Trial by TV-watching Jury

Today's issue of Parade magazine contained a short column, "The High Price of Jury Trials." Even before reading the article, I said to myself, "It's sure not because they are paying the jurors too much." The actual point of the article was that the expense builds up when courts have difficulty filling jury boxes because of so many summons recipients claiming hardship or simply not showing up for duty.

I certainly agree with Matt Fullenbaum in the final paragraph when he calls the jury system a cornerstone of our democracy and claims that it's important for everyone to answer the call. However, I think that one reason so many people try to get out of it is that jury duty is such drugery and jurors are generally treated rather badly. (For the record, I have never sat at a defendant's, plaintiff's, or prosecutor's table, but I have served three tours of duty in the jury box.)

Yes, jurors are generally poorly paid, the Arizona example of $300 per day on longer trials being a notable exception. The highest I have ever been paid was $30 per day. Transportation, parking, and lunch were not covered, and all of those can be significant costs in downtown Los Angeles. As I sat in my last trial, I was quite cognizant of the fact that the defendant was the only person required to be there that was being paid less for it than I or my fellow jurors were. In fact, I was pretty sure that the judge and the attorneys were each being paid more than all twelve jurors and two alternates combined. So, where are our perks?

Yes, perks. It's not only the pay, but jurors are often treated rather poorly for anyone of any pay scale. They have to sit quietly and attentively while evidence and testimony are presented, and while arguments are being made; that's not really a problem for most jurors. But then there's an objection, and the judge tells the jurors to disregard the last few statements spoken. (Yeah, right, and why don't you order us to never think about pink elephants while you're at it? That will purge them from our minds!) When there is a sidebar conference, jurors have to just sit there and do exactly nothing: they can't talk, they aren't supposed to be reasoning toward any conclusion yet before all evidence is presented, and they darn sure better not be listening in on that conference that's happening only twenty feet away. On the other hand, if the court is waiting for some slowpoke to show up, the jurors have to wait out in the hallway, where there is generally no comfortable seating, and they are still allowed to neither talk nor listen.

One thing that has improved in the past few years is the one-day-one-trial policy now implemented in many jurisdictions. When I last served, Los Angeles County had a ten-day-one-trial policy. You had to sit in the waiting room all day, reading or watching the soaps on TV, until you got called to a courtroom. Once called -- usually with about 50 other people -- you got grilled as to your suitability for that trial. If you got rejected, or if all jurors and alternates were selected before they got to you, it's back to the waiting room. And this goes on and on until you either get seated in a trial or spend ten days in the waiting room. In my case, I got dismissed twice and then finally seated for a five-day trial on my ninth day of service. (So yes, I had to miss fourteen days of work for a wonderful $30 per day.)

During that service, I devised a means of streamlining the trial system and being much more kind to the jurors. It was a videotape trial. Granted, the technology has greatly improved since then, digital video, DVDs, and all that, but the idea remains the same.

It's simply this: prospects report to the courtroom for jury selection, some are selected, and then all go back to their daily business until the end of the trial. The attorneys' opening statements are recorded on video, as is all testimony. At the end of each day, a copy of the raw video is given to each party, with the original retained as the court record. At the end of the trial, the video is edited: all sidebars, gone; all objections, obliterated along with the offending statements that prompted them (assuming that the objection was sustained). All that's left is the pure statement that the jurors are supposed to hear. Naturally, the person doing the editing must be an officer of the court, but each party to the case is allowed to have one witness to the editing process. If there is any objection to an editing decision, they can be quickly raised with the judge; after all, each party has their own copy of the raw video.

Finally, all selected jurors are summoned back to the court. Both parties are introduced, and then the jurors sit and watch the entire edited video, with a five-minute break each hour. The defendant is allowed to be present for the viewing, but is not required to be; he is however required to remain silent through the viewing if present.

Before the defense rests their case, they must declare one of the following choices: (A) the defendant's testimony and cross-examination will be on video like all previous statements and testimony, and will be likewise edited, (B) the defendant will give live testimony in the presence of the jury and will likewise submit to live cross, or (C) the defendant will decline to take the stand at all. If choice B is selected, all existing video must be edited and presented to the jury before the defendant takes the stand, in order to maintain chronological continuity of the trial.

Closing statements of each counsel can be on video, or can be live -- live would probably be convenient if defendant's testimony was live, while video statements would be more convenient otherwise. But then, after instructions from the bench, the jury retires for deliberation, and gets to take the full trial's edited video with them to play back as they please.

So, what would this accomplish? For one, you would waste far less of the juror's time. Enough less time that the court can probably afford to pay them minimum wage or even more. Second, the jurors don't have to go through the doublethink process of pretending they didn't just hear statements that the judge told them to disregard. Third, because the attorneys know that the jurors will never hear those statements, they will probably make far fewer of them, so the additional time for the jury to view edited video after the live testimony has already occurred will probably all come out in the wash. Fourth, in some cases the jurors will never be called to the courtroom because, after all testimony has been presented, the prosecution may drop the case or the defendant may plea bargain. In all of this, what it accomplishes overall is that the jurors are treated like valuable members of the court rather than its indentured servants.

If we really believe in trial by jury, then the juror is arguably the most important person in the courtroom, possibly even more important than the judge on the bench. So why shouldn't we treat them that way? If we did, then maybe not quite so many people would try so hard to finagle their way out of jury duty.

Health Care Non-Reform

There is a world of difference between "You scratch my back; I'll scratch yours," and "we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor." If you don't see the difference, or see it as only minor, then you are part of the problem with politics in this country, and you are by no means worthy of the right to vote.

I am absolutely disgusted that Ben Nelson agreed to the Cornhusker Kickback. As a resident of Nebraska, am I supposed to be grateful that he negotiated this concession? Sure, it means things are not as bad for Nebraskans as for people in many other states; in actuality, it takes what would otherwise have been a monumental catastrophe and improves it to being merely a major disaster. But hey, my wife and I both have family in other states where it is still a monumental catastrophe. And am I not supposed to care about other hardworking Americans in still other states? Gee, and all this time we've been told that it's the conservatives that try to divide this country.

As a pro-life conservative, am I supposed to be pleased that Nelson managed to get a compromise on the abortion language in the Senate health care bill? To be pleased with that would be like celebrating the fact that my team outscored the other team 10-7 in the third quarter, even though the other team was ahead 40-3 at halftime and is now close to another touchdown early in the fourth quarter. There is no guarantee what will happen in the fourth quarter, nor is there any guarantee that Nelson's abortion language will survive reconciliation with the House bill.

Celebrating that compromise would also be like believing that Planned Parenthood doesn't use federal funds for abortion. Sure, officially they don't. But federal grants subsidize their other activities. Which means that funding from non-governmental sources that might otherwise be required by those other activities can instead be diverted to promoting and providing abortion. So they are in effect being subsidized for abortion; to state otherwise is merely an accounting trick.

Little concessions here and there do not make this so-called health care reform bill any less of a major train wreck. The bill might make health care a little more accessible to a very small minority of Americans, but at the cost of making it worse for the vast majority; simply yet another handout in a long chain of wealth transfers from those who produce wealth to those who contribute nothing at all to society.

And despite spin to the contrary, this bill will do nothing to control costs. Rather, it restricts the amount that some people will have to pay for certain goods and services. That doesn't mean that those goods and services will actually cost any less, just that others will have to bear the brunt of the cost. Three guesses who those others are.

Even if the bill explicitly says that the cost of certain things cannot rise, those words will not be worth the paper they will be printed on. If words in signed legislation always caused reality to reflect those words, then why don't we just outlaw poverty and be done with it? From now on, nobody is allowed to be poor; everyone will always have plenty of everything, whether they bother to work for it or not. While we're at it, why not have the law also mandate that everyone be able to fly? Won't that be cool?

No, every time government tries to control costs by restricting prices, the only thing it accomplishes is reduction of supply, because those suppliers simply cannot remain in business while being forced to lose money on nearly every transaction.

Am I advocating doing nothing? No, but continuing with this so-called health care reform would be far worse than doing nothing at all. It's not that we want to go slower, and it's not that we don't want to go anywhere; it's that we want to go in a completely different direction. A direction in which people and not government bureaucrats control their own destiny, and in which people that work hard to provide for themselves and their families don't have to carry water for those who are too lazy to carry it themselves.

The Problem with Entitlements

Probably the biggest problem with entitlements today is the very fact that they are called "entitlements." As George Orwell demonstrated in 1984, when you institutionally bastardize the language, you gradually control the direction of thought in the people that use that language. Since welfare handouts are referred to as "entitlements," people have come to believe that they really are entitled to them.

My family was on vacation at Disney World a couple of weeks ago, and we participated in one of their Dining Plans. I have to admit that I was somewhat disturbed the first time that we got a meal and the cashier informed us of how many entitlements we had left in our plan. My first thought was "We're not on welfare!" But then it occurred to me: those really were entitlements. We were in fact entitled to them because we had already paid for them.

How many government benefits actually get handed to people that really paid for them? Those are typically referred to as "services," and the money paid is "service fees" or "user fees." Ironically enough, benefits are only referred to as "entitlements" when the recipients have no moral ground from which to claim that they deserve the benefit. Why are you entitled to receive something that I paid for and you didn't?

We've got to stop worrying about the "dignity" of those who continually absorb every resource sent their way. Those resources are not entitlements; they are handouts. And we can no longer afford to hand so much out. So we need to stop the doublespeak and call them what they really are, not what some wish them to be.

Do you hope he fails?

The day before Barack Obama was inaugurated as President, Rush Limbaugh was asked about his hopes for the new administration. His four-word reply: "I hope he fails." It's been nearly two months since then, and Limbaugh has explained his meaning several times, but I still hear it presented as though he wants our economy and/or the country to fail.

Hoping Obama and company fails is not at all the same thing as hoping the country fails. Granted, if you are of the mindset that Obama is The Messiah, the Pure and Perfect One, then sure, they are pretty much the same thing to you. But if you really think that Obama's failure necessarily means that the country fails, perhaps you need to better examine your beliefs and motives.

If you honestly believe that Obama's plans will be harmful not only to you, but to most everyone around you, and to the country as a whole, and you can credibly support those beliefs with historical and empirical evidence, not just one or two isolated anecdotes, then what in the world is wrong with hoping that those plans cannot be successfully carried out?

Now, I know that the analogy I'm about to pose, some will find offensive, even incendiary. (You have been warned.) But hey, was anyone censured for implying that the Bush administration was complicit in 9/11? I can't think of anyone. In fact, I can't think of anyone censured for publicly saying it outright.

I bring up 9/11, because I'm thinking of a situation that day. Did the passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 hope their hijackers would succeed? Did any of those passengers say, "Well, I don't agree with them, but they're in charge now, and I hope they succeed because we need to get along"? Hardly. They surmised that the hijackers were attempting something that would be devastating to this country, and from the evidence we've been able to gather, they not only hoped the hijackers failed but considered it their solemn ultimate duty to ensure that failure. And thank God that they did.

So is it wrong to hope Obama fails with his plans for the country? Well, was it wrong to hope that George W. Bush failed? Apparently, a lot of people did hope just that. In fact, a number of people not only in Congress but within the entrenched executive bureaucracy actively worked toward making him fail.

Obama has made no secret that he wishes to remake this country, to take wealth away from those who hold it and "return" it to others. (You can only actually return money if it was wrongfully taken in the first place, or if the product that the money paid for has also been returned to the seller.) Obama also wants to severely restrict tax deductions for charitable gifts, but make up for it by offering government support to certain non-profit endeavors. (Rather than you giving your money to the charity of your choice, he gives your money to the charity of his choice. Hello ACORN, goodbye anything remotely conservative, libertarian, or religious right.)

Let me tell you a little story. When they were first married, my parents were struggling to get up into the middle class. Their first Christmas tree was cut out of a small scrap of cardboard and covered with aluminum foil. (Hey, they recycled way back then!) Now, 53 years later, I find myself lumped in with those evil rich people that have what everyone else deserves. But along the way, we took no handouts, cheated nor stole from no one, didn't operate on the shady fringes of legality (like Ted Kennedy's family did during Prohibition), didn't try to buy votes or favors with other people's money (as do many in every level of government), got education and other training when and where we could, delayed gratification when necessary, and generally just did the best we could with what we had. And I didn't get where am by being greedy, stingy, or conniving, or by winning any lotteries; I was generous along the way, even naively over-generous in a few cases.

I hope that didn't sound too much like bragging. If I actually thought that my story was unique, perhaps I would brag. But I'm convinced there are at least a million Americans who could tell you a similar story. So why should we be punished?

I have seen numerous situations where certain people quickly burn through significant amounts of cash, even tens of thousands of dollars, and yet have nothing at all to show for it when the money's gone. Or are even worse off after than before. Sometimes it was even my money they were burning through (see "naively over-generous" above). I'm not talking about people who worked hard and trustingly invested their savings with Enron or Bernie Madoff. I'm talking about people that think they don't need to really work as long as they can get someone else to support them in some way or another. And I'm talking about people who spend more than they can afford on things that wouldn't improve their life in the long run even if they could afford them. Particularly irritating are the folks who manage to be in both of those groups.

If anyone thinks that it's okay to forcibly take my hard-earned, carefully-saved money and redistribute it to others who put out far less effort than me, or were far more foolish than me, then yes, I certainly hope that that person and his plans fail miserably.

No More Year Glasses

Tonight, as on the last nine New Year's Eves, a lot of people will be celebrating while wearing glasses shaped like the number of the incoming new year, with the two middle zero digits surrounding their eyes. It occurs to me that tonight is the last time this will happen, because the next year number with two zeroes in the middle is 990 years in the future. And I'm guessing that by then, objects to be placed on the face for purposes of modifying vision will be reduced to the status of historical or even archaeological curiosities, so it would occur to no one to emulate them with a year number.

But we wouldn't have to wait 990 years were we to change our calendar system from its present Anno Domini (aka Common Era) numbering. However, we would need to select an origin year that is sometime within the second AD millennium so that 1000 New Calendar could occur significantly sooner than AD 3000 (aka Y3K).

But do we even need to base our large time unit on the duration of Terra's Solar orbit? After all, our current solar days and years don't quite fit together as it is, so we have to add a Leap Year Day every fourth year except for those divisible by 100 but not 400 (making a year equal to about 365.2425 days, or 349.2 more minutes than are claimed by Rent's "Seasons of Love"). And even with that, we have to occasionally throw in a Leap Second, as is supposed to happen tonight, in order to keep things synchronized. So why not adopt time units derived from something more astronomically universal. Stardates, anyone?

So if we play with stardates, why not call our new system the New Cosmic Calendar? And instead of searching for some great event to mark the origin of our new time axis, why not just arbitrarily designate the time at which the system was adopted as "NCC 1701"? Okay, maybe that's a bit too geeky, but at least we would only have to wait another 299 stardate units to wear glasses with two zeroes in the middle.

Well, Happy New Year anyway, and enjoy those year number glasses for the last time in your life. (Unless 51 years from now you use a large "6" as the left eye hole.)

Community Organizer

Honestly, I believe that if a liberal mouthpiece or pundit were to say that the sky is green or that the state of Delaware was in the middle of a desert, a lot of people would be repeating it as gospel the next day, particularly if it could be somehow interpreted to the detriment of one or more conservatives.

I say this because I saw a letter in the paper this morning that ended with "Jesus was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a governor. 'Nuff said." Well, my response to that is "The Mississippi River runs backward." It's equally true, and equally relevant to the current presidential campaign, which is to say, not at all. (The river did in fact run backward for a few days following the New Madrid quake in 1812, so it might even be more true than the first statement.)

The community organizer/governor statement was already making the rounds, attempting to equate Barack Obama to Jesus and Sarah Palin to the Roman procurator who ordered His crucifixion, before Rep. Steve Cohen repeated the statement on the House floor September 10. But it is simply hogwash, and can be true only in the Joseph Goebbels sense of telling it big enough and often enough.

First of all, Roman procurators like Pilate were not democratically elected governors as we know them, but were appointed by the emperor. And whereas Sarah Palin enjoys overwhelming approval in her state, Pilate was popular only with the corrupt local leadership to whom he capitulated. Hmmm, that last part doesn't sound much like Palin, either.

But the more odious comparison is Obama to Jesus. Jesus was, is, and will be many things. In His earthly incarnation alone, he went from miraculous Child of a virgin, to carpenter, to Teacher and Prophet, to Suffering Servant, to Sacrificial Lamb, to Risen Savior, and finally to Ascended King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He was never a community organizer of any kind, let alone the kind that rabble-roused the populace to demand that the government support them at the expense of others.

Jesus called for people to be servants to others and generous givers of their resources, but Obama calls for people to demand to be served and given to. Jesus told a parable in which one talent was confiscated from the lazy servant who refused to do anything with it and was given to the productive servant who turned five talents into ten; Obama calls for confiscating the earned wealth of productive people and redistributing it to people who seem productive only in the sense of fecundity.

In short, the implied comparisons of the oft-repeated statement are illogical, nonsensical, demeaning, and borderline sacrilegious.

And by the way, I'm sure that it is Bush's fault that Delaware is a desert. You know, global warming and all that.

The AMT Strikes Yet Again!

Well, our wonderful Congress did a few last-minute tweaks to the Alternative Maximum Tax a couple of months ago, rather than dispensing with it altogether as should have been done at least a decade ago. So, until it's gone, it looks like this will be an annual rant of mine.

In last year's version of this rant, I mentioned that it turns out that the AMT is even worse than I realized the previous year. But can it get any worse? Are you kidding? Of course it can!

Let's revisit the dinner party for 20 that I hypothesized in last year's rant: You had to pre-pay for 30 steak dinners when you only needed 20; the restaurant refunded you for 5 dinners immediately and for 3 more a few months later. If you do the math, he still owes you for two dinners that you never got but had to pay for a long time ago. So you and your spouse decide to go out for a nice dinner, and you wind up at the same restaurant. When you're finished, the restaurant owner presents you with a bill for the full amount of the meal. You say, "Why not credit the dinner refunds you owe me against this bill?" The owner responds, "Oh, no, those were for steak dinners! You had fish tonight, so it doesn't apply."

Why did I add such an odd turn to the dinner party story? Because that is precisely what is happening to my taxes yet again!

To review, the AMT forced me in spring of 2005 to pay tax on income imputed to me in 2004 but which I had not yet received. In spring of 2006, computing 2005 taxes made it obvious that the previous imputed income was overstated so I got to recapture the tax overpayment. But not all of the overpayment; some rolled over to 2006 taxes. What I was ranting about last year was that 2006 taxes still didn't let me recapture all of it, but rolled some still further.

It's now February 2008, and I'm doing my 2007 taxes. The labyrinthian tax instructions say that I owe $1572 of AMT for 2007. But they still owe me $715 for AMT overpayment three years ago. So I should have to pay $857, right? No, only in a world that actually makes sense. But in the world of our marvelous tax code, there are certain activities that trigger the AMT, and there are certain activities that trigger AMT recapture credits. Apparently, in 2007 I did a few from the first group but none from the second. So the entire $715 credit has to roll over to 2008 taxes next year, and the entire $1572 AMT is in the tax bill that I have to pay by April 15 of this year.

So next year the feds will still owe me $715 for taxes that I paid four years earlier, taxes on income that never existed at all! Will I ever get any interest on that four-year (or possibly even longer) loan? Again, that would only be in a world that actually makes sense. But will the insanity ever cease?

Instead of Term Limits

Calls for term limits for members of Congress and/or state legislature come up frequently due to annoyance at some very senior member, pushing something ridiculous or blocking something worthwhile. We pretty much all know the arguments for and against such term limits. The Founding Fathers never intended Congress to be a career, but any given constituency should have the right to vote for whomever they want to represent them.

What does it say about the people of Massachusetts if they cannot find anyone to be a better Senator than Ted Kennedy? What does it say about the people of north Omaha if they cannot find anyone to send to the Nebraska Unicameral Legislature better than Ernie Chambers? He's been there since 1970, twice as long as anyone else in the history of the state.

[Update: Nebraska passed term limits for its state senators in 2006, and Chambers was finally forced out January 6, 2009, after 38 years in office. But Kennedy is still on Capitol Hill.]

Any state could pass a law limiting the term of their own members of the U.S. House and Senate, and any throw-the-rascals-out group can boycott their state representative, but why would anyone want to limit their own representation if other constituencies were going to continue to send the same people year after year?

The problem is in the power of seniority. Experience in the legislative body naturally carries some de facto influence in that body; there is no reason it needs to carry de jure control as well. Yet nearly every legislative body in this country grants preference for committee chairmanships and other such positions of influence to the people that have been there the longest. But what does having been there forever prove? That the campaign deck is stacked in favor of the incumbent, who can communicate with the electorate at their expense, and can bring home a little bacon just before he has to face reelection? Or does it perhaps prove that sitting pretty on the public payroll is a lot easier than trying to advance a career or build a business in the real world?

Since term limits are so difficult to bring about, and since some validity can be ascribed to the argument that you don't want to be forced to retire a true talented statesman, I think we ought to abolish the legislative seniority system. Or, at the very least, restrict it severely. Let's say that we only have two grades on the seniority scale: anyone joining the body at or since the last general election is a freshman, and anyone else is a veteran. Veterans would include those who didn't have to face reelection in the last general election, such as a U.S. Senator in the third through sixth years of his first term. All freshmen are considered equals, and all veterans are considered equal, regardless of their relative terms of "service".

Positions of influence should then be granted to someone who has demonstrated knowledge and competency in the appropriate subject rather than someone who has just been hanging on in the certainty that he would eventually "deserve" the position.

Call me crazy, but somehow I think that Ted Kennedy's reelection chances would go down if the people of Massachusetts knew that the following January he would have exactly as much power as someone from Wyoming or Idaho with only two years experience.