CRIME PAYS

America is a land of injustice. This allows those that commit crimes to profit from their crimes. Justice is no longer the goal of law enforcement but fairness. Instead of doing what is right, people want to do what is fair. With the meaning in modern jargon fair allows for wiggle room. The original meaning has to do with being just and equitable. Righteousness is the same as straightness. Under righteousness, there is no room to wiggle around in. There are no deviations allowed because righteousness is not a respecter of persons.

When man legislates apart from righteousness, his laws will be, by definition, unrighteous. This unrighteousness will always favor lawbreakers. Lawbreakers know how to work the system. There is a case right now in Johnson City, Tennessee where a man named Howard Willis has been charged in a double murder in 2002 and six years later, he still has not been brought to trial. Since it is a death penalty case, there is a fear that a decision for death will be overturned on appeal. The criminal knows this, so he will the endless motions and appeals and will not work with his attorneys and so justice is postponed. Meanwhile, evidence can be destroyed, witnesses memories fade and there is the real possibility that the accused will be acquitted on some procedural technicality.

A good example of crime paying is in the case of Debra Cox of Johnson City, Tennessee. She has pled guilty to embezzling $269,778 from her employer. This woman stole this amount of money over a two year period. Her employers had trusted her and could not believe that she was stealing from them. Apparently, her employers were naive concerning the sinful nature. Cox would steal from her own mother.

What is most astounding about this case is that her employer owed Cox about $7,000 for unused sick, personal and vacation pay. Her employer, Watauga Orthopaedics was given legal advice that they had to pay Cox these benefits. So let’s get this straight. Cox steals $269,778 from her employer and her employer has to pay her $7,000. This is simply unbelievable. The $7,000 should have been used as a beginning of restitution payments for Cox. Cox has now been able to steal twice from her employer. She forfeited all claims to those benefits when she willingly chose to steal from her employer.

Our legal system is going to allow Cox to steal from the taxpayers next. She is facing jail time. Question, why do the taxpayers have to pay for her care? Biblically, she should have to make, at the least, double restitution to her former employer. She should not be put into jail but should have to work and pay back her victim. Putting her in jail accomplishes nothing but the wasting of limited law enforcement resources. The Cox and Willis cases proves beyond a shadow of doubt that crime pays in America.

ABOVE THE LAW

It is astounding the audacity of some people. There is no shame among men. Instead of being humbled by their actions, they respond with arrogance. When man has the ability to make laws, he will always seek to be himself exempt from those same laws. He thinks because he makes laws, that he is above those laws. He does not want to be held accountable for his actions. Everyone else is subject but he considers himself as a sovereign.

This fact happens repeatedly within the political realm of this nation. Their names are legion of politicians who have been caught breaking the law and yet, instead of trying to reform their behavior, they refuse to acknowledge that they have done anything wrong. Instead, they blame others saying that there is a conspiracy out to get them. They will not admit any guilt. They seek to put the guilt on others.

An example is Representative Charles Rangel, Democrat from New York. Rangel is going to pay back taxes of thousands of dollars for unreported rental income on a vacation home that he owns. What makes this situation interesting is that Rangle is the chairman of a tax writing committee. He has oversight of the tax code and yet, he has broken this code by not reporting income. If he knowingly did not report this rental income, then he is guilty of tax evasion. How can someone ethically write tax code and yet evade it at the same time?

Rangel is also under fire for other issues of his finances. As is predictable, Rangel refuses to take responsibility for his actions. Rangel’s lawyer, Lanny Davis said "he (Rangel) will not give up the chairmanship." This demonstrates Rangel’s arrogance. He can break the tax law and yet he still wants to be able to write the tax code. This violates the principle of having clean hands. Rangel’s hands are stained with hypocrisy. He wants us to conform to the tax regulations but he exempts himself.

Davis went on to say, "Mr. Boehner’s (Republican Minority Leader) hyper-partisan attack on an honorable man, Charles Rangel, is completely contrary to the spirit of bipartisanship." What does paying back taxes on unreported rental income have to do with bipartisanship? This is an attempt by Rangel to avoid the issue of his behavior. He does not want to be held accountable for his actions. He believes that he is above the law and that we all are fools.

CRISIS AFTER CRISIS

Everyday that goes by history is being written. What is being written is the failure of man to avert crisis. Man has rejected God’s law and seeks to establish his own law which has led to one crisis after another and yet man thinks that the civil government will somehow solve the very problems that they have caused. This is because the populace of this country do not understand the law of cause and effect.

The law of cause and effect is a spiritual construct and when your thinking consists of the visible moment, you will not be able to predict the consequences of your actions and so it goes on and on. Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary’s second definition of the word crisis is "The decisive state of things, or the point of time when an affair is arrived to the height, and must soon terminate or suffer a material change."

Crisis management is the normal situation under man’s rule. Each day brings the new crisis and tomorrow there will be another one. An example is the Big Three Automakers asking the government for $50 billion in low interest loans. The reason that these Automakers are going to the government is because no bank has the ability or wants to loan the Automakers that amount of money. Also, investors will be unwilling to purchase any bonds (debt) issued by the Automakers. Thus, they appeal to the government for protection from competition.

Instead of keeping up with the trends i.e,. rise in gas prices, Detroit continued to put out gas guzzlers and now they are suffering the consequences. Of course, the government has had a hand to play in this situation with their regulations against domestic drilling and not building new refineries. These decisions which were made many years ago are now having a dramatic effect upon this nation’s ability to compete. After the fact, Detroit is seeking to adjust to market conditions with taxpayer money.

To avert financial turmoil, the government has taken control of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This is a contradiction of terms. The one that caused the present mortgage crisis is the one that is now taking control and the market system will be blamed for the failure. By offering easy debt (credit) with artificially low interest rates, people borrowed money that they could not repay. The Federal Reserve kept cutting the interest rates until they were at 1%. This enabled people who were poor credit risks to obtain loans and the greed of mortgage brokers working on commission resulted in this financial meltdown.

All of this is predictable because of the issuance of paper money. Bad money drives out good money and bad loans drive out good ones. The market can determine the rates of interest better than the Federal Government can. All that the Federal Government can do is what they are best at doing creating another crisis with the taxpayers bailing out bankrupt companies. It is just tha matter of time before the next crisis hits. The civil government never learns from history.