Posted on 02/11/2011 6:53:03 AM PST by tje
BRANCH COUNTY, Mich. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) – A Brighton man is in trouble with the law for bringing aluminum cans from Indiana to Michigan to collect the deposits.
On Monday night state police troopers pulled over 64-year-old John Woodfill for driving erratically. He was driving a van with a trailer that didn't have a tailgate.
In the back were more than 60,000 aluminum cans
(Excerpt) Read more at wwmt.com ...
Sounds like Obamacare.
The state needs more can laws.
Any system based on leftist ideology (and we know the origin of that)
will inherently tend to reward the wicked and punish the innocent.
Felony for interstate transport of aluminum cans to claim a deposit? What????!!!!
While I am sure this is a violation of the intent of the law (a stupid law, if you ask me) - I’m not a fan of forcing a deposit on aluminum cans.. more government heavy-handed tactics.
Am I the only one that sees felony charges to be insane?
LOL! Since there no beer sales in Indiana on Sunday, I’ve gone to MI on many occasions to get some beer for the game. I pay their deposit, but have never taken the time to return the cans for my refund. SO MI OWES ME!!
I have to laugh because my wife is a Michigan native who floated this idea at the dinner table about a week before Seinfeld did that episode.
The state wants the money off the unreturned cans.
I don’t see how he broke that law. He didn’t sell the cans, he just wanted to. I can WANT to rob a bank but I haven’t broken the law until I actually rob the bank.
There's zero proof of that justification for the ridiculous law. If it were even slightly true, I'd expect to hit a significant increase in discarded cans and bottles the moment I cross the line into Ohio or Indiana. Instead, there's no difference.
Theoretically, one could make the case that Michiganders are such innate slobs that they are incapable of understanding the purpose of trash cans without the added incentive of a 10 cent per can deposit. Although tempting, the citizenry of Toledo or Ft Wayne are not noticeably different, and yet they manage to put their cans in the trash on a regular basis.
Overall, this is just another example of the failed regulatory mentality that has successfully driven Michigan into the ground.
Thank you...you're absolutely correct
Everything is upside down.
HA!
“Isn’t it self-evident that he crossed state lines with aluminum cans...”
well..it DEFINITELY is “interstate commerce” , which , so We the People are assured, IS subject to Congressional oversight...
I suppose that the state would argue "constructive intent", however to me that seems like an impermissible broadening beyond the clear wording and intent of the law. Sort of like charging a person with soliciting sex from a prostitute merely because they may be interested in doing so and have money in their pockets while driving in their car, even though they have not actually even spoken to a prostitute, let alone solicited sex. That would be putting the cart in front of the horse. IMHO you ought to have committed all of the elements of a crime before being charged with the crime (but the justice system has metastisized in so many ways that it seems that many law enforcement apparatchiks believe that such a concept is a mere formality that can be dispensed with at will)...
It does cut down on litter though, I can't proof it scientifically but I know there are people who walk and bicycle around the rural roads looking for can and bottles on the side of the road and looking in trash cans to make a little bit of extra money. You don't see it on the interstate highways but you will see it on the other roads, etc.
I use to live in Michigan many years ago, I now live in a better state politically (Tennessee), and were I live you will find people going along the roads picking up the aluminum cans to sell them for scrap aluminum.
Don't you see how subversive his scheme was. If everyone in Ohio and Indiana gathered up their containers and redeemed them in MI the RECYCLING program would go bust.
CHILDREN would suffer, Elderly would die.
This is a CRIME??? Some fed jackboots arrested a guy for selling cans??!! Wow..I feel MUCH safer now. Clearly this evil criminal should just remain on welfare, collect food stamps and live in public housing, rather than actually try to EARN money by working for it!!! Unbelievable.
LOL!
I’m sure they already know me.
I am a FReeper afterall.
In Michigan you pay a 10 cent deposit on the can when you buy the Coke. And you get a refund once you return it.
If you paid no deposit in Indiana, and then go to collect a refund in Michigan, you're stealing the amount of each refund. 60,000 cans = $6000.
Yeah, that's a felony.
>>but if you buy a coke in Ohio and take it across the border to attempt to get 10 cents off the can bought in Ohio they won’t give it to you, because the can will not say anything on it that indicates it was bought in Michigan or any of the states that participates in the program.<<
Well, actually that is not correct.
We do a family camping trip in Findlay State Park, Wellington, Ohio, every year. All the cans are collected and we bring them back home. Whether we bought them in MI or bought them on Ohio, we get the same 10 cents.
By the same token, my family comes up to visit and they buy soft drinks here. When they take them home, they lose on the deposit.
It’s almost a certainty that his license and license plates are from Indiana. At that point, they can very quickly and efficiently rape his privacy by getting cell phone records and tower “pings” and credit/debit card usage to show that he pretty much drove straight from Indiana to Michigan with those cans, then it’s a question of what the jury believes.
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