I was a bit prescient about seeking justice at the Federal level. Now that Federal abuses are getting worse, what I said in "Mythomania: A Psychodrama" is becoming more acute and necessary. It is a bit long but worth the read. Note also that I play politics within the limitations imposed by our government. Outside of those limitations, I have a lot more to say!
TREATMENT PLAN
I won’t let the bastards win.
My marriage was destroyed. I lost my career and my children. I went to prison for fourteen months. I have PTSD from these events and what happened to me in Nicaragua. Our society is sick on so many levels I often wonder if there is hope. I would not have written this book if I thought otherwise.
The following is my Treatment Plan, suggestions that I know would improve our lives and return us to a society based on mutual respect instead of fear and lies. Some of my suggestions sound unrealistic but I know they can work if we confront them together.
I break them down by levels but they are all interrelated. How do we develop a healthy society if our personal lives are sick? How can we live sane, normal lives in a sick society?
Federal Level:
- Stop the “Us vs. Them” mentality of government
Harvey Silvergate contends that each adult in this country commits at least three felonies a day. I believe him. This is a tool the feds use to eliminate dissent. I should know: I was the big mouth bass. Before he died, John Ehrlichman admitted that the Nixon administration developed the catastrophic “War on Drugs” to silence hippies and Blacks:
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
This part of the Treatment Plan has three corollaries:
End the War on Drugs
Stop the mass incarceration madness
Disarm the Internal Revenue Service
The last is important because the government uses the I.R.S. to harass dissenters. Decriminalize tax evasion. Release all prisoners-of-tax immediately. Let them come back and become productive members of society again. That would be the same for those in prison for nonviolent drug crimes. Decriminalize possession and all those stupid ancillary laws like possession of drug paraphernalia.
- Redefine what constitutes a “crime”
Really now, an Amish farmer goes to prison for selling raw milk? In classic liberal terms, a crime used to mean any action that results in physical harm to another person, theft, or destruction of someone’s property. It also includes treason and piracy, but we must be careful here because the feds can turn anything you do into either of those. For example, Baby Bush wanted to redefine tax evasion as treason. Right now, the feds consider tax evasion as theft so it can be a slippery slope.
These are the corollaries:
Reduce government regulations. Let’s admit it: a violation of a regulation is a crime, no different than violating a law. Anyone accused of violating a federal regulation should have the option of a trial by jury, a court-appointed lawyer if necessary, and the option of appeal.
Eliminate “three strikes you’re out” laws. Every infraction should be judged on its own merits. Period.
Eliminate the artificial distinction between a “crime” and a “hate crime.” Again, every infraction must be judged on its own merits, not what a prosecuting attorney thinks are its merits. No lie: I met an Amish farmer in Elkton who is serving a 15-year sentence for forcefully shaving another man’s beard. Why so long? Because the prosecuting attorney convinced the judge that it was a hate crime. Forcefully shaving another man’s beard isn’t right but is it worth 15 years of his life?
End mass incarceration. Period.
Make federal judges accountable to the public, not other judges
Good luck with this one. Judges live in their own little world of unaccountability. Funny thing is that “judicial reform” advocates generally believe that only other judges have the right to correct the system. I do think that if we can discipline judges who violate their oaths to the Constitution we might have a chance at real reform.Eliminate all governmental institutions and tactics that violate the Bill of Rights
There are several steps we can take immediately, which include:
Get rid of the grand jury. Read the Cato Institute’s paper about this un-American deception called “A Grand Façade: How the Grand Jury Was Captured by Government.” Don’t let yourself become a ham sandwich.
Get rid of the plea bargain. If a prosecuting attorney cannot convict someone based on evidence or eye-witnesses, then perhaps there is no crime.
Eliminate the Pre-Sentencing Investigation as a tool for harsher sentences. In my own case, the investigator wrote that Angie “claims that her husband’s personality changed over the course of their marriage.” I never got the chance to refute this. Well, until now.
- Eliminate the profit motive from the justice/prison system
The government views all of us as actual or potential sources of income. The current fashion of focusing on for-profit prisons is a start but I think it is a red herring. The government does not make a profit in the same sense that we think of making profits. A business makes money by producing goods or providing services that are either better, less expensive, or more unique than their competitors. The government makes money through taxes, fines, fees, and other forms of confiscation. Let me illustrate this through my own experiences:
I was incarcerated at F.C.I. Elkton for fourteen months. It costs the government approximately $34,000 per year to imprison one person there. However, the warden gets $75,000 per prisoner per year of taxpayer money so the closer he comes to spending only $34,000 the more “profit” he makes. Wardens are rewarded for their profits. He will do whatever it takes to decrease his expenses. His largest expenses are food and medicine. It doesn’t take a C.P.A. to realize where the cuts come from next.
Taking all the above into consideration, I want to make a bold statement that is highly controversial: the United States federal justice system is a giant welfare state. There is a good reason why so many Blacks are prisoners. It is the feds way to house, feed, and provide medical care to the poor without upsetting the White majority. If the government gave $34,000 a year to a Black man on the streets, Whites would have a fit. But incarcerate him for committing victimless crimes and everyone is happy. Except for that man, his family, and his community but they are in the minority. It doesn’t end there. You have also isolated that man from impacting the legal system through voting, protesting, and community action.
Make it illegal for any governmental official to lie to a citizen, at all levels
This is a self-evident treatment. What if we apply the same rules to the government that it applies to us?Make it an automatic felony for any governmental official to kill a citizen while on duty.
This would be a federal law that applies to all levels of government. I am not a person to cry “there ought to be a law” for much of anything but this one is just so reasonable it hardly needs explaining. But Dr. Mangold, you may ask, what if a criminal draws a gun? The police have so many ways to neutralize threats without killing that it is possible. Think of all the lives that will be saved. Perhaps I am not done saving lives.Make it mandatory for judges to disclose the right of “jury nullification” to juries before every court case.
This is a powerful tool citizens of this country must end legal abuse by the government. Because it is so powerful, most judges do not notify juries of this right and defense attorneys in some jurisdictions are disallowed from informing them, too. Check out Wikipedia for more about this issue.
