Essay 6

Forgive them father for they know not how they vote!
Or,
New dogs, new ponies, same show.

 

                                                                                                            

   I'm not really sure when lawyers arrived on the scene, but I can't really see any purpose they serve except to cheat an honest man. In the old days, your word was your bond and you wouldn't survive long otherwise. If our words still had the same value today, there would be no need for lawyers, gone are those days of honor, now we convolute the words so much that it takes a lawyer to understand it, (job security, or plausible deniability, I guess). Using plain wording, direct and to the point, would leave no room for loopholes, everyone would be able to understand it, there would be no room for the trickery, oh, and think of the trees it would spare from the paper mills!!!
  
    I have decided that the main reason for lawyers is to be to protect the have from the have not. The main reason we are grouped as have and have not is probably due to the lack of laws protecting the have not from the have.

   Politicians are pretty much lawyers, ( and indeed most, if not all are lawyers), and are well versed in the art of saying one thing and meaning another, Sam Clemens, (Mark Twain), once said that the very desire to be a politician should negate ones right to be one. Most business men are just lawyers who took the short cut, skipped law school, got an MBA, and went right into snake oil.

   The big advantage we have is that at some point in time an unwritten, and unspoken law went into effect forcing all lawyers, politicians, and businessmen to wear their own personal noose around their neck, (I guess someone figured they weren't worth the cost of the rope, and I agree). Now I'm not saying they're all bad, just that the bad ones tend to stand out, and we probably should start making use of those ties.

   The chasm between law and justice is mind boggling in it’s scope; realistically speaking justice should be an absolute concept of right and wrong, and should involve some measure of “common sense”, (an oxymoron at best!), law on the other hand appears to be a matter of interpretation, where the interpreters don’t speak the same language. When they do manage to achieve coherency, the laws they produce, are rife with enough ambiguities to render them pliable in the hands of a good attorney, (there goes that oxymoron again).
We elect politicians to enact laws for the common good, and enact laws they do, (job security again), here are some interesting ones;

*In California it is illegal to eat oranges in the bathtub.
*In Miami it is illegal for a man to wear a strapless gown. (Does this apply to the gay community?)
*In Sarasota you can’t sing in a bathing suit.
*In Georgia it’s illegal to change clothes on a mannequin unless the shades are drawn.(What happens in Georgia stays in Georgia)
*In Chicago you can’t take your French Poodle to the opera. (So much for canine culture)

*In Kentucky it’s illegal to marry the same man 4 times. (Slow learners or bad memory?)
*It is illegal to mistreat oysters in Maryland. (Just have to rely on Viagra I guess)
*Dueling with water pistols is against the law in Massachusetts. ( It’s all fun and games ‘til someone gets their eye washed out)
*Soup Slurping is illegal in New Jersey. (New Jersey should be illegal)
*In Oxford Ohio it is illegal for a woman to undress in front of a picture of a man. (A real one is alright I guess)

That’s enough, you get the idea, but it does make you wonder what prompted these laws, and while we’re in the vicinity, here’s a list of average sentences served for assorted crimes according to the online sourcebook of criminal justice statistics;

Violent crime, (Terrorism, Kidnapping, Assault, Homicide, etc) -----8 years
Property offenses / theft-----------------------------------------------------2 years
Embezzlement ---------------------------------------------------------------1.3 years
Fraud --------------------------------------------------------------------------2 years
Forgery ------------------------------------------------------------------------2 years
Auto theft ---------------------------------------------------------------------3 years
Pot depending on level of involvement is good for ---------------------2 to 4 years
Heavier drugs are ------------------------------------------------------------8 to 10 years
Firearms and explosives-----------------------------------------------------6 to 12 years
Sex crimes---------------------------------------------------------------------7 to 10

   The above shows that running off with the employee pension fund is still a better bet than selling pot, (but you have to wear a tie), crime does pay if you think big, really big. Homicide apparently ain’t what it used to be, and even the states with death penalties loathe using it.
Some crimes have such low consequences that the seasoned criminal will commit them just to get some free medical and dental. Pick the right crime and win a free college degree, (you’ll have plenty of study time outside the shower).

   The above listed group of crime and punishment can be referred to as religion based law; there are many, many, many, many, others that we can refer to as designer laws, similar in nature to the ones listed earlier, (the above, above), just not quite as ridiculous.

   (Yes, Virginia, there is more to come…)