Slaving your life away just so you can make ends meet; having no say in the major decisions that affect your life; criminal politicians and businessmen plundering the country. Try to do something about it and they'll lock you up. Yes..A tax cheating farmer from Dundalk, John Oliver Byrne, who paid up €1.64 million to settle with the Revenue Commissioners got off with a two year suspended jail sentence. He has 157 previous conviction on both sides of the border, including one for a €1.93 million tax fraud in the North. Imagine if the outcry from politicians if poor criminals got off as lightly

The mayor of Las Vegas has proposed moving the city's 14,500 homeless to an abandoned prison 30 miles away. Much more compassionate than.. housing them? Workers in Goldman Sachs offices in Dublin will be happy to learn that their top bosses in the US are doing alright. Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein got a pay rise to €41 million, while co-presidents Gary Cohn and Jon Winkelried took home just slightly less, at €40 million each in cash and shares.

Land of the free? A record 7 million people - one in every 32 American adults - were in jail, on probation or on parole at the end of last year, according to figures released by US Justice Department.


This article is from Workers Solidarity No96, March April 2007

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