California

A “Great Stupid” Mash-Up! Ethics Hero And Incompetent Elected Official Of The Month: San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa…And Some Related Comments Of The Day [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I never expected to see those two categories in the same post, did you?

But it has come to this: San Mateo County Supervisor David Canepa told reporters this week that he regretted his vocal support of California’s Prop 47, which voters passed in 2014, which reduced certain thefts and drug possession crimes from felonies to misdemeanors if the value of the stolen goods was less than $950. This, amazingly, led to an explosion in retail crime and other social pathologies, with videos on social media showing looters casually walking out of stores with merchandise. Some prominent retail locations in San Francisco, LA and other cities have closed in response.

This was all part of the progressive-Democratic response to “over-incarceration,” with politicians like Joe Biden, California Governor Gavin Gavin Newsom, and mercifully retired NYC mayor Bill De Blasio, among others. The Retail Federation reported retail shrink across the U.S. reached nearly $100 billion in losses in 2022.

Gee, what a brilliant idea Prop 47 was !

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The Answer To This Controversy Is Legally And Ethically Obvious And We Shouldn’t Trust Anyone Who Doesn’t Think So

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

“Americans are losing faith in their schoolteachers,” the Washington Post proclaimed a year ago. Gee, I wonder why…

California’s woke attorney general, Rob Bonta, has filed a lawsuit against Chino Valley Unified School District in San Bernardino County to halt the county’s requirement that parents be notified when their child changes pronouns or gender identity, or seeks to use a bathroom assigned to a gender opposite to his or hers. In other words, the legal representative of the California state government wants the state to have the authority to withhold information about a family’s minor children from the parents of those children at the discretion of its agents. This attitude is now rampant in schools around the country, primarily because the education community has been thoroughly politicized and is no longer trustworthy.

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Now THESE Are Unethical (California) Lawyers…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

Famed California trial attorney Tom Girardi was accused of stealing more than $18 million from clients; I was late to the metaphorical party, not covering the long-running ethics scandal until a month ago. (Sorry.)The State Bar of California had opened 205 disciplinary investigations in 40 years against Girardi, but he ducked accountability until the very end, in part because of pay-offs to bar staff.

One of several new regulations designed to prevent future Girardis is the Client Trust Account Protection Program. That requires the state’s lawyers to report whether they are responsible for client trust accounts, to provide basic account information, to complete an annual self-assessment, and to certify that they comply with ethics rules related to safeguarding client funds. The point, of course, is to stop lawyers from stealing from their clients. There are a lot of unethical practices lawyers get away with, but not taking proper care of client funds is supposed to be the third rail of lawyer misconduct.

The deadline for compliance with Client Trust Account Protection Program was April 3, 2023. Lawyers who failed to comply were fined $75 and had until June 30 to meet the regulations. Suspensions began in July. The results: 1,641 California lawyers have had their licenses suspended.

This is not a good sign.

Our Woke Education Apocalypse Update: The Failure Of The “I Promise” School, And Other Horrors

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

With great fanfare, NBA immortal LeBron James established the “I Promise charter school in 2018 to educate “at-risk” students. The I Promise School, which teaches children from 1st to 8th grade, promises:

With education as the driving force of change, the LeBron James Family Foundation is not only spreading that impact and improving lives of inner-city students and families, but also shifting the course of an entire community. Focusing on his hometown of Akron, the Foundation’s I PROMISE program provides year-round resources, access to opportunities, supportive skill development, constant encouragement and other wraparound supports to more than 1,300 Akron Public School students who have all been guaranteed college scholarships if they do their part. These efforts have culminated in the groundbreaking new public school – the I Promise School – that is taking an innovative approach to providing a challenging, supportive, and life-changing education, creating a new model for urban public education.

Soaring and inspiring words…it’s too bad that the Akron Beacon Journal reported this week that the 2023 “class of eighth graders at the I Promise School hasn’t had a single student pass the state’s basic math test since the group was in the third grade.” Moreover, “The state has also issued its first concern about the school: two of I Promise’s biggest subgroups of students, black students and those with disabilities, are now testing in the bottom 5% in the state, landing the school on the Ohio Department of Education’s list of those requiring targeted intervention.”

The response from those responsible? “Huminahuminahumina…” Stephanie Davis, the new principal of the school this year who was introduced as “the perfect person to lead the I Promise School and all of our families to the success we know they will achieve,” according to the school district, had no immediate explanation.

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Ethics Dunces, Sociology Dunces, Law Enforcement Dunces…Whatever: The California Reparations Task Force

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

Try a mind experiment: if California’s ridiculous and racist Reparations Task Force wanted to exacerbate racial tensions as much as humanly possible while also making African-Americans seem as toxic to society as a KKK Grand Dragon could imagine in a fever dream, what would it be doing differently that it is doing right now? We know that the group is already recommending that millions of dollars in taxpayer reparations for slavery be handed out to the state’s blacks, even though slavery never existed in the Golden State. But wait, there’s more!

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Unethical Quote Of The Month (And Incompetent Elected Official): Vice-President Kamala Harris, Part 2: Harris Has Directly Violated California’s Legal Ethics Rules

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

There is another aspect of Kamala Harris’s attack on the Supreme Court majority on Dobbs that bears noting.

In most jurisdictions, a lawyer may not publicly impugn the integrity of a sitting judge, and certainly not a Supreme Court Justice.

Here is the relevant rule in California, one of the jurisdictions with the duty to oversee her conduct. California’s position is that a member of its bar is subject to California rules no matter when the lawyer violates them.

Rule 8.2 Judicial Officials – State Bar of California:

(a) A lawyer shall not make a statement of fact that the lawyer knows* to be false or with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or integrity of a judge or judicial officer, or of a candidate for election or appointment to judicial office.

Comment “To maintain the fair and independent administration of justice, lawyers should defend judges and courts unjustly criticized. Lawyers also are obligated to maintain the respect due to the courts of justice and judicial officers.”

If there is a California lawyer reading who wants to take a stand for the integrity of the ethics rules, a formal complaint to the would be apt and appropriate.

[The graphic above represents my assessment of the likelihood that the California Bar would ever enforce its rules against a good, abortion-loving Democrat for attacking the U.S. Supreme Court.]

A Barn Door Fallacy Classic From California

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

California was the only U.S. jurisdiction that had no version of American Bar Association Rule 8.3, which reads in part, “A lawyer who knows that another lawyer has committed a violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct that raises a substantial question as to that lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects, shall inform the appropriate professional authority.”

“Shall” means must, and thus, theoretically, a lawyer who does not report a lawyer for misconduct that amounts to a serious legal ethics violation is himself or herself committing such a violation as well. That’s the theory.

The California legal community has just gone through a spectacular scandal. Tom Girardi, a famous and much-acclaimed plaintiffs trial lawyer, was disbarred after it was discovered that he had defrauded many clients and illegally obtained millions of dollars in the process. The California bar’s investigation report was horrific: his corrupt activities were successful for so long in part because he recruited—and bribed—members of the State Bar leadership and the organization’s employees. Over a hundred lawsuits had been filed against Girardi by clients for misappropriation of funds, but his record with the Bar remained pristine.

Shortly after the ugly story broke, California began to take steps to add some form of 8.3 to its Rules of Professional Conduct governing the ethics of its members, a cynical and useless move designed to appear responsible. It was also an example of what Ethics Alarms calls “The Barn Door Fallacy,” a phenomenon most common today in the area of post-tragedy gun legislation. After a high-profile disaster, the response is to “do something” that supposedly would have prevented the disaster if it had been in place earlier. Usually, as in this case, the reality is that it would not.

Rule 8.3 is something of an illusion anyway. Bar associations are reluctant to second guess a member and punish him or her for their personal assessments of what kind of conduct constitutes “raising a substantial question as to that lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness or fitness as a lawyer in other respects.” Stealing money from a client is definitely in that category, but proving that another lawyer “knows” about such conduct as opposed to “suspecting” it is not easy. Most bar counsel have no stomach for it, and prosecutions are absurdly rare.

The fact that 8.3 is called the “Snitch Rule” in the profession tells you how most lawyers feel about it. In general, lawyers tend to make ethics complaints to their bars about adversaries. Blowing the whistle on one’s own firm member, a powerful partner, a close colleague or a friend is rarer than—well, pick your metaphor, I’m not feeling clever today.

To see how the news out of California is even less than meets the eye, note how the state’s version of 8.3 is narrower than any other state. It reads,

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Unethical Quote Of The Month: Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Statement Regarding His Reparations Task Force’s Final Recommendations

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

I see another politician is envious of John Kerry’s Lifetime Weasel Award! Just consider this head-exploding response by California Governor Gavin Newsom, who appointed a task force that was under the impression that its—ridiculous, but never mind, let’s say good faith—recommendations for financial reparations to black Californians would be accepted as well as taken seriously:

“The Reparations Task Force’s independent findings and recommendations are a milestone in our bipartisan effort to advance justice and promote healing. This has been an important process, and we should continue to work as a nation to reconcile our original sin of slavery and understand how that history has shaped our country. Dealing with that legacy is about much more than cash payments. Many of the recommendations put forward by the Task Force are critical action items we’ve already been hard at work addressing: breaking down barriers to vote, bolstering resources to address hate, enacting sweeping law enforcement and justice reforms to build trust and safety, strengthening economic mobility — all while investing billions to root out disparities and improve equity in housing, education, healthcare, and well beyond. This work must continue. Following the Task Force’s submission of its final report this summer, I look forward to a continued partnership with the Legislature to advance systemic changes that ensure an inclusive and equitable future for all Californians.”

If there are any African-Americans in California—or the universe, for that matter—who see Newsom’s statement as anything but an insult to their intelligence, well, their intelligence deserves the insult.

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Still More Evidence That No One Who Cares About Individual Liberty, Freedom of Expression And The Increasing Threat Of Totalitarianism In The US Should Live In California Voluntarily…

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

With AB 2098, California’s legislature passed a bill that would punish doctors offering “false information” on the Wuhan virus and its offspring. It okayed direct government action to punish speech based on content, and was obviously unconstitutional. Naturally, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it into law anyway: he doesn’t believe in the Bill of Rights, his party doesn’t, and apparently the California voters that keep voting for him and officials like Adam Schiff don’t either.  Their state has devolved into a kind of Bizarro World gradted to the rest of the country, a place that increasingly rejects the underlying values and principles the United States was built on, and increasingly, basic logic as well. Here’s a meme that appeared on Powerline’s always entertaining “The Week in Pictures,” which I heartily recommend:

That’s not even satire. It’s just true, and emblematic of how ethically inert the entire stat has become.

The new law prevents doctors from providing “treatment or advice” “to a patient” “related to COVID-19” when that treatment or advice includes (1) “false information” (2) “that is contradicted by contemporary scientific consensus” (3) “contrary to the standard of care.”  Threatening disciplinary action (such as the loss of one’s license to practice) the law sends “a chilling message to physicians to toe the line.” in Prof. Turley’s words. Though a first year law student would quickly see the measure was unconstitutional, California has California-culture judges. In McDonald v. Lawson one of them held the law to be just fine. Now, however Judge William Shubb (E.D. Cal.) in Hoeg v. Newsom, another challenge to the law, has granting an injunction against its enforcement. Continue reading →

The California Task Force On Reparations’ Proposal

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I read something about the ridiculous recommendations forthcoming from California’s “Task Force to Study and Recommend Reparations Proposals for African Americans” a while back, and decided that it was just one more indicator of how the entire state had lost its collective mind, that The Great Stupid knows no bounds, and that some things are even too silly for me to write about. Now I think some attention should be paid. Because…

  • The task force reportedly will recommend giving $223,200 each to all descendants of slaves in California, on the theory that it will be a just remedy  for housing discrimination against blacks between 1933 and 1977. The  cost to California taxpayers would be about $559 billion, which is  more than California’s entire annual budget, and that doesn’t include the massive cost of  administrating the hand-outs and dealing with all the law suits it is bound to generate. Obviously, the recommendation is absurd for that reason alone, which makes it pure virtue signaling. The task forces is unethical by definition: spending public money to study an issue and issuing a recommendation that is politically and financially impossible to follow is irresponsible in the extreme.

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