The sickness will remain

As the U.S. is confronted with an economic crisis that could end up leaving the nation’s economy an empty shell, it’s important to note how we got here. While there is plenty of finger-pointing go on about how the nation’s banks and mortgage companies managed to conduct a financial shell game, it is all really just a symptom of the overriding cultural problem the U.S. faces – We are a nation sick with greed, where the nation’s elite always thinks of dollar signs rather than humanity.

And nowhere is this more evident in this disturbing story from the New York Times about federal judges who sent undeserving minors to private prison camps for kickbacks.

[Judge] Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.

While prosecutors say that Judge Conahan, 56, secured contracts for the two centers to house juvenile offenders, Judge Ciavarella, 58, was the one who carried out the sentencing to keep the centers filled.

“In my entire career, I’ve never heard of anything remotely approaching this,” said Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim, who was appointed by the State Supreme Court this week to determine what should be done with the estimated 5,000 juveniles who have been sentenced by Judge Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2003. Many of them were first-time offenders and some remain in detention.

The case has shocked Luzerne County, an area in northeastern Pennsylvania that has been battered by a loss of industrial jobs and the closing of most of its anthracite coal mines. …

… If the court agrees to the plea agreement, both judges will serve 87 months in federal prison and resign from the bench and bar. They are expected to be sentenced in the next several months. Lawyers for both men declined to comment.

Since state law forbids retirement benefits to judges convicted of a felony while in office, the judges would also lose their pensions.

With Judge Conahan serving as president judge in control of the budget and Judge Ciavarella overseeing the juvenile courts, they set the kickback scheme in motion in December 2002, the authorities said.

They shut down the county-run juvenile detention center, arguing that it was in poor condition, the authorities said, and maintained that the county had no choice but to send detained juveniles to the newly built private detention centers.

Prosecutors say the judges tried to conceal the kickbacks as payments to a company they control in Florida.

We are a sick people, indeed. And whether or not the economy rebounds, that sickness will continue until the almighty dollar is replaced with some basic humanity from the nation’s elite.

–WKW

HT Dgun

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