Burnt Witch, Broken Promises

To secure the recent return to America of the fugitive "fraudster" Sholam Weiss , the U.S. Department of Justice purportedly lied to Austrian authorities and skirted extradition treaties. To make sure Weiss, now age 55, never leaves prison, a judge sentenced him in absentia (he fled the country mid way through his trial) to 845 years (10,140 months)...or nearly 700 years more than Bernie Madoff's 150-year sentence. 


It was exhibitions such as these -- ripe with anything-goes, pull-out-all-the-stops, throw-perspective-to-the-wind fervor -- that inspired the creation of this blogsite...and this inaugural post. 


Simply put, in recent decades white-collar defendants seem to have joined alleged terrorists, illegal aliens and purveyors/possessors of child pornography as a favorite target of modern witch hunters. White-collar defendants (heavy hitters and small fish alike) are typically prosecuted under vague, sweeping statutes crafted decades ago to cripple mob bosses and drug kingpins. Their sentences often rival and sometimes surpass those imposed on armed robbers and even some rapists and killers in decades leading up to the post-Nixon, get-tough, law-and-order, build-and-fill-prisons era. Gradually over the past two decades, a relative handful of spectacular crimes and excesses (from Madoff's Ponzi scheme to Goldman-Sachs role in the recent economic meltdown) helped set the stage for the zealous pursuit and harsh punishment of growing numbers of citizens who find themselves accused of white-collar crimes.


Yesterday on another blog site, I commented that nabbing white-collar suspects now seems to outweigh other important American values, such as keeping our word to friendly foreign countries and honoring treaties. Original Post Here

The one direct reply oozed derision and annoyance typically reserved these days for military lawyers representing Guantanamo detainees, amnesty advocates for undocumented workers and the few brave federal judges and academics questioning the severity of prison sentences being imposed for simple possession of child porn by seemingly harmless first-offenders.


My blog will focus on unduly harsh treatment of all citizens that I believe are being cast as modern-day witches, particularly white-collar targets.

Jean Marie Garrison Kerr

LEE'S SUMMIT, Mo. -- Jean Marie Kerr, 83, was born to Eugene and Izzetta Garrison of Lynchburg, Va., Jan. 28, 1924. She died July 10 at home in Lee's Summit, Mo.

She married John A. Kerr in 1946 while he was stationed with the U.S. Navy in Virginia. They had one son, John A. Kerr Jr.

Jean retired in 1986 after a 22-year career at Disneyland. She started there as a sales clerk and rose to supervise a group of 25 employees.

She leaves a legacy of kindness and generosity toward family and friends. She quit scool at age 13 and went to work to help support her younger brothers and sister. Throughout her adult life, she routinely "adopted" elderly couples, taking them grocery shopping, driving them to doctors appointments and checking on them before and after work. She also volunteered at local senior centers.

She lavished love and attention on her son and her grandchildren, Adam Kerr of Lee's Summit and Victor Kerr of Kansas City.

Besides her grandchildren, she is survivied by her son, John, and his wife, Mary Livingston Kerr, of Lee's Summit.

Burial services were held July 12 at the Lee's Summit Historical Cemetery. 

Impeachment 'Strategery'

   It's almost too painful to contemplate. Democratic leaders in the House have taken impeachment off the table apparently in the belief Republicans are on the ropes and larger majorities in Congress and the White House are theirs for the taking. Pursuing impeachment, they reason, would only raise a stink that might somehow threaten what otherwise looks like a sure bet.

   Speaker Nancy Pelosi further suggests the Democratic agenda of important legislation would be stymied in the turmoil of an impeachment action.

   At the same time, Democrats seem determined to nominate as their presidential candidate in 2008 either the polarizing wife of a polarizing ex-president or an inexperienced black man.

   Meanwhile George Bush continues to live out Dick Cheney's dream of clutching ever more power and further expanding the reach of the American Empire.

   What Democrats in congress apparently fail to grasp is that growing numbers of Americans want the Bush Administration to be held accountable for a lengthy lists of offenses, the worst being the gutting of the Constitution and Bush's fraudulently conceived war of aggression in Iraq. 

   Nothing the Democrats might accomplish legislatively is likely to erase the perception they simply lack the courage to take on the Bush-Rove-Cheney White House. Neither will it quell the outrage building around the notion Bush and his corrupt cronies might be allowed to walk away unpunished for their many crimes against America.

   The ultimate payoff for the Democrats will probably come with the all too predictable outcome of choosing Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama carry the Party's pennant in 2008. They also are likely to learn that cowardice isn't an appealing attribute for a Party asking voters' to put it in power.

The Real Surrender Monkies

Republicans delight in accusing Democrats of cutting and running, hoisting the white flag and other phrases calculated to paint Democrats as the party of surrender.

Yet it was the Republican leadership that succumbed to terrorism and set in motion the actual surrender of America. For it was the Republican leadership that yielded to terrorists' desire to intimidate Americans  and destroy the fabric of their nation. The Republicans accomplished this by capitalizing on our fears to consolidate power and then and dismantling the Bill of Rights one by one.

The resultant Bush empire bears little resemblance to the America he inherited when he was sworn in as president. More and more each day it operates like an empire ruled by an unenlightened emperor.

And we can't blame terrorism for the sea changes that have taken place in America on Bush's watch. Terrorism is an ancient tactic that always has been and always will be available to otherwise powerless groups and nations harboring powerful animosities.

All that changed on 911 was the scope of success of a single attack in a series of attacks attempted over decades by the same folks who've long despised America for its Middle East policies.

So it is Bush and his sleepwalking followers that have surrendered America by handing it over to Big Business power brokers and dismantling the foundational documents that made it what it once was....and sadly is no more.

The Amnesty Bill? C'mon!

Republicans have made an art form of manipulating the language. They've become accustomed to saying anything, no matter how illogical or bereft of facts, and being believed by far too many gullible, distracted, uninformed Americans.

The immigration bill being referred to by its opponents as the amnesty bill is a prime example. It's a bad bill because it's far too harsh and punitive, not because it doesn't include a plan to export 12 million people.

Here's a question for the Lou Dobbs-Pat Buchanan wing of the Republican Party: If people sneak across the U.S. border because their families are starving and there are no jobs where they live, does that make them criminals..."illegal aliens"...or refugees?

A pox on the angry, frightened, authoritarian, bigoted jerks who can't sympathize with these good, hardworking people who typically work twice as hard for half the money lazy, spoiled Americans demand.

They use emergency rooms for health care and can't pay the bills, which then get passed on to taxpayers. They put their children in schools but pay no property tax to support the schools. They take their wages under the table and therefore pay no income tax. They put a strain on the welfare system. They drive down wages for blue-collar workers who used to receive respectable manufacturing industry salaries.

So why, then, don't we expel the poor, white Americans who do these things along with the illegal aliens who keep Lou Dobbs up at night?

A big problems with America is that downtrodden people who desperately need a powerful voice in government have no chance of getting one. It's too risky for our "leaders'" job security to speak for low-level drug users being routinely crushed by the "War on Drugs"....for gays who merely want the rights non-gays enjoy...for victims of a "justice system" that's speeding full circle toward trial by ordeal...and, yes, for poor, hard-working brown people desperately trying to feed and care for their families.

America is a tough-guy nation by any standard. And it obviously prizes strength and toughness over sometimes competing virtues such as wisdom, charity, kindness. But remember these wise words: America is great because it is good; if it ceases to be good it will cease to be great.

Ought there to be a Gouging Law?

The problem with making price gouging a federal crime is this: While initially the law would be used to harness greedy energy barons, it would only be a matter of time before "creative" prosecutors were using it to nail local business people for charging $7 for a service for which they used to only charge $5.

Alberto Gonzales' problems are just a small part of what's wrong with the "Justice Department."

Prosecutors and Wrongful Convictions

Responding to the Duke LaCross case exonerations, Eric Zahnd says prosecutors strain to convict only the guilty and "virtually always get it right."  (Prosecutors want justice, not just a victory, 4/15/07 Kansas City Star B8). For a pretty convincing alternative view, however, every American should read “Win at all costs; Government misconduct in the name of expedient justice,” a series that appeared a few years ago in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. It’s online at http://www.post-gazette.com/win/day1_1b.asp

Also, Zahnd was defending prosecutors doing business in state courts, where cases are commonly tested by juries. But what about federal prosecutors, who typically leverage their breathtaking powers and other advantages to “win” all but a relative handful of their cases in plea agreements.

Take, for example, the charge of choice these days for federal prosecutors in

Kansas City

and elsewhere in the nation, mortgage fraud. “Targets” face seemingly insurmountable odds of prevailing, regardless of guilt or innocence or mitigating circumstances.

Armed with the draconian federal sentencing guidelines, prosecutors can plausibly threaten those who are reluctant to confess with three or more decades in prison as the alternative to “light sentences” of “only” a year or two in prison. If that fails, prosecutors often threaten to charge members of the targets’ family. Given the expansive, sweeping nature of fraud statutes, those threats are plausible, too.

Federal prosecutors routinely punish the rare suspects who opt for trials by stacking additional charges against them.

The hearty few who still insist on a trial then face legal costs of up to half a million dollars or more. And while recent scandals have cast new shadows on the FBI and Justice Department, it still falls to defense attorneys to overcome jurors’ TV-drama images of agents and prosecutors as straight-arrow stalwarts of justice.

Not surprisingly then, none of the scores of area citizens charged with mortgage fraud in recent years have gone to trial. And about 96 percent of those charged with federal crimes end up negotiating for the least ruinous sentence possible.

So who really knows how fair or honest or descent federal prosecutors are, since most of their work takes place in interrogation rooms where they enjoy lopsided advantages over suspects even as wealthy and famous as Martha Stewart and as powerful and connected at Scooter Libby.

Beyond that, Zahnd’s comments fly in the face of a 2004 University of Michigan Law School study that reported 328 prisoners were exonerationed by DNA and other exculpatory evidence between 1989 and 2003. It noted another 135 cases in which innocent suspects were victimized by rogue cops and compliant, career-driven prosecutors. It characterized these numbers as “the tip of the iceberg” of the “false conviction” phenomena.