I’m not a fan of OJ Simpson’s by any definition.  But, I do feel that our legal system put him into double jeopardy.  That is, he was acquitted of murder, and yet later retried for the same crime.  How is it that he was found not guilty for having murdered two people, and yet fined $33M for their wrongful death?   How does this happen?

It turns out that wrongful death is much easier to prove than murder.  “Wrongful death” only requires a “preponderance of evidence”.   Although a “shadow of a doubt” may exist, you can conclude guilty anyway.  Further, a wrongful death jury need to only have 75% of the jurors agree (9 of 12).  Lastly, you can’t “plea the 5th” in a civil case.  You have to respond on the stand.  I don’t understand why we have the 5th amendment for criminal cases and not for civil ones.  Either it’s unfair to make someone testify in ways that might hurt them or it’s not.  We can’t have it both ways.

Unfortunately, wrongful death lawsuits have nothing to do with justice and everything to do with money.  This entire branch of our legal system has been carefully carved and sculpted by lawyers for the benefit of lawyers.  Justice would have the murderer behind bars, and the public safe.  But we don’t have that.  Does Fred Goldman and his lawyers getting rich give us justice?

What boggles my mind most is why more people don’t stand up for OJ against our completely broken legal system.  He was legally acquitted.  Even if we think he is guilty, we need to let him go - that issue was concluded long ago.  If you think our system is broken for not finding him guilty, then fight for that.  But if you aren’t fighting for that, because you think our system usually works, and you think that “beyond a shadow of a doubt” is a good idea, then you absolutely must support OJ now.  This is double jeopardy, plain and simple, because everyone hates him.

I want our legal system to be about truth and justice, rather than money and appeasing public sentiment.  By allowing both a criminal and civil trial on the same issue, conducted under different rules, we are accepting hypocrisy in our system.  Stop thinking, “Oh good - OJ is getting what he deserves”, and instead think about what it means to be ”innocent until proven guilty”.  OJ was not proven guilty.  Yet we treat him as though he is guilty anyway.  This pisses me off far more than whether he got away with murder or not.

After writing this, I found a few other smart people saying the same thing: Joelle Blackstarr, Miranda Tempest, etc

I just got spam from Sam Brownback.  Not only is this guy sending unsolicited email, but he sends me some drivel about wanting to overturn Roe vs Wade.  Dude- we’re in a war, with millions of people that are alive being killed, losing their homes, or losing family members every day.  And you want to write about Roe vs Wade?  Get some priorities!

Last November, for the first time ever, I voted for all Democrats.  I’ve usually voted almost all Republican.  However, on this ballot, I felt that whatever tax increases the Democrats might pass would be better than the war in Iraq.  So I voted for them, in hopes that they would stand up to President Bush’s crazy plan.

Now, however, I realize I was completely wrong.  Not only are the allowing Bush to continue the war, but they’re throwing in an extra $20B in farm aid, social programs, and Federal hurricane relief! 

This is the worst of all worlds!  Because I didn’t vote Republican, we’ve got both a stubborn, silly war and increased taxes for ridiculous social programs.   I should have voted Republican.  I don’t agree with Bush, but at least he does what he says he will.  The democrats say that they’ll stand up to Bush and then they fall over like a bunch of dominoes.

I’m such an idiot.

The drum of immigration beats this week.  I’m strongly against legalizing all illegal aliens.  The alien population in question is much poorer, much less educated, and much less able to build a great nation than the average American.  We’ve got too much poverty already, and bringing in more is not going to make things easier.  We dilute our wealth by giving it to the aliens.  Mexico needs to build its own wealth, and we should help, but that does not mean allowing all Mexicans into America.

Despite my beliefs, we can’t stop it.  The fact is that most Americans, like myself, are too busy working to go out and protest against the illegals that are currently protesting for legal status every day.  The illegals have much more to gain in the short term than those of us working stiffs have to lose.  Legal status for an illegal would instantly make a huge impact on his life and his family’s life.  For those of us citizens already here, it has almost no immediate effect, and the degradation on our nation will be gradual.  So the illegals will be out in force every day fighting for this (if we let them).  The citizens who oppose them can’t possibly do that, nor are affected enough to want to.  Unfortunately, at the end of the day, the squeaky wheel will get the grease, and that means these illegals are not going to be illegal forever.

America will ultimately look like the pictures you see here.  One is Mexico City.  The other is San Diego.

Making these folks legal is wrong.  Not only do we need to stop the immigration, we also need to stop the protesting by enforcing our existing laws and sending them out of the country.  If I were in charge of the INS, I’d use these protests as an opportunity to arrest them.  Even though they can’t vote on a ballot, allowing them to protest is allowing them to vote.

In the continuing controversy over whether we should have voting exclusively in English or not, one point seems to always be overlooked:  Who translates the ballot, supporting documentation, etc?  Translation is a subjective thing.  For any significant body of text, there are no two translators that would translate in exactly the same way.  The tone, use of vernacular, and subtle word choice can dramatically change a reader’s perception to a body of text.  If we have ballots in multiple languages, we can’t preserve the original author’s tone, and therefore, the original text is void.  I know that “yes”/”no” translate fairly easily; but the supporting text does not. 

If our goal is to have everyone voting fairly - on the same initiatives - then we have to distribute identical material to everyone.  Unfortunately, this means the ballot has to be in one language.  For now, that language is in English.  If the majority wants to change the language to something else, they can put up an initiative to change the language.  Whichever we pick, there should only be one.

Immigration is an issue that I care about a lot.  If you read this blog, take a few minutes to watch this well done presentation.  This is serious stuff!

The Republicans got trounced yesterday with their “stay the course” policy.  Hooray!  Maybe now we’ll get out of Iraq and bring the troops home.  Everyone except our President knows that the battle is over and the rest of the “job in Iraq” can only be done by Iraqis themselves. 

But, why is it that in order to end the war we have to choose to elect the Democrats?  We’ve successfully kept them out of control in the House since 1995, and for good reason.  Now, don’t get me wrong, if I have to choose between the war in Iraq and electing Democrats, I’ll take the Democrats.  But this is a really awful choice.  Why can’t we keep the Republicans in the House and get out of Iraq?

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you should read Nancy Pelosi’s e-book.  She clearly states what she is all about:  taxes and social programs.

Here are her 6 tenets  for 2006:

1) Defense.  She wants to double the size of the military with a variety of expensive campaigns.  Well, anything is cheaper than war, I guess.
2) Raise the minimum wage.  (In other words, cause unemployment)
3) College.  Make college tuition tax deductible permanently, cut student loan interest rates, increase Grants, NSF, etc.  (In other words, increase taxes)
4) Energy.  More incentives for energy-efficiency.  (In other words, increase taxes)
5) Affordable Health Care.  Lower prices for seniors.  (Remember the baby boomers?  In other words, increase taxes)
6) Protect Social Security.  Gov’t retirement matching.  Remember the Baby Boomers?  In other words, massively increase taxes.

The stage is definitely set for the democrats.  Bush’s war is going to be the rally cry for Hillary Clinton in 2008.  Taxes… taxes…

I hate to say it, but it’s worth it as long as we get out of Iraq.

I wonder if George Bush realizes that his biggest legacy may not be the war in Iraq, but rather the depression he creates by forcing Americans to elect Democrats to get Bush to stop fighting this stupid war.

We all know that our government is a Republic and not a Democracy. We call it a democracy, but it really is not, and never has been.

Did the framers of our government really intend that it be a republic and not a democracy? I think they did. In general, the common citizen will not, and cannot be expected to always know how to vote on a particular complex issue. So, a republic, in theory, solves this. The people elect the representatives, and the representatives carefully study, analyze and vote for us.

But, is this not dated? Certainly the framers of our Constitution also had a practical problem. The populous simply could not vote on every issue. There would be no physical means to collect daily votes on every minor issue that came up before the house.

Today, however, this is not true. Using technology, there is no reason that we could not change to a government which is completely a democracy, and where every citizen can vote from their living room on any issues, on a daily basis. Issues would come up, debates would be broadcast live across the nation, individuals could go to Washington and be heard, and then, everyone who wanted to could vote. Instead of having polling stations, individuals would make a trip to the library.

Here in California, the Governor just punted several issues to the people for voting. For whatever reason, these political hot potatoes were just too hot for the elected folk to make decisions on. What if this sort of election didn’t cost the taxpayers $80M, but instead was effectively free, riding on technology that was already in place for our regular voting?

Even if we didn’t have a real democracy, what if we had a real-time system the people could vote. Any elected official could go to the system and see the results from his constituency the exact results on any issue for those watching live? I guess it’s neat-o but not necessarily an improvement for any of us.

Practically, this is pretty costly. Security issues abound. But, it’s solveable if we want to. And it could radically change the way elections are handled. If nothing else, it’s fun to think about.

I got some propoganda mail sent to Democrats in California by the “Alliance for a Better California”.

It’s an 8.5″ x 11″ glossy with a picture of a karate guy’s big foot and reads, “Time to kick his [Schwarzenegger] butt for a change.” You’d think that with two sides of that large sheet, they’d be able to offer at least a modicum of actual information. But no.

On the flip side, it just says how they want you to vote on the propositions, but says absolutely nothing about what you are voting for. They just offer up choice quotes like, “This concept flunks out”, “Politics at its worst”, “Fails the basic test of fairness”, etc. There is no description of the flunky concept, the worst politics, or even the failing fairness.

How dumb do they think we are? Just send us the instructions on how to vote and we’ll do it without question?

I don’t really know if this is sponsored by Feinstein and Boxer, but their names are displayed prominently, so I think they must be at least be in approval. And if so, they clearly think I’ve got nothing but monkey fodder in my head. That may be true in my case, but they should never assume that!

Here is the full text of Proposition 78 and Proposition 79.

Both of these have a lot of details - far too many for me to capture what they are “about” in this short blog entry.

But, I can summarize them both very quickly! Vote NO!

The idea for each of these is to somehow offer discount prescription drugs to some set of low-income individuals. Each has a different set of benefits, each targets a different set of people. That idea is valiant, but each then ties into a bunch of complexities - including how these discounts are established, who benefits from the state & industry negotiation, who benefits from the new administration and overhead that needs to be created to establish these agencies. Lastly, the pro-78 folks are claiming that 79 allows for new mechanisms under which lawyers can file class-action lawsuits. Who knows.

Overall, it’s too complicated, too subtle, and has too many unknowns. On the other hand, it costs between $10M and $20M, and I’d rather we spend that money on somethat that we know is solid.