Monthly Archives: March 2014

Random Thoughts

District of Columbia – A License to Steal

I’m sitting in the waiting room getting my car serviced.  Since I am retired, I can wait for it.  It’s a good time to get things done, if you can get far enough away from the blaring TV.  I’ve noticed a consistent correlation in waiting rooms like this.  The more mindless the TV show, the louder the volume.

Living close to the District of Columbia exposes us to the absolute worst of the worst (and I spent a year in Chicago).  And they want to become a state.  I used to teach types of jurisdiction at The JAG School in Charlottesville, Virginia.  And, the District of Columbia is a Federal Enclave.  Some places, like here in Virginia, are exclusive state jurisdiction and DC is exclusive Federal jurisdiction.  I can’t remember much more than that, except that a number of years back, there was a patch of land called Fort Missoula, Montana that nobody claimed.  Montana insisted it was Federal property and the Feds had exclusive jurisdiction.  The Feds insisted that the state had jurisdiction.  This came to a head when an abused wife blew away her soldier husband.  Both sides insisted the other had jurisdiction, and consequently, neither Montana nor the Federal government would prosecute.  Ladies, don’t lure your abusive male companions out to Fort Missoula because I think the problem has been fixed.

If you’re mad at somebody, take them for a walk in DC.  Medric Cecil Mills, Jr. was walking with his family on Rhode Island Avenue and he collapsed from an apparent heart attack.  The good news was they were right across the street from a fire station with 15 firemen/EMS on duty.  The bad news is that Rhode Island Avenue is in DC.  Members of the family raced over to the fire station to get help.  After an unreasonable delay, they were told to call 911!  It took 15 to 20 minutes to get help and Mr. Mills died.

Generally when the DC EMS takes an hour to get to the location of the emergency, they blame it on broken equipment, bad directions or that they were understaffed.  Kind of hard to do it in the Mill’s case.  Of course, they could blame it on stupidity.  And what will happen?  Oh there will be an investigation.  Someone will be suspended.  Someone will retire early and someone will be reassigned.  Of course the family will sue DC and the city will settle the case for millions. And, we, the taxpayers, will pay.  And life in the city bumbles on.

There is hardly a week that goes by when some DC official isn’t arrested for stealing money from the city.  It doesn’t matter whether then have an important job like awarding DC contracts or whether they just empty the coins out of the parking meters, they have figured out how to supplement their income.  My previous barber’s building was torn down and he had to find a different location.  The new location required reconstruction and the only way he could get his permits approved was to pay off all the city inspectors.  There is a DC license plate that says at the top, “Taxation without Representation.”  Across the bottom it should say, “Ah, But We Do Have A License To Steal.”

Whenever I mention the problems in DC, people immediately mention Marion Barry.  He was the mayor for 12 years, then went to jail, and then was elected again as mayor.  After going to jail for six months, his campaign slogan was, “He may not be perfect, but he’s perfect for DC.”  I love it and couldn’t agree more.  During his second term back in the Eighties, he hired so many DC employees that no DC official could tell Congress how many employees DC had. Congress had to strip DC of its hiring authority and take away budget control.

There were eight years when Barry didn’t pay his taxes.  But to revoke his parole, the government had to proved he intentionally didn’t pay.  And, he was usually so zonked out, it was hard to prove he did anything intentionally.  He is still the Ward 8 Councilman, because he is still perfect for DC!

In the last three years, three council members have pleaded guilty. Harry Thomas, Jr. from Ward 5, stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the DC youth sports program.  Kwane Brown lied and fraudulently altered documents to get a loan to buy a boat that he named “Bulletproof!”  And, Michael Brown was caught taking $55,000 in bribes from undercover FBI (probably the same guys that got Barry).  If they were smart like Barry, they would have pleaded not guilty and relied on a DC jury of their peers to set them free.  After all, they too are perfect for DC.

The present mayor, Vincent Gray, is a piece of work.  He was elected in 2010 and the election is still being investigated.  A number of his subordinates have already pleaded guilty to election misconduct.  Now, deep pocketed Jeffery Thompson has pleaded guilty, admitting he provided $668,000 for a shadow campaign for Gray.  Thompson told the judge who accepted his plea that Gray presented him with a budget of over $400,000 that Gray needed for his illegal election activities.  Gray has now called Thompson a liar. Gray, like Barry, may be perfect for DC.  Gray, of course, is running for reelection.  Gray, unlike Barry, looks exactly like Snidely Whiplash.

FLASH – Marion Barry has just come out and endorsed Vincent Gray for mayor.  I rest my case.

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com
Random Thoughts

What Should I Do With All This Stuff?

Isn’t it funny how something that isn’t of any importance one day suddenly becomes all consuming the next?  Now I understand that if someone is involved in a serious car accident or discovers an illness, then everything changes.  But, I’m talking about something much milder.  I’m talking about suddenly realizing that you have more stuff than you can handle if you are going to move into smaller quarters.  Like five times the stuff.

In the military where you moved every two to three years, there was a built-in system to control your amount of stuff.  And while we did gather more stuff, we also got rid of stuff.  If we bought a new couch, we sold the old couch.  But, when we retired from the military in 1990, we moved into a house with lots of room and lots of storage space.  So now when we buy a new couch, we move the old couch to the finished basement or out into the gazebo. When we remodeled the kitchen, we hung the old cabinets in our garage so we could fill them up with more stuff.  We were good! We were very efficient and when the name of the game was accumulate, we excelled.  

So in the blink of an eye, the rules changed.  Now we are concentrating on getting rid of stuff.  It was a lot more fun to accumulate.  The first difficult question is where to even start.  If you just wander from room to room looking at everything, it will drive you crazy.  So we decided to start with our files.  I started with my study and then, will move to the basement.  This is serious work.  I was really doing quite well in disposing of files that I would never use.  Then, I pulled out my desk drawer and focused on on a pile of cards I had been keeping forever.  Some of the stuff I found was amazing.

I found a business card advocating the election of Brunson Hollingsworth for prosecuting attorney in the Democratic Primary on August 7, 1962.  He had been a year ahead of me in law school at MIZZOU.  The front had a picture of him with his dark framed glasses and a big, bushy mustache.  On the back, he had printed some lines which included, “A time like this demands strong minds; great hearts, true faith, and ready hands.”  I scratched my head over the part about “ready hands.”  I’ve observed too many politicians with “ready hands.”  Anyway, Brunson was elected as the prosecuting attorney of Jefferson County.

This wasn’t Brunson’s first run for office.  In 1961, he ran for president of the University’s student body.  Two Greeks were running and Brunson tried to get the votes of the independent students.  He ran on a “do nothing” platform and announced that if he were elected, he would do nothing.  It was great fun.  When you are in law school, any diversion is great fun.  He rented a horse and wagon and had himself driven around campus laying on a bed of straw in the back of the wagon (doing nothing).  He also had a two-foot tree stump that we carried to the center of traffic intersections on campus.  He would then sit on the stump (posing as Rodin’s The Thinker) and, of course, do nothing.  It was a riot.  I guess you had to be there.  He came in third in the election, but insisted that the other two candidates had spent more money than was permitted and declared himself the winner.  The University didn’t buy it.

Going through these cards was not a productive project towards cleaning out stuff.  Each card I looked at brought back fond memories.  I have a Trial Observer card from the late Sixties (signed by the infamous Lew Shull) when I was stationed in Germany.  Also, a Cook County Sheriff’s Correctional Department ID from when I was doing pro bono work toward a Master’s Degree at Northwestern.  And, a press pass issued to me by The Fort Riley Post when I started writing The Judge Says.

I also found my receipt for taking the H1N1 Swine Flu shot in 1976. What a fiasco!  One person died of the flu and at least 25 died from taking the flu shot.  That was 38 years ago, so I am probably safe. Whatever doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.  I’m thinking of getting a tattoo that says “Swine Flu Shot Survivor – 1976.”  I just can’t figure out where I should put it.

At this late stage, I have now satisfied myself that I have probably screened this little pile of cards many times, because everyone is a keeper.  I still have my Red Cross blood donor cards, even though I can no longer give blood.  That is because I was stationed in Germany in the 1980’s.  Something to do with Mad Cow Disease. Mad Cows and Swine Flu.  I think I will become a vegetarian.

Written by PJ Rice at www.ricequips.com