Tuesday, August 02, 2005

14. How is the power of the big corporations in America, connected to the abuse of power by judges and lawyers?

So why don't the rich people and corporations keep the judges under control, and force them to be honest?

In talking about the power of the big corporations, and the billionaires and multi-hundred-millionaires, it isn't necessary to take sides on issues like market capitalism versus leftist social democracy, or the old-fashioned debate about what Americans call 'conservative' versus 'liberal' viewpoints.

What is involved here, is the monopoly power of rich companies and a few rich people, so concentrated that it has become huge and dangerous, and stifles free competition, personal independence, and human rights. It is what even USA Presidents, going back to Teddy Roosevelt, warned about as the dangerous power of 'trusts', cartels and monopolies. This also ties in to what US President Dwight Eisenhower warned against as the power of the 'military industrial complex', the big corporations and wealthy people receiving the trillions of 'national security' spending, whom he said might eventually control all branches and aspects of government, if people were not vigilant.

It is that kind of concentrated, monopoly power that is at issue here - not just the power of the judges and lawyers themselves as a monopoly, but the power of the corporations behind those judges and who set up the system as it now stands.

Of course it benefits judges themselves to operate a culture of almost naked and unrestrained power, where complaints about judges are only reviewed by other judges. It benefits the judges to have a system where the lawyers appearing in court must slavishly submit to the judges, and not dare expose corruption, or else instantly lose their ability to practice law, and maybe face jail under judge orders for 'contempt of court'. The system now is where USA judges can commit crimes and develop a culture of gang bribery, secure in the knowledge that they can cover up for themselves and any fellow judges who engage in bribery and misconduct.

The current game benefits the judges, and it benefits the group of wealthy lawyers who play dirty games with the judges and who buy influence with them. But all of that may not be enough to explain why the game keeps going on.

Over and over again, people cry out in private: Why doesn't 'somebody' do something about these crooked judges and lawyers? Why won't anyone help me? Why do the politicians, the police and everybody else, stay silent whilst all of this is going on?

Yes, theoretically, the legislators have the power to go after the judges. Theoretically, media could start publicising on the front page of the newspapers, and in the headlines of news broadcasts, all the terrible crimes being committed by judges and lawyers, all the stories of so many victims, with so much proof in written documents. If major media wished, they could publicise all those stories that are usually only found on obscure internet pages, written by people after they themselves have become victims. The media could talk about the giant hidden iceberg of USA court corruption, with hundreds of thousands of victims, and numbering in the millions when you count family members.

But nonetheless, all the millions of victims of the legal system are suffering, and finding that no one in power, no big political party or influential media organisation, is taking up their cause, beyond the very occasional hint of what is happening. Why not?

The answer ultimately lies in the power of the big corporations, and their billionaire and multi-millionaire investors. These powers, ultimately, like the current system as it is. It works for them, even though the average common person often gets run over by the big bus driven by the judges, known as the American legal system. These big corporations, who also own the media companies, and who also supply the money for your congress-people and legislators, like the system as it is. So all the people who get the big corporation and billionaire money - the media, the legislators, the prosecutors and state governors who run for office, as well as the lawyers - they all generally stay quiet about legal corruption, because they know that the current legal system is what is wanted by those big corporations and investors who have lots of cash to deploy, either for them or against them.

A 'fair' legal system, which made the little person equal to the big corporation, is obviously something dangerous to the corporations, causing the corporations not only to lose money, but even more important, to lose control. An unfair legal system - where only the richest can afford to play the game well - benefits the corporations greatly.

Almost no one in America can pay lawyers $500 an hour for months and months. But this is small change for big companies or billionaires, to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers. For rich psychopaths, it is a pleasure to spend millions on the most disgusting crimes, such as raping children, or racist threats and murder of innocent people.

And it is not just lawsuits and legal claims, which the big corporations and rich investors are worried about. It is control of all the machinery of government, control of democracy itself, that is secured by owning the legal system.

America is the nation in the world whose political system, is most controlled and owned by big corporations and investors. An unfair legal system, with lots of influence-buying and bribery, not only lets companies win their particular legal battles, in taking away the rights of the little person. It also prevents other kinds of protests and political activity that could threaten the big companies' profits and power. The working class and middle class people, can be kept submissive and in fear, afraid of ever trying to ask for their rights either in the court or in the political or media arenas.

So America's unfair legal system is an important tool by the rich, used to keep people shut up and quiet and fearful. Similarly, the monopoly ownership of America's media by the big companies keeps many Americans ignorant of things that are going on, the media hiding what the corporations do not want them to hear. This corporate control extends to the internet portal companies, the internet search engines and social media, all of whom play their part in hiding truth.

Americans are in terror of the law and the legal system, as just enough stories of people's lives being destroyed via the courts, are allowed to circulate in the media. If the average American is arrested, he already instinctively fears that he will be railroaded and sent to jail if he is not rich, and if he does not have several hundred thousand dollars to spend. If he is sued by a big company, the average person instinctively fears to lose everything he owns, and go bankrupt.

The legal system is used to quash, silence and destroy, and even imprison, little people who try to criticise big companies, rich people, and - of course - judges and lawyers. The legal system is used to attack and harass people who try to start independent political parties or reform movements, or engage in protest activity, and to crush independent writers and critics.

One big tool of destroying people's lives, is the whole farce of American courts on divorce and family law, the custody of children and alimony and divorce property disputes. By keeping millions of Americans tied up in years of legal hell and losing money to this system, working Americans are kept poor, and drained of energy and resources they could use for other activity, such as politics on behalf of the working class.

In a general demoralisation of the working and lower classes and especially minorities, America has built a giant gulag of prisons, with more than 2 million prisoners - approximately one-fourth, twenty-five percent, of all the prisoners in the entire world. The USA is now a big jailhouse, with something like 1 out of every 150 US citizens currently in prison, many of them innocent, especially minorities.

Some people like to talk about statistics of high crime amongst minorities. Well, one thing that can be said in response, is that for decades now, US prosecutors largely do not care if the person they arrest for the crime is guilty or innocent. A crime is committed, and the detectives will often arrest some 'rando' minority, some hapless black or Latino individual, and say to themselves, 'Well he probably did some other crime even if he didn't do this one.' If minority crime statistics are high, it is in part because the actual criminals who did crimes, are often not the one arrested. With poorer minority cases knowing well that innocent young men especially are arrested, others lose the incentive to be law-abiding.

Working class and minority Americans live in fear of being sent to jail on false and bogus charges, with fake evidence from crooked jailhouse snitches, who tell lies just to get a lighter sentence for themselves. Sometimes you learn that an innocent man was strapped to a table and put to death, on the basis of such flimsy crooked evidence.

Paradoxically, middle-class whites in the USA often think the jailing of blacks and Hispanics are all 'mostly legitimate', even tho they themselves have experiences of getting mauled and abused in USA courts, although more in lawsuit and divorce cases and cases involving money. Very tragically in these times of racial and social group tension, there is too little understanding that, for example, American whites and blacks and Latinos, are all victimised by the US legal system, although in somewhat different ways for the middle class and the poor amongst minorities.

By contrast, hardly anybody is in jail in Europe, and the crime rates are much lower, despite many European countries only jailing 1 out of 1000 people, instead of 1 out of 150 like in the USA. America imprisons a much higher percentage of people than China, Cuba or other countries that USA leaders like to criticise.

The average person in the USA is already at least subconsciously aware that the legal system is a terrifying monster. It's a frightening iron fist of corruption on what should have been a better nation.

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