Sold Short In America. Richard A. Altomare
world? I have experienced twenty days and no contact. Despite what they say in their literature, their purpose is to isolate and deprive those prisoners. If the result of that deprivation is these repeat inmates as we have been describing, then the system needs an overhaul quickly. As a former Marine, I seem to adjust quickly due to my life experiences. What about the young impressionable ones? What about their families? A phone call alone will not solve this problem; it just simplifies to this layman the arrogance, incompetence, lack of concern, and total disregard for their fellow citizens. And these inmates are citizens! We either can fix them or make them worse.
Tonight CO Deliverance who I believe has the most anger and does the least at night took and ripped up my request for a telephone call and said "yeah-right". He walked away from me despite my calls for him to speak and to explain to me why I have not been able to make a phone call.
It's a dilemma. Do I formally complain about someone in here and then have an inside the prison enemy when today I just have a non-combative lazy governmental worker. Or do I just wait and wait until the system finally catches up and does what it should do?
In addition, tonight I sadly received thirty more of aspirin and thirty more of a cholesterol medication substitute. Do they know something I don't? My continued incarceration has to be addressed before Friday. Am I staying more than thirty days? How could this be allowed?
Chapter 7 – Could this be the “Twilight Zone”?
The SEC actually demanded that their Judge send me to a Manhattan jail for "civil contempt" for not being able to pay the $3,000,000 fine, which exceeds my total salary earned over the past fourteen years. My attorneys told me it is highly unlikely to be incarcerated for civil contempt. Nevertheless, I am still writing from inside a prison cell with no crime committed.
I think the loss of a developing company without any hearing or trial is a crime. Confinement without a crime is a crime.
This morning, I began to wonder at what price one finally acquiesces. At what stage of pain, loneliness, fear or loss does one drink the Kool-Aid? Is authority always the victor? Is integrity worth your freedom, your family, your life, and your dignity? Do we genuflect, and at what price? Each individual must make that choice. There are some willing to martyr for their belief, and yet others say "OK, if you don't want me to believe that way - no big deal"?
Is my Judge someone who has been told to believe (and believes) that the SEC is right, no matter what they say? Has he simply “parroted” the SEC’s opinion and disregarded my position and me personally as an individual and respected member of society? In this society do most agree with him? Are most afraid of authority? Does my pain this morning need to be further expanded or simply accepted? Will I lose forever the world I built? Does the pain ever subside, or will pain get more difficult each morning? A true patriot, Patrick Henry said, "I regret that I have but one life to give for my country". This is how I still feel today.
What are my limits? What are my loved ones limits? Why do others in political re-education camps acquiesce? Can one "pretend" to believe or does a "pretend sell-out" still mean a sell-out? To whom, am I selling out? How long must I suffer for a cause which may or may not ever be admitted? Who pays for my financial destruction? What if the system is broken all the way to the top? If my destruction is so easy, why will they relent? When and if I return home; will I ever recover financially? Will others look differently towards me? Not heroically, but with contempt or fear? Do members of a society see when that society has begun to die?
I have sold all of my remaining personal assets to fund the appeal of this unconstitutional decision for my shareholders and myself.
How many mornings away before loved ones forget about you?
Waking up in here has become "normal". Time has been taken away as well. I have committed no crime, but have the perceptions of the propagandized lies of my fabricated wrong-doing made me appear toxic and dismissible from other's lives?
Who will trust to work with me? Will this diseased SEC-created leper (me) now be distrusted by those in the financial establishment? Will the wrongs created by one Judge and the fearful mistruths of the SEC, as well as their conflicted receiver ever be reversed? Have they successfully painted this victim as the criminal and improperly punished him - despite his honesty and integrity?
I persist, and I suffer. I suffer for my country. Has my America forgotten? Have my fellow Americans chosen to not fight for what has always made us different from other civilizations? In these deep dark morning moments, like a shaggy dog, shaking water off after a bath; I shake, but I must not forget it isn’t water I’m trying to shake off, but injustice. When such injustices as these occur, City hall can and should be defeated, because Americans are given the opportunity to define themselves, their character and their reputations. No matter how vulnerable, pained, angry, disgusted or righteously indignant one has been made to feel - one must persevere and fight for truth. Take everything from me - but you can't take away the TRUTH!
I am listening to a dialogue between an inmate and a prison representative. Apparently, the inmate didn't listen to a guard. The representative basically sentenced him to sixty days of no visitation and thirty days of no commissary privileges. What then about my phone rights? When will someone recognize that no crime has been committed? Hearing my attorney tell me I am innocent and this is an outrage, does not rescue me from a world foreign to any well-balanced society member. I left a note hanging outside my cell demanding a phone call. After listening to that "counseling" session on disrespect, I decided to wait until they let me call. I ripped up the request. This is like playing cards with the guy who made the cards and who changes the rules of the game as it is being played.
As this gum chewing cow-like woman CO counseled two other inmates about not disrupting the system and following the rules, I waited until she finished. Maybe she could help me make a phone call. As she finished, I requested to speak to her. She walked away ignoring me as her gum chewing continued, unabated. The young man in solitary was put here because his counselor didn't fill out his requested visitor's pass and his mother was not allowed to visit him after coming from Kansas. He expressed his frustration and questioned his counselor's professionalism. That's a crime? There is no professionalism in this macabre world of disorder and inconsistent laws. It is the exact opposite of what on paper they pretend it to be. That is the truth. Save these young people and damaged individuals from more damaging behavior. Completely reform this prison system. Privatizing it only assures more unnecessary arrests to insure private corporate profitability.
It's frustrating not knowing the results of today's call with the Judge, which was to discuss my release. Not hearing anything however makes me think that the answer was no release again today. I’ll wait until tomorrow morning, and still hope for a degree of civility and my eventual release.
Tonight there is not much to report, but the phone situation remained the same. I did receive the phone tonight, but the prison computer said "no way". I plan to hand the warden another letter tomorrow on his Thursday morning walk through. I hope my letter is also met with some degree of professionalism and responsiveness.
Showers occurred again tonight. This was my first mouse in the shower experience. At first, it seemed the guards were trying to treat me with the same courtesy which I extend to them. – Then the mouse. I just miss my family. I worry at the financial challenges that this incarceration, as well as these appealed fines will do without my legal victory occurring. Yet still, I didn't step on the mouse.
I may be trading a book tonight with a cell neighbor. I hope I get one in English that I can actually read.
It's quiet tonight and I hear it is only 8 PM. That's not a long time until I try to sleep without thinking about going home tomorrow. Remember we have no clocks, and time management becomes a mind exercise in here.
Today after my legal visit, it took over an hour and forty-five minutes to get me back upstairs. They had only one elevator and I am a low priority, I guess. Lunch was three hours cold waiting for me. It contained a pretty hard piece of meat, which I put on a sandwich. Dinner was spaghetti and two ounces of an inedible spicy sauce. I'm certainly not overeating.
Tonight's book trade was typical of