The System is Broken

Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier

As I sit here, scanning headlines, reading stories and trying to get a fix on where the world is today, I can’t help but think just about every headline I read could just be replaced with the phrase “The System is Broken.” Try it yourself and see:

“Massive Maryland Prison Corruption Case Highlights National Issue,” (Reuters, 10/6/16)

“Suspect in Killing of Two California Officers Barred from Owning Gun,” (Reuters, 10/10/16)

Both headlines are descriptive of the stories that follow them, but a bit wordy; and really, “The System is Broken” would be just as apt.

In Maryland, the largest federal indictment ever handed down in that state’s history just fell upon the heads of 80 guards, inmates and outsiders involved in the scheme that saw drugs, pornography and tobacco being smuggled into a medium-security prison, in exchange for cash and sex.

“David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, said Maryland’s case was not unique. Only last month, two guards in Tennessee were charged with having sex with inmates, to name one recent example. The FBI arrested dozens of current and former officers at nine Georgia prisons in February in a corruption sting.

‘The scale in Maryland might be unusual, but the conduct is not,’” Fathi said in a telephone interview,” wrote Ian Simpson for Reuters.

Simpson also pointed out an uptick in the number of people incarcerated nationwide in recent years; the Justice Department says there were 1.4 million people held in American prisons at the end of 2014, a 12 percent increase in the last 14 years.

Not only do we as a nation arrest too many people for “crimes” that have no victim, but we then fail to enforce existing laws intended to prevent crime and harm to the public; as is the case with John Felix, the convicted felon accused of gunning down two Palm Springs police officers on October 8. By law, he isn’t allowed to possess a firearm. The left constantly decries the “easy availability” of “legal” guns but typically remains silent on the actual ready availability of illegal guns; and, not surprisingly, none of the new additional laws they propose ever address the latter but instead focus solely and squarely on infringing upon the rights of law-abiding citizens.

The system is broken. And, while all these occurrences that are evidentiary of that failure are going on, most Americans are spellbound by a staged contest between two people half the country is expecting to “fix” all the problems this nation has. Not that either Trump or Clinton have ever done anything to give any reasonable person hope that they are the ones capable of fixing this mess; nothing about the election or governing process of this nation is logical.

Remember all the “hope” and “change” we were sold eight years ago? How much has changed? Is anyone more hopeful? And, let’s face it, Obama had more charisma than Trump and Clinton combined; he at least was a great salesman for his forlorn hope and lack of change. Why anyone takes seriously the snake oil being offered by these two lesser hucksters than Obama even is beyond me. We should know by now that presidents can deliver neither “hope” nor “change,” and continuing to expect one to do so is how we ended up where we are; and why things aren’t going to improve for the foreseeable future.