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apologies to those seeking great substance. This is a rant inspired by today's news. rob
This article, The German magazine Spiegel says Wall Street banksters committed a monumental insider bank robbery, hilights the difference between the way the US, the DOJ and the US Congress handled things compared to Europeans.
I posted this quicklink, Obama's new chief of staff opposed health reform and consumer protection agency to my facebook page, commenting that Obama's replacements were worse than the original bad choices he appointed. Terry Adcock commented, " couldn't they have found a mobster from Chicago to fill the Chief of Staff job, instead? Oh, yeah, maybe they did!"
That's what spurred me to write this. How many politicians have decided that it is more lucrative and safer to become a congressman rather than a criminal? How many members of congress are no different than criminals? How about that Republican in the new, 112th congress who asks "how can we help get rid of regulations" for businesses? The people who are supposed to protect us, the guards to the henhouse, are instead helping the foxes The police are helping the private prison industries. There are even judges who help add "customers" to prisons seeking higher profits. A judge and his prison corporate partners got caught in Luzerne county PA.
Certainly, not all police are partners in corporate crime. But the system is set up so corporations are the likely beneficiaries of the benefit of the doubt when police are brought in. That makes for an ugly picture.
image is a portion of an 1874 Harpers Weekly editorial cartoon I have hanging in my office, enhanced a bit by photoshop
You're a corporation (I say you because the supreme court insists that corporations have the rights of people) and you want to make billions? Get a war started using the mainstream media assets you own or hire publicists and lobbyists to push. if locals in the target "enemy" nation are inconvenient, kill them. You can always arrange for the government to hire hundreds of thousands of private contractors to do the job.
ALWAYS, always wrap the profit- generating war in lies. It's a tried and true approach. ALWAYS tie the war to patriotism and the flag and God and Democracy. Always make up sh*t-- fake threats, fake atrocities, WMDs-- it worked great for two generations of Bush criminals.
David Swanson's War Is A Lie details the many ways lies are used to start and continue wars. The same approach is used to create laws that steal from the commons, from the people, from main street. Those laws make it legal to engage in unfair or rigged business. The laws protect predatory corporations. The laws allow those too big to fail companies to set up operations that in the past were criminal. The laws permit corporations to influence politicians, with lobbying and gifts and third party ads. Those behaviors were criminal in the past.
The sad thing is, as politicians make more and more criminals public officials they also continue to maintain laws that make criminals out of people who have not hurt anyone-- people accused of victimless crimes.
Things are getting worse. Something has to change. It is time the criminals operating as politicians or heads of corporations get put where they belong. It's time that people who harmed no-one are no longer incarcerated, charged or arrested.
