The FBI's Desired Encryption Back Doors Could Harm Intelligence Gathering, Military Operations

The OTHER Government Revolving Door: Sheriff's Departments, State Troopers Provide New Homes For Bad Cops

from the I-wouldn't-join-any-club-that-would-take-me-as-a-member dept

Wed, Nov 26th 2014 3:52pm — Tim Cushing

It's not just our nation's legislators that enjoy a "revolving door" -- one that moves them from Congress to the private sector and back again, to the mutual benefit of legislators and certain industries… not so much the rest of America.

There's another revolving door out there -- one that keeps bad cops employed in the law enforcement sector. It's incredibly difficult for police departments to shed their "bad apples," what with police unions pushing back hard on the few occasions that the blue line fails to hold. But even if they do manage to cut one loose, there's a good chance this former officer will just end up carrying a badge and gun for someone else.

As we covered earlier this year, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department made sure a plethora of bad cops weren't hurting for money, either by bringing them on board directly or placing them in open positions at the jails under its control.

For nearly 100 hires, investigators discovered evidence of dishonesty, such as making untrue statements or falsifying police records. At least 15 were caught cheating on the department's own polygraph exams.

Twenty-nine of those given jobs had previously had been fired or pressured to resign from other law enforcement agencies over concerns about misconduct or workplace performance problems. Nearly 200 had been rejected from other agencies because of past misdeeds, failed entrance exams or other issues.

Out in Lincoln, Nebraska, other law enforcement agencies are acting as halfway houses for police officers with a history of misconduct.

John McGahan, the Lincoln Police Department’s 2013 Officer of the Year who resigned this year after Internal Affairs accused him of using excessive force, is now working at the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office.

A second police officer accused of using excessive force, Jeremy Wilhelm, is a trooper candidate with the Nebraska State Patrol.

Here's some more uniform-switching, this time in Ohio.

Former New Albany Police officer Steve Mowery faced several accusations of misconduct while he worked for that force… Mowery allegedly used excessive force against a teenager and was sued. That case was settled, according to those who were involved.

Mowery resigned before the police department could make a final recommendation for discipline, according to sources at the New Albany Police Department.

Today, Mowery works as a deputy for the Lucas County Sheriff's office in the Toledo area.

Thanks to WBNS-10TV, the Sheriff's office is finally looking into Mowery's law enforcement record. But Mowery isn't an anomaly.

[F]ormer Nelsonville police officer Randy Secoy was hired despite a reprimand from the Athens County Sheriff's office for his "inability to control his anger." Secoy made the news last year after surveillance video showed him lunging toward a seated teenager and forcefully gripping the teen's throat.

Franklin Township Police Chief Allan Wheeler has hired multiple officers who have had troubles elsewhere. One officer resigned his position as a police chief at Marietta College in eastern Ohio… Printed reports that are still available online say that the former Marietta College Police chief was accused of making unwanted sexual advances toward a woman and stalking her.

From Florida, here's the story of a well-traveled officer who might just be "the most crooked cop in America."

[Major Joseph] Floyd joined the Crestview Police Department in the Florida Panhandle in 2007 after a brief stint with the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office. Unbeknownst to his new colleagues at the time of his hiring, Floyd had a rap sheet that stretched back more than a decade. Over the course of eight years, Floyd was terminated, forced to resign, or quit three police departments while under investigation for insubordination, lying, and falsifying records. Before becoming a cop, Floyd had been arrested for battery, disorderly conduct, and assaulting a law enforcement officer.

The article at Reason details some of Floyd's past misconduct, which includes having subordinates tase unresisting suspects, planting evidence, striking suspects with rifles and referring to female officers as "department whores." Charming. And yet, apparently still employable. (Here's the 11-page indictment.)

From Texas:

[Roy] Logan was fired in 2001 from his last job as a licensed peace officer before becoming a Precinct 5 deputy. His explanation on a Dallas County job application: "terminated by newly elected sheriff."

Kaufman County Sheriff David Byrnes said Logan was fired after a Texas Department of Public Safety officer reported seeing him playing an eight-liner gambling machine while on duty - about eight months after Byrnes took office.

Deputy Constable Juston Coffman resigned from the Celina (TX) Police Department after having been disciplined "several times." He found a new home as a school district police officer.

More from Texas. Nearly half of Jonestown's seven-member police force had a history of misconduct. (Two were immediately fired by an interim police chief earlier this year.)

Yvonne Gunnlaugsson had been suspended several times from the Austin Police Department before retiring under a cloud in 2005, public records show. She’d come to work for Jonestown a short time later…

Gunnlaugsson had compiled a long list of infractions as an Austin police officer. She’d been suspended six times, including for wrecking a patrol car after falling asleep and for failing to interview a suspect who had been identified by a robbery victim. Her involvement in another case led to a federal lawsuit against the city that raised questions about her judgment while responding to a call.

Andre Anderson, was sacked from the Jonestown department May 7. An internal investigation accused him of omitting an important piece of history from his job application: He’d lost his job at the Travis County sheriff’s office in 2001, after acknowledging he’d had sex with two inmates while they were in custody.

The third officer, still employed at this point, was suspended and fired by the Georgetown Police Dept. for failing to investigate suspected crimes.

Another police officer from elsewhere in the state managed to parlay being fired for drunken driving (and being named in a wrongful death suit that resulted in a $750,000 settlement) into a new position as a sheriff's deputy in another county.

The problem is so pervasive it has its own term: gypsy cops. Moving from agency to agency tends to obscure incriminating paper trails, especially if the switch involves moving from a city agency (police department) to a county agency (sheriff's department) or state agency (state troopers, highway patrol). Changes in background check requirements and decertification stipulations can be abused to keep bad law enforcement officers employed by law enforcement agencies.

The background checks themselves are their own problem. Agencies have been known to hire officers who've failed checks or while background checks were still pending. For smaller agencies or those pressured to add officers, these background checks may not be as thorough -- if they're even performed at all.

Police union pressure has led to legislation that further insulates police officers from being held accountable for their actions. Called a "law enforcement bill of rights," it's actually a long list of extra rights that makes it nearly impossible to fire bad cops, much less have their misconduct harm their future employment prospects. Mike Riggs' writeup of these special, police-only due process "rights" is eye-opening. And infuriating.

At this point, it pretty much takes a felony conviction to ensure a fired cop won't just end up wearing a different badge somewhere else. Most police departments aren't willing to battle police unions to ensure fired cops stay out of circulation. Neutral references are given instead of recommendations against hiring. Dishonorable discharges are upgraded to honorable or "general."

Those doing the hiring are also falling down on the job. When pressed about hires of cops with negative histories, those responsible for their continued employment plead ignorance. Despite the fact that these incidents are usually part of public records, law enforcement agency heads act as though it's everyone else's job to perform their due diligence. To some extent, it is. Those integral to the hiring process should be more thorough. But ultimately, the buck stops at the top. There's enough information out there that bad cops should only slip through the cracks of the vetting system on rare occasions, rather than finding open doors nearly everywhere they look. The problem with bad cops will never go away if they can simply become some other agency's "bad apple" just by filling out a job application.

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Filed Under: bad cops, police, revolving door, sheriffs departments, state troopers

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Anonymous Coward, 26 Nov 2014 @ 5:41pm

Blood in Blood out
Law Enforcement is starting to look more and more like a blood-in-blood-out type of gang. Such is the case with Christopher Dorner who attempted to expose the corruption within the LA Police Department but was instead framed, hunted down and finally murdered. During their manhunt, they even executed two completely innocent civilians whom they thought were related to Dorner but were later identified as having no relation whatsoever.
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tqk (profile), 26 Nov 2014 @ 7:44pm

Re: Blood in Blood out
... finally murdered.

Just a nit, if Wikipedia can be believed: they set his cabin hideout on fire and he died from a self-inflicted gunshot. I often wondered what was going on in that story. The news reports seemed pretty fishy to me at the time, but I didn't have the time to see much of what was going on.

If Dorner can be believed, it's pretty much par for the course for the story above. If cops report (alleged) cop misbehavior, they'll be the one who will be disbelieved all the way down the line.

Body cameras correctly implemented can't come fast enough. The situation won't have any chance of changing before then.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 26 Nov 2014 @ 8:37pm

Body Cameras Correctly Implemented
...would be monitored by a third party outside the precinct, or get streamed straight to a public-access archive.

If body cams end up controlled by the precincts themselves, they'll act like dash cams and conveniently disappear whenever they reveal officer misconduct.
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Anonymous Coward, 26 Nov 2014 @ 9:12pm

Re: Body Cameras Correctly Implemented
Maybe we could tie qualified immunity to the body cameras, instead of the officers themselves. No video? No QI. No LEO's bill of rights. No grand jury, just an automatic indictment. They still get a regular jury trial, same as the rest of us.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Nov 2014 @ 1:27am

Re: Re: Body Cameras Correctly Implemented
No body camera? Immediate termination of employment AND lifetime blacklisting AND forfeit of all benefits/pension AND loss of QI. Pigs are menial servants and as such, deserve to be punished harshly for disobedience to the will of their masters.
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Jake, 27 Nov 2014 @ 6:53am

You'd think a really big city police department would have an abundance of nice boring paperwork that nobody else wants to do to dump on these kinds of screw-up.
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got_runs? (profile), 27 Nov 2014 @ 11:29am

>
Sounds like the catholic church covering for pedos.
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Anonymous Coward, 27 Nov 2014 @ 6:41pm

Re: Re: Re: Body Cameras Correctly Implemented
I wanted to go further in my list of "stuff that happens if your bodycam isn't on," but I've recently been trying for a more restrained and mellow approach.

One fantasy idea I can't let go of, however, would be really fun. What if the camera could be linked to the safety on an officer's service weapon? No video, no bang bang. It's been done to death in sci-fi... then again, we've already got real-life Communicators and Tricorders.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Nov 2014 @ 12:30pm

Re: >
Sounds like the catholic church covering for pedos.

That's exactly what it has become. But worse, it's a safe haven for career criminals of every kind.
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art guerrilla (profile), 28 Nov 2014 @ 12:57pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Body Cameras Correctly Implemented
wasn't a month or so ago, that this and other sites reported about the ladykop who basically ran down a suspect, TURNED OFF her body cam, then shot him...
see what happens to her...

here is my main retort: NO MATTER our efforts to hold Empire and her mercenary goons accountable, laws will only be enforced to the detriment of the 99%...

i am fairly certain there are all kinds of 'laws' against ALL the illegal, immoral, eee-vil shit the goons with a gun and a badge actually do (NO MATTER you 'believe' it is 1% or 100% of kops who are 'bad'); BUT, WHO is going to 'investigate' this shit ?
WHO is going to speak up against it ?
WHO is going to make a 'federal' case of it ?
WHO is going to judge it ?
WHO is going to enforce it ?
WHO is going to ?
NO FUCKING ONE who is part of The System, part of The Problem: depending on changing a corrupt and broken system by using the processes of the corrupt and broken system, is a fool's errand...
as long as the 1% have their claws on the levers of power, any/all such laws prohibiting and proscribing various behaviors, WILL BE enforced against the 99%, and will be (mostly) ignored against the 1% and their eee-vil minions of doom...
based on a true story...
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Nov 2014 @ 2:13pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Body Cameras Correctly Implemented
It's not that I disagree about any System being corruptible and inevitably corrupted. The problem is that there's a paradox: pure freedom is as unstable as a "free market." To prevent the most powerful (most sociopathic) from freely imposing their will by force, we need a System to regulate and deter the formation of these other Systems.

We're dealing with a government that is only good at one thing: marketing fear. Unfortunately, enough people fall for it that any large-scale resistance gets torn apart by its own warring factions. Until this problem can be solved, I see nothing to be done beyond half-measure kludges like body and dash cams.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Nov 2014 @ 2:22pm

Polygraph is JUNK SCIENCE
How do you "cheat" on a polygraph "exam"? They are junk science ... voodoo ... complete bullshit.

Any government agency that uses them reveals themselves to be either completely dishonest and untrustworthy, or jackass ignorant, or both.

We already knew that about all law enforcement agencies.
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tqk (profile), 28 Nov 2014 @ 6:12pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Body Cameras Correctly Implemented
... I've recently been trying for a more restrained and mellow approach.

Always advised. :-)
What if the camera could be linked to the safety on an officer's service weapon?

How about linking it to the safety of a fellow officer? That might even appeal to the PBA (aka, cop union). "What happened to your partner?!?" Cops like fellow cop's to be safe, yes? Who does'nt?
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GEMont (profile), 28 Nov 2014 @ 6:40pm

Creating a Police State 101
Wow.

- Make laws that let the police rob the public at will.

- Arm and suit-up the police in high tech military gear so they feel safe from the public they are robbing and so they can more easily intimidate their victims.

- Insure that no oversight is used so that police officers may escalate their crimes against the public at their own speed and earn whatever amount of extra cash they're willing to steal, as long as the department gets a cut.

- Create legal precedents that insure no officer will be held responsible by a court of law, for their actions, if caught.

- Where an officer "falls through the cracks" of this legal safety net, create a revolving door employment system where prosecuted bad cops are simply transferred to other jurisdictions and rehired as cops once again.

I really don't think a better description of a Police State can be imagined.

I get the feeling there are not a lot of years left to the USofA, if they do not soon find a different path than this one.

The end of this path is pretty obvious.

---
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tqk (profile), 28 Nov 2014 @ 6:58pm

Re: Re: >
... it's a safe haven for career criminals of every kind.

It's creating those career criminals! Once they're on the force and busting drunken women, they get to find what's in their smartphones, ... Yada, yada, yada.

They may graduate from police academy clean, but once on the job, carte blanche thievery, assault in multiple ways, and everything protected by their peers is the norm.

Properly implemented bodycams please (or now), damnit!

You can't just hand over such power to mere mortals and expect them to do the right thing. Power does not work that way, and *lots* of things (money, racism, stupidity, ...) muck up all good intentions. "The road to hell ..."
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Uriel-238 (profile), 28 Nov 2014 @ 7:14pm

America will still be around.
Just not the United States of America that we imagined we were in.

Rome is still the capital of Italy.
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tqk (profile), 28 Nov 2014 @ 7:32pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Body Cameras Correctly Implemented
... pure freedom is as unstable as a "free market."

Go ahead and try to prove that. Prove either of them. Neither have ever existed!

Markets have always been subject to fiddling by those in power. "Pure freedom" is a pipe dream. Your "pure freedom" is my "rampant anarchy".

All the intentions in the world will never prove to you or anybody that I don't want to screw you out of what's due you.

Get rid of the "power elite" which I might use against you, and we'll be closer to trusting each other. Until then, we're still in the jungle, dog eating dog.
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tqk (profile), 28 Nov 2014 @ 7:40pm

Re: Polygraph is JUNK SCIENCE
They are junk science ... voodoo ... complete bullshit.

Yes they are. If you believe in the squiggles on paper, you're correct. There's no science there.

If your victim believes in them, however, and all you care about is what their eyes are doing and what their mouths are spouting, it's a useful tool for eliciting those thoughts.

The only way to win is to not play.
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tqk (profile), 28 Nov 2014 @ 8:14pm

Re: Creating a Police State 101
The end of this path is pretty obvious.

The really "funny" bit is you believe you're still "on the path." Everything you just mentioned is already in place and functioning. It may not be for everybody yet, but it is there, up and running and fully functional. We lost years ago. We may find some small comfort now by returning to YouTube, or by plugging ourselves back into the matrix.

"Seig heil! Your papers?"
I really don't think a better description of a Police State can be imagined.

Debatable.
I get the feeling there are not a lot of years left to the USofA ...

Dreamer. Wishful thinking.

We ignored Eisenhower's warning to our detriment, and we lost. Now what's our game plan?

Welcome to Dark Ages II. Enjoy the ride.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Nov 2014 @ 12:34am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Body Cameras Correctly Implemented
I wouldn't dare try to prove it. I went with "unstable" instead of "imaginary" only to acknowledge that the feeling of true freedom might be achieved by an idealist... for a split second. It would of course be quickly followed by a knife across the throat courtesy of the maelstrom of rampant anarchy swirling around the poor deluded soul.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Nov 2014 @ 7:28pm

Almost makes me think that someone saw how the brownshirts acted in Nazi Germany and modeled the current police training on it.

hence the blueshirts
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KRA, 30 Nov 2014 @ 9:46am

A thought
One of the things that I never understood was why municipalities had to pay for officer training. In CT they claim it costs upwards of $50,000 to train a cop. Hiring an officer who has been through the academy, even if that officer is bad, carries a big financial incentive for cash strapped towns. I don't know if this is just the case where I live or if it's the same everywhere.

I have a few degrees that took decades to pay off, and I went through all that educating without any guarantee of a job ever. Why don't we make these aspiring law enforcement officers pay their own way and fund their own educations? It's a serious question. I don't get it.
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Anonymous Coward, 30 Nov 2014 @ 1:09pm

Vote them out
I get laughed at whenever I say this, but it seems to me that any person who is authorize to point a gun at the populace should only be able to do so with the consent of said populace.

Police officers should be ratified in something like the "Missouri System" for judges. The department hires them, but they don't get a gun until they've been ratified by the voters. Then they stand for re-ratification at some reasonable interval, like maybe six years.

Then number of cops who would actually be voted out of office under such a plan would be vanishingly small, but the prospect of getting bounced in a way that their pals couldn't protect them would at least make them think about who they're ultimately responsible to.
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That One Guy (profile), 30 Nov 2014 @ 5:53pm

Re: Vote them out
Nice idea, though I'd set the re-ratification period much shorter, something like two years or so. People can forget a whole lot in six years, and with that much time there are just so many chance for records to be 'lost'.
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Phil McGerken, 2 Dec 2014 @ 9:23am

So you 'think' you're free?
In a nation of supposedly free Peoples, we see the militarization of our police. We see soldiers coming back from multiple tours of duty in combat zones, kicking in doors, going room to room, killing 'insurgents' etc. These men were groomed by the military and their combat experiences and the military gets them young too, before they have any skills in life/profession. These men come back to society and getting work can be tough, so they gravitate to what they know...being the controller, being the one in charge, being the dominate one, etc, etc. The come back in many cases with PTSD too. Police depts have low standards for intelligence and IQ as is showcased by the court case where a man wasn't accepted into the academy because his IQ was too high. Can't have critically thinking people being cops, they won't follow orders. Anyway, then they train these men more and more for civil control, confiscation, etc, etc. When you combine all of that, add in sociopathy and megalomania, PTSD and a control mechanism called police that's power and control hungry (against generally unarmed people) and feces their population over victimless crimes, turns rights into 'privileges' i.e. traveling freely upon the land...i.e. driving. I hate what police have metastasized into and yet they wonder why they're hated coast to coast.
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GEMont (profile), 3 Dec 2014 @ 3:32pm

Re: Re: Creating a Police State 101
("The end of this path is pretty obvious." GEMont

'The really "funny" bit is you believe you're still "on the path." '

It would indeed be funny if it was true and I actually believed we were still on the old American Dream Path.

That anyone could still believe in the American Dream is outrageously hilarious.

Just to clarify - "The end of this path is pretty obvious." refers to the current path being taken since 9/11, the one you state is "already in place and functioning".

"The Path" that you seem to think I believe we are still on, is, I assume, the old Hollywood Path - Land of the Free, Home of the Brave, Innocent till PROVEN Guilty, Apple Pie and Mom Path that Americans thought they were on for decades that makes up the American Dream.

For the record, I stopped believing in the existence - and in fact the possibility - of the American Dream when they sealed away the evidence surrounding the Assassination of J.F. Kennedy, to protect the guilty.

---
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Uriel-238 (profile), 4 Dec 2014 @ 7:11pm

These days we speak of the "American Dream" only ironically.
I thought the American Dream as it were was an honest day's pay for an honest day's work.

In the '50s we turned that into material notions in order to encourage the middle class to spend.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 4 Dec 2014 @ 7:33pm

Before the brownshirts.
The Weimar freikorps
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tqk (profile), 4 Dec 2014 @ 7:40pm

Re: These days we speak of the "American Dream" only ironically.
I thought the American Dream as it were was an honest day's pay for an honest day's work.

I thought it was a la Horatio Alger, as in no matter your humble beginnings, with hard work and initiative, anyone can be the next Carnegie, Hearst, Jobs, or Gates.

Of course, as recent events show quite clearly, it's never been more than a pipe dream for many, specifically certain minorities at that moment (which changes over time). Wops, spics, kikes, polacks, niggers, Catholics, Irish, women, LGBT, ...
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GEMont (profile), 4 Dec 2014 @ 9:42pm

Re: Re: These days we speak of the "American Dream" only ironically.
"....an honest day's pay for an honest day's work"

"...anyone can be the next Carnegie, Hearst, Jobs, or Gates."

Don't get me wrong here, as I'm no expert on the subject, but it seems to me that what you both have posted is not the American Dream, but the mythology behind Capitalism.

Please correct me if I err here.

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GEMont (profile), 4 Dec 2014 @ 10:12pm

Re: So you 'think' you're free?
"I hate what police have metastasized into and yet they wonder why they're hated coast to coast."

You might start with the notion that they DO NOT WONDER WHY they are hated coast to coast.

They know exactly why they are hated and like any military force occupying a foreign land, they thrive on this hatred and the fear that creates it.

The Police motto of serve and protect does not delineate the particular "group" of citizens they are serving and protecting, so they have never bothered to change that motto.

They serve and protect those with wealth and power, and they really always have.

However, they now must serve and protect these ruling families in a slightly different manner, as the wealthy ruling families change tactics from simple capitalism to full out fascism, in their rush to gain greater and greater wealth in less and less time.

After all, the leaders of the 1% are getting older and older every year and they want to enjoy the fruits of their labors - cocaine and hookers, yachts and Lear jets - as much as possible before they become too old, or die.

With capitalism, stealing wealth from the poor without getting caught was always an art-form, whereas the only form of art known to the fascist is adversity and the cloud of confusion war, poverty and corruption creates around their lucrative criminal activities.

Make no mistake, the modern police forces of america are at war with the citizens of america, because the citizens of america will soon have no choice but to rebel against the leadership of america who are draining them of life and wealth and hope for a future, as fast as their new laws will allow.

Before long there will no longer be any doubt as to who is the enemy of the people, and at that time, the forces of power have already prepared their stand and their tactics.

The police are merely the most visible sign of that time to come.

We now return you to your regular channel and replace your soother - Joy Joy - all is well!

---
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Uriel-238 (profile), 5 Dec 2014 @ 1:03pm

Upward mobility, and a fair wage
Both notions, that of fair work conditions and a fair wage, and that of the promise of opportunity and upward mobility are notions associated with capitalism. At the time that they were related to the American Dream, the US was distinct in being one of the few places in which everyone was a freeman and not a serf*, and the notion of rising via the spoils of work or conquest was a possibility. In other nations that were still feudal, a rich commoner still couldn't get too ambitious. And yes, some successful merchants bought holdings and titles, but that was always considered an abomination of the nobile heirarcy since we still had notions of hereditary purity.

* Which is not entirely true, not just because of slavery but because of the sharecropping system which has been used in the US up through the 1950s. In fact, a lot of systems such as the truck system had been intentionally implemented control employees and curtail their ability for advancement. Americans are technically free in that they belong to no one (a la slaves) and no territory (a la serfs) but we have our own instruments by which we secure common Americans by obligation to their masters.

So, yeah, both of these ideas, being treated well as a worker, and being able to seek your fortune and actually find it, were notions that required both democracy and capitalism with which the US was associated.

Too bad it was never really true. The American Dream is a fiction much like Merry England.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 5 Dec 2014 @ 1:09pm

This once wasn't ironic.
The German emigrant comes into a country free from the despotism, privileged orders and monopolies, intolerable taxes, and constraints in matters of belief and conscience. Everyone can travel and settle wherever he pleases. No passport is demanded, no police mingles in his affairs or hinders his movements...

--F.W.Bogen 1851
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GEMont (profile), 6 Dec 2014 @ 10:20pm

Re: This once wasn't ironic.
I understand a recent study by an American University also shows that the carrot used to keep American peasants from hanging millionaires on tree branches for their continuous stream of criminal acts, is actually something the wealthy invented specifically to make themselves look good and to keep the common man from ever reaching the upper braches of the food chain.

I am of course, referring to the very common notion of Rags To Riches Success, we hear about almost daily from media, that explains in tiny words how we the peasants can some day also become wealthy as God, if we just mind our business and work extra hard every day, without complaint.

Apparently, the endless stream of Rags To Riches stories are just that - manufactured carrots to fool the general public into staying on the job an extra hour, and never discussing the criminal actions of their employers and dreaming of that day "their ship comes in".

The near religious belief in this American Myth of eventual wealth, is what allows the rich to abuse everyone beneath them in the food chain and get nothing in response but continuous admiration and respect from the very peasants they abuse.

As John Oliver might put it. "Of course the game is rigged. But that just makes it so much more awesome for the day when I get mine."

The vast majority of wealth is either inherited, or stolen (if you don't get caught AND convicted, its normally called "earned profits"), and the number of real rags to riches stories can be counted on one hand - and they usually have some near miraculous twist that make them unique events and unlikely to happen twice in a millenia.

The true lesson here is simple - if you're not born to wealth, the only way you're going to have even the chance of a snowflake in hell of becoming rich, is to become a criminal and become really good at stealing wealth from the working, capital-generating poor, like the majority of the members of the Ownership Society do - a task which is quite easy to accomplish, since the peasants are trained to assist willingly.

Those working regular honest jobs (that usually aid in the destruction of the planet in one fashion or another) have absolutely zero chance to become anything more than middle class - the support layer for the mega wealthy. Being in the middle class is the reward peasants get for successfully aiding in some unique way, their billionaire employers, in their never-ending quest for more wealth - a reward for being an essential peasant.

The real American Dream is to become rich enough to be beyond the law, and thus be able to enjoy the privilege of unrestrained self aggrandizement without fear of consequences.

I still think that the addiction to wealth should bear a medical title, like mammonism, or perhaps, capitalism. :)

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Uriel-238 (profile), 7 Dec 2014 @ 11:48am

The rags-to-riches myth
We have Sutter's Mill to blame, right here in California.

It was the Gold Rush that altered the dream from "work hard to build a fortune" to "hack the system to get ahead of everyone else"

What breaks my heart is that we still teach all this bullshit to our kids.

Play by the rules. It matters.

Vote. It matters.

Go to college. It matters.

We set our children up for failure that way.

We should teach our children that they need to truly think outside the box. Lie, cheat, steal, murder to ruthlessly get to the top. That's exactly what everyone at the top did to get there.
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GEMont (profile), 9 Dec 2014 @ 12:51am

Re: The rags-to-riches myth
And that is exactly what they do teach their children in order to enhance their chances of reaching and staying at the top of the food chain.

It pretty much boils down to:

"Never give a sucker an even break."

There is a lot more to social engineering than meets the eye. The poor are a manufactured resource.
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