While Wronged Homeowners Got $300 Apiece in Foreclosure Settlement, Consultants Who Helped Protect Banks Got $2 Billion
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/while-wronged-homeowners-got-300-apiece-in-foreclosure-settlement-consultants-who-helped-protect-banks-got-2-billion-20130426
This an interesting article and I recommend reading it to understand how corrupt our government is, but it is more or less just the trigger for this post. I have railed on our InJustice system here a number of times and sort of got tired beating that dead horse and left off blogging on the topic. It is sort of like fighting the tide; though, presuming you can survive high tide, you are safe in the knowledge that the tide will recede. I try to tell myself that this time is no different than past rising tides of corruption (and there have been some amazing periods of corruption in our past!) and that we will see a reversal of all the social ills that are being foisted on us by the oligarchy, but I can’t shake the feeling that this time is different. Of course, in the past these cycles tended to be broken by a world war, maybe that is what is missing so far. Then again, maybe this time really is different. I see the beginning (actually, a well established) feudal society here in the US. Feudalism is very stable and enormously sucks for those in the bottom 90% of society (really, for about 8 of that 10% the situation isn’t very great either, just isn’t constant unremitting misery). Our society has already progressed very far along this path, now that almost 50% of our population is at or below the poverty level (see here for some background; be sure to follow the link to the article that lead to the post) and what passed for middle class 40 years ago ($50K family income) now translates to barely above the poverty line and the cash equivalent to 40 year ago middle class now putting you in the top 25% (and the purchasing equivalent the top 2.5%), our ‘middle class’ has already shrunk to less than 10% of our population.
Oh, and we are programmed by the Madison Avenue advertisers paid for by our controlling oligarchy to blame the people who are suffering rather than the people responsible for the suffering.
But this post is really about how law is no longer applicable here in the Great USofA. I was watching some blowhard on CNN yesterday babbling about how ‘evil’ it was of the Obama administration (like somehow Obama is so all powerful that he can control things that happen at the local court level (at least not yet)) to have dared to have read the Boston Bomber (BB; since I am too lazy to look up his name is) his Miranda rights 48 hours after he had been captured. I pointed out to my wife (who really wasn’t interested in hearing my shouting, but she happened to be in the room) that he might as well have said ‘I object to the use of the law in the US, no one should have any rights if the government chooses not to offer them’. In our Great Country to be accused now is to be guilty. Beyond the trial-by-media (circus) that happens so often, if our government decides you should become a non-person (citizen be damned!), then you are a non-person. You now have no rights, no legal representation, no right to a speed trial, nothing. The government deems you, damned you are. That the BB wasn’t read his rights immediately was already a travesty showing that law has been stripped away from our society. That he was a US citizen only compounded the issue; if we are a nation of laws then those laws apply to everyone, not just citizens. There is ALWAYS a ‘trickle down’ effect: when the federal government stops caring about law, the state governments follow right behind (see here and here for an example). How can any rational person think that city and county governments would hesitate?
So, to summarize, we are already in a lawless feudal society where wealth buys you anything and being poor is a crime. Sure, maybe the pendulum will swing back like has done so many times in the past (we can fantasize it will do so absent a world war), but I am thinking that this time it is going to stick. Maybe it will revert, but on a timescale that will make it such that I still will want to leave (unless I somehow get into the top hundredth of a percent and can ignore the plight of all you poor people).
