Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2008 > September > 19
Friday, September 19, 2008
These class clowns mock legal system
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Today’s lesson, boys and girls, is judge shopping.
The elders who run some of your local school systems have acknowledged that they failed in their obligation to provide you an adequate education. Oh, I know, some of you have disengaged parents. What’s “disengaged”? That means they’re content to pack you up and send you off to school without concerning themselves much about what happens or doesn’t in the classroom or whether you’re text-messaging instead of doing homework. What’s “homework”? Never mind.
The point is that you’re self-esteemed through make-work school days by adults charged with the responsibility of providing you an education. Get to college and the realization dawns quickly: You know nothing. You’re not gifted. You’re remedial. This brings us, children, to today’s lesson on judge shopping.
The elders in some failed school systems across Georgia, as elders often do, blamed their failings on others. It’s not our fault, they said, reflecting the consensus of the times that somebody else makes us fail. We bear no responsibility. It’s not our fault.
So, as is the custom of the times, they formed a group and gave themselves a nifty name, the Consortium for Adequate School Funding. And they sued. Taxpayer money — at least $2 million diverted from the job of educating children in some 50 mostly rural systems and more than $1 million from the state’s coffers — was spent trying to convince a judge to give them more taxpayer money.
This is one of those roll-around-the-country lawsuits that activists pursue, regardless of a state’s per-child spending.
The consortium’s invitation to a judge with no particular education policy expertise is to snatch that responsibility from elected officials and to decide in isolation that, of the thousands of possible causes for a system’s failure to perform, the answer is more money. It would be a stupendously arrogant and activist judge to take that bait.
First up, a judge would be required to determine why some of the 50 suing systems produce better results than others. Some of the state’s best systems are not the big spenders. But the story of the day here is not the legitimacy or lack thereof of their complaint.
It’s judge shopping.
To succeed, the suit requires an activist judge willing to substitute his or her opinion for that of the executive and legislative branch. When circumstances unrelated to the specifics of this case required that it be handed over to one of the active Fulton County judges, the lawsuit fell to Craig Schwall, a Superior Court judge of unquestioned character and competence.
So what did the consortium’s leadership decide?
To drop the lawsuit “so that it can take other actions, including the filing of a new lawsuit in another court in Georgia.”
That, children, is judge shopping.
Worse still, it’s judge shopping preceded by a gratuitous slur directed at Judge Schwall. “We were … concerned that the critical issues of this case would not receive a fair hearing under the new judge,” said former Atlanta School Board chairman Joseph G. Martin Jr., the consortium’s executive director.
Mind you, Judge Schwall had never touched the case and has given no clue, in any respect, how he would receive it, except to agree that the case would go to trial on Oct. 21, as scheduled. The consortium’s cheap-shot objection is that he is a Republican appointed by Gov. Sonny Perdue — prompting the governor to declare that he is “particularly troubled by the consortium’s blatant and unfounded disrespect for the judiciary in general and Judge Craig Schwall in particular.
“Before Judge Schwall could even make a ruling, the consortium baselessly accused him of not being impartial, retreated and expressed plans to file again in a transparent attempt at forum shopping that undermines the most basic principles of this country’s legal system and the rule of law,” the governor said.
The state should now ask for a hearing on attorney’s fees — and it should insist, too, that the suit be dismissed “with prej-udice,” thereby making it more difficult to rework the lawsuit and refile it elsewhere.
That would do nothing about the shameful slur directed at Judge Schwall. But it would make judge shopping more difficult.
This issue is before the governor and the General Assembly. That is where it belongs.
Permalink | Comments (111) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Dumbed-down college; financial lessons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Charles Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar at American Enterprise Institute. Here’s his assessment of the traditional college route to adulthood: “College is not all it is cracked up to be. Dumbed-down courses, flaky majors and grade inflation have conspired to make the term B.A. close to meaningless. Another problem with today’s colleges is more insidious: They are no longer good places for young people to make the transition from childhood to adulthood. Today’s colleges are structured to prolong adolescence, not to midwife maturity.” Hope this assessment doesn’t hurt anybody’s feelings who’s, you know, on campus or anything.
Wall Street Journal headline after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. fell to bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch & Co. fell to Bank of America: “Old-School Banks Emerge Atop New World of Finance.” Lesson: Save. Don’t get strung out on debt. There’s no new way to make debt an asset. In a financial crisis, those with cash can buy good stuff cheap. Landing Merrill Lynch “was the opportunity of a lifetime,” said Bank of America Chairman and CEO Ken Lewis. “This … creates the company instantly that would have taken decades to build.”
Thirty-four years after he viciously murdered his wife for her modest insurance, justice came to Jack Alderman. On the day before his execution Fulton Superior Court Judge Melvin Westmoreland ordered a stay until the state parole board held a “meaningful” clemency hearing. A last-minute stay after 34 years. The board met meaningfully and again denied clemency.
Cheers for DeKalb Solicitor Robert James, who hauled parents to court for their children’s unexcused absences from school.
Tolls on interstate HOV lanes, already built with tax dollars? Not legitimate. It’s a second tax on highways to fund other spending. And what do those who pay the second highway tax get? Not another square inch of road capacity.
Everybody who expects problems at the polls on election day should vote early. Problem solved.
Volunteers needed to hunt for lost vice presidential candidate. Anybody seen Joe Biden?
Horror of horrors, the DOT has prematurely bought some land in the path of future road construction. Shocking. But if the state had an extra billion dollars, buying future transportation corridors in Metro Atlanta — or all of North Georgia — would be a smart investment. As the Northern Arc debacle revealed, you can’t move once people put down tap roots.
The Brian Nichols jury is selected. Take a couple of days to decide his guilt or innocence and then another 90 trying to convince all 12 jurors to impose capital punishment. I’m thinking the defense got a 10-2 or 11-1 jury on that.
Give it your best shot, I say to my friends on the left. Sarah Palin does too. “If you want specifics and specific policy or countries, go ahead, you can play stump-the-candidate if you want,” she said to a questioner Wednesday. That is the game, as everybody knows. Palin won’t be cowed. The guys — Barack Obama, Biden and John McCain — all have that inside-the-Beltway feel — McCain the maverick less than the others. Palin’s the genuine outsider. “I think because I’m a Washington outsider, opponents are going to be looking for a whole lot of things that they can criticize” but on Inauguration Day “I’ll be ready.”
Russia vows to mark its Arctic territory so it can claim a large share of its mineral riches. Russia, the U.S., Canada and other countries all are trying to assert jurisdiction in the Arctic because of oil, gas and minerals. One more reminder: The future requires a strong leader in the White House, a decision-maker. It’s no time for a facilitator. False signals could be consequential. We’re dealing with thugs.
If I had $100,000 available, I’d pour it into financial stocks and others battered by the panic. What we have to fear is panic. Have faith in America.
Permalink | Comments (122) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Services »
