The Alaska Bush People couldnt prove they were living in Alaska because they didnt have things like electric bills because theres no such thing as electricity in the wilderness and they get 30 days in jail. Fannie May and Freddie Mac implied that their securities were federally backed when they werent misleading investors, Freddie Mac also understated its earnings by 5 billion dollars, Freddie Mac was also found to have given illegal campaign contributions to benefit members of the house financial services committee by the federal elections commission. And Fannie May and Freddie Mac got a 100 billion dollar bailout from the United States government. In America, the punishment for your crimes is commensurate with your wealth. Take a speeding ticket as a simple example: A 100 dollar speeding ticket is ten times more punishment for someone making 10K a year than it is for someone making 100K a year. If youre a billionaire and you do something wrong you get a 100 billion dollar bailout. If youre poor and youve done nothing wrong you get 30 days in jail. What the Alaskan Bush people were really guilty of was being poor. America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, higher than the second and third highest countries combined, Russia and China, and Americans think theyre free and Russia and China are police states? America has too many laws and too many people enforcing them. I went to school in Australia and I saw one police officer the entire time I was there. If I drive 20 miles between towns here, its not unusual to see a half dozen police officers. I was making out with a women in the bushes outside of a club, both of us half naked, clothes everywhere, and the cop came upon us and said, Oh sorry mate, and he left. If that were to of happened in America, most likely I would have been arrested for a sex offense and would be required to register as a sex offender the rest of my life. There are too many laws. There are too many people enforcing them, and its ridiculous.
The issue is they took money from the State. Alaska is a little unusual in that they pay out proceeds from the oil drilling to all residents living in the state. In 2005 they paid out $2,072 per person (though it is usually lower than that). While it is true the two were originally sentenced to 30 days in jail, they ended up being placed on house arrest with electronic monitoring instead. They accepted a plea deal from the prosecutor so that charges against other members of the family would be dropped. I am not sure if any law was broken, but the old man Billy Brown told viewers of the documentary that he did not feel like he had done anything wrong. The devil is in the details, as they say, so I'm not in a position to make informed commentary, but it sounds like they may have been convicted on a technicality, and then the prosecutor coerced them into taking the plea deal (not at all uncommon)
I wonder about the idea of having a prosecutor anyway. The whole idea that the government employs a whole staff of lawyers with no other job than to (*)(*)(*)(*) you in any legal way seems a little strange to me, since we elect and pay them.
