The people's voice of reason
The people's voice of reason
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In the 2008 Presidential election, the people of America granted immense power to one of the most dangerous men in the world. In 2012, they re-elected him. Now after almost eight years of treasonous treachery, the Great Traitor and his minions have saddled us with a catastrophic, outrageously expensive, unsustainable health care burden, needless war-mongering and meddling in the Middle East killing thousands of people and making new enemies, releasing dangerous terrorists from GITMO while...
As years go by, politicians never cease to stoop lower and lower to scheme up new ways to milk more money from the people and place numerous additional roadblocks into the American economy. One of the newest targets for government ripoffs, of course, is the internet. Up until now, it has been a bastion of free-market success, where people and corporations, both large and small, have equal opportunities to make the best of a world-wide market. Anyone who claims to know Constitutional law should...
For many years, I have wondered about the procedures employers use to select applicants who apply for jobs. The first qualifications that come to mind are education and experience—presumably the more of each, the better. From my observations, employers like to see resumes that have a complete list of previous employment, with exact dates and other trivia, with no gaps, going all the way back to high school or earlier. Other qualifications, like talent, honesty, dependability, health, and o...
“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark…And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” – Revelation 13: 16-17. Just how, exactly, does the mark of the beast relate to anything we do today in everyday living? Most people need some help comprehending it. But the answer is simple. It’s a nasty little government practice called licensure. Are you self-employed? Do you own or op...
This will be my final article for the Alabama Gazette. As I compose it, my mind goes back to the hot August day 3 years ago when I first visited with Loretta Grant to propose this series of articles. I had grown up in Macon County, chosen law as a profession and watched tumultuous changes that had been wrought by law. I had deliberately chosen to stay close to a primary site of those changes. I had served as a circuit judge for 18 years. It had been a great learning experience. I felt burdened...
It won’t be long before we get into football season, and “Roll Tide” and “War Eagle” will be screamed across Alabama and surrounding states to root for our teams. It is a tradition of tailgating, get-togethers, and… ticket “scalping.” It is a known fact that our universities make big bucks with their sports. If anyone wants proof, he should have a look at the Alabama and Auburn campuses and note the numerous fancy buildings and facilities that have mushroomed everywhere. Parts of the Tuscaloo...
Child Abuse- Child abuse can result from physical, emotional, or sexual harm; it can even result from neglect. There are multiple causes and connections which can contribute to child abuse such as alcoholism, substance abuse, anger issues, and poverty just to name a few. But child abuse has no limits--it affects all strata of life. It does not see or care about who you are, where you come from, or where you have been. Studies show that one in eight boys and one in four girls are sexually abused...
When I was in the third grade, I raised my hand one day and asked the teacher for permission to "go to the bathroom." She nodded, and I hurried down the hall to the door designated "Boys." When I had relieved myself, I headed back in the direction of my homeroom. As bad luck would have it, the doors in the hallway all looked alike, and I opened the wrong one. Two second-grade girls were standing there with their mouths open in disbelief. Then they both screamed and pointed at me. The loudest...
Public education was and is the great American dream. Nevertheless, since the 1950s, we have seen a broad-based movement toward the privatization of education. It is against this background that I tell my story. Stephen Covey who wrote The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People suggested that one of those habits is “keeping the main thing the main thing.” For public education, excellent, effective education is the main thing. I was born in rural Macon County and attended Shorter High School, a pub...
Once again, there is a lot of noise being made across the country to raise the minimum wage in a make-believe effort to help the poor workers at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. And once again, if any of this crap should ever become law, it will have the exact, opposite effect its promoters are touting. What are our so-called “leaders” thinking? What is going through the minds of these people? Do they honestly believe they are helping anybody? Is it going to help workers pull the...
First, let’s focus on ignorance; then we can develop its relationship to evil. Ignorance certainly includes lack of knowledge, but ignorance is not merely absence of knowledge. Ignorance has a positive existence in human consciousness. It is incorrect beliefs more often than the mere absence of correct beliefs. The incorrect beliefs are strongly and passionately held and adamantly defended. Ignorance doesn’t just stand on a street corner and rant and rave; it talks on I-Phones, and moves in ema...
On the subject of gambling, many people and politicians in Alabama are all over the spectrum on how much we should allow in this state. On one side are the ones who believe that it should be completely legalized with a free market. On the opposite, we have the extremists who want to abolish every last bit of it, lest the people overindulge in it and plummet into Hell. Do we have a practical solution to this argument? For starters, there is no way we can abolish it. The federal government has gra...
The cost of access to the legal system presents difficult, perplexing questions. The legal system is the last resort for dispute resolution. But access to the legal system costs money. Lawyers engage in the practice of law to make a living. They cannot provide their services free. The cost of a judiciary has caused the legislature to impose substantial charges in the form of various court costs. If the dispute involved involves only a small economic value, the cost of the legal solution may be...
Everybody in America knows that we have a serious problem with immigration. However, very few have offered any reasonable and workable solutions. One “solution” that will not be effective is building a “Berlin Wall” along our southern border. Building and guarding it would not only be outrageously expensive, but it could be easily bypassed on both ends by boats or even swimmers. Deportations to the other side of the border are also mostly ineffective. The illegals simply come back again and aga...
Last month I described how the Finnline and adequate yellow time can put an end to dangerous panic stops at signaled intersections. Here are some additional remedies to improve the traffic flow. The legitimacy of installing a signal for a private property is dubious at best. And because of the way many are timed, they are particularly obnoxious. A few weeks ago, Walmart opened a new store on highway 231 across from the Garrett Coliseum in Montgomery. Like at every other I had seen, it had a...
Lawyer advertising turns most people off. That includes many members of the legal profession itself. Ads that include boxing gloves, horses, tigers and big trucks may be mildly amusing the first time you see them, but add little to the image of the legal profession and nothing to the dignity of law. Those of us who still regard law as a gift of God that allows humans to live peaceably together have difficulty seeing how the commercial advertising of legal services as a commodity can be...
WACV Talk Radio, I asked Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange what he was going to do about removing the obnoxious red light cameras from the city. His answer was very blunt, “Nothing.” In fact, he even announced that he had plans to install some more. Why? Does Mayor Strange understand that they do essentially nothing to improve safety? Apparently not. But he obviously knows that they generate a great deal of revenue by legalized piracy. This is especially true when yellow lights are timed so sho...
It seems like every time I answer the phone these days it is a new opinion poll. The pollsters have even gotten into cell phones. I probably receive at least twelve or fifteen such calls each week. The calls are intrusive and excessive. The benefits arising from the overburden of surveys is highly questionable. The problems facing government these days are highly complex, to say the least. Most of us have our hands full simply dealing with the problems that confront us in daily life. So what is...
A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that more than four out of five parents are concerned that their children are exposed to too much televised drama, sex and violence -- yet millions of youngsters are still enthusiastically watching hours of TV daily, with little or no supervision. That's unsettling news for clinicians and medical professionals alike. American children spend an average of six hours each day watching TV or using other media devices . That's more time than they devote...
In September and October, I wrote articles describing the dangers that are inherent in corporate America’s ability to impose arbitration on the consuming public. I pointed out that the power of dispute resolution is vested in the courts and that when dispute resolution is privatized, the public is deprived of its right to know. On December 14, 2015, the United States Supreme Court decided the case of DIRECTV v. Imburgia, which deals with arbitration. DIRECTV had entered into a contract with all...
Faith is what we really and truly believe. It performs some remarkable functions that do not depend on its ties to religion. All of us believe that we exist in a physical environment on the face of the earth and that by observation we can come to understand that environment. We take for granted that the objects that surround us have names and that there are words that we can use to identify and describe them. Because we live in a social environment in with others who share those same words and...
I am currently teaching a course about faith in my church. I make the rather obvious point that faith is what we really believe. I’m afraid that sometimes we don’t really believe what we say we believe. We always act consistently with our faith. Jesus said, “Ye shall know them by their fruit.” But if our actions always reflect what we believe, then why don’t we always do what we know is the right thing to do? Plato thought if a person knows what is right, he or she will act consisten...
Every person with even a whit of common sense knows that bribery is illegal and fundamentally wrong. But people still do it all the time. Some are rather petty. I know a fellow, whose name I will not mention, who has used bribery as a means of getting out of traffic tickets. Back in the days when he was a practicing doctor, he faced many situations where getting to patients and appointments promptly was crucial in administering aid to save people’s lives. As a result, he was often caught e...
Our country is facing a myriad of crises both at home and abroad. These include but not limited to an effective foreign policy in which President Obama has diminished over a century of the U.S. role as a major force in maintain some semblance of order among rogue nations in the Mideast, Russia and China. As a result, the America we once knew is no longer considered the number one world power and, consequently, has lost its influence world-wide. The chaos which has been allowed and to some...
This column will focus on the privatization of dispute resolution in arbitration. Congress enacted The Federal Arbitration Act that required arbitration in all matters involving interstate commerce where there was an arbitration agreement many years ago. In the 1980's the United States Supreme Court upheld that legislation. Since that time there has been extensive privatization of a very large amount dispute resolution. With rare exception Court proceedings are public proceedings, but arbitratio...
