"Fist in the Air in the Land of Hypocrisy"

Sometimes I run across a story here and there, something that doesn't receive much attention because it isn't exactly groundbreaking news, but which, nevertheless, makes me stop and think a little differently about the stories that have recently been dominating the media landscape. Everyday there is a barrage of news and information that inevitably gets overlooked in the daily coverage of important events. I'm not trying to comment on the relative importance of certain stories and this is not a post about the media's obsession with the trivial and the absurd. This is more of a "that just figures" kind of rant. These snippets of recent news that I stumbled upon just seem to, coincidentally of course, put the major events of late into a crisper perspective if you will, and so I just wanted to share them.

Not too long ago "I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby - once Vice President Cheney's most trusted adviser - [was] sentenced to 30 months in jail for perjury. Lying. Not a white lie, mind you. A killer lie. Scooter Libby deliberately poured poison into the drinking water of democracy by lying to federal investigators, for the purpose of obstructing justice. "

Amidst the coverage in recent weeks of Libby's sentencing, the uproar among conservatives and a few pseudo-Democrats who "flooded the judge's chambers with letters of support for their comrade and took to the airwaves in a campaign to "free Scooter" and the endless calls from the same crowd for Bush to pardon him, there have been some less significant stories that have stuck out in my mind for some reason.

One such story was reported Sunday in the Boston Globe. According to the Globe, "The Bush administration is trying to roll back a Supreme Court decision by pushing legislation that would require prison time for nearly all criminals." It seems that the Supreme Court took issue with mandatory sentencing guidelines in the past, which has sparked a "debate, pitting prosecutors against jurists, [that] has been ongoing since a 2005 Supreme Court ruling that declared the government's two decades-old sentencing guidelines unconstitutional." Bush's Justice Department, currently under extensive investigation by Congress that potentially implicates important people in the White House, believes that "a growing number of lighter sentences [is possibly] proof that crime is rising because criminals are no longer cowed by strict penalties."

Despite the Justice Department's concern, many agree with the Supreme Court's decision and there has been "a larger debate about whether sentences for crack cocaine are unfairly harsh and racially discriminatory." According to "US District Judge Paul G. Cassell, chairman of the Criminal Law committee of the Judicial Conference, the judicial branch's policy-making body[,] 'the vast majority of the public would like the judges to make the individualized decisions needed to make these very difficult sentencing decisions."' He further argues that '"Judges are the ones who look the defendants in the eyes. They hear from the victims. They hear from the prosecutors."'

All of this started me thinking about the larger issue of justice in our society and so, when I ran across this article, "Twenty Things you Should Know About Corporate Crime" reported Saturday in Alternet, I was immediately interested. This article was full of interesting statistics that I was not aware of. For example, I had no idea that "the losses from a handful of major corporate frauds -- Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom, Enron -- swamp the losses from all street robberies and burglaries combined." While the "FBI estimates, for example, that burglary and robbery -- street crimes -- costs the nation $3.8 billion a year" it seems that "Health care fraud alone costs Americans $100 billion to $400 billion a year."

I was beginning to get excited about those mandatory sentencing guidelines but upon further reading I found out that "corporate criminals are the only criminal class in the United States that have the power to define the laws under which they live." The article describes how corporations "have marinated Washington -- from the White House to the Congress to K Street -- with their largesse" and how "out [of] the other end come the laws they can live with."

Thinking about the seeming injustice of it all, I tried to comfort myself with the thought that corporations aren't like street thugs who go around with guns killing people. I mean, really, the loss of affordable medical coverage, a pension, investments or a livelihood is not likely to kill you and anything is better than being dead. But then I remembered that I had just previously read that "corporate crime is often violent crime" and that the "FBI estimates that, 16,000 Americans are murdered every year" as compared to "the 56,000 Americans who die every year on the job or from occupational diseases... and the tens of thousands of other Americans who fall victim to the silent violence of pollution, contaminated foods, hazardous consumer products, and hospital malpractice."