Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
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"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
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Every now and then one of them gets caught
Every now and then one of them gets caught, but no inside guys like "Dusty" get any serious time. When we read about the case of CIA official Kyle "Dusty" Foggo in this article  it is important to keep in mind that this kind of blatant
criminality, by one of the most powerful people in government,
outlined only sketchily in this article, is no exception. It is the
rule.In these rare incidents where corruption is actually uncovered and prosecuted, we get a brief narrow glimpse at our gangster government at work. Take the case of "Dusty" and multiply it by a few thousand times and you begin to get the picture of why the country is sinking into the toilet so rapidly. Crime pays and crime in government pays really, really BIG. It begins to be possible to understand the absolute audacity of these criminals and how arranging a $700-billion rip off of the Treasury is just the latest in a series of ever more grandiose rip-offs perpetrated on US citizens since the time of Reagan. It seems petty by today's standards, but I was a victim of a grand government scam back in 1983 at the hands of newly appointed Reagan administration officials. I was part of a program for physicians that obligated us to pay back government assistance with service in underserved
I will spare you the fascinating details that led up to me and my wife sitting in the office of a prominent and very well connected LA lawyer. The deal was $50,000 for "public relations expenses" to make my problem go away. When we protested that we really were committed to public service and quite a bit too poor to find that kind of money even if we wanted to "make the problem go away," the lawyer proposed to arrange for us to borrow the money and then he would do our bankruptcy for free! Hey, what a deal. Needless to say we didn't bite, and a government official's threat to "ruin your life" was followed through on. To this day I have a non-dischargable debt of in excess of a million dollars (I stopped paying attention to exactly how much as the interest accumulates so rapidly) that requires me to live as a judgement proof debtor. Amongst other things this prevents me from many kinds of employment, severely restricts what income I can earn, and requires that I have no savings or any possessions that can be profitably repossessed. The Injustice Department seems to have lost interest lately, but I used to have to continually fill out forms declaring any and all assets and income. I was yelled at numerous times and called a liar because I filled the forms out accurately and truthfully. It seems it violated the world view of some of the Injustice Department lawyers to believe that a doctor could have nothing but an old pick up truck to declare as an asset. But to understand the grand scope of the scam just multiply $50,000 times 2,000 potential victims and you get $100,000,000, which, back in '83 was real money. People are either beneficiaries or victims of corruption. The beneficiaries remain silent for obvious reasons. The victims remain silent for many reasons, not the least of which is the well-founded fear that they will not be believed. Many, undoubtedly like the many doctors who took the bait I refused, have been compromised by collusion in crime. But most victims are just chumps too weak-willed to fight back. Now that the whole country is a victim you'd think that we would just admit it to each other, grow back some spine, and get on with the job of taking the criminals down. Pretty soon the emotional barriers of shame, denial, guilt and fear will not be able to continue holding back the tide and a great tidal wave of anger will come crashing ashore and things will change. There is even a small chance that such change will be for the better. Herb Ruhs, MD PERMANENT LINK Jeez, what a sad story ...That's not sad. Don't ask me for sad. That is angry. Angry for all of us put in a situation like that. Remorse and regret are a couple of drugs I try not to indulge in. Very habit forming. In that particular case I've always wondered if the spooks weren't behind it somehow. I played them pretty hard in Viet Nam. I hope they would want revenge. Like my grandma said, you measure yourself by what your enemies think of you, not the opinions of your friends. But I hear the sympathy and the support and appreciate both. Besides it kept me from being hijacked by success. Success has stalked me for a long time. Success is the death of the searcher. And without the consequences of this failed shakedown I would never have learned the path of involuntary simplicity, a great spiritual aid. I have a life full of stories like that. Very dramatic stuff. I did a job on a bully when I was five, a kindergartner. The kid, Butch, was bigger than the rest of us, maybe first or second grade, and mean. His was the only house with TV, so all us kids in the apartments would go to his house to watch Howdy Doody. I had a wicked crush on Princess Summer Fall Winter Spring, still do. Well, after Howdy this kid would follow littler kids, knock them down and bite their ears. Kids said he sucked the blood. GOD, the power of TV. We put up with it in order to watch Howdy. Well one day I show up with a right forearm cast (another big story) and apparently Butch decides this qualifies me as weak enough to be his victim of the day. Bad mistake. I beat him senseless with the cast then picked up a stick with a nail in it and worked him over some more. The kids blamed me because his family moved and therefore no more Howdy. After that; divorced parents, a Dickensian Catholic boarding school, foster care, institutions for tough boys, way radical college, Viet Nam, India, Berkeley in the seventies, radical medical school, nursing assistant in locked wards... and a bunch since. Stories that many find hard to believe. Stories I would have a hard time believing had I not been there. Herb Ruhs, MD PERMANENT LINK  | Latest entry | Recent entries | Older entries | |
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