Oh please, 2012 candidates and Republicans of all stripes, take up this cause! Listen to Eli Lehrer of your favorite right-wing website, the National Review Online!
Yes, Mr. Lehrer is taking the side of the underserved, the reviled, and the otherwise oppressed. He's a fighter for the people, or at least, a person. One man.
Bernie Madoff.
Why?
Something close to 12-year sentence his defense attorney recommended is pretty reasonable.
I should note that there is a 15 to life penalty for selling up to two ounces of cocaine.
No high-living investment manager wants to spend any time in prison and the certainty of any sentence for fraud provides sufficient deterrence.
Ah yes. The fact that Madoff is rich and happy means that he really, really doesn't want to go to jail, so any amount of prison time is sufficient. Like Paris and Lindsay's sentences, measured in hours instead of years. Because those two high-living ladies certainly viewed their brief prison sentences as sufficient deterrence to return to a healthy, normal life.
Nearly all sophisticated white-collar criminals operate on the basis that they are too smart to get caught.
Unlike poor criminals, who realize they're too dumb to get caught? Drug dealers figure they're too smart to get caught. Bank robbers figure they're too smart to get caught. Hell, the guys who stole the ATM in Barbershop probably figured they wouldn't get caught. What is this shit?
His life expectancy is 13 years and the rigors of prison life — particularly for a man used to living at the height of luxury — hardly seem likely to extend that.
Again with the argument that prison is extra-bad, even in short doses, for rich white guys. Unlike poor black guys, who, as the right-wing argues, look forward to going to prison and require us to reform prisons to make them tougher.
Read the whole thing - it's a trainwreck.