US government agency argues that money isn't property–so it can take yours
reason.com
reason.com
The plaintiff is accusing the government of being unconstitutional after being fined $38,083.20 (of unpaid wages) plus a penalty of $16,000. For:
a substantial failure to comply with the recruitment and hiring of U.S. workers, offering less favorable terms and working conditions to U.S. workers, impermissible pay deductions, and a willful misrepresentation regarding the accuracy of its need for temporary workers [1]
This is like seeing a story "Big Macs are delicious sandwiches (mcdonalds.com)". Their only obligation is to their ideology
I know a lot of people reading this are sympathetic to that ideology.
Having sympathies doesn't somehow make my description of the purpose of the organization less accurate. https://reason.org/wp-content/uploads/files/b5fb809a409cd25c...
There's nothing in there about say, valuing accurate journalism that informs the public with relevant information.
Looking at all the media right now, point to a non propaganda outlet, so we can better understand your facts.
Even things like BBC, CBC, NHK, NPR - you can whine about their politics but they're journalists at a news organization, trying to do their job as reporters instead of forwarding a particular agenda.
If you think sensationalist bad faith pushers who are trying to persuade an ideology are the same as journalists trying to abide by ethics, accuracy and codes of conduct who value responsibility and integrity then I can't help you.
Rest of World is funded by Sophie Schmidt, daughter of Eric Schmidt, former President of Alphabet/Google.
Intercept was originally funded by Pierre Omidyar.
Is this suppose to mean something? US National Endowment for Democracy is not partisan and has both Democrats and Republican members and the Open Society promotes government transparency and accountability.
> Armed with 30-years of research and data on advocacy organizations, foundations, and donors, CRC utilizes a universe of well-trained contributors to help build the individual and organizational profiles that populate the website.. InfluenceWatch brings unprecedented transparency to the funding, motives, and interconnections of the entities profiled.
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/national-endowment...
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/open-society-found...
> Bellingcat is a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence (OSINT). It was founded by British citizen journalist and former blogger Eliot Higgins in July 2014. Bellingcat publishes the findings of both professional and citizen journalist investigations into war zones, human rights abuses, and the criminal underworld. The site's contributors also publish guides to their techniques, as well as case studies.
Sounds like journalism to me.
Compare with
> The Reason Foundation is an American libertarian think tank that was founded in 1978. The foundation publishes the magazine Reason. Based in Los Angeles, California, it is a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization. According to its website, the foundation is committed to advancing "the values of individual freedom and choice, limited government, and market-friendly policies.
Sounds like "not journalism"
There's a lot of antisemitic trolls who think it's edgy to call them secretly pro-communist somehow.
Claiming eastern European Jewish billionaires are secretly polluting the commons with communist propaganda is definitionally Nazi bullshit. It's really hard to be more of a bulls-eye on the dartboard.
Again it goes back to the media literacy question. If you can't see a difference in purpose and objective between funding independent media organizations and white supremacist antisemites, I can't really help you.
No such claim was made.
That said, if someone wants to promote an ideology then reporting on events related to what concerns them in order to inform their supporters or gain new ones seems like a very good idea.
There's so many of these "what the fuck man?" moments you have with cable news you forget there's professionals out there than don't do that kind of shit.
NYT and other trusted publications built up that trust by (mostly) upholding such principles in the past, and have lost a lot of that trust by violating them.
“To find out, we read every article mentioning the word from 2020 to 2022 in three publications where journalists talk to each other: Columbia Journalism Review, Nieman Journalism Lab, and Poynter. We coded each of these 195 articles on a five-point scale from ‘very negative’ to ‘very positive,’ and found that when American journalists speak about objectivity, they are three times more likely to speak negatively of it than positively (our count is 111 to 38).”
I think your criticisms of them are unfair (at least with regards to this specific article) – and I'm speaking as someone who actually doesn't have a huge amount of agreement with their ideology (I'm no libertarian).
The grandparent is pointing out that the case was about a "fine" – the article itself doesn't use that specific word, but it is obvious to anyone who reads it that is what it is talking about. It links for more information to another page – https://ij.org/case/c-s-lawn-administrative-appeal/ – which does use that word. But I think, the author of this article (Rob Johnson) not using the term "fine", is not due to some attempt to mislead the reader – it is because the US government doesn't technically call it a "fine", calling it a "liability" is the language it uses, and being a lawyer he naturally gravitates to using the most technically correct language regarding the case. Part of the reason why it is called a "liability" not a "fine", is fines are ultimately kept by the government, whereas at least some of this $50,000 is allegedly unpaid wages which are to be ultimately paid to the employees, but the employer disputes the government's claim they underpaid them to begin with.
What the court case is actually about, is whether someone who is having a $50,000 liability imposed on them (whether as a fine or as back-payment of underpaid wages) has the constitutional right to have a proper trial before an independent judge and jury before having the liability imposed, or whether a "trial" before a "judge" who actually works for the executive agency issuing the liability is sufficient. Whatever is the right answer on that one, I don't think Johnson's position is per se unreasonable. And Johnson is picking on one of the several counterarguments to that contention that DOJ lawyers make in a brief – that constitutional protections against expropriation don't apply to money because money isn't property – and calling it out as unreasonable. I don't think Johnson is necessarily wrong here. Rejecting this contention wouldn't necessarily win the case for the non-government side, since this is really a threshold issue – are those constitutional limits even in scope here? Just because (contrary to this argument in the brief) you conclude "yes they are", doesn't mean that when you go into their details, you won't find that some exception to them applies. But if the whole thing is out of scope, you don't even reach consideration of the exceptions.
It'd be like an employee of McDonald's marketing department posting press releases about what a great choice meal prepping is from local farmers markets.
A core, essential part of media literacy is understanding what the goals of the organization are and that the people working there are doing their job.
Some do journalism and everyone else knows the value of wearing it as a costume.
This article isn't claimed to to be "investigative journalism", it is a blog post. Judging it by the standards of "investigative journalism" is unfair, because it never claimed to be that.
But is there any evidence that the factual (as opposed to matter of opinion) claims of the blog post are untrue? I haven't seen any.
And NYTimes, WaPo, whatever, publish opinionated blog posts too (or at least they used to, blogging isn't what it once was.) And at least some of the "unbiased investigative serious journalism" they do publish turns out to be biased error-ridden hit pieces.
> Some do journalism and everyone else knows the value of wearing it as a costume.
The author of this blog post isn't a journalist and isn't claiming to be one. They are a lawyer posting about their own case. What's wrong with that?
The focus of the blog post was not the case as a whole, it was to call out one specific argument made by a DOJ attorney in a legal brief. In fact, it quite explicitly eschews going into the ultimate point of the case ("The specifics of what the government claims Saine did wrong (in short: arcane labor law) are beside the point").
It isn't fair to judge the post as an "overview of what the case is actually about", because it was never attempting to be that.
Stating the obvious implies it isn’t obvious to others, but I don’t think that’s fair or true
On the one hand, I'm very much against sleazy companies withholding wages from their employees. Such companies deserve to be slapped down, hard.
On the other hand, I'm very much against the government taking money without legally demonstrating that they should. "Money isn't property" is obviously BS, and is designed to exploit a loophole that lets them take anybody's money whenever they want to.
On the third hand, making every administrative fine become a court case is almost certainly going to DOS the administrative functions of the government. That seems like a very bad outcome, especially when the administrative function is preventing sleazy companies from engaging in wage theft.
So I guess I'm cheering for the company to lose the larger battle, the "money's not property" argument to get slapped down hard, and the administrative functions to continue to be able to operate, but not because of that rationalization.
(nelox's statement at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42893104 is pretty much what I was trying to say.)
But it's just as nonsensical for the plaintiff to argue that he (or his business?) can't be fined because his money is his private property.
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Edit: no, I'm rethinking this immediately lol. If Congress passed a law saying "we're taking $16k from this dude" that's abitrary and capricious and clearly violates the guy's rights. But if laws are passed (taxation, fines) that everyone is subject to, then obviously those laws need to function by taking money. If "the gov can't take my property" is what is meant by the constitution, then fines and taxes wouldn't exist. So maybe that's what the gov means here, i.e. "money is not property for the purposes of taxation and fines".
In this case, the answer is kinda both. Administrative law stuff like this can be heard without violating the seventh amendment under the two-part test cited in I.A (which was affirmed by a 2024 decision), and I.B points out that he implicitly consented by litigating in front of the ALJ for four years (and that implicit consent has been upheld as consent to avoid exactly this kind of gamesmanship).
The government is quite sly. They like to introduce evil new techniques on cases or people others will have no sympathy for, in hopes they can build new powers without resistance.
The actual motion is linked from TFA. I should have been clearer that I was referring to that.
It's worth reading the bits TFA extracts in the context of the motion, both for the supplied historical context and for clarity on the actual position taken.
The process to incur a fine is much more structured (and bound by its own laws) than a government trying to break your down down and grab your cash.
It's absurd, but judges have had to rationally argue against crazier things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawsuits_against_supernatural_...
> Before you run out and trade your USD for meme coins, let me reassure you: DOJ's argument is wrong. The Due Process Clause applies to "life, liberty, or property," and the Supreme Court has repeatedly applied that Clause to money. It follows that, since money is neither life nor liberty, it must be property.
The government being obviously wrong has not stopped the Supreme Court from making utterly insane judgements.
the government is actually arguing that the Department of Labor is allowed to issue fines and require companies to pay back wages when they steal from their employees and lie on visa applications
But if the appeleate court rules the same, you're SoL. IDK how many appeals you think people deserve over crimes this open and shut (and so frivelous in the grand scheme of things. He was charged 16k for the offense and backpay).
Was the footnote necessary?
> It’s not clear how equating “money” with “private property” fits into the relevant analysis of whether an action is “legal” or “equitable” under the Seventh Amendment. ... And certainly CS Lawn cites no precedent for the *remarkable proposition that violations of public rights transform into private rights simply because those violations are enforced by monetary penalties*. ... But, in any event, money is not necessarily “property” for *constitutional purposes*.
and then goes on to discuss how money has been distinguished from property in other constitutional analysis e.g. why all taxes aren't deprivations or takings under the Due Process or Takings clauses. It's not an argument that money does not belong to its owner, but that money is constitutionally differentiated from property, and that differentiation was contemplated by the founders.
NB this is in the context of a business that availed itself the H2-B program contesting a finding by administrative law courts that it failed to adhere to some of the requirements of that program, and is therefore assessed a fine (which was reduced by each successive appeal within the administrative court system). They're effectively arguing, via a grab-bag of constitutional arguments, that they deserve a different sort of trial than they agreed to by (1) using the H2-B program and (2) litigating with the agreed-upon system for four years.
I wonder about digital assets "for constitutional purposes" though?
Using that argument, actual property isn't property either. The government creates property by enforcing property rights that are really just lines on a government owned map, the government can tax your property, and the government can condemn and take your property for the general welfare.
I'm not sure if you know this or if you're pointing it out, but that's how it works. You have title of of deed similar to a king granting land to nobles. The nobles only own it at the king's pleasure and usually ow a tax. So too it is with the government and property tax and eminent domain, etc.
Money is a construct, which we agree or disagree on its value, and use as a proxy to trade for real goods or services. The inherant value of paper money is elmost nothing, electronic forms of money, could be viewed as w liability, as it takes energy to maintain its presence.Coins are metal, and embody the effort of extraction and potential re use, so are property. Why anyone needs to argue this is odd.
Reason magazine are libertarian cranks who want to get rid of the administrative state, which is what this case is actually about anyways. Basically this is an appeal to a determination by a Department of Labor Administrative Law Judge where the lawn care company is saying its unconstitutional to have administrative courts. The government is saying no its not (its not) and also you should have brought this up sometime in the last 4 years this case was being heard by the DoL, and also you would have lost in an article 3 court anyways, because you cheated your employees and lied on visa applications.
Edit: ALSO, this is not a case from the Department of Justice, as the article (written by an attorney!) states, but it's the Department of Labor. I know its a nitpick but come on!
But this specific case seems way overblown
Ummm... let's hope my passport is still considered property, as I seriously consider leaving this madness.
You can buy your way into a lot of countries at very affordable rates (https://www.businessinsider.com/cheapest-countries-where-you...) and there are citizenship brokers that can help you.
This hinges on the government defining Bitcoin as "property" which is distinct from "money". They normally assert that only US currency is "money". As such, any property that changes value (i.e. Bitcoin) is subject to capital gains tax.
So if spenders of Bitcoin don't mind filing a separate tax form for every Bitcoin transaction, then Bitcoin fixes this. Otherwise, not so much.
Bitcoin does fix the problem in the sense it is obviously property. But that doesn't solve much.
Where's the incentive for me to stop hitting you with a hose? Maybe a few more wallets will shake loose. And if not, oh well.
Really? It's digital. It can be accessed anywhere. You just force the person to give it to you. Why do you think crypto executives are such popular K&R targets?
Crypto is constantly being seized. And unlike cash, you can't publicly taint every account that interacts with the dirty money.
People use dirty bills all the time with no issue, too. I need to look up who our background check provider is, but I've seen people flagged as a high risk (twice in client onboarding, once in a deal, once in an employment context) due to a known or probably-known wallet having a high frequency of high-risk transactions. That's, put simply, not visibility I have into anyone's bank account.
In two of the cases we added safeguards (at client and counterparty's cost) and in two I declined to proceed.
Indeed. But cash is easier to seize: you just need to know where it's stashed vs crypto where you need to know where it's stashed + know a secret password/pin that may only exist inside someone's head. And even if you find something that might look like a crypto wallet, you may not even be able to verify that it is one or what it contains.
> I need to look up who our background check provider is, but I've seen people flagged as a high risk (twice in client onboarding, once in a deal, once in an employment context) due to a known or probably-known wallet having a high frequency of high-risk transactions. That's, put simply, not visibility I have into anyone's bank account.
That's just an overzealous policy that some financial institutions (aka AML "obliged entities") voluntarily decide to subject themselves to. Pretty much no one does such background checks for p2p and commercial transactions.
It’s a watered-down version of the stuff every bank uses. Hell, my small-town bank does this when screening mortgage applications.
Citizen: I don't have $50,000
Government: You have $50,000 worth of bonds and securities
Citizen: That's property. I demand a jury trial by my peers.
Government: <crickets>