Starvin Larry

“FERGUSON, Mo. (AP) — Ferguson’s first municipal election since a fatal police shooting sparked months of protests and exposed the city’s deep racial divide drew relatively little interest from prospective candidates as Tuesday’s filing deadline passed.

Three of the St. Louis suburb’s six City Council seats are up for election on April 7 and none of the three incumbents decided to seek re-election. Three of the eight residents who did declare as candidates waited until hours before Tuesday’s late afternoon filing deadline.”

http://news.yahoo.com/few-candidates-file-ferguson-election-despite-protests-002048665.html

After all the rioting,looting,protests,and claims that the police and courts were taking advantage of the poor-claims that were proven to be true for the most part-even WaPO’s Radley Balko did a series on it.

Then there were the claims of racism because the council was nearly all white-and “only 53%” of the police force was black. It only cost 10 bucks to run for council-I’m sure any of the protesters who were screaming about it’s racist and unfair that there was only 1 black council member could have scraped up the 10 bucks between last summer,and yesterday.

It’s doubtful that electing black council members would have changed much anyhow-the cops write tickets for minor traffic infractions,the courts levy large fines plus “court costs” that are expensive even for middle class folks. Then there’s all the bullshit related to city and county zoning and building code infractions that residents are cited for-and can’t afford.

Then,when people can’t pay,they are arrested on warrants,appear in court again,then have more fines and “court costs” added to the fines and court costs that they couldn’t pay in the first place. Then they can’t pay the old fines plus the new fines-so another warrant,another trip to court-more fines & “court costs”-plus jail time.

I thought debtor’s prison was outlawed well over a century ago-almost two centuries ago,yet here we are…

“Debtors prisons were outlawed in the United States nearly 200 years ago, but every day, people go to jail because they failed to pay their court debts, NPR reports. More than 30 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court made it clear: Judges cannot send people to jail just because they are too poor to pay their court fines. The Supreme Court didn’t tell courts how to determine what it means to “willfully” not pay. So it’s left to judges to make the sometimes difficult calculations.

In Benton County, Wa., jail records sampled over a four-month period in 2013 show that on a typical day, a quarter of the people who were in jail for misdemeanor offenses were there because they had failed to pay their court fines and fees.”

http://www.thecrimereport.org/news/crime-and-justice-news/2014-05-debtors-prisons-npr

The ever growing police state, and .gov inc. are violating people’s rights openly-besides this issue-we have cops just taking people’s money and property,without ever charging them with a crime-a practice our outgoing AG supposedly banned-but it’s highly unlikely that .gov inc. is going to just give up either one of these revenue streams.

We fought a war with England over less.