American Jurisprudence: Lost in Space?

January 25, 2010

Ignoring problems does not make them go away.  By the same token, solutions to major problems cannot be found until the problems can be identified.  Ironically, the average citizen, if pressed, will usually identify lawyers as the major problem in our society.  At face value this seems quite unfair, but on further examination, the theory may not be as far fetched as some apologists would think.

To the average citizen (and I am no exception), it would seem that law schools teach their unwitting students how to pervert logic and fairness, two entities that most Americans assume are the cornerstones of our democratic society and the Constitution.  Certainly the growing inequities in our society and the prevalence, in politics, of attorneys to blame for those inequities, may account for the animosity toward them.  However, emotional factors aside, the profession does seem to have earned much of its sordid reputation.

Attorneys spend over two billion dollars a year in political contributions.  The profession   purposely insinuates itself into every aspect of human life, demanding its “pound of flesh” for everything from house closings to non refundable multi thousand dollar fees for things like obvious “false arrest” arrangements with the courts.  Arrogant law school professors defend inane concepts such as “money and free speech are the same,” ignoring the obvious quid pro quo associated with money but not with speech.  The Bar Association claims that it does not understand what is meant by the phrase “due process” in the frequently ignored Fourteenth Amendment of our Constitution.  This virtually nullifies the entire concept of “equal protection of the laws” under due process.  Apparently the “illiterate” legal profession and the courts do not know what “equal protection” means either.  At any rate, these and other gaping holes in the education of attorneys have allowed Medicare seniors in our country to be cheated out of forty billion dollars in over payments to drug companies and pharmacies in 2010 alone!  Unlike every other government agency, Medicare is forbidden to use its more than forty million members to negotiate better prices for drugs.  Even worse is the rape and pillage of the Social Security Fund to the tune of more than two trillion dollars!  Conveniently, seniors are the only citizens whose investments can be stolen by the federal government at a moment’s notice without so much as a “____ you very much.”  Obviously and purposely robbed of their right to “equal protection,” “due process,” not to mention their dignity, they are ignored by their government, the ACLU, the Supreme Court, the Bar Association and other now almost useless organizations.  Where I come from, inducing and even forcing someone to invest in a retirement fund which has no intention of returning most of its investors’ funds to those retirees is called “fraud.”  It is also a well known investment scheme referred to as “Robbing Peter to pay Paul.”  I believe it is blatantly illegal, but according to attorneys and accountants, this is not the case.  Nevertheless, this  actually represents the largest fraudulent scheme in human history.  Worse yet, by extorting a share of these payments from employers, under penalty of punishment, the government clearly violates state and federal Rico statutes.  This is referred to as “racketeering.”

Meanwhile, in most jurisdictions now, only attorneys may become judges.  Why this is legal, I am not certain.  The greatest irony, in fact, is that the judiciary is fast becoming the most ignorant and least qualified of all professions.  These elected and appointed “professionals” are the only ones that I know of who do not have to meet any aptitude standards, nor do they have to participate in continuing education.  Thus, for many, their ignorance may become, not only boundless, but incurable.  Mathematical morons are left to decide the fate of divorced couples’ family estates and the future of your children may be left to a child hating miscreant more interested in making it to the golf course than the welfare of the children.  No matter how many cases are misjudged, there is rarely any accountability demanded.

Now we have one of the most incompetent Supreme Courts of all time.  Unethical misconduct abounds.  Besides their clear disregard for Constitutional Law- Patriot Acts, War Powers Acts, First Amendment abuse, disdain for the Fourteenth Amendment, we have “Justice” Thomas accepting and not properly documenting 700,000 dollars obtained from right wing political organizations through his wife.  While I have no doubt that Mr. Thomas did not need 700,000 dollars in inducements to make his unethical and often incompetent decisions, there is a quid pro quo here and  I’m afraid the good judge is guilty of bribery.  The only thing missing here is a false witness.  Apparently federal attorneys like Leura Canary, Alice Martin and Louis Franklin can only prosecute cases in which they personally suborn perjury.  Don’t worry Mr. Thomas, as long as “Uncle” Eric(I almost said “Tom, didn’t I?) Holder, Chief Republican Apologist is in the ”Justice”  Department, there will be no special prosecutors.  In fact, if there were, it would probably be Patrick Fitzgerald and he has never convicted anyone of anything but “lying to a federal prosecutor.”  Just tell him the truth or “plead the Fifth” and he’ll never be able to convict you.

While “Justice” Thomas’ conduct seems to constitute “business as usual” for his type of judge, “Justice” Scalia’s clandestine meeting with Tea Party officials behind closed doors has the makings of classic political intrigue.  I mean  some of those officials (ala Barbara Bachmann, Sharon Angle and Joyce Kaufman) have even advocated violent treatment  and shooting of opposing party members if necessary.  Despite my contempt for the Patriot Act, it does seem to identify this behavior as “terrorism,” does it not?  Personally, I am in favor of censure for Scalia, censure and resignation for Thomas and arrest for advocates of violent overthrow of members of the government.  Unfortunately,  I must admit, I do not believe that Democratic members of Congress have the guts or the Republicans the ethical standards necessary to right any of these “wrongs.”

Before you chuck this article in the can with all the rest, please consider the real message behind it.  In reality, I do not hate attorneys.  In fact, I respect them more than they probably deserve.  The legal profession represents the only nonviolent solution this country has to avert both financial and social disaster.  It is not just that mentally ill justices like Thomas and Scalia clearly cannot differentiate “right” from “wrong” that is so troubling.  It is also the worthless notion that there is nothing within the law that can protect us from both their ludicrous decisions and their illicit conduct.  Where is the Bar Association?  As a citizen, for instance, my “freedom of speech” is worth a thousand or five thousand or whatever dollar amount local and federal legislatures determine as my limit, but a clearly incompetent and apparently illiterate Supreme Court decided that  unlike individuals, corporations should enjoy unlimited “freedom of speech” in the form of their donations to political candidates.  Thus corporations are entitled to the “freedom of speech” that the First Amendment said that Congress shall not abridge, but somehow Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Kennedy allowed legislated limits on speech for individuals!  Not to be outdone, liberals, instead of arguing the obvious, that money and speech are synonymns only in the minds of the demented or those who have been bribed by criminal corporations or individuals, tried to limit freedom of speech for corporations.  The First Amendment, sadly unread by an entire Supreme Court, does not say money is the same as speech, nor does it allow limitation of speech to anyone, individual or corporation.

Where are the attorney organizations?  You have stood silent while the entire justice system is collapsing around you!  The Bar Association needs to disbar crooked judges instead of protecting them.  It needs to threaten the same for Supreme Court Justices who accept inducements or violate the Bar’s canon of ethics.  You have a duty to fight for seniors’ rights in a country in which their own government purposely abuses its most vulnerable minority, the elderly on fixed incomes, stealing over two trillion of its hard earned retirement dollars!  You must demand of the Supreme Court that they uphold the right of the Social Security Fund to demand the return of its stolen funds!

Never mind the ignorant and illiterate rants of Republican and even some uneducated Democrats about wholesale cuts in benefits to people who pay in their fair share of retirement contributions, but will never see the majority of the money.  Three presidents were advised by their appointed committees to privatize the Social Security surplus so the war mongers could not get their filthy paws on it.  Unfortunately, it took only one mentally deficient wretch to blow more than eight years of surplus funds and then suggest the destruction of the Fund itself, by privatizing it.  A surtax, a virtual “sin tax” on weapons that are specifically designed to kill people, perhaps handguns, but certainly automatic weapons, assault rifles, rocket launchers, tanks, rockets etc.... could easily restore the seniors’ looted retirement funds.  Besides, the fact that most of the illicitly “borrowed funds” were spent on these munitions, it would scarcely hurt their sales.  What’s more, what could be better than actually collecting tax money from drug lords, foreign terrorists, mobsters and dictators that these companies so readily service?  All routine hunting rifles, shotguns and other hunting weapons would be exempt from the surtax, of course.

Before joining the Federal Witness Protection Program to save myself from the wrath of the NRA leadership, a word of advice to those gentlemen.  The vast majority of NRA members are hunters and legitimate “protectors” of their families, not paranoid members of a corrupt lobby financed by an amoral munitions industry financially dependent on the need for one person to kill another.  Unless you want to encourage a rival rifle association, it might help if you would poll your membership once in a while on issues like rational control of assault and advanced automatic weaponry.  You might be surprised to learn that they too, cannot figure out why a civilized human being needs to carry an automatic weapon to a peaceful political gathering or a politician’s speech.

Allen Finkelstein, D.O.