In the 6th Century BC the Scythian prince and philosopher, Anacharsis, who later was to be murdered by his own brother, stated: “Written laws are like spider's webs; they will catch, it is true, the weak and the poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.” What was said well over two millenniums ago is just as pertinent today. The United States is a country full of laws, laws upon laws upon laws, yet, when you look at our prisons and jails, they are filled almost without exception with the poor and destitute, the uneducated, the undesirables, those lacking the right skin color, or lacking the right religious faith, and almost all far removed from the powers that run this nation.
For instance, think about the worst crimes committed by multinational corporations in which virtually never do corporate officers go to jail, and if they do, they are typically able to call upon a seemingly endless amount of appeals, and only in the most egregious or notorious cases does anyone actually do time, and usually that is only one person whereas probably scores of others should have done time with him. Consider also the big oil companies that have polluted waters, to which, via accident or oversight or incompetency aside, typically are slapped with monetary fines, which are almost always the type of penalty that they would prefer, because being able to go back to business as usual, will soon recover those monies, which they simply look upon as "opportunity cost" gone somewhat awry. Then too there are institutions that are so fortunate as to be labeled "too big to fail" signifying that whatever financial shenanigans that they operate under, that literally steal billions from the public that they, will never have to suffer or personally be held accountable for it.
America purposely has far too many laws, which, are unequally applied, and selectively enforced. This effectively means that the average citizen if he has political views that are outside of the norm, or a lifestyle that is considered to be abnormal, or strange habits or weird trades, that this person can be and is, selectively targeted by the government and its agencies in a manner in which a dossier is collected on that individual keeping tabs of who, what, when, and how he conducts his personal business. This is very convenient for the government that can at a time of their own choosing, find the vulnerable spots in the target's life, and exploit these in order to disrupt his life, or to apply pressure on innocent family members in order to bring this person to heel or to turn State's evidence against someone else.
The rich and powerful on the other hand, don't have to worry about these things, no matter what part of the political spectrum that they are, whether conservative or liberal, because over and above their political leanings, the main thing that they care about, is maintaining their privileged status in life, which essentially comes down to exploiting the powerless to favor the few. The law is very clear in what it almost always does, which is to protect and to serve the status quo, that is to say, their masters, as their employment, livelihood, and the special powers that the law enforcement apparatus have over the general population depends upon it. The only possibly exceptions ever seen to this general maxim are true grass-roots uprising that have unsettled the masses so much, that the law must as a matter of course, cede some ground.
The government well understands the value of having so many laws, so that they call upon whichever law fits the bill of the purpose that they have in mind so as to keep the population under wraps, if not quiescent. Every once in a while one of the rich and powerful are selectively sacrificed so that the population believes somewhat in the illusion that justice truly does wear a blindfold, the only problem is, America's justice clearly knows what it is doing and those privileged people that control those levers most definitely do.