The United Police States of America: the Criminalization of Living in the United States

In their ongoing war against the Constitution and people of the United States, the Democratic and Republican parties have amply demonstrated their willingness to sacrifice fundamental rights and liberties for the empty promise of security over the last ten years.  As the Occupy movement spread across the country over the last three months, we have witnessed the violence and brutality of the militarized police state that these parties have helped to create everywhere from New York City to San Francisco.  Perhaps even more disconcerting, however, is the criminalization of life and living itself that has been promulgated by the professional hysterics in the Democratic and Republican parties over the last forty years.  Today, one third of all young adults have been arrested at some point.  From Reuters:

Close to one in three American teens and young adults get arrested by age 23, according to a new study that finds more of them are being booked now than in the 1960s.  Those arrests are for everything from underage drinking and petty theft to violent crime, researchers said. They added that the increase might not necessarily reflect more criminal behavior in youth, but rather a police force that's more apt to arrest young people than in the past . . . 

The researchers said it seems that the criminal justice system has taken to arresting both the young and old more than it did in the past, when fines and citations might have been given to some people who are now arrested.

"If (police) find kids that are intoxicated or they have pulled over someone intoxicated... now, nine times out of 10 they're going to make an arrest," Wright told Reuters Health.  "We do have to question if arrest is an appropriate intervention in all circumstances, or if we need to rethink some of the policies we have enacted."

Meanwhile, as police crack down on jaywalkers, pot smokers, underage drinkers, and petty thieves, the professional criminals in the ruling political class effectively get away with murder.  Consider this obscene disparity.  A homeless man steals $100 dollars and then returns the money out of remorse.  He is sentenced to 15 years in prison.  A mortgage company CEO aids in a $3 billion dollar scheme to defraud the Troubled Asset Relief Fund and gets forty months in prison.  This is the very opposite of justice.  This is criminal.