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Discovery
A word that has been thrown around lately in regard to legal proceedings regarding the indicted former president is ‘discovery.’ No, that doesn’t refer to Columbus’ 1492 voyage, but to a step in the course of litigation which the American Bar Association’s website defines as follows:
‘To begin preparing for trial, both sides engage in discovery. This is the formal process of exchanging information between the parties about the witnesses and evidence they’ll present at trial. Discovery enables the parties to know before the trial begins what evidence may be presented. It is designed to prevent "trial by ambush," where one side doesn’t learn of the other side’s evidence or witnesses until the trial, when there’s no time to obtain answering evidence.’
Clearly, the use of information obtained in the ‘discovery’ process is limited to this purpose. Unfortunately, the indicted former president and his bottom-of-the-barrel lawyers feel otherwise and are not adverse to using information learned in the discovery process to attack the prosecution, as well as potential witnesses, and even the judge, who certainly will take steps to end this misuse of the discovery process, probably in the courtroom in Washington on Friday, August 11.
The indicted defendant will try to use this step to portray himself as a 'victim,' to be tried in the media, something he believes he can manipulate, rather than in the courtroom, where the judge is in charge. The strength of the evidence against him appears to be so overwhelming, that he will attempt to convince the public that he is being railroaded.
The defendant might even push the issue, refusing to obey the judge's orders, to the point where she remands him to the custody of the court, and that means his being held in jail, enabling him to further paint himself as a victim, until the trial.
‘Discovery’ is intended as a means of streamlining communications between the two sides in a case, and not something that, once information is revealed to either side, can be freely broadcast to the public before it comes out in the trial. That would compromise the purpose of the trial. Rather than being something that the First Amendment gives a defendant the right to shout about, even exposing potential witnesses to threats, it is material that remains under the control of the court, and that means the judge.
JL
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Joe Biden’s Zingers and Republican Delusions
Here’s an AP quote, more opinion than news, from an article in Sunday’s Palm Beach Post:
“President Joe Biden has his zingers (‘This is not your father’s Republican Party’). He’s got patriotism (‘This is the United States of America, dammit’). He’s got a geometry-based explanation on how to grow the economy (‘From the middle out and the bottom up).”
Joe is on a roll! He is using frequent repetition of these potent one-liners to break through the clutter of lies and innuendo which the Republican foes of democracy and their likely presidential nominee in 2024 are peddling. He is counting on Americans being smarter than Republicans believe they are.
Republican leadership believes voters are so dumb that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene last week actually framed Bidenomics ‘as a continuation of the Great Society and the New Deal,’ as if most Americans view these programs as bad things. Republicans are possibly that dumb but most Americans are not!
Except for some misguided voters in the States that were once part of the old Confederacy, Americans recognize Social Security, Medicare, guaranteed savings accounts, and other New Deal and Great Society legislation as good things!
Poor Congresswoman Greene was too blind to realize that she was actually endorsing the agenda of the Democrats and gave voters a good reason to vote for Democrats. Republican leadership is a victim of their own dreams and delusions.
Anyhow, read Eugene Robinson’s Washington Post column from a few days ago which dwells further on the successes of Bidenomics. You can find it at https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/31/bidenomics-economy-inflation-growth/ or CLICK HERE.
JL
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I Get Another Letter Published
I’m not all politics these days. Here’s a letter from me that the Palm Beach Post published on Sunday. (A few days earlier their sports pages had featured an article listing the many local high school football stars who have transferred from one high school to another, making it appear that doing so was a quite normal thing.) Here’s my letter:
“Any college willing to offer a football scholarship to any of the many local high school athletes transferring schools, as documented in the Post, so as to be able to perform better in their scholarship quests, ought to be aware of one thing. Once registered in any college, these athletes' eyes will immediately be focused on the collegiate 'transfer portal' so as to be able to perform better in their quests to be drafted by the NFL. Even if there is no school loyalty among college athletes, similar high school transfers should not be permitted.”
But this letter really isn’t a departure from politics. It’s about the same shady brand of business ethics that has invaded and corrupted our government. And here we see it even dragging high school athletes into its spidery web.
What often passes as ethically acceptable in the business world is often unacceptable in government, media, and education! ‘Caveat Emptor.’
JL
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Take Unemployment Figures With a Grain of Salt
Stop and think about those comfortably low unemployment numbers about which the Administration boasts. We’ll take them as better than nothing, but looking closely at the job growth that keeps unemployment low, I have my suspicions.
The greatest job growth is in two fields, healthcare and hospitality. The number of these new healthcare and hospitality jobs exceeds the number of jobs that have been eliminated in more demanding fields such as information technology, online retailing, and the kind of manufacturing that has adopted today’s sophisticated labor-saving tools. Now is that really job growth?
I suspect that the total annual salaries of those being laid off far exceed the total annual salaries of the larger number of those able to snare one of those new jobs in healthcare or hospitality. I would like to see such numbers.
I don’t know if a laid-off coder or tool-and-die maker would really be happy working in a nursing home or as an in-house aide to someone with Alzheimer's Disease. Believe me, those newly created health care jobs don’t represent physicians, nurses, and such, but rather turn out to be home care positions and the numerous lower paid positions involving the paperwork, the ‘prepping,’ and cleaning up after the doctors and nurses finish the medical part of their jobs. Someone has to deliver the meals in a hospital, and that too qualifies as a healthcare job.
And few of those laid off would relish waiting tables or working in kitchens in restaurants or making beds in a hotel as a fair replacement for a programming or a skilled manufacturing job. These are the jobs ‘hospitality’ offers, not the ones filled by the spiffy types pictured in the ads smiling behind the check-in counter at five-star resorts.
A frightening thought is whether many of the new jobs created in the hospitality and healthcare fields are even necessary? They have one thing in common. They often involve tasks that can be done at home, where a family can cook for itself, wash its own dishes, make its own beds, do its own laundry, and find ways to amuse themselves. They don’t need someone to provide them with ‘hospitality.’ As for health care, the bulk of the newly created jobs replace what, not more than a century ago, also was considered a family responsibility, caring for the homebound sick and elderly.
But even then, on that basis, income of some level is required to survive. So the recruiters in the health care and hospitality fields come to the rescue, keeping unemployment numbers down. But that is nothing to cheer about. They create the wrong kind of jobs.
Looking deeper into this picture, the concept of getting a ‘job’ in our economy is changing. The expectation of staying with one employer until retirement is long gone. Technology is constantly making some jobs obsolete, even highly skilled ones. And ‘senior’ employees are easily replaceable by new, younger employees, at ‘starter’ wages. Unions used to provide some safeguards in these areas, but no longer have the muscle to do so.
Defining what ‘jobs’ are and what the whole concept of ‘employment’ is all about, from a lifetime or career standpoint, is something I feel our schools and colleges must emphasize. There might even be a role for government in addressing this challenge, something that just won’t go away on its own.
JL
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Here’s Why Lady Justice Should Tighten Her Blindfold
From the non-subscriber portion of Simon Rosenberg’s ‘Hopium Chronicles,’ it is reported that ‘Trump is Getting An Unacceptable Level of Special Treatment’ and this is described in a great new article posted by former prosecutor Karen Agnifilo on the Meidas Touch site. Here's an excerpt:
"As a three-decade former state prosecutor in New York, I have never seen a defendant treated as leniently as defendant Trump. He has a rap sheet with 3 open felony indictments, 78-charges, in 3 separate jurisdictions. He has repeatedly threatened prosecutors, judges, and potential witnesses and has his own 757 jumbo jet at the ready to fly anywhere in the world and can abscond at any time. And the nature of his charges are among the most serious there are — he is accused of stealing our nation’s most sensitive secrets, trying to destroy evidence of his crimes, committing fraud in the oval office, and causing a violent insurrection in order to attempt to steal an election he lost, and our democracy. Imagine if he were Black or Muslim. There is no doubt he would be incarcerated pending trial.”
 |
| Hey, Lady! Justice is supposed to be blind! No peeking to see who the defendant is! |
JL
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State Legislatures are Where It’s At
Did you ever consider that the most important votes that you cast are NOT for president, for senators or representatives, or governors, but for those running for State legislatures, those ‘down-ballot’ candidates whose names you don’t even recognize?
While all elections are important, State legislatures are the front lines where the battle between those who support democracy and those who oppose it is being fought. All too often, these positions are filled with political hacks who do not care about what is in the best interests of the people.
Late News: An example of the danger posed by unrepresentative State legislatures was Tuesday's Ohio referendum, intended to tighten their State constitution's rules for changes to be made in it, a thinly veiled ploy against women's choice in regard to abortions. Well, the people spoke up and the changes were decisively defeated.
When they have the chance, State legislatures can be repudiated by the people, as happened in Ohio, but the real answer is in who is elected to those bodies in the first place! Do you know who your State legislators are? Hmm. I thought so.
JL
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Housekeeping on Jackspotpourri
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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 link to that address in your email to them. I think this is the best method of forwarding Jackspotpourri.
There’s another, perhaps easier, method of forwarding it though! Google Blogspot, the platform on which Jackspotpourri 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 list up to ten email addresses to which that blog posting will be forwarded, along with a comment from you. Each will receive a link to the textual portion only of the blog that you now are reading, but without the illustrations, colors, variations in typography, or the 'sidebar' features such as access to the blog's archives.
Either way will work, sending them the link to 'https://jackspotpourri.blogspot.com,' or clicking on the envelope at the bottom of this posting, but I recommend sending them the link.
Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it.
JL
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