How Things Work Now

Read this Editorial in the New York Times.  Among the other disasters the neo-cons have brought upon this country, the dissolution of the governments role in protecting its citizens is one of the more reprehensible.

(There's some more info on the Leandro Andrade case here.)

Now, it's highly probably that Mr. Andrade did not have the kind of legal counsel available to State Farm Insurance or BMW.  And so he couldn't make as sophisticated a case to the Supreme Court.  Even still it's hard to imagine how anyone could sentence a man to 50 years in prison for shoplifting.

The problem of corporate bias is not so much in the "conservative" judges on the Supreme Court.  (Though that's certainly a problem).  The problem lies in the fact that the law-making process of this country is directly controlled by corporations.