CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS

Some very good friends of mine just experienced one of the most frustrating assaults on their dignity:  their identity was stolen. It seems that some miscreant in a far away state got hold of their banking information and made some debit withdrawals from their account. While money is more scarce than abundant for these friends, it isn’t really about the money.

Money comes and goes. But what these thieves stole from them is the first thing you get in this world, is really all you have, and it’s the only thing you take with you when you go… your name.

Few things incense me more than identity thieves. It comes second only to child molestation. It takes a special kind of degenerate to do both. Identity theft isn’t some random, passionate act perpetrated by the disenfranchised and desperate. It takes a certain level of skill and planning that most people don’t possess. Because of that we should stop treating it like it’s the unfortunate baggage of the technological age – a simple law of unintended consequences. The people who steal in this way are highly resourceful and often underestimated and they prey on anyone. These criminals are not society’s uneducated dregs; they demonstrate by their cunning that they only lack character and perhaps a soul. It requires a high degree of depravity to violate someone in this way.

i say we should make a public example of these perps in a way befitting those who betray public trust or defraud investors. Oh wait, we don’t actually do much to those people at all! When law makers and enforcers do get around to processing those types the results are often short of justice or lacking exemplary punishment. The time to make an example of just how damaging crimes of character are to the fabric of our corporate spirit is NOW!

i say public flogging is a good start; something bare-assed. For the ones who enjoy that kind of sport and might actually beg for it, we should consider something a little more permanent like “drawing and quartering”. We might want to consider something special for our public servants who with misguided fervor run to protect and abet these felons like… i don’t know… maybe, KICKING THEM OUT OF OFFICE!!!

Let’s take “Weenergate” (yes, i know i misspelled it. i did so on purpose because everybody mispronounces his name anyway… it’s “whiner”). The guy’s a first class jerk to begin with but that’s not important. We can all be jerks. What he did was violate the public trust by implying someone was framing him or hacking him – both of which are serious character crimes.  He almost succeeded in bringing the full investigative force of the FBI to bear on some non-existent crime at the expense of the tax-payer to cover up his douche-baggery. It’s akin to filing a false affidavit. Flog his bare ass on the floor of House Chambers! Then strip him of every lifelong perk he’s accumulated from his service and toss him in the general population of Riker’s for 20 years. i’m sure they’d love his bulging underpants in that place.

As far as the people who violated my friends:  chain gang. Twenty years of breaking rocks or digging ditches ought to set them on a path of appreciating the merits of an honest day’s work. But before that, they should have to go on Oprah or The View wearing a sandwich board (and nothing else) with something like this message:

“My name is ____. i am a first-class, low-class, dishonest, degenerate scum. i impersonated someone and committed a crime in their name. i’m not sorry and i’m on my way to the penitentiary where i will someday become really sorry. “

 

 

« A SEERS REFRAIN

Mikey and Me »