Friday, December 30, 2016

NEW YEAR CLARITY

If Debbie Reynolds could forgive Elizabeth Taylor for taking and then discarding Eddie Fisher, then you can forgive your brother for whatever stupid thing he did.

Groups can forgive other groups for the atrocities of the past.

Anger and hatred do not just ruin your own life, they can ruin life for us all.

This does not mean that you have to be friends with the person that abused you. It just means you have to give up YOUR OWN HATRED AND ANGER.

In my 43 years of practicing law, I have found that it is sometimes best to delay a court case until the parties are no longer full of anger.

I have never seen a problem between two people or two countries get solved without talking to each other.

Currently, too many people have decided to "shun" our new president. This means that our new president will hear only from those people who agree with him.

True courage is being the first to say, "I am going to talk with X and see if I can at least reach a compromise with him."

Personally, I believe that all of you should be brave enough to stop supporting the war on drug. The current Chicago is replaying 1930s Chicago, where the violence did not stop until alcohol became legal. Do you think it is OK to continue this slaughter just because it mostly kills Blacks and Mexicans?

SMILE AT YOUR NEIGHBOR! FORGIVE YOUR ENEMY! FIGHT FOR JUSTICE!

HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Friday, December 23, 2016

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

I hope you all have happy and fun times during the Holiday Season.

I am going to have to spend Christmas through New Years working. No wassailing for me!

Luckily, I have already spent time with my family in a lovely celebration of a marriage.

Almost all major religions ask that we take care of the poor and the sick. Perhaps this year we can find homes for the homeless, food for the hungry, and jobs for all workers.

Please do your best to stop spreading fear. If you are afraid, you often make irrational decisions that cause harm to both you and others.

But mostly, please have a good time this holiday season.


Tuesday, December 13, 2016

DOES PUTIN INFLUENCE CALIFORNIA?

CALIFORNIA IS STARVING ITS COURT SYSTEM. Our legislature is trying to silence our major attorney's association, so that they are unable to fight for justice for everyone.

Courts are our most important bailiwick against injustice. Without attorneys, the inarticulate cannot get justice.

LGBT and other nonconformists get representation from California attorneys in order to request justice from California courts.

Putin regularly arrests civil rights attorneys. Russia's court system answers to Putin, not to justice.

California Courts have been lauded for their commitment to justice.

But now that California is rich again, our courts still do not have enough money to keep the clerk's office open in the branch courts. You can no longer call the courts on the phone. If you mail in something to file, it waits over a month to be filed.

This is only going to get worse as courts stop assessing fines which harm the poor.

Sometimes the attacks on the essential services that keeps California strong and wealthy are subtle. Our famously fair justice system is one of the fundamental reasons that people of all varieties are comfortable being themselves while living here.

If we starve the courts of monies they need to run the day to day justice, justice slows, then sometimes disappears.

The California Bar Association is a state wide attorney organization that should be able to alert us all to such a failure to fund the courts. Right now the California legislature is not allowing the Bar Association to collect dues from attorneys. (Attorney associations are always SO critical of bad legislation.)

Keep California great. Spend the holidays fussing about funding our courts. Insist that the legislature stop preventing attorneys from associating with each other, and disciplining each other.

LET'S KEEP OUR CALIFORNIA JUSTICE SYSTEM, WHICH ENFORCES JUSTICE FOR ALL!






Tuesday, December 6, 2016

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS

For Christmas, I want an END TO THE WAR ON (SOME) DRUGS.

Trying to get people to obey drug laws is causing corruption in our banking systems, violence in our inner cities, and prisons full of people of color.

Worse, it has had NO EFFECT ON ACTUAL USE OF DRUGS.

Unless, of course, you count all the people who are dying of heroin when they can not get prescription pain medication. Did you know that opiate addiction rates have not changed in over 100 years? Opiates can be legal or illegal, addiction rates stay at about 1.5%.

It is very EASY for President Obama to take marijuana entirely off the federal drug schedules. This would remove marijuana as a federal crime, and EACH STATE can then decide whether to keep marijuana illegal. All he has to do is cite the SIX presidential commissions who have recommended marijuana be removed from the federal drug schedules.

Then President Obama can declare a national emergency, and move all the other recreational drugs to schedule V, which would allow for reliable research on these mostly natural remedies which are being misused.

Did you know that a large percentage of drug overdoses involve opiates combined with anxiety medications?

For me, the worst part of the War on Drugs was how trying to make people stop using drugs messed with the US Constitution. The courts allowed seizure of property without a conviction, searches of vehicles, drug raids with battering rams.

NONE OF THE CURRENT RECREATIONAL DRUGS ARE WORSE THAN ALCOHOL.

When Obama is moving drugs onto schedule V, he should state that no drug can be put on any other schedule unless it causes a higher percentage of deaths than alcohol. Require that proving a drug caused a death must take into consideration other substances that the user was also taking.

Alcohol prohibition ended December 5, 1933. We all know how incredibly stupid and ineffective it was to try to keep alcohol illegal.

It is just as incredibly stupid and ineffective to try to keep recreational drugs illegal.

The best way to keep drugs from children is to make them legal and regulated. In states where marijuana is legal, teenagers complain that they can no longer easily buy marijuana.

LET'S GET MEDICAL HELP TO THE ADDICTS, LIKE WE GIVE MEDICAL HELP TO ALCOHOLICS.