As the plutonomy takes hold in our society, city governments have been slowly turning into white collar racketeering criminal enterprises, where highly organized business interests work very closely with politicians at every level of government in a conflict-of-interest-laden scheme that results in the erosion of constitutional protections, and on the exploitation of citizens for private gain.
The points of pressure, or squeeze on the average citizen keeps growing as the result of this arrangement. Anything from an explosion of fines (which are constantly growing) for parking violation, jay walking, and a myriad of petty infractions, to hidden and fraudulent charges in billing statements by cable, telephone, loans, banks, internet, and other services' providers.
As this happens, the criminal collusion between politicians on the take and their paymasters also results in the criminalization of a growing number of infractions, including failure to pay certain fees, debts, and moving violation tickets.
As a result, more and more people are becoming eligible for detention or incarceration, for a growing number of reasons. This stuff is happening by design, driven by lobbyists for corporate-fascist organizations like ALEC.
Nobody can deny the need for security in a society. It is natural for people to expect their government to provide a certain level of security and order so law-abiding citizens can go about living their lives without being victimized by criminals, wantonly.
But in their wisdom, the Founding Fathers, knowing that the innate need for security and order by the citizenry has always been exploited and abused by tyrannical ruling classes since time immemorial, included a number of rights in our Constitution to protect the citizenry against oppression. The bulk of those rights are related to privacy, the right to not incriminate oneself, and the rights against illegal search and seizure.
There is nothing new under the sun: Universally, and eternally, for ever and ever, any time any government asks the citizenry to give up any right in the name of security, it is because that government intends on instituting tyrannical oppression. That was true a thousand years ago, 500 years ago, 200 years ago, and in the year of the Lord 2012.
In today's version, the tyranny takes the form of a collusion between highly organized corporate business interests and their puppets in government, which include a very significant number of politicians and corrupt public officials in cities, states, and the federal government.
This confluence of interests, actions, and criminal collusion has turned into what is today the American Corporatocracy, which is the type of system we live under.
This structure, system, ethos, is in place in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Miami, Boston, Chicago, New York, Dallas, Huston; it's everywhere.
The criminal racketeering structures are very similar in each city, each state. Corporate interests represented by powerful lobbying organizations buy off money-grabbing politicians who then proceed to do their bidding. In return these politicians become an entrenched power structure, benefiting from lucrative lobbying jobs (when they leave office), murky campaign contributions, access to powerful and influential people.
Those citizens who welcome the rapidly growing police state apparatus, including highly advance surveillance drones flying over our cities, and explosion of surveillance cameras in our cities that are constantly recording and saving data, warrantless stop-and-frisk campaigns, warrantless wiretapping and surveillance, etc., are exactly the type of people all tyrants throughout the ages count on to be able to curtail rights and impose a police state.
Nobody is going to help us; if there is any chance of re-instituting democracy and the rule of law, and citizens' constitutional protections, it will have to be done through a mighty struggle by the people; by the citizens.
That struggle may take the form of legal battles, protests, activism, confrontation; it may take many forms, but it will have to be a struggle.
Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Hary Reid, Mayor Ed Lee in San Fransico, Rahm Emanuel in Chicago, Senator Barbara Boxer, Senator Dianne Feinstein... They're not going to do it. They are part of the plutonomy, the Corporatocracy. They mainly answer to the military industrial complex, to the private prison industry, to the big oil lobby, to the surveillance industry, to the insurance industry.
It does not mean we have to give up on the concept of democracy. We need to help revive it, and we do that by removing the politicians on the take from office, one by one. And we do that by breaking the criminal racketeering political-business cartels, by removing the ability of the ruling elite to bribe the politicians in the current pay-to-play political environment.
Of course, the challenge is how to do that? But it all starts by recognizing the actual state of affairs; recognizing what the current system is all about. If not enough of the citizenry comes to this realization, then we won't be able to fix the system... And the oppression, exploitation, subjugation, and enslavement will continue apace.