The Best of the Fray Thread, Version 1
by Rundeep
05/10/2010, 11:39 PM #
Iso: writes a lovely, sensitive, insightful post. Replies: JackD: compliments intelligently. ThomasPaine: thanks Iso for writing. Rundeep: Generic love. TK: awesome and includes a psych analysis. Dr. No: loves it and adds an anecdote. Topazz: some insightful comment, plus adds something witty. Urq responds to Topazz utilizing some 19th Century expression and beginning the threadjack Tempo responds to Urq and asks a rhetorical question about opera/horses. Laurie responds to Tempo pointing out that Tempo once actually was a horse and or the fat lady singing. Tempo: reported, plus you know that's not true now get help. Ellen: Backs up Tempo. Laurie to Ellen: That's what you always do, back up your friend like you did in the following email: and quotes it. Schmutzie: Responds to Tempo in Tempo speak, pointing out how rude the threadjack is. Tempo replies to Schmutzie, calling him some variation of his real name. JackDallas responds to Schmutzie, agreeing with Tempo and adding a possibly racist/homophobic/variation on his nic. Laurie responds to Jack pointing out he was once wonderful, especially when writing about his Nova Scotian retrievers and writing cattle wrangling songs while spitting watermelon seeds into the desert behind his suburban split level. Jack Dallas tells Laurie to either get help or fuck off, and introduces concepts related to the lubrication of her genitalia. Dawn Coyote points out that Jack couldn't create lubrication of a woman's genitalia if he peed K-Y. JackDallas says he wouldn't screw Dawn even if he did pee K-Y. Dawn points out that even when she was drinking she wasn't drunk enough to let the likes of Jack within 10 miles. Schmutzie backs up Dawn, berating Jack in Tempo speak, replete with CAPITALS and Faux French. Jack replies that he wouldn't screw Dawn with Schmutzie's dick. Tempo defends Jack and says he's been misunderstood. Schmutzie asks Tempo how much K-Y it took Jack to, you know, do jack. Laurie points out that lubricant changes colors depending on whether or not you live in an oxygenated environment, and how bright the lava lamp in your bedroom is. Topazz says she prefers a blacklight and will provide a link showing glow in the dark condoms and a Grateful Dead poster. And something else hilarious. At the bottom of the original post, Keifus and skitch post something interesting and supportive. To Be Continued....
Showing posts with label rundeep. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rundeep. Show all posts
10 May 2010
19 February 2009
The Myth of the Good People
The Myth of the Good People
by rundeep
02/19/2009, 9:21 PM #
When I first moved out of my small town to the big city to attend law school, I knew I belonged somewhere for the first time in my life. There suddenly were people who read newspapers. Who talked and read books, who had places to walk to and things to do and who were forced, every day, to navigate the world about them to get things done. And all this doing gave them a kind of confidence in their own abilities that was sorely lacking where I was from. Yes, there was crime and you had to be careful and not take stupid chances. But even that was exciting, and making the choices improved your sense of self-reliance even more.
People who grew up the children of minions in coal towns never really believed they could affect their environment for the better. They were taught from infancy out to take direction, follow a crowd, and to fear.Employers, priests and the nuns in school were always right and you were always wrong. It amazes me to this day that the union movement in America had a big spark there. Conditions had to have been unspeakable to get people so inclined to sheepishness to actually move. Thought wasn't exactly a prized commodity and questioning just kept you from getting jobs, though, as the union movement showed, they could be roused to powerful anger. In short, they are the equivalent of a community of fear biters -- scared and yet despised, willing to lash out sometimes but never actually change anything.
The year I moved out I refused to come back for anything more than a few hours on holidays. My mom would ask me why and I'd say: I hate it. Whenever I criticized a politician, or a business, or anything, she told me I was unfair to the Good People of the Region (which was her euphemism for everyone). And this reflected their own widely held views that they were decent, god-fearing people who lived in a poor, hardscrabble but pleasant place. Indeed, there was virtually no serious crime and no one locked their doors at night. How I could prefer the company of criminals (probably black people at that) was incomprehensible to the home crowd.
Mom wanted me to be a lawyer for her whole life. She grew up working for judges and lawyers as a secretary, understood a lot more than some of the paralegals, and dreamed big for me. She had such fawning respect for the people she worked for that I thought for a long time those men were of a different species. If we were a community of hardworking, decent people, they were the true esquires of that realm -- brilliant, cultured, landed. But always fair and wonderful, possessed of true Solomonic temperament and handsome to boot, like Gregory Peck in "To Kill A Mockingbird." She had to resign herself to the hard fact that I was never coming back to practice in those environs, and it irritated her. She groomed me to swoop in and share the podium with these men of greatness. When I told her time had shown me they weren't so smart (because I was being mean about it), she accused me of horrid, hateful bias.
Well then, imagine my lack of surprise when the US Attorney indicted 2 judges in the county seat for sending unrepresented minors to a private prison on minor matters in return for kickbacks. Michael 9 below posted the entire story, here's a link to some of the more sordid details.
link
It is the most reprehensible kind of crime imaginable by someone in the judicial system. More than a few of these kids had never been in trouble before. Many (if not most) didn't have counsel. In one case, a kid who wrote nasty things about his school principal was sentenced to 3 months. The scandal hardly stops here. Another judge who was removed from the court last year claims she was removed because of her complaints about these two. The judges had judgment entered against them right before the indictments by a bank to whom they allegedly owned money. The bank's principal owner and a board member is a famously mobbed-up local landfill and casino operator, himself under indictment for lying to the state gaming commission about his ties to local organized crime figures. The judgment has the effect of taking most of the judges liquid assets, and all the money they made from the kickbacks, right before any civil lawsuits are filed by the victims of this scheme.
And of course it's broken beyond the particulars to a finding that a court administrator was stealing money from settlements (and used a county-provided car while on leave pending his criminal hearing), there's an investigation into the persistent rigging of arbitration awards in personal injury cases, and I know a lot of lawyers who had "sneaking suspicions" of payoffs of other judges there that just went uninvestigated, because there was little hope anything would be done.
At least my Mom knows enough to be scandalized. I told her I wanted to hear no more about the big, bad corrupt city. They have a small, deep, soulless cesspool -- a community of moral failing. I'm sure there are wonderful small towns somewhere. I just have to find one.
rundeep
by rundeep
02/19/2009, 9:21 PM #
When I first moved out of my small town to the big city to attend law school, I knew I belonged somewhere for the first time in my life. There suddenly were people who read newspapers. Who talked and read books, who had places to walk to and things to do and who were forced, every day, to navigate the world about them to get things done. And all this doing gave them a kind of confidence in their own abilities that was sorely lacking where I was from. Yes, there was crime and you had to be careful and not take stupid chances. But even that was exciting, and making the choices improved your sense of self-reliance even more.
People who grew up the children of minions in coal towns never really believed they could affect their environment for the better. They were taught from infancy out to take direction, follow a crowd, and to fear.Employers, priests and the nuns in school were always right and you were always wrong. It amazes me to this day that the union movement in America had a big spark there. Conditions had to have been unspeakable to get people so inclined to sheepishness to actually move. Thought wasn't exactly a prized commodity and questioning just kept you from getting jobs, though, as the union movement showed, they could be roused to powerful anger. In short, they are the equivalent of a community of fear biters -- scared and yet despised, willing to lash out sometimes but never actually change anything.
The year I moved out I refused to come back for anything more than a few hours on holidays. My mom would ask me why and I'd say: I hate it. Whenever I criticized a politician, or a business, or anything, she told me I was unfair to the Good People of the Region (which was her euphemism for everyone). And this reflected their own widely held views that they were decent, god-fearing people who lived in a poor, hardscrabble but pleasant place. Indeed, there was virtually no serious crime and no one locked their doors at night. How I could prefer the company of criminals (probably black people at that) was incomprehensible to the home crowd.
Mom wanted me to be a lawyer for her whole life. She grew up working for judges and lawyers as a secretary, understood a lot more than some of the paralegals, and dreamed big for me. She had such fawning respect for the people she worked for that I thought for a long time those men were of a different species. If we were a community of hardworking, decent people, they were the true esquires of that realm -- brilliant, cultured, landed. But always fair and wonderful, possessed of true Solomonic temperament and handsome to boot, like Gregory Peck in "To Kill A Mockingbird." She had to resign herself to the hard fact that I was never coming back to practice in those environs, and it irritated her. She groomed me to swoop in and share the podium with these men of greatness. When I told her time had shown me they weren't so smart (because I was being mean about it), she accused me of horrid, hateful bias.
Well then, imagine my lack of surprise when the US Attorney indicted 2 judges in the county seat for sending unrepresented minors to a private prison on minor matters in return for kickbacks. Michael 9 below posted the entire story, here's a link to some of the more sordid details.
link
It is the most reprehensible kind of crime imaginable by someone in the judicial system. More than a few of these kids had never been in trouble before. Many (if not most) didn't have counsel. In one case, a kid who wrote nasty things about his school principal was sentenced to 3 months. The scandal hardly stops here. Another judge who was removed from the court last year claims she was removed because of her complaints about these two. The judges had judgment entered against them right before the indictments by a bank to whom they allegedly owned money. The bank's principal owner and a board member is a famously mobbed-up local landfill and casino operator, himself under indictment for lying to the state gaming commission about his ties to local organized crime figures. The judgment has the effect of taking most of the judges liquid assets, and all the money they made from the kickbacks, right before any civil lawsuits are filed by the victims of this scheme.
And of course it's broken beyond the particulars to a finding that a court administrator was stealing money from settlements (and used a county-provided car while on leave pending his criminal hearing), there's an investigation into the persistent rigging of arbitration awards in personal injury cases, and I know a lot of lawyers who had "sneaking suspicions" of payoffs of other judges there that just went uninvestigated, because there was little hope anything would be done.
At least my Mom knows enough to be scandalized. I told her I wanted to hear no more about the big, bad corrupt city. They have a small, deep, soulless cesspool -- a community of moral failing. I'm sure there are wonderful small towns somewhere. I just have to find one.
rundeep
11 May 2007
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