 |
March 20th, 2013
Featured in:
Podcast Episode Keywords:
abuse of power · bliss · corruption · criminal · House of Representatives · ignorance · Illinois · Jesse Jackson Jr. · prison · theft |
If you’re curious about this case, here are some additional details:
In February of 2013, both Jesse Jackson Jr. and his wife, Sandi, pleased guilty to charges of fraud, conspiracy, making false statements, mail fraud, wire fraud, and criminal forfeiture. Jackson allegedly used approximately $750,000 of campaign monies for personal expenses. According to the New York Times, he entered into a plea arrangement with prosecutors who in turn recommended he receive a prison sentence of 46 to 57 months.
Music
References
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Kevin: Hello and welcome once again to the JK Podcast, as podcast dedicated to the pursuit of liberty, humanity, and equality for all. Joining us once again this week is our friend, Tom DeLorenzo, an author and regular contributor to StrikeTheRoot.com. More details about Tom and his work can be found at our website at www.JKPod.com.
This week we leave you with another of our shorter episodes. Our topic begins with Jesse Jackson, Jr. Jr. is the son of the well known Reverend Jesse Jackson, and also a former member of the United States House of Representatives for the state of Illinois. Jesse and his wife recently ran into a little trouble for spending campaign funds on personal expenses, and of course this brings about our loving title of, “Fuck That Guy”.
As the conversation goes on, I begin dreaming of a simpler time when I was ignorant of such wild corruption in the United States. Both Jad and Tom jump in to discuss what such ignorance might really feel like. So please sit back and enjoy the short ride. This is the JK Podcast.
I haven’t noticed any current events that really struck my eye recently. Oh, well there is the Jesse Jackson thing today, so there’s not really a whole lot to talk about other than fuck that guy, so –
Tom: There you go.
Kevin: My take anyways.
Jad: What was his thing? I totally missed it.
Kevin: Oh you know, typical – just America. I mean, got a bunch of campaign monies and spent them on personal artifacts for himself and his wife, committed tax fraud, et cetera. They both pleaded guilty today in court, so – apparently what he did comes with a jail sentence, so I hope they impose it because like I said, fuck him.
In February of 2013, both Jesse Jackson, Jr. and his wife Sandy pleaded guilty to charges of fraud, conspiracy, making false statements, mail fraud, wire fraud, and criminal forfeiture. Jackson allegedly used approximately $750,000 of campaign monies for his own personal expenses. According to the New York Times, he entered into a plea arrangement with prosecutors who in turn recommended he receive a prison sentence of 46 to 57 months. This narrator hopes he gets every single one of those months.
I’d love to see every single one of these fucking assholes in prison, so – of course it’s as a office space [?] for us, I’m sure these are little white collar prisons, not a federal pound me in the ass prison.
Jad: So what did Jesse J – I totally missed this.
Kevin: It’s Jesse Jackson, Jr. actually, so –
Jad: Oh, right, right, right – he’s like a Senator from Illinois, or House of Representatives in Illinois or something.
Kevin: Yeah, he’s a [crosstalk], he was anyways, yeah. I don’t know if he still is or not, but –
Narrator’s point number 2, although Jesse did remain a member of the House, Jad is not remembering incorrectly either. Jesse was actually a potential candidate to replace president Obama in the Senate for the state of Illinois. Whether it would’ve happened or not is purely speculative, but it didn’t matter much, as you may remember another little financial scandal involving a guy named Rod Blagojevich.
Jackson wound up being cleared of these charges, but it’s pretty difficult to believe he had no knowledge of the scandal that landed Blagojevich in prison in the first place. In fact, the liberal group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named Jackson one of the 15 most corrupt members of Congress in 2009. Again, fuck this guy.
In any case yeah, he had to stand trial and I guess, I don’t really know how this level of criminal law works, but I guess if you plead guilty, you forgo the use – you know, the ability to have a trial, it just goes to a judge at that point.
Jad: OK.
Kevin: Which I guess kind of makes sense because you’re pleading guilty to begin with, but so anyways, he pleaded guilty and so there isn’t going to be any trial, so it’ll just come down to his sentencing now, and then the lawyers I guess will basically create a case for the judge to say why he should have a – basically they’re going to be arguing for zero sentence, the states or whomever will be arguing for the maximum sentence, and the judge will presumably agree somewhere in between.
Jad: Right.
Kevin: So [?] wasn’t clear on my point, you know, fuck that guy, I hope he goes to jail.
Jad: So you’re pro this guy is what you’re saying.
Kevin: Yeah, yeah you know – yeah, I’d love to see more congressmen take more taxpayer money and not do shit in congress, and then spend it on themselves. I think it’s a wonderful system, personally. I look forward to running for congress so I can take advantage of the same system.
Jad: You could run on that, make it interesting.
Kevin: I probably could.
Jad: Just be like, “I want lots of shit” –
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: – “and the only way I can get it is” –
Kevin: There’s a good way to do it, and by the way, fuck that guy, so that was a current event, but there’s not a whole lot to say about it because obviously I think the 3 of us are not going to have a lot of disagreement on that.
Tom: Nah.
Kevin: I don’t really know what else has been going on, I mean, in current events. I’ve been not keeping up with the news as well this year as I should be.
Jad: Pish posh. Keeping up exactly as well as you should be. If you don’t know what’s going on, that’s all for the better.
Kevin: Actually I might have a – my mental health has been a little better this year, so –
Jad: Right.
Kevin: – maybe there’s a correlation there, I’m not really sure. Ignore the world around you and you feel a lot better. Actually, it is a point that I make to people, friends of mine and stuff. You know, I have a pretty good memory and I’m pretty interested in following everything that goes on, and a lot of times I tell people, I was like, honestly, the ignorant lifestyle does not strike me as the worst lifestyle at this point.
I wish a lot of times that I just genuinely didn’t care at all because I feel that overall, I probably would be a much happier individual – kinda to Tom’s point earlier, you know, is shit really getting bad? I mean, we read about it getting bad all the time, is it really? I don’t know, but to me it certainly seems like it is, so I guess if I were just ignorant to all of that, I would just be the same sit at home, watch football, eat potato chips, and [?].
Tom: Well I think there’s a couple levels of being ignorant of details or the facts. I mean, to me it seems like the details become less and less important. In other words, I’m going to guess Biden’s the vice president, but I’m actually not sure and I don’t care. I’d be happier if I didn’t know who the president was because the names are not important because it’s just the same people doing the same stuff so you know, being ignorant of who did what and who is in this congressional district and all that stuff, I mean, that’s great. That’s just a waste of space in my brain to me.
Kevin: But that’s a really conscious ignorance, for sure.
Tom: It is.
Kevin: Yeah.
Tom: I mean, I’m interested in seeing things about police abuse and stuff like that, and that seems more relevant because it’s something you can try and get people to focus on a little bit more, but you know, I can’t put it in my brain at all who might be the better vice president, or what they’re doing, or who he is even – I don’t trust it at all anymore in any of that.
Kevin: Right, so there’s a level there I guess that you’re saying that you know, just tiers of what you can be enthralled with and what you cannot be enthralled with, and on the one spectrum of that you’ve got the politicos that are analyzing every single little detail of every single congressman’s word ever and just doesn’t really matter because the overall picture is still a bunch of bullshit.
Tom: Yeah like when the president does his state of the union address, I can just get onto Google and Facebook and just get a general idea.
Kevin: Right.
Tom: None of it’s a surprise and there’s no possible way I could make myself listen to him or anybody for more than the time it takes me to find the remote control because I just can’t listen to the details.
Kevin: And the level of ignorance that I’m of course referring to in this case is more like you know, Cypher on The Matrix, like, you get to the point where you’re aware – it’s almost like an overwhelming, helpless feeling where you look at it and you start kind of fantasizing about the fact that you – using the metaphor of the movie – I know The Matrix isn’t real, but I’m a happier person to be unaware of the real existence of things because the real existence of things are so beyond repair that it’s just better to leave in the bubble of ignorance, so to speak.
I’m not trying to make a case for it, just – and it’s kind of any interesting notion of philosophy in general of course that once you start getting involved in philosophy, that’s kind of like the you know, the safety warning that comes on any basic philosophical lesson, right? I mean, you can’t unlearn philosophy, that’s the one caveat to it that stands out to some people. You can’t not think about something in some weird way once you have thought about in that weird way.
Tom: Yeah. I think overall, I’m happy knowing what I know, and I wouldn’t want to be – I wouldn’t want to go backwards I guess, blissfully unaware is one thing, but once you become aware of stuff, I wouldn’t wish that I would not know about stuff.
Kevin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean you know, realistically I feel the same way, but there’s definitely times where I can see kind of the appeal, you know? But friends of mine that just genuinely have no knowledge of the things we’re talking about whatsoever, so like, “really, I didn’t know that a 3rd building collapsed on 9/11″ – like that sort of thing – you just genuinely have no knowledge of the things that occurred because you just – you haven’t even looked at it that deep.
You’d know that the country was attached by terrorists and we responded – that’s the level of knowledge that you have, and sometimes I look at that and there’s almost – again, facetiously speaking, but just kind of this small level of envy that I hold there for saying, “God, it must be really nice.” I mean it – and I mean in a really condescending way – it’s like looking at a child and just seeing the way that they’re so happy to look at the world and it’s because they are – because they’re unaware of all these things that are about to come and surprise them.
Unfortunately, that’s about as far as the topic went, though I’m fairly certain we’ll have more on it in a later installment. As always, thanks for tuning in. We greatly appreciate all of our regular listeners supporting our project. If you’d like to get in touch with us, please stop by our websites. Jad is at Jad-Davis.com, Kevin is at KevinLudlow.com, and we’ll have links to reach Tom on our website, which is incidentally at www.JKPod.com. Thanks again, and we’ll talk to you soon. And remember, Jesse Jackson, Jr., go fuck yourself.
