Preying on the Poor

[Uncle Joe]

3. This is pretty much about the only direction a nation; that worships the almighty dollar above

all else and willing to allow an evil for profit prison industry to exist can head for.

At the local level though, government is increasingly opting to join in the looting. In 2009, a year into the Great Recession, I first started hearing complaints from community organizers about ever more aggressive levels of law enforcement in low-income areas. Flick a cigarette butt and get arrested for littering; empty your pockets for an officer conducting a stop-and-frisk operation and get cuffed for a few flakes of marijuana. Each of these offenses can result, at a minimum, in a three-figure fine.

And the number of possible criminal offenses leading to jail and/or fines has been multiplying recklessly. All across the country—from California and Texas to Pennsylvania—counties and municipalities have been toughening laws against truancy and ratcheting up enforcement, sometimes going so far as to handcuff children found on the streets during school hours. In New York City, it’s now a crime to put your feet up on a subway seat, even if the rest of the car is empty, and a South Carolina woman spent six days in jail when she was unable to pay a $480 fine for the crime of having a “messy yard.” Some cities—most recently, Houston and Philadelphia—have made it a crime to share food with indigent people in public places.

Given enough time without changing the above mentioned adverse dynamics, governmental/private looting will increase in size, scope and duration to eventually include most Americans as the Middle Class withers, the numbers of poor greatly expand and the U.S. morphs into a nation dependent on a 21st century version of slavery/new Gilded Age hybrid economy.

Thanks for the thread, mass.