Immunity and Impunity in Elite America: How the Legal System Was Deep-Sixed and OWS Swept the Land

[seafan]

Glenn Greenwald asks the question of the emergence of the Occupy Wall Street movement that is engulfing the nation: 'Why now?', when we have been conditioned for thirty years to accept, and not begrudge, the vast wealth of the rich, as, we were told, it was through their innovation, their inventions, their risk-taking and their philanthropy that the lives of the rest of us would benefit.

As the duplicitous but folksy Ronald Reagan soothed us with the words "a rising tide lifts all boats", we were conditioned to accept and welcome the rapid rise of wealth disparity and inequality that have now become such an incredibly destructive force in our country.


So, Greenwald asks of the Occupy Wall Street movement, 'Why now?'

And he answers it with a ferocity of truth that has burst out of its chains.




Immunity and Impunity in Elite America: How the Legal System Was Deep-Sixed and Occupy Wall Street Swept the Land

By Glenn Greenwald
October 25, 2011

.....

It is now clearly understood that, rather than apply the law equally to all, Wall Street tycoons have engaged in egregious criminality -- acts which destroyed the economic security of millions of people around the world -- without experiencing the slightest legal repercussions. Giant financial institutions were caught red-handed engaging in massive, systematic fraud to foreclose on people’s homes and the reaction of the political class, led by the Obama administration, was to shield them from meaningful consequences. Rather than submit on an equal basis to the rules, through an oligarchical, democracy-subverting control of the political process, they now control the process of writing those rules and how they are applied.

.....

If you were to assess the state of the union in 2011, you might sum it up this way: rather than being subjected to the rule of law, the nation’s most powerful oligarchs control the law and are so exempt from it; and increasing numbers of Americans understand that and are outraged. At exactly the same time that the nation’s elites enjoy legal immunity even for egregious crimes, ordinary Americans are being subjected to the world's largest and one of its harshest penal states, under which they are unable to secure competent legal counsel and are harshly punished with lengthy prison terms for even trivial infractions.

In lieu of the rule of law -- the equal application of rules to everyone -- what we have now is a two-tiered justice system in which the powerful are immunized while the powerless are punished with increasing mercilessness. As a guarantor of outcomes, the law has, by now, been so completely perverted that it is an incomparably potent weapon for entrenching inequality further, controlling the powerless, and ensuring corrupted outcomes.

.....

That is what has changed, and a growing recognition of what it means is fueling rising citizen anger and protest. The inequality under which so many suffer is not only vast, but illegitimate, rooted as it is in lawlessness and corruption. Obscuring that fact has long been the linchpin for inducing Americans to accept vast and growing inequalities. That fact is now too glaring to obscure any longer.

And no amount of rubber bullets, tear gas, clubs, flash grenades, smoke bombs or pepper spray is going to stop it.


We, the people are coming.

[Kaleko]

1. Every day another wake up call.

A mass awakening is now unstoppable.

[indepat]

2. In the meanwhile, multiple rethuglican candidates are peddling vastly

regressive tax schemes which would sharply exacerbate inequity on many fronts as if to say we don't give a gawd damned about the lot of the great majority of Americans. :patriot:

[Kaleko]

5. The harder they squeeze,

the more people in the streets.

IMO, we've passed the tipping point. Systemic collapse is immanent. Wait 'till the people find out what happened to their pension funds. We'll pull together and help each other, carry each other, sister and brother. Worldwide.

[Fire Walk With Me]

3. K&R!

[Vincardog]

4. We, the people are coming.

[leftstreet]

6. K&R

[Kaleko]

7. Kick

[slipslidingaway]

8. knr - Greenwald will be on with Maddow tonight. n/t

[SammyWinstonJack]

9. K&R

[Luminous Animal]

10. And an interview with Greenwald on Truthout (link below)

http://www.truth-out.org/why-elite-class-protected-under-americas-justice-system/1319566022

[Uncle Joe]

11. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, seafan.:thumbsup:

[seafan]

12. Taibbi: 'These guys on Wall Street are not winning – they're cheating.'

From Matt Taibbi's searing article in Rolling Stone:


October 25, 2011

.....

All weekend I was thinking about this “jealousy” question, and I just kept coming back to all the different ways the game is rigged. People aren't jealous and they don’t want privileges. They just want a level playing field, and they want Wall Street to give up its cheat codes, things like:

FREE MONEY. Ordinary people have to borrow their money at market rates. Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon get billions of dollars for free, from the Federal Reserve. They borrow at zero and lend the same money back to the government at two or three percent, a valuable public service otherwise known as "standing in the middle and taking a gigantic cut when the government decides to lend money to itself."

Or the banks borrow billions at zero and lend mortgages to us at four percent, or credit cards at twenty or twenty-five percent. This is essentially an official government license to be rich, handed out at the expense of prudent ordinary citizens, who now no longer receive much interest on their CDs or other saved income.

.....

CREDIT AMNESTY.

.....

STUPIDITY INSURANCE.

.....

UNGRADUATED TAXES.

.....

GET OUT OF JAIL FREE.

.....

These inequities are what drive the OWS protests. People don't want handouts. It's not a class uprising and they don't want civil war -- they want just the opposite. They want everyone to live in the same country, and live by the same rules. It's amazing that some people think that that's asking a lot.

People just want a level playing field.


And we have been robbed of that for more than 30 years.



Thanks to Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi for their dedication to the truth.