Are your ready for your Tea Party?

Every once in a while an event or movement catches on with the public and creates a life of its own. Such is the case with the Tax Day Tea Party Movement.

Originally a local grassroots movement to rally against the overburden of taxes has turned into a national movement to take place this Wednesday, April 15th. There are hundreds of events planned all over the country. Like many movements of the past this is the American Grassroots at its best. individuals who rarely, if ever, get involved in the political process make their opinions known. A rally against the "system" and the injustices long endured. Many people come away feeling empowered like never before.

Unfortunately, for many it also becomes proof positive the system is broke and the individual truly has very little input. While the event is enjoyed little happens afterwards. After the party's over there is a "what's next?" feeling left unanswered.

Having witnessed such events over the years I believe this syndrome is the byproduct of little organization or long term vision.

WHAT HAPPENS ON APRIL 16TH?

I offer the following:

1 - Should the local rallies be successful on a local basis events should immediately be planned to be held at the state capitols of each state participating. The time frame should be 30 - 60 days from April 15th. Those who attended will likely have the motivation to follow through with a more centralized rally. Organisers must keep its' members excited and ready for the nest step.
2 - The Tea Party Movement started out by a few friends with an idea and little or no organization. Now it's time to organize. Without some semblance of leadership and organization there is danger of interest fizzling out. While I don't advocate allowing a political party (namely the GOP) take control of things a centralized organization must be implemented.

While remaining "grassroots" and completely without structure sounds like a good concept practically it's a recipe for extinction.

So, here I am preparing to attend a Texas Tea Party in Dallas on Wednesday. I anticipate several thousand at just this one event. Good things will happen. For however a brief of time the people's voice will be heard. I only hope that this concept can continue forward and foster true change. Good luck!

Locations across Texas

Happy birthday Bill of Rights

Did you know? There was a motion at the original Constitutional Convention to include a Bill of Rights in the original document, but the idea was rejected without debate by the delegates.

CLICK HERE

James Oddo explanation

Thank you for defending America!!!

James Oddo - Get the f*** out of my office

What I Like About Texas (new)

Dispatches - Unholy War (Part 2 of 5)

Dispatches - Unholy War (Part 1 of 5)

A Short Course in Brain Surgery

Fred Thompon Announces his Candidacy for President

fred thompson, president,

FedEx vs. Government Bureaucracy -- Newt Gingrich

Yes, Newt is right!

I WANNA BE LIKE OSAMA

Harry Potter - Order of the Pheonix

Well, as a die-hard Potter fan I went to see the new Harry Potter movie. As a die-hard Potter fan I have mixed feelings regarding the movie.

Until Order of the Pheonix (OP) the movies have tracked fairly close to the books. This all changed with OP. I'm not certain this is due to the complexity of the book or the producers/directors just felt like being creative. Since J.K. Rowling is supposed to have a lot of creative control over the movies it's probably the former. However, it's dissapointing in some aspects.

Now, with that said, as a stand alone movie it wasn't bad. True, a little darker than the other previous HP movies. But the books/movies are growing in maturity with her (JKR) audience.

Another surprise I had was that the theatre wasn't as full as expected.

Prosecution for Profit (Part 2)

In keeping with the below post regarding "Government Sanctioned Tort Actions".

Prosecution for Profit
Wall Street Journal, July 5, 2007



When President Bush issued an executive order in May barring federal agencies from hiring private lawyers on a contingency fee basis, the press corps yawned. But Mr. Bush was getting out ahead of one of the bigger legal battles now raging across the country: prosecutorial neutrality.

America's legal system is based on the idea that government officials act on behalf of the public interest, not for personal profit. That's why we don't pay policemen per arrest, judges a percentage of damages they award, or prosecutors a bounty for each conviction. Yet public officials are increasingly violating this ethic by outsourcing legal work to tort lawyers who profit from prosecuting public claims.

The practice developed in the 1990s, when state Attorneys General promised trial lawyers a percentage (a contingency) of any settlement they could beat out of Big Tobacco, and it has since spread like bird flu. In Rhode Island and California, prosecutors have tried to give plaintiff firms a cut of judgments against lead paint makers. Oklahoma wants to reward private attorneys for suing poultry companies. Mississippi AG Jim Hood has signed contingency deals in securities cases.

The practice has become a lucrative new tort business, to the point that plaintiffs attorneys are now recommending lawsuits to state officials. In some instances, governments simply target an industry, and then let the tort lawyers decide whom to sue and on what grounds. The tort lawyers then turn around and send a portion of their profits back to the politicians in the form of campaign contributions.

The good news is that defendant companies are starting to fight back in court -- and are winning. The Superior Court of California in April ruled that the county of Santa Clara could not pay contingency fees to private attorneys -- in this case, tort lawyer giants Thornton & Naumes and Motley Rice -- who were suing lead-paint manufacturers on behalf of the government. The county had argued that since government retained "oversight" of the attorneys, there was no problem.

Judge Jack Komar pointed out the impossibility of determining how much control a government attorney must exercise to make a contingency fee deal legitimate. He cited the California Supreme Court's 1985 Clancy decision, which noted that a contingency arrangement "is antithetical to the standard of neutrality that an attorney representing the government must meet."

Unfortunately, California's high court is one of the few to have addressed such fee agreements. Some defendants have noted the 1927 Supreme Court decision in Tumey v. Ohio, which barred paying government officials a bounty for arrests and convictions during Prohibition. The Rhode Island Supreme Court last year seemed intrigued by this argument, and returned a lawsuit over contingencies to a lower court for more consideration. Still, prosecutors are busy dreaming up reasons why Tumey doesn't apply, and the contingency issue is probably destined for the Supreme Court. In the meantime, some states are moving to bar these contracts, or make them more transparent.

Government prosecutors claim they need outside lawyers because they lack the money and resources for big suits. But surely if the tort bar is as interested in "public justice" as it professes, it'll work by the hour. And if prosecutors feel underfunded, they can always request more money from the state legislatures that control the purse strings. Budgetary oversight is in fact one check on prosecutorial excess.

In the 1935 Berger case, the Supreme Court noted the obligation of a prosecutor "is not that it shall win a case, but that justice should be done." Sometimes that means foregoing a suit, or balancing litigation with other public policy goals. Such concepts aren't priorities for trial lawyers, whose main goal is to hit the financial jackpot. The U.S. justice system is frayed enough without making trial lawyers the deputized vigilantes of public prosecutors.

When is it good for a monopoly to be allowed to function and for how long?

An interesting topic came up while discussing the "state sanction tort actions" post (beow).

When is it good for a monopoly to be allowed to function and for how long?

Throughout US history monopolies have been allowed to function in the early stages of an industry with the governemt ultimately breaking it up upon maturity.

The rapid advance of the computer industry might not have occrred (as quickly) had Microsoft not had (and still has)essentially a monopoly. However, at what time should that monopoly be broken up? Or will market forces take care of the problem without government intervention?

Mr. Pitts say it all........

Leonard Pitts: Not because he's black

Washington comes across as someone trying to use his race as a get-out-of-jail-free card
08:37 AM CDT on Saturday, July 7, 2007


My wife and I have a running joke.

Say the doctor informs me he's going to administer some test that will hurt like heck. When he leaves the room, I whisper to Marilyn: "You know why he's doing it, don't you? It's because I'm black."

It is, of course, a joke with a point. Namely, that some black folks can read race into anything. Some of us keep indignation in our hip pockets and conspiracy on speed dial.

But we'll get back to Isaiah Washington in a moment. First, the obvious disclaimer: I am not saying race is never the reason bad things happen. Au contraire. One often gets pulled over because one is black. One often gets substandard health care because one is black. One often fails to get the job because one is black.

Worse, because those in charge of pulling people over, giving health care or making hiring decisions are seldom clear and candid that race is their reason, it's easy to become paranoid, to believe everything is race until proven otherwise. So to be black is often to walk a tightrope above a snakepit of suspicions, both founded and un.

Apparently, Mr. Washington has fallen, and he can't get up.

He is, you will recall, the black actor from Grey's Anatomy who used an anti-gay slur during a fight with a cast mate. Months later, backstage at the Golden Globes, he used the word again in denying he had used it the first time. In the ensuing uproar, Mr. Washington apologized, entered what he calls an "executive counseling program" and filmed a public service announcement promoting tolerance. Last month, after all that, he was fired.

Frankly, it was cheesy of his bosses to wait so long. Why let the man jump through so many hoops just to give him the ax at the end?

But what sympathy you might have for Mr. Washington is undercut by the fact that he has gone on a PR offensive to talk about a firing that he believes happened, at least in part, because he is black.

As he told Newsweek: "Well, it didn't help me on the set that I was a black man who wasn't a mush-mouth Negro walking around with his head in his hands all the time. I didn't speak like I'd just left the plantation, and that can be a problem for people sometime. I had a person in human resources tell me after this thing played out that 'some people' were afraid of me around the studio. I asked her, 'Why, because I'm a 6-foot-1 black man with dark skin and who doesn't go around saying 'Yessah, massa sir' and 'No sir, massa' to everyone?' "

Which brings us to two truths that may seem contradictory but aren't: One, there is epidemic racism in this country. Two, you can find racism where it does not exist.

Forgive me, but Mr. Washington seems far more illustrative of the second axiom than the first.

Mr. Washington – like many of us, black and otherwise – seems knee-jerk where race is concerned. I mean, is it so hard to believe people feared him because they thought he was a volatile jerk? Or that a white actor of middling fame who disrupted his workplace would have also been fired? In his rush to make himself a martyr, Mr. Washington fails to consider these and other obvious questions.

He comes across as one of those brothers the running joke is meant to mock – the kind for whom race is a get-out-of-jail-free card. Unfortunately, like the boy who cried wolf, such people trivialize what is serious and give others license to do the same.

He lost his job for saying an awful thing. I wish he'd stop whining and deal with that.

Step 1 is to realize that black is not an excuse.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald. His e-mail address is lpitts@miamiherald.com.

Government Sanctioned Tort Actions: Did the country not learn something from Texas?

According to the National Center for Policy Analysis (www.ncpa.org) the trend of states hiring tort specialist to "go after" potential wrong do'ers/industries is a growing. Apparently, nobody learned from the tobacco settlement fiasco that hit Texas a few years back. A fiasco that cost a few politicians their career and some jail time.


While I am a large proponent of privitization of many services government provides; I don't believe justice should be one of them. Simply put, there's the potential for way too much money to be made to keep everyone honest.

REIGNING IN THE TORT VIGILANTES

America's legal system is based on the idea that government officials act on behalf of the public interest, not for personal profit. That's why we don't pay policemen per arrest, judges a percentage of damages they award, or prosecutors a bounty for each conviction. Yet public officials are increasingly violating this ethic by outsourcing legal work to tort lawyers who profit from prosecuting public claims, says the Wall Street Journal.

The practice developed in the 1990s, when state Attorneys General promised trial lawyers a percentage (a contingency) of any settlement they could beat out of Big Tobacco; it has since spread like bird flu.
In Rhode Island and California, prosecutors have tried to give plaintiff firms a cut of judgments against lead paint makers.
Oklahoma wants to reward private attorneys for suing poultry companies.
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood has signed contingency deals in securities cases.
The practice has become a lucrative new tort business, to the point that plaintiffs attorneys are now recommending lawsuits to state officials, says the Journal:

In some instances, governments simply target an industry, and then let the tort lawyers decide whom to sue and on what grounds.
The tort lawyers then turn around and send a portion of their profits back to the politicians in the form of campaign contributions.
In the 1935 Berger case, the Supreme Court noted the obligation of a prosecutor "is not that it shall win a case, but that justice should be done." Sometimes that means foregoing a suit, or balancing litigation with other public policy goals. Such concepts aren't priorities for trial lawyers, whose main goal is to hit the financial jackpot. The U.S. justice system is frayed enough without making trial lawyers the deputized vigilantes of public prosecutors, says the Journal.

Source: Editorial, "Prosecution for Profit," Wall Street Journal, July 5, 2007.

For text:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118359933548957734.html

For more on Legal Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=35

U.S. SUPREME COURT: Reverse Discrimination is Still Discrimination

Today in a 5-4 vote the Supreme Court ruled that school districts that use race as a basis for location placement is unconstitutional. Simply put, discrimination is still discrimination and must not be used to "fix" the ills of the world.....



Article published Jun 28, 2007
Supreme Court rules against race quotas

June 28, 2007


ASSOCIATED PRESS - WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled today that schools cannot take steps to assure racially mixed student populations, dealing a blow to so-called "affirmative action" programs.

In the 5-4 ruling, the high court ruled in favor of parents who were battling the criteria used to admit students to schools in two cities where whites and blacks live in mostly segregated neighborhoods.

The schools had argued that students should be assigned to different facilities, sometimes far from home, to ensure racial diversity.

"Simply because the school districts may seek a worthy goal doesn't mean that they are free to discriminate on the basis of race to achieve it," Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority decision.