INNOCENT? PAROLE? FORGET IT!

Innocent persons do not make parole. Why not? Many reasons. First, realize that the parole boards are staffed solely by political patronage winners. Political patronage is a reward dispensed to powerful party loyalists who helped a politician win an election, usually by merely funneling large amounts of cash into politician and party pockets for "campaigns". Whenever a new politician wins a position in the publics' trust, there is a type of 'regime change" that occurs, especially when the winning politician is a member of the opposite party from the previous winner. (Independant or progressive parties are squeezed out by the two main parties.) The winning party politicians customarily force the opposite party officeholders to resign so that their jobs can be given to the winning politician': cabal. The president of the US, for example, has thousands and thousands of these high-pay, low "work" gravy jobs to give away or use as bribes or rewards for persons who deliver the vote. Governors have hundreds and hundreds of these jobs to pass out. Politicians often pass out political rewards by creating jobs out of nothing. Commissions and panels are staffed and richly paid to study some inconsequential matter. Favorites are extremely well paid with taxpayer money to act as "consultants". A1ready overbloated govt bureaucracies are swelled even more to justify paychecks to party hacks, their wives, their kids, kin or friends who often function as nothing more e than seat-warmers, ghost-employees or persons whose "work" consists of merely showing up to collect a paycheck on the first and fifteenth of each month. Taxpayers' cash is among the easiest things for politicians to pilfer away with and get kickbacks from. This tradition in political life has not been revealed much since Oregon senator Packwood got caught at it many years ago. The gov/media alliance appear to have reached an agreement on this: they do not report it much, and not to any depth, and reporters get to continue to enjoy the many lavish, expensive, gift-packed parties that govt and politicians throw with taxpayer's money to instill good press relations. In the old days when we did not suffer an insipid, self-muzzling press, this criminal activity by govt officials and politicians was called "graft", and this custom of wide-open payoffs was called "the spoils system", possibly because of its mighty moral stench. For a short time there was public debate as to which was better govt, the spoils system, or a merit system, where the most educated and qualified kept or got these jobs. The merit system was found to be much better for every citizen, but was thrown out anyway in favor of the stench system. Also amputated from the commonweal were descriptive terms such as "spoils system" and "patronage". Now they use the sterile term “Political appointees".

These moneyed interests who make it on to parole boards are usually described as "prominent businesspersons". They are also deliberately stacked with persons who have spent long years at the public nozzle in the fields of govt, prosecution or policing. Ordinary persons who make ordinary wages or who perform ordinary work do not get appointed. To cover up this discrimination in a field where justice and fairness requires a peer to be somewhere-involved in oversight, there is occasionally a teacher allowed in.

Because the vocations of govt service are richly rewarded both above and below the table, there is never a shortage of retired judges, ex-prosecutors and washed-up police personnel able to deliver the vote. These jobs often run in families. Any scurrilous buffoon or alcoholic instantly gains the appearance of respectability as soon as he obtains employment in this sector. Such public servants have a steady stream of citizen-supplicants who buy into this mystique and who generally become very appreciative beholden to, and dependant upon, these powerful father figures who protect citizens from "evil" and assist in solving their problems. Such public servants get gratification from both petting many small egos and getting their own egos constantly petted. Citizens become more helpless and needy. The public servants' egos swell and they become more manipulative and malanthropic. The resulting synergism creats massive amounts of goodwill and positive thoughts toward public servants in citizens' minds while it creates arrogance and cunning in public officials. Influence is found to be even more valuable than money, setting the stage for much influencepeddling. (See "Juror Groupies" for more detail on this phenomenon.) The governor appoints these extremely popular vote-getters to his parole board upon the promise that they will do nothing that could embarass him, and that they will share the graft. (See "Parole...")

Former judges, ex-prosecutors and washed-up police officials all possess a deep, abiding, (yet often well-concealed) hatred and contempt for anyone who has been branded "criminal", and for the very concept of a criminal possibly being innocent. These parole board members are products of the machine that has as its first precept an invincible belief in its own complete and total infallability.

The machine programs their minds toward "patriotism" that manifests as an extreme self-righteousness in all things the govt uses as its propaganda. The more practical and cynical of these officials are able to sell paroles and other get-out-of-prison technology without any internal ethical problems. The only real problem is getting caught too close to the money used to purchase such relief. Avoiding exposure is made easy for them and their squeamish fellows through the services of lawyers. Innocent persons, or persons too harshly punished by this system of law that is overly-dependant on emotion, can not simply purchase leniency as they do in more straightforward nations. No. In America, one must pay lawyers for the privilege of attempting to purchase a corrected punishment. This adds a layer of safety to the dispensers of influence, and a layer of extra cost to the persons wishing a more fine-tuned punishment. Because Americans are the most over-punished of all citizens of the world, it follows that we also suffer some of the highest costs for attempting to correct overpunishments. Persons with families who have little to spend toward correcting overpunishment are thus shut out due to the excessive expense and the ready abundance of those more able to afford the purchase of corrected punishments. ("Justice" is an overused, virtually meaningless word that has almost nothing to do with the American legal system: This nebulous, amorphous, all purpose word has been denigrated into little more than a device for political propagandists and the media to exploit. It is full of salable emotion, especially in relation to the bereaved.)

Professional influence dispensers will only accept the attentions of lawyers, not the captives whom they represent. Lawyers have a calming influence on clients who become resentful with the process of trying to correct overpunishment and its usual outcome. In almost every case, the outcome progresses through two stages: the lawyers periodically emit hopeful noises along with requests for more money; clients gradually cease to pay more money as no positive, concrete results accrue. Lawyers leave the hope alive, and thus the door for more payment open. Only in cases where payors get irate over the ratio of money spent v. results obtained (commonly $5,000 to zero), is the door finally shut and the lawyers admit that there is nothing "further" they can do "for" their clients.

The market for corrected judgements rises every year with the increasing rate of imprisonment. The market was high in about 1975 when I first became aware of it through a Tulsa newspaper front page headline.

It proclaimed to the entire state that paroles were not for sale for $500. Soon thereafter I watched a friend, who should have gotten the death penalty, buy his way out in increments of $500-$1,000. (This process is detailed in my book, "JAILBREAK!")

The persons who profit so richly through their sales of parole and leniency products are often called on by the media and legislators to account for their law rate of permitting paroles versus the high number of persons held in captivity by the law industry. To this they reply, "parole was never meant to be a safety valve for prison overcrowding". (No one pretends that it is, and this non-answer dodges the real function of parole boards: to correct overpunishment routinely obtained through use of emotion and theatrics by overambitious prosecutor/judge teams. Three reasons for such a low rate of sentence correction (currently only 16%/year) are the high salaries that parole board members are paid ( $75,000/year), the high political cost when such corrections are trumpeted by the media, and the general outcry of generic outrage from police/ prosecutor and crime-victim organizations that accompany these announcements.

Govt by emotion is never good, and emotion is the main problem preventing parole board members from doing their jobs and correcting overpunishment. Another excuse they like to use in avoiding their function is to self-righteously proclaim to the press that, "Parole is not a right, it is a privilege". In reality, sentence correction by the parole board should be claimed as a right, especially due to the massive amount of rights-thefts by govt employees since the constitution came into effect. More properly, PUBLIC SERVICE is the privilege that nepotistic dynasties of the rich and connected have converted into their right. Also, sentence correction should be demanded as a right due to the judge/prosecutor/cop/ media alliance's routine use of emotion and corrupt methods to obtain excessive punishments in almost every case. Look outside America and you will see more civilized sentences given almost everywhere. (For analysis of these corrupt methods, see "Innocent's Guide..." and other essays on www.jamesbauhaus.org.)

In California, citizens fight for this right. In backward states like OK, we have even more reason to demand sentence corrections. Ways to obtain this right are in the essays, "E-Voting...", "Pro-Active Civil Rights...' and "Why Write?", among others. Citizens should counterattack in the govt's war on citizens. We are not just the source of their excessive riches, power and privilege, we are their equals, but only if we merely stand up and claim so.

Resolve to recognize their abuse and refuse to accept it any longer!