Comment Re:Reparations for the Innocent (Score 1) 219
Any citizen of the Commonwealth that is accused of a major felony crime by way of an incitement or probable cause hearing by the State, and in which the state subsequently withdraws the complaint (or portion thereof) before trial, the case is dismissed by the court prior to trial OR the citizen is found not guilty of the major felony crime at trial shall be entitled to claim all costs and expenses related to or extending from the trial (including lost income) against the general fund of the commonwealth.
So the super rich are cemented as untouchables in law by the simple fact that any government short of federal isn't going near charges against them with a ten foot pole. And even federal would be up in the air depending on charges. I agree, for nearly all cases the above would be an improvement...but at the same time it would permanently close other doors when it comes to leveling the playing field of the legal system.
Every blanket solution has problems like this, which makes me lean towards case by case solutions. That leads to a "who watches the watchers" kind of argument. I don't think that there can be a real solution without trust, and that trust has been beaten and abused so much that nothing is left. At this point everyone is kind of looking around and thinking, "Yeah, this is screwed up" but has no one to put faith in to fix it. It's a broken system behind a broken system. You have to start at the root of the problem; the people's relation to their government. People need to become more involved and government needs reform. It's a huge system designed specifically to keep sudden change from sweeping through it, which becomes a double edged blade in this case. It's also hard for most people to even grasp the scope of our current government and all of the tangled webs between local, state, and federal.
If you back up even further the problem expands to encompass our entire society. People don't trust people. People fear people. People blame people. People hate people. You have negative reinforcement from all sides. You have cities divided into something akin to war zones. Police are seen as the bad guys more often than not when they step in. Ditto for government. A lot of people just don't care, or pretend not to. Of those that do care, very few make it to a place suitable to making change and of those even less make the trip unscathed.
I've lost my point in the downward spiral, so I'll just end it there.