MORE CON ARTISTS -- MORE FRAUD

Con artists are aiming at seniors. There is a new fraud where someone calls up pretending to be Medicare.

MY ADVICE -- Do what my senior friend does. Tell everyone that they can mail you a letter but that you do not do business with people who call you on the phone.

ANYTIME SOMEONE CALLS -- Get their phone number, their name, and the name of their business. Make them spell out the names. Then tell them you will call them back. When you call back, use the phone number that you get from the phone company.

DO NOT SEND ANY MONEY TO A PERSON "IN TROUBLE", unless you KNOW the person and have SPOKEN to the person. (MANY PEOPLE IN PRISON spend their time begging for money using the mail or the internet.) KNOW THE PERSON means that you have met the person face to face many times and that you have met the person's friends and family. FOR ANY MONEY SENT, get a promissory note, in writing, saying how much money was given and that the person promises to pay it back. NEVER GIVE SOMEONE MONEY THAT YOU NEED TO USE FOR FOOD OR RENT.

THERE IS A NEW FRAUD where people call up pretending to be your grandchild in jail who needs bail. To double check, do not call the jail. Call a bail bondsman from the area where the jail is supposed to be. Have the bail bondman check to see if your grandchild is actually in jail. Send the money directly to the bail bondsman so that the kid can be bailed out. DO NOT SEND CASH to a "friend".

BEFORE SENDING MONEY TO ANYONE -- ask a trusted friend if sending the money is a good idea. ALWAYS REMEMBER that a request for money could be a fraud.

BALANCE THE BUDGET

Somehow, we are all going to have to pay for the bank rescue which saved our economy. It is, unfortunately, not legal to tax just banks. Neither can we tax just those Republicans who believed that no regulations would allow business to boom.

This is because usually you can not tax people for being wrong. We did not get a boom. Instead we almost got a bust. Con artists and stock market gamblers almost took out the entire world wide economy.

So how do we save money so we can repay the deficit? I think firing janitors and putting the cleaning out to a sub-contractor is a REALLY STUPID way to save money. You lose control of who is in your office at night, so theft of data and electronics increases.

Personally, I think we should stop spending money on the War On Drugs. Study, after study, after study, show that prohibition of drugs does not work. Studies show that drugs are MORE available to children when they are prohibited. Alcohol, which is regulated, is less available to teenagers than cannabis.

Real life results in countries like Portugal show that offering treatment instead of threatening imprisonment actually lowers drug use. Treatment is also MUCH less expensive than sending someone to prison.

Please read the LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) website. Be sure to go to their arrest clock.

25% of the world's prison population is in prison in the US. (We have less than 5% of the world's population.) The states and the federal government are spending billions of dollars on arresting and prosecuting possession of drug crimes. Our crime labs are so jammed with drug tests that the labs have little time to catch the person that robbed your house. Our court are so jammed with drug cases that the courts have little time to evaluate abuse and/or custody of children, or to prosecute the guy who robbed your house. Our prisons are full to bursting, and no politician will agree to parole anyone in case one out of 10,000 released kills someone after they are paroled.

If another country was doing all of this, we would be screaming human rights abuse.

What we should be screaming about is the waste of money spent on the War on Drugs.

Haven't you noticed that the more money we spend on drug prohibition, the more violence is generated?

Worse, we are strong arming our allies into helping us enforce our draconian drug prohibitions. We all watched Columbia turn into a violent country. Now we are watching Mexico turn into a violent country.

When will we ever learn?

THE PRICE OF DUE PROCESS

Sometimes following the rules of due process of law and the rules of admissibility of evidence requires letting the bad guy go free.

In court, truth does not matter. In court what matters is what you can PROVE by admissible evidence. (Admissible means the court will allow the evidence to be part of what the judge and/or jury uses to make the decision.)

Some evidence is not admissible because allowing evidence gotten in certain ways causes bad behavior by the police.

Police generally can NOT take a person to jail because of a traffic ticket (or do much searching either). You may not remember when a few rural male cops strip searched pretty girls who got traffic tickets.

Allowing confessions without the Miranda warnings (You have the right to remain silent ...) does not stop the lying to suspects, but a wise suspect asks for his free attorney. (The number of unwise people never ceases to amaze me.)

It is VERY HARD to see someone you truly believe to be guilty to go free. Sometimes the desire to punish the ones you believe to be guilty causes worse wrongs. Police officers have been known to beat up suspects, to question children without a child's representative, to plant evidence, to forge evidence, to lie to judges, to break in without a warrant, to encourage a person to commit a crime.

Each time a court finds that evidence is inadmissible it is based on 800 years of legal thinking by the best legal minds of their time. Both sides are heard by higher and higher courts until the best of the best decide that admitting the evidence causes more harm than good.

The rules limiting admission of evidence are NOT STUPID RULES, they are the rules that are at the heart and soul of a free society. Ignoring these rules of evidence means ignoring all law from the Magna Carta to the US Constitution in 2010. The Magna Carta and the US Constitution are basic legal documents where man finally said, "People have rights and these rights are ...". These documents are living, growing, documents with all courts continuing to define and explain "due process of law" and admissibility of evidence.

Generally, we in the legal profession do not share our 'dirty laundry' with you. We whisper in hallways, and talk only with true friends. Eventually, it becomes so bad the new reporters hear about it. Then the higher courts MAY make a new rule. But BAD ACTIONS have to have a consistent pattern before higher courts find that evidence has become too tainted to admit into court.

Unless, of course, you think it is OK for the police to 'round up the usual suspects' or to arrest people and keep them in jail without trial. Oops, I guess some of you think you can make exceptions. I WARN YOU to be as careful about the exceptions as you are careful about the rules.

None of this is easy. Attorneys, judges, and citizens will ALL DISAGREE about the rules and exceptions as applied to any one case.

But sometimes, what happened was WRONG, a wrong easily understood by the general public. Than, it is, without doubt, a violation of due process.

Long and hard lessons have taught us that how we treat the least important among us is how we can expect to be treated, especially if we publicly disagree with the powerful.

AFGHANISTAN

The Rolling Stones article that finished the US commander in Afghanistan took me back to the old days of the Vietnam War, right down to some of the best reporting coming from Rolling Stone magazine.

I believe that the lessons are:

LESSON No. 1

YOU CAN NOT SOLVE SOCIAL PROBLEMS WITH MILITARY FORCE.

I do not want to see Afghanistan dissolve into violence and draconian repression of women.

I wish the US could work with the UN to have a UN peacekeeping force in Afghanistan.

We should not kid ourselves that we can actually win a war in a place where only Genghis Khan was able to win a war. The US does not wage war by killing everyone who dares to disagree with us.

LESSON No. 2

Do not get drunk with a reporter. Do not make nasty inside jokes in the presence of a reporter. Just because a reporter seems to agree with you does not mean that the reporter actually agrees with you.

LESSON No. 3

You can get fired from a job you do not want by ignoring lesson number 2.

THE HOBBIT MOVIE

I think that I know why The Hobbit is not yet a movie. I think it is prejudice against the actor who plays Gandalf.

Did you know that J.K. Rowling has publicly stated that Dumbledore is gay?

Both Tolkien and Rowling wrote books about acceptance of those who are different from you.

When will we ever learn?

FATHERS WITHOUT CHILDREN

By law and according to their constitutional rights, both parents have an equal right to parent their children.

In practice, the courts tend to give the children to the mothers.

If the divorcing mother is angry with the father, she can make it extremely difficult for the father to see the children.

MY ADVICE:

YOU ARE ENTITLED to see your children. Sometimes a judge will order therapeutically supervised visits, where the parent sees the children in a therapist's office. If you think you can not get the judge to give you regular unsupervised visits, take the therapeutically supervised visits as the therapist can report to the judge about your interactions with the children and perhaps get you the regular visits. IF YOU INSIST on visitation your way, you may never get to see your kids. (Of course, this presumes that you can AFFORD to pay the therapist.)

The courts appreciate the opportunity to have input from a trained, licensed dispassionate professional. In a child custody battle, the therapist can explain the situation to the judge. Stop thinking of it as "I do not need therapy" and start thinking of it as "I could use a witness that the judge will believe."

FRANKLY, I think it was better when people fought over the furniture. If people are going to fight, it is better that they fight over the furniture, than fight over the children. Furniture does not have feelings.

FORM OVER FUNCTION

My apartment has a new front loading washing machine. I am certain that this idea came from a man.

Clothes that are really dirty need to soak for a while before you restart the washer to finish the load. This is not possible with a front loading machine, because it does not hold the water in a tub.

It is hard to get out the heavy, wet, tangled clothes, which are way below the level that they would be in a regular washer.

I am certain that eventually the washer will leak through the front door. I am certain of this because the neato moon roof on cars eventually leaks.

Also, you can not open the washer to throw in more clothes.

BUT IT LOOKS REALLY COOL because the washer and dryer can match exactly.

On TV I see ads for a vacuum cleaner which I KNOW was designed by a man. It spins the dirt or some such thing. However, in my experience, it is impossible to take the dirt out of a vacuum without getting dirt up your nose unless the dirt is contained in a vacuum bag.

BUT HEY, doesn't it LOOK COOL with its see through container.

MAKE BP PAY -- CAN BP AFFORD TO PAY?

We have all heard that the Bush administration put a limit on the amount an oil company has to pay for environmental damage caused by an oil spill. I think it is a paltry $75 million in total environmental damages per incident.

Luckily, the Bush administration was unable to convince Congress to repeal the Clean Water Act. Under the Clean Water Act, an oil company can be fined up to $1,100 per barrel of oil spilled. Given the size of the Gulf oil spill, the fine BP may have to pay is HUGE.

Can BP afford the damages? I hate to spoil the fun you all are getting from gambling on BP stock, but BP is an enormous company. BP is also sitting on the VAST oil reserve which is causing the oil spill. We have no choice but to allow BP or another oil company to tap these reserves as new wells are the only long term solution to end the oil spill.

As a congressional hearing proved, NO OIL COMPANY has actually bothered to make an emergency oil spill plan for a particular geographic area. (Dumb, I know.) We are going to have to think of this mess as that Bruce Willis movie where the oil men were the only people with the skills to solve the problem. Book learning does not suffice when you are drilling.

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

My guess is that some middle managers decided save money by taking risks that they did not fully explain to their bosses. This often happens, because, for some reason, bosses never believe that their middle managers are NOT telling them the entire truth.

THIS IS WHY we have regulators. If the middle manager knows that he/she will have to satisfy an inspector as to the safety of the operation, then he/she is more likely to give the boss the bad news about escalating costs. That, of course, assumes that we have inspectors, and that the inspectors are doing their jobs.

The Republicans have this theory that we do not need governmental regulation and many of you believed them. Now we have had a financial crises and an oil crises, both caused by lack of regulation and/or by lack of enforcement of regulations.

GULF OIL SPILL -- LEGAL LESSON

PROXIMATE CAUSE is a legal term we will all have to learn. I will try to explain.

(PLEASE NOTE that these terms are all VERY COMPLEX legal terms, defined by thousands of apealate court decisions.)

If you do an act that harms another person, place or thing, you have to pay monetary damages for the harm you caused.

First, you have to prove that someone was negligent. Negligent means they knew or should have known that their act might cause harm. They acted anyway and harm was caused.

Then you have to prove that the act was the PROXIMATE CAUSE of the harm done.

Think of the Mythbusters episode where they used a tree to shoot a 'man' into a 'castle'. (The man was a dummy, and the castle was plastic.) If the tree broke and hurt one of the crew, the Mythbusters experiment would be the proximate cause of the crew member's injury. But if a crew member cut his finger while eating lunch, the cut finger would not have been proximately caused by the experiment.

If you know a first year law student, ask him/her about the train station case that is a tort professor's favorite way to explain proximate cause. (Law school joke -- in law, a tort is NOT a small cake.)

IN THE GULF OIL spill, was a teenager's inability to get a summer job proximately caused by the oil spill?

KID SUMMER READING

Most of the children's books that I read are young adult books. For young children, especially boys, I think comic books like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are a good idea. Let the kid pick the comic, with you only checking for sex and violence. ANY reading is better than NO reading.

Here are some others.

The Harry Potter books, which I think are a must read for both children and adults. The later books get very heavy emotionally, with some favorite characters dying.

Arrows of the Queen by Mercedes Lackey (some discussion of lesbian relationship). Other books by Lackey may be too grown up for preteens.

Wrede's the Seven Towers

For all books that are also Disney movies, one should read the book by the original author. Warn the child about old books being weird about women.

Try the colored fairy tale books. Any good book seller will know these. But the stories are dryly told and some kids will not read them.

The Little House on the Prairie by Wilder. 8 or 9 books in this series.

The Black Cauldron by Alexander

The Last Unicorn by Beagle. Also buy the Last Unicorn cartoon on DVD.

The Rolling Stones and Podkayne of Mars, by Hienlien

The Just So Stories by Kipling

The Most Dangerous Book for Boys (Two ways to temp kids to read this, danger for boys, and 'not for you' for girls. I LOVED this book. It is still in my bathroom.)

The Spiderwick Chronicles

The Percy Jackson Olympian books.

Warrior Heir by Chima.

I will go to a bookstore to look for more. MY books are in a mess, and I can not find anything.

I HAVE ALWAYS READ A BOOK BEFORE I RECOMMEND IT.

SUMMER READING

For adults and teens:

Motor Mouth, by Ivanovitch

Any book by Elizabeth Peters. Try Legend in Green Velvet or The Summer of the Dragon.

Any book by Agatha Cristie, but ESPECIALLY the ones with Tommy and Tuppence.

Any book by Dick Francis. Try 10 Pound Penalty.

Any book by Mercedes Lackey. I like the Valdemar books.

Any book by Patricia Wrede. Try Raven's Ring first.

Dead Witch Walking by Harrison.

Hawaii by Michener (The bit about babies born within 9 months of sailing from New England is one of the funniest things I have ever read. Even how the school reacted is typical and funny.)

Exodus by Uris (This book is exciting, but NOT FUN.)

Letters From Earth by Mark Twain

MY FAVORITE SUMMER PET PEEVE

No iron cotton is treated with something that makes it stiff and hot to wear. Often, I do not buy clothes because they are "no iron".

If you want REAL cotton, order muslin, gauze or cotton knit. Chambray used to be OK, but now it also is being treated. Denim is sometimes treated, sometimes not. NO LABEL will tell you if the cotton has been treated.

I also NEVER buy something if it needs to be ironed. This is because I know I will only wear it once.

So how do I avoid ironing cotton?

Wash your cotton as usual. Stained cotton comes clean if you soak it for 10 minutes or so in detergent and OxyClean. To soak clothes, just open the lid of the washing machine, after the washing machine finishes filling up and just starts to swish back and forth. Then shut the lid to restart the wash when you are done with the soaking.

DO NOT put new cotton in the dryer. Hang it on a hanger, smooth out all of the wrinkles, straighten the collar and the button area. Then let it dry. After you have it on for 10 minutes, you will not be able to tell that it was not ironed. (OK, my Mom can ALWAYS tell that I did not iron it, but most people will not notice.)

When cotton gets really soft, you can dry it in the dryer. You might have to wet and straighten a few wrinkles.

ZONING AND MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Now that the federal government is no longer raiding medical marijuana clinics, more clinics are being built.

However, cities and counties are either stopping all clinics or allowing only a few clinics. They use zoning laws to do this.

Medical marijuana patients are NOT evil drug users. They are sick people with a doctors prescription to use marijuana for medical purposes. PLEASE LET THE CLINICS OPEN FOR BUSINESS.

HONESTLY, you have access to study, after study, after study, that states marijuana should just be legal, that marijuana is not lethal, that marijuana is not physically addictive, that making marijuana illegal make criminals out of our good young people.

My friend calls it, "Superstition winning over education." I call it, "Propaganda winning over reason."

DRUGS AND ZONING

An unknown side effect of drug prohibition is the building code blackmail that protects the rural planter of illegal herbs. This blackmail also protects the labs cooking up illegal substances.

FIRST, SOME BACKGROUND:

Almost everywhere in the US, cities and counties have zoning laws. These laws are necessary to prevent greedy, unethical, and stupid people from doing things like building a feed lot so close to town that the smell sometimes makes breathing unpleasant.

Part of these zoning laws is ALWAYS the requirement that any new building meet the building code standards, usually the newest national building code. (Building codes require grounded wiring, hot water in every dwelling, etc. They also require plans, sign off by structural engineers, etc.)

THE RESULT:

Many rural people ignore the building code when they are adding on to their farm house. This is especially true in the more remote areas.

So those planting and cooking illegal things tell the farmer that they will turn the farmer in for building code violations if the farmer complains to law enforcement about ANY illegal activities.

Code enforcement does not get involved in building code violations unless someone complains. Once the complaint is made, the farmer has to bring the building up to code or tear it down. I have even seen code enforcement refuse to listen to experts regarding WHEN the building was built. (An old building, built BEFORE the code went into effect, does not have comply with the building code.)

BOTTOM LINE:

Our rural people with little money are being truthfully told, "Shut up about our illegal operation or lose your house."

HELP FOR SMART U.S. SENIORS

If you are over 62 and were smart, you own your own home and have equity in that home.

You probably qualify for a reverse mortgage. HUD has changed the rules regarding reverse mortgages. Now, you can take out part of the equity and never pay another mortgage payment. (You can live rent and mortgage free in your own home for the rest of your life.)

There are a lot of websites that can give you a quick calculation of about how much cash you will get on top of the never having to pay the mortgage.

HUD has all of the rules of the game.

ADVICE -- DO THIS AT A BANK. The rates are set by law. The loan amounts are set by law. All of the rules of the reverse mortgage are set by law. So go to a full service bank or a savings and loan and ask the banker how to get started.

NO PROOF OF INCOME IS NEEDED. You will have to pay for an appraisal of your home. The only things effecting the loan are your age, the value of your home, the current amount you owe on your home, and any liens you may have on your home.

You can stay in your home until death. They can sell your home if you do not live in it for one year, but they have to get approval from the Secretary of U.S. Housing and Urban Development.

DO AS WE SAY, NOT AS WE DO

The United States has told Israel that it should reconsider its economic blockade of Gaza.

Israel decided to put an economic blockade on Gaza after violent incidents including Gaza shooting rocket powered explosives into Israel, killing Israeli citizens.

If a small neighbor county had even THREATENED to shoot rockets into to US, we would blockade them. WAIT, we did that.

IN FACT, even after they removed the rockets, we continued the economic blockade for the next FORTY EIGHT YEARS. But, Israel should be reasonable.

Frankly, I think that embargos and blockades may be counter productive. Recent history has shown us that trade can cause a country to change, while blockades can cause a county to blame others for why they cannot change.

Heres an idea. Let's tell Israel that we will stop our economic blockade of Cuba, if they will stop their economic blockade of Gaza.

VOTE TODAY

CALIFORNIA VOTING

PLEASE VOTE TOMORROW. Please do not vote from fear and anger. This has been, is, and will be, the great State of California. Move us forward into the 21st century with rights and responsibility for us ALL, even the least of our brethren.

If you do not know who to vote for, the League of Women Voters has the best website, with the ballot and all candidate and proposition statements covering every zip code in California.

If you are in a hurry:

1. Candidates. Eliminate all candidates who do not bother to write a position paper. (I am making a ONE TIME exemption for Barbara Boxer.)

2. Propositions. Read the opposition first. Then look at the groups who favor or oppose the proposition.

3. It used to be that one could just vote for the woman. We now have women candidates who are radically conservative. This means you actually have to read the candidate statements and make an informed decision. You can no longer just vote for the woman.

(I have already blogged about judges. See my blogs of 5/11 and 5/14.)

VOTING IS YOUR JOB. To quote my mother, "If you did not vote, you cannot complain about politics at my table."

IMMIGRATION

Most of our ancestors came to the United States because they were poor and starving or because they were being killed for their beliefs.

Usually, first generation immigrants are sympathetic to other immigrants. By the second or third generation, the children and grandchildren of immigrants are US citizens through and through. This is a good thing except when the US citizen decides that now that (s)he is here, the country is too full for anyone else.

This country has a history of appalling prejudice against large groups of immigrants. We did not allow the Chinese to buy property, we made insulting jokes against the Irish and the Poles, we interred Japanese Americans during World Was II. Waves after wave of immigrants were met with poverty and prejudice when they came to the US.

Now we are again being hostile to immigrants from Mexico and South America. We call them names, and want them rounded up and sent home.

Whenever illegal immigration happens overseas, we are all sympathy. We call the people refuges, and demand that they be treated with dignity.

Illegal immigration is less likely to happen if the illegal immigrants are not better off the moment they step foot in the US. Unfortunately, our corporations are addicted to cheap labor. They hire the illegals through subcontractors to avoid legal penalties.

Illegal immigration is a crime. It is also a crime to steal food even if you are starving.

Honestly, if we want people to stay in Mexico, we need to help Mexico become a country where people have an opportunity to make a living wage. There is NO WAY we can protect our border from being crossed by people so desperate that they will risk death in order to come here.

We CANNOT come to a sensible solution until we stop calling people names and until we stop looking for the easy one sentence answer.

This is a very complex question. We need to THINK about the solution.

Unless you are 100% Native American, your ancestors immigrated to the US, so have a little sympathy for the newest strangers among us.

DECISIONS MADE OUT OF FEAR AND ANGER are ALWAYS bad decisions. Please stop spreading fear and anger so that we can come to a solution that makes us proud to be Americans.

EMPTY HOUSES -- WHAT TO DO

All over the US, people have abandoned their homes due to financial issues.

Some of these homes will be sold to investors who will wait for better prices before reselling them to homeowners.

Couldn't some non-profit buy these houses at the current bargain prices? The non-profit could sell the homes to nurses, teachers, police officers and firepersons. Then these people who provide priceless services to our communities, could actually afford to live in the communities where they work.

Actually, with a little bit of legal maneuvering, we could use redevelopment funds to get the houses to the service people. No one is going to want to invest in municipal redevelopment until the economy has improved. So we could use the funds that are just sitting there to implement the Home for Our Service Persons (HOSP).

The biggest risk in buying a bank owned or repossessed home is the damage that may have been done to the home while it was unoccupied. If the non-profit or municipal redevelopment inspect the homes and fix the defects, then sell the homes to teachers, nurses, firepersons and police officers, we will have a win-win-win situation.

Instead of empty homes, we will have homes full of the best sort of people.