Public vs. Private
Justice Under the Law
By
Laura Joyce Moriarty
It
is essential that a fair, equitable U.S. judicial system is maintained at all
costs as our minority citizens are growing in both numbers and need.
Attaining
fair treatment under the law is more difficult recently, because we are living
in a political climate of chaos and conflict. This is not a random result of
diverse opinions. It is a planned systematic process by dishonest politicians
that use disagreement and discord to weaken diverse communities. In other
words, people’s ability to cope and fight for their rights is challenged and
eventually demoralized.
I
call this system an Onslaught of Coercive
Practices. It is being used to upset the balance of justice . . .
especially social justice. My thoughts on this arose out of an idea put forth
by Randolph Bourne in his piece entitled, Unfinished Fragment On the State*,
i.e., the idea that “war create[s] a coercive political climate.”
Just
like war, I believe that economic misery, distress, confusion, fabrications,
and any form of gas-lighting, i.e., bullying are all manipulations that stem
from one common thread; the desire to create a coercive political climate.
A
poor community is hard pressed to garner the necessary resources, money, and
time to stem the coercive tide that flows out of the desires of the publically
corrupt. Such a community is constantly under siege and believes itself less
knowledgeable or able than those in power.
But
they have rights! The first and most important of these rights is the one to
vote and the second one is to ask questions. Your representatives are your
servants. You are paying their salaries. You can demand explanations.
So
one of the ways to attain justice under the law is to demand correct, truthful,
and sincere answers to your questions from your candidates before you vote.
The
students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have figured this out as
they have been throttled with incredulous justifications for evading or
excusing the issues of gun control. When the students heard this nonsense from the
legislators, they said, “B.S.”
Thus,
if you want justice, then you must demand correct honest answers. Let’s use the
example of private prisons versus public prisons.
Private
prisons are on the rise and communities are only recently being alerted to
their failures and appalling abuses. They are numerous and noticeably
unconstitutional. That is, no law has been passed that asserts that elected
public officials are permitted to abdicate their duties and relinquish their public
responsibilities to private for-profit corporations.
When
you elect a representative, you are essentially giving that individual the
right to make decisions for you. You have not elected them to turn over their
responsibilities to an unaccountable private entity that can ultimately claim ignorance when things go wrong.
If
you ask your legislative candidates about whether they will vote against the
funding, endorsing, supporting, etc., of private prisons, you may receive lots
of ambiguous answers about the costs, about the inmate demographics
and facility locations,
about the use of mandatory sentencing [their responsibility and a subterfuge by
the way], about inmate violence, and more. If you hear all this, be aware and
beware. It is all B.S.!
Both
the federal and state legislators have the responsibility to raise money
[taxes] and appropriate those taxes. Many of these state and federal
representatives base their decisions on their own favorite preconceptions and
this is where they run into trouble, and it is usually based on the money paid
in taxes. Any such argument, or study, or notion they might raise is
irrelevant. For every positive issue on one side, there is an alternative
negative issue on the other. In the case of private prisons, there are more
negative issues period. But again, these issues are not relevant.
In
brief, there are no arguments for or against the issue of private prisons based
on numbers, or funding, or any other issue they might conjure up to get away
with deceptive legislation. They may
be secretly thinking . . . a job for a friend . . . a private kickback . . . profits
for a favorite corporation represented in their stock portfolio . . . big
campaign donations, and much more. They may even believe that bottom-lines are
more important to the taxpayer. If you wasted your energy asking for specifics,
they will not tell you that private corporations actually receive money from
the government anyway in the form of stipends, transferred personnel, and more.
Again, do not fall for taxpayer / bottom-line issues.
So to be clear,
these are the outcomes of any public welfare service that is usurped
from public funding to private corporations.
Why is this
entire process fundamentally wrong? Because the U.S. Constitution provides for the rights of our government entities to tax citizens while
“guaranteeing the general welfare of citizens.” If
your representatives are unwilling or unable to raise the appropriate taxes to
provide for the general welfare of all its citizens, then they are abandoning their
responsibilities as delineated in the U.S. Constitution.
Thus, provided
in our democracy are the rights for elected officials to enact legislation and
to tax accordingly. They are the ones who enact the criminal statutes and
regulations. They are the ones who make the laws and, therefore, are the ones
who are ultimately responsible for any end results that constitute breaking
their laws. Thus, their public responsibility doesn’t end with the passing of a
law.
We are not a
rogue nation made up of dictators and a military government that punishes
citizens as if they were all enemies of the state. We are a democracy and we
all must be responsible for seeing that our government works. Translation: Taking
responsibility for punishing citizens who break government laws is the
responsibility of the government. They are the ones who must attempt to house, educate,
and rehabilitate offenders. I might add that it is not their responsibility to
punish offenders unless there is a precise law that delineates specifically and
clearly what that punishment involves.
This is an
especially important issue for the upcoming 2018 election. I would recommend
that you ask every legislative candidate to give his or her opinion on private
prisons. When you begin to hear a lot of B.S. about how private prisons save
money, be sure to explain that you understand that they are profit-making
corporations running these prisons and that no matter how much taxpayer money
is supposedly saved, you expect that your representative provide for the
general welfare of all its citizens as delineated in the U.S. Constitution that
they have sworn to uphold, and that includes the humane treatment of prisoners
in a transparent publically accountable system.
Laura Joyce Moriarty, M.P.A., has been involved in community
service for most of her life. Many of her political papers are saved in a
special collection in the Georgia State Library: http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/findingaids/id/1802
She is also the author of more than thirty fiction and
non-fiction works. Search Laura Joyce Moriarty on Amazon.com.
*Randolph Bourne, “Unfinished
Fragment On the State,” Free Government in the Making, 3rd
edition; ed. Alpheus Thomas Mason, (New York, Oxford University Press 1965) p.
729.
© Laura
Joyce Moriarty
