How come they keep having these ‘elections,’ and nothing ever changes?
For the most part, participating in “judgeship” elections is pointless at best, if not outright pernicious. Your participation will be interpreted as granting your consent and approval to what amounts to a huge, unconstitutional scam.
So far as I know, you can no longer become a judge in this country — with the possible exception of “Justice in the Peace,” restricted to handling minor misdemeanor matters in rural areas — unless you’re a lawyer and “officer of the court” who vows in advance to uphold unconstitutional drug and gun laws, et cetera.
I don’t mean you “can’t become a judge” because no one would vote for you, which would be a bad enough indictment of the current popular understanding of “limited government.” No, I mean you’re not even allowed on the ballot (or, in “appointment-only” states, on the list of three finalists submitted to the governor.)
Receive a pro tem appointment, announce you’re not going to convict or even bother to try anyone for any unconstitutional “drug offenses,” and see how fast your temporary appointment is revoked.
Look up courageous attorney Marc Victor of Arizona.
Campaign for a judgeship by promising to throw half the cases out of court? That’s an “ethics violation”! You could be “removed from the ballot.”
“That’s because judges are only supposed to enforce the laws, not make the laws,” squawk the smug parrots of statism.
Actually, judges, like all other “public officials,” swear an oath not to “enforce every enactment” (which would be logistically impossible), nor to “kowtow to the Bar Association,” but rather to protect and defend the CONSTITUTION, which bars the other branches from enacting or enforcing any law which exceeds their limited powers specifically granted. Any judge honoring such an oath would have to throw out the charges in the vast majority of cases now heard in our courts, explaining, “I read the federal and relevant state Constitution again last night, and I can’t find any authority for the federal or state government to ‘license’ or otherwise restrict anyone from growing or manufacturing or selling or possessing cocaine, opium, marijuana, or machine guns, generating all the carbon dioxide they please, traveling on the public roads, killing some endangered bug on their own property, what have you. As matter of fact, the First and Second and Ninth and Fourteenth amendments and parts of Article I, Section 8, actually bar such laws. And no, my oath doesn’t allow me to pretend these laws are valid while we wait decades to see if some ‘higher court’ may find otherwise. Meantime, while I’m at it, all jurors need to be told they have an undisputed power to judge the law as well as the facts.”
It takes years of “training” in convoluted casuistry to blind an otherwise intelligent person to the ethical, moral, and legal responsibility to do that, which is why only “lawyers” who have been checked out by the “Bar Association” are even allowed to be considered for judgeships, any more.
The purpose of all this rigmarole is to keep afloat a vast, unconstitutional police-and-prison-state.
Needless to say, this makes a mockery of the notion that “You voters chose these judges, so how can you complain?”
But the notion that the people get to “choose their judges” is often made even more absurd than that.
Nevadans, for example, think they elect their judges. But even in states with “judgeship elections” (like Nevada), a whopping number of the black-robed politicians who give America the world’s highest incarceration rate are political cronies, chosen not based on qualifications (other than being a lawyer) or wisdom or street smarts or even popularity but instead to fill cynical racial quotas by the sitting politician known as a “governor” or (in the case of Nevada’s federal judges) by Harry Reid.
In other words, even though Nevada voters keep trooping to the polls and rejecting any change to a system of “appointed judges,” that’s what they generally get, anyway.
The way this works is: When Nevada judges, who are mostly political animals, decide to retire, they rarely announce their retirements “at the end of my current term,” which would throw that bench open to a truly contested election with no incumbent. Instead, they retire mid-term, allowing the governor to appoint a replacement. (In exchange, the “retiring” judge is generally promised a lifetime sinecure sitting on the Supreme Court’s paid “library committee,” or appointment as a “senior judge” who can keep getting paid to hear cases while never having to face the voters again.
At the very least, that particular plum used to be denied to judges who sought re-election and got defeated, the way Nancy Becker was thrown out on her ear by voters in 2006 for her role in the disgusting, discredited “Guinn v. Legislature” tax-hike ruling. So Nancy Becker couldn’t possibly have been appointed a Nevada “Senior District Judge” in 2012, right? Oh, wait . . .
Then, in a form of well organized protection racket, these newly appointed incumbents extort “campaign contributions” from the firms of the lawyers who appear before them, who give the money in order to buy “equal treatment” by the bench, which means “preferred treatment.”
(What I mean by that is, if you’re a private individual representing yourself against the cops, and you’re a few minutes late getting into court because the new Clark County courthouse was designed with inadequate elevators where you can wait in line for 20 minutes, and they call your name before you arrive, you’re instantly found guilty in absentia. But if one of these lawyers who funds judgeship campaigns is late or has failed to file something on time, they keep sending the bailiffs out to look for that guy for hours. I’ve documented this in the case of the Harry Pappas parking ticket.)
Instant ‘incumbent’
These appointed incumbents also line up endorsements from police unions, who are thus guaranteed none of their members will ever be convicted for, you know, shooting to death unarmed citizens who were kneeling in front yards with their hands on their heads, dribbling a basketball down the street, kneeling in front of the toilet trying to flush a small bag of marijuana, hideous crimes like that.
Why voters vote for judges who are endorsed by cops who are the very people those same voters are most likely to someday face in a “my-word-against-his” situation in court, I don’t have a clue. I guess it’s true that voters tend to get the government they deserve.
(Oh, gee. Did my examples above sound hypothetical? Look up Orlando Barlow, killed with a .223 rifle by Officer Brian Hartman of Metro’s “Baby’s Daddy Removal Team” as Barlow knelt in a front yard with his hands on his head, surrounded by cops; or Ronald Perrin, killed while armed only with a basketball by officer Bruce Gentner. Look up Trevon Cole, killed by Metro Detective Bryan Yant as he knelt, unarmed, on his bathroom floor. Look up Charles Bush and Henry Rowe and Stanley Gibson. See https://vinsuprynowicz.com/?p=579 or https://vinsuprynowicz.com/?p=562, just for starters.)
(Oh, wait. Did I seem indirect when I stated that some under-qualified judges, too dumb or timid to challenge the government’s often ridiculous positions, were appointed primarily to fill racial quotas? I’m sorry. I meant to name Johnnie Rawlinson on the federal bench, who has ruled the federal government “owns” 85 percent of Nevada because they acquired it in an 1848 treaty with Mexico, and Adriana Escobar of the Clark County District Court, for starters.)
The 2012 electoral contest for Clark County district judge in Department 14 was a good case in point.
Judge Donald Mosley, who came out against the hideous drug war but only upon his retirement (when it was too late to do any good, or cause him any trouble) quit the bench in the summer of 2012 so Gov. Brian Sandoval could appoint his replacement. Sandoval appointed Adriana Escobar, who could then campaign for “re-election” (a misnomer if there ever was one) as an “incumbent,” a few months later.
She was challenged by Mike Davidson, probably the best qualified judicial candidate to never be appointed to a judgeship by Brian Sandoval. (Hey, I’d brag about it.)
Mind you, all my warnings about judgeship elections still apply. Michael Davidson would doubtless still have enforced all kinds of unconstitutional laws. I doubt I’d even agree with most of the man’s politics, him being a Democrat and all.
But Davidson did take a J.D. “with distinction” at the University of Arizona in Tucson in 1978. He served as an assistant D.A. for Clark County from 1998 to 2003 under Stewart Bell, when the office was not yet a laughing stock. He then served as chief deputy D.A. (on the criminal side) for the city of North Las Vegas from 1998 to 2003, and is now a senior litigation partner for Kloesar and Leatham, which means he’d be taking a pay cut to go to the bench at about $160,000.
Compare that — plus Mr. Davidson’s other experience and that important but hard-to-quantify asset called “demeanor” — to half the judges currently shuttling the cattle down the chute to prison on the Clark County bench.
On the other hand, Ms. Escobar bragged (and still brags) she attended the University of Nevada Las Vegas, an urban teachers college whose 30 seconds of fame came decades ago when the school bragged a successful basketball team filled with out-of-town thugs who were caught hanging out with a professional gambler known as “The Fixer.” She then took her law degree at the California Western School of Law, a lowest-tier law school (per U.S. News & World Report) whose best known graduate is former Clark County District Attorney David Roger.
Roger was the man who single-handedly drove away all that office’s best assistant D.A.s while never prosecuting a single killer cop of the Metropolitan Police Department (Ron Mortensen, the exception that proves the rule, was locked up on Stew Bell’s watch in 1997, only because another cop turned him in.) Then, upon his retirement, David Roger showed up working for -– surprise! -– Metro’s police union, chief apologists for the Baby’s Daddy Removal Team!
Ms. Escobar’s Web page brags “I am proud of my service as Nevada Consumer’s Advocate and Chief Deputy Attorney General protecting consumers and prosecuting complex securities and mortgage fraud. I am a former Commissioner on the Nevada Public Utilities Commission where I worked to protect Nevada utility rate payers. I also served on the Nevada Taxicab Authority regulating the taxicab industry in the community’s best interests.”
My, my. How on earth did an undistinguished graduate of an undistinguished law school manage to rack up such a non-stop string of lucrative, resume-building appointments?
Racial quotas, in part. She’s an Hispanic woman, and an attractive one, if you rely on an omnipresent campaign photo that may date from around 1990. But curiously lacking from her campaign literature is any mention of her former husband and meal ticket, the guy without whom she’d probably be lining up with the rest of ‘em to litigate neck-sprain injuries, that being real-estate millionaire and former (appointed, of course) Nevada state Attorney General George Chanos.
Although I don’t know Chanos personally, I actually admire the guy for sidestepping Nevada’s vicious political racket by declining to run for “re-election” as attorney general, a post he was expected to hold with ease. Instead he decided to become the majority stockholder and chairman of the board of Capriotti’s Sandwiches, a job which actually produces something useful. (Try the Capistrami or the Bobbie — just don’t order a “cheese sub” at the Blue Diamond Road outlet, where a slab of cheese on dry bread is all you’ll get.)
What’s that? I’m just some right-wing racist who wants to “keep the Latinos down”? I fought hard, and usually successfully, over the years to win Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial board endorsements for Vince Ochoa, Bernie Zadrowski (yes, Zadrowski is Hispanic; that’ll teach you to rely on surnames), Don Chairez, and plenty of other “minorities” -– not because their “groups deserved representation,” but because they were the better candidates.
Protection rackets
But back to that online Adriana Escobar resume:
Members of the Nevada Public Utilities Commission “protect rate payers”? Oh, good one! The reason Nevada’s monopoly electricity provider meekly goes along with the Legislature’s absurd “Green” edicts ordering them to obtain some arbitrary (and ever increasing) fixed percentage of their power from more expensive “alternative sources” like windmills and solar panels and hot springs and gerbils on treadmills (rather than cheap, reliable, clean coal and hydro) is that the PUC guarantees them a fixed percentage of profit above their costs. Thus, there’s no natural predator in the system to point out such Politically Correct mandates drive up everyo0ne’s electric bill, while handing Nevada Power/NV Energy & Co. higher profits as a fixed percentage of higher operating costs, as a reward for buying more expensive, less reliable power!
What’s that? The PUC members are thus only following the law? Fine. But they could squawk loud and long, explaining just how this works every time they rubber-stamp such nonsense, driving Nevada’s poorest consumers deeper and deeper into poverty. Instead, Ms. Escobar simpers that she somehow “protected Nevada utility rate payers” as she repeatedly wielded her big red rubber “OK!” stamp and then reached for another paycheck. (PUC Commissioners are paid an average $120,000 per year. Ka-ching!)
And Ms. Escobar’s claim that the Nevada Taxicab Authority “regulates the taxicab industry in the community’s best interests” is an even bigger knee-slapper.
Nevada taxicab “regulation” is a protectionist racket that bars the entry of most would-be competitors, keeping taxi fares high and cabs so thin on the ground that it’s virtually impossible to get a cab during evening or weekend hours anywhere off the Strip — all as a favor to the current, politically well connected big players in the industry.
Come out of a restaurant in your suburban Las Vegas neighborhood on a Friday night to find your tire is flat, or decide that maybe you had one martini too many and you’d just as soon call a taxi to drive you home? At least the dispatchers are usually honest: “A dead-head run, miles from the Strip? Fugettabout it!”
What would be in the “community’s best interest,” Ms. Escobar, would be to reduce the cost of a taxicab license (assuming we need such a system, at all) to an amount that just covers a vehicle safety inspection and a criminal background check, opening up the industry to all those unemployed and underemployed safe, sober Southern Nevada drivers out there.
Or is the lady –- whether on her endless ladder of regulatory protection rackets or on the bench -– serving some other “community” that she hasn’t bothered to tell us about?
I’ve never been in Adriana Escobar’s courtroom. It’s highly unlikely her retention on or expulsion from the bench will ever affect me. She seems to be a nice enough lady. She beat Mike Davidson back in 2012 by a margin of 52-48, and no one was surprised. This year she’ll face what appears to be far more lightweight opposition from fellow California Western graduate and former Navy judge Michael Root. Barring some kind of nasty scandal, she’s basically got a lock on her job till she decides to retire -– mid-term, of course.
Once again Nov. 4, Las Vegas voters will shuffle dutifully to the polls and rubber-stamp the cynical race-based appointments of their betters, voting for all the world like Archie Bunker: “Now there’s the one with your Mexican name” (Escobar was actually born in Colombia), “and she’s got the prettiest yard signs, too!”
Ka-ching!
October 27th, 2014 at 9:00 pm
Yup
But what is a viable alternative?
By viable I mean one that could really happen. Maybe TEA….but that is the closest we have come in a very long time.
October 28th, 2014 at 8:56 pm
We left Nevada in 1955, after “somebody” fired through the kitchen window at Mom, and Dad had a couple of run-ins with “crazy drivers” on the Boulder Highway while coming home from Las Vegas. Apparently “somebody” had decided he wasn’t a good influence for the community.
I had hoped that the area had cleaned up the corruption and Mob rule in the ensuing years, but, apparently not.