August 17, 2010
August 16, 2010
August 15, 2010
Loser: My ignominious defeat in small claims court
There are many stories to tell in this naked city and I am determined to tell them all. Here’s one of those stories — about my recent resounding defeat in small claims court.
“If you can’t even win a case in small claims court, then you must really be a loser,” a small (but very mean) voice inside my brain keeps repeating. Hey, that’s me — the one with the big “L” on my forehead.
Here’s the story. I loaned someone some money. She promised to pay me back but then later claimed that she had never made such a promise. I took her to small claims court. She married a fancy-pants lawyer. Her new fancy-pants lawyer/husband took over the case. “Can he DO that?” I asked. Apparently he can.
Apparently there’s a law that says that a husband can substitute in for a wife — with the judge’s permission. But later, when I was reading the minutes of my trial, it didn’t say anything about the judge having approved the substitution of the fancy-pants attorney/husband in place of the missing defendant. It didn’t even mention the fancy-pants husband at all.
By law, the judge has to approve this substitution — and, according to the trial’s minutes, she didn’t. But where the freak can I go to appeal this, er, oversight? Nowhere. From what I have been told, plaintiffs have no right to appeal a small claims court decision. Ever. Sorry, no Supreme Court rulings for us.
Meanwhile, back in the courtroom, the dude in the fancy suit wiped the floor with me — by offering his infamous “Judge Judy” defense. Apparently, according to the fancy-pants lawyer-husband, the main purpose of me filing this claim was to allow me to get on the Judge Judy show! How can one even begin to fight a charge as bizarre as that one?
But, sadly, our small claims court judge bought the missing defendant’s husband’s whole package — fancy suit, big words, irrelevant exhibits and all. “Claim of plaintiff denied.” And now I’m a loser.
I did, however, learn one very important thing from this trial — which I would like to pass on to all the rest of you big-time fancy-pants lawyers out there. Whenever you are arguing a case and you really really want to win it, just offer up the “Judge Judy” defense. Apparently it works like a charm.
For instance, if that recent California anti-Proposition 8 decision, the one that now makes gay marriages in California legal, ever gets appealed before the Supreme Court, all that the attorneys speaking against the repeal verdict have to do is to say, “But Your Honors, you can clearly see here that these Californians are only trying to repeal Prop. 8 so that they can get on Judge Judy!”
Then you’ll win your case for sure.
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August 14, 2010
August 13, 2010
August 11, 2010
August 10, 2010
Today’s Quote: Revealing the True Class Differences in America
And it’s no doubt gotten worse since this was written in 1984 — just look at the shabby way the heroic workers who became ill from Ground Zero have been treated:
“Every year 100,000 workers are killed or die of work-related accidents or disease; 400,000 are disabled; 6 million are hurt at work. In The Working-Class Majority (1974), Andrew Levison says, ‘All the clichés and pleasant notions of how the old class divisions…have disappeared are exposed as hollow phrases by the simple fact that American workers must accept serious injury and even death as part of their daily reality while the middle class does not.’ And he goes on:
‘Imagine the universal outcry that would occur if every year several corporate headquarters routinely collapsed like mines, crushing sixty or seventy executives. Or suppose that all the banks were filled with an invisible noxious dust that constantly produced cancer in the managers, clerks, and tellers. Finally, try to imagine the horror…if thousands of university professors were deafened every year or lost fingers, hands, sometimes eyes, while on their jobs.’”
– Paul Fussell, from his book “Class,” Ballantine Books (1984).
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Holding onto eroding Houma bayous: Harder than holding greased pigs?
In March of 2006, my son Joe participated in the American Indian Movement’s Sacred Run, traveling from San Francisco to Washington DC on foot — and I joined him for the New Orleans leg of the journey. He ran. I drove.
Joe ran through the Ninth Ward and he ran through the bayous. I drove behind him through both, getting a windshield tour of Katrina’s incredible destruction. Following along behind Joe in my car, I saw the Katrina damage up close. “You think the outsides of the houses look bad?” someone in the Ninth Ward told me. “You should see the insides.”
For several nights, the runners and the rest of us camped out in the back yard of the chief of the United Houma Nation, an organization formed by a Native American tribe that has lived in Louisiana’s southern bayous for possibly a thousand years. Houmas were definitely living in these bayous back in 1682, when French explorer Rene-Robert de La Salle passed through. Plus I got a “United Houma Nation” T-shirt from the chief herself and now I wear it every single time that I fly in an airplane. Call me superstitious, but it has definitely brought me good luck — I’ve never crashed yet. Just as long as I keep wearing my United Houma Nation T-shirt, I’ll be safe!
Anyway, after we ran/drove through the Ninth Ward, we then ran/drove through various bayous south of New Orleans and we ended up at the very tip of the bayous, in a small town on Isle de Jean Charles. This town’s major occupation in 2006 seemed to be trying to think up ways to prevent the Gulf of Mexico from drowning the town. The main road past the fire station was at sea level already. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like here during Katrina. All the houses were already built on stilts, ten feet off the ground. What could they do next? Build their homes 20 feet off the ground and swim to the store when they needed supplies? Things didn’t look hopeful for Isle de Jean Charles. Not at all.
“People don’t realize,” said one of the tribal elders I talked with there, “that we are losing more and more of these outer islands every single year. When I was a child we used to go fishing and crabbing over there, where there used to land. If I had a nickel for every crab we caught, I’d be rich! We ate better than any rich man. Fresh crab for dinner every day. We were poor but we lived well. A lot of that land is now under water. I miss those days.”
As of March 2006, this town at the end of the bayou was just barely holding on. “During a hurricane, this road is under four or five feet of water. If you don’t get out before it starts to blow, you just don’t get out. And being in one of these homes on stilts during a hurricane is like being in a washing machine during the spin cycle. Levees are being built to protect the nicer homes further inland, but nothing is being done to protect these outer areas — where we were born and raised.”
“Are the people living out here mainly Houmas?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Then we passed by a straw man hanging from a tree. Someone had put it up in the aftermath of Katrina. The sign around its neck read, “Help me!”
I asked the tribal elder about how he saw the future unfolding for Isle de Jean Charles. “We have several seers in our tribe,” he replied.
“And what do they say?”
“They just tell us to pray.”
The Houmas of Isle de Jean Charles were just barely holding on to their homes four years ago. I wonder how hard it is for them to hold onto their homes today, after the huge BP oil spill disaster. I bet that it’s like holding onto a greased pig.
And the eroding lives of the Houmas in the bayous of Louisiana could also be an analogy for the eroding lives of all Americans today — as inch by inch, town by town, the corporatists and militarists who own my country take over more and more of our land, our wealth and our rights. Soon we too will be lamenting the loss of our native lands and our traditional lifestyles.
But the Houmas are doing things and organizing and campaigning to try to save what is left of their beloved bayous. And what are most Americans doing? They are happily gulping down anti-depressants, watching Fox News and blaming all our troubles on welfare recipients and immigrants — NOT on the corporatists and militarists who are the ones who are actually eroding our lands — and greasing our pigs.
PS: Speaking of oil, Betty Soskin just sent me a video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM1syI0UA3Y, on how to solve California’s budget crisis — by getting oil companies who drill here actually start to pay their fair share of taxes, like they do in Texas and Alaska.
Let’s make this video go viral!
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August 9, 2010
August 7, 2010
Ginny Brown-Waite has invited everyone for dinner on the Gulf coast
This is unflippin’real! Here’s an email I received from FL GOP Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite. I wrote back and asked if those tar balls that are washing up on the Pensacola beaches are really whale turds. I’ll try to post a screen shot below…
Oil Spill Update | August 6, 2010
Dear Friends,
(Ginny and Ivan, from the National
Fish & Wildlife Service, discuss the
importance of keeping Crystal River
and Three Sisters oil free).
Without touching our shores, (emphasis added) the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has infringed on all of our lives. It has impacted our tourism, dampened our aquaculture industry, and threatened the wellbeing (sic) of our precious ecosystems.
(Ginny meets with local fishermen
at Hernando Beach to discuss the affect
the oil spill is having on the the local
seafood industry).
Over the last few weeks, I have met with many members of the aquaculture industry in our District: representatives from the National Fish & Wildlife Service up in Citrus County, shrimpers in Hernando County, and several small business owners from areas in between. I have seen firsthand that, at this point, our waters are clean and our seafood is safe. (emphasis added)
It is of the utmost importance that we work together to protect our natural resources. As a community we need to support our local industry and we should expect the same from our federal government and BP. Included in this mailer are a number of available resources designed to help you and your neighbors as we all work to persevere through this trying time. As always, my staff and I are here to offer assistance in any way that we can. Please do not hesitate to call my Brooksville office at 352-799-8354, or toll free, 1-866-GWAITE-5.
Sincerely,
Ginny Brown-Waite
Member of Congress
Hurricane Preparedness
The National Hurricane Centers predicts a busy hurricane season for much of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. In light of the ongoing situation in the Gulf of Mexico, I have been in touch with FEMA Administrator, Craig Fugate, to discuss his department’s hurricane preparedness plan and whether FEMA has incorporated scenarios that include the Deepwater Horizon oil spill into that plan. Given the Administrator’s previous experience as Director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, I have every confidence that, as long as he is given the necessary resources, he will meet the Gulf Coast’s needs during any cleanup effort. To read my letter to Administrator Fugate, go to my website.
Contact Information
Visit www.RestoretheGulf.gov for more details, including contact information for the following:
- U.S. Coastguard Joint Information Center
- Individual and Businesses Claims Line
- Register Your Boat to Assist with Response Effort
- Volunteer to help
- Wildlife Distress Hotline
- Environmental Hotline & Community Information
As always, if you need further assistance, please do not hesitate to call my office at 352-799-8354 or contact me via my website.
Are you kidding me? Millions of barrels of oil and millions of gallons of Corexit just disappeared!?! Thank God that Jesus is watching over the Gulf and miraculously cleaned it up…
Call Ginny Brown-Waite at 352-799-8354 or contact her via her website and ask her if she’d like to work together with you and discuss the situation in the Gulf of Mexico over a fresh Gulf seafood dinner in front of you for a photo op or a You Tube video.
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Ye Olde Scribe Presents: FAT Chance!
An actual news report Scribe heard described recent conclusions from the medical community that fat people raise our cancer rates because, they claim, being obese causes cancer. Since Scribe has noticed his whole life that only fat people get cancer, and only fat people get all the diseases and maladies that curse humanity, he would like to reveal other possible conclusions from all this obsession with perfecting humanity through diet and weight control. Well, “perfecting” everyone other than those who push such conclusions.
As we all know now the Black Plague was caused by fat people, and since many male Klansmen tend to be over weight the obvious conclusion is that racism and antisemitism is caused by being obese. So all you thin folks who helped lynch niggers and Jews: you’re forgiven. We owe you reparations. You obviously were under the EVIL spell of fat people.
(more…)
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Unemployment report for July worse than expected: Are American workers obsolete?
Author’s note: I have a better solution than the author who suggested emigrating. How about REALLY taking our country back…from the corporations that own it? How about, tar, feathers and a modern day version of the guillotine?
Excerpt:
On Friday the grim reality of more job losses for Americans was plastered across headlines. What makes this even more distressing is that this is occurring during what is supposed to be an economic recovery.
Approximately 131,000 jobs were lost in July and the unemployment rate remained stuck at 9.5 percent. Private sector hiring was at a modest 71,000, unable to offset the layoff of thousands of temporary census workers, other government employees and those who lost their jobs in the private sector last month.
Of course, the big story was that the jobs report affected stocks and the Dow Jones industrial index, not the millions of Americans that are out of work, even though stocks rebounded by the end of the day. After all, who in the corporate media really cares about middle class workers? It is becoming clear that the so-called economic recovery applies to Wall Street, not “Main Street.”
According to Newsweek, Main Street may not be adding jobs, but Wall Street went on a hiring binge. A recent study by the White House executive-compensation board reported that banks paid $1.58 billion in bonuses at the end of 2008, just days after receiving federal bailout money and dangerously close to the nexus of the financial collapse. These same banks do not want to lend to the shrinking middle class that bailed them out when they can make more money speculating on Wall Street.
Economists are still spinning fairy tales so they can celebrate bank bailouts. Unmentioned are the 40 million Americans that are still broke and out of work. The reality is that things have gotten progressively worse as foreclosures are still near their peak, bankruptcies are rising, wages are stuck or reversing backwards, and benefits that have been cut by companies may never be returned to their workers.
Why is that? I do not have any answers, but this piece written by Michael Lind, director of the Economic Growth Program at the New America Foundation, may provide some insight. I normally would excerpt this and provide commentary, but this one may be best to read in its entirety:
Are the American People Obsolete?
Have the American people outlived their usefulness to the rich minority in the United States? A number of trends suggest that the answer may be yes.
In every industrial democracy since the end of World War II, there has been a social contract between the few and the many. In return for receiving a disproportionate amount of the gains from economic growth in a capitalist economy, the rich paid a disproportionate percentage of the taxes needed for public goods and a safety net for the majority.
In North America and Europe, the economic elite agreed to this bargain because they needed ordinary people as consumers and soldiers. Without mass consumption, the factories in which the rich invested would grind to a halt. Without universal conscription in the world wars, and selective conscription during the Cold War, the U.S. and its allies might have failed to defeat totalitarian empires that would have created a world order hostile to a market economy.
Globalization has eliminated the first reason for the rich to continue supporting this bargain at the nation-state level, while the privatization of the military threatens the other rationale.
The offshoring of industrial production means that many American investors and corporate managers no longer need an American workforce in order to prosper. They can enjoy their stream of profits from factories in China while shutting down factories in the U.S. And if Chinese workers have the impertinence to demand higher wages, American corporations can find low-wage labor in other countries.
This marks a historic change in the relationship between capital and labor in the U.S. The robber barons of the late 19th century generally lived near the American working class and could be threatened by strikes and frightened by the prospect of revolution. But rioting Chinese workers are not going to burn down New York City or march on the Hamptons.
What about markets? Many U.S. multinationals that have transferred production to other countries continue to depend on an American mass market. But that, too, may be changing. American consumers are tapped out, and as long as they are paying down their debts from the bubble years, private household demand for goods and services will grow slowly at best in the United States. In the long run, the fastest-growing consumer markets, like the fastest-growing labor markets, may be found in China, India and other developing countries.
This, too, marks a dramatic change. As bad as they were, the robber barons depended on the continental U.S. market for their incomes. The financier J.P. Morgan was not so much an international banker as a kind of industrial capitalist, organizing American industrial corporations that depended on predominantly domestic markets. He didn’t make most of his money from investing in other countries.
In contrast, many of the highest-paid individuals on Wall Street have grown rich through activities that have little or no connection with the American economy. They can flourish even if the U.S. declines, as long as they can tap into growth in other regions of the world.
A very interesting point of view that is worthy of consideration. What do you think? Will Americans ever get fed up enough to do anything?
Read more, get links here: Madison Independent Examiner
August 6, 2010
Dear Madam Jane: My daughter has grown up to be trailer trash…
Well it looks like Madam Jane has now gotten into the advice-to-the-lovelorn business. She just showed me these new letters from her fans:
Dear Madam Jane:
My daughter has grown up to be trailer trash. What can I do? As she drove by me today in her car, she stuck her head out the window, gave me the finger and screeched “F*ck you!” like a barbarian. She also seems to lie at the drop of a hat. What can I do? Where did I go wrong?
Signed, Perturbed
****
Dear Perturbed:
First of all, it sounds like you are falsely maligning trailer trash here.
Second, you need to be aware that having children is the luck of the draw. You do the best you can to raise them and sometimes they just turn out bad, no matter what you do. Just forget about her and move on. The best revenge? Live a good life, do the best you can to make this world a better place, go to Heaven when you die, have a great funeral and don’t invite HER.
Signed, Madam Jane
****
Dear Madam Jane:
I am the president of a relatively large super-power and am being bossed around at work by corporate lobbyists and special-interest groups. In addition, my country looks like it might be going bankrupt in the near future. Either way, I am starting to worry that I might be losing my job. What should I do?
Signed, First Fired
****
Dear First Fired:
Perhaps it is time to either stand up for your principles or else start looking around for a new job. I hear that Haiti is looking for a new president. Can you rap? Also, be aware that as your country goes deeper and deeper into recession, it can no longer afford any more wars — no matter what the bosses tell you. Start trying to persuade people to downsize. Or else.
Signed, Madam Jane
******
If you want Madam Jane to give you good advice too, just treat her to a trip to Hawaii (or perhaps a jelly doughnut) and she will tell all!
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The Tattlesnake – Drunk or Stupid Edition
It’s time to play the popular home game ‘Drunk or Stupid?’ wherein contestants watch TV and decide from the public statements and general demeanor of various politicians and pundits if they are such persistent imbibers it has softened their corrupt little minds to the point of retardation, or if they are just naturally dumb as a result of ignorance and flea-bitten ideology. Of course these terms are not mutually exclusive; some of these miscreants are both drunk and stupid, but here we are gauging which mode predominates in their media appearances and what passes for journalistic efforts.
Names were picked at random from a tricorn hat while I was nursing a hangover and appear in no particular order; the obvious idiots – Beck, Limbaugh, et al – were ignored:
Joe Lieberman
Drunk. On MSNBC recently, he kept calling Gen. David Petraeus ‘Darren’ Petreaus and mispronounced, or Freudian slipped, Rolling Stone as ‘Ruling Stain.’ Of course, if you’re as crooked and backstabbing as Joe, you have to go heavy on the MD-20/20 just to stand shaving every morning.
Sarah Palin
Stupid, in the unique way only ex-beauty pageant contestants can manage. (Google Carrie Prejean and Miss Beverly Hills.) Hubby Todd is likely the drunk in the family, along with all the little Palin photo-ops, and who can blame them?
John Boehner
Drunk, with bells on. Catch the GOP Bonehead late enough in the afternoon and he’s liable to gush all sorts of hilarious head-slapping crapola while he stares bewildered and baggy-eyed at the camera, like a dripping-wet old Lothario who’s trying to think up a reasonable excuse on the spot for why he was caught skinny-dipping with the neighbor’s wife at dawn. No doubt he pours them down as he rests in his coff – uh — tanning bed every morning. There are suspicions he was born with the face he has now and had to be hidden in the attic until his body caught up to his weathered mug, but that’s just the loosest of rumors, no doubt spread by one of his many detractors.
Mitch McConnell
Drunk, on waning power. Yet another failure of modern plastic surgery, at least that form practiced in the hills of Kentucky. McConnell found the recipe for making lemons out of lemonade, and then, obviously, ate them all in one sitting. His wrinkles are embarrassed to be seen with his archaic ideas these days. Rand Paul, Mitch, Rand Paul…
Chris Matthews
Drunk, with an attractive excess of saliva and a penchant for spitting when he’s excited – and he’s usually excited about something. (Guests who sit across the table from him on his show are rumored to be armed with ample supplies of Kleenex and zinc cough drops.) He also has the drunk’s penchant for mispronouncing a word and then insisting his mistake is the correct pronunciation. (‘Chee-knee’ for Cheney, for instance.) After embarrassingly blubbering over the greatness of Junior Bush in the early part of the twenty-first century (“Americans just love this guy!”), and verbally ass-grabbing various young women on his show, as well as showing a streak of mean for Hillary Clinton that is inexplicable, he’s now steered to the left in order to boost his ratings, aping the success of Keith Olbermann, but his past follows him like the iron shackles that should be encircling the legs of the now literally heartless Dick Chee-knee.
David Gregory
Stupid. He’s an affable, ambitious yuppie who walks around with a permanently moistened index finger stuck in the air, or somewhere. ‘Dave’ thinks he’s posing a tough question when he asks John McCain to give his ‘real’ opinion of Sarah Palin. He’s perfect for NBC’s Sunday morning nod to subtle parody, ‘Meet the Press,’ but I detect a certain jealously of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert since they are allowed to present actual news segments more often than Gregory, and they don’t have to smooch pampered Washington posteriors to keep their jobs.
Candy Crowley
Stupid, but just barely, as it’s rumored she can put a double shot of 100-proof Georgia moonshine between her ample breasts and drink it without spilling a drop while doing a nude hula dance. Unfortunately, she has failed to display this prodigious talent in front of CNN’s cameras, preferring to bore her audience to tears with her tedious ‘Republican-pretending-to-be-liberal’ act. Candy is the Judy “What will we – I mean the Republicans — do to win New Hampshire?” Woodruff of her generation.
George ‘Eff’ Will
Drunk as a lord. Take him out to the ball game but make sure you have enough sturdy lifters to carry him home. Even stupidity couldn’t possibly explain some of his well-worded but gaseous and error-laden opinion pieces. The Doric columns of the Capitol building could be crumbling to dust before his eyes and ‘Mr. Will’ (as his friends call him) would write a column the next day praising the lasting architecture of Washington. A devoted acolyte of Ronald Reagan, George Eff never let ‘The Gipper’s’ sunny geriatric optimism infect him; he did, however, apparently contract Conservative Alzheimer’s from his late friend, a disease that has spread like a plague throughout the Republican Party. The symptoms are an inability to admit mistakes, a total disregard for historical fact, a whooshing sound in the ears from air continually filling a vacuum, and the necrophiliac’s tendency to romantically embrace ideological corpses.
Sharron Angle
Drunk, on ‘Situational Lemonade’ and the Lawd. It’s tempting to dismiss her as merely dumb, but that discounts the self-righteous zeal with which she has pursued her particular form of delusional right-wing fringe insanity. For that kind of breath-taking goofiness, you need more than just stupidity, you need God working with you in one of his many ethereal jokes. Karl Marx once said that religion is the opiate of the masses; in that regard, Sharron is a bust-out junkie without a hope of redemption.
David Broder
Not merely drunk, but embalmed. The Rufus T. Firefly ‘Dean’ of the Washington Press Gang hasn’t had an opinion that makes any sense in years, but he forges on, wallowing hog-like in alcohol-induced dementia while his snide colleagues cheer him on. The Old Fudd not only sees pink elephants, he celebrates them in print and tries to inveigle his readers into stumbling with him down Wet Brain Lane. Apparently the Washington Post has been afraid to tell him he’s been dead for a generation, at least as far as any political or cultural relevance is concerned.
Rand Paul
A board-certified drunk, but nearly as stupid. Only a dedicated souse could have this many half-baked opinions and his single-minded dedication to terrible ideas of the past that have proved unworkable. Besides, he hangs out at a plush Kentucky country club and apparently doesn’t play much golf. There is only one other thing white people who frequent country clubs do, and it’s usually shaken not stirred with a hint of vermouth and consumed by the pitcher. Remember, Rand, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life.
Wolf Blitzer
So drunk you could get snockered sucking on his beard. The Blitzkrieg’s premier contribution to modern journalism – that is to say, advertising the Empire — is knowing from US intelligence sources, prior to the Iraq invasion, that Saddam Hussein had no WMD (he admitted it on a small public radio station in D.C.), yet withholding that little nugget from his CNN audience and obediently flogging WMD fear on behalf his pals in the Bush-Cheney War Room. His other offenses against reason and veracity are too numerous to mention, but suffice it to say that he’s now probably in the Susan Powter range of daily consumption, necessary to rinse the bitter taste of corporate swill out of one’s mouth, and the image of the elephant feces-spattered circus clown from one’s mind.
© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.