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 30, 2016
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.
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!
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 30, 2016
FREEZING TO DEATH
I worry about the North Dakota protesters. Having grown up in South Dakota, I know how cold it gets in the winter.
I am also emotionally torn by the pipeline. Pipelines spill WAY less oil into the environment than shipping the oil by rail. Companies who fail to get agreement from all stakeholders often fail to admit that they have leaks from pipelines. Some of the oil destined for the pipeline is the dirtiest oil on earth. Just whiffing it once, sent me to the emergency room.
When I read that a veteran from Hawaii was going to protect the protesters, I was reminded of the Laura Ingalls Wilder book, 'The Long Winter'.
It is SO easy to freeze to death. Often, when you are freezing to death, you feel warm, go to sleep, and never wake up.
The prairie can be a very unforgiving place. The blizzard winds can be so strong, they will blow you off the road. Sometimes you can barely see your hand when you hold it up in front of your face.
Blizzards make your world into a white trap. You can not even go from tent to tent without a rope around your waist. I do not know how you go to the toilet without frostbite. When you can no longer feel your fingers, it means you have frostbite and will probably have to have the finger amputated. Frostbite freezes the blood, as the frozen part warms up, the blood does not reanimate, so gangrene sets in, your finger or toe turns black, and has to be cut off or the infection will kill you.
My blizzards were in SOUTH Dakota. NORTH Dakota is even colder and nastier in the winter.
You may be able to fight the pipeline.
You can not fight Mother Nature.
Trump won the election. You have lost this battle. Please stay alive so we can win the political war that is coming.
I am also emotionally torn by the pipeline. Pipelines spill WAY less oil into the environment than shipping the oil by rail. Companies who fail to get agreement from all stakeholders often fail to admit that they have leaks from pipelines. Some of the oil destined for the pipeline is the dirtiest oil on earth. Just whiffing it once, sent me to the emergency room.
When I read that a veteran from Hawaii was going to protect the protesters, I was reminded of the Laura Ingalls Wilder book, 'The Long Winter'.
It is SO easy to freeze to death. Often, when you are freezing to death, you feel warm, go to sleep, and never wake up.
The prairie can be a very unforgiving place. The blizzard winds can be so strong, they will blow you off the road. Sometimes you can barely see your hand when you hold it up in front of your face.
Blizzards make your world into a white trap. You can not even go from tent to tent without a rope around your waist. I do not know how you go to the toilet without frostbite. When you can no longer feel your fingers, it means you have frostbite and will probably have to have the finger amputated. Frostbite freezes the blood, as the frozen part warms up, the blood does not reanimate, so gangrene sets in, your finger or toe turns black, and has to be cut off or the infection will kill you.
My blizzards were in SOUTH Dakota. NORTH Dakota is even colder and nastier in the winter.
You may be able to fight the pipeline.
You can not fight Mother Nature.
Trump won the election. You have lost this battle. Please stay alive so we can win the political war that is coming.
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
TAKE A HIKE
Liberals and progressives need to get out into the woods, the beaches, the parks. Taking a hike on Black Friday is a way of saying that golden opulence obtained through oppression is evil.
If the weather is nasty, go to a museum, a bookstore, or live theater. I always enjoy the Dicken's Faire. (Buying hand crafted items is not opulent.)
Progress towards equal treatment of all citizens can be painfully slow. Sixty four years ago a secret hero of World War II was convicted of criminal indecency because he was a homosexual. He saved hundreds of thousands of lives through mathematical genius, but was denigrated and despised because of his sexuality.
Now we have gay marriage is many parts of the world.
Women got the right to vote less than 100 years ago. This year the US had a woman almost win the Presidential election.
Just 12 years ago, the US Supreme Court found that it violated the Americans With Disability Act for a judge to require that a disabled person crawl up the steps to his courtroom.
Sometimes people can say incredibly awful things, yet not really mean what they say. Sometimes people can say all the right things, but do all the wrong things.
I recommend that, instead of fighting over the election, we all discuss future shock*, and how it can affect society.
After thirty years, Trump tower is still beautifully maintained. It would be amazing if we could do the necessary public maintenance we have deferred for thirty years. Rusty pipes, deteriorated plastics, roads and bridges.... This list is endless.
It will be fun to encourage people to imagine what Trump could build in their hometown.
I am Thankful that I live in California, in the United States of America.
* Future Shock is a book written by Alvin Toffler, about a world where rapid change left people unable to cope, because all of the behavior patterns they learned when they were young, seemed to be no longer acceptable behavior.
If the weather is nasty, go to a museum, a bookstore, or live theater. I always enjoy the Dicken's Faire. (Buying hand crafted items is not opulent.)
Progress towards equal treatment of all citizens can be painfully slow. Sixty four years ago a secret hero of World War II was convicted of criminal indecency because he was a homosexual. He saved hundreds of thousands of lives through mathematical genius, but was denigrated and despised because of his sexuality.
Now we have gay marriage is many parts of the world.
Women got the right to vote less than 100 years ago. This year the US had a woman almost win the Presidential election.
Just 12 years ago, the US Supreme Court found that it violated the Americans With Disability Act for a judge to require that a disabled person crawl up the steps to his courtroom.
Sometimes people can say incredibly awful things, yet not really mean what they say. Sometimes people can say all the right things, but do all the wrong things.
I recommend that, instead of fighting over the election, we all discuss future shock*, and how it can affect society.
After thirty years, Trump tower is still beautifully maintained. It would be amazing if we could do the necessary public maintenance we have deferred for thirty years. Rusty pipes, deteriorated plastics, roads and bridges.... This list is endless.
It will be fun to encourage people to imagine what Trump could build in their hometown.
I am Thankful that I live in California, in the United States of America.
* Future Shock is a book written by Alvin Toffler, about a world where rapid change left people unable to cope, because all of the behavior patterns they learned when they were young, seemed to be no longer acceptable behavior.
Monday, November 14, 2016
LET PEOPLE LEARN
Many of the totally unacceptable things that Trump said, were said at the very beginning of his campaign.
Trump never apologizes, just like Gibbs on NCIS. However, when Trump no longer repeats an awful statement, that means that he has rethought that statement.
For instance, Trump has vowed to get rid of Obamacare. Now Trump is saying that he will replace Obamacare with a better health care system, and Obamacare will stay in place until the new system takes over.
If we always hold people responsible for 10 year old actions and words, then we should also give them credit when they say that they have learned better.
For instance, females really want to be able to drink and drug themselves into catatonic states and still be safe from unwanted sexual intercourse. I agree with them. I just do not see HOW we can actually keep females safe if they go home with, and take pills from, strangers.
I can understand children waiting months or years before telling of sexual abuse. I do not understand how adult women can expect to have a crime prosecuted if they wait for a year to report the crime.
Back in 1975, a magistrate told me that he would not assign me any criminal cases where the defendant was a male, as he could not live with himself if I got hurt by a client that he had assigned to me.
He then said that he would send me female defendants. I let this go, as I am unable to fix everything in the world.
Later, I discovered that I was getting WAY MORE criminal cases than other attorneys. This is because the magistrate was sending me ALL of his female defendants. This really helped my fledgling law office.
If you want to be certain that the US makes progress in solving social problems, you can help solve social problems in your own town. Volunteer to help "at risk" kids. Mentor women, without hitting on them.
STOP PROTESTING AND START FIXING those things you can fix. This election is OVER!
Trump never apologizes, just like Gibbs on NCIS. However, when Trump no longer repeats an awful statement, that means that he has rethought that statement.
For instance, Trump has vowed to get rid of Obamacare. Now Trump is saying that he will replace Obamacare with a better health care system, and Obamacare will stay in place until the new system takes over.
If we always hold people responsible for 10 year old actions and words, then we should also give them credit when they say that they have learned better.
For instance, females really want to be able to drink and drug themselves into catatonic states and still be safe from unwanted sexual intercourse. I agree with them. I just do not see HOW we can actually keep females safe if they go home with, and take pills from, strangers.
I can understand children waiting months or years before telling of sexual abuse. I do not understand how adult women can expect to have a crime prosecuted if they wait for a year to report the crime.
Back in 1975, a magistrate told me that he would not assign me any criminal cases where the defendant was a male, as he could not live with himself if I got hurt by a client that he had assigned to me.
He then said that he would send me female defendants. I let this go, as I am unable to fix everything in the world.
Later, I discovered that I was getting WAY MORE criminal cases than other attorneys. This is because the magistrate was sending me ALL of his female defendants. This really helped my fledgling law office.
If you want to be certain that the US makes progress in solving social problems, you can help solve social problems in your own town. Volunteer to help "at risk" kids. Mentor women, without hitting on them.
STOP PROTESTING AND START FIXING those things you can fix. This election is OVER!
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