Brett Kavanaugh succeeded in making it through the Senate confirmation process, but how he would have fared if applying for a job in the private sector? Though both involve a vetting process, the Senate hearings were more concerned about ensuring a conservative voice was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court and less concerned about what kind of man Kavanaugh is.
A private employer, on the other hand, would want to ...
Continue Reading →Posted by:
The Pew Research Center reports that income inequality is at its highest point since 1928. Will it ever substantially improve? Not without a dramatic paradigm shift.
From 1979 to 2015, annual wages increased for the bottom 90 percent of Americans by 21 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute. For the top 1.0 percent, the increase was 105 percent. For the top 0.1 percent, it was 339 percent.
Our system is based on the paradigm, as Professor Scott R. Sanders of Indiana ...
Continue Reading →Who would ever think Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi have anything in common? Then again, what about those outsize egos they lug around?
Trump proved his ego is of epic proportion the week before last when talking on Fox & Friends about the Mueller investigation (as reported by CBS News). “If I ever get impeached, I think the market would crash. I think everybody would be very poor.” He went ...
After being terminally ill for months or perhaps years, should you have the right to say, “I’ve had enough. It’s time to die?” Not only a tough question, it’s one that makes us uneasy.
Seven states—California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, Washington—and the District of Columbia permit what some call “death with dignity.” Except for Montana, the laws are similar: patients must be a resident of the state, capable of making and communicating health care decisions for themselves, at least 18 ...
Continue Reading →Posted by:
[I thought it appropriate to follow my last blog, which dealt with the annoying overuse of the word, “guys,” to touch on a related subject, bad grammar. This post was published in the Columbus Bar Association Lawyers Quarterly magazine a few years back. Regrettably, what I wrote then is still relevant.]
In the words of a great American nautical hero, “I’ve had all I can stands. I can’t stands no more!” I’m talking about bad grammar. That’s right—bad grammar, a bad ...
Continue Reading →Posted by:
[This piece was published a few years back in the Columbus Bar Association Lawyers Quarterly magazine. Because the state of our language continues its spiral decline, I’m posting it here.]
It’s almost too much to bear. It’s enough to make my head explode. Our English language is slowly degrading to a point where things that were once considered to be bad grammar and offensive slang are now slowly becoming the new standards.
Using the correct pronoun after a conjunction is a lost ...
Continue Reading →Posted by:
Unless you live in a cave, you’ve probably read several articles about the demise of civility in our political discourse. There’s no question a problem exists. Jim Simon did a nice job discussing the issue in an op-ed published June 28 in the Columbus Dispatch.
He advocates a number of changes in how we behave, such as: insisting on “high-road behavior” from politicians; stepping out of our bubbles and being willing to listen to and understand those with whom we ...
Continue Reading →Posted by:
We’re in the midst of a national kerfuffle over what it means to be patriotic, and it has a lot more to do with ego and attitude than substance. Funny thing is, the man who started the ruckus never served in the military.
President Donald Trump has castigated NFL players for not standing during the national anthem and criticized franchise owners for allowing them to do so. Last week, he used the NBA finals to renew his spat with players LeBron ...
Continue Reading →Enough already! How much longer should we endure the administration’s new policy of separating children from their immigrant parents? In the last six weeks, the administration has separated about 2000 children from their parents, with no clear plan for reuniting them
Yes, the immigrants are wrong for seeking amnesty by just walking across the border (as opposed to hiring a lawyer and making application through the immigration courts or entering the country through a port of entry) and, yes, we ...
Continue Reading →Posted by:
Is access to legal assistance for low-income Americans important? President Donald Trump doesn’t think so. His 2018 budget proposed eliminating the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), an independent nonprofit, established during the Nixon administration that provides civil legal aid to low-income Americans.
Trump apparently forgot about his campaign theme—“to bring hope to every forgotten stretch of this country.” According to former LSC president Martha Bergmark, the majority of the states with the lowest ranking for access to legal assistance for low-income citizens ...
Continue Reading →