JL
* * *
Headlines
Say a Lot
Wednesday’s
column by Charles Blow in the New York Times was headlined ‘Why Trump’s Indictments Don’t Feel Like Part of the
Finale.’ The Palm Beach Post’s
Saturday reprint of almost all of that column was headlined ‘There’s Little Time Left to Hold Trump Accountable.’ Either
way, the column is 'must' reading! Check
it out at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/opinion/trump-indictment.html?smid=tw-share or CLICK HERE to read it.
Blow hits the nail on the head in pointing out that the defeated former president’s supporters believe in him because ‘they wanted their biases confirmed rather than challenged’ and his celebrity status made that possible.
(And don’t forget what appears in the
preceding item in this posting about the ability of the legal profession to
corrupt law to bring about extended delays. (I can't seem to get away from that this morning.)
JL
* * *
Lawyers,
Shakespeare, Sir Thomas More, and our Forty-fifth President
This
key line by William Shakespeare from his play, Henry VI, Part 2, written in
about 1592 is frequently quoted. They
are spoken by a criminal insurrectionist
who cries out, “First thing, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
The meaning of this has been debated for years as to whether Shakespeare meant that lawyers were good for society, working to protect people, and that only the bad guys, like the criminal character for whom he wrote these lines, would want to kill lawyers, or that lawyers were bad for society, part of a system that oppressed the rights of citizens. On whose side was Shakespeare anyway?
Sir
Thomas More’s ‘Utopia,’ his early vision of an ideal world, was finally
published in England about forty years before Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2
was written, and could have influenced him.
More was himself a lawyer and rose to the position of Lord Chancellor
(before he was beheaded by Henry VIII, but that’s another story), a position
not unlike a combination of the roles of our present Attorney-General and
Supreme Court Chief Justice. This excerpt from ‘Utopia,’ More’s fantasy about
an ideal world, suggests what he had thought of lawyers and laws in general at
that time.
‘They (the Utopians) have no lawyers
among them. For they esteem them (think of them to be) a class, whose
profession it is to disguise matters, and to writhe (meaning ‘twist’) the laws. Therefore they think it much better that every man
should plead his own cause, and trust it to the judge, as elsewhere the client
trusteth it to his counsellor (lawyer). By this plan they avoid many delays, and find out the truth with more certainty. For
after the parties have opened the merits of the cause without the artifices of lawyers, the judge examines the matter and
supports the simplicity of those well-meaning persons whom otherwise the crafty (lawyers) would run down. And thus they avoid
those evils which appear so remarkable in those
countries which labour under a vast load of
laws.’
The
words I’ve put in red suggest what More had thought of the legal profession and
laws at the time he wrote ‘Utopia.’ (This blog has been frequently referring to More's ideas.) I
wonder what he and Shakespeare, for that matter, would think of the lawyers
involved in the pending indictments of our forty-fifth president, who I cannot even
imagine pleading his own cause directly before a judge as More suggests,
without the benefit of counsel. That
would probably produce a comedy superior to any that Shakespeare wrote.
JL
*
* *
Homelessness
When I was a kid, I recall seeing photographs of people sleeping in the streets in places like what used to be called Calcutta or Bombay. (Both cities now use their original un-anglicized names, Kalikata and Mumbai.)
 |
| They're still sleeping on the streets in India, and now, here too. |
And during the Great Depression in this country for a while, unemployed veterans were living in makeshift structures in parks. They called them ‘Hoovervilles,’ named after the president at the time. World War Two helped solve this problem with significant job creation, especially in California.
If
you read the attached article on today’s homeless population in this country,
truly a disgrace, you will find that this tragic situation is based on housing
being unaffordable for many, even those with jobs that don’t provide enough
income to pay rent for a place to live.
The
article, from NPR’s national newsfeed last week, can be found at https://www.npr.org/2023/07/12/1186856463/homelessness-rent-affordable-housing-encampments?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20230713&utm_term=8738041&utm_campaign=news&utm_id=65835993&orgid=482&utm_att1= or by CLICKING HERE.
Check it out, it's a short read. A minute or two.
Years ago, we had solutions for this problem. They were known as ‘slums.’ Often, families including many relatives were
squeezed together in what were called railroad flats, running from front to the back of a structure, in old, dilapidated, multi-story, tenements in the worst
parts of our major cities, where they were overcharged for housing that
building inspectors would condemn if they ever got near to them, which they
never did. But at least, as bad as their
housing was, slum dwellers were not homeless.
 |
| A Solution 120 Years Ago, but not Today |
At one time, such buildings were new, but after over a century of band-aid type repairs, many were candidates for demolition. As that occurred, they were replaced by housing with higher rents, often part of the gentrification of a neighborhood, which locals could not afford. Parts of Brooklyn are an example.
For a while, government stepped in to provide housing once
the slums were razed in the form of public housing for those with low incomes. These were the towering red brick ‘projects’
that housed those who a few decades earlier would have been slum dwellers. Along with State rent controls, this was an
attempt at a solution. But there were never enough of either to take care of
those whose income did not include enough money to afford whatever housing was
on the market, not to mention the unemployed who couldn’t afford anything at
all. And the remaining ‘projects’ are
now deteriorating while the ancient, run-down buildings that a century ago provided
housing in ‘the slums’ do not exist any longer.
Nowadays, buildings are not allowed to get that old. Look around your neighborhood.
In the nineteenth century, as the United States expanded
westward, those who could not afford housing in the original thirteen States were
among those who settled the vast open spaces of the continent stretching to the
Pacific coast. That solution is no longer
possible and the homeless are present in these areas now too.
While the NPR article does not offer solutions, I see two approaches
to them.
One is to hope that the economy grows to the point where
every employed American can afford a decent place to live, as provided by the
housing marketplace. But as the poet wrote, ‘Hope springs eternal in the human
breast.’
The other is for the Federal government to step in and
through taxation of individuals and businesses, or the sale of bonds, build
more public housing, and provide low interest financing enabling builders to
provide affordable housing to all who seek it.
Oh, I know we tried that once and it eventually failed
us. But it might succeed if done ‘the
right way.’ The tricky questions of where such housing would be built (urban,
suburban, or rural?), who would qualify to live there, and whether some kind of
rent control need be instituted also cannot be ignored.
This country should be up to meeting this challenge.
JL
*
* *
|
How
Did I Miss This? In
an article in the New York Times about Microsoft’s apparently successful
continuing efforts to absorb a video game company, the following shocking
information was included. |
|
‘The game industry now accounts for
significant chunks of the economy. It is larger than music, U.S. book
publishing and North American sports combined. Microsoft’s game division and
Activision Blizzard, the company Microsoft is targeting, each make more money
annually than all U.S. movie theaters.’ Where
was I when this happened? I thought it
just involved mostly kids. My contact with video games is minimal (occasionally
I play a game of ‘Spider Solitaire’), but somehow, this massive change in our
economy and its social effects, slipped by me and many of my generation. I still read books, watch sports, and go to
the movies. Solutions
for our social and economic problems based on ‘gaming’ won’t work because
games are based on a fictional ‘reality’ of which our society is not a part. It has its own rules and laws which don’t
work for real people. Adults, who’ve regressed to playing video ‘games,’ instead of facing life, also seem to go for the fictional 'reality' of movies like ‘Barbie’ or those based on the old
Marvel Comics. They inhabit a reality of their own and should not have definitive roles in our culture. But apparently,
they do. If
that is where we are heading, we should remember that Marvel comic book
heroes were always second-rate imitations of those found in DC publications.
Captain Marvel never was in the same league as Superman. Billy Batson could
never get a job as a reporter at the Daily Planet, as Clark Kent did, no
matter how many times he screamed ‘Shazam.’ It is time to ‘get real.’ Go to see ‘Oppenheimer.’ (Eat first, it runs about three hours.) Connect, or reconnect, with reality.
JL * * * |
Nostalgia Quiz #2
GEICO
is a large insurance company, often represented in advertisements by a ‘gecko,’
a variety of green lizard. See if you
know today’s answer.
The
name of the company, GEICO, is:
a.
An acronym for its origin in Atlanta many years ago as the
‘Georgia Entrepreneurs’
Insurance Company.’
b.
An acronym for its origin as ‘Government
Employee’s Insurance
Company,’ started back in 1936 to sell
insurance to government employees.
c.
Derived from the name of its founder, Croatian immigrant
Charles Geicovic, who became a millionaire
selling insurance to people more traditional companies avoided soliciting.
d.
Derived from its initial role insuring animals, such as the
‘gecko’ lizard it still uses in its ads.
Which
do you think is correct? The answer will
be in the next blog posting.
The
answer to Nostalgia Quiz #1 is the London barber most recently appearing in the
Sondheim musical bearing his name, ‘Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet
Street.’
JL
* * *
A Closing Quote
Finally, from David Marchese's New York Times Magazine interview of 85-year-old author Joyce Carol Oates, something to think about. In reminiscing about her work, Oates said 'Everything that you think is solid is actually fleeting and ephemeral.'
JL
* * *
Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
Email
Alerts: If you are NOT receiving emails from me alerting you each
time there is a new posting on Jackspotpourri, just send me your email address
and we’ll see that you do. And if you are forwarding a posting to
someone, you might suggest that they do the same, so they will be similarly
alerted. You can pass those email addresses to me by email
at jacklippman18@gmail.com.
Forwarding
Postings: Please forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit
from reading it. Friends, relatives, enemies, etc.
If
you want to send someone the blog, exactly as you are now seeing
it, with all of its bells and whistles, you can just tell folks to check
it out by visiting https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com or by providing a
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the best method of forwarding Jackspotpourri.
There’s
another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it
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is prepared, makes that possible. If you click on the tiny envelope with
the arrow at the bottom of every posting, you will have the opportunity to
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Either
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Again,
I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from
reading it.
JL
* * * *
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