Posted 07.24.05 in Epilef
I recently read remarks made by Justice Carlos Moreno of the California Supreme Count at the International Association of Trial Lawyers. I just want to highlight here some of his remarks. Justice Moreno being a judge for the California Supreme Court could send me for death row for copyright infringement, so I plea the fifth, the fourteenth, the tenth, (which is the amendment that allows a man to have multiple wives?), and the zeroth! What follows are fragments of judicial insight from Justice Moreno's speech:
Talk about spin, we have the Healthy Forests initiative signed into law in 2003 as a fire prevention measure. Instead it has loosened logging restrictions in millions of acres of public forest. There's a certain logic to the law, however - it's hard to have a forest fire after you've removed all the tress. To me it all sounds like a variation on the theme: "Leave No Tree Behind".
In the city of Berkeley, within a matter of miles between West Berkeley and the hills on the east, the disparity in life expectancy among males is an astounding 15 years.
At my own public high school in Los Angeles, which I visited last week, I was informed that out of an entering freshman class of just under 1000, only 400 will ultimately graduate four years later.
In term of employment, we are increasingly becoming a bipolar workforce with vast numbers concentrated in service industries. The manufacturing industries which once provided a living wage for vast numbers of Americans are being depleted everyday as technology and outsourcing and lack of capital investment eliminate many of these jobs. And while we profess to be concerned about illegal immigration, we are alarmingly dependent on foreign labor, much of it illegal, yet do nothing, absolutely nothing, about the thousands upon thousands of employers who ignore wage and hiring laws, and who if caught, are fined with a slap on the hand.
I was stunned recently to learn that in my own city of Los Angeles there are over 30 billionaires, in the region. And yet, it is a city with tremendous problems relating to health, education, and welfare.
Yet our country, America, is still a country of immigrants who have come, and still come to our shores with many hopes and dreams.