How Gutlessly Oblivious To Feigned Integrity Can Selling Culture Be?

America's celebrity-centric, popularity focused, major news outlets have harped the last days, chiming in about members of the Internal Revenue Service investigating the non-profit status of smaller less-influential local groups in the Tea Party movement. 

As described by Nicholas Confessore in The New York Times under Uneven I.R.S. Scrutiny Seen in Political Spending by Big Tax-Exempt Groups is a fair summation of why the smaller groups were touched on and others with larger influence were not bothered with as too intimidating themselves. 

Everyone without the political pull to create a stink with the IRS is investigated in this country as holds true throughout the world where people can't convert what little money they have into power. 

In the U.S. we're called in to face IRS investigators with a lawyer to represent us and compromises are reached while the numbers required to survive skyrocket beyond ordinary mortals reach. Period. Though in principle we all realize if the mountains of funds financing the assorted industrial complexes really did filter back through society, tax rates might be more reasonable and millionaires who need millions more to clear a million might not be as inclined to lead us to this precipice where pennies have been reduced to worthlessness. 

Non-profit applies to more of us than necessary and it doesn't take images of economists shrugging their shoulders to understand that truth. 

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Is This Really The Real Deal In Russia?

Where Russia's government is incapable of monitoring non-violent public protest? Where Russia's government has no interest in its citizens having any voice beyond what bureaucrats want other than their own self-preservation? Where the idea of evolving beyond top-heavy elitism is beyond Russia's caretakers vision? According to a May 6, 2013 article by Andrew E. Kramer in The New York Times?

It doesn't matter citizens are scapegoated to hide Russia's elitism? 

But, all that aside, there's a positive side to this past Monday's Moscow demonstration as Mr. Navalny spoke at the event. Perhaps a small concession from the present government's not wanting to outwardly appear like the tightly wound totalitarianism of the Soviet era? But as large a concession as that might be, it still indicates control, and not pure freedom, nonetheless.

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What Is There To Possibly Hope For In The Show Trial of Aleksei Navalny?

Other Than The Eternal Wish Justice Improves?

Imagine this board's meaning to a Defendant or a King?

On the first day of trial in Kirov, Russia, the initial BBC report stated that, after pleading innocent, Aleksei Navalny stood before the court and denounced his embezzlement trial as politically motivated. BBC even included the following positive picture of Mr. Navalny wearing a pre-trial demonstration smile.

While the RT headline above the picture below was, 

Opposition leader Navalny goes on trial, claims case 'politically motivated'

Nice how the world's commercial freedom allows our witnessing as straight forward and honed press coverage as any in the Stalinist Era, so to speak. Prosecutors had public support then too. An especially clear parallel when, after polishing off the details of the state's case, RT explains, with complete commercial callousness, that a survey basically found enough folks aren't aware justice isn't being served to care if the country's professionals can't afford principles. The craft of controlling public opinion is not Free Speech, yet world's great substitute.

Heck. The Russian legal culture is intact. Lawyers vs. lawyers, to a degree, kind of, sort of. Mr. Navalny is a lawyer. In the US, unless caught holding the smoking gun, a potential political hotshot is left alone so as to not raise the assumption of political impropriety. Imagine your country so weak there's no test for political propriety?  

A last Sunday editorial, A Blogger on Trial, by Bill Keller, in The New York Times, excellently summed up the Russian legal system's low trajectory toward a more complete openness. The following in italics was my comment on Mr. Keller's essay, finished just after the public comments were closed on 4/22/13 at 53. 

Amnesty for Everyone if no one is Innocent of Corruption? Sounds as ludicrous as President Putin, or anyone, being in a position to change Russian greed. How far America's relationship with corruption has evolved is always on trial every day. It must seem to Russians, fair trials are fairy tales, just as Americans know justice can be. This is Russia’s president’s cue to not turn his head and smile and say the courts aren’t his problem unless seen as another Stalin is his legacy? Then, for now, everything remains the same. Celebrities on trial and variations on martial law.

RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINES covers the President's Popularity, and a March 23rd essay in The New York Times concerns Russia's wealth management. I just hope everything works out for everyone. Far be it from me to complain about  Russian politics, ... 

Coincidentally, in a record 4 hour and 47 minute televised Q & A, the president is accused, without quotes, of saying he’d personally ordered the general prosecutor’s office to approach the Navalny case objectively. Yes please, indeed sir, I'd appreciate some more fine-tune adjusting of those rose colored glasses.