Lady Justice is Kind of a Bitch

in #money6 years ago

Ok so yesterday I came at you with my review of the "Fyre Fraud" expose, and honestly, I walked away fairly unimpressed. "Poor little rich kids" was kind of my takeaway, but it got me to thinking about something much bigger and entirely more relevant: our justice system and the lack thereof real justice.

Now when you think about America, you think about freedom, and justice and all of the amazing things that we peddle to those "less fortunate" in other countries. This is why we have people risking their lives to come here, paying coyotes thousands to sneak them across the border, risking deportation, death and other unfortunate circumstances. Yet, does what these people coming here for really exist? Do we have a real Democratic Republic, freedom, unfettered capitalism, justice and proper rule of law?

Hardly.

Not by a long shot.

So are people being led here on a platform of lies?

Well, kinda. I mean, citizens that live here are led to believe that they themselves have these things, and to be grateful for it Goddamn it. Kiss the ass of Uncle Sam, worship at the feet of Lady Liberty, play Bird Box with Lady Justice, and so forth and so on.

So why are so many people screwed over by the systems that we have? Why don't we have real justice? Why is Lady Justice such a bitch?

Well, because we have allowed crapitalism to invade our economy, culture and even rule of law.

Dat money doe.

Money talks and nowhere is it louder than America.

Crony capitalism has all but destroyed a once flourishing nation. It snuck in and started small, first encapsulating small decisions, small governments, and then grew bigger and stronger and is now virtually unstoppable.

So what does that have to do with justice?

Well, let's take a look at our justice system.

We have relayed the responsibility of incarceration to private entities. These private entities only make money if there are people in jail. There are only people in jail if judges put them in jail, so who do you think those private companies are going to offer moola to? (Hint: it's not the court typist).

Internal investigations have caught dozens of judges having taken bribes from large corporations to incarcerate perps and for extended periods of time.

This doesn't really sound like justice to me.

It isn't about getting bad guys off the street, or drugs out of the hands of addicts, or pedophiles away from schools, (although I would be okay if all pedos were set to just rot in jail, but I digress) these convictions are made solely out of the transactions made with private prisons. How utterly disappointing.

But wait, maybe there is justice to be found on a smaller scale. We have small claims court, right? Anyone can do that for free, without a lawyer, and get in front of a fair judge!

Well, yes and no.

The judges may be more fair due to the fact that practically no one in small claims court is sent to jail, therefore losing the incentive for big business to bribe judges, however, another evil has entered the courtroom: Representation.

There is a chance, without representation, that you can get your money back from someone in small claims court, but this often is a process that takes months upon months and requires taking multiple days off work, likely unpaid. Do you think the average person is going to lose a week's worth of pay just to get a $500 payout? And that's if the person they are seeking restitution from, ACTUALLY PAYS...and yeah, good luck with that.

Let's go up a little further though, and see what happens if you are looking for a bigger payout...say that a company did something terrible to you, or you were in an awful car crash, and the insurance company is being a dick...well you still have to have the money for a lawyer AND you have to be ABSOLUTELY SURE you are going to win. Good lawyers can cost anywhere from 500-1000 dollars an hour, and if you don't win, you will have to pay them back for all of that time. Most people won't even take that chance, therefore most people don't even bother to sue, even if they are owed something.

The trend you can see here, is that wealthy people have the opportunity to seek justice, but many poor people can't. Of course there are many exceptions to this, but we are living in a world of generalities here just for the sake of time.

My article about the Fyre Fraud was a great example of this. Stupid, gullible rich kids got their money back, because their parents had the money to pay GREAT lawyers, some which ended up turning them a profit. If you are poor and get swindled however: tough fucking luck. What comes to mind is many colleges that claimed to be legit and have all their credentials and ended up folding (I believe Trump U was one of them, but I believe he also settled out of court.) This left a lot of poor college-age kids, fucked, without a degree and tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Because they took out their loans from the government, rather than the school itself, when the school folds, the only person that ends up with the financial responsibility is the student who took out the loan (even though the Fed should have never issued a loan to a non-legit school to begin with and should have taken some of the fall, but they're the Fed, so they remain untouched.)

So is it possible to restore a sense of justice in the United States? Sure, but it will likely never happened. We have been infiltrated from the inside out and now corporations and the wealthy run America.

I guess the answer to it all is to just get rich...maybe Steem can help me with that? ;)

xx - Beth

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Well said. I wish I could agree that you have completely covered the nefarious corruption endemic in American injudiciousness, but sadly, I am aware of more - and worse - venality in the system.

You point out that government has financial incentive through privatization of prisons to imprison innocent people, but there are many more incentives that all worsen the problem. Graft and kickbacks in every level of administration of such facilities are endemic, and I have personally witnessed mere kitchen administrators stealing food purchased for events by inmates (things like Pow Wows, Kwanzaa, and Ramadan, for which particular populations have a cultural imperative to specific feast foods), prostitution for 'soda tickets' (used in lieu of actual federal reserve notes, yet money all the same), and much, much worse.

I served on a grand jury that investigated jails in Multnomah County, Oregon, back in the 90s, and captives boldly stated they were being sexually abused by staff while in the immediate and present physical control of the staff being accused. The grand jury was controlled by the District Attorney, who provided counsel to the jury, and was prevented from issuing subpoenas or doing any damn thing about it.

The entire system is codependent each segment upon the others, and the individuals within it upon it as a whole, and it extracts not only an ungodly amount of money via public spending, but from the captives who are able to bribe for goods and services during their enslavement.

I could go on, but reckon you get where I'm coming from.

Thanks!

Oh yea, I imagine a novel could be written about corruption in our justice system. A huge flaw I see in our checks and balance system is that there is nothing outside of it. We have to trust that each section of law will look after the other and keep things in balance, but it hasn't been that way for some time. It is a brilliant idea but also fundamentally flawed without an outside entity to keep things in check. I guess some would call that the shadow government, though if that exists, its goal is to not involve themselves in things!

Thanks for your input! :)

A loosely related video on why this corruption has spread so far:

It's worse. Some States had contracts with privately owned prisons that stipulated 95% occupancy. As some folks were released, beds had to be filled, so this non quota system acquired a contractual obligation to produce inmates. Life for shoplifting anyone?

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/04/05/accused-candy-shoplifter-faces-life-prison/82647430/

edit: I recently read a statistic that the use of private prisons were in decline, but the election of Trump did raise their stock prices.

Ugh it's just so disappointing. And see, now I am a bit vexed about it because I just watched this documentary about private prisons and how inmates would rather be in one because they offer rehabilitation as opposed to just incarceration. It surely is a catch-22.

This was the video I watched. Candace Owens is a right-leaning kinda sorta libertarian. She talks a lot of sense though and I like here a lot.

I looked at it strictly as a possible reason for having more inmates than any other place in the world, by a long shot. It still could be.

Yes, some of those facilities are top notch, complete with machine shops running CNC Milling machines or entire factories. The private prisons, if managed well, have an incentive to motivate people, but also have a budget to do so (Mexican office furniture factories can't compete). This prison model has spread to a few other Countries, but it is too soon to tell what the over all effect will be. It may well be a better option in the sense that the gubmint is always looking to cut cost vs. business always looking for profit. Happy Cows produce more milk; proven fact.

I'm sort of in the middle, I listen to/read both sides, no matter how radical their views are, I can disapprove of both later :)

Thanks for the video.

When "les gilets jaunes" team up with crypto, the fireworks will start...

@lukewearechange won't be there this weekend though. Rumor is that live ammo will be used to quell the protests because they have grown so large.

I am fearful and also super interested in how this turns out.

Just curious what reach this story has... have you heard of the yellow vests before I posted this?

Of course. I would think you would have to be under a rock not to know what's going on in France!

The alt-media say that they're getting demonitized and censored for covering this story, though YT stats seem to be fairly decent (but a bit under-rated compared to some of Luke's videos). There does seem to be a damping algorithm in place that marginalizes this type of content.

To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.

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