Texas Woman Jailed for Overdue Library Books

reply to post by abecedarian


You really do fail to understand the corporate government.

Let me try to best explain it to you in this fashion. I own a deluxe hotel and a patron (not you) checks in on your credit card, I make money off their stay, the patron staying pays nothing but you do.

So who in fact made money off all this, the state did! They own the jail, which they charge the operation of to the taxpayer (you) they own the courts which they charge the operation of to the taxpayer (you).

The jail and the court both operate as seperately funded entities that are paid per person from either the individual defendant (if they have means) or you the taxpayer if they don't.

So while this lady did not cheat you out of anything and simply lost some books in a fire, the State cheated you out of the cost of this (the taxpayer) which they could have had they so chosen, forgone in the interest of real justice, and used that same 700.00 charged to you, for about 35 nice library books.

See if you can follow along here, the Jail gets paid about 78.00 per day on averaqe to house an inmate and has a cost per inmate of about 5.00 in food, (some places as low as 3.00) per inmate, and the jail staff, typically just a few sherriffs who get paid seperately by the Sherriffs Department (you get to pay for them seperately) so they don't factor into the cost.

The Court will draw the court costs from the tax payer too. So in 7 days time, yes these two FOR PROFIT enterprises run by the state have collected 700.00 in taxes to pay for all this.

Now here is the kicker if you understood common law, the state has to show damages, but because the books were paid for in fractional reserve defacto instrument of debt currency attached to nothing of value that the government itself prints out of thin air, the state paid nothing to begin with.

Now how the state profits in reality is how it controls and that is through hording goods and services, every dollar you have to pay in tax is one less dollar worth of goods and services they have to provide you through the corporate company store.

Thus requiring you to labor that much harder and longer for the state and its corporate enterprises.

This is all just a control system, and while you have swallowed the absurd fictions of it hook line and sinker and parrot the talking heads the corporations hire to tell you how to think and interpret things, those of us with critical minds doing are own research and drawing our own conclusions view this system of 600,000 laws, phony currency, corporate monopolies and armed henchmen enforcing rediculous laws that rob people of a quality of life, and sometimes freedom and life itself to be an crime against the people in general.

Glad you like it, but I sure don't.

Thanks!

In my town, the library no longer sends out overdue notices. You get a bill from a collection agency. Another library I went to, did not want to take my $ for overdue fine. Checker said "Oh, you don't have to pay that today". She was saying that to everyone. It made me suspicious as to whether they were going to start charging more interest. I paid the 50 cents anyway, even though it seemed like it was more of a bother to her to take the $.

It would be to everyone's advantage to look into the Law of Pledge. When you show documents to receive privileges, you are often putting items up against any possible future violations that result in parole. Check out laws on assumpsit and bailments.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


Interesting read there, seriously.

Where I live the county jails are staffed by deputized sheriffs, deputies serve various legal summons, secure courtrooms and act as bailiffs in court proceedings. Most sheriff work is not contracted out; they even operate their own IT department. Oh well. Must be different where you live.

Originally posted by abecedarian
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

Interesting read there, seriously.

Where I live the county jails are staffed by deputized sheriffs, deputies serve various legal summons, secure courtrooms and act as bailiffs in court proceedings. Most sheriff work is not contracted out; they even operate their own IT department. Oh well. Must be different where you live.

edit on 12/8/2010 by abecedarian because: (no reason given)

This is what Sherriffs do, they run the jails, secure courtooms, and act as bailiffs, in some municipalities they act as law enforcement agents and investigators too. Parts of Los Angeles County are policed by the Sherriff's department, and places like Broward Country Florida the Sherrifs Department is the main law enforcement agency as well as the custodian of the jails.

The Tax payer pays their budget, their budget though is not simply limited to paying for personnel and facilities.

Now so you might better understand the Sherriff is an elected official. Who gets him elected are the Powers that Be, these are the wealthy movers and shakers in a community who own businesses where in exchange for getting the Sherriff elected the Sherriff awards their businesses contracts for things like uniforms, weapons, training, office supplies and furniture, squad cars, radios, computers, etc., etc.

In many cases the Powers that Be develop these businesses specifically to siphon off money from government budgets that you pay for. Sure they employ some people legitimately in this fashion but the government has a reputation at all levels, local, state and federal of paying vastly inflated prices for goods that make the beneficiaries of those contracts a hefty profit.

So in reality it's like skim from a Vegas casino, the Powers that Be control the politicians who allocate the budgets so they basically ensure the money is there at your expense to over pay for everything that they are then going to sell the government.

Often they work through lobbyists who are cut outs and remove them by one layer to do this, lobbyists are often people the powers that be previously cut elected or appointed to office like former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff who is now selling the government overpriced highly expensive and potentially very dangerous backscatter x-ray machines to the TSA to do unconstitutional virtual strip searches on the citizens with dangerous levels of radiation.

When your Tax dollars aren't going to foreign investors who own stock and bonds in the states they are largely going to over priced goods sold by the people who essentially pre-select the candidates you get to vote on, making them and their corporations untold profits at your expense.

This is what you are not seeing and considering, and the average of 78.00 per day paid to the Sherrifs Department to house an inmate leaves a lot of money then to spend on these kinds of purchases and plenty of room for obscene profit in them.

Why do you think we have the highest per capita prison population in the world, while at the same time we tout ourselves as being the freest county on earth?

Because the prison industrial complex, like the security industrial complex, like the military industrial complex are all huge profit centers for the corporations that support them with over priced goods and services to basically siphon off your tax dollars into the hands of a select few people, while providing you a bare minimum of services in exchange.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this is what's really going on, and this is why the girl was sent to jail.

Thanks.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


I understand what you're saying; I have since your OP. I think I'm correct in stating that you are a person that believes in the phrase "you reap what you sow" as you've said such to me using quite a few more words.

So, in spite of your opinion of the politicians and the system, which as you do explain rather eloquently have taken advantage of her, you must have some realization that what happened to the woman was the result of her actions and a series of bad decisions. Whether the fire occured before or after the book(s) due date, is mostly irrelevant as the situation could've been resolved amicably had she put in more effort to fix the problems than she did avoiding it.

I fail to see how you can deny that, then say that I am a victim of my own actions and beliefs.

reply to post by abecedarian


The system is designed so a very large percentage of people literally have no decisions left to them but bad decisions.

Right now we live in a nation where there are about 10,000,000 to few jobs, for the number of people. So for 10,000,000 there is no good decision. A large percentage of people who are employed are not paid a living wage and have had to augment and suplement their lives by credit and taking on debt. For these people there really are no good decisions.

This is what people who are not Masters don't understand, you can not control people, but you can control their environment and in essence limit their choices and decisions through controlling their environment.

The whole scarcity paradigm of hording resources at the top is designed to specifically leave a noticible number of have nots that are basically the person that has to be left with no chair in musical chairs.

If there are only 8 chairs and 10 people, yeah, 2 people really don't have a good decision left to them.

Our system trains you to believe that they were too slow, too dumb, too lazy, to something, if they didn't get one of the eight chairs, and in essence to ignore the fact that the real problem is that there were not ten chairs.

Most people (almost all people) will in fact gladly work and meet their responsibilities if there are opportunities for them to do that, in a world though tightly controlled by corporate monopolies partnered with a rule and law heavy overly litigous and dishonest government, that's not happening.

Why scarcity is employed through hording even though it's more than easy enough to produce those two extra chairs, the resources and the labor exist, is because those two people who have no chair, now have a bad choice, stand, and be the odd man out, or to hit you over the head and take your chair.

You see the government wants two of the people sitting to get hit over the head and have their chairs taken so the other 6 people who now realize they could lose their chairs demand laws and protections to not lose them, by asking the state to gaurantee that they can keep their chairs by punishing anyone who doesn't have a chair, who tries to take someone elses chair. Eventually they will demand the state punish people for simply not having a chair, because they realize the lack of the chair is what is likely to compel them to try to take theirs.

What they won't do is all demand the state provide more chairs, why? Because they already have a chair and don't care about the people that don't because they actually believe that they got their chair through skill and doing things right, instead of just the numerical luck of the draw.

They actually believe the two people who didn't get a chair are at fault and not the state.

The state runs a system deliberately where a certain percentage of people aren't going to get a chair.

That's the plain honest truth, and they do this to justify their own existence and make you want the state and all these laws, that gives the state the control TO SHORT EVERYONE ON CHAIRS.

In other words we might all be created equal, but there sure is no equal number of chairs, to go along with the number of people, so the people who have chairs, well they think they are better than the people who don't have chairs.

I don't think they are, I think they were just lucky enough to get one of the chairs, and there is no excuse why there is not enough chairs to go around.

Who is guilty, the government is who sold out to corporate entities from the get go, and manages this perverse system of frauds and lies and scarcity to perpetuate and grow itself, cause limited chaos, a decreased quality of life for all, and robs the entire human race of the resources that the planet provided us, not them, who stole them all for a pittance and a lie.

The desease is not the symptom, the symptom is having no chair, the desease is a corrupt system that deliberately fails to provide them when it easily could.

OK, it says right in the article. She was not arrested for having a library fine. She was arrested for not showing up at a court date... That is a big no no... No wonder she went to jail.

Originally posted by gimme_some_truth
OK, it says right in the article. She was not arrested for having a library fine. She was arrested for not showing up at a court date... That is a big no no... No wonder she went to jail.

Try telling that to the Protoplasmic guy. You'll be called sheep, lap dog and whatever.

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler

Originally posted by buddhasystem

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler
Once again your arguments are based on so many ill concieved assumptions. Do you know if the fire was a fault of the woman or perhaps the city's own gas main?

You don't of course.

But neither do you. If she had a point, she could have spoken to the judge. It's funny that a person whose circumstances you don't really know yourself, all of a sudden is a sacred cow exempt from normal responsibilities of an adult.

No I do not know all the details as they pertain to this woman, I am simply giving her, that constitutional privelege you will not of being "innocent until proven guilty".

Funny isn't it, that you resort to legalese, all the while saying that she was somehow exempt from the court, the judge and the rest of the process. She didn't give anybody a chance to prove her innocent and instead showed disrespect to the legal system that you trying to conjure as her sacred protector. She gets what she deserves.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


I remember they were doing this in Maryland a while back. If the woman's house burned down, why did she not go to court and just tell the judge that?

I lost a library book one time and I paid for it at the library at a used book rate. I think a lot of people nowadays don't take responsibility for returning their books and DVD's to the libraries. Sad.

Originally posted by paradiselost333
You can’t just not show up for court!

What if your baby just broke it's arm?

What if your baby is hemroging?

What if?

Believe it or not, there ARE things beyond our control.

Originally posted by Nutter

Originally posted by paradiselost333
You can’t just not show up for court!

What if your baby just broke it's arm?

What if your baby is hemroging?

What if?

What if a giant alien spaceship created a force field around her house that prevented her from leaving and be in time for court? What if a witch next door put a dark spell on that person's car's engine? What if indeed she had a simple diarrhea?

That's just an idiotic kind of argument since it appeals to unlikely set of events that NOBODY told you actually took place.

Heck, what killed JFK could have been a meteor shower. Are you game?

reply to post by buddhasystem


So you don't understand the concept of a fair system. OK. My bad.

I just hope that the next time you need to be in court over a library fine from lost books in a fire that the witch next door doesn't put a stop to you getting to the trial on time. I say we put you in jail for your lack of baahhing.

BTW...anyone saying this woman deserves jail time for simply not showing up in court needs to sit in a court room some day. How many cops don't show for trial? When it's their fracking job?

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler
reply to post by abecedarian

 

The system is designed so a very large percentage of people literally have no decisions left to them but bad decisions. ....

What part of the system caused the woman to forget to return the books and/or caused her house to burn thus incinerating the books?
What part of the system caused the woman to ignore repeated requests from the library to take care of the situation?

Or are you suggesting GWB / Cheney set her up?

reply to post by Nutter


You are quite correct, cops are notorious for not showing up to code violations and even some felony proceedings. Yet they seldom if ever are faulted for that let alone charged for that.

The truth is there is no valid reason why this was in court period. It's a debt issue, with the library simply being a creditor.

The library 'loaned' the book. The loan wasn't repaid, that's a civil debt issue and not a criminal proceeding. It should have been handled in small claims court if it had to be handled in court, and the failure to appear would have simply resulted in an automatic judgement going to the plaintiff. Then they could have legally gone to judgement debtors court, where if the defendant was properly served, failure to appear could result in a warrant for arrest, but only so long as it takes to bring the defendant before a judge and to provide their financial statements so the judge could assess a payment schedule, or whether payment has to be made at all. Judges will sometimes absolve people of debts in judgement debtors court if the defendant has no real means to pay the debt.

She wasn't taken to jail for a week for failure to appear, she was sentenced to a week in jail over the books.

If picked up on a bench warrant for failure to appear, you must be brought to an arraigning judge within 72 hours. If you are not guilty of any crime then you must be released. So the fact that she spent a week in jail clearly demonstrates that she was incarcerated in liue of being able to pay the fines on the books, and that she failed to get the court's clemency for having lost the books in a fire.

She may in fact have chosen not to go to court, because her public defender informed her that she would have to do jail time if she could not pay the fine, and that the prosecutor was unwilling to wave the fine due to the fire.

Most small matters are plea bargained between the public defender and prosecutor with the judge simply adding a rubber stamp and ajudication.

Very rarely is someone jailed for contempt of court, which technically failure to appear is considered, contempt of court. Once the court gets someone in contempt to comply which in this case is simply showing up, then holding anyone beyond that could only be done on a contempt of court charge.

No one can be incarcerated for more than 72 hours without being formally charged of something.

It's that simple. So obviously she was charged of something, and since her contempt was only failure to appear, then once her appearance was compelled by the state's henchmen then she crossed that bar and should have been released.

Anyone who thinks a human being deserves a week in a cage for loosing library books, probably deserves to be held in a cage to protect us all from such inane thinking.

The lack of understanding of the law evidenced by some on this thread is truly frightening, I really consider it just to be petty mean spirited people taking out their frustrations in life by transferring them on to others.

Sadly this is what creates the cycle that leads to most people's frustrations in life.

Proto says this woman deserves compensation from the state in the amount of 1,000.00 for pain and suffering and violations of the Constitution and Common Law!

Well this happen to me back in the early 90s and there was no court or anything. The library just called the police on me. I told the library earlier i lost the books in a house fire, where my wife and i lost a 2 year old child and everything we owned BUT they still wanted payment! Finally i just turned myself in because i heard the cops were looking for me... It was a bunch of BS! We lost a child!!!! i could give a rat's ass about their books!

Originally posted by abecedarian

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler
reply to post by abecedarian

 

The system is designed so a very large percentage of people literally have no decisions left to them but bad decisions. ....

What part of the system caused the woman to forget to return the books and/or caused her house to burn thus incinerating the books?
What part of the system caused the woman to ignore repeated requests from the library to take care of the situation?

Or are you suggesting GWB / Cheney set her up?

Some people are evidently suited for only dealing with very small problems on a very limited level.

You are focusing on a symptom and not the problem. Kind of like if someone had open sores from AIDS just putting a bandaid on the sores, and forgoing a drug regimen that might halt the disease and send it into remission.

A. You do not know that the woman forgot to return the books.
B. If they were not 'late' at the time of the fire it would actually be the FIRE DEPARTMENTS failure to not respond to the blaze in sufficient time with sufficient resources to save the book, so that part of the system failed.
C. You do not know if the woman ignored repeated requests from the library, or if she simply responded honestly that the books were lost in a fire and she did not have the money to pay for them and the fines (this is why she likely borrowed books instead of purchasing books, as most people who are really interested in a book, and have means to do so, purchase it and not borrow it).

So your refusal to see a bigger picture at play here, really only consigns you to this mean spirited world of assumptions where you demand excellence from your fellow human beings without any consideration as to whether they are in the position because of an uneven and unfair playing field to preform to excellent standards.

So in reality you are simply making a bad choice, because like most people you have been traditionally taught that bad choices are good choices.

Judge not lest you be judged.

To err is human to forgive is divine.

Fear not Proto will not give up on this planet, though, some people sure do like making it hard.

There is no shortage of books or trees to make paper, or printing presses to print them, or government printing presses to print money to buy them.

Punishing someone with a week in jail is not acceptable to Proto, who if you look at the Avatar and can read Latin you will know I am Rome's highest moral authority, and have declared the poor woman innocent of all charges, and due compensation in the sum of 1,000.00 from the state.

Which tomorrow Proto will get cracking on seeing happen!

By the way you have just increased your karmic debt and must now return here for two more life times!

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


You're too funny.

Originally posted by abecedarian
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

You're too funny.

You really aren't!

An Amish community that lost five girls in a Pennsylvania schoolhouse shooting massacre last year has donated money to the widow of the gunman, the community said yesterday.

The Nickel Mines Accountability Committee, which was set up to handle more than $4.3 million in donations from around the world after the shootings, said it had given an unspecified contribution to Marie Roberts, a mother of three.

Her husband, Charles Carl Roberts, a local milk truck driver who was not Amish, tied up and shot 10 Amish schoolgirls aged six to 14 in their classroom last Oct. 2, killing five of them before turning the gun on himself.

After the shootings, members of the deeply religious Amish community in Lancaster County about 100 kilometres west of Philadelphia, said they wanted to forgive the gunman.

forums.plentyoffish.com...

To think you want to see a woman jailed for loosing library books in a house fire.

Thankfully some people have real compassion and empathy as witnessed above.

Thanks for not getting it.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


Okay... Be the compassionate one here.
The gunman made mistakes and got killed and amish donate to help his widow.
A woman is paying her price for - court, possible fines, etc. so you should donate to the library.