America: Never in the civilized world have so many been locked up for so little.
August 29th, 2010 | No Comments
JUSTICE IN AMERICA – OR THE LACK THEREOF
“Never in the civilized world have so many been locked up for so little.” The Economist July 24 – 30 2010.
The Economist weekly magazine (now printed in the U.S. for U.S. customers, but largely written in the UK) a few weeks ago published a five page article about the death spiral of justice in America. Now mind you, this is a serious publication. It ranks with the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times and is designed for professional investors and financial managers, government and private sector alike, around the world.
Here are the cites: Economist July 24th – 30th 2010: p. 13: “Rough Justice: America locks up too many people, some for acts that should not even be criminal.” p. 26 – 29: “Too many laws, too many prisoners – Never in the civilized world have so many been locked up for so little.”
The U.S. continues to have the highest per capita prison population in the world. Nearly 1% of the population is in prison. Prisons, even private prisons, are a giant industry. Chances are that nearly one out of three families has someone in prison or an ex-felon within two generations. Let me help you put that in perspective: we are all criminals. And if we’re not already, chances are good that we will be before it’s over.
As a lawyer, may I help you understand what happens to you once you are a convicted felon? Aside from being denied a LOT of potential jobs, you cannot vote. Maybe someday you can get your voting privileges back. You can’t run for many public offices. So politics is out. Two, you cannot own a gun. Even if you were convicted of a non-violent crime. If you were convicted in federal case you can never get your record expunged (cleared) except by presidential decree. So . . . we have a class of people that have been brutalized by the system and who both know what to do with their vote, how the system should work but doesn’t, why we should all own guns, and they can’t do anything. And, the statistics show that this “they” is becoming most of us!
The laws are now so incomprehensible that no one can actually know what they are. We’ve not only left the ten commandments, we’ve left the “One Million Commandments” – there are so many regulations and laws, that a dozen professionals working together could not read them in their lifetimes. That means that there is no effective way for anyone to know what “the law” is. And those laws are added to and changed so fast, it would be a full time job for another dozen people just to track what’s happening.
Worse, if all these life-sentenced professionals are charged with just reading the law, they couldn’t remember what it meant, how various laws interfaced with each other (because it’s impossible for one person to read them all), and thus they couldn’t agree on anything.
The point is, that means that no one really knows what the law is until it’s being used to crush you. This is, by any ethical definition, an immoral justice system. The rule of law, the very basis of civilized society, cannot work unless those charged with obeying it can understand it. Not a team of CPAs and law professors. It means that everyone must understand it. That is now clearly impossible. It’s been impossible for decades but it has really gotten nasty of late.
Add to that the fact that the “executive branch” of government – that means the president and cohorts – have somehow managed to “rule” without and “advise and consent” of anyone – and rarely actually need “laws” to do whateverthehell they want. And somehow our supreme court has become irrelevant. A lot of what the executive branch of government has “ordered” for the last few administrations is, in my professional opinion, unlawful. Many of the laws passed by Congress vastly exceed their authority under the Constitution. Do you have any idea how tough it is to reverse something these miscreants do, even if it’s wrong? It’s nearly impossible. And probably not in your generation.
If this weren’t bad enough, and make no mistake, it’s terrible, every two-bit district attorney running for office can now jail anyone for just about anything. Judges have been severely restrained from handing out humane or reasonable sentences. “Mandatory minimums” prevent judges from recognizing a bogus case — to which the defendant has just pleaded guilty rather than face a jury and 50 years in prison for “nothing” – and just giving the defendant 30 days and telling the prosecutor he should be ashamed of himself.
Those days are gone.
People, please understand, children, and I mean 9, 10, 11, 12 years olds are being sentenced as “sex offenders” for interacting with EACH OTHER! What did they do? The got caught playing doctor or, God forbid, engaged in sexual conduct. They get removed from school, sometimes their home and raised by the state who apparently doesn’t know that things “happen” at those tender ages even if someone thinks they shouldn’t. This is as immoral as it is stupid. This is fighting basic human nature that is usually kept in check as much as one can by vigilant parental watchfulness. But have you watched TV lately? Watched what kids watch? Watch the ages at which children are “groomed” to re-enact adult behavior? I mean what do we expect? We allow them to be trained to do it and then we convict them as sex offenders. And we train parents, teachers, counselors, classmates, to turn them in “for their own good.”
And if you don’t mind that your child is sentenced as a sex offender, how about a terrorist?
Hunting knife = terrorist.
Sling shot = terrorist.
How can people put up with this shit? Yes, kids do amazingly stupid things. That doesn’t make either you or them terrorists. It makes them “stupid for a day”. Frankly, it makes them kids.
Does it get worse from here? Yes. Home schooled children and those of us with bad attitudes are now classified as “home grown terrorists” – I’m not kidding. Some of the other telltale behaviors to watch for in spotting home grown terrorists that are actually in government training manuals: Carrying a Bible. Carrying a copy of the Constitution. Quoting the law and your rights. All signs of potential terrorists.
And now, with the U.S. “Patriot Act I and II” as law, any government official can basically do anything to anyone. And you’d better jolly well like it or your attitude will be noted and you’re just one step away from being arrested as a terrorist with no lawyer and no trial.
Therefore, it is impossible for any of us to know the “law” and therefore “the law” is immoral on its face. It’s hard enough to remember the 10 commandments let alone section 1593.7/a/subsection39576.1 of something you never heard of but which you’re facing twenty years for.
Law has become a “gotcha” game. The old Al Capone trick — if you can’t get him on the substantive crime, then you get him on something else. And, not that Al was a nice guy, but he mostly got his start violating prohibition laws that were later repealed and are now recognized as an ill-conceived plan of the moral right to control individual (no victim) human behavior “because it was right under God’s law (as they interpreted it)” — the quintessential nightmare that any mob-rule, easily-led “democracy” has to contend with. And now we have the “war on drugs” that seems so reminiscent of prohibition – with its attendant outrageous expenditures with no results except bloodshed and tragedy. And I’m not even counting the fact that many contend the CIA is involved in it.
Add to that the U.S. Patriot Acts I and II and a number of Presidential Findings and you have essentially the unlimited power of “them” to do anything they want to anyone.
Even if you leave out nationwide FEMA camps, which do seem to exist, as the paranoia of conspiracy nuts, you have the practical aspects that “they can’t arrest everyone”. That is true. But it only matters if they don’t arrest YOU or your family. And it is the unpredictability of “their” behavior in regards to YOU that is the fundament of the present nightmare. They win by making you run from the small statistical chance that they will catch you and crush you. Sure, the human race will likely survive. Jews, as a people, survived Hitler. Russians survived Stalin. But 20,000,000 or more did not. The question is will you and yours survive? And when it comes down to it, you are not your nationality or your religion, you are you. And if they kill you, you’re dead; if they ruin you or your family; your life is over. No matter that historians later categorize it as aberrant behavior of a government out of control. You’re not here. And maybe your family is gone, too.
So you run from the small possibility of their successful discovery and elimination of you for no reason other than they can. And “we” are trying to convince a voting majority, call it 65,000,000 voters, that there is something wrong with this when about 30,000,000 or more voters work directly for government, 20,000,000 or more receive checks from the government, and 20,000,000 have indirect jobs from the government, and another 10,000,000 or 20,000,000 receive union benefits protected by the government? That’s right. Between entitlement recipients and government workers and protected unions, “they” have enough votes to do whatever they want.
As long as “they” give “them” cable TV and beer, there will be no revolution.
With these kinds of laws and surveillance capabilities, our Framers would have been ferreted out and living in Gitmo before one Revolutionary War shot was ever fired. There would be no Constitution. To a man they all met the current definition of “terrorist” and would have been killed. They are only patriots now because they won. They would not win today.
Here’s an interest bit of dialog from Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged (1957)
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand, in Atlas Shrugged, spelled it out specifically when the govt agent, Ferris, confronts Hank Rearden to force him to give up ?access to Rearden’s invention of new metal.
A short excerpt:
Agent Ferris: “You honest men are such a headache, but we knew you’d slip up sooner or later – and this is just what we wanted.”
Rearden: “You seem to be pleased about it.”
Agent Ferris: “Don’t I have good reason to be?”
Rearden: “But, after all, I did break one of your laws.”
Agent Ferris: “Well, what do you think they’re there for?” Dr. Ferris did not notice the sudden look on Rearden’s face, the look of a man hit by the first vision of that which he had sought to see. Dr. Ferris was past the stage of seeing; he was intent upon delivering the last blows to an animal caught in a trap.
“Did you really think that we want those laws to be observed?” said Dr. Ferris.
“We want them broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against. We’re after power and we mean it. You fellows were pikers, but we know the real trick, and you’d better get wise to it.
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted-and you create a nation of law-breakers-and then you cash in on guilt.
“Now that’s the system, Mr. Rearden, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”
Frankly, even after a lot of thought, I have no great ideas how to stop this. Let alone reverse it. I don’t want a revolution but they’re not leaving any of us much choice. They won’t go away. They like being in power. They like screwing with us. And they want our money.
“Never in the civilized world have so many been locked up for so little.” The Economist July 24 – 30 2010.
