sausage king
The less people know how laws and sausages are made, the better they will sleep at night
OAKLAND Self-proclaimed "sausage king" Stuart Alexander was sentenced to death Tuesday for killing three meat inspectors nearly five years ago.
So at last it is over, I have been following this case, off and on, since its inception. it has been overshadowed(perhaps instructively) by the Peterson case across the Bay.
"The defendant bushwhacked three unsuspecting people who were trying to protect society from a rogue meat producer who was hell-bent on disobeying the law," prosecutor Jack Laettner argued. "The level of violence exhibited by the defendant shows that no one is safe from him. ... He is just a miserable sociopath."
No, Obergruppenfuerher Laettner, he was not hell-bent on disobeying the law, he was not a "rogue" meat producer (whatever the hell THAT means) . No, the man was not a miserable psychopath, he was just miserable; made that way by a program of unrelenting governmental harrassment at the instigation of a disgruntled employee.
Laettner is an obvious pus-pocket with a flair for the bathetic; and an equally obvious community theatre reject.
The man saw everything he valued, his life his livelyhood, threatened: a business that had existed 79 years, under the mangment of the same family for 4 generations. The poor man finally snapped under the pressure.
We may not necessarily approve of his actions. But we can certainly understand them.