AP reports on the sentencing of Bernard Madoff:
A federal judge rejected Bernard Madoff’s plea for leniency Monday, sentencing the 71-year-old swindler to spend the rest of his life in prison for an “extraordinarily evil” fraud that took a staggering toll on thousands of victims.
U.S. District Judge Denny Chin cited the unprecedented nature of the multibillion-dollar fraud as he sentenced Madoff to the maximum of 150 years in prison, a term comparable only to those given in the past to terrorists, traitors and the most violent criminals. There is no parole in federal prison so Madoff will most likely die there.
“Here, the message must be sent that Mr. Madoff’s crimes were extraordinarily evil and that this kind of irresponsible manipulation of the system is not merely a bloodless financial crime that takes place just on paper, but it is instead … one that takes a staggering human toll,” Chin said.
No word yet on what the sentence will be for the likes of Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, those chairmen of the Federal Reserve, who’s irresponsible manipulation of the system was also not merely a bloodless financial crime, but that caused the tremendous booms and horrendous busts of the last 50years and brought on a recession that threatens the stability of the entire global economy, and has made the dollar the scorn of the world’s financial markets. And unlike Madoff, who merely spent away his investors fortunes, Greenspan and Bernanke have financed the entire population of the United States into a debt-hole so staggeringly deep that it’ll take several generations to pay off, if it does not first bankrupt the nation.
Also, there has been no work on the proposed sentence for the people who brought on the Social Security scam — a Ponzi scheme that dwarfs Madoff’s best efforts at swindling current investors out of their wealth to make fraudlently low payments to current retirees, while not actually putting any money at all away for the current investors’ retiremen, and which shows every indication that it will be bankrupt long before any current “investors” reach retirement age.
But, just like Bernie’s investors, swindled American taxpayers will continue to believe in the system that promises to pay them off.. right up until the point that the entire system collapses. And then they’ll stomp around and cry, just like every generation before that believed the government could give them prosperity for free instead of earning it themselves, not realizing the government cannot give anything that it hasn’t taken from them.
My fellow Americans, let us make the difficult choice of returning to a Constitutionally-limited government. Let each American be responsible for his own provision and retirement, and look upon the government teat as something to be shunned, rather than a guilt-free method of looting your neighbor.
Let us choose freedom and prosperity, and abandon slavery and destitude.
I wish you were a national columnist.