Gate and I Discuss Administrative Law

Gate took a break from reading the paper to look over some of my tax records as I was making photocopies of them for our upcoming appointment with the Social Security Administration.

I said, "Should you be doing that without a warrant?"

Gate responded "Its an administrative search, look it up."

I looked it up and then asked Gate, "Well, the controlling opinion is a 1988 finding by the Supreme Court of Illinois in the Case of People vs Madison, and in that they quote an earlier finding that, 

"...One of the fundamental principles of administrative searches is that the government may not use an administrative inspection scheme as a pretext to search for evidence of criminal violations...""

Gate responded, "what do you mean pretext, I'm just looking for some... uh...stuff..."

George adds that Gate may have cited a case that is less than national,

"Fourth Amendment reasonableness is predominantly an objective inquiry.  We ask whether the circumstances, viewed objectively, justify [the challenged] action. If so, that action was reasonable whatever the subjective intent motivating the relevant officials. This approach recognizes that the Fourth Amendment regulates conduct rather than thoughts, and it promotes evenhanded, uniform enforcement of the law. 

Two limited exceptions to this rule are our special-needs and administrative-search cases, where actual motivations do matter." (emphasis added and internal citations and quotation marks omitted).

Ashcroft v. Al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 735-36 (2011)

 A few days after I posted about Hard Rock Bear's comments about North Carolina, I saw a business article that was interesting.

Hard Rock will be opening a franchise in Guyana as part of a 'high end development'. 

In the first image, the person on the right Dereck Chin, CEO of MovieTowne, Guyana said that... Hard Rock Café will provide a dining event that includes a unique visual and sound experience..."

I asked Hard Rock Bear if the corporation paid a substantial fee for the right to be in Guyana. He said, "well, let's just say some money changed hands".

Hard Rock Bear Comments on a Business Decision

 Hard Rock Bear is frequently telling us that he is 'very unique' (he was the 147th Atlanta Hard Rock bear as I recall from when we still had the authentication card).  Nonetheless, we brought him with us to North Carolina in May 2018. This was because he wanted to scout out some areas to place another franchise.

Hard Rock cafe is, as of now (and has been for several years) a completely owned subsidy of the Seminole Nation.  I have suspected that the Seminole Nation uses the restaurant chain to invest tainted proceeds from their casino operations and then retrieve, untainted cash from the restaurant's customers. 

Anyway, Hard Rock obviously saw the physical appeal of both Chapel Hill (top image) and Durham (2nd image).

When I asked where he thought a franchise would be best placed, Hard Rock bear said, "Wherever the opportunity for money launde... I mean wherever the best business climate is.... heh heh."