I’m not coming back to blogging yet, but I had to add my endorsement of Rockwell’s (and Glenn Greenwald’s) comments about the Hastert indictment:

Lew Rockwell is dead right about the insane indictment of the former GOP Speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert, on charges he structured money withdrawals from his bank account (“structuring” is the “crime” of taking out your own money from your own bank-account in the form of cash in such a way as to avoid triggering the bank’s reporting requirements):

This amiable dunce was installed so the hated and feared Tom Delay could run the House unimpeded. Now the Patriot Act that Hastert pushed at Delay’s instructions dhas resulted in his being indicted.

More proof Hastert is a boob: he talked to the FBI without his lawyer present. And where did this ex-high school wrestling coach get $3.4 million to pay someone off? If he’d listened to Ron Paul, and blocked the Patriot Act, he wouldn’t be facing a cage. As Ron also pointed out, about normal people, it is an outrage that you can go to jail for using your own money, earned and taxed, without filling out a government form. (Thanks to Diogenes).”

For those who are not aware, in the US, prosecutors and judges control the judicial system. There is rampant corruption and abuse of office that passes virtually unremarked in the major media.

There are professional, financial and bureaucratic incentives for government agencies to go after low-hanging fruit; that is, convict on  trivial offenses or harass ordinary people without connections, rather than pursue serious criminality (rapists, bank-robbers and the like).

The entire system is a form of blackmail and extortion of defendants, with the threat of incarceration hanging in the background, all in order to get revenues.

Meanwhile, the intelligence services and the prison system are also for-profit systems. The more surveillance and prison there are, the better the owners/investors in these systems do.

Naturally, the definition of what constitutes a crime expands and the number of “criminals” incarcerated increases.

I’ve had many criticisms of Greenwald over the Snowden business, but on this, his and Rockwell’s comments are excellent.