WHEN THE GOVERNMENT GOES VERY VERY WRONG...

Leslie Van Houten is going to be released from the Federal penitentiary very soon…

She was granted parole for her role in the 1969 murder of Rosemary LaBianca, part of the famous Tate/LaBianca murders orchestrated by Charles Manson. Van Houten was 19 at the time, a former homecoming queen, whose life was caught up in the drug induced mind control tactics of a sadistic Charles Manson…

Van Houten has served 47 years with grace and dignity…she has been a famously inspiring and remorseful inmate for all of these years and has failed in 17 attempts to gain parole. If truth be told...Van Houten was instructed by Manson to go into the LaBianca home after Mr. and Mrs. LaBianca had already been killed and she stabbed the lifeless body of Rosemary LaBianca. She stabbed a dead person...that doesn't change intent but it does matter.

Contrast this with the case of Fabian Nunez…convicted of murder in a knife attack that killed Luis Santos. Nunez was sentenced to 16 years prison time but because Nunez’s father was the former Assembly Speaker and a friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Fabian Nunez had his sentence commuted to 7 years. Yes, on Schwarzenegger’s last day in office he did this favor for his friend. Schwarzenegger admitted as such.

Leslie Van Houten served 47 years…Fabian Nunez served 7….and there are no clear signs that Fabian will change the habits that took the life of Luis Santos.

When I was a young kid I remember the case of a 15 year old hitch hiker who was picked up in Berkeley California by a man who then brutally raped her…cut off both of her arms with an axe, and then threw her naked and mutilated body into a ravine in a remote area…to die. Mary Vincent was somehow able to crawl out of that ravine and was rescued by a passing car….

Lawrence Singleton was later captured, days after Mary Vincent was fitted with prosthetic arms…Singleton received a sentence of 14 years but he only served 8 years before he was released. A few years later Singleton murdered a woman and was sent back to jail.

It is hard to be trusting of the government and all their power when you see how unevenly and recklessly they exercise their control over our lives....the IRS can ruin your life for no reason whatsoever....and there is virtually no recourse for those who are crushed by the government. Money and power buy justice...it has been like this since man walked on two legs. Through greed and recklessness Wall Street and large lending institutions can destroy the lives of millions and send this country into a dark recession...and there is NO punishment...not even a slap on the wrist. A few high profile members of this group were shamed, but they walked away richer than before....

Could this be why Sandra Bland hung herself in her jail cell days after being incarcerated for not signaling before a lane change?

Bill Cosby can rape and drug dozens and dozens of women and girls....former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert can molest young boys while acting as their wrestling coach in high school…Hundreds and Hundreds of Catholic priests can serial molest young boys and can go totally unpunished….yet, a former spokesman for Subway can be convicted of owning child pornography and having consensual sex with a 17 year old and he is serving 15 years in prison…8 more years than Fabian Nunez, and 7 more years than Lawrence Singleton….

People are in prison for years and years for possessing drugs….it is an outrage..and a disproportionate percentage of them are black…

With the arrival of DNA testing I am hearing more and more about people (usually black men) who are being released from jail after spending 20, 30, or even 47 years (in a recent case) in jail for crimes they did not commit. "Sorry, we screwed up". Now that is a real crime!!!! Oftentimes the judicial system doesn't even care about getting it wrong....corruption and carelessness cost these people their lives...

Ask yourself....if you were granted the authority to adjudicate all of these cases yourself, would you get this many so terribly, terribly wrong?

It is very sad and depressing…and for many it is a never ending nightmare….what is so hard about being fair and just? Corruption abounds….greed abounds…and our Government gets it wrong way more often than it should.

Life is short...and precious...and when you are granted the authority to control someone's short and precious life then you had better get it right.....you had better be fair to all---it's not that hard. I'm learning not to expect this of the government...too much greed, and way too much apathy.

Food for thought.....