The solution to our two-tiered justice system? More tiers!
Edward Snowden made an observation about the Mueller Report that virtually everyone else on Earth missed.
As Motherboard reported last week, the Department of Justice says that it isn’t positive that Assange helped whistleblower Chelsea Manning crack a password hash in order to obtain cables related to the Iraq War, but that he’s being charged with that crime anyway. Snowden juxtaposed his treatment with that of Trump’s treatment in Robert Mueller’s report.“Mueller says it didn’t actually result in obstruction because the people that Trump ordered to do this simply ignored him,” Snowden said. “The DOJ’s defense of not charging Trump is look he tried to commit a crime but he failed to actually do this. And at the same time they’re charging Julian Assange under precisely the opposite theory. Where they say ‘Look, Julian may not have actually cracked a password—we don’t have any evidence that he did, we’re not even going to try to prove that he did, we’re going to say that the agreement to try is enough.”
“So this is a real question of a two-tiered system of justice. Where if you’re the president and you try to commit a crime, you can skate,” he added. “Why is it that journalists are being held to a higher standard of behavior than the president of the United States?”
Edward Snowden cut through all the crap and got to the heart of the matter, as is usual with him.
Only when it comes to the wealthy and/or powerful do motives matter.
A case can be made that there are already three tiers to our justice system.
The Untouchables
These are powerful people that can simply ignore the law. They don't even have to pretend that they hadn't broken the law.
Examples: torturers ("we tortured some folks"), murderers (“Turns out I’m really good at killing people”), and perjurers (in the name of national security)
The Great and the Good
These are generally wealthy people that have to acknowledge that there is a law, and that law theoretically applies to them...but not really. They often pay token fines for crimes that poor people would get lifetime sentences.
Examples: Too Big To Prosecute bankers, any large corporation
Apparently, robbing a bank is a criminal activity depending which side of the teller’s window you are on and whether you are upper management or a $12-an-hour cashier.
The Great Unwashed
Here we have the roughly 90% of the population.
Unlike the two groups above, there are debtor prisons, legalized robbery by cops, murder by cops, and most of all, draconian sentences that would embarrass a third-world dictator.
So what is there to do about this?
Since none of this is by accident, there is nothing "to fix".
The justice system is working exactly as designed - to keep the workers in their place while robbing them.
Therefore, the way to "improve" the justice system is to create even more tiers.
Our justice system should be divided by race (even more than it already is), gender, and by subclass (for instance the middle class vs. the poor).
That way the workers will resent each other even more than now, instead of organizing against their oppressors.
Comments
Rob a bank.
Do hard time.
Own a bank and rob your clients, such as wells fartgo, golden parachute.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
What a country!
In capitalist America, bank robs YOU!
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Bail out worthy!
If you own a gun
you can rob a bank. If you own a bank you can rob the world.
I'm great at multi-tasking. I can waste time, be unproductive, and procrastinate all at the same time.
What happened to -
guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. If the prosecutor has a reqasonable doubt, how can he/she bring the case before a jury which requires twelve people to not have a reasonable doubt.
And a public admission gives the defense attorney a bulldozer - "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prosecutor has expressed doubt, how can you not do the same?
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Every American should know the following
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/opinion/jurors-can-say-no.html?_r=1
One thing worth learning from Mitch McConnell: If you know what's really on the books, there's all kind of shit you can do!
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
It is going away,
just like due process, thanks to the hysterical people like the me-too movement, other rabid id-pol groups, and dems. They can accuse and smear as they wish.
I keep thinking that Trump, Carter Page, and others need to sue the government, Adam Schiff, Brennan, HRC and others for defamation. I know that there is a higher bar for public people, but that gang is just ridiculous.
Meeting with a Russian at a hotel and going to Russia to check out potential hotel sites are not crimes. Nor is gathering oppo research.
dfarrah
The standard for defamation of a public figure is
"actual malice." https://www.oyez.org/cases/1963/39
I have a feeling there are enough loose statements by the defamers (and every other Democrat in Congress) out there to clear that hurdle.
I'm not thinking
about 'loose' comments.
I am specifically talking about dems like Schiff, who went out and repeatedly accused Trump of treasonous acts, obstruction, etc., etc. And I would even include some 'reporters,' who did the same.
At some point, people who make crap up need to held accountable, one way or another.
I am hoping that the participants in the attempted coup are ultimately jailed for sedition.
dfarrah
It isn't a justice system. It's merely an unjust system.
There is no distinction between criminals and the law enforcement within such a system of elaborately organized but senseless violence, and all law is merely politics, brute force and cruelty. We have come to the point in America in the early 21 Century where the Nihilists and Social Revolutionaries were under the last Czars.
Revolution finally makes as much sense as social order, and doing nothing seems to be a senseless waste of life, itself. As people of conscience, we have nothing but bad choices available to us. Same with those who rule us.
Case in point
Joe posted about how lots of blacks in NYC were arrested for being in a gang. Not that they committed any crimes, but just because they were or might have been in a gang. Another unjustifiable system here in this land of the free is our bail system. Can't post bail? Tuff. You get to spend years in jail until your trial comes up.
I'm not entirely sure that I agree with the Warren Court's
holding that the First Amendment includes a right to freedom of association. If I recall correctly, there was a First Amendment challenge to a zoning law that limited the number of unrelated people who could live together in one dwelling. I think the result was correct, but was it really a First Amendment right?
In any event, the SCOTUS did hold that the First Amendment includes a right to freedom of association. Seems to me that right could extend to being a member of a gang, provided you yourself had broken no law. Then again, since the Warren Court, the SCOTUS has become more and more rightist. We tend to imagine that we are always progressing, but it ain't necessarily so. (An astrologer impressed that upon me by pointing out that, a millennia or few ago, astrologers calculated birth charts of people of all ages by going outside at night and looking up at the stars, then working back from there to the date and time of birth. Now, it takes a software program to do the same. In between, it took several books.)
BTW, for those who do not know, Earl Warren (R)(!) was the AG in charge of interning the Japanese in California, the state of the most such internments. Probably on that strength of that, he got to run for Vice President.
Eisenhower put him on the Court, later calling that the biggest mistake of his (Eisenhower's) 8 years in office. Warren was CJ of the SCOTUS when it decided the incalculably important case of Brown v. Board of Ed. Of course, the lawyer who argued that case so brilliantly for the NAACP is better known to us now as Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black man on the SCOTUS bench. What a travesty that Justice Clarence Thomas replaced him, thanks in great measure to perennial Presidential hopeful and hair inhaler, Biden. Ennnnyywayyy....
Perhaps in retaliation for Eisenhower's comment, Warren's autobiography includes a comment made by "Ike" at a Republican fundraiser where the guests were mostly Southerners. It went something like this: "See, Earl? These are not bad people. They just don't want their little girls sitting in school next to some big, black gorilla."
After heading the most left Supreme Court ever, Warren let LBJ convince him that heading the inquiry into President Kennedy's assassination was Warren's duty to his country. And the rest is missedstory (sic).
Does my ADD look fat in this post?
As I recall,
Ike struck a deal with EW at the 52 Repub convo, where Warren headed the CA delegation. In return for Warren giving the state delegates votes to Ike on the first ballot, which would put him over the top, Ike offered to give Warren the first seat available on the Court. Turns out the first opening was for CJ, when Vinson died.
On the Brown decision, I understand Warren cleaned up the quote for his memoirs, to have it read "those overgrown Negroes". According to one biographer, the actual line from Ike was "those big black bucks."
Mixed public record for Warren, the positives being his time as CJ, except for the Big Lie he promoted by heading the Warren Comm'n. Lyin' Lyndon snookered him into signing on apparently by telling him a whopper about how the FBI had evidence the assassination plot/Oswald tracked back to the Kremlin and that if that ever came out the country would be at war with 80 million dead. Warren would need to put on his Patriot hat to put the lid on the case to avoid WW3. This story also has it that Warren felt so pressured and alarmed that he walked out of the WH that day in tears. Plausible story. It was odd how suddenly stupid and spectacularly incurious several members of that Comm'n became when undertaking their investigation -- or their review of the FBI's investigation.
As to the freedom of association and the 1A, it might be that the Warren Court felt that association was important and necessary to give strength to the explicit 1A right of assembly. I like the outcome, and I'm not a strict Originalist so reading in to the Constitution to find implicit rights, as with Privacy, works for me.
Isn't that a crime?
Membership in a criminal organization? Maybe not constitutional. Maybe it is as belonging to the organization makes you an accessory to their crimes? Only lawyers know and I'm sure they disagree.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
If membership is a crime under some statute, you are
correct that the next issue would be whether the statute can be attacked as invalid for some reason. I was thinking along the same lines when I posted about freedom of association having been held to be a First Amendment right.
I suggest you read the article to see what all happened
one guy was living in another state and yet was arrested for maybe being in a gang years ago. The felony arrest has ruined his life. He was very close to Graduating with a decent degree and now he's living with his mother because he can't leave the state.
This seems wrong on so many levels. Guess I don't have to mention that he's black.
Our system works like this:
There's the 1%, the 9%, and everyone else. Unless you're part of the first 2, you basically don't exist.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
And to keep this "justice" system chugging along we need police.
https://www.lehighvalleylive.com/lehigh-county/2019/04/42-billion-divert...
So in PN, $4.2 billion has been diverted from the Motor License fund that the state constitution says can only be used for roads and bridges. But instead it was used to fund the state police. Even the state constitution is not enough of an authority or deterrent for these rascals.
The reason? Small towns that did not want to fund police with taxes (probably because they believed it was not necessary) required to the state to add police officers to protect them.
So the roads and bridges don't get repaired or built, and police, which communities think are not needed, are hired.
The state's AG is apparently fine with the diversion because he sees the need to hire police the people don't want. No mention for the need of upholding the state constitution.
I seem to recall something similar on the federal level.
Constitutions are quaint if I recall correctly.
"Constitutions are quaint if I recall correctly."
Much the same attitude as King John had toward the Magna Carta to which he himself had agreed--or pretended to agree.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Then again, defending and protecting the Magna Carta was no part of King John's mandatory oath of office.
John had to be cornered and strongarmed into sealing it
and immediately began looking for ways to weasel out of it. So John.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
There needs to be
a crime before obstruction can be charged.
Not only does Trump dispute that he told his lawyer to fire Mueller; Trump was within his rights as a president to fire him himself. No intermediary was necessary.
Trump did not commit a crime.
dfarrah
I am not sure an underlying crime has to exist.
Let's say there's an investigation going on. Later, it turns out that no crime was committed, but, at this juncture, we don't know that. And the FBI comes to me and I tell the FBI a lie that is very relevant to the investigation. Maybe I falsely claim to have witnessed so and so committing the crime they're investigating. In that hypothetical, haven't I obstructed justice?
ETA: There is a Washington Post story saying Barr is wrong, an underlying crime is not required. However, WAPO not only throws up a paywall, it does not even allow copying of the line from the address bar. It doesn't even allow you to leave WAPO and return to your own google hits. You have to start the search over from scratch. Three more reasons to cluck Bezos.
How exactly did he "obstruct"?
By not cooperating? The details matter. Now, I'm hearing ("The View" spilling into general news) that Mueller proved that the Russian government hacked into our electoral systems and Facebook pages to try and change the votes. (Facebook is part of the electoral system?) IMHO that is complete rubbish. Like claiming that having foreign business interests is a forbidden "emolument". Actual the definition would seem to fit HRC on the Uranium One deal much better than Trump having a hotel in Russia.
We need to see the COMPLETE UNREDACTED report to know what is actually in it. I have seen Muller quotes that are very damning, but does he have any evidence in his report?
No, I'm not defending Trump. I'm defending our constitution system of justice from mob action.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Did you catch my essay on Mueller?
It's titled Hillary's op ed, but there is lots of other information in it..
Mueller wrote that the FBI believes that Russia interfered with the election. He nor they provided any proof that happened and I think his report talks about the FB ads. There might be links in the original articles I used.
Yes, I just read the article,
so maybe I am wrong.
dfarrah