Wednesday, 19 October 2011, 51st STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS - Ninth Amendment readers please refrain from READING FREE UNLIMITED CONTENT FROM THE DIGITAL NEW YORK TIMES SIMPLY BY SETTING FREE FIREFOX BROWSERS TO "PRIVATE BROWSING". The following comment was as far as we know NOT published in response to an article in the Times regarding the travesty of what has come to be known in the vastly lucrative penal industry as the "Three Strikes" policy initiated and passed at least in California as a voter's proposition which was, as many such propositions are, poorly worded and therefore produced a sickening array of unintended consequences, in response to a public outcry over a horrific event which the misrepresented proposition essentially failed even to address.
Comment Believed Not To Have Been Published In The Times:
Unites States unconstitutional aggression "makes the world safe for democracy". Therefore "real" democracy with each law potentially conceived by a sole California citizen sounds super as one sits in one's hot tub reading (or more likely watching on television) some "in-depth" story simply assuming that the legal "pros" who actually drafted a proposition got it just right as intended.
Unfortunately as hundreds of propositions accumulate over time often resulting in horrendously entirely unintended (one would hope) consequences, many one-time "supporters" of the now nearly irreversible laws come to realize exactly why, or more likely vaguely glean in a state of total confusion and horror, that the "proposition" they recently noisily promoted and enacted results in entirely unsupported and unanticipated medieval consequences due to poor drafting and/or rank manipulation by prosecutors.
This speeds a "streamlined" legal process so as, for example, to coerce guilty pleas regardless of guilt for such heinous acts as licking a lollipop in a store while one waits to purchase it that may well tortuously be manipulated into one or sometimes all three of the popular catchy "three-strikes" mandating a life spent underground daily for 23 and 1/2 hours a day forever without parole at a supermax prison with a vaguely benevolent name such as "Pelican Bay".
Inmates who do not immediately willingly come out for their half hour of "recreation" a day in their own private cell concrete box without any human contact while their cell is hosed down are shot by several guards with darts on electric wires and dragged from their cells.
Such policies of 23-and-a-half-hour confinement, isolation, cruel and unusual punishment by electric dart wire dragging, whatever other abuse the guards may care to inflict, and the knowledge that this is to comprise the REST OF ONE'S LIFE would seem to be designed of course not to rehabilitate (long ago abandoned), but solely to punish, inflict extreme psychic and physical pain, and inevitably drive a person to insanity. Not said lightly, treatment at a prison such as California's Pelican Bay Prison sounds eerily reminiscent of a "medical experiment" worthy of Dr. Josef Goebbels.
Meanwhile, such as in cases as the infamous disappearance and murder of the young girl Polly Klaas precipitating the ill-conceived California "three-strikes" law, many perpetrators of similarly truly frightening and unimaginably cruel crimes serve relatively brief sentences (compared to life without parole at Pelican Bay for lollipop-lifting) which cannot be manipulated into the "three-strikes" scenario by even the sickest Southern California prosecutor soon are sent right back onto California's streets as the last ones Californians might ever wish to meet outside again by prisons that cannot afford to shelter, feed, house, and provide medical care to everyone (anyway yet).
That is anyway not when the prisons are so busy locking away people such as non-violent drug users and unlucky victims such as a first-time shoplifter who might have caught the prosecutor on a bad day or one that seemed just right for an easy conviction regardless of whether it was for all the wrong reasons, like shoplifting a lollipop "enhanced" to "three-strikes" and the rest of a life spent alone in an underground cement hole while the real danger was soon out again lurking and looking for someone else's, like the prosecutor's, daughter.
It is hard to pass up a prosecutor's deal offered which one can be assured will only be followed by harsher and harsher offers finally quite likely leading up solely to a "three-strikes" offer for not coming around quite quickly enough for what is actually a single petty misdemeanor which, moreover so far as the prosecutor is concerned, it is entirely irrelevant as to whether one actually committed it or not.
For the State it is just another quick "victory" with no judge, jury or trial, just sign on the dotted line and answer the questions in court in a way that indicates one at least vaguely understands English as you can not just "nod" all your rights away yet anyway. After all, this is a fair and just country, and you still have to say "yes" or "no" as appropriate out loud and in the right language indicating your "knowing consent" to giving up all your rights in five minutes to an impatient judge already busy reviewing the next case's guilty plea.
Copyright 2011 Big M and Little L All World Rights Expressly Reserved
Comment Believed Not To Have Been Published In The Times:
Unites States unconstitutional aggression "makes the world safe for democracy". Therefore "real" democracy with each law potentially conceived by a sole California citizen sounds super as one sits in one's hot tub reading (or more likely watching on television) some "in-depth" story simply assuming that the legal "pros" who actually drafted a proposition got it just right as intended.
Unfortunately as hundreds of propositions accumulate over time often resulting in horrendously entirely unintended (one would hope) consequences, many one-time "supporters" of the now nearly irreversible laws come to realize exactly why, or more likely vaguely glean in a state of total confusion and horror, that the "proposition" they recently noisily promoted and enacted results in entirely unsupported and unanticipated medieval consequences due to poor drafting and/or rank manipulation by prosecutors.
This speeds a "streamlined" legal process so as, for example, to coerce guilty pleas regardless of guilt for such heinous acts as licking a lollipop in a store while one waits to purchase it that may well tortuously be manipulated into one or sometimes all three of the popular catchy "three-strikes" mandating a life spent underground daily for 23 and 1/2 hours a day forever without parole at a supermax prison with a vaguely benevolent name such as "Pelican Bay".
Inmates who do not immediately willingly come out for their half hour of "recreation" a day in their own private cell concrete box without any human contact while their cell is hosed down are shot by several guards with darts on electric wires and dragged from their cells.
Such policies of 23-and-a-half-hour confinement, isolation, cruel and unusual punishment by electric dart wire dragging, whatever other abuse the guards may care to inflict, and the knowledge that this is to comprise the REST OF ONE'S LIFE would seem to be designed of course not to rehabilitate (long ago abandoned), but solely to punish, inflict extreme psychic and physical pain, and inevitably drive a person to insanity. Not said lightly, treatment at a prison such as California's Pelican Bay Prison sounds eerily reminiscent of a "medical experiment" worthy of Dr. Josef Goebbels.
Meanwhile, such as in cases as the infamous disappearance and murder of the young girl Polly Klaas precipitating the ill-conceived California "three-strikes" law, many perpetrators of similarly truly frightening and unimaginably cruel crimes serve relatively brief sentences (compared to life without parole at Pelican Bay for lollipop-lifting) which cannot be manipulated into the "three-strikes" scenario by even the sickest Southern California prosecutor soon are sent right back onto California's streets as the last ones Californians might ever wish to meet outside again by prisons that cannot afford to shelter, feed, house, and provide medical care to everyone (anyway yet).
That is anyway not when the prisons are so busy locking away people such as non-violent drug users and unlucky victims such as a first-time shoplifter who might have caught the prosecutor on a bad day or one that seemed just right for an easy conviction regardless of whether it was for all the wrong reasons, like shoplifting a lollipop "enhanced" to "three-strikes" and the rest of a life spent alone in an underground cement hole while the real danger was soon out again lurking and looking for someone else's, like the prosecutor's, daughter.
It is hard to pass up a prosecutor's deal offered which one can be assured will only be followed by harsher and harsher offers finally quite likely leading up solely to a "three-strikes" offer for not coming around quite quickly enough for what is actually a single petty misdemeanor which, moreover so far as the prosecutor is concerned, it is entirely irrelevant as to whether one actually committed it or not.
For the State it is just another quick "victory" with no judge, jury or trial, just sign on the dotted line and answer the questions in court in a way that indicates one at least vaguely understands English as you can not just "nod" all your rights away yet anyway. After all, this is a fair and just country, and you still have to say "yes" or "no" as appropriate out loud and in the right language indicating your "knowing consent" to giving up all your rights in five minutes to an impatient judge already busy reviewing the next case's guilty plea.
Copyright 2011 Big M and Little L All World Rights Expressly Reserved
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