The American Justice System

Is this a great country or what?

I was reading a post over on That Girl’s site and something she said made me think. First, I would like to thank TG because she always seems to come up with something that makes me extend my mental boundaries. Thanks TG – you are the best.

She wrote this in the middle of her post:

“Why am I going in with a ‘guilty until proven innocent’ mindset? Even the judicial system doesn't do that. Everyone is innocent first, right?”

When I read this I chuckled. It told me that TG has never actually spent any time in the machine that is the American Legal System. Good for you TG…I pray that none of you ever get to experience the hell that is being an innocent person being run over by the justice system in this country. We may have the best justice system in the world, but please don’t believe the hype.

Anyone who has ever been arrested and charged with a crime in this country would attest that the “innocent until proven guilty” motto that we have shoved down our throats is a crock of shit. Now I am not talking about being arrested for having too many outstanding parking tickets or for a DUI. That is the cookie cutter, turn key justice system. When you are arrested for a DUI, in my state at least, the process is laid out for you. You don’t even need a lawyer.

Get arrested for something serious, like five felony accounts of embezzlement, and you will get to experience the real American Justice System. This happened to me and I can tell you I was not treated like I was innocent until proven guilty. I was treated as though I was GUILTY.

Now I was completely innocent of these charges. After I found out what was happening and how I was involved, I felt guilty. But it was more like Catholic guilt than courtroom guilt.

I am not going to go into all the details of this case, but suffice to say I had no idea what the guilty people were doing. The D.A. had documentation that made it look like I took about 2% of the money embezzled – that is all. Did they come to me and ask for an explanation? No. Did they contact me at all? No. Did they arrest me and four others and charge us with five felonies plus a bunch of other charges? Yes.

I had to get a lawyer. I paid him over $10,000 in the year it took for me to settle my portion of this case. In that time I can tell you that the police that arrested me treated me like I was guilty. The judge treated me like I was guilty. The D.A. treated me like I was guilty. At no time did I feel like I was treated as an innocent person.

When you are arrested, they don’t give you a sign to wear stating “first arrest, might be innocent” to separate you from the people wearing the “rap sheet as long as my arm” signs so that the police know who to treat like an innocent person while incarcerated. It is probably a good thing they don’t do this as it might make the stay in jail a much more memorable occasion. Instead you are all treated the same – as people who have committed crimes.

Even after I took a lie detector test – and passed – the D.A. refused to drop the charges against me. He actually told my lawyer that he was pretty sure I was innocent, but if he released me, then it would weaken his case against the others. Can you believe that…he knew I was innocent, but decided he needed to prolong my personal hell. That is the American justice system. If you don’t believe it, watch a few episodes of Law and Order. You will inevitably see an episode where the D.A. says to arrest them all we will sort out the innocent one’s later.

There IS one time in the entire process that the “innocent until proven guilty” proverb is true. When you are actually on trial. I think it works there, because the 12 peers that are judging you are more likely to start out with the idea that you are innocent. They have not been jaded by years of dealing with the truly guilty. Besides, in the courtroom, the D.A. has to prove you are guilty. Up until that point, no proof is required.

What I saw during my up close, year long experience with our justice system was a lot of people working in a system that breeds cynicism. The police, lawyers, judges, probation officers and all the other people who work in the American justice system spend so much time around real guilty criminals that they automatically assume everyone arrested is guilty – which is probably true for more than 90% of them. They are very jaded and cynical and tend to believe the worst of people and not the best. This is completely understandable, but understanding the reason behind their cynicism sure doesn’t help if you are getting pummeled by the system.

Now some of you might wonder how this all ended for me. After a year of postponements and delays, while the D.A. tried to build a case, I was tired of paying a lawyer and living through this nightmare. I was allowed to plead to a misdemeanor and was released. My record was later expunged. By law I can tell people that I have never been arrested or convicted of a crime. However, when a background check is done, this arrest sometimes appears. It states I was never convicted, but the arrest for five felonies shows up. This requires me to disclose this whole story to every potential employer. I have a standard letter I give with every employment application, just in case. So this hell stays with me forever.

As for the rest of the charged parties, the court case was settled over a year after I pleaded out. Of the four remaining people, only one was convicted of anything. The rest were released. The sad thing is that the one person, who was convicted, confessed before the entire process began. This whole nightmare should never have happened.

Write Your Congressman

Is this a great country or what?

You know what is great about this country…weekends. Sure they are too short. Sure they seem to fly by in a drunken haze. But come on, weekends are the best part of the week.

I remember when I used to enjoy three day weekends every week. Now that was good times. Working Monday through Thursday and then…Thursday night debauchery. I think we should see if we can work two days a weeks and have a five day weekend. Most of you will still be able to do the same amount of work in two days that you do in the five days you work now – slackers.

Five days would be just enough time for me to enjoy myself on the weekend and then recover before the week starts. Two day weekends just do not afford me enough time to recover. I am usually not really myself until Wednesday. This is a good plan. If we maintain the five day school week, then I think this becomes a perfect plan. You parents know that one of the problems with weekends is that the kids are home all day.

I am sure if we all band together we can get Congress to enact an amendment or a law or something stating that the weekends will now start on Wednesday.

Of course we will need to change a few things. TGIF will need to be changed to TGIT. The restaurant Friday’s will need to change their name to Tuesday’s. Airline rates will decrease based on an overnight Wednesday stay. New movie releases will come out on Tuesday. The $5, $5, $5 pizza deal will need to be moved to Monday. I am sure there are a few more things, but nothing that seems like a deal breaker.

Help me out…write your Congressman. Write the President. Write Arnold, he will get it done.

Stop The Madness

Is this a great country or what?

One of the things that drive me crazy is that we live in a very reactionary country. Maybe reactionary is the wrong word. I think over-reactionary probably describes us a little better. If you do not think that we tend to over react to every thing that happens in this country, let me give you a great example. I used to fly about 75,000 miles a year inside the continental US. After the 911 tragedy, the security changed in airports. I can tell you that a modicum of security changes was definitely in order. However, when they started to confiscate my finger nail file at the security check points, I thought we had gone too far. What were they afraid of, I was going to give a stewardess a pedicure? Over Reaction

Now you are probably wondering what got me on this tirade. Well, let me tell you. On the way home, I was changing the radio station looking to find something interesting to hear, when I ran across one of the many right wing reactionary republican radio talk shows that seem to flood the airwaves. This one happened to be the famed Savage Nation show. Now I normally try to avoid this show, because the few times I have listened to it, I have felt the urge to get on a plane, find Michael Savage, and my foot in his ass. And, after the airport security confiscated my pedicure kit, I can assure this would be painful for him.

Today I listened to his show for a few minutes as he lambasted the FCC for not holding the satellite radio industry to the same standards that they do the terrestrial radio industry (that is your normal car radio for you right wingers). He does not like the fact that satellite radio has some programs that he finds offensive and that would not be able to be aired on regular radio. When a few callers voiced the opinion that satellite was a service you pay for so the FCC should not regulate it as they do normal radio, he seriously over reacted. Callers also likened the situation to that of watching regular TV versus HBO. Things are not as regulated on HBO as on NBC let’s say. Mr. Savage then decided to spew out some of his right wing idealism. Stating that if we were willing to let anything on TV that someone was will to pay to watch, then would we be willing to allow snuff films on TV. IN 20 years we will have snuff films on TV. At that point anyone who called got the “so you would allow snuff films on TV?” Like that has anything to do with the point. Way to over sensationalize your idea to the point that no sane person could disagree with you.

Sensationalism, is that the way you justify your point of view. That is pretty much how we got into this war…

I do not feel I need to, but let me address the snuff film question first. Does Mr. Savage believe that the moral judgment of this country is so low that in 20 years we would think it would be OK to watch “little girls from Thailand” in snuff films. I am not even going to repeat the other things he said about these snuff films. I tend to believe that the majority of us Americans would see that snuff films are bad…

If republicans are suppose to be for less government, then why are they for more government regulation. The republicans seem to want to regulate more and more what we see, hear or play. If you are truly for a smaller government, then please stay out of my business and let me listen to the music I want. If you really want to regulate something, then try Reality TV. Not that there is anything morally repugnant with reality TV, it just sucks.

As for the original question, now that I have disposed of his sensationalism, here is but one reason why the FCC should mind its own business. The reason that the FCC can regulate what is on radio is the government owns the airwaves. The government gave the radio and TV broadcasters these airwaves years ago for public broadcasts. This gives them the right to regulate what goes on these airwaves. The satellite industry is privately owned. They put up their satellites. They have the right to broadcast what ever they want. I assume they have no plans to start broadcasting snuff films, but if they do, you can be sure I will be the first one to file a suit to shut them down.

Now, I have never really considered my self a democrat or a republican. I think everyone is a little of both. I have always believed there are very few absolutes in life. And that if you are a zealot about any one thing, then chances are you aren’t listening to other peoples opinions. That means that you are missing out on a lot of good information. Why does it seem that the only idiots they give a microphone to are the ones that are so far to the right or the left that they do not represent any significant portion of the masses. Please stop listening to these idiots. If you agree with them, please do not reproduce. They are a lot of things to learn in this world if you will just listen.

You Talented MoFos

Is this a great country or what?

You know what makes this country great? Lyrics like these by The Killers:

Well somebody told me
You had a boyfriend
Who looks like a girlfriend
That I had in February of last year
It's not confidential
I've got potential

Now, it is not that these lyrics are overly profound or inspiring.It is just that they are cool. One of the things I love about this country is the way it cultivates artistic creativity. Not only do we encourage people to develop their artist creativity, we reward it. I know there are thousands of talented artists in this country who toil in obscurity, but this is still the best place on the planet to be an artist.

I have always been jealous of those people that are naturally blessed with artistic abilities. I have always yearned for the talent necessary to be able to compose music, write poetry, play a musical instrument, paint, draw, or write a novel. Alas, those are not skills I was blessed with. I guess I just have to continue to admire those talented mofos who have the ability to amaze us all with cool lyrics and a seemingly unending supply of artistic creativity.

Get Qualified First

Is this a great country or what?

I did not really want to start this post off with something really controversial, but what the hell. I am not sure if any of you have tried to purchase a home lately, but the qualification process is unbelievable. There are a lot of reasons why they won’t let you buy a home. You can’t buy a home if you have a bad credit number, you pay your bills late, you owe too much money, or if you do not have a job. Now I understand that buying a house is a big deal and that the people who are entrusting you with this great responsibility have some right to make sure that you can handle the burden and the responsibility of paying for and caring for your home.

So my question is this…why is it so hard to buy a house in this country, and yet they will let any idiot have children. Didn’t see that coming did you? I have seriously considered that we need to make people fill out an application and get qualified before they are allowed to have children. I am not asking for much. But people should meet a few basic requirements before they are allowed to procreate.

1. They can’t be a kid themselves.
2. They should not be living with their parents.
3. They should have a job.
4. They should be able to support themselves in this world…pay their own bills.
5. They should not be on drugs.
6. They should have a good income to debt ratio.

You pretty much have to meet this same list of requirements to purchase a home in this country.

Now I know some of you are going to notice that I did not put anything on the list about being married. That is because I do not think that you need to be married to have kids. Nor do I believe that only heterosexual couples can raise children (a whole other topic). If someone is mature enough and can take care of themselves, let them have kids married or not, gay or not.

I want you to know that I am speaking from very direct experience here. I come from a large family (I guess). I have two brothers and three sisters. I am the oldest and as far as I can tell the smartest, at least when it comes to this subject. I have one child (learned my lesson after the first one). I left the house when I was 18 and have lived and supported myself and my family ever since. I needed to leave the ghetto as soon as possible. Between my 5 siblings, they have 15 children. Most of my siblings could not even support themselves until they hit the age of 30, yet they already had most of these children. My poor parents…now you know why they live in the ghetto. Now, I love my nieces and nephews like you do complete strangers, but there is no way my brothers and sisters would have been approved, in my world, to have this many or in some cases any kids. APPLICATION REJECTED.

Parents are entrusted with a great responsibility. The have a responsibility to raise children into responsible, caring, intelligent, tolerant, well adjusted human beings. Who in turn will do the same for their children. Somewhere over the last generation or so, parents seem to have lost that sense of responsibility toward the nurturing of their children. Why is that?

One reason may be that, when I was growing up, the average family could pretty much live on a single income. Nowadays, all families need to have multiple incomes or they are forced to live in places like Iowa (nothing personal all you Iowanians). This double income required society means kids do not see their parents much, parents can take very little responsibility for raising their kids and kids are growing up without adult supervision. This has left children to learn their values from a Play Station (don’t get me started on videos games). We are creating a generation of kids with no moral integrity, no value system and no self worth. Why do you think we have needed to create all of these new disorders over the last 15 years? It gives parents an excuse for their children’s behavior. In my day a kid was hyper, he did not have ADD and certainly did not require medication.

It is not like this idea is unprecedented. There are countries where couples are only allowed to have one child. I don’t know if we need to do that, although living in an over populated Northern California makes me think this is not a bad idea.

Someone will ask, what do we do with the people who get pregnant and are not qualified. Good question. I did not say I had it all worked out.

The Beginning of Some Bad Writing

First off I would like to credit Richard Jeni with the name and description of this blog. I was watching him on TV and he thought that America needed a good slogan in order to get the other countries to like us. He seemed to think that America could do well to release the great marketing machine we have created onto the world. If we marketed ourselves better, then maybe the rest of the world wouldn't hate us.

As I watched him, I thought that this would be an interesting blog. I could talk about the many good and bad things concerning this country we live in. I will write about everything from racism to crime as well as amusement parks and Jello. Yes, Jello is one of the great things about this country. I can't always promise that you will agree with what I muse on these pages, but I can promise you that I don't care.