buses to a “$250,000 fee San Francisco charges taxi operators for a medallion”. That’s a payout to the previous owner with an initial 5% transfer tax, not a fee, and it was actually a big mistake for the city to have made it a payout rather than “value captured” rent to the city (which could be adjusted), since the city is being sued and is about to go to trial for it (https://webapps.sftc.org/ci/CaseInfo.dll?CaseNum=CGC18565325).
You’re making up stuff about things you don’t know about. Accepting gifts is always an issue in government, and often a serious crime for the employee, regardless of who benefits. Accepting or demanding compensation for official action is corruption, regardless of the beneficiary.
Negotiating public contracts, seeking public benefit, or enforcing requirements related to permitting is not bribery or corruption. You may not like poor people, public access to urban space, or union labor, but community standards based on law are not corruption.
Officials administrating the permitting process have discretion to act. The appointing authority ultimately controls them, and the people ultimately hold them accountable.
City councils are political bodies, and within their jurisdictions are the ultimate authority on what should and should not be allowed.
LEOs are employees of the state, and are meant to follow the dictates of the legislature or other political body that governs them.
If you want to negotiate a legitimate trade of public donation in exchange for a CCW, that needs to be done publicly through democratic and legal processes.
I think both are slimy but neither are corruption, per se, both institutions are serving the public interest.
Where I live building permits are basically shall issue. They're happy to have the development.
Apple or no Apple, no one in America should be deprived of their Constitutional rights. I'm more concerned that authoritarian states like California can get away with depriving the people of our explicit rights under American law than I am with people paying bribes just to exercise those rights.
I'm always frustrated but amused at how uninformed many of my fellow Americans are about the gun laws here (frequently it's the ones pushing for additional laws).
One of the minor pitfalls of Federalism- I can't keep track of the laws in all 50 states.
Just for the sake of comparison, the rule that was struck down in DC v. Heller (which firmly established that the Constitution protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for defense, subject to reasonable regulation by the state) required gun owners to keep their weapons "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock" at all times.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_carry_in_the_United_Sta...
I’m not following your logic.
Even if you disagree with concealed carry, 2/3 of the counties in CA will issue you a permit no problem that allows you to carry statewide. There is no reasonable argument for not issuing permits here.
I'd argue that the state is slightly authoritarian by allowing local officials such discretion, but that's more a matter of taste. However, if I was arrogant enough to think the Bay Area, LA and San Diego were representative of the entire state in terms of their approach to gun permits and this is actually not the case, then I apologize.
> Which, I'd point out, doesn't make much sense given that it is in fact the State of California which is bringing the charges against these people in the sheriffs dept for demanding bribes in exchange for a constitutionally protected government service.
Interesting framing. But the people who should have been entitled to these services and were coerced into paying bribes are also facing charges. The state's foremost goal appears be defending its own authority zealously, and worrying about things like legal rights after the dust settles.
California's gun laws are pretty blatantly unconstitutional, even without the bribery.
More people were allowed to pursue the "life" option in the Declaration of Independence. The first item of unalienable rights our forefathers stated all people had.
What do you do when two rights directly infringe upon eachother?
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/...
California is 23rd in homicide rate.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/homicide_mortality...
The 'typical' murder involves people that know each other and has a motive. Loose firearm regulations enable mass shootings [1][2] which are more indiscriminate.
Everyone has the right to bear arms but what do we do when that infringes on other peoples right to life? I think it's a cogent question.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_homicid...
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/the-looser-a-states-gun-laws-the...
Clearly the state has laws against murder. And California even has laws that "enhance" sentencing criteria for anyone guilty of using a firearm in the commission of a felony.[1] Also, "mass shootings" are also illegal and are incredibly rare.
Also, I have a right to "property"/"pursuit of happiness" (per Fifth Amendment and the Declaration of Independence). In the Bay Area, if I leave my laptop in my trunk, it'll be stolen. If you leave CA (or at least the Bay Area) and visit a state with slightly looser restrictions, laptops can peacefully spend a dinner in the trunk without being stolen. I have to imagine that criminals who know they have very little to fear from armed ordinary citizens are emboldened by the restrictions on firearm ownership. By the logic above, the correlation (note: I have no data other than the ubiquitous "BRING YOUR LAPTOP INSIDE!!!" signs all over the place in the Bay Area) must mean that the state is neglecting a right to property, therefore the fun restrictions should be relaxed. Or maybe using aggregate statistics and correlations isn't the best approach to analyzing legal-political issues in the absence of a very strong signal.
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...
https://ccwsafe.com/blog/danger-texas-law-on-deadly-force-de...
Mass shootings are a rounding errors and should not be used to motivate public policy. Catering to asinine edge cases like that is why we all have to take off our shoes when we fly.
If you want people to murder each other less then you need to reduce the size of the illegal economy (mostly drug trafficking) so that those industries can settle their disputes with contracts and court orders instead of violence. Basically everything else pales in comparison to that type of violence.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_death_rates_in_the_Uni...
Personally, I chose to live in shall-issue states.
If he didn’t pay the bribe there would have been nothing to report.
If they're applied in an unequal way, of course that's different.
As a stupid but illustrative hypothetical example, if the official decides each morning whether he will approve all CCW applications he sees that day or none of them based on a die roll before leaving home, and then unilaterally changes it a month later to go based on whether the last digit of the local CBS affiliate's high temperature forecast from the 7am newscast is odd or even, these stupid rules and rule changes would be completely compliant with the equal protection clause.
I don't believe the legislature has to specify the criteria used, if they explicitly give the local officials discretion, but their criteria do have to have some rational objective.
(How do you tell the difference? Well, as in this case, usually people leave some sort of evidence, and the legal system has a process for demanding evidence and evaluating it. It's not perfect, but it's certainly not unenforceable.)
I'm in a similar situation, actually. I had a trooper lie in court and even admit to it in the complaint investigation, but the investigator (another trooper) said it must be a misunderstanding. I'm curious how intentionally lying to cover up your mistake (exculpatory evidence) is a misunderstanding as a civil rights violation under Brady v MD, but I also don't want to get 'suicided'.
The part which is subjective is deputized to instructors, and one can shop around for a willing one.
The moral hazard you're alluding to is completely absent.
This is absolutely true. Soliciting a bribe, as a public official, however, is a much (much!) worse crime. And that seems to be what happened here.
Absent more detail, I think I'm willing to buy that Moyer was just a normal corporate executive faced with trying to work around a corrupt bureaucracy. But yeah, more detail could change that.
In some countries, seeking bribes is a crime, but giving in to a demand for bribe is not. That seems fairer. When you became a public official you agreed to perform your job dutifully. If a public official refuses to perform his job unless a citizen provides him with a bribe, then it seems like the citizen was forced into bribery by the public official. How is it then fair to hold the hapless citizen responsible for the crime?
The only people in the wrong here are the police .
The Bay Area and New York are notorious for withholding permits because it creates artificial scarcity, and off-duty cops are the only ones able to fill the demand.
Slightly offhand, I wonder how this will alter Apple’s security approach down the line. Not whether they believe in security, but the right road to get there if there’s a shakeup.
Well, it does make a legal difference as entrapment would invalidate the legal case against him. (I have no evidence this is what happened here--just pointing out a poor choice of words!)
What a silly thing to say.
Whether or not you initiated a bribe does not defend your participation in it. True
But ignoring the balance of power for, what appears to be, a reason to hate on Apple is just daft. Shockingly so.
A police offer demanding a bribe is not the same as a police officer accepting one. Just ignores the entire social dynamic of humans. Power dynamics are the central theme of human relationships. This is just a weird form of victim blaming, though not for a moment am I suggesting anyone is innocent here.
The Undersheriff should be crucified as a means of deterrence. You can't have positions of power occupied by those seeking to corrupt them. Which, I think, is not far off your argument, you just want to seem to needlessly drag Apple into this.
They weren't involved, beyond their employee basically stealing their stock. Is that somehow their fault? Should we charge them with criminal negligence for trusting someone? That's not going to have long term consequences for whistleblowers at all
Basically every high net worth or highly visible tech CEO has a PSD (really high end folks have a counter-kidnap team on standby).
Seems like it was just this individual.
I read the story as:
- Head of security team contacts police to get concealed carrying permits for his employees
- Police officer says “if Apple gives us 200 iPads, that can be arranged. On top of that, you’ll get $X”.
- Head of security team agrees, signs of for the Apple hardware, and receives a bribe.
If so, Apple was the only one paying, but the company probably wouldn’t have known about that (possibly, multiple employees would)
If this were the police asking for iPads in exchange for permits, I would call it extortion, not bribery.
If an Apple executive was the one running the entire thing, how is the argument that the company wasn't aware of it? What even is "the company" at this point?
Of course, that can change if it turns out Tim Cook knew about this. That would surprise me a lot, though.
Either of these standards would probably apply to a head of security who commits the crime as part of seeking concealed carry permits for an Apple security team.
Edit: Never mind. CA is super stupid and requires a state license to carry a firearm for employment but would then also require a license from the sheriff to conceal it.
Edit: Never mind. CA is super stupid.
Because you don't just randomly cough up a couple hundred anything from a company like Apple without it appearing on the books somewhere.
If it didn't appear on the books anywhere, then it sounds like Apple gave this department a quite significant "petty cash" fund and used this guy and department to do unsavory things so that the higher-ups can have plausible deniability.
Yeah, the company needs to get hammered, too.
A bribe like this will get buried into somebody's "untracked cash" account.
The problem is that this is "Standard Operating Procedure" for "Security" departments as they're generally ex-police themselves. That's why they didn't think anything of it.
All these big company "security chiefs" run in the same circle. It simply became known that the easiest way to get your CCW was bribery.
They already got folks at Facebook. Now Apple. They're going to get more.
And I love the quote that this is about the rivalry between "Rosen and Sheriff Smith." As we have repeatedly seen, even when the DA and Sheriff hate each other, the DA doesn't go after the police. If the DA is making a move, the Feds are already involved behind the scenes forcing the DA to move.
I suspect this fell out of some Federal security contract or a Federal security clearance background check for somebody.
Most states have separate licensing for armed employment.
It's actually pretty common for bribes to be requested by the official - the first answer at https://www.quora.com/What-should-I-do-if-the-customs-office... has a description of how this sort of thing usually works.
Really? HN has been a den of Apple, Microsoft, etc worship for a while now. In another thread on the frontpage, people are encouraging people to buy Apple TV. It's partly the social media PR teams these companies hire, it's the advertising and it's also the type of people HN attracts. It's sickening but what can you do.
> what has this place come to indeed
Indeed. And why a throwaway?
Oh sure, there's 0 difference between proprietary black box software and free/libre open source... give me a break.
Tech's Great-Man theory has society idolizing Silicon Valley monopolizers:
"In the movie Steve Jobs, a character asks, “So how come 10 times in a day I read ‘Steve Jobs is a genius?’” The great man reputation that envelops Jobs is just part of a larger mythology of the role that Silicon Valley, and indeed the entire U.S. private sector, has played in technology innovation. We idolize tech entrepreneurs like Jobs, and credit them for most of the growth in our economy. But University of Sussex economist Mariana Mazzucato, who has just published a new U.S. edition of her book, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, makes a timely argument that it is the government, not venture capitalists and tech visionaries, that have been heroic.
“Every major technological change in recent years traces most of its funding back to the state,” says Mazzucato. Even “early stage” private-sector VCs come in much later, after the big breakthroughs have been made. For example, she notes, “The National Institutes of Health have spent almost a trillion dollars since their founding on the research that created both the pharmaceutical and the biotech sectors–with venture capitalists only entering biotech once the red carpet was laid down in the 1980s. We pretend that the government was at best just in the background creating the basic conditions (skills, infrastructure, basic science). But the truth is that the involvement required massive risk taking along the entire innovation chain: basic research, applied research and early stage financing of companies themselves.” The Silicon Valley VC model, which has typically dictated that financiers exit within 5 years or so, simply isn’t patient enough to create game changing innovation." [1]