All of us, well most of us at least, have a strong sense of justice. Those who do wrong, who violate the law or commonly accepted norms must be held accountable and punished. When we see criminals unpunished and thieves enjoying their ill gotten gains and never brought to justice, we feel very frustrated. We manifest anxious anger and indignation at these outrages and our powerlessness to correct them and feel that society has let us down. Where is the law? Where are the police? Where are the courts? Why is there no justice? Where is this “rule of law” that is supposed to be fundamental to our society?

Conversely, we get a great deal of satisfaction when we see those who have violated the law brought to justice. We feel that the rule of law is still being applied and that we still live in a just society where there are laws, rules and norms that are still being taken seriously, applied and heeded. Once while driving on Arizona 377 approaching the town of Heber in a no passing zone, a huge black BMW sedan passed me at a very high rate of speed, seriously endangering my life. After collecting and calming myself, and muttering something about where are the cops when you need them, you can imagine my feeling of intense satisfaction when a couple of miles ahead, I came upon the flashing blue and red lights of an Arizona State Police cruiser pulled up behind that same black sedan. That reckless and dangerous driver will likely pay a hefty fine. Wow, there is justice, after all. 

But in spite of these occasional incidents that satisfy us and remind us that there are some laws that are being fairly applied and that there is some justice, we are daily reminded of significant injustices and violations of the law that go unpunished. The feeling of injustice leaves us wanting, creates of feelings of frustration and helplessness and feelings of distrust of those institutions in our society that are supposed to provide justice by arresting the bad guys who have bilked us, trying them and tossing them into prison so that they pay their debt to society.

Right now, taxpayers in states where the opioid epidemic has hit the hardest – states like New Hampshire, West Virginia, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, have been asked to pass legislation to fund programs to counter this epidemic. In fact there is now a Federal bill that will soon ask all of us to pay. The pharmaceutical companies and the medical profession that have manufactured, distributed and prescribed these dangerous and additive pain medications have raked in millions of dollars. So why are they not being asked to foot the bill for this terrible calamity. Why are taxpayers asked to pay for the ruinous greed and recklessness that have enriched a few? The facts are there – for example, over 22 million doses were shipped to one West Virginia town. Perdue Pharmaceuticals, the major manufacturer of opioids knew about he dangers yet continued to manufacture and market millions of these deadly pills.  But today I know of no efforts to prosecute this company or others or the medical profession for their glaring malfeasance.

And just consider the money that diabetes and heart disease has cost all of us as individuals and taxpayers. So much of this has been caused by our consumption of sugar. But big sugar has done a marvelous job of advertising over the years – “only 18 calories per teaspoon” (recently reduced to “16 calories” – why – have teaspoons shrunk?), “sugar for quick energy” and on and on. And the industry has packed “added sugar” into three fourths of all packaged food and has fought  against taxation of sugary drinks, a major cause of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. So the sugar industry has profited mightily over the years from this irresponsibility. Yet it has never been asked to pay one penny toward  the serious health problems which its ubiquitous product has caused.

And what about Monsanto and Bayer poisoning on our soil and farms with their deadly chemicals. Cloaked as “increasing productivity”, “feeding the world” or other euphemisms, these corporations continue to persuade our farmers to inject dangerous chemicals into our soil and our food. The recent revelation of traces of glyphosate, Monsanto’s Roundup, the most heavily used herbicide in the world and a cash cow for the corporation, in Quaker Oats and Cheerios, has recently received attention in the press. This revelation has revived the old argument of whether glyphosate is a carcinogen. Whether it is or not, this terrible chemical should not be in our food. If not causing cancer, which perhaps indeed has not yet been proven, then what about other potential effects – like damage to the endocrine or nervous systems? When serious harm to human health from this chemical will surely be proven one day, who will pay – the people or Monsanto? You know the answer.

The meat industry, the very epitome of inefficient use of foods, continues to thrive as the domestic and foreign markets for beef, pork and chicken continue to grow. Yet the the poisoning of our groundwater and waterways by manure lakes from feedlots and other concentrations of industrial strength cultivation of animals continues to grow unabated. Perhaps the massive profits of these industries should pay for the proper disposal of this waste instead of taxpayers. After all, years ago the tobacco industry was held accountable for the health problems resulting from its use and was required to not only place warnings on its packages but to pay billions of dollars for anti-tobacco advertising and to combat lung cancer. Where are the similar rulings against industries that are a threat to health today?

Also consider the dreadful attack on human health that has occurred in Flint, Michigan when someone decided to save the state money by changing the main source for the city water supply from Lake Huron to the Flint River. This dreadful chain of events has caused irreparable harm to the health of thousands of adults and children and has cost taxpayers close to a half billion dollars so far. But yet no one has been punished – not the Republican governor, not the city officials or anyone else. Where is the justice here, pray tell? Again, there is none, and taxpayers are left holding the bag for the unpunished crimes of a few.

What is going on in our country today? The savings and loan debacle of the 1980’s ended with over one thousand officials and owners going to jail for their part in the collapse. And in the early 2000’s the Department of Justice even set up a special unit to prosecute and punish the crooked executives responsible for energy trader corporation Enron’s abuse of privilege and power. Yet how many bankers and Wall Street executives have gone to prison for their part in the crash and near-depression of 2008, when $10.2 trillion in wealth disappeared, including $3.3 trillion in home equity causing thousands of people to lose their homes? That number is one – Kareem Serageldin, a senior trader at Credit Suisse, has served a 30-month sentence for inflating the value of mortgage bonds in his trading portfolio. No, instead of prosecution and prison, the executives and their banks and corporations got bailed out by us taxpayers. If the Justice Department prosecuted at all, mere fines were assessed. An example – in early 2014, just weeks after Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, settled out of court with the Justice Department, the bank’s board of directors gave him a 74 percent raise, bringing his salary to $20 million.

Another issue – why have reckless banks and corporations who have broken the law in myriad other instances never been punished with anything more than just a “slap on the wrist” fine. Banks and corporations being fined for serious violations of the law has become so commonplace that they are actually budgeting for these serial transgressions – yes, actually establishing a budget line for fines imposed for illegal activity and violations of regulations. What about prosecuting the people who made these decisions and sending them to prison? Perhaps with personal risk instead of fines, these serial transgressions could be reduced.

And related to this, a series of recent pieces in the media relating to the machinations of Paul Manafort to hide income in overseas havens to avoid taxes on millions of dollars of ill-gotten gains, gives rise to consideration of how he got away with this kind of thievery for so long and how many others there might be who have done exactly the same thing but have not been caught. The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell examined this issue passionately and eloquently in several of her recent columns and reminds us as well that prosecutions for white collar crime and tax evasion are at a three decade low. Yes, we have virtually stopped investigating and prosecuting these kinds of crimes so wealthy people are still getting away with tax avoidance, storing their wealth in overseas bank accounts and money laundering.  We prosecute people right and left for shoplifting or for driving without a license or for any number of other petty crimes. But the wealthy who park their millions in the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes or who don’t report millions in income, are rarely brought to justice and the crimes go on and on. According to one study, every year the United States loses $400 billion in unpaid taxes, much of it hidden in offshore tax havens.

Another well known example of no justice – no one has yet paid any kind of penalty for the lies and fabrications that were used to justify the Iraq war that resulted in countless deaths and trillions of dollars in destruction. Again, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of the liars and fools who perpetrated this war and sold it to the world and the American people, are now enjoying cushy retirements or life jobs on corporate boards. Many Germans did pay the penalty at Nuremberg for their crimes in prosecuting World War II, yet we have not lifted a finger to provide justice for the thousands of lives and the trillion dollars that the war in Iraq and the never ending war in Afghanistan have cost us.

And what about the terrible injustice of police brutality today? Black people get murdered right and left, and the perpetrators go free. Yes, no matter how blatant the act or how preponderant the evidence in police shootings, it seems that no one is ever punished with anything more than suspension with pay or banishment to a desk job. To mention but two of hundreds of incidents, although a wrongful death lawsuit was successful, no charges have ever been brought against Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer murderer of Eric Garner, whom we witnessed on video being throttled to death. Our warped justice system has focused instead on the guy who took the video, Ramsey Orta, who has since suffered prosecution and conviction for petty drug crimes. And Panteleo himself recently got a $20,000 pay raise while consigned to desk duty and interestingly, some $13,000 of this killer cop’s income last year was from “unspecified sources”, maybe bonuses? And  similarly, even though a lawsuit by the family was successful, the officer who shot Philando Castile, whose life ended as the world watched him bleed to death on cell phone video, was acquitted of second degree murder charges brought against him. And the list goes on. Reckless shootings, blatant killings by those charged to “serve and protect” us. Yet these renegade cops are the ones being served and protected. Where is the justice?

And how about our international best friend and “only democracy in the Middle East”, renegade nation Israel, which continues to flout international laws and basic morals? The world stands by and watches the Israeli Occupation Forces conduct target practice on unarmed Palestinian demonstrators and does not lift a finger to bring the perpetrators of these terrible crimes to justice. Instead the world looked the other way and focused instead on the rescue of 13 soccer players from entrapment in a cave. Where were these people, all the media, all the reporters, all the stories, all the TV coverage, as 120 Palestinians were murdered and 3000 wounded, many in a horrid, life altering manner because of special expanding bullets. Where is the anger and indignation about these killings of unarmed innocent people, including medics, children and the elderly? Why hasn’t this renegade nation been brought to justice or punished by the UN or the ICC? At this writing the number of unarmed Palestinians demonstrating the Gaza border killed by Israel is 174 and more than 18,000 have been wounded. Yet the corporate media doesn’t cover these atrocities, no talking heads take notice and the world does nothing – where’s the justice?

And while I am shaking with anger and a horrible feeling of powerlessness about these injustices, how about the damage wrought in Israel’s “wars” with Gaza, the world’s largest open air prison? Israel destroys infrastructure, homes, offices, hospitals and schools in Gaza in 2009 and 2014 with arms provided by the United States taxpayers, yet contributes not one shred of this largesse for reconstruction. What little of this that has occurred has come about through contributions from the UN, EU and a little from Arab countries, but not from the US or Israel. Why? Where are the laws and enforcement that are supposed to regulate nations’ behavior and their dealings with one another? Israel throttles Gaza, rations electricity, chokes economic activity, severely limits fishing, import of building materials and who pays for the privation caused by Israel? The UN, the US and the EU.  And while these insults to morality and international law go on, the US supports it all with $11 million per day of taxpayer money for Israel. Where the hell is the justice here?

And finally, the feeling of powerlessness, of helplessness in the face of the injustice wrapped in  corporate media’s purposeful neglect of facts and the truth, continues to haunt me when I read ad nauseam of “attacks on our democracy” by Russia toying with our elections when far more egregious harm is done to our increasingly frail “democracy” by ourselves. It is we, not Russia, who are constantly suppressing the vote through gerrymandering, voter ID laws, the reduction of precincts, removing names from voter lists and so on. It is ourselves, not Russia, who have allowed money to distort the election process and who have allowed oligarchs like Charles Koch and Sheldon Adelson to call the shots in our elections. Our own United States Supreme Court has been complicit in doing grievous harm to American democracy by equating campaign donations with free speech, allowing floods of secret money to distort our elections, dialing back the Voting Rights Act which permits states once again to discriminate against black voters, allowing states to purge voter lists and refusing to rule against gerrymandering.

Certainly I could go on and on about injustice in the world – US support of Saudi Arabia’s genocidal war in Yemen in which five million children face starvation and a cholera epidemic; our rigged economy which has stifled the middle class and enriched the one percent; the Republican party’s exacerbation of inequality through their “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act”; our baseless demonization of Iran on behalf of AIPAC and Israel; our heartless and inhumane treatment of refugees at our borders who are fleeing for their very lives; rejection of the Paris Climate Accords consigning future generations to struggle with the far reaching results of an inexorably warming climate; a young Palestinian man beaten to death by Israeli soldiers in his own home while family members listened. There is no justice.

The tension and anger persist and tear at my insides, exacerbated by my own powerlessness to change anything. But what I have recorded above will have to do for now. I have at least given voice in print about how I feel in a world heavy with injustice but light on accountability. And so I guess that I have done what little I could.