Local news sometimes has grander implications, here's a case of that.
An apartment complex in one of the suburbs was condemned a month ago because of 3000 housing code violations that included everything from coakroaches and mold to broken windows and missing fire alarms. They didn't get fined a single cent...just made to close down, tenants told to get out in thirty days.
The deadline for moving out was yesterday and now word is going out to the press that if tenants aren't out by Firday, they will be issued fines of $75.
How unfair is that? The company that owns the place breaks thousands of laws and doesn't get in trouble...but the people that live there are forced to move and if they don't have to pay up -- in effect having to pay for the mistakes of some faceless corporation. And get this, when the city attorney was asked why they weren't filing civil court procedings against the apartment complex for all their misdeeds, the Grand Rapids Press reported his answer thusly:
This is just another case of how the little people get screwed over by the system as it is. We live in a country that gives the same rights to corporations that are given to individual, living, breathing human beings (in accordance to the 1886 Supreme Court decision in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad). Not only does that not make a whole lot of sense, but it leads to instances like the one at the apartment complex. It leads to a system where corporations can get away with anything because they have more resources, more heads like the Hydra that Hercules fought in Greek mythology -- you kill one and two more grow up in their place. And so law enforcement doesn't do much about it, knowing that they can't be beat...
And so they go after individuals.
In this case, it's easier to force people out of their homes than it is to fight the corporation that owns the complex. It is easier to threaten the mostly poor tenants of the place than it is to threaten the people that actually caused the problems there. It's easier to do that because the system is designed to be that way because in theory that's how money is made and that is the foundation of our entire system. It's really quite sickening if you ask me, and I'm fed up with it.
But I'm more fed up with the fact that people just accept this as the way things are don't fight it, bringing justice back into our little world.
And that, my friends, leads me to be completely empathetic towards the situation. I don't have the strength to swing my sword at hydra heads by myself anymore.
An apartment complex in one of the suburbs was condemned a month ago because of 3000 housing code violations that included everything from coakroaches and mold to broken windows and missing fire alarms. They didn't get fined a single cent...just made to close down, tenants told to get out in thirty days.
The deadline for moving out was yesterday and now word is going out to the press that if tenants aren't out by Firday, they will be issued fines of $75.
How unfair is that? The company that owns the place breaks thousands of laws and doesn't get in trouble...but the people that live there are forced to move and if they don't have to pay up -- in effect having to pay for the mistakes of some faceless corporation. And get this, when the city attorney was asked why they weren't filing civil court procedings against the apartment complex for all their misdeeds, the Grand Rapids Press reported his answer thusly:
"We could have conceivably issued a citation for every violation for every day," Sluiter said.
Sluiter said it is difficult to charge a corporation. "You have to issue it against an officer or a general partner," he said. "We've considered it."
This is just another case of how the little people get screwed over by the system as it is. We live in a country that gives the same rights to corporations that are given to individual, living, breathing human beings (in accordance to the 1886 Supreme Court decision in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad). Not only does that not make a whole lot of sense, but it leads to instances like the one at the apartment complex. It leads to a system where corporations can get away with anything because they have more resources, more heads like the Hydra that Hercules fought in Greek mythology -- you kill one and two more grow up in their place. And so law enforcement doesn't do much about it, knowing that they can't be beat...
And so they go after individuals.
In this case, it's easier to force people out of their homes than it is to fight the corporation that owns the complex. It is easier to threaten the mostly poor tenants of the place than it is to threaten the people that actually caused the problems there. It's easier to do that because the system is designed to be that way because in theory that's how money is made and that is the foundation of our entire system. It's really quite sickening if you ask me, and I'm fed up with it.
But I'm more fed up with the fact that people just accept this as the way things are don't fight it, bringing justice back into our little world.
And that, my friends, leads me to be completely empathetic towards the situation. I don't have the strength to swing my sword at hydra heads by myself anymore.
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