TOM MORGAN’S MONEY TALK

Hillary E-Mail Scandal:

Were Mistakes Made? 

Editor’s Note:  The column, Money Talk, by Tom Morgan of Franklin, the retired Oneonta investment counselor, is syndicated nationally.  Here is this week’s column.

Random thoughts on the Hillary email scandal:

Imagine if you could suck all the political gas from this. You would be left with a pure impartial situation. Suppose you then asked: Did this senior government executive break a bunch of laws? Of course she did. Should the President be devastated that this happened? Sure. Should he sack his Attorney General for her behavior in this? Of course.

Should alarm bells go off in the White House and State Department? For sure. A senior executive handled top secret stuff as casually as she would comic books. She rolled out red carpets for spies. She endangered all of us with her recklessness.

        Now re-inflate the situation with the noxious fumes of politics. Do this and you get the disgusting scenario that just took place.  A president who could give a damn. Top secrets?  No big deal.  Multiple figures treated as if they are above the law.

Thought: We are told there is a higher bar for our leaders. When it comes to things like secrets and breaking laws. I don’t buy it. They should face a lower bar. Because when they break the law millions can suffer consequences.

Thought: Is the woman who may become President open to blackmail? From those who captured her emails? Of course she is.

Thought: Is it wrong to now give her clearances to read and handle top secret material? Without doubt. Her record with such material is abominable. She couldn’t get a clearance to be a traffic cop in D.C. With her train of scandal she wouldn’t get hired as a school crossing guard. Unless her name was Hillary.

Thought: Do others get punished for doing what she did? By the thousands.  Obama’s DOJ has prosecuted more leakers under the Espionage Act than all prior administrations combined. Combined. Every year our military punish even petty mishandling of secret documents.

Thought: So is there a law for us that does not apply to Hillary and elites? Yes. And now it has been writ in gigantic letters. On a pie called Unequal Justice. And shoved in our faces. When we paw the pie from our eyes we see a sea of the elite. Giving us the finger.  And mooning us. Glenn Greenwald wrote about such stuff in his book WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR SOME.

He wrote recently “Those who wield the greatest political and economic power are virtually exempt from the rule of law…while those who are powerless and marginalized are harshly punished, even for the most trivial transgressions.”

One lone, sobering truth: A lower-level person who did what she did would be in the slammer. No question. Lower-level folks are easy targets. No fancy lawyers and political pals for them. They are just little people. Let them eat injustices.

Does our system treat people based on who they are? Rather than by what they have done? Without question. Privilege reigns. We have royalty in this country. You need to curtsy or doff your cap. Whether you want to or not.

Thought: What do we say to the next little guy who gets punished for doing what she did?

Thought: Leaders skate above the law. Because they represent big movements, or parties.  So what does the latest say about such a movement? Would the movement condone virtually any crime? Well, the movement lionized Teddy Kennedy. After he committed atrocious crimes in the death of a young woman he was romancing.

Thought: If you think this stuff is wrong many will call you a hater. Maybe you are. But maybe you are a lover. A lover of justice for all.  A lover of equal treatment under the law.

Did Hillary lie her way through this? Golleeeee, what do you think?

In the early 1950’s our nuns taught us about how shabbily blacks were treated. In the North. But especially in the South. We students were appalled. We quizzed the nuns. Why don’t the police protect the blacks? Why don’t they enforce the laws?  Why do judges allow this horrible treatment? Why don’t priests and bishops and cardinals speak out?

The nuns had few answers. God works in ways we don’t understand, they told us.

I badgered my parents with the same questions. My mother said “That’s just the way it is.”  My father said, “We call this injustice. There are different laws for different people. You will see a lot of it in your lifetime.  I hope injustices will always disgust you. Because they are wrong.”

I still see injustices. They still disgust me. And they are still wrong.

From Tom…as in Morgan.

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