<html xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml" xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2004/12/omml" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"><head><META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=us-ascii"><meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 14 (filtered medium)"><style><!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Calibri;
panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{margin:0in;
margin-bottom:.0001pt;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";}
a:link, span.MsoHyperlink
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:blue;
text-decoration:underline;}
a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed
{mso-style-priority:99;
color:purple;
text-decoration:underline;}
span.EmailStyle17
{mso-style-type:personal;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:windowtext;}
span.EmailStyle18
{mso-style-type:personal;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D;}
span.EmailStyle19
{mso-style-type:personal-reply;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
color:#1F497D;}
.MsoChpDefault
{mso-style-type:export-only;
font-size:10.0pt;}
@page WordSection1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in;}
div.WordSection1
{page:WordSection1;}
--></style><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapedefaults v:ext="edit" spidmax="1026" />
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:shapelayout v:ext="edit">
<o:idmap v:ext="edit" data="1" />
</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Are We in Ferguson — or Kabul?</span></b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Reading <i>Thieves of State </i>reminded me that we’re not living in the country many of us imagine, but in something like an American klepto-state. Corruption, it turns out, doesn’t just devour the lives of people in far-off nations. Right now, it’s busy shoving what’s left of our own democracy down our throats.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Home, Sweet Kleptocracy </span></b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><br><b>Kabul in America </b><br>By <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/authors/rebeccagordon" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>Rebecca Gordon</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Well-paid elected representatives act with impunity, routinely <a href="http://www.citizensforethics.org/policy/entry/earmark-reform" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>trading</span></a> government contracts and other favors for millions of dollars. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens live in fear of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/10/report-in-lean-times-police-start-taking-a-lot-more-stuff-from-people/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>venal police forces</span></a> that suck them dry <a href="http://www.policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=print_display&article_id=2108&issue_id=62010" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>by charging fees</span></a><span style='color:#1F497D'> </span>for services, <a href="http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/09/384968360/jail-time-for-unpaid-court-fines-and-fees-can-create-cycle-of-poverty" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>throwing</span></a> them in jail when they can’t pay arbitrary fines or<span style='color:#1F497D'> </span><a href="http://harvardlawreview.org/2015/04/policing-and-profit/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>selling</span></a> their court “debts” to private companies. Sometimes the police just take <a href="http://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit/introduction/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>people’s life savings</span></a> leaving them with no recourse whatsoever. Sometimes they <a href="http://www.alternet.org/drugs/5-outrageous-cases-drug-war-police-corruption-week" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>steal and deal</span></a> drugs on the side. Meanwhile, the country’s infrastructure crumbles. Bridges <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>collapse</span></a>, or take <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_span_replacement_of_the_San_Francisco%E2%80%93Oakland_Bay_Bridge" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>a quarter-century</span></a> to fix after a natural disaster, or (despite millions spent) turn out <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Plague-of-problems-puts-Bay-Bridge-seismic-safety-6253577.php" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>not to be fixed</span></a> at all. Many citizens regard their government at all levels with a weary combination of cynicism and contempt.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>What country is this? Could it be Nigeria or some other <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/03/revealing-tunisia-corruption-under-ben-ali-201432785825560542.html" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>kleptocratic</span></a><span style='color:#1F497D'> </span>developing state? Or post-invasion Afghanistan where Ahmed Wali Karzai, CIA asset and brother of the U.S.-installed president Hamid Karzai, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>made many millions</span></a> on the opium trade (which the U.S. was ostensibly trying to suppress), while his brother Mahmoud raked in <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/11/us-afghanistan-bank-idUSKCN0IV1X020141111" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>millions more</span></a> from the fraud-ridden Bank of Kabul? Or could it be Mexico, where the actions of both the government and drug cartels have <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175971/tomgram%3A_rebecca_gordon,_it_didn%27t_work_in_afghanistan,_so_let%27s_do_it_in_mexico" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>created</span></a> perhaps the world’s first narco-terrorist state?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><a name=more></a><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>In fact, everything in this list happened (and much of it is still happening) in the United States, “from fraud and embezzlement charges to the failure to uphold ethical standards, there are multiple cases of corruption at the federal, state and local level.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>And here’s a reasonable bet: it’s not going to get better any time soon and it could get a lot worse. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Kleptocracy USA?</span></b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Sarah Chayes’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0393352285/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" target="_blank"><i><span style='color:#9B3921'>Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security</span></i></a> . <span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Chayes traveled to Afghanistan in 2001 as a reporter for NPR. Moved by the land and people, she soon gave up reporting to devote herself to working with non-governmental organizations helping “Afghans rebuild their shattered but extraordinary country.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>In the process, she came to understand the central role government corruption plays in the collapse of nations and the rise of fundamentalist organizations like the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State. She also discovered just how unable (and often unwilling) American military and civilian officials were to put a stop to the <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176068/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_roads_to_nowhere%2C_ghost_soldiers%2C_and_a_%2443_million_gas_station_in_afghanistan/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>thievery</span></a> that characterized Afghanistan’s<a href="https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/report/2015/03/17/108613/tackling-corruption-in-afghanistan-its-now-or-never/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>government</span></a> at every level — from the <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/bribes-in-afghanistan-last-year-reached-almost-four-billion-dollars/1599111.html" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>skimming</span></a> of billions in reconstruction funds at the top to the daily drumbeat of demands for bribes and “fees” from ordinary citizens seeking any kind of government service further down the chain of organized corruption. In general, writes Chayes, kleptocratic countries operate very much as pyramid schemes, with people at one level paying those at the next for the privilege of extracting money from those below.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Chayes suggests that “acute government corruption” may be a major factor “at the root” of the violent extremism now spreading across the Greater Middle East and Africa. When government robs ordinary people blind, in what she calls a “vertically integrated criminal enterprise,” the victims tend to look for justice elsewhere. When officials treat the law with criminal contempt, or when the law explicitly permits government extortion, they turn to what seem like uncorrupted systems of reprisal and redemption outside those laws. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Reading <i>Thieves of State</i>, it didn’t take long for my mind to wander from Kabul to Washington, from a place where American-funded corruption was an <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176068/tomgram%3A_engelhardt,_roads_to_nowhere,_ghost_soldiers,_and_a_$43_million_gas_station_in_afghanistan/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>open secret</span></a> to a place where few would think it applicable. Why was it, I began to wonder, that in our country “corruption” never came up in relation to bankers the government allowed to sell mortgages to people who couldn’t repay them, then slicing and dicing their debt into investment “securities” that brought on the worst recession since the 1930s? (Neil Barofsky, who took on the thankless role of inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Fund, tells the grim tale of how the government was “captured by the banks” in his 2012 book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/1451684959/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20" target="_blank"><i><span style='color:#9B3921'>Bailout</span></i></a><i>.</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Chayes’s book made me think in a new way about the long-term effects of the <a href="http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>revolving door</span></a> between the Capitol — supposedly occupied by the people’s representatives — and the K Street suites of Washington’s myriad lobbyists. It also brought to mind all those former <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/top.php?display=Z" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>members of Congress</span></a>,<a href="http://www.duffelblog.com/2013/02/general-worried-about-finding-job-as-lobbyist-defense-consultant-after-retirement/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>generals</span></a>, and national security state officials who parachute directly out of government service and onto the boards of defense-oriented companies or into <a href="http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/06/05/DOD-Retirees-From-4-star-General-to-7-Figure-Income" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>cushy consultancies</span></a> catering to that same security state.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>It also made me think in a new way about the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/opinion/the-worst-voter-turnout-in-72-years.html" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>ever-lower turnouts</span></a> for our elections. There are good reasons why so many Americans — especially those living in poverty and in communities of color — don’t vote. It’s not that they don’t know their forebears <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/what-we-do/civil-rights-memorial/civil-rights-martyrs" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>died</span></a> for that right. It’s not that they don’t object when their votes are <a href="https://www.aclu.org/map/battle-protect-ballot-voter-suppression-measures-passed-2013" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>suppressed</span></a>. It’s that, like many other Americans, they clearly believe their government to be so corrupt that voting is pointless.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Are We in Ferguson — or Kabul?</span></b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>What surprises me most, however, isn’t the corruption at the top, but the ways in which lives at the bottom are affected by it. Reading <i>Thieves of State<span style='color:#1F497D'> </span></i>set me thinking about how regularly money in this country now flows from the bottom up that pyramid. If you head down, you no longer find yourself on Main Street, U.S.A., but in a place that seems uncomfortably like Kabul; in other words, a Ponzi-scheme world of the first order.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Consider, for instance, the Justice Department’s 2015 <a href="http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>report</span></a> on the police in Ferguson, Missouri, about whom we’ve learned so much since Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/ferguson-missouri-town-under-siege-after-police-shooting.html?_r=0" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>shot</span></a> to death on August 9, 2014. As it happens, the dangers for Ferguson’s residents hardly ended with police misconduct. “Ferguson’s law enforcement practices are shaped by the city’s focus on revenue rather than by public safety needs,” Justice Department investigators found:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>“This emphasis on revenue has compromised the institutional character of Ferguson’s police department, contributing to a pattern of unconstitutional policing, and has also shaped its municipal court, leading to procedures that raise due process concerns and inflict unnecessary harm on members of the Ferguson community.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The report then recounted in excruciating detail the extent to which the police were a plague on the city’s largely black population. Ferguson was — make no mistake about it — distinctly Kabul, U.S.A. The police, for instance, regularly accosted residents for what might be termed “sitting in a car while Black,” and then charged them with bogus “crimes” like failing to wear a seat belt in a parked car or “making a false declaration” that, say, one’s name was “Mike,” not “Michael.” While these arrests didn’t make money directly for the police force, officers interested in promotion were told to keep in mind that their tally of “self-initiated activities” (tickets and traffic stops) would have a significant effect on their future success on the force. Meanwhile, those charged often lost their jobs and livelihoods amid a welter of court appearances.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Ferguson’s municipal court played its own grim role in this ugly scheme. As Justice Department investigators discovered, it did not “act as a neutral arbiter of the law or a check on unlawful police conduct.” Instead, it used its judicial authority “as the means to compel the payment of fines and fees that advance[d] the city’s financial interests.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>By issuing repeated arrest warrants when people missed court appearances or were unable to pay fines, it managed to regularly pile one fine on top of another and then often refused to accept partial payments for the sums owed. Under Missouri state law, moving traffic violations, for instance, automatically required the temporary suspension of a driver’s license. Ferguson residents couldn’t get their licenses back until — you guessed it — they paid their fines in full, often for charges that were manufactured in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>As if in Kabul, people then had to weigh the risk of driving license-less (and getting arrested) against losing their jobs or — without a car — not making it to court. With no community service option available, many found themselves spending time in jail. From the police to the courts to city hall, what had been organized was, in short, an everyday money-raising racket of the first order.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>And all of this was linked to the police department, which actually ran the municipal court. As the Justice Department report put it, that court “operates as part of the police department… is supervised by the Ferguson chief of police, is considered part of the police department for city organizational purposes, and is physically located within the police station. Court staff report directly to the chief of police.” He, in turn, ran the show, doing everything from collecting fines to determining bail amounts.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The <i>Harvard Law Review</i> <a href="http://harvardlawreview.org/2015/04/policing-and-profit/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>reported</span></a> that, in 2013, Ferguson had a population of 22,000. That same year, “its municipal court issued 32,975 arrest warrants for nonviolent offenses,” or almost one-and-a-half arrests per inhabitant. The report continued:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>“In Ferguson, residents who fall behind on fines and don’t appear in court after a warrant is issued for their arrest (or arrive in court after the courtroom doors close, which often happens just five minutes after the session is set to start for the day) are charged an additional $120 to $130 fine, along with a $50 fee for a new arrest warrant and 56 cents for each mile that police drive to serve it. Once arrested, everyone who can’t pay their fines or post bail (which is usually set to equal the amount of their total debt) is imprisoned until the next court session (which happens three days a month). Anyone who is imprisoned is charged $30 to $60 a night by the jail.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Whether in Kabul or Ferguson, this kind of daily oppression wears people down. It’s no surprise that long before the police shot Michael Brown, the citizens of Ferguson had little trust or respect for them.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Privatizing Official Corruption</span></b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>But might Ferguson not have been an outlier, a unique Kabul-in-America case of a rogue city government bent on extracting every penny from its poorest residents? Consider, then, the town of <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/us/lawsuit-accuses-missouri-city-of-fining-homeowners-to-raise-revenue.html?emc=edit_th_20151105&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=65427895" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>Pagedale</span></a>, Missouri, which came up with a hardly less kleptocratic way of squeezing money out of its citizens. Instead of focusing on driving and parking, Pagedale <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/us/lawsuit-accuses-missouri-city-of-fining-homeowners-to-raise-revenue.html?emc=edit_th_20151105&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=65427895" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>routinely hit</span></a> homeowners with fines for “offenses” like failing to have blinds and “matching curtains” on their windows or having “unsightly lawns.” Pagedale is a small town, with 3,300 residents. In 2013, the city’s general revenues totaled $2 million, 17% percent from such fines and fees.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Might such kleptocratic local revenue-extraction systems, however, be limited to just one Midwestern state? Consider then the cozy relationship that Augusta, capital of Georgia, has with <a href="http://www.sentrak.com/faqs/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>Sentinel Offender Services, LLC</span></a>. That company makes electronic monitoring equipment used by state and local government agencies, ranging from the Los Angeles County Probation Department to the Massachusetts Office of the Commissioner of Probation. Its website touts the benefits to municipalities of what it calls “offender-funded programs” in which the person on probation pays the company directly for his or her own monitoring, saving the courts the cost of administering a probation system. In return, the company sets its own fees at whatever level it chooses. “By individually assessing each participant a fee based on income,” says Sentinel, “our sliding-fee scale approach has shifted the financial burden to the participant, allowing program growth and size to be a function of correctional need rather than budget availability.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Such systems of privatized “justice” that bleed the poor are now spreading across the U.S., a country officially without debtor’s prisons. According to the <i>Harvard Law Review</i> article, some cities charge a “fee” to everyone they arrest, whether or not they’re ever convicted of an offense. In Washington, D.C., on the other hand, for “<a href="http://www.dccourts.gov/internet/public/aud_criminal/handlearrest.jsf" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>certain traffic</span></a> and a number of lower level criminal offenses,” you can simply pay your arresting officer “to end a case on the spot,” avoiding lengthy and expensive court costs. Other jurisdictions charge people who are arrested for the costs of police investigations, prosecution, public defender services, a jury trial (“sometimes with different fees depending on how many jurors a defendant requests”), and incarceration.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Watch Your Ass(ets)</span></b><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Even Machiavelli, who counseled princes seizing new territory to commit all their crimes at once because human beings have such short memories, warned that people will accept pretty much any kind of oppression unless “you prey on the possessions or the women of your subjects.” So many centuries later, while we women now tend to believe we belong to ourselves, <a href="http://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit/introduction/#citation_32" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>civil asset forfeiture</span></a> is still a part of American life. Unlike criminal asset forfeiture, which permits the government to seize a person’s assets after conviction of a crime, civil forfeiture allows local, state, or federal law enforcement to seize and keep someone’s money or other property even if he or she is never charged. If, say, you are suspected of involvement with drugs or terrorism, the police can seize all the money you have on you on the<i> </i>spot, even if they don’t arrest you — and you have to go to court to get it back.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Federal asset forfeiture collections have risen from around $800 million in 2002 to almost $4.5 billion in 2014, <a href="http://ij.org/report/policing-for-profit/introduction/#citation_32" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>according</span></a> to the Institute for Justice (IJ). Governments defend the practice as a means of preventing suspected criminals — especially high-level drug dealers — from using their money to commit more crimes. But all too often, it’s poor people whose money is “forfeited,” even when they’ve committed no crime. The Pennsylvania ACLU <a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/new-aclu-report-shows-philadelphia-da-seizes-1-million-cash-annually-innocent-philadelphians" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>reported</span></a> that police take around a million dollars from Philadelphians each year in 6,000 separate cases — and not from drug lords either. More than half the cases involve seizures of less than $192, and in a city that’s only 43% black, 71% of those seizures from people charged with no crimes come from African Americans. If your property is seized, you can try to go to court to get it back but, <a href="http://www.aclupa.org/files/1814/4526/3118/Broken_Justice_-_Montgomery_County_final.pdf" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>says the ACLU</span></a>, you should expect to make an average of four court appearances. Most people just give up.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Reading <i>Thieves of State </i>reminded me that we’re not living in the country many of us imagine, but in something like an American klepto-state. Corruption, it turns out, doesn’t just devour the lives of people in far-off nations. Right now, it’s busy shoving what’s left of our own democracy down our throats.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto'><span style='font-size:16.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Chayes documents how such corruption can lead to violent explosions in other countries. Indeed, it was a final kleptocratic insult — a police woman’s slap in the face after he refused to pay a bribe to retrieve his confiscated vegetable cart — that led Tunisian <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_Bouazizi" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>Mohamed Bouazizi</span></a> to burn himself to death and touch off the Arab Spring. As Machiavelli wrote so long ago, people will put up with a lot – <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/09/world/cia-torture-report-document.html" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>torture</span></a>, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/snowden-nsa-files-surveillance-revelations-decoded#section/1" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>mass surveillance</span></a>, even a <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-gop-clown-car-20150812" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>car full of clowns</span></a> masquerading as candidates for president — but they don’t like being robbed by their own government. Sooner or later, they will rebel. Let’s hope, when that happens, that we don’t end up under the rule of our own American<a href="http://www.salon.com/2014/07/03/we_are_a_corporate_theocracy_now_the_christian_right_seeks_cultural_and_political_domination/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#9B3921'>Taliban</span></a> or some billionaire reality TV star.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>