Legal Costs: Lawyers & American Worker Hourly Wages

Twenty-five percent of my 1961 high school graduating class went on to become lawyers. One half of those attorneys would steal a hot stove. The other half would watch and learn.

Today the WSJ featured an article about some lawyer hourly rates reaching $1000.00 per hour. Attorney fees have been climbing 6-7 percent per year for the past 5 years. Meanwhile the average American workers salary has been stuck at around $17.42 per hour for those past 5 years losing out to inflation.Also during this past 5 years, the price of one 9 mm shell has hovered around 10 cents each.

When access to justice is only available to the wealthy through the wealthy, evolutionary experience predicts a low-cost alternative will evolve.

Prostitute Heidi Fleiss & Politician Hillary Clinton

Today well-known D.C. prostitute-madam Heidi Fleiss endorsed politician Hillary Clinton's presidential run.

Here's a rep from the world's oldest profession endorsing a rep from the world's second oldest profession. Where's Fleiss' moral authority ? Well prostitutes actually own what they sell. Whereas politicians sell to the highest bidders things which really belong to others. And to make it worse, politicians sign papers of indebtedness that those others have to repay!

I ask you. Who is the more moral?

San Francisco Politics: Mirijuana Vs. Wheelchairs Vs. Critical Thinking

Here's another classic San Francisco political battle. It's a S.F. classic because the issue has nothing to do with running the city more efficiently or in a cost-effective way. Instead costly Board of Supervisor's time is being used up in a hissing and pissing contest in non critical S.F. matters. Only a city as wealthy as San Francisco could afford such wasteful, expensive arguments.

In one corner we have the Cannabis Buyers Club. They sell mirijuana for medicinal purposes. But their place of business is on the second floor without wheelchair access. So to circumvent city's ordinance, the business and the landlord want a historical designation of the building which trumps a wheelchair access requirement.

Not so fast says Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier who herself is in a wheelchair. She sputters, " If they think the [mirijuana] business should be held in such high esteem, then make it a museum or put up a plaque on the wall, but don't put the rights of one group over the civil rights of another".

Pardon me Ms. Alioto-Pier, but how did you get your appontment to the Board of Supervisors? Was a more qualified persons civil rights trampled because of your political contacts and Civil Rights legislation affirmative action philosophy interceding? Wheelchair users are a protected class. But more importantly critical thinking is more valuable and by definition should also be protected. I don't know how many wheelchair users want medicinal mirijuana on the second floor of a building without an elevator, nor do you, but I would guess the number to be tiny or non-existant. Live and let live. By the way, what about cutting the cost of running San Francisco? How about dealing with personal non-critical issues on your own time?

OZZFEST: Let Them Kill Themselves

The annual Ozzfest Concert was held in Holmdel, N.J. this past week. Over 13,000 attended. Two men died of overdoses of cocaine, mrtijuana and alcohol on Thursday. There were 229 arrests. Most of the arrests were for underage drinking and disorderly conduct.

After perusing the reviews of the "bands" in the NYT, I have a suggestion. Leave the attendees alone. Let them kill themselves on overdoses. Why? Anyone that wants to hear " death metal" fused with " black metal" isn't worth feeding . Also the pictures of the band members show them to have less symmetry in their visage than refuse from a cat litter box.

Personally I would chip in for mainland- China food and beverage to be served and free lead-laced tatoos. It's a cinch no al-Qaeda suicide bomber would ever step foot into an already dead zone.

Does The World Need A Balance Of Power And Hate?

Sadly the Russians are restarting the policy of armed, airborn bombers 24/7. They abandoned that practice in 1992. But the statement yesterday by President Putin that accompanied the announcement mentioned self-preservation in the face of "other nation's aggression" as the cause. Also Russia, China and 4 Central Asian countries are involved in "war games" in Russia's Ural Mountains. It looks like the Cold War is starting up again. Maybe if we had the Cold War prior to 2003 there would have been no Iraq invasion . Maybe the world needs a balance of hate/power for stability.

Speaking about hate, America's Congress just raised it's support for Israel. The U.S. will increase it's support to $ 3 billion per year from $2.5. Arguably Israel and it's Zionist politicians is the most hated country and leadership on the globe. The power of the Israeli lobby and the delusional, apocalyptic evangelical christians that support them is the greatest asset of the rogue nation. Others opine that America's unqualified support will only hasten Israel's destruction.

Frivolous Monkeys With Guns, Money & Language

Yesterday the BBC reported 1 adult,male and 3 juvenile gorrilas were shot and killed in the Congo's Varengo Mountain Gorrila Reserve. Where is the AIDS virus for these near-monkeys with AK-47s ?

Yesterday the Dow plunged 387 points on nonprime loans fallout. Nonprime loans include banks lending to bad credit history applicants, high debt to income borrowers and no-documents on income home buyers. In other words banks lent their depositors money to would be defaulting borrowers who could walk away from the loans if the home didn't appreciate in value.

Yesterday the democrats gave Bush/Gonzales increased power for warrantless eavesdropping. This is despite the promise from the dems that they were different than the republicans and " if elected " would clean up Washington. Language is cheap. Only deeds count.

We are called homo sapiens. This means we are wise. But we act more like frivolous monkeys with technology.

Sonar & Marine Mammals & Rap Music & People

Naval brass are bemoaning the recent enlightened ruling by Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of Federal District Court in Los Angeles. She ordered the Navy to stop using sonar in naval exercises off of Southern California because it causes severe sensory hardship and dislocation to marine mammals resulting in massive deaths by getting beached. Marine mammals include our distant relatives whales, porpoises and dolphins. They stayed in the water hundreds of millions of years ago when we left to slash and burn dry land.

The Navy says the noisy sonar naval exercises are necessary to protect against U.S. enemies. Oh ? How many submarimes does Al-Qaeda have? Introducing loud sonar into the quiet depths of the sea is akin to playing rap music over super-speakers in Yosemite Valley. Some morons might like that, but that's why iPods are available. If marine mammals wanted loud sounds they would have invented them. I predict that any species that maintains an affinity for loud sounds will not last as long as a species that avoids loud sounds. Why? Because loud sounds distract from attaining self-knowledge.



If you're trying to find people you used to know then using some kind of online people search engine for finding people could be helpful.

Healthier Drug Users Or Healthier Public Environment?

San Francisco spends $ 850,000 to give 2.4 million syringes free per year to drug users in the City's needle exchange program. The program was launched years ago to cut down on the infections from unsafe drug use. Sixty to seventy percent of the needles are returned. The remainder end up in the public common areas of the City where innocents get stuck or infected or both. There are app. 750,000 needles per year discarded in an unsafe manner. One suggestion to mitigate the unsafe disposal problem is to provide convenient collection locations throughout the city so concientious and civic-minded drug users can return their needles 24/7.


Relying on drug users to be responsible is the definition of moronic optmism. Isn't providing free syringes for illicit drug use a de facto partial legaliztion of drug use? How can you have a legal way of breaking the law? Ethically and practically speaking you shouldn't . Ergo either legalize drug use or stop the needle exchange. With legal drug use would come the free market to provide solutions and the philosophy of more personal resposibility and freeing up prisons for more dangerous demographics. The trade off between healthier drug users at the cost of unhealthy public environments is a bad trade.



When it comes to drugs you can find plenty of health information on the Internet about them. Even if you don't need to know more about drugs then you can still find plenty of useful health info online and maybe even find people to answer your health questions like nurses or doctors.

Iraq Pre War Intelligence Retrospective

The other day Dick Cheney said , " ...that the surge had made significant progress". Sorry Dick. After app. 1 million Iraqi deaths and 2 million Iraqis forced to flee their country and countless physically and mentally maimed, " ...the surge has made significant progress" doesn't make the crime of the invasion O.K. .

And by the way. Cheney's hand in developing and spreading bogus Iraq pre war intelligence included the lie that Saddam Hussein tried to buy yellowcake from Niger. Hence the Plamegate scandal. The yellowcake was proof that Hussein had restarted his nuclear weapons program. You know, the spector of " mushroom clouds" promised by Cheney, Bush, Rice, Powell and The New York Times. But didn't Hussein need a nuclear reactor to process the yellowcake to make weapons- grade plutonium? But Hussein had no reactor. The Iraqi Osirak reactor was bombed and disabled in 1981 by the Israelis. And in 1991 it was completely destroyed by the U.S. .

QUESTION: Why didn't any opponents of the war ask the question about the need of a reactor before the invasion?

ANSWER: Representatives in lobby-run governments are NOT paid to ask questions.