P.O.E.

The End of John Kasich As We Know Him (And I Feel Fine)

First of all, John Kasich is not a public servant.  He has no interest in serving the public.  He serves the special interests that have made him their spokescreature.  I suppose you could call him a private servant, since he serves such private interests as the Koch brothers, Murdoch, the ALEC agenda, all those hideous despicable frauds who have made the twentieth century so shitty.

If you reverse Kasich's pedigree, back past his million dollar contribution to the Republican Governor's Association from Murdoch, back past his stint as a whore for Lehman Brothers, past his Fox News days spouting propaganda for the aristocracy and the Bush regime, past his renunciation of Catholicism once his parents died, past even further to his college days, when, incensed by having to pay his fair share for a broken window in the dorm at Ohio State, he bitched to the university president, who took him to shake Richard Nixon's hand at a Republican fundraiser, you see him as substantial as the Pillsbury dough boy.

That's all he's been: a spokescreature.  He stands for nothing but self-interest.

Yesterday's renunciation of his signature piece of governorship may have punctured his lung (he keeps saying he needs to "catch his breath...") but it is less a win for unions than it is a wake up call to every citizen of democracy.

Perhaps Kasich felt he could not bite that hand that feeds him.  After his fluke gubernatorial win, he knew he had to cater to those who paid his way.  But if there's a paradigm shift possible in his arrogant mind, let it be this:  When you're governor, you serve the people.  Once they've decided you're a fraud with no intention of public service, they will bite back.

I hope, on Friday, when some strange compulsion to look at the clock arises, he'll see 11/11/11 at 11:11:11 and something will click in his head. He'll see his part in the twentieth century that stayed a decade too long, and, unlike so many self-serving frauds beyond redemption, he'll find the strength to atone, to finally begin the promise of a twenty first century that has been denied us; a century when looking out for the least among us constitutes the highest form of public service known.

I doubt it.  More likely, he'll get run over by our bus.

On the Eve of Constitution Day

Yay! Happy Constitution Day! What the hell is Constitution Day? It's the anniversary of the day the Constitutional Convention signed the document to be presented for ratification by the states. There was no Bill of Rights included, of course, but since that's the part of the Constitution that now matters most to individual citizens (Rememba: The Articles of the Constitution create our government; the Bill of Rights puts limits on government power) I thought I'd give my schpiel today. Enjoy.

 If you live in the United States of America, you know that the Bill of Rights, those first ten changes to the Constitution, give each citizen certain powers and protections from the government. But while these rights contained in the Bill of Rights, commonly understood, provide essential freedoms to us all, very few people in our society actually know what they say. So you never forget, so our government never forgets, here are some of your rights:

 THE FOURTH AMENDMENT: Your right against “unreasonable searches and seizures,” and your right against government warrants based on less than “probable cause” are found here. These rights concern your first interactions with law enforcement, and define the limits of governmental power when they search for evidence and when they arrest people. Choices that citizens make both before and after law enforcement gets involved in their affairs may later affect the admissibility of evidence against them at trial: certain conditions at the time of a traffic stop or a police investigation or pursuit may result in evidence being “suppressed,” removed from a criminal trial, because the evidence was tainted by the government’s “unreasonable” conduct. But even unreasonable conduct may be excused, and the evidence admissible, if the citizen’s choices don’t coincide with the Supreme Court’s requirements for the Fourth Amendment to apply. If you don’t know how the Fourth Amendment has been interpreted by the Supreme Court, then you don’t know your Fourth Amendment rights.

 THE FIFTH AMENDMENT: Your right against double jeopardy, your right to remain silent, and your right to “due process of law” are found here. These rights control how the criminal justice system may prosecute you. While you cannot directly control how police, prosecutors and courts do their jobs, you do have direct control over your right not to be “compelled” to be “a witness against [yourself.]” If your decision to provide information is voluntary, then evidence that you provide may be used against you. Investigators are allowed much discretion when interrogating suspects. They can even mislead a criminal suspect about what evidence they have so far, and they can make assurances to suspects that may prove to be false. Unless these tactics are documented and preserved, it may be your word against the police during your trial. Only citizens who understand this right to begin with will receive its protections later.

 THE SIXTH AMENDMENT: Your right to a “speedy and public trial” by an “impartial jury,” your right to confront witnesses against you, and your right to “Assistance of Counsel” are all found here. These are significant protections for a criminal defendant. Even the poor are provided counsel, though most agencies providing such services are increasingly underfunded and understaffed. A lawyer is supposed to fight for you as hard as possible within the bounds of the law. But a lawyer must also help you make informed decisions about how to handle your case, and offer an explanation of risks and consequences of your choices.

 THE EIGHT AMENDMENT: Your right to reasonable bail if arrested, your right to reasonable fines, and your right against “cruel and unusual punishment” are found here. These rights deal with what the government can take from you before, during and after criminal prosecutions. Do you have to mortgage your house to get out of jail? Can you be fined so much that you can’t afford food or housing? Can the government legally kill or torture you? These questions are answered by the Supreme Court’s interpretation of this amendment.

 Know your trial rights.

 Any person charged with criminal prosecution has a right to a trial. If the charge is punishable by jail, then the defendant has a right to choose a bench trial (in front of a judge) or a jury trial. The defendant has a right to force the government to prove each and every essential element of the crime with evidence that convinces the judge or jury beyond a reasonable doubt. There is much debate over the meaning of that standard of proof; it is higher than a preponderance of evidence, it is higher than clear and convincing evidence. It is the highest standard of proof that exists in our laws. Judges and jurors have to be really, really sure about their verdict so that innocent people aren’t wrongfully convicted.

 Defendants have the right to effective assistance of counsel. This means you have a right to have a lawyer at trial who will try to show that the evidence against you is a lie, a mistake, or simply not enough to convict you.

 Defendants have right to testify at their trial, and to tell their side of the story. But they don’t have to. They also have a right to say nothing, without anyone commenting on their silence, or suggesting that their silence means guilt. Remember, the defendant has nothing to prove, no burden of proof. The government has the burden of proof of evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. If they fail to meet their burden, the defendant wins.

 Defendants have a right to compel witnesses to testify, to force people to come to court and tell what they know if what they know will help your case.

 Most people chose to waive, or give up, these rights in order to get a better resolution. Your lawyer must be convinced that you know and understand your rights. The judge must also be sure you know your rights, before asking you to give them up. Accordingly, be sure to educate yourself about your trial rights.

I'm Out with the Out Crowd

For most of my professional career as a lawyer serving the least among us, I've been appalled by the cynical self-serving actions of those who pretend to be guardians of a free and just society. Way, way too many corrupt frauds in public office, or more generally, in public service. Long ago, I spoke out about a very powerful judge who had many allies in the system. Particularly, he/she had many allies in the county prosecutor's office and in law enforcement. They were The In Crowd in Cuyahoga County government and politics.

As a result, I wound up on a "No Deals" list inside the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's Office. A No Deals list is exactly what it sounds like: Your clients are screwed because they have you as a lawyer. Unless you can convince a jury. And I convinced a number of juries in those days that the prosecution was, as esteemed jurist Louis Brandeis often posited, "total bullshit."

How I dealt with that crippling blow to my career is worthy of a screenplay. Perhaps, there's one in the can already. Suffice it to say, I took the long view that federal investigations would, one day, right the Poseidon once again. In the meantime, I'd do my best Hackman with a law degree, leading lost souls to the top masquerading as the bottom, while The In Crowd lead others to their doom by heading to the bottom masquerading as the top.

And now, Cuyahoga County is deep into a federal takeover, with investigations at every level of public service. Judges are going to jail. Prosecutors are cutting deals to rat out their supervisors. Cops, too. The most powerful people in Clevelandia have been forced to look back on their own lives and find themselves despicable. Suddenly, that corrupt In Crowd is now The Out Crowd.

And, me, Out with The In Crowd for so long, now find myself Out with The Out Crowd.

Do you know what that makes me, now? When you're Out with the Out Crowd, you are, by definition, The In Crowd.



Welcome to the Bloomsday Manifesto.

Me, Standing LIke Rod Serling in Black & White

Let's all agree on this: We are in the midst of a poverty crisis of biblical proportions, created over the last fifty years when it could have been avoided. Better judgement, more moral judgment in America would have changed things, lifted up the poor in some stirring Kennedy-esque motif. But once motifs get assassinated, its time to roll up your sleeves to help the poor. Whether it's your brother or your mother or your neighbor or your cousin or a stranger, member of your clan or congregation, or not.

I beg for justice and mercy in the poverty capital of America, where my father did before me, before he died of a liquor-soaked, broken heart. I have street credibility.

I stand next to thousands of people a year, who publicly declare that they are poor, and, therefore, require effective assistance of counsel as guaranteed by the Sixth Amendmint to the Constitution appointed at government's expense. I am an assistant public defender in the Crooked River swamps.

But, I also have a message. Lots of them, in fact. One primary message holds sway over me the most. It's not one of my own invention. It has lasted thousands of years. But it has, also, been largely obscured. It is this: you judge a society by how it treats the least among its citizens. Period. And our society is in epic failure on this point.

 But all is not doom and gloom, my friends. Because I have solutions. Plenty of them. Here, in my own little internet pseudo-autonomy zone I call The Bloomsday Manifesto.

[Cue the bongos, and flautist.]

Terrible/Parable

I'm Sorry, You Must Have Your Narrative Confused With My Narrative

Tip of an interesting iceberg discussion with a colleague. Did he not throw down Foucault?

BREAKING NEWS:

Stupid Judge Hurley, lookin' out for people's rights'n'stuff.

Smell The Metaphor

The demolition of this ugly hulk of a building is more than progress. It's metaphor. The building, itself, loomed precariously on the southern edge of the Cuyahoga river valley for generations, just west of the southern departure of the current I-71/I-90 Innerbelt bridge. It has now been removed to make room for a new bridge across the valley.

I drove past it each morning as it eclipsed the city. It was, by all accounts, a vacant, useless building designed as a refrigerated warehouse in the earliest days of that technology, but it made money for someone as a billboard. Massive, stupid, ugly advertisements covered it's sides. It may have been some coveted commercial space, but it was a cynical, shameful one, abusive to passing traffic. If anyone ever hated a building, I hated this one.

After civic planners decided to destroy it, the inevitable court case ensued. Somehow the case revolved around who actually owned the facade of the building - the advertising space. Of course, every party involved got a piece of the pie.

In as much as it was an eyesore, it was also a blind spot. The monolithic cube with bank and drugstore adds precluded passers-by from seeing the true Clevelandia, physically and psychologically, in its past, present and future tenses.

Here's how: at the very spot where these moments were filmed, another bridge that crossed the Cuyahoga river valley existed a century ago. At the very spot where the new bridge will be build, seventeen citizens perished on November 16, 1895, when the lift over the river malfunctioned. They plunged and died. Forgotten. A mass transit tragedy that no one remembers.

Blind spot, indeed, Clevelandia.

Tweet, Chomsky, Tweet! or Noam, Tweet, Noam!

parts 2 through n.

I'm kicking the hostas in atypical fashion (in my underwear) at 5:00 a.m. after a feed under the glow of Jupiter and it's moons and I spy movement out of the corner of my eye. A raccoon at the end of my driveway has spotted me. I spook it, but it growls and backs up.

Cute lil' bandit mask and all. Cute but treacherous. Close Encounter hand signals will not work.

Clevelandia Loves You, Lady Kaga

The last lines of her dissent:

 ARIZONA FREE ENTERPRISE CLUB’S FREEDOM 

 CLUB PAC v. BENNETT

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

Less corruption, more speech.  Robust campaigns leading
to the election of representatives not beholden to the few,
but accountable to the many.  The people of Arizona might
have expected a decent respect for those objectives. Today,
they do not get  it.  The Court invalidates Arizonans’ efforts
to ensure that in their State, “ ‘[t]he people. . . possess the
absolute sovereignty.’ ”  Id., at 274 (quoting James Madison
in 4 Elliot’s Debates on the Federal Constitution 569–570 (1876)).
No precedent  compels the Court to take this step; to the contrary,
today’s decision is in tension  with broad swaths of our First Amendment
doctrine.  No fundamental principle of  our Constitution
backs the  Court’s ruling; to the contrary, it is the law
struck down today that fostered both the vigorous competition
of ideas and its ultimate object—a government
responsive  to the will of the people.   Arizonans deserve
better.  Like citizens across this country,  Arizonans deserve
a government that represents and serves them all.
And no less, Arizonans deserve the chance to reform their
electoral system so as to attain  that most  American of
goals.
Truly, democracy is not a game.  See  ante, at 25.
I respectfully dissent.

Jerry Brown, Noam Chomsky and Ulysses Bloomsday Walk Into a Bar...

JERRY: Noam, I just read a transcript of one of your recent speeches, where you describe how throughout history honor has been given to those who speak on behalf of the powerful. You conclude with the observation, "Rending these chains is a first step toward freedom and justice." Maybe we could start there.

NOAM: Well, we can go back to the earliest recorded texts in our canon -- take the Bible, for example -- and we'll find that those who have served power have always been rewarded with respectability. It's as close to a historical truism as you can find. There were a lot of intellectuals in the Bible. They didn't use the term, "intellectual"; they were called prophets. But they played the role that intellectuals play in the modern period. They gave geopolitical analysis, social critique; they expressed moral judgments and so on.

The prophets of the Bible came in two types, types that in the Soviet Union used to be called commissars, and those that were called dissidents. The commissars, the people who served power, were the ones who were later considered false prophets. They were the people, however, who, in their own time, were respected, honored and protected. They served power. There was another group of people, seemingly off in a corner somewhere, who exposed the corruptions of power. They're the ones who were reviled, imprisoned, driven into the desert, and so on. It was only much later that the evaluation was reversed and they were recognized as the true prophets.

That pattern just perpetuates throughout history, and for perfectly good reasons. If you serve power, authority and privilege, you'll end up, by and large, with respectability. And if you undermine them, whether it's by political analysis, moral critique, or anything else, they're not going to applaud you for it.

JERRY: They're not going to applaud you for it, because you're not validating the power structure.

NOAM: No. What you're doing is, in fact, speaking up for the interests of the general population and for what the people themselves see as right and wrong. That's not what privilege and power want. History isn't physics, but this pattern is about as close to a true historical generalization as you can find.

BLOOMSDAY:  Fuck that, guys. I'm going for applause.

[excerpted from Dialogues, Jerry Brown, Berkeley Hills Books (1998)]

How Sick is Dick? How Gone is Ron?

Olivia Kubla John, Your Stately Pleasure Dome Decrees

Every Manifesto Deserves an Anthem

For Those Playing Along @ Home...

Let me try to give the answer to your puzzled snarky question at the end of this article, MR. MASON:

The reason that you are so perplexed at this effort is that NO ONE in this town TRUSTS YOUR JUDGMENT OR MOTIVES anymore, sir. This "Six-week circus" you scorn is really an attempt to rectify the "10-year circus" you've made of the county prosecutor's office. Your shameful, self-serving, self-dealing, corrupt practices that have affected (perhaps, even, ended) the lives of so many in our town are drawing to a close.

Your conflicts are manifold. Your supervision of county government, tethered to your grip of the Cuyahogs County Democratic Party, is appalling. Maybe you're working with the Feds and won't get indicted, but at least, the Ohio Ethics Commission should ding you soon and you should be forbidden from the practice of law.

Harsh words, perhaps. But it's time someone speak them loud and clear.

The Plot Thickens to a Frothy, Putrid, Luke-Warm Gruel

Courtroom Classroom Theater Church

The Plot Thickens

http://www.cleveland.com/countyincrisis/index.ssf/2011/05/strongsville_councilman_pat_co.html

County Corruption, County Reform: The Leviathan in Earnest

This is an interesting turn in the matter.

"We Have Many Things In Common. Name Three:"

In keeping with trinitarian ideas, I thought I'd pry open the pupae on three issues clOse to MY HEART.

First: Governor John Kasich's decision to pull the plug on a new psychiatric hospital on the Euclid Corridor is a shameful one. As a public defender in the Poverty Capital of America, I stand next to dozens of people in court each month, mostly black, always poor, who are in desperate need of immediate psychiatric help. The resources available now - to evaluate, diagnose & treat severe mental disorders - are a coupla doctors working part-time who might get around to it in the next coupla weeks or not. Usually, not. Nothing offends me more than when a client languishes for days, weeks without proper mental health care. My hope that a new paradigm of mental health services for my clients hinged upon that new hospital.

Second:  I have always asserted that the quickest way out of the morass of corrupt decision-making at the county prosecutor's office is the preliminary hearing: a low-threshold evidential hearing held in municipal court to determine if there is probable cause to send the matter to common pleas court for further prosecution. My further elaborations on the point are found here, but suffice it to say that preliminary hearings require sworn testimony by witnesses at a time most contemporaneous with the crime alleged -  not months later. Preliminary  hearings also cast sunshine on the charging process so the public can see it. Contrast that with the corrupt, ham-fisted, racist, throw the kitchen sink, charging process of the Cuyahoga County Grand Jury process. Did I mention it's corrupt?

A few months ago, I called in to WCPN's Sound of Ideas (episode available in it's entirety here) to counter Judge Timothy McGinty's peculiar assertion that the County Public Defender's office was the problem.  I asserted, as above, that the most just tool to promote integrity and, yes, efficiency, in the criminal justice system was the preliminary hearing.  While Judge Timothy McGinty graciously avoided the sorts of ad hominem attacks on me that he reserved for Chief Public Defender Robert L. Tobik on that day, he declared that "the days of preliminary hearings are...over"  I'd like him to tell that to the lawyers representing these guys.  Perhaps he meant that preliminary hearings are only a thing of the past for poor, mostly black folks. For people who can afford the sterling representation of Bud Doyle, Henry Hilow, et cetera, the death of the preliminary hearing has been greatly exaggerated.

Third: Arbitration, Schmarbitration.  Reeling back to those pre-Issue 6 halcyon days of Plain Dealer-spoon-fed-Masonic-propaganda, those who actually read the proposed charter carefully, back then, knew that this current turf battle would ultimately require litigation. In courts. It would last for years. It was near top of the long list of intellectually fraudulent problems with the proposed charter.  It was a major reason to vote "no" on 6; "yes" on 5. Rememba?  It can't be swept under the arbitration rug, now.  And when the court case comes, look out for conflicts-a-go-go.

March Comes In Like A Lion Stuck On A Rock At The Flooded Cleveland Zoo Soundtrack

"Happy throngs take this joy wherever you go!!"
"We have many things in common: name three."

Vale, Clevelandia

Infested blanket, pesticide, colon's twisted hide
river discharge overflow into Lake Erie pride
deus ex machina est non spiritus mundi
ghost in the machine will hide in secret cavity
skinner box has chicken pox with soto voce cry
vox humana, Pax Clevelandia, et bono populi

The Annotated History of Spasm Dancing

Click here to find the missing link.

Kudos, Spellacy

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/02/jurors_so_upset_about_case_bro.html

The Best Public Steward in America

Galveston Sequel?

A Trinitarian Notion