Satire|Politics|Ethics

What happens when the right people, don’t go to jail?

One underlying cause for America’s current Unrest

Take a good look around you. Is anyone missing?

WHAT IS HAPPENING

There’s a fairly good chance that someone you knew, loved, played ball or skipped school with is now in prison or has been in recent years.

According to current statistics, there are about 2,130,000 people spending time in over 7,000 prisons and other facilities in the United States. Or about 0.7% of the population.

The U.S. represents 4.4% of the world’s population and houses 22% of the prisoners. What’s wrong with this picture?

Approximately half a million are in local jails awaiting trial or other legal proceedings because they cannot afford bail. PrisonPolicy.org

With such a high volume and percentage of incarceration in the U.S. it’s estimated that between 70–100 million people, or as many as 1 in 3 adult age Americans has a criminal record. SentencingProject.org

There are two sides to every story — this is the other side.

WHAT ISN’T HAPPENING

Between January 2007 and September 2009, the International Monetary Fund estimated that U.S. and European banks lost $1 trillion dollars due to toxic assets and bad loans.

How much is $1 trillion? If the average price of a 2-bedroom home was $200,000, then we could have bought 5,000,000 of them with the money that was lost.

People every day are sent to jail or worse for shoplifting, stealing someone’s ID, failure to pay rent, passing a bad check or even passing a counterfeit $20 bill.

Yet how many executives of those banks and financial institutions worldwide, actually went to prison after the Great Financial Crisis?

According to a New York Times Magazine article written on April 30, 2014 by Jesse Eisinger — that would be one.

An unfortunate banker from Credit Suisse, named Kareem Serageldin, who went to prison for “concealment of hundreds of millions in losses in Credit Suisse’s mortgage backed securities portfolio.” His sentence — 30 months.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE SYSTEM FAILS US

If you’ve been wondering why people are upset at the government. Or anxious about how tens of millions of seemingly rational people voted for someone like Trump in 2016 and might do it again in 2020.

If you’re suffering from sleepless nights, cold sweats, hallucinations, that former presidents are visiting you at breakfast each morning, the reason might be that we as Americans have lost faith in a government that refuses to take responsibility for its failures and refuses to assign responsibility for “criminal acts” committed by those, it deems financially untouchable.

When bad decisions, greed, insensitivity and callous indifference to human suffering, become as easy to set aside as an overcooked grilled-cheese sandwich, then shit happens.

There are conflicting reports and opinions, handed down in the years since 2007 that insist the banker’s that caused this disaster were incompetent, greedy, deceptive, overly ambitious in their claims and generally unfuckingbelievably stupid in their actions, but probably not guilty of any overt criminal acts.

They sold mortgages to people who couldn’t afford them. Sold mortgage-backed securities to financial institutions who would have been better off investing in radioactive waste. Somehow managed to get their products rated higher than dirt, by reputable credit agencies within the industry, all resulting in a cascading failure of biblical proportion and the aforementioned loss of $1 trillion.

Not to mention millions of unlucky people who lost their homes, jobs, cars, careers and the old moped in the garage that was also repossessed, because — well, there was nothing left to take.

But it wasn’t illegal.

Worthy of tens and tens of billions of dollars in fines. Sure, you bet.

Worthy of new regulations. Of course. There is always room for new regulations.

But were any CEOs, CFOs, Chairmen of the Board held accountable for flipping the collective bird at millions of people across the globe, while resoundingly saying fuck you to common sense, common decency and the already dying concept of fair play in business?

• We distrust the government and their intentions because they have proven time and again to lack the courage to take on big business and big banking.
• We don’t believe the government because individuals within have lied to the American people so many times in the past, that, even Oxford Dictionary is considering renaming a lie the truth, and the truth a lie.
• We don’t believe government can change (including both Houses of Congress) because their intimate connections to vested interests and lobbyists borders on the indecent and probably would be considered illegal in several states.
• We voted for Trump because we thought he was anti-government, anti-mainstream. The antidote to indifference and complacency in Washington. This is what happens when people become desperate, and are betrayed one time too many.

The Black Lives Matter movement erupted with such incendiary might, because there were centuries of injustice and indifference heaped upon a group of people who have lost faith in those who dole out justice and are supposed to be held accountable for their decisions.

When bad decisions, greed, insensitivity and callous indifference to human suffering, become as easy to set aside as an overcooked grilled-cheese sandwich, then shit happens. More bad decisions are made. Idiots are elected king and good honest folk are made to carry the load once again.

WHAT WE SHOULD DO

The solution for this miasma of malfeasance is both simple and complex.

• Vote for those who will change the system
• Demand accountability in our elected officials in the same way we demand accountability in our children — teach them.
• We demand fidelity and loyalty in our familial relationships, why not in our elected officials. Tell them to stop sleeping with the “enemy”.
• Dramatically reduce access to both Houses of Congress from all lobbyists and vested interests. They represent Big Business, Big Banking, Big Pharma and not the American people.
• Help overturn Citizens United and usher in max campaign spending. Lies are expensive to disseminate. If they don’t have the money for Advertising, lies will no longer be as valuable.

But most of all we need to see this as an opportunity to regain control. It’s our country and it belongs to all of us. Not the 1%, the 7%, or any other number.

There are many reasons for what is happening out there today. This is only one of them. Whichever one motivates you toward change is the right one.

“I guess the only time most people think about injustice is when it happens to them.” Charles Bukowski

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Martin Luther King Jr.

Sherry McGuinn Tom Byers Timothy Key P.G. Barnett Paul Myers MBA George J. Ziogas Kathryn A. LeRoy, Ph.D. Rosennab Selma

Joe Luca is writer and editor for ILLUMINATION and a published author and writer of children’s stories, short fiction, non-fiction articles, screenplays and poetry. Publications include Child’s Life, Children’s Playmate and others. There are some other articles below — have a read. And thank you for stopping by.