There are monsters amongst us, the torturers, the murderers (those who lied us into war are murderers in my book), the idolators, the userers who catapulted our world into recession through their incredible greed and evil. These people have ammased wealth through the great real estate ponzi scheme among others, and are using it in the political system to keep us under control. They manipulate the media or just flat out own it (fair and balanced), pitting Americans left against right, flooding the airwaves, lobbying and even writing legislation to keep themselves safe with their millions with record-setting tax cuts that robbed our nation's future with the debt burden it cost us.
But no one has done anything to hold them accountable, and this is a cancer on our society. Without accountability, we have no justice. When we have no justice, we have lost our way, lost our moral compass. And I believe this is what ailes our economy.
How can we have faith in a system when people who started multiple wars are not held accountable for their decisions and the actions that happened as a result? Or the banksters who robbed life savings in numerous ways, jobs losses, reduced 401k savings sizes, and most certainly the home as a piggy bank? Or the lawyers who twisted the law to justify torture of our enemies? Would we stand for it if someone else did this to our soldiers?
It is good, I believe, that finally terrorist Bin Laden was held accountable. I feel that the world breathed a sigh of relief when he was eliminated. But he's not the only one who needed to be brought to justice.
Part of getting justice is protection from events repeating, and that very clearly hasn't happened. Once again the money was pouring in to weaken financial reform in Congress and still today trying to defund the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. That needs to stop, and we need regulations to right the system.
And part of getting justice is to reform the banking industry enough so that too big to fail is no longer the case (Glass-Steagall anyone?), and given the size of the mega banks only got bigger, that clearly hasn't happened.
And part of getting justice is reforming the electoral system by shining a light on all campaign financing, setting strict donation limits, and providing public financing. People, it's time to face the facts. Without fair elections, our public servants are too often compromised chasing campaign dollars that it ultimately costs us through laws that benefit the few. We need to get the system back to neutral before we are ever going to have justice.
And a big part of getting justice is thoroughly and fairly investigating the possible war crimes and financial crimes and prosecuting them under the fullest extent of the law. And where they are not yet crime under current law, changing the laws to make sure it never happens again.
If left and right can't agree that we need campaign finance reform, we can't agree on anything. If left and right can't agree we need to hold law breakers accountable, we can't agree on anything. If left and right can't agree to end the abuse of the filibuster to prevent progress for the will of the majority (hint, its in the Constitution), we can't agree on anything. If we can't come together to fix the system, we're never going to get to the real problems because the political parties are acting like they are bought and paid for... or just afraid to do the right thing. So we need to free them of that fear by cleaning up the system.
Justice will bring confidence. Confidence is what the world needs. And letting the bad guys get away will continue to damage people's confidence in the system and thus, the economy.
It's really that simple.