I went to search for some images of the untouchables of India.What appeared was almost entirely from the television show and the movie loosely based on Eliot Ness and his homies.

Is it possible we aren’t all that aware of the rest of the world?

The word untouchables is applied to the crew of Ness and the Dalits of India. I, however, think it an appropriate descriptive for another group.

The Dalits are subjected to treatment that can only be described as horrific. It is as open and cruel as the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan at its height. I may cover this in detail in another article.

However, my immediate intention is to address a completely different demographic. This is a group of Americans that, unlike the Dalits, are deserving of the discrimination and violence to which those in India are subjected. They are our plutocrats. They are the special people of America who are not subject to the rules and laws that govern the rest of us.

Have you ever watched testimony before Congress? Oil men, tobacco executives, Wall Street vultures, these and others routinely lie to the committees. They aren’t even good liars. They obviously don’t even try to be good liars. They know that it doesn’t make any difference.

Let me be more specific. It is illegal to lie to Congress. Also, it is illegal to lie to the FBI, the IRS, the Department of Justice. In fact, it is illegal to lie to almost every agency and department of the federal government. Similar laws govern the states.

It seems not to have stopped these liars. Could it be because the government almost never pursues perjury charges against these special people? I think that may have something to do with it.

Now, let’s change our point of focus just a little. Let’s look at the hoi polloi. It’s just us. It’s just those who are expected to behave. It’s just those who are really subject to punishment for violation of the laws.

You lie to the IRS at your peril. Lying to the FBI isn’t recommended. Even being dishonest with Congress puts you in jeopardy. Yeah, I know, they prefer testimony by the big shots. They garner more attention from the cameras. But, they do, on occasion, interrogate us peons.

Since few of us have the temerity to lie to big brother, this may not seem to be of much consequence to most of us. That may not be the proper way to look at this particular situation.

However few may be affected by it, you need to recognize how fundamental it is to our status in this society. Those plutocrats who have nothing to fear from breaking the laws stand above the rest of us. In effect, they stand on us. They are the elite. We are the subjects. It puts into sharp relief that we are not considered citizens of this country.

What did he just say? Yes, it’s true. We are not citizens of this country. Citizen and subject are not synonyms. A citizen is a member of the state, the country. He is entitled to rights, civil treatment and has various civic obligations. A subject is one ruled over by another; a monarch or a government.

It isn’t just a matter of semantics. It isn’t just a fine academic point. It is real. It has consequences.

It may seem of little import when one of these plutocrats walks away from the scene of his perjury. You may not be planning on lying to Customs officials on your return trip. But, it does matter.

It matters how those in charge perceive you and me. How they do affects the way laws are written; the way they are enforced. Don’t forget, tax rules and regulations are laws. They throw in a little deduction here and there for you and me. For the elite they make the laws and their lack of enforcement a cruel joke. At least it’s cruel from our perspective.

The mindsets of the government and the elite have other consequences. Have you written a letter to you congressman? Have you complained to the Bureau of Indian Affairs? And, what was the result? Did you even feel that they really paid attention? You mean you didn’t have your lawyer, the one with the K Street address, make the call for you?

We’ve heard the refrain thousands of times: All men are created free and equal. True, we know that should be interpreted as equal before the law. That’s what our social studies teachers told us. You don’t still believe that, do you? Free and equal, in the constitutional sense, are too closely entwined to be separable. If you are not equal, your freedom is less than you might think.

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Yes, class warfare has been waged against those of the middle class and the poor for decades. No, the middle class and poor have not been fighting back, at least not yet.

I am suggesting a new and different strategy for at least the first significant counterattack. The plutocrats have handed us the weapon we need. They and their toadies have maimed the economy. Would you believe that can be turned into a weapon?

While they are somewhat cushioned from the results of their mischief, I have found a way to turn their weapons against them. Jujitsu is a method of using your opponents force against him rather than directly confronting that force. Everything old is new again.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the World Justice Project. It is an organization dedicated to “lead a global, multidisciplinary effort to strengthen the Rule of Law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity.“ It’s honorary chairs have included a range of Supreme Court justices from Ruth Bader Ginsburg to Sandra Day O’Connor. Others are Desmond Tutu, Colin Powell and Jimmy Carter.

Recently, they published the results of a study, called The Rule of Law Index. It evaluates and ranks how laws are implemented and enforced around the world. Countries are ranked on such factors as whether government officials are accountable, whether legal institutions actually protect rights, and how ordinary people fare in the system. The index ranks 35 countries but will double that next year.

Of the 11 industrial countries, we were at the bottom in accessibility and affordability. We fell below such countries as Mexico, Croatia and the Dominican Republic. When polled, the responses were telling. “For instance, only 40% of low-income respondents who used the court system in the past three years reported that the process was fair, compared to 71% of wealthy respondents. This 31% gap between poor and rich litigants in the USA is the widest among all developed countries sampled. In France this gap is only 5%, in South Korea it is 4% and in Spain it is nonexistent.”

I’m inclined to believe that the reason for the rich litigants’ satisfaction being only 71% is a matter of spoiled brats not getting everything they want even when they win. The system does at least occasionally recognize the need to provide the gloss of fairness.

You and I suffer a disadvantage in our courts system. Other studies prove that perception of a disparity is real. Obama has appointed the acknowledged leading legal mind, Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, to address this problem. Less than one in five poor people with a legal problem obtain legal services of any kind.

Is this really a serious problem? Mr. Tribe says, “The truth is that as a nation, we face nothing short of a justice crisis. It is a crisis both acute and chronic, affecting not only the poor but the middle class. The situation we face is unconscionable.”

Bernie Madoff went to prison for ripping off a relatively few. The Wall Street bankers and mortgage brokers ripped off millions. How many will Bernie ever get to see again? When the Dow dropped from around 14,000 to the neighborhood of 7,500 many IRAs, 401ks, pension funds, university endowments and such, many people experienced a sleepless night or two.

But, apparently, the consequences of destroying several trillion dollars of other people’s money do not include any perp walks. Actually, this year the result was $144 billion in bonuses.

Let’s step back and assess where we are. The poor and middle class, quickly merging, have little access to the courts and less satisfaction. The elite does have access. The parasitic plutocracy avoids paying the price and ends up profiting from their greed.

The problem is actual criminal activity. Fraud was committed when sub-prime mortgages were rated and sold as AAA investments. Any lawyer worth his three-martini lunch can come up with a dozen collateral charges. If some of these bad people were sentenced to a year for each offense, they could watch the dying of the Sun through the bars on their windows.

The pension funds and others managing large amounts of investments suffered major financial hits. They do, however, have the wherewithal to pursue legal remedies. They also need to fear action charging them with failure to do due diligence and fulfill their other responsibilities. They should be harassed, poked and prodded until they seek redress for their clients. Use one pack of parasites to squeeze another pack parasites. Some activity in the civil courts, with concomitant publicity, will make it easier to pressure the authorities to bring charges in the criminal courts.

Additionally, there needs to be a constant drumbeat for accountability. That accountability should be for those handling those huge amounts of your pension money. It should be extended to include government officials, politicians, anyone culpable. This will not be something that comes quickly. This will not be something to which the plutocrats and their lackeys will easily acquiesce.

We have a justice system that puts one of every four prisoners in the world in our prisons. We have the longest sentences in the world. Yet, a financial heist that dwarfs anything we could have imagined fails to stir our justice system to punish even one malefactor.

We can’t directly force the system to act. It is possible, however, to get those financial geniuses to face off against each other. We might benefit as a side effect. Some of you may get a bit of your retirement back . . . or maybe a little revenge and a justice system we deserve.

Let’s begin a class war by proxy.

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Despite what some may think, I was not around for the Dred Scott decision. That aside, I had comforted myself that the Supremes could not make a worse ruling than the one that gave us Bush the lesser.

I was wrong, horribly so.

We are now the only developed country in the world that allows corporations to legally spend unlimited amounts to control the government. Aren’t we special?

Stay with me a couple of minutes. You will see how stupid and/or corrupt at least five of the Justices really are.

How did we get here and what needs to be done? It is simple but the ramifications cannot be overstated.

First we are dealing with a bunch of hypocrites. The radicals of the Court loudly proclaim that they believe in following the intent of the Founding Fathers. They also maintain that the courts should not legislate, nor usurp the legislative role. Yeah, sure.

No Supreme Court has come close to the activism of the present Court. They have overturned more legislation, by far, than any Court of which I am aware. That tendency alone was sufficient to make all predictions on the latest travesty easy. Commentators from the entire spectrum got it right. This ruling was no surprise.

How about their claimed devotion to what they term ‘strict construction?’ That is also a gross mischaracterization. What was the Founding Fathers’ opinion of corporations? It may not be common knowledge but is far from a secret to any scholar or amateur enthusiast of our founders.

With the exception of Alexander Hamilton, all of the founders hated and/or mistrusted and/or feared corporations and the threat they represented to the nation to which they had given birth. This at a time when corporations were relatively rare and weak compared to the present. Back then one must prove a societal need, a benefit to the public, in order to obtain a charter.

Corporations are not mentioned in either the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. The last time I checked, the wording was still “We the people . . .” Corporations had only the latitude to function as was delineated in its charter. Where did this idiotic concept of corporations having a legal personality originate? Not from the Supreme Court. It came from an essentially parenthetical couple of sentences by one Justice.

The year was 1886. The case was Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company. The doctrine of corporate personhood was included by Justice Morrison Remick Waite before the beginning of arguments. He stated, “The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations. We are all of opinion that it does.”

So, two sentences by a single, junior Justice changed the Constitution, laws and the dictionary definition without argument, without discussion, without any attempt at rationality. It subsequently became the very foundation of corporate law.

Let’s look at this. It doesn’t require looking too deeply. It doesn’t require a degree in Constitutional Law. It does require more intelligence than five of the present Justices. It requires common sense. It requires an absence of devotion to the plutocracy, a jettisoning of ridiculous ideologies. Here we go.

Everyone acknowledges that a corporation is property. It, and/or its shares, not only can be owned, by its very nature it must be owned. If it is a person, it enjoys the constitutional prohibition of slavery. You are not permitted, under any circumstances to hold a person as property. Ask your wife.

A corporation speaks with one voice. Although the textbooks tell you that the shareholders control it, or that the directors control it on behalf of the shareholders, the reality is that management rules. Management’s priorities are rarely the same as the stockholders. Stockholders also are further removed from participation by mutual funds, hedge funds and similar devices. Does anyone believe that corporate lobbying efforts are always (sometimes) consonant with the interests or opinions of shareholders?

While many other legal and logical arguments reach the same, or supportive, conclusions, no serious arguments have been proposed that contradict those arguments. We have no need to pursue any further the irrationality of claims for corporate personhood. Let’s proceed to the ramifications.

The last presidential campaign was easily the most expensive in history. The estimates I saw last year were well over $1 billion but less than two. I haven’t seen your checkbook but to me that is significant change. Actually, I consider that amount obscene. It distorts and corrupts. There is no upside for anyone who values their right to vote.

Now let’s look at real money. The major Wall Street casinos have announced record, or near record, profits. These profits are after record amounts being set aside for bonuses. Have you paid attention? These bonuses total about $150 billion.

If Wall Street decided to redirect only half of that amount to campaign finance, we would never have to watch another non-political commercial in an election year (every other year) again. Although that might seem initially to be an attractive side-benefit, all you have to remember is how quickly campaign advertising begins to pall.

While we know better, politicians owned by special interests insist that they are not swayed by lobbyists’ bribes. Given the amounts now available to them, they likely will not even bother to address such questions. The $150 billion cited above represents only that available from the major institutional players of one corrupt industry. Factor in the insurance industry, PhRMA, agribusiness, energy and a host of others wanting laws that benefit them, to our detriment.

There would not even have been the sham of the healthcare debate with its foreordained outcome. The drug pushers could sell morphine as a toothing medication for infants again, as Bayer did before it became famous for its aspirin. The Department of Agriculture could eliminate all of those pesky areas and become a foundation to channel taxpayers dollars directly to ConAgra, ADM, et al. Exxon and its peers would not have to waste another nickel cleaning up after themselves. There no longer would be a need to debate global warming, or spending any funds on research. Government could really be streamlined.

How much have you ever donated to a political campaign? Look on the bright side. Now there is no need to.

I believe that there has never been a law or ruling which so drastically changes and damages our system.

Many people get upset about the power of the government. Permit me to reminisce. Back in the late 1960s or early 1970s there was a little flap at Delta Air Lines, where I was working. You need to understand that at that time aircraft mechanics were treated like royalty. They were the princes of the industry and highly prized by the airlines.

One of these princes let his sideburns grow to the level of the bottom of his ears. No, they were not mutton-chop sideburns. Though wild hairstyles could be seen everywhere across the country, his could not be considered wild by any definition. He was fired.

Except when I was in military service, I would never expect the government to be so intrusive, so controlling of the minutiae of people’s lives. Corporations are not bound to respect any of your rights, beyond the prohibition of discrimination. The government is constrained by the Constitution. With the Founding Fathers, I have always feared corporations far more than I feared the government – until now.

All is not lost. The Court struck down campaign finance laws, not corporate laws or regulations. The Congress unquestionably has the authority to control corporate behavior through changes in corporate law. It could be done by regulation. You and I are, as people, are not controlled by laws in this area so it cannot be claimed that corporations are being discriminated against or denied that to which people are entitled.

I would ask that you notify me the next time you see a bunch of corporations exercising their right of freedom of assembly or, perhaps, their freedom of religion. I would love to attend a baptismal ceremony for one of these ‘guys.’

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