NEA Petition to support educators, school support staff and workers collective bargaining rights

To sign the NEA petition go to Education Votes

We Pledge To Stand With America’s Educators, School Support Staff And Workers ~

We believe that educators, school support staff, nurses, firefighters and other middle class workers are essential to the well-being and safety of our families and communities.

We believe that working Americans need to use the strength of our numbers to fight for better wages and benefits, job security and safer workplaces.

We believe that the attacks happening in state after state are more of the same old partisan politics in which whatever party is in power tries to hurt the other side.

We believe that while we suffer, the same politicians support tax breaks for corporations and CEOs. Politicians know unions are a check on corporate power, so they are working to weaken or eliminate them.

To fulfill the promise of workers’ role in restoring balance to our economy, protecting and growing the middle class, and sustaining our communities, we urge governors and politicians to:

• Meet with educators and other public employees to find fair and sensible solutions that are in the best interests of the nation’s middle class, children and families.

• Stop the power struggle. We need balance that brings our leaders together to create quality jobs and solves the problems hurting middle class families across the country.

• Do their share by cutting their own high salaries, pensions and perks before asking frontline, middle class workers to sacrifice even more in wage and benefit cuts.

• Solve the problems of the middle class instead of giving even more power to the corporate CEOs who got them elected.

• Remember that public employees are our neighbors and friends. They are educators, firefighters, social workers, and police officers. They make a lot of sacrifices and make a big contribution. It’s important not to vilify them or to suggest that somehow they are the cause of state budget problems.

The fun begins: Fordham's new law school building

More pix and plans at Inside Fordham

The biological weapons fraud: Colin Powell demands answers over Curveball's WMD lies | The Guardian

Soldiers were ordered to be vaccinated 

against Saddam Hussein''s non-existent smallpox supply.  

Some developed endocarditis.

The Guardian reports that Gen. Colin Powell is mad at "Curveball", the aptly nick-named Iraqi fraudster who claimed - falsely he now admits - that he had personally witnessed Saddam Hussein's mobile biological warfare equipment. Powell went before the world at the U.N. and did "an Adlai Stevenson", as Christ Matthews calls it. Frankly I thought Powell was a willing shill.  The then Secretary of State said from the podium at the United Nations that we have

"firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails … The source was an eyewitness who supervised one of these facilities".

"An eyewitness" is awfully thin ground to launch a war: especially when Hans Blix's WMD hunters had found nothing and said they needed more time. But Powell was on board and there was no stopping the train George W. Bush had put in motion.

It is easy to forget that George W. Bush launched a program of massive smallpox vaccination without any evidence that any risk existed. Public health authorities were compliant with the Presidential command. Even though no risk had been identified. Fortunately few members of the public were sufficiently motivated by the non-existent threat to subject themselves to the low but unnecessary risks of the live virus vaccine. 

 Although almost no one dared to say aloud that the emperor had no clothes - that there was NO evidence of a smallpox threat - the program was the product of intense debate about risk and compensation and safety, as I detail in my interesting but utterly ignored study Reactions and Overreactions: Smallpox Vaccination, Complications and Compensation (2003).

Government covers over half of health care costs

More than half of health care costs are borne by government

h/t Ezra Klein via  Paul Krugman  If we want to be more effective in health care delivery we need to use the biggest wedge: government expenditures and controls.  And BTW - caps on victims of medical malpractice is an unjust way to do it.  And turning medical malpractice adjudications over to "experts" like doctors is undemocratic and untrustworthy.  Obama ought to rethink that sop to the right.

New York Courts Will Press for Legal Aid in Foreclosure Cases - NYTimes.com

Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman: everyone facing foreclosure should be represented

The civil Gideon movement!

New York Courts Will Press for Legal Aid in Foreclosure Cases - NYTimes.com

I'VE NEVER BEEN ON WELFARE

That's what respondents in this survey seem to be saying.  Tax breaks are not subsidies - unless it's somebody else's.  Then it's a loophole.  Social Security I paid for.  Medicare - I'm paying now.  Unemployment - they take that out of my paycheck.  Student loans - I had to pay back.  Mortgage interest deduction well...that's a tax deduction because I too deserved the American Dream...
Source:

Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenges of Social Policy Reform in the Obama Era

Prof. Suzanne Mettler, Cornell University, Dept. of Government

Lincoln the lawyer

from his notes for a law lecture (1850)

I am not an accomplished lawyer. I find quite as much material for a lecture in those points wherein I have failed, as in those wherein I have been moderately successful. The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for to-morrow which can be done to-day. Never let your correspondence fall behind. Whatever piece of business you have in hand, before stopping, do all the labor pertaining to it which can then be done. ....

Legal Ethics Forum: Lincoln the Lawyer

Lincoln's Gettysburg Address read by Johnny Cash, Colin Powell, Sam Waterston, et al.

Today is Lincoln's birthday.  THIS LINK will bring you to great Gettysburg address read by Johnny Cash , Colin Powell, Sam Waterston and others. 

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

When Democracy Weakens - NYTimes.com

Bob Herbert - the New York Times columnist - hasn't gotten the message that it is unfashionable to be concerned about the poor in what used to be called "the ghetto" but now doesn't get called anything at all.  What caught my eye was his mention of my late teacher - Howard Zinn of Boston University:

The Egyptians want to establish a viable democracy, and that’s a long, hard road. Americans are in the mind-bogglingly self-destructive process of letting a real democracy slip away.

 I had lunch with the historian Howard Zinn just a few weeks before he died in January 2010. He was chagrined about the state of affairs in the U.S. but not at all daunted. “If there is going to be change,” he said, “real change, it will have to work its way from the bottom up, from the people themselves.”

I thought of that as I watched the coverage of the ecstatic celebrations in the streets of Cairo.

When Democracy Weakens - NYTimes.com

Obama: The Egyptian People Have Spoken

February 11, 2011 Mubarak steps down and Obama welcomes the change.
"It was non-violence that bent the arc of history once more".

The year of the free-agent lawyer

The year of the free-agent lawyer by Jordan Furlong

Sobering thoughts for those of us at "national law schools" that focus on placement at large firms that seek premium fees from corporate clients and work on the pyramid structure with "top school, top grades" associates at the bottom of the pyramid topped by rain-making equity partners:

Law firms, for once, appear to be near the front of a business trend: the lawyer employment model is shifting away from full-time work in law firms towards temporary, contract, part-time, dispersed, and/or remote free-agent lawyers. And this should be no surprise, because legal work itself is making the same transition: from a model in which every task was performed (and billed) by full-time lawyers inside the law firm, to a model in which legal work is carried out by the most appropriate, efficient and cost-effective performer, regardless of status or location. Associate leverage ratios have declined from their historic mid-’00s highs and figure to stay lower for the foreseeable future; formerly bottom-heavy pyramid-shaped law firms have become and should remain noticeably slimmer.

It’s a rational development, and in the end, it will produce a legal labour model more aligned to marketplace reality than to lawyer traditions. But from now on, many lawyer jobs will be much less secure, and significantly lower-paying, than the last few decades have led us to expect. And it will give rise to a number of implications and repercussions:

• Law schools have not seen this trend coming and they have not adjusted their business model, which still pretends that huge tuition fees can be paid off quickly with a high-paying law job. At least three years’ worth of students have graduated into an entirely different market than the one on which their schools’ economic assumptions were based, and every year that schools fail to adjust adds another year of graduates with misaligned expectations. The long-term impact: a winnowing of the number of law schools and a general (although not universal) slump in revenue among the schools that survive.

• h/t John Steele - Legal Ethics Forum

Legal Services: Last Line of Defense - NJ Lawyer Editorial Board

I noted with alarm that the Republican Study Committee - representing two-thirds of that party’s Members of Congress - declared in the Spending Reduction Act of 2011 that they would eliminate federal funding of the Legal Services Corporation, whichis now $420 million/year. I understand that in negotiations extreme demands are made which one expects will be compromised. But on this item compromise is not called for: the proposal should be abandoned entirely. Fortunately the New Jersey Law Journal Editorial Board has added its voice. - GWC

Editorial:  Legal Services: Last Line of Defense  

New Jersey Law Journal

Copyright 2011 ALM Media, LLC.  Further reproduction without permission prohibited.

February 04, 2011

Rule of Professional Conduct 6.1 expresses the commitment of our Supreme Court and the profession to providing legal services at reduced or no fee to persons of limited means and to support organizations that provide such services. The federal government is compelled by the Sixth Amendment to provide competent counsel to criminal defendants. A "civil Gideon" movement has urged expansion of civil legal services to the poor.

Few have expressed that commitment more poignantly than the leader of the federal War on Poverty, R. Sargent Shriver, who passed away last month. In 1967, the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity optimistically addressed students at his alma mater, Yale Law School:

"This summer, more than 800 law students will volunteer their time to bring justice to the poor. They will be using the law as a social invention, not as a social prevention. Nothing like this was happening 20 or 30 years ago. I was in law school — here at Yale — and I know. In those days, no one was tougher or more grasping than the average law student. He was a young man on the rise, eager to go up the ladder two rungs at a time. But today, something has changed — 800 of these students are going into the slums for the summer or will be traveling the circuit in rural areas. These young law students are renegades from Easy Street. They don't care about how much money they make, but how much justice they can bring."

The movement that Shriver celebrated and supported with War on Poverty dollars was institutionalized in the Legal Services Corporation and its local affiliates. Federal funding and funding through the Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts program have been essential to supporting legal services. Unfortunately, the plunge in the real estate market has devastated Legal Services of New Jersey funding. In calendar year 2009, it received $8,085,228, compared to $25,718,614 in 2008 and $40,226,156 in 2007.

The statewide legal services system — consisting of LSNJ and six regional programs, serving all 21 counties through 23 offices — opened more than 69,000 cases in 2009, of which 1,700 were handled by volunteer attorneys. LSNJ reports that of the cases closed in 2009, 28 percent were housing cases, primarily tenant matters. Family law (divorce, separation, support and custody) accounted for 22 percent, while consumer law (bankruptcy, collection, warranties, unfair sales practices and disputes with public utilities) and income maintenance matters (Social Security, SSI, food stamps) accounted for 18 percent and 16 percent, respectively.

Just a couple of months ago, relying on an LSNJ report on irregularities in residential mortgage foreclosures, the state Supreme Court took various actions to make certain that foreclosure proceedings are adequately supported by knowledgeable affiants.

We believe that legal services carry on an important role and were therefore alarmed to hear of a proposal to eliminate all of its federal funding. We strongly oppose it.

The continued existence of a free and democratic society depends upon recognition of the concept that justice is based upon the rule of law grounded in respect for the dignity of the individual and the capacity of the individual through reason for enlightened self-government. The public will not respect that if they cannot access the levers of the law.

The need of members of the public for legal assistance is met only if they recognize their legal problems, appreciate the importance of seeking assistance, and are able to obtain the services of acceptable legal counsel. For that, legal services play a key role. However pressing disorder in our fiscal house may be, it is critical that we not back away from this historic commitment to a program that is already deeply wounded by economic forces beyond its control.

Suit Says Mets Owners ‘Consciously Disregarded’ Warning Signs About Madoff - NYTimes.com

To whom did the Wilpons's and partners owe a duty?

Suit Says Mets Owners ‘Consciously Disregarded’ Warning Signs About Madoff - NYTimes.com
Text of complaint by Trustee Picard

Legal Ethics Forum: Supreme Court Update

Legal Ethics Forum: Supreme Court Update

Eleven cases now before the Supreme Court on the law of lawyering. Renee Knake brings us up to date.

Legal Ethics Forum: Fifth Circuit Opinion on the Constitutionality of Louisianna Advertising Rules

Legal Ethics Forum: Fifth Circuit Opinion on the Constitutionality of Louisianna Advertising Rules

MDL Judge finds Kenneth Feinberg not a neutral but an agent of BP

Judge finds Feinberg not independent of BP | Reuters

District Judge Carl Barbier, who supervises the multi-district litigation arising from the BP Oil Spill has issued an order which requires that BP and attorney Kenneth Feinberg who administers the "Gulf Coast Claims Facility"

[r]efrain from referring to the GCCF, Ken Feinberg, or Feinberg Rozen, LLP (or their representatives), as “neutral” or completely “independent” from BP. It should be clearly disclosed in all communications, whether written or oral, that said parties are acting for and on behalf of BP in fulfilling its statutory obligations as the “responsible party” under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.

The order seems wise to me.  The agreement between the Feinberg firm and BP provides:

A. At the request of the White House and BP, Kenneth R. Feinberg (“Feinberg”),
acting through and as a partner of Feinberg Rozen, has established the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (“GCCF”) to independently administer and where appropriate settle and authorize the payment of certain Claims asserted against BP as a result of the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig and consequent spillage of oil into the Gulf of Mexico (the “Event”).
***
1. Services and compensation

Feinberg Rozen shall perform the claims administration and settlement services described in Exhibit A attached hereto (collectively, the “Services”) in accordance with the terms of this Agreement, including the exhibits hereto. In performing such Services, Feinberg Rozen agrees to make available the services of Feinberg.

(b) Feinberg Rozen shall perform the Services in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations and the Claims Protocols set forth in Exhibit B. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, Feinberg Rozen shall follow OPA as it operates and administers the GCCF.

(See the BP Horizon Spill documents page on my blog TortsToday)

Feinberg's settlement authority is limited by the terms of the OPA - and BP has the right to renew (or presumably to cancel for breach) a highly remunerative contract.

Although the agreement itself declares that there is no attorney client relationship - and the estimable Stephen Gillers says so too - I think “attorney for BP” is an accurate way to describe his role. He is settling claims and obtaining general releases. Of course claims servicing agents do similar things.

But Feinberg is an attorney of impeccable reputation. So when he claims to be “independent” that may carry persuasive weight with claimants. Certainly his authority as attorney and settlement agent appears to be broad - - so long as he stays within the parameters of the Oil Pollution Liability Act of 1990. (BP can appeal to a private panel awards of more than $500,00). 

Feinberg  is an authorized settlement agent of BP. I think that would be a more prudent way for the Gulf Coast Claims Facility to be described to claimants. To fail to do that presents the risk that a claimant could set aside an agreement - asserting that his waiver was not fully informed - that he thought a neutral, disinterested judgment had been made.  Judge Barbier's ruling seems to substantially remedy that problem.

Leonard Joy - Federal Defender in NY retires

Leonard Joy, in patrician portrait pose
 at his Morristown, NJ home

It is not often that a public defender gets the credit that is properly due him - or her.  Prosecutors, in the public mind, stand for rectitude.  Defense lawyers, in the public mind, too often stand for, well, for their clients - the accused, the guilty.  Defense lawyers are accused of relying on technicalities.  I've never heard the accusation addressed to a prosecutor.  

So as a one-time defense lawyer, a "pool attorney" for the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender, I was pleased to see the New York Times give Leonard Joy his due: as the retiring long-time leader of the Federal Defender in New York.  He and his staff brought to their jobs the integrity and competence needed to maintain the integrity of the system, to provide the legitinacy the courts need - the assurance that evidence not bias was the ground of verdicts entered.  

兔年愉快 Happy Lunar New Year

亲爱的朋友们


春节好！ 新年快乐。万事如意！- 乔治

The good old days..when the right to bear arms was the duty to serve in the militia

Minuteman statue, Concord, MA

for white men between 18 and 45.  Here is the enrollment provision of the Militia Act of 1792 (which sure doesn't sound like an individual right to bear arms to me):

Old North Bridge, Concord - site of the `shot heard round the world'

I. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia, by the Captain or Commanding Officer of the company, within whose bounds such citizen shall reside, and that within twelve months after the passing of this Act. And it shall at all time hereafter be the duty of every such Captain or Commanding Officer of a company, to enroll every such citizen as aforesaid, and also those who shall, from time to time, arrive at the age of 18 years, or being at the age of 18 years, and under the age of 45 years (except as before excepted) shall come to reside within his bounds; and shall without delay notify such citizen of the said enrollment, by the proper non-commissioned Officer of the company, by whom such notice may be proved.

That every citizen, so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch, with a box therein, to contain not less than twenty four cartridges, suited to the bore of his musket or firelock, each cartridge to contain a proper quantity of powder and ball; or with a good rifle, knapsack, shot-pouch, and powder-horn, twenty balls suited to the bore of his rifle, and a quarter of a pound of powder; and shall appear so armed, accoutred and provided, when called out to exercise or into service, except, that when called out on company days to exercise only, he may appear without a knapsack.

That the commissioned Officers shall severally be armed with a sword or hanger, and espontoon; and that from and after five years from the passing of this Act, all muskets from arming the militia as is herein required, shall be of bores sufficient for balls of the eighteenth part of a pound; and every citizen so enrolled, and providing himself with the arms, ammunition and accoutrements, required as aforesaid, shall hold the same exempted from all suits, distresses, executions or sales, for debt or for the payment of taxes.

Mubarak calls for constitutional reform

In his inelegant and incomplete concession speech Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said:

"I say in all honesty and regardless of the current situation that I did not intend to nominate myself for a new presidential term. I have spent enough years of my life in the service of Egypt and its people.

"I am now absolutely determined to finish my work for the nation in a way that ensures handing over its safe-keeping and banner ... preserving its legitimacy and respecting the constitution.

"I will work in the remaining months of my term to take the steps to ensure a peaceful transfer of power.

"According to my constitutional powers, I call on parliament in both its houses to discuss amending Article 76 and 77 of the constitution concerning the conditions on running for presidency of the republic and it sets specific a period for the presidential term.

"In order for the current parliament in both houses to be able to discuss these constitutional amendments and the legislative amendments linked to it for laws that complement the constitution and to ensure the participation of all the political forces in these discussions, I demand parliament to adhere to the word of the judiciary and its verdicts concerning the latest cases which have been legally challenged.

Articles 75 and 76 are in the link below. Basically the parliament puts forward one candidate for a six year term. The relevant Articles are below:

Constitutional Law Prof Blog: Egypt's Constitution: Presidential Election

Egypt: worshipers among the tanks

If Hosni Mubarak falls - after 30 years of U.S. support for his adherence to Anwar Sadat's peace agreement with Israel - the iconic image may well be this one by Scott Nelson for the New York Times in Cairo.

prayer in Cairo's Tahrir Square, January 29, 2011

China: Will Law Reforms Reduce Forced Home Demolitions? - China Real Time Report - WSJ

Berkeley law professor Stanley Lubman reports:

In October 2010, thugs hired by a demolition company to destroy a house forcefully entered it and brutally murdered the homeowner. The crime, one of a series of similar violent incidents in recent years, was widely reported and sparked popular outrage. Last week, the State Council published a regulation that would end the power of local governments to order demolition of urban residences and require disputed cases to be decided by courts (report in Chinese)....

Will Law Reforms Reduce Forced Home Demolitions? - China Real Time Report - WSJ

Jon Stewart Named to Ground Zero Board - NYTimes.com

"humbled"

Jon Stewart, the satirical host of “The Daily Show” who used histelevision program to push for federal money for the health care of first responders at ground zero, was appointed on Thursday to the board of the foundation building the Sept. 11 museum and memorial.  Stewart, a Tribeca resident, has been a passionate advocate for those sickened by their work at the smoldering disaster site.
Jon Stewart Named to Ground Zero Board - NYTimes.com

FactChecking the GOP Response | FactCheck.org

FactChecking the GOP Response | FactCheck.org: "Ryan and Bachmann made two new false claims, and repeated other talking points, in their responses to the president's State of the Union address."
Plus the old falsifications.

Stanley Fish: Obama's Rhetoric - a voice of power that need not declare itself

Stanley Fish on the SOTU 
A state of the union speech whose power was constructed of small elements.

This is Obama’s version of American exceptionalism, which is for him not the proud, in-your-face doctrine announced by some political figures, but a quiet affirmation of resolution and an abiding faith in a future that can be won. Obama has managed to downsize a rhetoric that can often be bellicose and turn it into a statement that is almost, but not quite, modest. This is the voice of power that need not declare itself and is therefore all the more impressive.

Stanley Fish: Language of the Union

By STANLEY FISH

Published: January 26, 2011 New York Times

Sensible Economists' Letter on the Affordable Care Act - Grasping Reality with Eight Tentacles

Sensible Economists' Letter on the Affordable Care Act - Grasping Reality with Eight Tentacles

Yes, we can...Barack Obama's 2d SOTU

image: NY Times 

Barack Obama is a great conciliator. Today was an example of his high skill - of a tight rope walk between the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, as Marilyn put it this evening. Obama's speech was the most John Kennedy-like State of the Union speech any president since has given.

Of course the only real competitor is Bill Clinton. Obama struck Kennedy's just left of center note of optimism more closely than Clinton - because of the adversity of his and our circumstances. - gwc

Evoking the can-do spirit without jingoism


What we can do – what America does better than anyone – is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. We are the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers; of Google and Facebook. In America, innovation doesn't just change our lives. It's how we make a living.


Government underwrites innovation


Our free enterprise system is what drives innovation. But because it's not always profitable for companies to invest in basic research, throughout history our government has provided cutting-edge scientists and inventors with the support that they need. That's what planted the seeds for the Internet. That's what helped make possible things like computer chips and GPS.


Candor about divided government


What comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow.


I believe we can. I believe we must. That's what the people who sent us here expect of us. With their votes, they've determined that governing will now be a shared responsibility between parties. New laws will only pass with support from Democrats and Republicans. We will move forward together, or not at all – for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics.


Evoking the Kennedy New Frontier


The future is ours to win. But to get there, we can't just stand still. As Robert Kennedy told us, "The future is not a gift. It is an achievement."


Our sputnik moment


This is our generation's Sputnik moment. Two years ago, I said that we needed to reach a level of research and development we haven't seen since the height of the Space Race...We'll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology – an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.


Calling youth to service
To every young person listening tonight who's contemplating their career choice: If you want to make a difference in the life of our nation; if you want to make a difference in the life of a child – become a teacher. Your country needs you


Let’s educate all our children


One last point about education. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of students excelling in our schools who are not American citizens. Some are the children of undocumented workers, who had nothing to do with the actions of their parents. They grew up as Americans and pledge allegiance to our flag, and yet live every day with the threat of deportation. 




New York to Rockland, Maine in 4 hours
Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail, which could allow you go places in half the time it takes to travel by car. For some trips, it will be faster than flying – without the pat-down.


For tolerance


And as extremists try to inspire acts of violence within our borders, we are responding with the strength of our communities, with respect for the rule of law, and with the conviction that American Muslims are a part of our American family.


Our troops come from every corner of this country – they are black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American. They are Christian and Hindu, Jewish and Muslim. And, yes, we know that some of them are gay. Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love. And with that change, I call on all of our college campuses to open their doors to our military recruiters and the ROTC. It is time to leave behind the divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation.


We won’t be bombing Iran this year


Because of a diplomatic effort to insist that Iran meet its obligations, the Iranian government now faces tougher and tighter sanctions than ever before.


Poking fun at government without attacking it


We live and do business in the information age, but the last major reorganization of the government happened in the age of black and white TV. There are twelve different agencies that deal with exports. There are at least five different entities that deal with housing policy. Then there's my favorite example: the Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they're in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them in when they're in saltwater. And I hear it gets even more complicated once they're smoked.

ThinkProgress » Steele Acknowledges The ‘Logic’ Of The Health Insurance Mandate

ThinkProgress » Steele Acknowledges The ‘Logic’ Of The Health Insurance Mandate

N.R.A. squelches studies of gun violence - N.Y. Times

Image: Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence

N.R.A. Stymies Firearms Research, Scientists Say

By MICHAEL LUO

Published: January 25, 2011

Keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally disturbed should be a consensus objective.  How to do it requires study but researchers who study guns and violence say the influence of the National Rifle Association has all but choked off funds.

The east is red

At least Michelle Obama remembered that the east is red.

Economist's View: "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too"

Rep. Paul Ryan (R - WI)

James K. Galbraith

As an anti-dote to Paul Ryan's rebuttal of the President's State of the Union Address (and the commentariat's echo chamber) here is an excellent review of James K. Galbraith's book The Predator State which demonstrates the fraudulent character of the Free Market label claimed by Ryan, et al. The reviewer, Randall Wray observes:

Wherever one finds a sector [of the economy] that still operates reasonably well, one finds remnants of New Deal institutions that support, guarantee, regulate, and leverage private activities, in spheres as diverse as higher education, housing, pensions, healthcare, the military-industrial complex (and the prison-industrial complex). Naturally, even these sectors are endangered as they represent potential riches (witness subprimes, a privatization mess that Wall Street would love to repeat with Social Security). Still, Jamie is hopeful. The ideology of free markets is bankrupt, but the US is not. The path is clear: re-regulation, planning, standards (including wage controls), and coming to grips with the nation’s global responsibilities.

Economist's View: "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too"

h/t Paul Krugman

Obams's job approval polls - 2010

The Loss of a Good Man - NYTimes.com

Losing Sargent Shriver

- by Bob Herbert

The Loss of a Good Man - NYTimes.com

What they would cut: the Spending Reduction Act of 2011

The Republican Study Committee's members are 2/3 of the Republican Members of Congress.  Here is their plan: the Spending Reduction Act of 2011.  Not defense, not Medicare (yet), not Social Security (yet) but just about everything else.  And legal services for the poor - entirely.

Health reform: individual mandate necessary

When the Romney health insurance plan in Massachusetts kicked in - when people who were eligible for subsidies were compelled to buy health insurance there was a huge increase in the number of insured health people. So what? That is what makes insurance possible. Healthy people must pay into the system. If you could sign up for insurance the day you got your cancer diagnosis few would buy insurance. You would buy it when you needed it - like `just in time' manufacturing planning.

That's why if you repeal the individual mandate the entire Affordable Care Act collapses.

More mandate-relevant evidence | The Incidental Economist

Myth of the Hero Gunslinger - NYTimes.com

Myth of the Hero Gunslinger - NYTimes.com

50 years ago today - John F. Kennedy's inaugural address

I remember watching on a black and white television that cold day, my senior year in high school.  I remember the old Vermont poet Robert Frost, whom we knew from Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, Cardinal Cushing's invocation, and the young, Irish Catholic President whose eloquence stunned us all.

Bono: What I Learned From Sargent Shriver - NYTimes.com

Bono

What I Learned From Sargent Shriver - NYTimes.com

Sargent Shriver - the spirit of '67

Sargent Shriver spoke at the Yale Daily News Banquet in April 1967.  His address captures the man and the optimistic spirit of the time.  He was a Catholic social liberal, the Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity and of the Peace Corps.


It is hard to believe that the President of the United States declared War on Poverty - as Lyndon Baines Johnson did in his Great Society program.  Today loud voices call for government to retreat to allow the fruits of self-interest to flower, to solve the problems of financing health care by free-market solutions - as did John Boehner yesterday in leading the unanimous vote of House Republicans to repeal the affordable care act.


During his tenure from 1966 to 1968 as director of the War on Poverty programs Shriver founded a myriad of social outreach programs including Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), the Community Action Program, Job Corps and Head Start.


In 1967 - the year I graduated from college and headed off to the Peace Corps a spirit of service was in the air - and Sargent Shriver was its cheer leader and institutional leader.  Instead of marveling at the brilliance of Yale law students training for mergers and acquisitions, he saw law students as idealists:

This summer, more than 800 law students will volunteer their time to bring justice to the poor. They will be using the law as a social invention, not as a social prevention. Nothing like this was happening 20 or 30 years ago. I was in law school--here at Yale — and I know. In those days, no one was tougher or more grasping than the average law student. He was a young man on the rise, eager to go up the ladder two rungs at a time. But today, something has changed — 800 of these students are going into the slums for the summer or will be travelling the circuit in rural areas. These young law students are renegades from Easy Street. They don’t care about how much money they make, but how much justice they can bring.

He asked is idealism a fad?  And answered the question `No'.  Today we see that youth are still ready to answer Yes, We Can.  Fordham Law students have proven that year in and year out at the Public Interest Resource Center, winner of the 2008 ABA pro bono award.  The disappointment that many feel today is that our leaders - from the President down - have asked too little of us, not too much.  Of course we know why.  The November election showed that the electorate was not ready to embrace subsidies for health insurance for those of moderate income.  And the poor have fallen off the electoral map.  Sad.


For an excellent biographical summary of Shriver's life, see this piece from the Yale Daily News.


For my reflections on Shriver and the spirit of those times, go HERE.

Virtual Law Offices - a brave new world

New Jersey - where I am licensed to practice - has a strict rule: you must maintain a "bona fide office" for the practice of law.  A place where you can be found, where files are kept, the phone answered.  R. 1:21-1(a).  Despite a recommendation by the State Bar Association's small firm practice committee that the rule be eliminated the rule remains in place.  Its vitality has been declared in Opinion 718 by the state Supreme Court's Advisory Committee on Professional Ethics (on which I serve) and its Committee on Attorney Advertising.  Like the Court which it serves, the Committee was unable to embrace the idea of a lawyer who could be found only online, whose files might exist only in the "cloud".


Now comes the Pennsylvania Bar Association's Committee on Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility.  In an advisory Ethics Opinion 2010-200 the Bar Committee (which does not have the force of law) embraces Virtual Law Offices as consistent with the Rules of Professional Responsibility.


I recognize that the world is changing, and that there are resources for management of the "virtual law practice" - a website authored by Stephanie Kimbro, who has been embraced as the first Xemplar Attorney by LexisNexis .  I bought my first laptop twenty years ago - and tossed out the yellow pads from the first day.   But I am left uneasy by this embrace.  It is a brave new world that has such people in it.  


The Pennsylvania committee declares that in its opinion:

• An attorney may maintain a virtual law office in Pennsylvania; 

• An attorney may maintain a virtual law office in which the attorney works from home, and associates work from their homes in various locations, including locations outside of Pennsylvania; 

• An attorney practicing in a virtual office is not required to list  a physical address in advertisements and on letterheads; 

• An attorney with a virtual office is not required to meet with clients at the address listed in any advertisements and/or in the geographic location where the attorney will perform  the services advertised, but must disclose to the client all of the information required under the Rules of Professional Conduct; 

• An attorney may use a post office address in advertisements and  letterheads, but may not state that services are performed at the address where the post office box is located; 

• A virtual law office must disclose information specifying where the services advertised  will be performed, but need not disclose the specific address where each attorney is located; 

• An attorney practicing in a virtual office may not state that his or her fees are lower than those of traditional brick and mortar law offices, but may state, if accurate, that the firm’s overhead may be lower than traditional brick and mortar offices, thereby possibly reducing the fees the firm charges clients;  

• There are no additional precautions necessary for an attorney practicing in a VLO to comply with his or her duty of confidentiality beyond those required of all attorneys; and, 

• An attorney practicing in a virtual office at which attorneys and clients do not generally  meet face to face must take appropriate safeguards to: (1) confirm the identity of clients  and others; and (2) address those circumstances in which a client may have diminished capacity