One Nation, Under Corruption, With Liberty and Justice for…. - by Queue
Queue on 25/10/2013 at 15:00
Over on today's
Rabid Liberal news-site, I noticed a couple of stories that really should have gotten my lefty ire up, but instead I find that I'm numb to these constant revelations of misdeeds, misconduct, and abuse of powers.
First Story: (
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/24/texas-judge-forced-to-resign-after-caught-texting-instructions-to-assistant-da-during-trial/) http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/24/texas-judge-forced-to-resign-after-caught-texting-instructions-to-assistant-da-during-trial/
Second Story: (
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/24/nc-gop-official-fired-after-bragging-voter-id-law-would-kick-the-democrats-butt/) http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/24/nc-gop-official-fired-after-bragging-voter-id-law-would-kick-the-democrats-butt/
But shenanigans such as these have been part of the American Way throughout history. It's nothing new. So with this in mind, I pose the question: For a future generation, what do you believe needs to happen for those to put aside prejudices, personal gains, political gains, and ideological rhetoric toward upholding the integrity of their office and position?
Personally, I'm starting to believe nothing short of dragging the no-good-doers (like bankers, Special Interest heads, jackboot cops, hanging judges, and a bevy of various corrupt officials) out in the street and beheading them, ala Revolutionary France, would do the trick. Sure, it might seem a bit extreme, but it also would affect some sort of concrete consequence for fucking your fellow man without so much as a reach around.
So, hopefully someone more level headed than I can weigh in before we start sharpening the axes.
[edit] BTW, as far as government corruption on a State level goes, my neck of the woods (Michigan) scored #8 on the Top Ten List. (
http://www.therichest.com/expensive-lifestyle/location/the-10-most-corrupt-state-governments-in-the-united-states/) http://www.therichest.com/expensive-lifestyle/location/the-10-most-corrupt-state-governments-in-the-united-states/
Pyrian on 26/10/2013 at 00:15
Quote Posted by Queue
For a future generation, what do you believe needs to happen for those to put aside prejudices, personal gains, political gains, and ideological rhetoric toward upholding the integrity of their office and position?
Constant, vigorous, unrelenting scrutiny and accountability. It's not so bad when they're caught and punished. It's much worse when they do all this crap with impunity and get away with it.
Quote Posted by Queue
Personally, I'm starting to believe nothing short of dragging the no-good-doers (like bankers, Special Interest heads, jackboot cops, hanging judges, and a bevy of various corrupt officials) out in the street and beheading them, ala Revolutionary France, would do the trick.
This is not something you can control. Ref: Revolutionary France. Innocents will die. You'll probably die before it's over. And the hopelessly corrupt you wanted to remove forever? Odds are decent they'll be running the show. Or, those who
are running the show will end up hopelessly corrupt. Power is like that. Lethal unaccountable power, even more so.
faetal on 26/10/2013 at 11:02
Animal Farm. Cut one head off and another will replace it. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The distribution of power into many separately elected entities is supposed to undermine this concept, but just makes the targets for corruption smaller than one big entity and thus easier to individually buy / coerce / replace. A large part of me just thinks that the scale of hman governance is such that it will always tend towards a tyrant or feudal system.
The US kind of resembles an ultra-nationalistic feudal state these days, albeit a modern synthesis of such. The UK is pretty close behind and I suspect other European countries will be forced that way too, since global ecnomies are irrevocably interlinked. The serfs are kept occupied with trivia (TV/ games / beer) while the fruits of their labour is incrementally diverted to the offshore accounts of an elite few. This is happening more or less everywhere and as the money is siphoned out at ever-increasing rates, the absurd notion of eternal growth is kept alive by increasing the national debt, ensuring a growing tax burden on those who pay it. What happens when this all collapses inward on itself, who knows, but those who are causing it will have vast amounts of money in places it can't be touched, so I doubt they're too worried.
Tony_Tarantula on 26/10/2013 at 17:21
For that first one, the issue lies with how they select judges. We've got a system where most judges are former prosecutors which is inevitably going to corrupt the legal process over time.
Example of the mentality that brings:
Quote:
When my case first began, Judge Richard Owen kept making jokes about Steven Schiffer and how he was the first in an SEC case to be stripped of all lawyers. Judge Owen said he never “took it upstairs” meaning to the Appeal’s Court and then laughed in court. When I asked my lawyer, who Owen was trying to remove, what was so funny he said “you don’t want to know.” I insisted – who was this Schiffer he was constantly joking about. I had never heard of Schiffer. It turned out Judge Owen caused him to commit suicide hanging himself stripped of counsel and harassed by government on every front. Some people just cannot endure this type of treatment. This is how they get their pleas – threats and torture. It should be illegal to accept a plea, but when the judges are former prosecutors, there is nobody to protect human rights. This is all about winning. That is it.
A second part of it can be faulted at John Ashcroft Ashcroft changed the rules for federal prosecutors, so that the number of convictions they win isn't how they advance career. Instead they're judged by how many years of jail time they are able to rack up.....which seems to be a policy that was designed to stuff the jails with as many people as possible. It encourages locking people away for any reason whatsoever and is part of why the prison population is so high.
Yakoob on 27/10/2013 at 06:23
Quote Posted by faetal
A large part of me just thinks that the scale of hman governance is such that it will always tend towards a tyrant or feudal system.
Yeerp, must agree. One of the many (sad) things I gleemed from my studies in Ethnic Conflict is that the human really is a very vile creature...
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
It encourages locking people away for any reason whatsoever and is part of why the prison population is so high.
Similarly many cops have a quota of how many tickets they give out each month which further encourages this. Hopefully whoever thought those two were a good ideas was the first victim of these policies :p
