From 2005 to 2008, there are on average 14,172,384 arrests made per year in the United States. This is based on data from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’™s Uniform Crime Reporting program. Of all reported arrests, drug abuse violations remains the greatest, with on average 1,819,970 arrests made per-year/

I checked with MADD and a little over one million of those arrests involved DUI's. So if I got this right, only three million of the 14 million arrests last year relate to drugs or alcohol?

Domestic beatings might take up a lot of the slack, I suppose. There are tens of thousands of injured spouses or injured children but surely a large percentage of these types of crimes relate to drug or alcohol abuse.

That same reasoning would relate to assaults or even murders, I suppose.

I am just in awe of these numbers.

My math skills tell me that almost 5% of our population is being arrested every damn year! (And I should underline that a traffic ticket or a parking ticket does not constitute an arrest!)

And this also tells me that there cannot be 14 million repeat offenders every year.

I will come back to the numbers a little later, but damn it appears we do live in a police state and/or our nation is composed of millions upon millions of bad people!

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

The Daily Beast has published a fine critique of a movie I probably will not view for a few years.

The movie is supposedly based upon a rambling narrative by an extremely mentally ill man who stole hundreds of millions of dollars from pension funds and retirees and unions and....

Kind of a mini-Madoff.

Except of course, Mr. Madoff was more like Lawrence Welk's band members; that is Mr. Madoff was a good a family man!

Mr. Belfort and his partners on the other hand were sex driven and drug driven perverts who broke just about every single state and Federal law on the books that did not entail gun fire.

In 1994, Stratton Oakmont agreed to pay a $2.5 million fine to the SEC in order to settle a civil securities fraud case, with Belfort, Porush, and another partner, Kenneth Greene, paying $100,000 each. It’s estimated that Belfort was worth about $200 million at his peak. He was finally arrested in 1998 for securities fraud and money laundering. He was convicted in 2003, and after cooperating with the FBI and ratting out his friends, he received a 4-year sentence, but served only 22 months in a California federal prison. His cellmate was Tommy Chong, one half of “Cheech and Chong,” who was serving 9 months in jail for selling bongs. And Belfort was ordered to repay $110 million to a victim compensation fund, but the U.S. Attorney’s office says that he has paid less than $12 million in restitution, and has reneged on his agreement to fork over 50 percent of his income toward the fund.

The most egregious part of this story is not just that this prick only served 22 months in prison, but that he has failed to pay his fine and has reneged on his agreement to fork over 50% of his income for the purpose of making partial reparations to the victims of his felonious business concerns.

MADOFF

Madoff is sitting in prison and will be sitting in a cell for the rest of his life.

His son committed suicide.

What happened to the 60 billion dollars?

Only quarter cents on the dollar have ever been recovered.

But what gets me is that his wife was left with 2 ½ million?

I have not researched the issue of attorney fees that covered all the legal representation of the family.

And that is an issue that, I would bet, involves millions upon millions of dollars.

All this brings a meme from Law & Order:

If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided to aid in your defense.

KEVIN TRUDEAU

I see Kevin Trudeau on my tellie every single day while I channel surf my monstrosity of a machine.

This guy really knows how to scam the system.

A federal judge has ordered infomercial marketer Kevin Trudeau to pay more than $37 million for violating a 2004 stipulated order by misrepresenting the content of his book, “The Weight Loss Cure ‘They’ Don’t Want You to Know About."

This all occurred in 2007 for chrissakes relating to findings made in 2004 and Kevin has paid nothing.

How can I watch him on TV everyday while he continues to be under the terms of this edict issued by a Federal Judge?

Here is a guy who is a convicted felon (in the 1990's); a guy who dresses rather well; a guy who hires actors to perform in his infomercials while he has purchased half hour segments on cable;a guy who sells millions of books; and a guy who has somehow fed himself and maintained a home somewhere(s) for almost ten frickin years and paid his attorneys for services rendered as he is constantly summoned to Federal Courts as well as Federal Agencies.

On Friday, Gettleman said Trudeau failed to pay and ordered him to transfer ownership of companies and financial accounts to a court-appointed receiver. Gettleman found him in contempt, opting not to give him jail time out of concern that those hurt by his actions would never get compensated.

In October of last year, Trudeau was finally jailed for contempt.

By November of last year, Trudeau went to prison?

(and here)

REALITY SETS IN

Half of all Black Men have been arrested by-age-23.html

Just looking at one aspect of this horrific state of affairs, how many 23 year olds can afford bail or an attorney?

Did you know that it is against the law for attorneys to receive funds that arose from illegal activity?

Assume the alleged felon is busted for selling dope and owns a house and a couple of cars and has fifty grand in the bank. The Feds or the state officials responsible for the arrest can simply take the money and the cars and the house prior to any arraignment, let alone conviction and the alleged felon will receive the services of a court appointed attorney.

And that alleged felon will not have enough money for bail and he will sit in jail for months or even years BEFORE trial.

When the U.S. Attorney decides to indict someone under RICO, he or she has the option of seeking a pre-trial restraining order or injunction to temporarily seize a defendant's assets and prevent the transfer of potentially forfeitable property, as well as require the defendant to put up a performance bond. This provision was placed in the law because the owners of Mafia-related shell corporations often absconded with the assets. An injunction and/or performance bond ensures that there is something to seize in the event of a guilty verdict.

18 USC S1861

BAIL

Every day three quarters of the people sitting in a New York City jail are waiting for trial. Most are there for one simple reason: they are too poor to make bail

Now just to underline the fact that this type of discrimination against the poor; this enslavement of the poor; this deprivation of basic rights of the poor is not anecdotal:

Well, the thing that inspired Taibbi to take up the matter were his observationsthat "over 700,000 people" were "arrested in weed-related incidents" in 2012, and that class, race and/or privilege, to varying degrees, seem to be the determining factors as to whether a marijuana smoker ends up being incarcerated or not. This is hardly some counterintuitive take, they are just plain facts. (Dave Weigel, in a more illustrative example that somehow managed to not make Scarborough fulminate,offers the same basic criticism as Taibbi.) huffingtonpost.

CONCLUSION?

Until I read Taibbi's article, it just never occurred to me that ¾ of a million people are arrested every year for charges relating to maryjane.

I certainly did not know that 14 million people are arrested every year in this country.

I do not know if most of these people were ticketed or booked and released or put in some cell with some large bail hanging over them.

The number of imprisoned folks in this nation approaches three million if you count prisons and jails and some seven million Americans are either in stir or on parole or probation with records available on line to any potential employer or landlord or whatever.

Obviously the percentage of minorities and the percentage of the poor who are permanently scarred by our criminal justice system must tell us something.

And so if you steal 200 million dollars you might be imprisoned for 22 months and you might publish a book and receive a portion of a movie deal and....

But if you get caught selling a thousand dollars worth of dope, you might face three years or even life imprisonment (especially if you are on your third strike) and your family might lose houses and cars and pensions and....

Now RICO may or not be involved in any particular case because the underlying basis for the act involves patterns of conduct.

But when you consider people like Madoff or Trudeau or The Wolf of Wall Street it would not seem too difficult to establish patterns of conduct.

Hell, Wall Street has been demonstrating felonious patterns of conduct for decades!

It just gets to me that a Trudeau can walk around for almost ten years as a TV star and publisher earning millions of dollars and able to pay an entire crew of attorneys!

If you recall, Madoff was actually allowed to post bail and live in his mansion for awhile with a signal device on his ankle.

However, bail will be denied (de facto if not de jure) to members of the poorer classes.

Parole or probation will be revoked for those people who lack the means to pay fines.

The decision to arrest in the first place appears to be discriminatory. I mean either Black Men are victims of discrimination with regard to police or prosecutorial discretion or half of all Black Men are horrible people. And I do not believe the latter proposition.

Now an assistant DA might chime in thusly:

The guy beat his wife half to death, do you want him out walking the streets? Or

The guy was selling dope in a school yard, do you want him walking the streets? Or

The guy is a convicted felon and was caught with a weapon on his person, do you want him walking the streets?

I have no answers for these quandaries.

But something is severely wrong with our legal system.

And I don't see anybody doing anything about it.