With all the bad news out there, here's a little ray of justice. I didn't see this mentioned yet, and it's worth knowing that occasionally, the justice system sides against corporate, privatize-everything, corrupt power-mongers.
Mark Ciavarella Jr. was a judge in Luzerne County, PA. Most of us have heard of this extreme example of evil slime, he's often referred to these days as the "Cash for Kids Judge". He's known by that moniker for accepting $1 million in bribes in order to funnel kids to the PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care detention centers. These are privately run juvenile detention centers who apparently didn't feel there was enough real troubled, crime-committing youth out there, so they "encouraged" this judge and another (Michael Conahan) to convict kids as young as 10 to juvie for petty crimes.
The real kicker, as you can read here in this AP article, is that Mr. Ciavarella, Jr. feels that he's really the victim in all of this.
Ciaverella, speaking before the sentence was handed down, apologized to the community and to those juveniles that appeared before him in his court.
"I blame no one but myself for what happened," he said, and then denied he had ever incarcerated any juveniles in exchange for money.
So he's awfully sorry and really can't blame anyone but himself, but then points out that he didn't really do anything. I wonder what it is that he accepts the blame for.
He also feels that his reputation has been besmirched:
He also criticized U.S. Assistant Attorney Gordon Zubrod for referring to the case as "kids for cash," and said it sank his reputation.
"He backdoored me, and I never saw it coming. Those three words made me the personification of evil," Ciaverella said. "They made me toxic and caused a public uproar the likes of which this community has never seen."
Oh, the humanity. It's so very unfair for him to have been criticized in this manner. And the name calling! It's over the top!
I hope former Judge Ciaverell doesn't mind too much that I am referring to him here as Scum of the Earth. I wouldn't want to bruise his delicate ego.
EDIT: There was a good question in the comments about Civil lawsuits. I Googled it and apparently, the way is being cleared for those cases to move forward.
From The Juvenile Law Center:
Civil Rights Lawsuit Moves Forward in Kids for Cash Case
I'm sure that Former Judge Ciaverella is chafing at the title of the article. Good.