Plan A was for America, if memory serves.
Over the course of this wild and wacky Campaign-O-Rama…a two-year spending frenzy that has served as our principal economic stimulus…I have actually heard the legendary American Dream redefined as “owning your own home.” See here, I thought it was more along the lines of starting with little or nothing and, through superlative effort/energy/aptitude/ingenuity coupled with extraordinary opportunity/serendipity/providence/timing…voila…a productive, fulfilled, happy and secure personage who commands the respect of and enjoys the benefits of Society. What do I know?
Which brings me to Plan B, for Bailout. I know the Great Bailout constitutes privatizing profits and socializing losses, I do know that much. I know that if crime pays, there will be more crime. And I know that, so far, crime pays.
That doesn’t work for me.
I dare claim universal recognition that it is rather harder to be honest than dishonest. It is rather more difficult to continually endeavor to do the right thing…when time and money are short and expediencies regularly present themselves…than to do whatever you please, whenever you please, however you please. A lotta people could get over a lot better if they did not feel morally obliged to tow the line. Government would tell us that not only can the Elite NOT tow any lines, but that they shall be REWARDED for unrestrained free-wheeling with other people’s money?
Like I said, that doesn’t work for me.
Ergo, Plan C…for Cells. Not the terrorist cells that have caused a certain amount of mayhem and that have, in my opinion, been marketed to create OTHER mayhem. Prison Cells. Note the distinction between prison cells and jail cells. I’m talking about federal penitentiaries, not country club jails that serve almost as much needed R & R after all that raping and pillaging.
For real, I have a plan. I not infrequently remind me of Lucy Ricardo…”I’ve GOT it!”
“What have you got?” Ethyl would reliably ask with telltale skepticism.
“A PLAN.”
I am not precisely sure about blogging etiquette, nor about the Findability Factor. I expect I will do myself a favor on both fronts by providing lots of links to correlate with my remarks. I actually DO have quite a lot of research…completely inefficiently clumped at present…and I expect I shall improve rather than deteriorate as a Citizen Journalist. I heard that term on what-passes-for-news…I kinda like it.
In the meantime, though, until I DO become more adroit, I will suggest that many of my remarks are intuitive and general and that demand to cite sources is usually the your-mother-wears-army-boots equivalent of “PROVE IT.” As well, I hear this on the radio, I read that in the coffee shops, this farmer talks about that, that driver talks about this…some of my remarks don’t have “sources” more specialized than My Life.
I declare that I am not a Liar. I’m a piece of work, to be sure…an acquired taste for a niche audience, and even THEN only in limited doses…but I am not a Liar. Easiest thing in the world to say. The next easiest thing is to spot a discrepancy between words and deeds. In real life, that’s the way it is, is it not? You come up against a new person in whatever context, you gotta decide whether they know what they’re talking about and whether they mean what they say. If a person’s word is no good, really, what more is there to say?
Liars lie. It’s what they DO. Babies cry, birds fly, people die and liars lie. Psychopathic Liars, several of whom are numbered among our Conscienceless Uber Rich, lie even when they don’t have to. It’s like chasing mercury.
Which brings me to Plan C, for Cells.
Must I dig up statistics to back up the assertion that America has the largest prison population on earth? MAYBE it’s the largest per capita but I don’t think so, I think it’s the largest in the world. Here is something I WILL pull from the dreaded Documents labyrinth of my computer, which has steadily deteriorated into an unsavory blend of the junk drawer in the kitchen and the wrong side of the tracks.
”When it shall be said in any country in the world, my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am the friend of its happiness: when these things can be said, thn may that country boast its constitution and its government.”
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Part II, 1792
.
America…keenly principled and freshly independent…was one of Thomas Paine’s expressed inspirations in writing Rights of Man. Neither he nor any of our Founding Fathers would be anything but horrified by the State of the Nation, I’m pretty sure of that. I expect they would urge resurrection of public stockades.
If a dog poops on the living room rug, you don’t take the dog out back, point at the flowers and start hollering, “NO! Bad dog!” And you surely don’t, whilst pointing at the flowers, commence lip service to beauty, “We want to keep the living room rug as fresh as flowers so…NO MORE POOPING IN THE HOUSE!”
If a kid swipes another kid’s toy at the park, you don’t take him AND the swiped toy home, sit him down amongst all his toys plus the purloined toy and deliver a speech about sharing. And you surely don’t, whilst delivering the speech on sharing, give the kid an early birthday present.
I am DELIGHTED to hear of more and more calls for Executive Retribution…Mario Cuomo in New York, Keith Fimian running for Congress out of Virginia, a couple different Congressmen on C-SPAN. Otherwise, we’re not only letting them keep the toys they swiped, we’re giving them early birthday presents.
Let the punishment suit the crime. That is wisdom of the ages.
At the root of creative accounting and juggling books and scattering risk and bundling debt and fudging incomes and fibbing rates and winging appraisals lies Greed. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins, that is also wisdom of the ages.
In the couple years that I have been posting online, I have more than once been presented with the argument that a certain amount of Greed is good. Bollocks, to quote Christine Lagarde.
Greed is intense, selfish insatiable desire that exceeds need and warrant alike.
People also argue, rightly I think, that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. But it does NOT follow that the right amount of a bad thing is a good thing. Virtues can be rendered vices. Vices are not rendered virtues.
The offenses are assorted…collusion, insider trading, price fixing, tax evasion, fiduciary malfeasance, conspiracies in restraint of trade, racketeering…but they all trace to Greed.
As a paradigm for punishment, seizure of ill-gotten gains suits crimes attributable to Greed like it was bespoke on Jermyn Street in London.
We now know that when motivated by truly important matters, like the collapsing of America’s financial sector or the pulling of Terri Schaivo’s plug, Congress is able to pass landmark legislation lickety-split. Who can forget the Patriot Act?
When hard-core, bullet-ridden drug traffic hit Ireland, Ireland just said NO and, unlike us, meant it. Seizure of assets…not only those proven to be ill-gotten but those that could not be traced to legitimate sources…nipped that action virtually in the bud.
We can do the same here, AND make a dent in our deficit at the same time. Are you kidding me? We LOVE two-for-one specials.
But the Truth is, though they care about money more than anything, taking their money is not enough. Y’know why? Because they think they are above the law, at the same time that they are diabolically clever. Because their measure of self is obtained via their holdings, they will be motivated unto greater dastardliness to reclaim their greatness. I was once told by a Player that their idea of gossip is counting one another’s money.
Rather than get into long, drawn-out Marcia Clark-style legaleze over which assets were ill-gotten and which were honorable, seize everything except:
1.) the cost of running the family’s lifestyle and primary residence for one year
2.) one million dollars for when the Bad Guy emerges from his year in prison, hopefully reformed.
That is what I propose…seize their assets and send them to federal penitentiaries for one year; their families will be covered while they’re “inside” and they’ll have a million bucks to work with when they get out. Nuthin’ cruel or inhuman about that.
The sins of the father will be visited upon their sons. If families are AT the table, families are ON the table. It is sad about the children, I agree, but the Scoundrels should have given that more thought. Spouses, on the other hand, get no sympathy from me. Think aiding and abetting, think accomplices.
It can be hoped that a year in prison will teach humility, but that is out of our control.
This is not.
I heard on the radio within the past year that the literacy rate of our extraordinary prison population is…get this…THREE PERCENT. It doesn’t even seem possible. MAYBE it was the literacy rate of a convict subset, but I don’t think so, I think it was system-wide.
How on earth do we propose that illiterate people with prison records will earn a living, once they are returned to Society? It practically guarantees reversion to a life of crime and a return to prison. Three strikes, they’re out, you say? And they have two strikes against them at the gate? Who on earth hires illiterate ex-cons? Our credit is shot, so now we borrow trouble.
Like-minded people resonate with one another. Athletes, I think, have more regard for coaches who played the game. Soldiers, I presume, respond better to military officers than to gardeners. Alcoholics, I would know this, get through to other drunks.
Let the criminals teach the criminals. The Bad Guys are bad, not stupid. Let them spend one year in federal penitentiaries teaching those illiterate convicts their letters and numbers. How to fill out a job application, what is an interest rate, stuff like that.
I’ll bet half a dozen disgraced executives won’t have to be raped before there will be a long overdue call for reform of our Draconian prison system. Incarceration Incorporated is decidedly not Christian, it’s not American…it’s not even decent.