What Motivates Us to Expose California’s Corrupted Elder Abuse Enforcement System
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, in the public domain. (Photo credit: Harris & Ewing Collection at the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, circa 1916)
What motivates us to unite, empower, and mobilize to expose California’s broken, corrupted elder abuse prevention, response, and enforcement system?
Elder Abuse Exposed.com members wholeheartedly agree with and are influenced by the statement that is often misattributed to statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke, i.e., that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” We also agree with and are inspired by truly great and compassionate political leaders, like Mahatma Gandhi, who said, “A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members.”
Therefore, we are dedicated to doing something good to publicly expose and try to stop California government’s turning its back on some of our weakest members, i.e., our frail, vulnerable, and aging parents and grandparents suffering in nursing homes. We believe that exposing that Americans “don’t value old people” and “don’t want to think about ourselves getting old,” according to California elder abuse expert Dr. Kathryn Locatell in the December 21, 2011 “Gone Without a Case: Suspicious Elder Deaths Rarely Investigated,” by ProPublica, FRONTLINE, and NPR, can encourage the U.S. to become an even greater, more compassionate nation that does not flout God’s commandment “to honor your father and your mother.”
Elder Abuse Exposed.com members are also motivated by the realization that unscrupulous government officials who turn their backs on a nation’s weakest citizens by failing to enforce the law have a pernicious effect that spreads well beyond the double-victimized citizen and the government’s broken and corrupted law enforcement and criminal justice system. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said in his dissent in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928):
Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.
