Even though the media portrays it differently, most of us in the Occupy movement are in basic agreement with the Tea Party on a number of items.  We believe this is one we can agree on - and ask for your support in Helping to Take back our Country.  The Plea Bargain System - An Evil Destroying America? http://youtu.be/VSZZXgevT7k

HOW TO END THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT

A Primer for the Current Major Parties

By Bob Bennett

It is good that the major political parties are wondering how to end the Tea Party movement. If the Tea Party wins or ends, rational government should return. However, as both major parties have been in bed with their major campaign contributors for so long, real reform seems unlikely. Neither party seems to remember that the purpose of any just government is to protect the people from the abuses of the powerful. That is simply natural law. The left never bothered to learn political theory, while the far right abandoned it, in favor of misreading Darwin. It is Survival of the Fittest, not survival of the most powerful, and not survival of the best backstabbers.

Instead of focusing on paying off debts to major campaign donors, government and the parties need to address the problems the common people face due to the privileges given to the elites. How many laws have been passed solely to benefit your elites? Has there been a single law in the past 30 years that actually benefitted the common people? The FDA exists to curry favor with the Drug and pesticide Companies. The “FDA Food Safety Modernization Act” would give a bureaucracy the right to tell you how to grow your home garden; fining you if you don’t use enough pesticides. The Drug companies have run rampant for decades, with phony studies, and marketing campaigns designed solely to force drugs on people who don’t really need them. Big oil has avoided any meaningful oversight, as have most major corporations. The bureaucrats know they will have a fat paycheck waiting for them at the corporations they are suppose to be regulating, if they stab the public in the back enough.

Katha Pollitt writes (The Nation May 3^rd- Letter From Berlin) “As for the political value of the Second Amendment in defending the Republic, the idea that homeowners could hold off a tyrannical government with their individual weapons is bound to look ridiculous to people who have actually experienced fascism.” The idea of the 2^nd Amendment is to prevent a tyrannical government from getting in power in the first place; and then give the people a chance should they slip. Basically the position of the Left has been that any bureaucrat on the face of the earth should be allowed to tell you how to live your life, down to the tiniest detail. It is a large part of the reason many feel the USA is becoming tyrannical.

George Washington warned the nation about getting involved with foreign nations largely because, at the time, foreign nations, primarily European, used lies and deceit as the common way of doing business, and only those who were skilled in lies and deception were capable of avoiding the landmines inherent in such a system. We have become a land where lies and deceit are the common way of doing business, especially in government.

Eisenhower warned, in his farewell address, of the dangers of the military industrial complex. We have become a nation where by the military industrial complex rules every decision. A Free People must, first of all, be free from hate and fear. Both parties feed on hate and fear. The left is in favor a bureaucratic dictatorship, the right a dictatorship for corporate elites. Neither is acceptable.

The latest ploy of the Right is using the problem of terrorist to eliminate the individual’s rights under Miranda; but except for television programs and the rich, Miranda was eliminated in the 80’s; especially in urban areas. (I do have a personal bias in this; in 1988 I was given the choice of dying in the Los Angeles County Jail or pleading no contest to misdemeanor charge I didn’t believe myself guilty of. After 74 days in solitary, denied pen, pencil, access to a telephone and prescription medication, and a court appointed attorney who refused to speak to me, except to demand I plea no contest, I caved. The California Bar Association – Decision 93-29417 failed to see any ethical violations.)

Aside from reading a person his rights, the Miranda decision also required counties provide a public defender to all defendants facing 6 months or more incarceration (Possibly the first of many unfunded mandates). In most states, it now applies to all defendants, including those facing less than 6 months imprisonment.

Naturally enough, counties looked for ways to avoid the increased costs involved with providing a public defender. The result is the plea bargain system. At first, this system of injustice was used primarily to put pressure on individuals suspected of major crimes, but for which inadequate evidence existed to have a reasonable chance of conviction. Also, at about the same time police officers lobbied successfully to get paid for appearing in court, which previously they often had to do on their own time.

However, by the early 80’s, the plea bargain system was being used for just about everything, including to cover up abuses by police officers. (According to the Criminal Justice Profile, published by the State of California; the conviction rate in Los Angeles County rose from 81% in 1981 to 98.6% in 1988. I haven’t tracked this since 1996, when it was at 96%.) While prosecutors touted their high conviction rates as evidence of their tough on crime positions, the plea bargain system actually encourages crime (“Plead no contest and I can get you out of jail by tomorrow.”), increases the amount of jail time spent by those who believe themselves innocent, or at least had mitigating circumstances, and spews hatred for those who administer the criminal justice system.

But that is not the sole reason for the crime in cities, which began irritating the people outside the cities long ago.

Starting in the late 60’s individuals who really didn’t belong there began to be released from mental institutions. In the 70’s drugs were found which mitigated the symptoms of mental patients, and many more were released from institutions. In the 80’s, with the election of Ronal Reagan, who believed these individuals should compete with everyone else, both homelessness and the criminalization of the mentally ill began. Mental Health Courts began to reduce this aspect of the problem; although mentally ill individuals still make up abnormally high percentage of prison populations. (Full disclosure: I received Honorable Mention from the Pacific Research Institute (1992) for a paper on how Mental Health Courts could save communities money while providing better treatments.)

Drug laws – Are today’s drug laws the result of J. Edgar Hoover being blackmailed (for being a transvestite) by one or more mafia families? We will probably never know for sure, but we spend way too much money to keep people incarcerated for activities which primarily just injure themselves.

Both major political parties promote greater privileges for their elites. County prosecutors are on the list of the privileged elites for both Republicans and Democrats. This is part of the reason this country is sinking toward dictatorship, which appears to be the favored position of both far left and far right, although each appears to want a different flavor of dictatorship. This helps fuel the increase in gun advocates.

When government, State and Federal begin to address the problems created by the greed, both of power and money, of the elites instead of covering up their abuses, we will once again become a fit nation, deserving of survival.