Category Archives: Government

Opus 017: The Reality of our criminal ‘Justice’ System

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by DAVID BROWN | ClearNFO.com | March 6, 2010

On the nature of Criminal Justice in America:

The real problem is not with the laws but with our justice system. It is not what it appears to the outsider looking in. In fact many on the inside may not be aware of all the deals that are constantly being made. Many news pundits blame judges but this really misses the point. Let me give you an example of how 90% of the cases are handled and why.

Who are the players?

·        Judge (The editor of the story)
·        Police, Detective, etc. (prosecutor)
·        District Attorney (prosecutor)
·        The Plaintiff (prosecutor)
·        The Accused (defense)
·        The Accused attorney (defense)
·        The Jury if there is one (the ones in the dark listening to a story that is usually heavily edited by the judge)

What are their motives?

·        Judge – wants to clear his docket and get on to the next case. Has a god complex
·        Police…want a conviction but not willing to do all the real work necessary to prove up the evidence.
·        DA: Wants to fluff his resume and run for office again with a 95%+ conviction rate
·        Accused: Terrified and willing to make a deal

Given the above motives, this is what happens in 90% of all criminal cases: Plea Bargain. A plea bargain is where the accused pleas to a lesser crime for lesser time if he will agree to plead guilty. This is usually a lie because the plea may be for some crime that was not even committed.

What does everyone get out of this grand deception aka lie?

·        Judge: Gets a conviction and gets one more case off his docket
·        Police: don’t have to spend a lot of time investigating
·        DA: gets a conviction which makes his resume look good
·        Accused: may or may not be guilty. No one cares except him or her but he gets a lesser penalty and a lesser charge so he is relieved and may wonder if he did the right thing if innocent.
·        The Defense attorney gets paid and on to his next case. Can show his value by getting the crime/sentence reduced.

The cake is baked and everybody is happy!

This lie is sealed when the judge asks the accused if he was given any enticement for pleading guilty. The accused swears in court that he was not. All the players in this charade know this is a lie, but this is the real world. This is not CSI, or any other made for TV hoax on the gullible American public.

So…where is justice in all this? No one cares. Sorry.

If the accused was guilty, then he gets off with a lesser charge. If the accused was innocent then an innocent person was coerced into pleading guilty. Truth and justice have no play here.

Part 2:

If you care to explore a bit deeper here are some more considerations.

1) There is little to no consideration for finding the truth or for providing justice. This system runs on the participant’s resumes, ascendancy, money and politics. Truth, justice and the American way have no room here.

Most of the accused have little to no money and thus are totally at the mercy of the judge, DA, police and his own defense attorney Just to get a decent attorney interested you must have $10,000 in cash laying around that you don’t need. After the $10K is spent the bills usually accelerate and the judge, DA and everyone else is fully aware of your ability to fight. If they sense weakness then all bets are off and you become the cause of their effect and everyone knows this.

What this means is that our justice system is generally up for sale and you can get the amount of justice you can afford.

2) One of the great powers of the judge is the ability to edit the story. As most people know, if you can determine what is told and what is left out you can make a story say almost anything. So the Judge is the storyteller here for the jury. The jury is clueless and usually has no idea that they have been denied all the facts to make a good judgment.

3) Politics also come into play here. If the accused or the plaintiff has friendly, financial or political connections with important people, this will determine how the story is edited.

3) Polygraph tests: Polygraphs are extremely accurate if you ask most people in the polygraph industry but are at best 70% accurate according to research I’ve seen. Polygraphs are also very easy to beat if you do a little research prior to taking a test. Polygraphs are not admissible in court simply because they are NOT accurate– but are routinely used to coerce a confession or used as leverage under the false promise that the accused (person of interest) will not face indictment. This is a ruse to gain more true or false incriminating information that will ultimately lead to a conviction. The person and company doing the polygraph are usually under contract with the county which represents: the Judge, the DA, the Sheriff, Police, etc.  The polygraph company is at risk of losing this contract if they don’t please their pay masters and so it is never a good idea to take a polygraph provided by the prosecution.

4) If you are innocent, never talk to the police and never give any information to anyone without competent legal representation. The reason for this is that the prevailing motive of the justice system is to convict and close cases. You will be under great pressure and feel obligated to absolve your self and prove your innocence but if you violate this fundamental rule, you will be very sorry. You don’t want to become another statistic on their resume. Always be pleasant and respectful and just explain that you want to protect your rights and you therefore require an attorney.

I have mixed thoughts about the ACLU because I disagree with most of what they do. However, with the deck stacked against anyone who finds themselves caught up on this assembly line of easy and convenient convictions it is nice to see the ACLU protecting the rights of those who don’t have the financial means to put up a just defense.

If you have ever observed what happens to a weak chicken who has been pecked to death in a chicken coup you will get a good idea what the accused face here in the USA if you don’t have the financial means to hire and pay for a good attorney, not to mention the deposition and court costs.

This, my friends is the current state of our fine justice system here in the good old USA. So, the next time you see someone do a perp-walk in an orange jump suit, just realize that most of these poor slobs had a court appointed attorney and were used to fluff several resumes.

For additional reading on this topic please see Paul Craig Roberts’ excellent book entitled ‘The Tyranny of Good Intentions’.

Opus 016: Do we have a democracy or a republic?

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by DAVID BROWN | CLEARNFO.com | October 17, 2009

Democracy VS Republic

What form of government do we have in the USA anyway?

We can always debate the finer points but to put it simply, a democracy is “rule by the majority” and a republic is a “rule by law”. The distinction here is more important than most US citizens realize. Let’s take a look at the difference.

Let’s say Mr. Smith had worked hard as a young man and bought a plot of land 10 miles out side of his home town of Pleasantville. Over many years, he had worked hard and paid for the land in full and had been able to work the land through careful planning and irrigation to build a rather fine grape vineyard producing some of the best grapes, wine, raisins, grape juice and jelly in all the land.

A Democracy (rule by mob):
Seeing how fine the vineyard was and how Mr. Smith had prospered, the town councilmen took a look at their overworked budget and proposed a vote to the citizens that Mr. Smith’s land should rightfully become the property of the town and therefore be divided up amongst the good citizens of Pleasantville. By majority vote, this proposal was passed overwhelmingly and the land became the property of the town. Everyone was delighted and very happy except Mr. Smith. There could be no consoling Mr. Smith and so he had raised such a fuss about all of this the town folk voted to put Mr. Smith in prison for unbecoming behavior which was very unpleasant to the erudite and sophisticated sensibilities of the refined citizens of Pleasantville. Everyone was horrified at Mr. Smith’s words and angry outburst in public and couldn’t tolerate such behavior.

A Republic (rule by law):
If Mr. Smith in the story above lived under the protection of the rule of law or a republic, a simple majority vote couldn’t have deprived him of his property or freedom. The city councilmen would have had their powers limited by the rule of law. Mr. Smith would have been provided certain rights and been protected by the rule of law, due process and the rights guaranteed to him by a constitution and bill of rights.

The US founding fathers were keenly aware of this distinction and that is why the Constitution and The Bill of rights limit the power of the government. These documents are your shield and are there to protect you. When our educators, politicians and news media continually preach about the democracy please remember that this is a representative REPUBLIC and not a democracy.

Do you pledge allegiance to the Democracy or the Republic?

From the American View…

http://www.theamericanview.com/index.php?id=11

As the story goes, at the close of the Constitutional Convention, a woman asked Benjamin Franklin what type of government the Constitution was bringing into existence. Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

It has been baldly asserted that in a Democracy, majority rules, whereas in a Republic, Law rules. Consider, in a Democracy, there is no need for a Constitution, since the majority can simply change Law at a whim. In a Republic, there is a Law above the government, and in our case there is a written Constitution.

Definitions from Wikipedia…

The Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law of the United States. It is the foundation and source of the legal authority underlying the existence of the United States of America and the federal government of the United States. It provides the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government to the states, to citizens, and to all people within the United States.

In the United States, the Bill of Rights is the name by which the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution are known.

Opus 009: The Financial Rabbit-Hole…

by DAVID BROWN | CLEARNFO.com |Original date: December 27, 2012

Debbie Downer (Debbie Reynolds)

Debbie Downer (Debbie Reynolds)

Not trying to be Debbie Downer here but a friend is someone who will tell you if your house is on fire and it is.  The question is do you want the red pill or the blue pill?

“You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.  You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Remember — all I am offering is the truth, nothing more.”

If you took the red pill, here’s your updated Joe Friday moment…”Just the facts ma’am…”

The US National debt is what is usually reported in the news media but this is just the tip of the financial iceberg that lurks beneath the churning financial sea upon which 313 million Americans bet their futures.  Everyone has an uneasy feeling about an impending financial Armageddon rather than facing fact and reality we choose to believe in magic…that someone has a magic bullet or a solution that will save the day.  But there is no magic.  We are on uncharted waters and unfortunately the news is much worse than is reported.  Let’s take a look beneath the churning waters to take measure of what awaits us and why.

First a few sobering facts the news media are hesitant to report:

Balance Sheet (11/26/13):

  • -US National Debt:  $17 trillion
  • -US Unfunded Liabilities: $127 trillion
  • -Total Liabilities: $144 trillion
  • -Total National Assets: $106 trillion

Net Worth: Negative $38 Trillion

Income Statement (11/26/13):

  • -US Federal Tax Revenue: $2.8 Trillion
  • -US Federal Spending: $3.5 Trillion

Annual Net Income (deficit): Negative $ 0.7 Trillion

Insolvency is the inability of a debtor to pay their debt…

  1. Cash flow insolvency involves a lack of liquidity to pay debts as they fall due.
  2. Balance sheet insolvency involves having negative net assets—where liabilities exceed assets. Insolvency is not a synonym for bankruptcy, which is a determination of insolvency made by a court of law with resulting legal orders intended to resolve the insolvency.

The Net Worth of the US is actually much worse than the figures above when the debt of the state, local, personal, banks are added into the mix.  To fund all the excessive spending and promising, the Federal Reserve continues to create more debt to keep this financial fantasy going just a few days more having no real solution at hand.  In the meantime, the US Dollar is losing its place as the world’s reserve currency which is estimated to reduce the living standard of the US by 40% once this trend completes.

At this point, you might say that things can’t get much worse but they do.  The World-Wide derivatives bubble is currently sitting at an estimated $1.5 Quadrillion or $1,500 Trillion and 80% of these are interest rate swaps.  World-wide GDP is only about $70 trillion.  Why is the interest rate swap so important?  Because as the interest rates go up the bonds go down and most of the major banks would be insolvent if the bonds they hold lost value.  This is the real reason that the Fed is keeping the interest rates low.

In the economy of the 60s – 80s we would have let troubled banks go bust but we have allowed them to get “too big to fail”.  They are too big to fail because if they did fail, it would bring down the entire world economy.   How did they get so big?  It is a direct result of the repeal of the Glass–Steagall Act in 1999.  The Glass-Steagall Act was enacted in 1933 to limit commercial bank securities activities and affiliations between commercial banks and securities firms.  In short it was a wall of separation between commercial and investment banking.  The 1999 repeal permitted Wall Street investment banking firms to gamble with their depositors’ money that was held in affiliated commercial banks.

And it gets worse.  The recent Libor interest rate rigging scandal is being called the biggest financial fraud in history and will have major ramifications to the world economy.   This scandal impacted an estimated $800 trillion in transactions and is just getting started.  Karl Denninger of Market-ticker.org calls this, “the largest organized theft ever committed in human history.”

If the banks are responsible for just 1/10 of one percent of the $800 trillion in Libor transactions, it would represent $800 billion in liability to the banks.  The total cost will be much higher, and some banks will go under as a result of litigation and loss of reputation.  Ron Hera of Hera Research  said “Truth is, if you take back more than 1% of what the banks have stolen, they’re busted.”

Then we have the sovereign bond market bubble sitting at a 300 year high, just waiting to burst.

So you can see that it is not a question of if but when one of these bubbles will burst and the whole house of cards come tumbling down.