Cash for Clunkers is Totally ABSURD

I did not get to vote on my tax money being spent to give GM workers a free lunch. The average GM worker makes 72 DOLLARS AN HOUR in total compensation when you combine their pay and their benefits. That’s disgusting. I work hard and I pay 10 grand for my medical for just me and my 2 kids. Why should my tax money be used to prop up a corrupt company and a dozen corrupt unions without my say in the matter? I’ll tell you why, it’s because the politicians giving our tax money away to the big US Automakers are getting cash kickbacks, or votes, or deals. FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL ! These politicians are all getting the payola to break the backs of hard working American taxpayers without us getting a chance to vote on it.

Cash for Clunkers should be a crime. It’s nothing short of Totally Absurd. And I guess it’s an ABSURD LAW at this point. It’s so ridiculous, it does not even require alternate or clean energy cars like HYBRIDS. That’s becasue it’s a crime happening before our eyes to prop up a corrupt industry that has been robbing America blind for decades.

Make gas 7 bucks a gallon. Give huge tax breaks for clean alternate energy. Get rid of corn based Ethanol – it costs 7 times the cost to make it as other clean fuels. Get wise America. Lets roll up our sleeves and duke it out with these corrupt politicians. Cash for Clunkers is TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION. Follow the money trail… every single one of the politicians involved is profiting illegally or in the form of buying union votes with our hard earned cash.

H.R.2835 – Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act – Absurd or Not ?

I see 2.7 million Americans in jail – mostly for drugs – mostly for marijuana, while at the same time the current and last 2 Presidents were former marijuana users. In fact there are over 100 MILLION Americans that have used or tried pot at least once in their lifetime. The almost unbelievable and utterly backward legal treatment in the United States against marijuana fostered corruption in our courts, our police forces, and the private prison system who all make up the main benefactors for the absurd anti-marijuana laws. I am not normally a fan of Barney Frank in all his efforts, but I have to stand up and applaud his work on H.R. 2835. Congratulations Mr. Frank and thank you Sir !! This is long overdue. The Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act is an Absurd NOT law and this nation needs it if we are going to reform bad thinking and bad policies that actually foster corruption.

When the Prosecutor Gets Charged

What happens when a distinguished Prosecutor with 30 years of practicing the law, having gone after hundreds of people charged with DUI, gets charged with DUI himself? We are about to find out… the HARD way.  The 4 term elected Chief Prosecutor for South Carolina’s Richland and Kershaw counties Barney Giese was popped by Charleston SC cops while driving in Charleston on June 29, 2009.

According “The State – South Carolina’s Homepage” http://www.thestate.com/local/story/857689.html, Barney spent 11 hours “in the Pokey” before he was released on bail. He also failed 3 out of 4 breath tests having refused to submit to the first. He automatically lost his privilege to drive a car for 6 months becasue of the first refusal.

People that have known him for decades are shocked and the story is that he seriously was NOT a known drinker and a driver. South Carolina’s renowned Columbia criminal defense attorney Jack B. Swerling was quoted as saying “he’s one of the best prosecutors I’ve ever known”, “has an incredible sense of integrity and sense of justice”, “I just don’t accept it. I just don’t believe it.” As a Columbia criminal attorney for more than 30 years, Jack Swerling mentioned some irregularities in the case Charleston Police put together on Barney including no videotape of the DUI scene which has been a standard requirement for quite a while.

Because it’s particularly shocking that a Prosecutor that put hundreds of men and women behind bars for DUI is facing the same punishment, although for a first offense there is almost no possibility he will serve time. Will this have a negative impact on his ability to prosecute other DUI offenders? Some say yes and some say no but its definately a heated controversy.

Will Sotomayor Ever Shake the “Wise Latina Woman” Thing ??

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was quoted as saying:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” **

Another famous quote from Sonia in direct reference to the ethnic background and gender of a judge “may and will make a difference in our judging.”**

The controversy and the questions regarding her confirmation to replace Justice David Souter are all politics and a matter of formality at this point. Her record as a federal judge indicates no outward bias of any kind. She’s apparently a good judge with an excellent track record and her remarks in those instances were unfortunate.

Face the facts:

• She’s a Democratic Party nominee.
• The President picked her himself.
• She grew up in the Bronx in a barely above poverty level environment, and her Papi died when she was a little girl – only 9 years old. (Being partially from da Bronix myself some of us actually embrace the small cultural differences that make us unique but still from the same family of New Yorkers. We  speak 132 languages every day here).
• Her record as a judge is impeccable, and it’s been intensely scrutinized.
• The nature of American politics demand that Republicans take shots at Democratic nominations to the Supreme Court and the Dems naturally must take shots at the Republican nominees when it’s their turn.
• Nothing in her background has surfaced that would automatically derail her from confirmation.
• She is 99% sure to be confirmed IMHO.

Were those statements racist? Well, probably a little bit, so the answer is “yes”.

Are they minor and more of a “foot in the mouth” experience that was never manifested in one of her court decisions in the past”. The answer is “yes”, they were minor and not reflective of any of her work.

Is she really a Latina racist who’s hell bent on reforming laws to favor women or Spanish or any other category people can be classified in? The answer is “No, probably not”. (Although it’s probable that she might fantasize about it a little bit. It’s doubtful she would ever actually allow bias to creep into a bench decision).

It is ABSURD to beat this issue again and again in front of the whole world? My vote is ABSURD NOT !! We need to investigate every crack in the dam thoroughly. It’s necessary to check everything we can and have confidence in our nation’s top judges.

In answer to the title of this post, I don’t think she’ll ever shake the “wise Latina woman” thing no matter where she goes for the rest of her life…. but it will die down to hardly a whisper someday, and it won’t prevent her confirmation.

** http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/15judge.html

Another ABSURD Supreme Court Ruling regarding DNA testing

I just read an Associated Press article titled: Court finds convicts have no right to test DNA

Even though there have been 232 reversals of bogus convictions in violent crimes (rape and murder mostly) in this country because of DNA testing  – the Republican heavy Supreme Court just ruled the federal “Law” in this country does not provide someone convicted of a crime the right to look at his own DNA evidence !!!

I guess it’s a “sort of moot point” because 46 or 47 states already have their own DNA laws on the books that allow for or require DNA test results. It’s just like having Arnold Schwarzenegger appear in several documentary movies smoking pot for real,  and then presiding over a state with hundreds of thousands of people in prison. Many inmates in California prisons are there for federal pot crimes although in California in many cases it’s use and distribution is legal under the law, and the process is taxed federally, and by the state.

I have to say clearly I believe the Supreme Court twisted and manipulated the true intent of the law which I would have thought was to find the truth about the perpetrators of violent crimes. This is a pathetic decision denying DNA evidence in a particularly brutal rape case. It is absolutely an ABSURD law.

The United States has executed dozens of innocent people who were convicted lock stock and barrel by corrupt lawyers, witnesses, and judges. In every case where a man was murdered this way I believe every civil employee should be terminated without benefits from the cops that did the bogus arrests to the judges that did the conviction. When prosecutors are found to have withheld information as is often the case, they should have a minimum sentence of 10 years in the general pop with other criminals.

In a country where “OJ Law” rules, this decision is unfortunately not surprising, even though it is enough to make a good man get sick to his stomach reading about it.

Military Divorce and the LAW

Sometimes marriages survive the pressures of military life splendidly. But in general there is usually more pressure on a military marriage than on their counterpart marriages in the civilian world. There are normally higher divorce rates in the military and in particular when there are long overseas deployments. I consulted the office of Virginia Military Divorce Attorney attorney and former US Army Officer MK Murphy before writing this story.

A divorce where one person is actually in the military can have an interesting difference from a regular cilivian divorce in that the person who is in the military falls under a category of law known as the UCMJ.  The Uniform Code of Military Justice is a set of laws that pertain to active duty US Servicemen and Servicewomen.

Sometimes a military spouce can be punished for adultery under the UCMJ’s Article 134 or General Misconduct Clause. In order to meet the guidelines for this clause, the military person has to:

1. be proven to have committed a physical act
2. one or both parties to the act were married at the time to another person and
3. that the act of adultery had a negative impact on the military such as fraternization between officers and enlisted or other such conduct unbecoming an officer.

A Virginia military divorce lawyer rarely has to deal with the Article 134 UCMJ possibility during a divorce proceeding. That is mainly because it is hard to prove the physical act or there is really no “discredit to the armed forced” that the situation created. There are special cases where this is a factor, but it usually leads to the officer having to resign and loose military benefits rather than any time in prison.

One case that got a lot of attention was the case of Air Force B-52 pilot Lt Kelly Flynn. She had an affair with a civilian who was married at the time to an enlisted Air Force servicewoman at the same base. With all the negative publicity and all the consternation within the ranks, this case did indeed lead to an apparent discredit to the armed forces and whatever the level of proof obtained regarding the other 2 requirements for Article 134 in this case, Lt. Flynn did resign and leave the service.

Is military punishment for adultery absurd? Not at all in my opinion as there are indeed rare cases where there should be a law on the books to protect the armed service from the negative impacts that can result. Especially in the case where the chain of command or chain of leadership is hurt or tarnished. That could lead to a breakdown in functioning.

Is it fair to restrict the number of Liquor Licenses?

I was eating in my favorite New Jersey Diner on Easter with my kids. I’ve known the owner of Tiffany Diner in Ramsey, NJ for maybe 20 years now. Harry still cooks maybe 6 or sometimes 7 days a week and to be honest, I’m sure he loves almost every minute of it.

In the town of Ramsey, the Tiffany Diner is like an institution with around 40 years of memories from every person who has ever lived there. The place stands out among Bergen County Restaurants for a couple reasons. It was the first non Paterson Styled New Jersey Diner in Northern Bergen County and as such it was always filled with customers 24 hours a day during the 70’s and 80’s.When the diner opened in 1972 there were few really excellent restaurants in the area so Tiffany Diner was “THE” place to go for nearly every family or social event. Check out their New Jersey Diner Food Gallery for a jaw dropping and mouth watering look at part of their menu.

But now there are at least 25 restaurants in the town of Ramsey alone, and with T.G.I.F.’s and Houlihans and Chilies and 9 Chinese Restaurants and 10 Pizza places, the competition is severe and traditional diners don’t get the volume of business they used to faced with the huge competition. But there is another factor and that brings up the point of this article.

Ramsey New Jersey limits the number of Liquor Licenses to 5 in the Borough. That means the value of these Liquor Licenses is probably around half a million dollars or more – that is if you can get one. So a law restricting Liquor Licenses made in the 1960’s is hurting the smaller family owned restaurants in favor of the corporate mega chain restaurants who can afford to plow down the smaller places to put up a parking lot. In my professional opinion, this is an ABSURD LAW. The town should offer a limited license to small volume operators like the diners. They could do that without hurting the big places that have a huge bar business by restricting the Diner Type operators to 2 drinks max per customer.

Well anyway the world is changing fast and as we look at laws that restrict the number of Liquor Licenses we also have to look at the bigger picture. Are the big bars serving an average of more than 1 drink per hour to their customers? You better believe it. That means almost by default the people that go there to do some “serious drinking” are getting behind the wheel of their car over the legal limit for alcohol consumption. And who’s fault is that? The Police? The District Attorney? Let’s investigate that with the next post and think about whether it’s absurd or NOT !!

Thank You For Visiting – Have a great day !!!

73 AIG Bonuses over a Million Bucks each ?

Absurd. This is the first article I have ever commented on that I made a judgement in the first word. But there it is. For Federal Regulators to allow these complex and incredibly dangerous financial hustles was bad, really bad. To bail the perpetrators out is still undecided… it may have been a mistake or it may have been prudent. We will not know for a few years. But to allow 165 million dollars in guaranteed bonuses while AIG is the largest single recipient of bailout funding is 100% ABSURD.

Adding insult to injury, the AIG spokesman told reporters that they were not going to release the names of the millionaires because they would be targets for violence. That’s interesting. I wonder who was going to go after them? Taxpayers? Getting more absurd by the minute there are almost 10 execs getting more than 4 million a piece for last years hard work. And 22 execs are getting more than 2 million a piece.

When I was an Officer at a number of Wall Street financial firms we were members of a “bonus pool”. That is to say if the company was profitable, we all got a bonus, and our bosses divided up the bonus pool based on individual performance. For the US Government to allow a guaranteed bonus system to prevail knowing well that AIG was going to get the biggest bailout of them all is beyond reason. To say these people are necessary to unwind their complicated financial schemes is also totally absurd. Like they are the only rats that know where the cheese is hidden?

Is the Phelps Investigation Going Too Far?

Michael Phelps made world wide headlines in November 2008 when cell phone photos surfaced showing him apparently using a pot pipe.  Since then the Columbia South Carolina Sheriff’s Department has arrested 8 people associated with the incident… asked them all kinds of questions about Phelps… but they have not arrested Phelps himself.  And with the maximum charges that appear to be possible being a misdemeanor, it’s starting to seem like the Sheriff Mr. Leon Lott might be going too far.  He seems to be spending an inordinate amount of the tax payer’s money and the valuable time of the investigators and other staff in his department on this investigation.

Forget about the fact that our current President of the United States and the last 2 Presidents were all admitted “users” at one time or another during their youth, the media frenzy surrounding this case was HUGE. Is it possible the Sherrif is using that to get favorable media attention for himself?

Columbia SC criminal defense lawyer Jack Swerling has been quoted in numerous national media sources during the last 4 months and I picked this up from “The Liberty Papers”:

”The efforts that are being made here are unlike anything I’ve ever seen before,” said Jack Swerling, a defense attorney in South Carolina. ”I know Leon Lott, I know him to be an honorable guy. I’ve known him for 30 something years. But the efforts here are extraordinary on simple possession cases.”

http://www.thelibertypapers.org/2009/02/13/leave-michael-phelps-alone/

So if our President can stand up and admit it… and it did not prevent him from getting elected President… is it getting a little ABSURD that the Sheriff in Columbia SC is spending so much tax payer money on this thing? Should we just go ahead and get ready to vote for Phelps for President?

Mr. Obama was quoted in the Herald Tribune when he was a Senator on the campaign trail:

For one thing, he said, “When I was a kid, I inhaled.”

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/24/news/dems.php

Bye Bye Bernie !!

Occasionally we get to write about an ABSURD NOT law. This one put Bernard Madoff behind bars for 150 years starting yesterday. So after destroying or at least injuring the lives of thousands of otherwise innocent human beings, we finally have a jailed perp and it feels good to see some level of justice. Now I hope the prosecutors “do the right thing” and get back as much as they can for the personal investors and then the institutional investors. I hope they go after his assets next.

Anyway, here is a little tidbit I found on the Smoking Gun… a copy of his guilty plea.

So long Bernie. By the way, lets talk about your acomplices in this long carefully conceived plan.  I think misery deserves company.