Week of 08/08/2011

Meanwhile In An Alternate Universe…
– by David Matthews 2

In the world that is Joe Blue’s America, everything is beautiful.

There is no debt to worry about in Joe Blue’s America. Everything is fully-financed, paid for though generous tax contributions from the business community, who are more than eager to give their fair share and then some. Businesses work hand-in-hand with government agencies to provide the best benefits for all employees, from the CEO on down to the mailroom clerk. Everyone has the best insurance coverage, the best salary, and the best retirement programs, all provided without question or complaint.

The elderly don’t suffer in Joe Blue’s America. They live their final years in comfort, surrounded by the best medical care that tax money can provide.

There are no homeless in Joe Blue’s America. Everyone has a home, be it a house or an apartment, and that home is always well-stocked with all the right kinds of healthy food. The playgrounds are always well-maintained and made safe for the children.

There is no illiteracy in Joe Blue’s America, because everyone has free access to education to further themselves as much as they wish. They can be doctors or lawyers if they so choose, without worrying about whether they can afford to do it, because they know that government and private businesses will bend over backwards to help them achieve their goals.

And, best of all, there is no hate in Joe Blue’s America. All races, all creeds, all genders, all religions and preferences, they all live happy and peacefully in Joe Blue’s America. They don’t bicker or fight. They don’t show bias or play preferences. They all get along, and everyone is happy.

Meanwhile, in another universe…

F. Red Smith is enjoying his third parade of the month. He enjoys watching the soldiers march in the parade amidst the cheers and patriotic displays. It makes him feel proud to be in an America where soldiers are idolized and praised for their service.

Yes, in Red Smith’s America there is war, but war is a necessary evil, and Red Smith’s America has a responsibility to make sure that all threats, real or imagined, are dealt with swiftly and decisively. And the people in Red Smith’s America support the troops fully and without question or hesitation.

There are no protesters in Red Smith’s America. Sure they could protest if they want to, but why should they? There is no reason for people to exercise that particular “privilege” in Red Smith’s America. The government does only what they are told to do, nothing more and nothing less, so the people have no reason to complain.

There is no debt in Red Smith’s America, because there are no “wasteful” government programs that need to be funded. Everything is paid for in trade tariffs from other countries, the way Red’s forefathers intended. And the government only does what it is supposed to do. The Congress passes a balanced budget, each and every time, and the President signs it without hesitation or fanfare.

There’s also no political animosity in Red Smith’s America, because there is only one political party to worry about, and everyone in government knows their jobs. The legislature passes laws, the executive signs them, and all the judges have to do is judge people on the laws. Easy, simple, and somewhat boring.

Sure there’s some diversity in Red Smith’s America, but not too much to cause trouble. Sure there are a few differences in opinion or color or belief, but not too much, and those that aren’t “normal” know their place in Red Smith’s America and they stay silent, or else they just disappear, never to be seen or heard from again.

There are poor people in Red Smith’s America. After all, someone still needs to clean the toilets and serve the fries in this glorious state. But there are no homeless people, or people needing government assistance in Red Smith’s America. Such a concept doesn’t even exist. Sure the people could exist, in theory, but somehow they just disappear, never to be seen or heard from ever again.

Everyone pays their way in Red Smith’s America. Everything is provided by a private entity, which people eagerly pay for. People pay for insurance, they pay for medial costs, they pay for education for their children, they pay for their living, they pay for their retirement, and they even pay for their own death. And they only get what they pay for. They know that not everyone will get the same amount of service if they can’t afford to pay for more of it. It’s not perfect, but that’s the way that it is in Red Smith’s America, and people just accept it.

Meanwhile in OUR universe…

Our America is not working. Our economy has degraded into a malicious predatory state that is cannibalizing itself and then pretending that it has somehow “recovered”. It is being further exasperated by a political system that has failed the American people because it is mired in two groups that have their heads firmly entrenched in those two alternate universes.

One group is apathetic because they refuse to see the problems in this world. Instead, they have convinced themselves that things have already been fixed and they are in that perfect world of Joe Blue’s America. The other group is bitter and angry because this world is nothing like their Red Smith’s America, and they are doing everything in their power to drag the rest of us into how they think things ought to be.

And the end result of this continual dysfunction is misery. Millions of Americans have been literally forsaken by these two groups. They have been abandoned by the people stuck in Joe Blue’s America, and systematically shut out by the mechanizations of those with their heads in Red Smith’s America. How can the Forsaken Americans be expected to revitalize the economy when they have no money because of the apathy in one group and the malicious mechanizations of the other?

Let’s get brutally honest here… it is high time that both of those political factions get their heads out of those alternate realities and come back to our universe, to our America, and accept the reality that they created either through their malice or through their negligence. The longer they stand on platitudes, the worse things will get for the rest of us.

And to those who say that government can’t do anything to resolve our economy, I challenge you to truly read the history of this America. The Americans of this world have gone through this before in the 1930’s, and it took drastic measures to come out of it. But it took people living in this world making the decisions that help out every American, even those that were forsaken.

Those living with their heads stuck it the fictional worlds of either Joe Blue or Red Smith need to make a choice. They need to choose which world they will live in. Will they work with the people of this world, or will they continue to operate with their heads in those alternate universes? If they continue to favor the latter, I would strongly suggest that they be the ones to go away so the rest of us can fix the problems they helped to create.

Week of 08/01/2011

Maybe We Should Pull The Trigger
– by David Matthews 2

Once upon a time the nail-biting story in the movie would always involve a last-minute save. No matter how bleak things seemed, no matter how harrowing the stakes, somehow the hero would come in right at the last minute to make the save.

James Bond used to stop every doomsday plan with “007” seconds left. The bomb would be diffused with maybe 1 second left to the timer… or if the timer reaches zero, it’s because the bomb was a dud, or it was already disabled. The world is saved, civilization goes on, life continues… roll the credits.

But then came along a different kind of ending to the story. Timer counts down, people are biting their nails, prayers are made, breaths are held, and then the hero… fails. The bomb goes off. Armageddon arrives. Civilization grinds to a halt. It is the whole world itself that fades to black along with the film as we go to the end credits.

Sometimes this failure is by accident. Sometimes there’s a hidden trap or a second device that lays in wait for the first to fail. Sometimes the hero is prevented from stopping the pending doom from happening. Maybe the hero is killed before he can save the day, so we’ll never know if his guess was right about the red wire or the black.

And then… every so often… you have a situation where the hero doesn’t just fail to save the day, but intentionally causes the doom to happen. He actually presses the button. He drops the bomb. He triggers the apocalypse. Civilization as we know it comes crashing down, and it’s all because he made it happen.

Of course the reason why the hero does it would differ from the villain’s. He’s not allowing the world to come crashing down in a quest for power or glory. Quite often the decision is done for more altruistic reasons. Maybe because the crisis itself that led to this moment was just too extensive. Maybe the system had become too corrupt, too far gone for people to be able to step back. Maybe Armageddon, as horrific the consequence, is the only thing that can save a world that refuses to save itself in that case.

Lately we’ve been repeatedly driven to the precipice of ruination. We’ve been told that the world would come crashing to a fiery end unless drastic and bitter action is taken.

First it was bailing out Wall Street because it was supposedly “Too Big to Fail”. Then it was the stimulus package. Then it was the federal budget, and then the Bush Junior tax cuts. Every time, the danger would be get larger and larger, and the precipice would get closer and closer. Fingers would be pointed, rhetoric would be raised, and eventually a consensus would be made at the very last minute that would give everyone a moment to pause and reflect.

But it would be for only a moment, because the next crisis would always be just around the corner.

And now we’re at that precipice again. Now it’s the so-called “debt ceiling”; an artificial creation of the Congress and the White House to supposedly “control” their spending. The Congress and the White House are playing their games once again, pointing fingers, amping up the rhetoric, threatening world-wide doom should we fail to raise this artificial limit.

At stake, supposedly, is nothing short of the global economy itself. The debt limit is supposedly keeping us from paying what we owe on the overall federal debt. That’s money that has been already spent and we’re just paying the interest on. Failing to pay that means that we’re in default. Our precious credit rating - which is another artificial creation, and admittedly so according to Congressional testimony in recent years - would be sunk, and the world markets would start to collapse. Interest rates would soar for everything. The money that Big Corporate has been hoarding for the past few years would supposedly “dry up”. Recession, Depression, financial Armageddon, the world we know would supposedly come to an end if we don’t up that limit and keep the money bleeding out.

And it’s not like there aren’t any plans to address this. Oh, Congress and the White House have come up with plenty of plans, especially of late, to deal with this and to supposedly lessen our burden. The problem, as always, boils down to partisan egos. One plan would keep us solvent until 2013, but would hit the upper-incomes with higher taxes. One plan would spare the higher taxes, relying on deeper cuts and a vote for a Constitutional Amendment for a balanced budget, but would only last until the middle of Election Year 2012. Despite these sharp differences, both of these plans have some similarities, and yet nobody wants to come up with an unhappy medium. Everybody’s screaming bloody murder over not having “their preferred” plan pass through Congress and are demanding that their favored plan go through as is.

And all the while the artificial deadline looms closer and closer.

So here we are… nail-biting, holding our breaths, waiting at the edge of our seats to see if the Congress and the White House can get their respective acts together and come up with a solution that everyone will go along with, even if it’s not a solution that they like. And they are supposedly ready to let the world go to hell if they don’t get their way.

And this is going to sound somewhat extreme… but maybe it is time that we finally pull that trigger and let it happen.

Don’t get me wrong; I know that the right thing in this situation would be for the politicians to come up with a solution, even at the last minute, and keep the money flowing. But then we would be right back to square one with the overall problems stemming from our continual social, economic, and political dysfunctions. The ongoing excuse from Big Corporate for not hiring people as promised is because the economy is too unstable, and yet the reason why the economy is too unstable is because Big Corporate refuses to live up to their part of the tax cut deal. Political egos continue to operate under the delusions that they are right and they can do whatever they want without any consequences and that they can blame everyone else for the misery that we are going through. Essential services are being slashed not just to the bone, but to the marrow, forsaking the people who need those services now more than ever. And our “precious credit rating”, which I need to remind you is just an “opinion” according to the people in the know, could still be turned to junk and we could still end up in the same situation as Greece, no matter the deal we strike.

In other words, the misery continues unabated.

And then there is the reality that even if an agreement is struck in time that there will be another similar crisis looming over the horizon. Maybe not tomorrow; maybe as we get closer to the end of this year another similar deadline will be cooked up and whipped up. Another “looming crisis” for us to worry about and for politicians to point fingers at each other as we all wish that they would all just spontaneously combust and put themselves out of our collective misery.

Maybe it is time for the “Hail Mary” pass to be missed. Maybe it is time for the economic bomb to go off and the money to come to an end and the people with the power to finally have a reason to worry.

Yes, I am well aware of the consequences of saying that. I am well aware of the disastrous effects that would befall markets in this country and also around the world should the “unthinkable” happen. Wall Street would collapse, although it did just that in 2008 before we gave them that bailout they never deserved to have. 401K programs would supposedly become worthless, although that was always the “second shoe” just waiting to fall even before 2008. Interest rates would skyrocket, although they were already on the verge of doing that. More foreclosures, although they never stopped, more bankruptcies, although those never ended, and even more bank closings, although that never stopped either.

Yes, it would make things worse, at least in the immediate short term, but things have already been getting worse anyway. We’ve only been sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that things were getting better. Now we would be forced to admit that they clearly weren’t getting better.

And then there is that wild card… the angry masses. What happens when the masses realize that things have finally broken down? What would they do? Who would they go after first? I would strongly suspect you’d see a quick exodus of “the elite” once those masses start mobilizing.

Plus, once you’ve reached bottom, not only is there no place to go but up, but you also take away the fear of reaching bottom. The threat of failure at that point would lose its power, and the games being played right now would have to come to an end, because the fear would no longer be there to motivate people to do your bidding.

Let’s get brutally honest here… maybe we need to have this fail on us because it is the only way that we can really deal with the problem and confront the real sources of our misery. There would be no getting around it at that point. Anything short of that only continues the status quo, and that does not bode well when the status quo is sustaining the misery and doing absolutely nothing to remedy it.

Sadly, as this commentary was being finished, it was revealed that a deal was struck among those in government that would once again keep the money flowing from the federal coffers. It still must get Congressional approval, but, baring partisan arrogance, it appears that we once again have been pulled back from the figurative cliff. Once again we are free to live in fear of the next impending doom, the next cliffhanger moment, and the next ticking clock. Once again we are free to wonder when the people in power will do what is right, or if they will finally fail, and bring us down with them. Only time will tell.

Week of 07/25/2011

Whither MSNBC?
15 Years Later, “Phase One” Fails
– by David Matthews 2

It was a little over fifteen years ago this month that something called “Phase One” was launched.

“Phase one” was supposed to be the “next generation” of news, providing cutting-edge technology with the resources of an established national news service. A joint venture between the biggest technology company of the time, Microsoft, and one of the “Big Three” in media, NBC.

That “next generation”… was MSNBC.

At first it was unique. It provided an emphasis on technology as well as current events. It introduced people to the Internet and often directed viewers to their own website for more information on the stories they provided. At the time, that was considered innovative.

Unfortunately, it was a “next generation” that died an early death, and in its place was a cable changeling. It wasn’t even two years into “Phase one” when the executives at MSNBC pretty much abandoned the “tech” side of the equation and put everything they had into the cable news business. Gone were the shows about technology and gaming, gone were the tips and tricks of the Internet and the new generation of devices that would aid society into the 21^st century. Gone was everything Microsoft except for the “MS”.

So what did viewers get for the rest of those fifteen years?

They got “All Monica Lewinsky, all the time.” They got the “subject du jour” rehashed over and over and over again until they start checking out the Golf Channel just to break the monotony. They got repeats and rehash of NBC’s news magazine show “Dateline”, only they’d customize it into themes such as “To Catch A Predator” and “Caught on Camera”. It wouldn’t be too bad if those aired only on MSNBC, but these are all shows that would air first on NBC and then repeated ad infinitum-ad nausium on MSNBC.

So… what about new material? Material that would be excusive to MSNBC? Well that seems to be where a lot of their problem has been.

How many show hosts have come and gone on that channel? Dan Abrams, Alan Keys, Pat Buchanan, Mitch Albom, Phil Donahue, former Governor Jesse Ventura, Michael Savage, Rita Crosby, Tucker Carlson, and Ron Reagan Jr. all had shows on MSNBC that lasted anywhere from a couple of years to only a couple of weeks. Keith Olbermann had two shows on MSNBC, and one of them lasted until just recently.

Don Imus used to have his nationally syndicated morning radio show simulcast on MSNBC until a bad joke by his producer (it wasn’t even something that Imus said himself) led to a self-serving crusade to get rid of him. And where did he go? He ended up with the competition.

The only original show that has remained with any real longevity to this day is “Hardball with Chris Matthews”, and even then they rehash his program two hours after it airs.

It seems that the executives at MSNBC want something that is physically impossible… they want to have “firebrands” without the “fire”.

MSNBC media personalities say something inflammatory and they get suspended when someone complains. Ed Schultz goes off on a tirade on his radio show, not even something that he said on his MSNBC program, and he gets suspended from his TV show! Time editor and “Moring Joe” contributor Mark Halprin gets goaded into calling President Obama “a dick” on live TV and he gets suspended. It’s like hiring an arsonist and then getting surprised when the arsonist lights a match.

In the other hand, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News, which came out only a few months after MSNBC, soared to the top of the pile, partly because of their firebrands like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and Geraldo Rivera. They even managed to snag Glenn Beck for a few years before his ego became so huge that not even Murdoch’s own money could keep him afloat. Murdoch brought over CNN’s egomaniac Lou Dobbs, and put Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and former Governor Mike Huckabee on the payroll.

In other words, rather than to shy away from the “fire” of the firebrands, Fox News puts them on salary and backs them up, and with the exception of Beck, those firebrands still have a place to do what they get paid quite well to do.

Let’s get brutally honest here… after fifteen years of being on cable, it’s safe to say that MSNBC has been slowly meandering itself into obscurity and eventual oblivion. They have clearly abandoned their initial idea of being the “next generation” and, instead, they have been trying desperately to be a kindler and gentler cable channel with all of the appeal of sour milk.

Granted, the cable channel has just changed corporate hands from General Electric to Comcast, but that doesn’t mean that they should remain as the media milquetoast that they have become. If they want to survive, they need to make some serious changes to how they operate.

For starters, if they’re going to be like Fox News, then they need to go to bat for the talent they hire. Firebrands are hired to say inflammatory things. That’s how they get and keep their audience. If the network executives are not willing to back that kind of media personality, either as a host or contributor, then they have no business bringing them over, period.

Second, they need to ditch the rehashed news magazines, or at least make the decision about whether or not they should air them on either NBC or MSNBC, but not both. As long as MSNBC gets NBC’s hand-me-downs to fill up the schedule, there’s no incentive to come up with or to support anything new that would set them apart from the other cable channels.

Third, MSNBC executives really need to come up with and support something new and unique that makes them stand out instead of trying to be like either Fox News or CNN. Once upon a time, they really had that something new with their mixture of news and technology. Granted, they abandoned that edge for “All Monica all the time”, but that doesn’t mean they can’t go back to it, and it is something that has pretty much been abandoned in the past few years.

Once upon a time, CNN was the only news channel on cable. They haven’t really changed in all that time, even when MSNBC and Fox News came about. Fox News soared to the top without trying to imitate the competition. The executives at MSNBC need to stop trying to emulate the competition or serving as the hand-me-down recipients of their “mainstream” sibling channel. They need to shine on their own if they want to celebrate fifteen more years. It’s long since time for MSNBC to go from “Phase One” to “Phase Two” instead of falling back to “Phase Zero”.

Week of 07/18/2011

Atlanta’s Education Disgrace
– by David Matthews 2

There’s an old joke about a company CEO who wanted to see how smart his people were, so he went through the various departments to ask them what two plus two equaled. Every department, in their own unique way, would each say “four”. Then he went to the accountant, who closed the blinds, locked the door, turned off the recording devices, and then whispered into the CEO’s ear “What do you want it to equal?”

That, unfortunately, seems to be the new response to the Atlanta’s education system.

For the past few weeks, there have been a series of reports here in Atlanta about how school systems changed student tests, rigging the results so certain schools would appear to be performing better. And this supposedly wasn’t just recent. According to one report, this went back ten years, and despite warnings in 2005 that this was going on, the school system either did nothing or destroyed evidence of the cheating.

The allegations are sickening. Teachers being pressured by principals to make changes and so-called “test-changing parties” being held to alter the tests submitted by students is nothing short of disgraceful. Former School Superintendant Beverly Hall was even named “Superintendent of the Year” in 2009, in the midst of the cheating scandal! Forty-four out of fifty-six public schools in Atlanta were supposedly involved! Over eighty percent!

Great… we’ve gone from “Johnny can’t read” to “Waiting for Superman” to a really bad joke about Corporate America.

Bear in mind that the students themselves had nothing to do with it. As far as they are supposedly concerned, they did everything expected of them. They actually believed that they were doing better than they really were. But think, for a moment, about the student whose test answers were changed… if that student has a serious learning problem, nobody would know.

You know, once upon a time there was at least the PRETENSE of messing with a student’s education for the sake of some greater good for that student, such as a college scholarship and a potential future in professional sports. But here the teachers and principals can’t even pretend that they’re doing this for the students! This was done purely for themselves.

And now the big discussion is supposedly… what to do with the teachers and administrators responsible.

That should be obvious, shouldn’t it?

Let’s get brutally hones there… what was done was more than just “cheating”… this was a case of FRAUD to an extreme degree. The material gains in this case came in the form of promotions and government grants. Those involved were rewarded for gains that were not theirs to begin with. That fits the definition of FRAUD.

In other words, firing those involved should be the LEAST of punishments involved. There needs to be CRIMINAL charges as well; certainly for the most blatant instances of cheating, such as the ones involved in the “changing parties”.

And this commentator notices that a lot of emphasis has been placed on the teachers, but what about the school administrators that pushed for this? There’s been very little word about the principals and assistant principals that gave the order to change the test results. They would be the ones that would “crack the whip” on this kind of operation, so why isn’t there any talk about what’s going to be done about them?

This scandal has widespread implications for the public school system in general. Already conservative and neo-conservative forces have been doing everything they can to dismantle public education, herding as many children as possible into private schools. They’ve been able to do this on the theory that private education would actually give students an edge. With the Atlanta Public School System now known for cheating on the very standardized tests that would either prove or disprove this theory, the conservative and neo-conservative argument essentially wins by default. They can now use this as the justification to dismantle public education even further. After all, how can public schools prove they’re capable of doing their jobs when they have been caught cheating?

Atlanta Public School System teachers and administrators, all funded by taxpayer money, are now stained by this mess, and it would be extremely hard to trust them or the quality of their work in the immediate future because of this. But they’re not the only ones affected by this mess. The students whose results were changed will never know how good they really are. The few public schools that did not participate in the systematic cheating will be tarred with the same brush as those that did. And those within the APSS that did not participate in the cheating will also have their careers scrutinized from this point forward. And the taxpayers themselves, the people who are financing all of this, are now going to start to wonder if the public school system itself is worth keeping.

Right now the numbers don’t look good for them, and, this time around, they can’t rig the results.

Week of 07/11/2011

Mala Ultionis: Trading Justice for Revenge
– by David Matthews 2

According to my old college and high school education, there are two kinds of crimes in society.

The first is called “mala en se”, which is Latin for “wrong by itself”. Crimes like murder, rape, theft, and fraud are pretty much self-explanatory. Anyone with a thinking brain will know that these kinds of activities are wrong.

The second kind of crime is called “mala prohibita”, or “wrong by legislation”. These are activities that are deemed wrong for no other reason than because a legislative body DEEMS them to be wrong. Things like breaking the speed limit, riding a motorcycle without a helmet, or going on a boat without a life vest are all considered “wrong” because the legislature DECLARED them to be such.

But of late I’ve come across a THIRD kind of crime in society, and some may consider it to be an off-shoot of “mala prohibita” since it is also only considered “wrong by legislation”, but their motivations behind it are somewhat different.

I call it “mala ultionis”.

“Wrong by Revenge”.

These are the kinds of crimes that are put in place to AVENGE some kind of past activity. For instance, if a bank robber is wearing a mask when he or she commits the crime, the legislature could later on make it illegal for one to wear a mask inside a bank. Obviously the law cannot be used to go after the bank robber, because that’s considered after-the-fact, but it WOULD be done to punish other people.

But… what if you take your child to the bank on Halloween and your child is dressed up in costume and wearing a mask? Well then you and your child could be facing some serious penalties, wouldn’t you?

Yes, it doesn’t make sense, but then again laws that are “mala ultionis” are not about making sense. It’s about trying to satisfy that blinding demand for REVENGE.

After John Hinkley tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, liberals immediately screamed for strict gun control legislation. They couldn’t stop Hinkley, so they wanted to make life miserable for other people who either have guns or wanted to get guns. And pretty much every kind of gun control legislation that has come up since then has been based on similar kinds of tragedies. Every school shooting and workplace shooting in America has resulted in new pushes towards restricting gun ownership and gun use. Those laws are all “mala ultionis” laws. They could not be used to STOP the tragedies that inspire them, but rather they are used to punish OTHER people to satisfy that obsessive NEED for REVENGE.

Likewise, when Hinkley was found not guilty by reason of insanity, there were waves of proposals to re-write the legal system to either eliminate the insanity plea completely or else to neutralize it so someone would STILL be held to account for their actions even though they would be considered insane. Again, those are proposals that would be considered “mala ultionis”

You know those laws that are written in memory of someone who was a crime victim? They don’t have to be a murder victim. They could just as easily be someone who was kidnapped. Those are usually “mala ultionis” laws. They’re written to make other people pay the price for the crime that the victim endured.

In light of the recent acquittal of Casey Anthony in Florida over the death of her child, there is a new wave of similar revenge-based laws being proposed to “avenge” what happened to Casey’s child Caylee. Sixteen states are now either pondering or enacting laws that would criminalize parents for not reporting a child missing within as little as twelve hours, or failing to report the death of a child.

“Mala ultionis”. The state couldn’t punish Casey for Caylee’s death, so they’re going to punish anyone else they can get.

I’m sure some people that this is just a matter of fixing the barn door after the animals have left, but let’s get brutally honest here… these kinds of laws are NOT going to do what they are intended to do. Worse yet, these kinds of customized “in the honor of the victims” laws can lead to even worse abuses.

Let’s suppose some state passes one of these “Caylee’s Laws” and charges parents that fail to report a child missing as felonies. What is to stop some vindictive parent or relative from using that law to accuse their ex-spouse of “failing to report” when they claim that they couldn’t “communicate” with their child? How about if a pregnant woman has a miscarriage and her abusive bible-thumping anti-abortion husband declares it to be murder? Hey, she didn’t “report it” in time, therefore it’s a felony.

Politicians tend to consider these to be “unintended consequences”, but that excuse only applies if they actually put some serious THOUGHT into these laws instead of just blindly passing what’s put before them like the paid lemmings they are. Instead, they’re considered “feel-good” laws to appease the emotional masses yearning for some kind of legislative response to a tragedy.

It should be noted that there ARE some forms of “mala ultionis” that have beneficial purposes. For instance, the Bill of Rights, the limitations placed on government, were all created as a result of past abuses of power. Same with the laws that came up after Watergate. In instances where government abuses its power, restrictions are put in place that essentially punishes future politicians from repeating those abuses. Unfortunately, those kinds of “mala ultionis” laws are few and far between. Politicians can dish them out, but they obviously can’t take them.

Substituting revenge for justice doesn’t make up for past wrongs. It only serves to create more misery by making others pay the price for actions they had no role in.