The Federal Criminal Forfeiture Statute: Reining in The Government’s Previously Unbridled Ability to Seize Pretrial Assets

American organized crime movies are synonymous with a climatic raid and seizure of illegal assets – typically drugs and guns. But what is really encompassed within the Government’s grasp; what are the “illegal assets”? The truth is that the Government has a wide reach and the criminal seizures don’t end when the screen goes black and the credits roll. The Federal Criminal Forfeiture Statute, as applied to RICO and CCE cases, typically entails the forfeiture of any asset connected to the underlying crimes. Given that criminal forfeiture penalties have ethical and constitutional considerations, it is not surprising to learn that a recent United States Supreme Court decision has scaled back the Government’s power over its ability to seize. This Note will provide an overview of the Federal Criminal Forfeiture Statute, as well as RICO and CCE in order to provide context, will detail the case law history of the statute in application, will examine the ethical and constitutional considerations, and will question the future of the controversially applied law

Age-restricted housing in New England

Fair Housing Act amendments exempt housing restricted to “older persons” from provisions protecting families with children from discrimination. But municipal leaders who believe that promoting over-55 housing will reduce education costs are in for a rude awakening.Housing - New England ; Municipal finance - New England

Effect of woodstack structure on invertebrate abundance and diversity

Reduced quantities of dead wood in managed forests have resulted in a reduction in the abundance and diversity of saproxylic invertebrates to the extent that many are now considered red list species. To mitigate against this loss, one conservation measure is the provision of dead wood, in the form of piles of chopped logs, i.e. ‘woodstacks’. The heterogeneity and volume of dead wood habitat is considered to be an important component of habitat suitability. However, the value of different woodstack types to invertebrate conservation has rarely been quantified and there is little consensus on how to best to survey the invertebrate fauna of woodstacks. This study used both sticky traps and pitfall traps to sample the invertebrate fauna of three types of sycamore woodstack. Woodstacks were made from 10 logs, 20 logs and 10 scorched logs plus a control woodstack made of unplasticised polyvinyl chloride (uPVC) plastic piping and observed over a 4-week period. A total of 1446 invertebrates from 16 orders, including 127 Coleoptera, were caught during the sampling period. A generalized linear model was used to analyse invertebrate abundance between woodstack and between trap types, and diversity was determined using Shannon diversity indices and analysed using a two-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). The woodstack type had no effect on the abundance of invertebrates. However, Shannon diversity was highest on the scorched woodstacks, with little difference between the 10 and 20 log stacks and the control uPVC woodstacks. However, closer inspection of orders revealed the uPVC woodstacks to have the lowest abundance and diversity of Coleoptera. This study suggests that constructing woodstacks can provide suitable habitat for a variety of invertebrates. However, these invertebrates may have simply used the structures for shelter and the true value with saproxylic invertebrates could not be measured in this 4-week study. To fully appreciate the conservation value of woodstacks will require longer term studies that examine how and when saproxylic invertebrates use dead and decaying wood

Cyclical asymmetry in fiscal policy, debt accumulation and the Treaty of Maastricht

In this paper we present a stylised framework of fiscal policy determination that considers both structural targets and cyclical factors. Applying this framework to a sample of 16 OECD countries, we find evidence of significant asymmetry in the reaction of fiscal policy to positive and negative cyclical conditions, with budgetary balances deteriorating in contractions and not improving in expansions. This asymmetry appears to have contributed significantly to debt accumulation. We find no evidence that EU fiscal rules have reduced the ability of governments to conduct stabilisation policy between 1992 and 2000.stabilization, fiscal policy, government debt, fiscal rules

Healthcare in Italy: expenditure determinants and regional differentials

The aim of this work is to identify the determinants of health spending differentials among Italian regions, which could highlight the existence of potential margins for savings. The analysis exploits a dataset for the panel of the 21 Italian regions starting in the early 1990s and ending in 2006. After having controlled for standard healthcare demand indicators, spending differentials appear to be associated with differences in the degree of appropriateness of the treatments, supply structure and social capital indicators. These results suggest that savings could be achieved without reducing the amount of services supplied to citizens. This is particularly important in view of the expected rise in health spending associated with the forecast demographic developments.government expenditure, health, regional variation

Public Debt and Economic Growth in Italy

In this paper we investigate the link between government debt-to-GDP ratio and real per capita income growth in Italy over 1861-2009. We model our regression analysis on a standard production function. Our results support the hypotheses of a negative relation between public debt and growth and of a stronger effect of foreign debt compared to domestic debt before World War I. The effect of public debt on growth appears to work mainly through reduced investment. These results help explain the different reaction of per capita GDP growth to the debt-ratio over 1880-1914 (when the negative correlation between the two variables is particularly strong) and 1985-2007 (when the correlation appears to break down when debt starts declining). A descriptive analysis of fiscal policy in these two periods suggests that differences in the timing of fiscal consolidation as well as in the size and composition of the budget are additional explanatory factors.public debt, economic growth, Italian economic history

Cyclical asymmetry in fiscal variables

In a stylised framework of fiscal policy determination that considers both structural targets and cyclical factors, we find significant cyclical asymmetry in the behaviour of fiscal variables in a sample of fourteen EU countries from 1970 to 2004, with budgetary balances (both overall and primary) deteriorating in contractions but not improving correspondingly in expansions. Analysis of budget components reveals that the asymmetry is due to expenditure, in particular transfers in cash. We find no evidence that the fiscal rules introduced in 1992 with the Treaty of Maastricht affected the cyclical behaviour of the variables examined. Numerical simulations show that cyclical asymmetry inflated average deficit levels, contributing significantly to the accumulation of debt.fiscal stabilisation, government expenditure, government debt, fiscal rules

Customizing a Python driver for IDS cameras under Raspberry Pi - Claudio Francese

IDS Cameras (www.ids-imaging.com) are widely used devices both in industrial and scientific applications for their high resolution, framerate and expansion capabilities. Other features include the synchronization of the image capture to an external trigger and turning on an external flash during the frame acquisition. The software and the drivers provided by the manufacturer are compatible with Windows ™, Linux for Intel™ architecture and some Linux based embedded systems. One of the supported platforms is the Raspberry Pi (www.raspberrypi.org). The Raspberry Pi embedded system is a small dimensions computer (85.6mm x 56mm x 21mm) running a Linux operating system on a 900 MHz quad core CPU. The presence of USB and Ethernet connections and an expansion connector (with SPI, I2C signals available) makes the device a good and low cost solution (less than 50 €) for setting up a scalable, reliable network of distributed intelligent controllers for electronic devices, digital integrated circuits (for example DDS signal generators, FPGAs, A/D and D/A converters) and measurement instrumentation. This document shows how to interface a USB IDS camera to a Raspberry Pi using the Python language and how to modify a working Python wrapper to the IDS camera C library in order to fit the user’s needs