I grew up in the Bronx reading comic books and listening to the radio and learned to believe that the good guys always won, and the bad guys always lost and ended up in prison. Good triumphed over evil not just once in a while but all of the time. It was not a good way to start out in life.
About 5 years ago I notified the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department about what I considered a major breach of the Anti Trust laws and was told by them that I was correct and there was a violation but they were not going to do anything about it. It was unfathomable to me at the time and it is remains amazing to me years later.
We lost, while those with power won!
Over thirty years ago our court system convicted my former boss at Columbia Pictures David Begelman who had committed a couple of very minor felonies like check forgery and embezzlement.
The "legal system" did not care about petty and insignificant stuff like that, so they sentenced him to community service. During the same week I listened to a defense lawyer representing a welfare mother decry it when she was sentenced to five years in prison for stealing six thousand dollars from the system. While this woman did a bad thing, FIVE years in prison?
One might ask why Begelman was not sent to prison for what he had done and I can only suppose that powerful people did not want him to go to jail and they made certain that he didn't.
We lost, while those with power won!
And now I ask why Begelman did not go to jail while Governor Siegelman of Alabama did.
I now quote an editorial about him from the New York Times From August 6th, 2007, titled Selective Prosecution
"We American's have always believed that our judiciary is just and non-partisan. But concerns are being raised that the United States is beginning to resemble a 3rd world dictatorship, at least in Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department.
Don Siegelman, a former Alabama governor, was the state's most prominent Democrat and had a decent chance of retaking the governorship from the Republican incumbent. Instead a Republican judiciary put their political "nemesis" in jail."
If you would like to be more depressed look at the Sixty Minutes piece about Siegelman.
To me this represents a gigantic "good grief!" I challenge anyone to look at this piece and not be ashamed of our government. Had this happened in an outright dictatorship I would perhaps understand, but in the United States of America, it is unbelievable.
David Begelman committed a crime and was saved from jail due to the efforts of powerful people and Siegelman, who apparently broke no law, was sent to jail because of the efforts of powerful people.
We lost, while those with power won!
What has gone wrong with our country, or has it always been the way it is now?
These things along with so many others make me sad that in our great democracy those with the most "political juice," -- money, influence, and power -- have their way with things, and the arguably innocent Governor Siegelman is sent to prison.
Sad, sad, sad, very sad.
I continue to use my small voice to comment on "media and other transgressions." And neither the public nor the system appears to care.
How can ANYONE justify the imprisonment of Siegelman?
"Community service anyone?"
I welcome myself back to the way things have always been.
In conclusion: Karl Rove should be in prison and not "making things up" on Ruperts' Fox News Channel.
And all men are petty, power grubbing and fearful, particulary when confronted by those they have wronged. This fear of retribution is at the core of the anti Obama sentiment; the fear that blacks will rise up and get even for all the years of persecution. That the poor will take back the government by sheer growing numbers. This is not uniquely American, but because of our unique history America is the international soap opera dramatization of racism and disenfranchisement everywhere in the world.
We are the world, and it is not pretty.
I ask myself a similar question all the time. I think that it's always been true to a lesser extent, but the powerful do worse things now - and still get away with it. The Class War is being fought, and the lower classes are losing.