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TechnoratiThe Crooks Get Cash While the Poor Get Screwed
Tearyan Brown became a father when he was 16. He did what a lot of inner-city kids desperate to make money do. He sold drugs. He was arrested and sent to jail three years later for dealing marijuana and PCP on the streets of Trenton, N.J., mostly to white kids driving in from the suburbs. It was a job which saw him robbed at gunpoint and stabbed in the chest. But it made him about $1,400 a week.
Brown, when he got out after three and a half years, was done with street life. He got a job as a security guard and then as a fork lift operator. He eventually made about $30,000 a year. He shepherded his son through high school, then college and a master's degree. His boy, now 24, is a high school teacher in Texas. Brown would not leave the streets of Trenton but his son would. It made him proud. It gave him hope.
And then one morning in 2005 when he was visiting his mother's house the cops showed up. He saw the cruiser and the officers standing on his mother's porch. He hurried down the block toward the home to see what was wrong. What was wrong was him. On the basis of a police photograph, he had been identified by an 82-year-old woman as the man who had robbed her of $9 at gunpoint a few hours earlier. The only other witness to the crime insisted the elderly victim was confused. The witness told the police Brown was innocent. Brown's friends said Brown was with them when the robbery took place.
"Why would I rob a woman for $9" he asks me. "I had been paid the day before. I had not committed a crime in 20 years. It didn't make any sense."
He was again sent to jail. But this time he was charged with armed robbery. If convicted, he would be locked away for many years. His grown son and his three young boys would live, as he had, without the presence of a father. The little ones-11-year-old twins and a 10-year-old-would be adults when he got out. When he met with his state-appointed attorney, the lawyer, like most state-appointed attorneys, pushed for accepting a plea bargain, one that would see him behind bars for at least the next decade. Brown pulled the pictures of his children out of his wallet, laid the pictures carefully on the table in front of the lawyer, looked at the faces of his children and broke down in tears. He shook and sobbed. It was a hard thing to do for a man who stands nearly 6 feet tall and weights 210 pounds and has coped with a lot in his life.
"I didn't do nothing,' " he choked out to the lawyer.
He refused the plea bargain offer. He sat in jail for the next two years before getting a trial. It was a time of deep despair. Jail had changed since he had last been incarcerated. The facilities were overcrowded, with inmates sleeping in corridors and on the floor. The gangs taunted those who, like Brown, were not affiliated with a gang. Gang members knocked trays of food to the floor. They pissed on mattresses. They stole canteen items and commissary orders. And there was nothing the victims could do about it.
"See this," he says to me in a dimly lit coffee shop in downtown Trenton as he rolls up the right sleeve of his T-shirt. "It's the grim reaper. I got it in jail. I was so scared. I was scared I wouldn't get out this time. I was scared I would not see my kids grow up. They make their own tattoo guns in jail with a toothbrush, a staple and the motor of a Walkman. It cost me $15, well, not really dollars. I had to give him about 10 soups and a package of cigarettes. On the street this would be three or four hundred dollars."
Under the tattoo of the scythe-wielding, hooded figure are the words "Death Awaits."
He had a trial after two years in jail and was found not guilty. The sheriff's deputies in the courtroom said as he was walking out that they "had never seen anything like this." He reaches into his baggy jeans and pulls out his thin brown wallet. He opens it to show me a folded piece of paper. The paper says, "Verdict: Defendant found not guilty on all charges." It is dated Jan. 31, 2008.
But innocence and guilt are funny things in America. If you are rich and guilty, if you have defrauded banks and customers and investment firms of billions of dollars, as AIG or Citibank has, if you wear fancy suits and have degrees from elite universities that cost more per year than Brown used to make, you get taxpayer money. You get lots of it. You maintain the lavish lifestyle of jets and spas and million-dollar bonuses. You live a life of unchecked greed and have too much in a world where most have too little. If you are moral scum in America we take care of you. But if you are poor, if you are, say, Tearyan Brown and African-American and 39 years old with four kids and no job and you live in the inner city, you are in trouble. No one comes to help you. You don't get a second chance. This is what being poor means.
Brown found that life had changed when he got out. He had lost his job as a fork lift operator. And there were no new jobs to be found. He had faithfully paid child support until his arrest but, with no income, he could not pay from jail and now he was being hauled into court by the state every few weeks for being in arrears for $13,000. The mother of his three youngest boys goes to court with him. She explains that he paid regularly while he had work. She explains that when she works on the weekends Brown takes the kids. She asks that he be forgiven until he can get a job and begin paying again. But there are no jobs.
"I would not be in arrears in child support if I had not been incarcerated for something I didn't do," he says. "I will never get above ground owing $13,000. How can I pay $120 a week when I don't have a job?"
Brown lives on $200 a month in food stamps and $40 in cash. Welfare will pay his apartment for another four months. He is barely making it. I ask him what he will do when he loses the rent subsidy.
"I'll be homeless," he says.
"My son says come down to Texas," he adds. "Start a new life with me. But what about my three little boys? I can't leave them. I can't leave them in Trenton. They need a father."
Brown works out every day. He does calisthenics. He is a vegetarian. He volunteers at a food pantry. He attends the Jerusalem Baptist Church with his little boys. "They are church kids," he tells me proudly. "They are pretty much raised by the church."
He is trying to keep himself together. But he lives in a world that is falling apart. The gangs on the streets of Trenton carry Glock 9-millimeter pistols and AK-47 assault rifles. When the Trenton police stop a car or raid a house filled with suspected gang members they approach with loaded M-16s. A local newspaper, The Trentonian, reports the daily chronicle of crime, decay and neglect. The lead story in the day's paper, which Brown has with him, is about a young man named James Deonte James, whose street name is "Lurch." James was charged in the death of a 13-year-old girl during a gang shooting. He is reputed to be a "five star general in the Sex Money Murder set of the Bloods street gang." In another story an ex-con and reputed mobster, Michael "Mickey Rome" Dimattia, was arrested in his car after a woman behind the wheel was seen driving erratically. "Mickey Rome," dressed in a black bathrobe with a red scarf around his neck, was found to be wearing a bulletproof vest, with three guns stuck in his waistband, and had a crack pipe, crack cocaine and prescription pills in his pockets. He had been convicted in 1990 of killing a 17-year-old boy with a shotgun blast to the head. He served less than three years for the murder. A feature story on Page 4 of the paper is about a man with AIDS who raped his girlfriend's son 55 times and infected the boy with the virus. The boy was 9 when the rapes took place.
"There are thousands more guns out there than when I was on the street," Brown says. "It is easier to buy a gun than get liquor from a liquor store."
He says he rarely goes out at night, even to the corner store. It is too dangerous.
The desperation is palpable. People don't know where to turn. Benefits are running out. More and more people are out of work.
"You see things getting worse and worse," he says. "You see people who wonder how they are going to eat and take care of themselves and their kids. You see people starting to do anything to get food, to hustle or rob, to go back to doing things they do not want to do. Good people start doin' bad things. People are getting eviler."
He pauses.
"All things are better with God," he says softly, looking down at the tabletop.
He is reading a book about the Bible. It is about Jesus and God. It is about learning to trust in God's help. In America that is about all the poor have left. And when God fails them, they are on their own.
58 Comments so far
Show AllThis nation is doomed as long as the poor people listed in this story are unwilling to disrupt the lives of the rich. If the political action you are taking doesn't cost them serious money they will ignore you and tack you apart by the use of police subversion, planted spies, agents provocateurs and phony drug raids.
Until the poor get that politics is not optional they will lose.
All you need is hollywood to make a movie. In this movie the life of Tearyan Brown followed. Will smith can play him.
Except you have to give it a "happy ending". He preseveres and some angel comes to rescue him. "America" that land of opportunity gives him a job and his pride back and he lives happily ever after.
For the vast majority of Americans it will be problem solved.
In California, the wealthiest 1% pay 8% of their income in state taxes. The poorest 90% pay 11% of their income. And so, to keep the wealthiest 1% of Californians from paying what the poorest 90% of Californians pay, California is about to throw hundreds of thousands of poor folks out onto the streets, deny food and healthcare to poverty-stricken kids, and shorten the state-workers work month.
People should know that, if California is anything like the rest of the nation, the wealthiest 1% of Californians own 40% of the state. This is America, 30 years after Ronald Reagan seduced us with supply-side economics.
somebody should have told that poor soul that god is always on the side of the rich in america.
There is no God but Mammon and the faithful profit by him.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a poor person's child to enter the gates of a university.
And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneylenders, for they were charging fixed interest below the prime rate.
NEW AMERICAN BIBLE
This is how it is, alright. So when do we begin to organize in some effective way to stand up to the encircling fascism that even Obama defends, because he defends the Wall Street banksters who have given us this undivided hell. Because if we never organize to confront and overthrow these motherfuckers once and for all, we are doomed to be their slaves, or prisoners. Hedges knows it, I know it, and you know it.
Common Dreams needs to have it's own TV station and run it like CNN in that it will play stories like Chris Hedges over and over along with other stories that need to be sent out to the masses. A TV station would reach way more viewers than the internet and get it's points over more forcefully. I'm Canadian so don't really know if PBS does the trick. Me thinks not though. Is money the problem? Or...?
Money is the biggest problem. You have any idea of how much it costs to own a national network? But there's also the problem of censorship for left-wing (as well as extreme right wing) ideas. YOu could create a station, and watch that none of teh big 6 or so companies ever broadcast it. It's their profits you're screwing with after all. Look how few people can even get Democracy Now, which isn't that hothead of a show.
You're correct on PBS. They've been GOP roadkill for a very long time. They'ere also overrun with KVH limo liberals anyway.
There's only one way out of this at this point. Well, two ways, but they should be in sequence or at least compliment each other: disrupt the crap out of this country and make it both ungovernable but also unable to conduct normal business. That involves things that a large segment of "progressives" simply refuse to address honestly: serious property damage, ticking off a lot of sheeple, and possibly even worse. SHort of that, the older non-violent protest techniques simply have been understood as nonthreatening now by the powerful. Marches don't do squat, because now authorities understand that people who march do little else. They didn't know that for sure in the 50s and 60s, which is why those movements had more success. Further, the "news" goes out of its way to censor popular demonstration on the centerr-left. It would have to be massive, disruptive as hell (Seattle, 1999), and unignorable. It's hard to get people on board for that kind of risk, even if they didn't have a principled stand on passivity.
We're in terrible shape unless we talk about things we don't want to talk about, or things that disturb us or challenge our platitudinous notions (read Zinn's romantic little ditty posted today) of how social change occurs.
We're very far behind the 8 ball as it is, but I think as things get worse our opportunities will increase to radicalize average Americans for whom resistance to what has never been in their minds at all.
I suggest that everybody who was moved by this column mail a copy of it to Obama. He supposedly reads a few citizens' letters a day -- maybe if enough copies came to him from different addresses across the country, his gatekeeper would actually pass it on to him.
Good point... I wonder if most folks who are so outraged and afraid it is all over would think it important to send to the White House the messages we send to each other.
I am guilty too... We all talk a good game but us humans seem to act when forced to act and that is not when somebody tells us to "Wake Up" it is when we realize we got to get out of bed.
Love the revolution
Yeah, you Lazy fuck... quit preaching to the choir and preach to our public servant number one disguised as the Boss.
Jim the Wise Guy
inanna i hope the rich come to my home and break in. you will be seeing on fox news
what happened to them. and if i go to prison i will consider it service to my country!
i:m no rightwing maniac but this has to come to an end! i will not be surprised
when they charge inmates for being incarcerated.
A lot of sates already do. Connecticut is one of them. See attached paragraph.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said he had no choice but to enforce the law, which allows the state to recover room and board from any inmate who comes into money while he or she is in prison -- or after they leave it, whether through inheritance, lottery winnings, proceeds from their crimes or financial windfall.
In my humble opinion this just guarantees that if you ever find yourself in jail for anything you will be ruined for the rest of your time on earth.
a man in the UK - forget his name - locked up for 14, 15 years for something he never done.
is finally exonerated and compensated .
"room and board" deducted from total!!!
the coffin of this country is already in the ground with the burial plot filled in!
its clear that the degradation of america is now complete. screw it! i can not even
begin to find the words to articulate my reaction to this story but it used to be
only in america! that meant you could come here from another country work
hard and have a good if not great life. today it means people from fascist business
schools who think their the masters of the universe pulling every brick out of the foundation
of this once great country. today its only in america as folks from elsewhere look
at the violence and greed here and shake their heads while deciding to stay home!
fuck ronnie rayguns! the great communicator. he who advocated greed and adverice
and if you were a blue collar person* vote for me and screw yourself* which of
course many of americans did! i can remember being at a islanders hockey game
and the hotdog vendors comes up and says gentlemen we have a new president.
i immediately lost my appetite and said no thanks. all the while saying to my dad
we are fucked now. twenty nine years later it is!
You know what?
I f@#king love this country.
Is that a fact? Good for you frank, you much be part of the wealthy classes; for the rich the USA is the best country in the world, if not, too f'in bad right? You better keep your doors locked and live in a gated community with heavily armed security guards.
Hats off to Chris Hedges, one of the very best this country has to offer, those are the kind of Americans I look up to.
Things are so bad in most parts of the U.S. that I feel we are all back in the last century and in debt to the company store (our state and federal governments, the credit card companies, and the banks). The idea is for you to spend your life working and hand these people money each month. You will never get out from under obligations to pay somebody something. Even with my home paid for, I worry about finding the money to pay school and property taxes. I worry if I will have enough to pay for heat in the winter. I've cut back on food; I never buy anything new except underwear. Even the appliances are second-hand. Welcome to the new standard of living.
"This machine kills fascists." (The emblematic statement on Woody Guthrie's guitar). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Guthrie
If there is a depression-era Woody Guthrie for today's recession of economic and cultural degradation, it would have to be Chris Hedges, in my opinion. While Woody and his cohort of "folk singers" did not literally kill fascists, they may well have rallied the "folk" to the humanizing movement symbolized by the New Deal in another age in which fascism was descending on a devastated land. As the Nazi boot is put on the necks of folk like the man from Trenton featured in Hedges' article, it will take the combined effort of writer-troubadours like Chris to rally the folk once again. Let's just hope that there's enough folk left in the folks to be aroused and that others will join the troop of writers and singers and political activists who will inspire what seems to be a lost generation of human beings.
Justice depends on how much money you have and if you screw the rich, or if you screw the poor.
When it affects the people that have money, then change occurs.
♪ ... How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool's hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn't help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game.
Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise
While Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell
An innocent man in a living hell... ♪
-- Hurricane (Bob Dylan and Jacques Levy)
_______________________________
· Yr Obd't Servant
The meek shall inherit the earth (or what's left of it)...
-30-
This article made my stomach tighten as waves of nausea rose up.
The injustices described here are happening MILLIONS of times over in the U.S. alone.
Those elite, sociopathic, white-collar crooks are just laughing at us while they pocket their fat bonuses and huge bail-out checks that Congress gave them.
What do we get? NOTHING. That's been clear for a long while.
We are so exhausted and degraded that we can barely manage a peep of objection.
It is really sickening.
This is EXACTLY what the righties wanted to happen when they took over with Reagan as their God. They WANTED a country where they get away with everything, and we all get screwed whether it's just or true or not. That is why they passed unfair drug laws at the same time as they privatized the prison and probation systems. That is why they beat he "tough on crime" dead horse with every election and every big stick they could find. And we have been paying for it ever since.
We're all on our own. This is the United States.
Sad to hear but this is the truth.
http://www.hunkmania.com/
???????
· Yr Obd't Servant
I'm starting to feel better and better about my decision not to serve on a jury; that is, if the courts excuse me from serving. I filled out my questionnaire for jury summons stating that I feel I can't serve on a jury because I have no faith in the criminal justice system and oppose the "War on Drugs." I also said I would never vote to convict anyone of any crime, until the Bush Administration is held accountable for their crimes. After reading this account, and knowing there are many more like Mr. Brown, I know I could never sit and listen to testimony about petty drug crimes while the country's biggest criminals are not only free but preying on the rest of us and lining their pockets.
On second thought, go ahead and do jury duty. If somebody's up on some petty drug charge - "Not Guilty". I see jury duty as a chance to mess with the system.
The problem there, though, is I might run the risk of being charged with contempt of court and get involved in a really tangled legal mess- like Laura Kriho in Colorado- see article at URL, below.
http://www.ndsn.org/dec96/kriho.html
Thanks for the link. It illustrates my parting comment above perfectly.
That way you can "hang" a jury. However, if you can convince your fellow jurists to arrive at a "not guilty" verdict that is called jury nullification. The jury has the right to "nullify", in the particular case they are deciding, any law they consider to be unjust. Prosecutors and judges will not inform you of this facet of the law, and both will be REALLY PISSED OFF at this, but it is still your right.
And, I agree, I would vote "not guilty" in any simple drug possession or sales case as long as no one was intentionally physically injured in commission of "the crime". I would no doubt also PISS OFF my fellow jurists here in fascist south central Pennsylvania.
Caution: There is some possibility that a fascist judge would illegally send a lone dissenting jurist or even a whole jury to jail for "contempt", so you REALLY need to be willing to take a stand for justice if you attempt this.
Unfortunately, while I am willing to take a stand, if it meant possible incarceration for contempt, I couldn't take that chance-- that would mean loss of revenue from work- not to mention something appearing on my record, possibly affecting my chance of employment in the future. I just can't go that far.
The solution to this, based on the link provided below, is to simply not discuss your motivation for voting as you so desire while serving on a jury. I don't see how any judge could try to prosecute if, for example, you state that you believe that the defendant is not guilty because you have a reasonable doubt. However, given the fascist system we now live in, I guess anything is possible.
Crooks are crooks no matter who does it. The title does not quite match the content of the article. There are the white collared wealthy crooks who are rewarded for stealing while the poor are punished for stealing even a small amount. But what really needs to be discussed is the extent of the crime and the punishment. Why is it that even amongst us liberals we fail to fight the conservative version of justice by making it clear that the punishment just does not fit the crime? Even when white collared criminals are punished, the punishment is either a slap on the wrist or an official pardon. If I were to pass this article to an average Joe or Jane, he or she would say "Well, he deserves it." However, had Mr. Hedges distinguished between the double standards of rewarding the wealthy for stealing while punishing the poor for doing the same, half of these same people would be enlightened as to what is really going on.
Read the article again. Brown had already served his sentence. Brown was NOT guilty the second time. Yet, he still got punished.
But to most ignorant people, he's still deemed guilty. This article needs to include discussion of the double standards of punishment based on class and until it does, such articles will generate very little sympathy from our already brainwashed masses.
Unfortunately Obama won't lift a finger to help the Tearyan Brown's of America. Instead the majority of U.S. elected officials support the 'for-profit' criminal injustice system as their silent sponsors devour poor. Judges get kick-backs for sending people to jail (i.e. Wackenhut and American Corrections Corporation), cops seize middle class homes, businesses and every tangible asset with any sort of drug bust and the young & unemployed poverty stricken youth sign up to fight corporate wars abroad for lack of a better job.
Until Americans learn not to vote for politicians who support the corporate state, nothing will change.
"Judges get kick-backs for sending people to jail ... "
You are 100% correct, and an example follows. It is extracted from the following article:
Feds: Judges used system to enrich selves
Times Leader (Wilkes-Barre PA) 1/27/09 by Terrie Morgan-Besecker
See the complete story at:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2172608/posts
I am not a "freeper", and I abhor that website. The same information can be found in a search of the Harrisburg PA Patriot-News archives. I live near Harrisburg and first read the story in that newspaper.
Begin extract:
Ciavarella, the county’s longtime juvenile court judge, helped ensure PA Child Care had a high occupancy rate by, at times, ordering children be detained there even when the juvenile probation department felt it was not necessary.
Ciavarella did that in part by establishing a “specialty court” that created a potential for an increased number of juveniles to be sent to PA Child Care.
The judges’ actions assisted the two juvenile centers in securing agreements with Luzerne County that were worth “tens of million of dollars” for the placement of juvenile offenders, the complaint says.
.......
The complaint also describes how two others involved in the scheme – identified as “participant 1” and “participant 2” – funneled money to the judges by disguising the payments as a “broker fee” or as falsely portraying them as rental payments for a Florida condominium.
Carlson would not identify the two participants, but details contained in the complaint indirectly identify them as Powell and Robert Mericle of Mericle Construction, the contractor who built both the PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care facilities.
The complaint notes that in June 2000, Ciavarella had a conversation with a Luzerne County attorney “who was interested in constructing a juvenile detention facility” in the county. Ciavarella then introduced that person to a contractor, a friend of Ciavarella who was later hired by that attorney to build the center.
End extract.
Whatever happened to the notion of the constitutional right to as speedy trial?
I was once positively identified as a peeping tom. Luckily, I was at work in a grocery store 200 miles away when the incident happened.
This article brought tears to my eyes. I have nothing much else to say. How hopeless for the innocent children who live in areas like this. Perhaps many more areas will become like this in the near future. This is a frightening scenario that we can expect to play out if things keep getting worse with our economy. What are the elite's going to do with their money when the dollar loses value? Where are they going to go?
spiraling scarcity: the winners win and the losers are left to die, tearing at each other's throats.
The television show COPS films the majority of its episodes in Broward County, Florida chasing down street corner pharmacists.
If you added up the value of all the drugs captured from the arrests made during the twenty-year run of the show it wouldn't equal one weeks' worth of credit default swaps sold on Wall Street.
Which begs the question: How come we never saw the CEO of Merrill Lynch tasered on Cops?
Because Merrill Lynch advertises on television?
I have seen several episodes of this show where the cops are the ones selling in "reverse sting" operations. On camera, they approach vehicles and ASK the occupant(s) if they want to buy some weed. They make a sale, and then another pig waiting down the street busts they buyer and confiscates their vehicle under "asset forfiture." This is both entrapment, and theft of property...by the police. Meanwhile, Bu$h, Cheney, our beloved banksters, etc., boast of the crimes (major felonies) they have committed on national media...and nobody seems to have the ability to get any law enforcement agency to prosecute.
From what I've witnessed all my life as an American...having $$, power, rich friends etc. is ALL that counts literally. The rest of us are FUCKED. I was once a middle class person with a business and a good job. When my business was gone and my job went away and I was 50 every since it's been a downward spiral. I'm able to survive only because I have no debt and own my home and my wife has a job ( for now). But we see the hand writing on the wall for our community. Because of the greed of a few and the utter stupidity of the Gov't it's all falling apart pretty quickly.
"Because of the greed of a few and the utter stupidity of the Gov't it's all falling apart pretty quickly."
I would change "stupidity" to "complicity". I am in much the same position as you, except that there is no wife and no wife's income. I "own" my little 900 sq. ft. townhouse, at least until the coming hyperinflation taxes me out of it, and my car will be paid off in five months. That's like getting a raise in pay! My dentist tells me I need $20,000 in dental work. Yeah. That's going to happen.
"The Crooks Get Cash While the Poor Get Screwed" -- otherwise known as The American Way(TM). When packaged for export to other countries, it may also be labelled as "Freedom and Democracy" or as "Operation [insert name of recipient here] Liberation."
That's why they call it the "criminal" justice system. It really IS criminal.
We need some congressional nullification so we can collectively ignore Goldman Sucks Government laws. Now if we could just get the payroll departments to stop paying cops for criminal behavior, we might get some progress.
They've forgotten one simple lesson in nature: in order for parasites to survive they must keep the host alive.The host is dying.
True. But in the year 2009, their "host" is now the whole planet. For them there are no borders... call 'em "Mobile Capitalists Without Borders" if you will.
They aren't confined to our shores--they now operate from anywhere. Washington is merely a place to hold meetings and make deals.
As things continue to crash, they move deeper behind their secured walls here or simply move on to other lands.
Important: As they "move", they take along with them the control of our armed forces and weapons with them. They don't need nor do they adhere to the confines or laws of artificial borders.
These people operate now as a Universal Entity. There is no "America" nation left, for all intents and purposes. Its not a political issue at this point. Its a humanity issue. These guys are a planetary enemy.
Just my take.
I completely agree. Parasites are opportunists. Nature knows that you can keep sucking off the host as long as there's still life left. The corporate parasites aren't even smart enough to realize this. They may have enlarged their area of infection, but failed to realize it is still a finite number.
"if you wear fancy suits and have degrees from elite universities that cost more per year than Brown used to make, you get taxpayer money."
But the number of USans who pay taxes is decreasing, the revenue stream is diminishing, the dollar is over-leveraged and losing value, and the USA's "elite" universities are not so "elite" any more.
Ever notice how so many of America's elite universities are located near decaying neighborhoods? Trenton isn't too far from Princeton.
A lightning bolt of justice.
Did anyone feel that when the banking crisis was first announced?
A complete abortion of Justice.
Did anyone feel that when Paulson proposed his bailouts? Biden is bankrolled by the banks that failed. Geithner is the executioner of America's death sentence.
The good parts of Democracy and real people lie Asphyxiating on the floor as as the fascists step so gently on it's/our collective necks.
Love
Zero
BEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD
Hey, just put a smiley face on the flag!!!
Amerika is all about a system that does only one thing, make the rich richer. Everyone, serves this, even when they think they're not. My personal dialogs recently with others here on Common Dreams verifies this. People believe, operate under innumerable false concepts, in order to do this one thing, make the rich richer.
It is a very comprehensive inclusionary thing, this fascist enterprise.
www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14226