What would the Constitutional Fundamentalists at the Tea Party think?
On July 12, 2010, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York United States District Court in Manhattan ruled that suspects can be held over six years and still get a speedy trial.
You may remember the U.S. Constitution has a Sixth (VI) Amendment stating: "In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial."
Apparently Judge Kaplan can't read at grade level, or thinks he is not obligated by the U.S. Constitution, or is just plain corrupt. Or maybe he believes in "judge made law." He appears to have set a new standard for speedy trial. "Speedy" does not mean in a short period of time. It is all about the alleged criminal's ability to defend himself. If that does not decrease in the pre-trial period of time, then the trial is speedy. Even if it takes six years to get around to it. Or, as Kaplan wrote in his opinion "There is no persuasive evidence that the delay in this prosecution has impaired Ghailani’s ability to defend himself in any respect or significantly prejudiced him in any other way pertinent to the speedy trial analysis."
Get prepared, America. Forget the assumption you are not guilty until proven to be. You can be held in jail for six years. And apparently interogated (aka tortured) by the CIA. Then, you get a trial.
The suspect, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, is accused of having some role in bombing American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. Maybe he deserved a long prison sentence. On the other hand, the case is one of many that brings to the forefront the United States government's extending of its legal arm to foreign soils. Should not Mr. Ghailani be tried in Kenya and Tanzania? Or perhaps President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton should be tried in Afghanistan for all the Afghans they have killed?
This is how liberty is engineered into oblivion. The government picks a case where the alleged criminal will have no public sympathy. It uses collaborating judges like Kaplan, and often arranges for a weak defense attorney for the victim. Maybe the ruling is appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where if upheld it sets a precedent for the entire nation.
Once the precedent is set, the old interpretation of the word "speedy" is erased from the U.S. Constitution. It is replaced by the right of the government to delay trial as long as a judge can be persuaded that the defendant has not had his defense capability impaired. In the case of the majority of poor people, they have little ability to defend themselves as it is, so there can't be much erosion.
Or, again quoting Kaplan: "The Sixth Amendment guarantees "a speedy ... trial," but it nowhere defines speedy."
I did not know the U.S. Constitution included a dictionary. Most of the words in the Constitution are not defined in the Constitution. So words means whatever judges say they mean?
Today a guy who is labeled an Islamic terrorist. Tomorrow, a Tea Party or militia guy, or perhaps a Socialist or environmentalist trouble maker. Maybe just a whistleblower. Once a precedent is set, whoever controls the apparatus of state and judicial power has a mighty weapon against their enemies.
Again, we have a good illustration that we are subject to the Gruel of Law. Rich people will doubtless continue to get speedy trials, and acquittals if there is any doubt as to their guilt. The poor, and especially those who oppose the U.S. government's attempt to boss everyone in the world around, will get whatever swill American judges dish out.
See also United States of America vs. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani
Showing posts with label justice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label justice. Show all posts
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Larceny of the Heart and Government
I noticed that my dog Hugo had taken a stick from my wood pile to play with. Since I was walking to the garden to dump the kitchen compost, with nothing else on my mind, this launched a train of thought about the nature of theft. I thought about how I hate being stolen from, but have not led a pure life in that regard myself. I thought about how society and government work, and how they could work better. Only then did I go back to thinking about how Hugo seems to be able to distinguish between what belongs to him and what belongs to others. There seems to be a mammalian basis for the concept of private property.
The phrase "larceny of the heart" kept popping back into my head. I believe almost every human being experiences larceny of the heart from time to time. I would put define this as a step building on mere desire. It involves knowing that something does not belong to you, and thinking of grabbing it anyway. Theft is actually acting on that feeling. Sometimes we humans rationalize our thefts. After all, if something has been stolen from us, do we not have the right to steal it back?
Like most people I was brought up on the straight and narrow regarding theft. It is hard to imagine either of my parents, poor as they might have been as children, ever stealing anything as adults. My childhood thefts were extremely petty.
The socialist ideas that were circulating in that era (late 1960's) only gradually had an affect on me. They can be summed up: capitalism is theft. By paying workers poorly, or overcharging consumers, or both, capital is accumulated. To that, I learned when I started studying political science, add an overlay of imperialism. It is possible to pay workers well in an imperialist country, and keep the capitalists and politicians happy too, by overcharging consumers and underpaying workers in economic colonies.
Many theories of government have been proposed, but they boil down to two scenarios: government to steal, and government to prevent stealing. Once a government has been around for a while, it usually does some of both, and it is usually biased to the status quo. This is that there are rich people, and they won't tolerate the idea that their wealth was created by some form of theft. No one is supposed to steal, but sharp business practices of the past, and even past violence, is to be forgotten about in all equations of justice.
Looking at our current government, we can argue endlessly about what part of taxation is for communal projects we all benefit from, and what is some form of legitimized theft. The rich don't like the idea of progressive taxation. The middle class may not like being taxed to subsidize both wealthy corporations (largely owned by rich people) and the needy. The people who do most of the actual work, but whose pay makes it fair to describe them as working class or even working poor, don't like paying taxes any more than anyone else. And the poor, well, they are a real mixed lot. Except they all want one thing in common: they want more. They share that trait with all of us.
When someone, or an institution, asks for a government subsidy or tax break, do they ever say to themselves, from whom will these tax dollars be stolen? I don't think so. Not the person faking a disability to draw $200 a week, not the defense contractor corporation grabbing $2 million a day.
I believe the core function of government should be the establishment of justice. You should get that for your tax dollar, even before you get roads or public schools or other things I think governments are the best institutions for providing. In America justice is scarce; mostly you have to hire lawyers to even have a chance of getting it. That is fundamentally wrong.
I think that very little of the "crime" that is actually punished in the United States involves serious theft or violence. It has nothing to do with justice. It is almost all about black markets. If the government would stop creating black markets, most ordinary (non-business) crime would go away. Prisons could be closed, saving the taxpayers a great deal of money.
The other place where we could clearly cut back on government is military spending. America is safe from foreign invasion. Unfortunately, other nations are not safe from the U.S.
I'd like a little justice for my tax dollars. I believe that by setting examples at the top, there would be less trouble at the bottom. The ideal examples would be Presidents and Congresses that did not commit crimes. But since that is rare in U.S. history, lets start with this: a war crimes tribunal. Let's try and punish every president from George Washington to Barack Obama who has committed crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Then we can, with clear consciences, address the trickier issue of what is fair taxation, and what is legalized theft.
The phrase "larceny of the heart" kept popping back into my head. I believe almost every human being experiences larceny of the heart from time to time. I would put define this as a step building on mere desire. It involves knowing that something does not belong to you, and thinking of grabbing it anyway. Theft is actually acting on that feeling. Sometimes we humans rationalize our thefts. After all, if something has been stolen from us, do we not have the right to steal it back?
Like most people I was brought up on the straight and narrow regarding theft. It is hard to imagine either of my parents, poor as they might have been as children, ever stealing anything as adults. My childhood thefts were extremely petty.
The socialist ideas that were circulating in that era (late 1960's) only gradually had an affect on me. They can be summed up: capitalism is theft. By paying workers poorly, or overcharging consumers, or both, capital is accumulated. To that, I learned when I started studying political science, add an overlay of imperialism. It is possible to pay workers well in an imperialist country, and keep the capitalists and politicians happy too, by overcharging consumers and underpaying workers in economic colonies.
Many theories of government have been proposed, but they boil down to two scenarios: government to steal, and government to prevent stealing. Once a government has been around for a while, it usually does some of both, and it is usually biased to the status quo. This is that there are rich people, and they won't tolerate the idea that their wealth was created by some form of theft. No one is supposed to steal, but sharp business practices of the past, and even past violence, is to be forgotten about in all equations of justice.
Looking at our current government, we can argue endlessly about what part of taxation is for communal projects we all benefit from, and what is some form of legitimized theft. The rich don't like the idea of progressive taxation. The middle class may not like being taxed to subsidize both wealthy corporations (largely owned by rich people) and the needy. The people who do most of the actual work, but whose pay makes it fair to describe them as working class or even working poor, don't like paying taxes any more than anyone else. And the poor, well, they are a real mixed lot. Except they all want one thing in common: they want more. They share that trait with all of us.
When someone, or an institution, asks for a government subsidy or tax break, do they ever say to themselves, from whom will these tax dollars be stolen? I don't think so. Not the person faking a disability to draw $200 a week, not the defense contractor corporation grabbing $2 million a day.
I believe the core function of government should be the establishment of justice. You should get that for your tax dollar, even before you get roads or public schools or other things I think governments are the best institutions for providing. In America justice is scarce; mostly you have to hire lawyers to even have a chance of getting it. That is fundamentally wrong.
I think that very little of the "crime" that is actually punished in the United States involves serious theft or violence. It has nothing to do with justice. It is almost all about black markets. If the government would stop creating black markets, most ordinary (non-business) crime would go away. Prisons could be closed, saving the taxpayers a great deal of money.
The other place where we could clearly cut back on government is military spending. America is safe from foreign invasion. Unfortunately, other nations are not safe from the U.S.
I'd like a little justice for my tax dollars. I believe that by setting examples at the top, there would be less trouble at the bottom. The ideal examples would be Presidents and Congresses that did not commit crimes. But since that is rare in U.S. history, lets start with this: a war crimes tribunal. Let's try and punish every president from George Washington to Barack Obama who has committed crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Then we can, with clear consciences, address the trickier issue of what is fair taxation, and what is legalized theft.
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