How America Works

Martha Stewart was tricked  by federal prosecutors into a meeting, in which her statements to the feds were eventually the basis of a conviction.  Never mind a Secret Service agent lied on the stand giving evidence against her, Martha Stewart went to prison.  Here is how our government works:

At the federal prosecutor's office in the Southern District of New York, the staff, over beer and pretzels, used to play a darkly humorous game. Junior and senior prosecutors would sit around, and someone would name a random celebrity—say, Mother Theresa or John Lennon.

It would then be up to the junior prosecutors to figure out a plausible crime for which to indict him or her. The crimes were not usually rape, murder, or other crimes you'd see on Law & Order but rather the incredibly broad yet obscure crimes that populate the U.S. Code like a kind of jurisprudential minefield: Crimes like "false statements" (a felony, up to five years), "obstructing the mails" (five years), or "false pretenses on the high seas" (also five years). The trick and the skill lay in finding the more obscure offenses that fit the character of the celebrity and carried the toughest sentences. The, result, however, was inevitable: "prison time."

Games are where we learn the rules and patterns of cooperation. Here senior prosecutors are teaching the junior prosecutors how the game is played. There are alternatives to this system, ones entrepreneur can fashion.  It is yet another trade lead open to all.

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