Dog City

In the City dogs eat better than a lot of people (Wilson/WSJ)

The Bay Area is a dog-friendly place, but San Francisco appears to have crossed the line.

Virginia may be for lovers, but San Francisco is for dog lovers. It has sprawling green spaces, treats behind every shop counter and beaches where canines can run and splash in the surf. But dog lovers, dog haters and the dog-neutral are finding themselves in an uncomfortable alliance against a contingent they say is exploiting the city’s tolerance.

Paws are up on the counters of coffee shops and no one flinches. Croissants are being stolen out of the hands of hungry diners by hungrier black labs. The aisles of Target and Trader Joe’s are full of “service animals” that can’t seem to recall much, if any, of their training.

Dog owners ignore posted leash laws, bring their dogs into restaurants and stores, and chuckle when their animals steal food from diners. For a City that prides itself on its civic-mindedness many of its residents don't display the community values that supposedly make it superior to those who live between the coasts.

Unsurprising Development

The water has been shut off over a year (SFGate)

In August we commented on the City's decision to remove the Vaillancourt Fountain as part of a 5-acre development plan. As is true of every highly visible construction project in Northern California, legal methods have been employed to halt the fountain's removal.

Armand Vaillancourt, the 96-year-old artist behind the brutalist fountain in Embarcadero Plaza, tapped a lawyer to write the letter, asking the city on August 29 to “immediately cease and desist from taking any steps whatsoever that may endanger or damage the Vaillancourt Fountain.”

...If the city ignores Vaillancourt’s warning and request for the city to hand over all documents related to the fountain’s future and keep the artist in the loop on ongoing conversations, Vaillancourt and six “long-standing” architectural and cultural organizations are prepared to take legal action, according to the letter.

We have seen this play before: opposition to the removal of an old building or public work of art has not furnished a plan to pay for the repair and upkeep of the object being eliminated. In Vaillancourt's case the repair is estimated to cost $29 million. One easily foreseeable result is that nothing happens while the property deteriorates. If San Francisco avoids this outcome, it will be a good sign that it's back.

Endangered Seal

(Image from ncronline)

The State of Washington wants Catholic priests to break the seal of the confessional: [bold added]

A new law, signed by Gov. Bob Ferguson in May, would require clergy to violate the confessional’s seal of confidentiality if they hear about potential child abuse. Failing to break the seal and report suspected abuse to authorities carries a penalty of up to 364 days in jail and a fine as high as $5,000.

Catholic clergy in the state sued, and U.S. District Judge David Estudillo of the Western District of Washington blocked the law with a preliminary injunction on July 18. Judge Estudillo ruled the law likely violates the First Amendment’s guarantee of free exercise of religion because it denies priests the confidentiality extended to other professions. The state has until Aug. 18 to appeal.

Confession is an essential practice of the Catholic faithful, who believe it reconciles a sinner with God. In the sacrament, the penitent admits wrongs and receives God’s forgiveness through the priest’s prayer of absolution. The seal of confession is so crucial to the Catholic faith that any priest who violates it is automatically excommunicated.

“For us, that’s a matter of spiritual life and death,” says Bishop Robert Barron, an American Catholic evangelist who filed an amicus brief in the case. The bishop says even “the slightest suspicion” that one’s confessed sins might be repeated elsewhere is an obstacle to the sacrament. Any law that might discourage a repentant sinner from seeking God’s forgiveness would hinder the free exercise of religion. Washington’s law is “the most egregious violation of religious liberty” in the U.S. right now, Bishop Barron said.

Child abuse is a heinous crime but is not so horrible that lawmakers want attorneys to break confidentiality with accused clients:

Washington lawmakers passed another bill this year exempting higher education attorneys from reporting abuse related to clients they represent. For these legislators, sins confessed to a priest don’t merit the confidentiality of what is said to an attorney. That “appears to be a textbook example” of targeting religious conduct, Judge Estudillo wrote.

Attorney-client privilege originated from English common law and does not derive from the Constitution, while confessional confidentiality is protected by the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"). The latter would seem to have a stronger pedigree constitutionally, but your humble blogger is no lawyer.

Leave the Sign, Take the Cannoli

(Photo by Bukaty/AP/WSJ)

The question: is the mural over Leavitt’s Bakery "commercial speech" subject to regulation or is it art that is protected by the First Amendment? [bold added]

[The town of Conway, NH] had argued the mural was a commercial sign and in violation of the town’s zoning law, and told him to take it down or adjust the size, which at 91 square feet was nearly four times larger than allowed. [Leavitt’s Bakery owner Sean] Young fought back, saying the mural was art, not advertising, and that the town infringed on his First Amendment rights by trying to regulate its content. He filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the town and sought $1 in damages.

..The ruling, issued by U.S. District Judge Joseph Laplante, came after a one-day bench trial in February.

Laplante said Conway’s enforcement of the ordinance was unconstitutional, and ordered the town to stop its efforts.

There are sound reasons for the regulation of commercial speech. Businesses could lie about the benefits, costs, or any other aspects of their products and services and skip town to avoid responsibility; such speech should not be protected by the First Amendment.

In the case of Leavitt's Bakery it's not clear why the public needed protection from the mural; calling it a commercial sign seemed like a pretext to force the bakery to remove an image that some in the town didn't like. Cheers for the judge for putting a stop to legal over-reach.

Crossing a Red Line That You Can't See

Beginning January 1st, California has banned parking within 20 feet of a crosswalk. The purpose of the "daylighting" law is to make pedestrians more visible to drivers who may not see them crossing because of parked vehicles.

(Illustration from Trumbull/Chronicle)

San Francisco had begun ticketing such closely parked cars although there were no warning signs or curbs painted red. [bold added]

After confronting a stiff outcry from residents and elected leaders, San Francisco’s transportation agency has scrapped plans to ticket motorists who park in unmarked “daylighting” zones near crosswalks, the agency’s director said Monday.

Previously, officials at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency intended to cite any driver who parks within 20 feet of a crosswalk — the safety buffer mandated by California’s new daylighting law — regardless of whether or not the curb is painted red...

While citations for parking in red zones carry a $108 fine, SFMTA had proposed lowering the penalty to $40 if the 20 foot buffer was not marked. Strained by limited resources, transportation staff said it would take years to paint curbs throughout the city, so the reduced fine represented a compromise.

But San Franciscans balked. Kirschbaum said that when she met with members of the public, they brought up the daylighting enforcement plan over and over again. City supervisors echoed their misgivings, saying the $40 tickets were unfair. When Kirschbaum relayed their feedback to new Mayor Daniel Lurie, she said he supported her idea to quash the $40 fines...

SFMTA announced a retreat. Drivers who park at red curbs will still be ticketed; those who park at unmarked gray curbs will not, even if they are within 20 feet of a crosswalk.

Besides nixing the $40 tickets, the agency will also accelerate its process for striping curbs to comply with the daylighting law. Transportation planners are now giving themselves 18 months to coat all the daylight zones in red paint, a far more compressed schedule than the initial projection of four to five years.

Comments:

1) the daylighting law has a lot to commend it. Some pedestrians dash into crosswalks where views are blocked by parked trucks or SUVs.

2) people draw the line at protecting the public if it means taking away their parking space!

3) "Ignorance of the law is no excuse": no one seems to believe that any more with the many thousands of rules and regulations that the average person has to deal with.

The Beam in her Eye

Mariann Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington, DC, has attracted controversy over her sermon at the national prayer service last Tuesday.

As homilies go, your humble blogger found it to be well within mainstream Episcopal thought. She called for unity and its "foundations": dignity, honesty/truth, and humility. She had completed her sermon on Monday but felt that she had to add something more:

"I found myself thinking, there’s a fourth thing we need for unity in this country — we need mercy," she told RNS in an interview on Wednesday. "We need mercy. We need compassion. We need empathy. And after listening to the president on Monday, I thought, I wasn’t going to just speak of it in general terms."

The result was a sermon, delivered from the cathedral’s pulpit on Tuesday morning as President Trump and Vice President JD Vance sat quietly just a few feet away, that pleaded with the president to have "mercy" on people who stand to be disproportionately impacted by his administration’s policies — namely, LGBTQ people and immigrant families.

"In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now," Budde said. "There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in both Democratic, Republican and independent families who fear for their lives."

She also made a plea for immigrants and refugees, a reference to Trump’s promise to enact sweeping deportations and his executive order stopping almost all refugees from entering the country starting Jan. 27. The majority of immigrants, Budde said, are not criminals, but "people who pay taxes, and are good neighbors."

I have two problems with the final section of Bishop Budde's sermon:

1) in a call for "mercy" she is really asking the President not to enforce the law. Perhaps she had become so accustomed to the Biden Administration's selective approach to enforcement (open borders for favored groups, lawfare against Republicans) that she thought that President Trump could do the same. The President said that he would not politicize the administration of Justice, and until he demonstrates otherwise should be given the benefit of the doubt. The right place to change minds is Congress, and the Bishop should have faith in the strength of her arguments to change the hearts of the nation's lawmakers.

2) President Trump's opponents almost all think that he is an emotional, impulsive narcissist. If Bishop Budde really believed that of the President, the wrong way to influence such a man is to berate him in public. The more effective method to get help for "transgender children" and immigrants who lack "proper documentation" is to show respect to the President in public, then approach him quietly for assistance after the prayer service. It's hard to believe that the Bishop would rather show off her antipathy to Donald Trump (on display in June, 2020) than help the people who need it. I hope I'm wrong about her motivation.

After the break is the text of Bishop Budde's sermon from the Guardian.

Paper is Still the Gold Standard

(Image from tvtropes)

You're on your deathbed and still of sound mind. Your estate is to be evenly split between your son and daughter, but Jack has never come around to see you while Jill has not only visited you daily but handled all the day-to-day minutiae of your finances and running your household.

You now want to leave everything to Jill, but there may not be time to get a lawyer to change your will. Surely it must be better to record a selfie on your smartphone rather than scrawl a note on a piece of paper. But that would be wrong.[bold added]

While most of the business of life has gone digital, estate law remains rooted to ink on paper. Americans who try to phone in or record their estate plans don’t realize that video and audio recordings don’t qualify...

Aside from audio and video, some states will allow an electronic will. But a paper will, drafted by a lawyer, and signed by you with a “wet signature,” witnessed and notarized, is still the gold standard.

If you insist on putting your final wishes on video, it behooves you to have a printer nearby. You can transcribe your speech using any number of programs and print the text. Make corrections by hand, and sign and date the final product. Et voilà! A piece of paper that should hold up in court with the bonus of having made a video that will add authenticity to the change in the will.

Estate law will undoubtedly catch up to technology in a decade or so, but many of us boomers won't be able to wait that long...

No Wonder the Courts Are Clogged

The basis of the lawsuit (Chron photo)

Your humble blogger, a non-lawyer, has viewed with aghast the burgeoning laws and regulations that over his lifetime "growed like Topsy".

And there's no natural brake to this phenomenon. A wrong or injustice is noted, some citizens cry "there ought to be a law", and the legislature responds. Presto, a law is created which governs a human activity that was heretofore outside the legal system's ambit.

Is it any wonder that the courts are backlogged?

A 7 year-old girl handed a drawing to a classmate, a lawsuit resulted, and the case may be appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.[bold added]

A California 7-year-old was banned from drawing pictures at school and forced to sit out recess for two weeks for adding “any life” below Black Lives Matter on a picture she drew and gave to a Black friend, punishments that led to a federal lawsuit.

At the core of the case, which could see its way to the Supreme Court, is a simple question: Do first graders have First Amendment rights? ...

What happened at Viejo Elementary School three years ago is undisputed. The student, identified as B.B., drew the picture, which also included four colored-in ovals representing herself and three friends, after a lesson on Martin Luther King, Jr., and gave it to her friend, M.C., who took it home, where her mother saw it.

The mother emailed the school, saying she wouldn’t “tolerate any more messages given to M.C. at school because of her skin color” and that she ‘trust(ed)’ the school would address the issue,” according to court records.

The principal confronted B.B. and told her the drawing was “inappropriate” and “racist” and that she couldn’t draw at school anymore and had to apologize to her friend. When she returned to class, her teachers told her she was not allowed to play at recess for two weeks.

A year after the incident, B.B.’s mother learned of her punishments and later sued the school district and administrators, claiming her daughter’s First Amendment rights were violated. She lost in the district court.

[Defense attorney Caleb] Trotter said he believes the judge erred in the fact that the drawing was not disruptive and then relied on a New York Times article, which was not part of the case record, to deem the “any life” part of the drawing as offensive, associating it with the “all lives matter” controversy.

“Testimony in this case clearly shows neither student knew any of what this meant,” Trotter said. “The school created this situation by introducing these adult topics.”

The legal issue at hand is whether then-7-year-old "B.B." has any free-speech rights, and the District Court ruled against her (really, her parents, who had sued the school district for suspending her). But the school district, IMHO, should never have introduced the Black Lives matter/All Lives matter dispute into a second-grade class, then punished a student for her misunderstanding of the subtleties.

According to the people who are eager to find offensiveness under every rock, "any life" is an allusion to "all lives matter", which reveals the racism of the writer or speaker. For the school district to a) buy into this interpretation and b) punish the 7-year-old for her bad thinking is a gross overstep of in loco parentis. For your humble blogger the removal of identity-politics ideology from public education, especially elementary schools, can't come too soon.

Its Demise is not in Question

In an expected development, the Governor and Legislature closed the upcoming year's California budget deficit by agreeing to a $297.9 billion spending plan.

(Image from the Economist)

In parallel news the slavery reparations bill ("Fund for Reparations and Reparative Justice"), estimated to cost $800 billion, was approved by the Judiciary Committee and moves to the State Assembly for consideration.

When I have an instinctive negative reaction to policies--in this case to pay big penalties for actions that neither I nor my ancestors had anything to do with--I like to turn to guidance from spiritual leaders to gauge whether I'm off base. This article (What the Bible Says About Reparations for Slavery) is helpful: [bold added]

Any examination of the question must begin with the notion of time and its relation to evil acts. The Bible, in Exodus 34:7 and elsewhere, tells us that God will “visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.”

These passages acknowledge that bad acts frequently have consequences that ripple beyond the temporal space of the perpetrator and can create a sphere of responsibility that far exceeds the individual actor. Importantly, the text also indicates that the ripples dissipate after three or four generations. The adverse consequences of nefarious acts don’t continue indefinitely—and, similarly, the desire for vengeance and the right to compensation for such acts can’t endure forever.

Why only three or four generations? This limitation is tied to the duration of emotional memory, including the transmitted personal sense of suffering and injustice. Most people have a vivid awareness of and emotional ties to parents and grandparents—perhaps even to a great-grandparent. Yet no such bonds can plausibly exist beyond that. The Bible is thus establishing a statute of limitations that is tied to the strength of personal memory and, therefore, to a limitation on the personalized rectification of historic wrongs.

Our legal system echoes this biblical teaching. Civil and criminal statutes of limitation generally bring to an end the pursuit of perpetrators for acts that are too distant in time to warrant subjection to judicial processes. Implicitly they also recognize that witnesses, tangible evidence, and raw emotions engendered by wrongful acts have disappeared—no matter how heinous the offenses.

While American slavery remains a powerful and tragic historical event, there are no individuals alive today who have direct personal links to it or even to those who suffered directly as a consequence of it. For all its evil and injustice, slavery is no longer a personal reality in the U.S. It is still a wrong to be righted, but in a collective manner, through national efforts—civil-rights legislation, improvements in education, public services, quality-of-life enhancements for the descendants of slaves, and the like. To its credit, our nation has vigorously pursued such efforts for decades.

The notion that direct compensation should be paid to sixth-, seventh- or eighth-generation descendants of slavery’s victims by similarly distant descendants of those who may have been complicit with slavery is simply unjust. The original actors, perpetrators and victims, are too far removed in time to merit punishment or retribution.

It is appropriate to punish a perpetrator or exact restitution from an individual who may have benefited directly from the acts of the perpetrator. Yet more than 1½ centuries’ distance makes such punishment for slavery incompatible with justice. Similarly, individuals separated by many generations from a vile act suffered by distant ancestors can’t have a justiciable claim for suffering they didn’t endure directly or indirectly.

The above interpretation of Biblical justice doesn't relieve me of my moral responsibility to help the poor and downtrodden. However, it's quite different to use the State's taxing authority to take from Peter to pay Paul --by force, if necessary--when both Peter and Paul and no one they know have any first-hand experience with the injustices perpetrated.

However, there is no point in getting too worked up about reparations. There is zero probability that California can come up with $800 billion, so it's just the timing and manner of reparations' demise that's in question.

Illegal Bookkeeping

Donald Trump, as is his wont, sucked all the air out of the news room tonight when he was found guilty of 34 felony counts by a Manhattan jury earlier today. (Mercury News early Friday edition front page, right.) If you need a summary, dear reader, here's a link to the Wall Street Journal.

Since everyone's pontificating on the story, your humble non-lawyer blogger will add a few observations.

Improper bookkeeping was the first crime on which the entire case hinges, and the Manhattan D.A. got to 34 felonies by counting individual checks as separate crimes all related to the same subject. From the D.A.'s summary: [bold added]

After winning the election, TRUMP reimbursed the Special Counsel [blogger's note: Michael Cohen] through a series of monthly checks, first from the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust – created in New York to hold the Trump Organization’s assets during TRUMP’s presidency – and later from TRUMP’s bank account. In total, 11 checks were issued for a phony purpose. Nine of those checks were signed by TRUMP. Each check was processed by the Trump Organization and illegally disguised as a payment for legal services rendered pursuant to a non-existent retainer agreement. In total, 34 false entries were made in New York business records to conceal the initial covert $130,000 payment. Further, participants in the scheme took steps that mischaracterized, for tax purposes, the true nature of the reimbursements.

Were I a bookkeeper in the Trump organization I would have routinely classified all payments to lawyers as "legal expenses." That satisfies both accounting and tax requirements, while protecting my employer because the payments, the invoices, and supporting documents would fall under attorney-client privilege. So far there's been no assertion by anyone that a Trump accountant below the level of CFO would know that this was wrong.

The Manhattan D.A. asserted that the CEO (Donald Trump) and the CFO (Allen Weisselberg) knew that the payments to Michael Cohen should have been called "campaign contributions" but purposefully misclassified (or let the accounting system misclassify) them as legal expenses. This is the first crime that led to another unspecified crime (there had to be two crimes in order to make this a felony, else the purported legal-expense misclassification was at worst a misdemeanor on which the statute of limitations ran out years ago).

I'm a humble retired accountant who thinks it's crazy that an alleged accounting mistake on $130,000 could cause me to be thrown in prison seven years later, but again I'm no lawyer.

Sentencing is on July 11th, so this story will recede in a few days, then come back in early July. Meanwhlle we have a debate to look forward to, and possibly the naming of Donald Trump's running mate.

An Economist's Approach to Immigration

2023 millionaire migrations. (Visual Capitalist)

Economics professor Richard Vedder and Matthew Denhart of the Coolidge Foundation want to allow immigrants to buy their way in: [bold added]

One way to modernize our immigration laws would be to allow market forces to decide who should become new citizens. Consider America like a club, with initiation fees required for admission. Instead of choosing immigrants based on where they are from, admit them based on likely contributions to America.

An example: Sell 8,000 visas to the highest bidders for 250 days a year. Suppose the average price is $30,000. Of the $60 billion in annual visa revenue [blogger's note: 250 days x 8,000= 2,000,000 immigrants per year. 2MM x $30,000=$60 billion], devote one-third to more-intense border enforcement, one-third to income-tax reduction (an “immigration bonus” to taxpayers), and one-third to increasing the anemic defense budget. Or apply the money to debt reduction, helping delay the fiscal armageddon threatening the pensions and healthcare of elderly Americans.

Those buying visas could get access to huge labor and capital markets. Productive potential newcomers would avoid years of waiting to enter the country, and America would gain largely productive citizens.

Once we set aside the romantic notion that all immigrants must be hard-working, law-abiding poor who just need a break, this proposal makes a lot of sense. Immigrants who can buy their way in are unlikely to claim welfare benefits but become immediately productive members of society and not run afoul of its laws. [This concept is already contemplated--but not explicitly with a price tag--through the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program.]

Think of it as a fast track lane through airport TSA where "only" two million can get through. There's still room for many more to enter in the traditional, terribly inefficient way. This proposal is worth a try.

Financial Therapy

(WSJ Illustration)

When I was going to business school 50 years ago, I admired the select few who were in the JD/MBA program. They had to be accepted separately to both the law school and business school--each of which was tough to get into--and devote four years to complete their studies.

But I'm not impressed by this latest dual credential, the financial therapist: [bold added]

The goal of financial therapists ultimately is to help people make good financial decisions, typically by raising their clients’ awareness of how their emotions and unconscious beliefs have affected their sometimes messy experiences with money...

Financial therapists tend to come from mental-health and financial-planning disciplines, and there are signs that their ranks are rising: The Financial Therapy Association has 430 members, up from 225 in 2015. Still, according to the group, fewer than 100 financial therapists have completed its certification process, introduced in 2019. You can be an association member without being certified by it...

Still, there are possible pitfalls when hiring a financial therapist. One major drawback: Anyone can claim they are qualified to practice financial therapy.

No government agency regulates the young profession. Candidates for certification by the Financial Therapy Association must take online courses designed by the association covering financial and therapeutic techniques, counsel clients for 250 hours and pass a 100-question test. But you can call yourself a financial therapist and not be certified by the association.

Meanwhile, the cost of financial therapy varies widely—from $125 to $350 an hour, [Financial Therapy Association President Ashley] Agnew estimates. Insurance rarely covers the tab.

Because of recent well-publicized policy mistakes, "experts" have lost the deference that their credentials used to afford them. However, credentialing and licensing do have their place in verifying that a person has a certain level of knowledge to practice often-complex professions.

The fact that there are zero certification requirements in "financial therapy" will result inevitably in scandal, defalcation, and possibly worse outcomes for clients. I wish it weren't true, but sad experience teaches otherwise.

O.J.'s Legacy

The 1994 Bronco "chase" (spectrum)

Every newspaper (yes, I still read at least three of them every day) has carried obituaries of O.J. Simpson, who died this Wednesday from cancer at the age of 76. His outstanding career in college and professional football and his subsequent work in film, TV, and advertising alone merited pages, but the big story was his 1994-1995 trial for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman. WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan captures that unique, "crazy" period in history:

Our crazy country. The O.J. Simpson case was the beginning of knowing we were crazy and admitting it. It was 30 years ago this June, the murder followed by the Bronco chase, and I find myself wanting to tell those who weren’t there what a sensation it was, what an amazement.

Everyone over 40 this weekend will be saying, “I’ll never forget when I heard the verdict,” and, “Did you watch the Bronco?” The case burned itself into our retinas; everyone in the country was in the path of totality.

As much as anything and more than most, the story was the beginning of the modern media age. It was the beginning of hypercelebrity and marked by the emotionalism of crowds. Crowds ran to California freeway overpasses on June 17, 1994, to see the Ford Bronco containing Simpson roll by, surrounded by police cruisers. They cheered and pumped their arms. They didn’t see it as a tragedy, the story of the beautiful young woman and mother, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her 25-year-old friend, Ron Goldman, who had been brutally stabbed to death. They saw an exciting drama unfolding before their eyes, like Al Capone shooting his way out of a bank heist surrounded by cops. Simpson was a guy everyone liked. So they cheered. And people watching thought: Whoa, what are we seeing, what is this?

Some new kind of fame was being presaged. A close friend of O.J.’s, Los Angeles lawyer and businessman Robert Kardashian, an apparently quiet fellow no one had heard of, was thrust into the case from the beginning. At a news conference he read a public letter from O.J., just before he turned himself in. The letter said he had nothing to do with Nicole’s murder. “I loved her. . . . If we had a problem, it’s because I loved her so much.” It was classic abusive-husband patter.

Kardashian, like other O.J. attorneys, would become famous, and the fame would be a lesson to many. After fame comes wealth and power and everyone gives you a good table. It is probably true that none of this was lost on his former wife, Kris, who had been one of Nicole Simpson’s best friends, or on his children, Kourtney, Kim, Khloe and Rob. Their show, “Keeping Up With The Kardashians,” debuted in 2007. They were the first reality-TV family, famous for being famous. They are billionaires now.

“It marked the end of cozy, afternoon soap opera entertainment and ushered in a tabloid culture of Kardashians, Jenners, and lesser beings,” former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter said by email. “Also, it made, for a time, Dominick Dunne the most recognized print reporter in the world.” Dunne’s colorful and breathless reports each month in Vanity Fair covered the case like a blanket—who snubbed whom in the courtroom, who said what at Brentwood’s glittering dinner tables...

If the signal moment was the Bronco chase, it was the court case that would have lasting significance. It was a prime example of how our legal system got bogged down in distractions, inanities, and poor police and legal work. It dragged on nine months. The judge, Lance Ito, also became a celebrity, and apparently liked it. He kept three open computers on his bench. No one had ever seen that before. Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show” had a regular sketch, the “Dancing Itos.” There were endless, meandering objections. The prosecutor, Marcia Clark, had to get her hair and makeup done, and a new wardrobe.

And the cast of characters! Kato Kaelin, the house guest who never left. Mark Fuhrman, the police detective who seemed solid on evidence and then was torn apart for having once used racial epithets and was accused of planting evidence.

And the phrases that bubbled up from the courtroom and entered the national consciousness: “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

And, of course, the terrible and historic moment when the jury announced its verdict.

The trial felt like it had gone forever but the verdict came in within a day. No one in America did a bit of work from the moment it was announced that the jury had a verdict. Everyone ran to a TV set. From Robert D. McFadden’s O.J. obit in the New York Times: “Even President Bill Clinton left the Oval Office to join his secretaries. In court, cries of ‘Yes!’ and ‘Oh, no!’ were echoed across the nation as the verdict left many Black people jubilant and many white people aghast.” Exactly true.

A friend wrote Thursday afternoon: “Trial as spectacle has been with us for a long time (think Lizzie Borden), and so have juries doing unusual things. But this seemed to take it to a new level. If memory serves, the volume of the New York Stock Exchange went down to basically nothing for a few minutes as the verdict was announced. That’s real.”

Reaction famously fell almost completely along racial lines. It was one of those 20th-century moments when you realized race is here to stay as an unending factor, an unyielding actor in American life. White and black saw two different realities. Whites: All the evidence points to his guilt, he’s one of the most admired men in America, race isn’t the story here.

Blacks: This is what you do to black men, you railroad them on cooked-up evidence, there’s plenty of room for doubt.

It showed in some new and unforgettable way the divided country. The verdict itself didn’t divide the country; it revealed it, again and not for the last time, as divided. Reaction was called shocking, revelatory. But what it was, was simpler. It was painful. It left you with a tight and mournful feeling in your throat.

Before O.J., American blacks lacked confidence in the legal system. After O.J., everyone lacked confidence in the legal system. It looked cynical, performative, agenda-driven, not on the level.

I would say he got away with murder because I believe he was guilty. But in a way he didn’t get away with it; it stalked him the rest of his life. And that is tragedy, too, because he’d been such a hero, a winner of the Heisman Trophy, a football star, a man of great accomplishment whom everyone admired.

That’s all.

The O.J. case revealed so much and started a new age. Within a few years the internet would become ubiquitous, and at that point the new age would become more so.

I remember going to lunch at a popular bar-restaurant in San Francisco. Instead of the TV being tuned to sports, it showed a slow-moving Ford Bronco being trailed by police cars on an LA freeway. I couldn't hear the sound and had no idea what the fuss was about.

Over the next year, one could not avoid the O.J. Simpson story; it was on all the network news. In their thirst for material reporters unearthed every scrap of information about every character in the drama: the defense team, the prosecution, law enforcement, and witnesses. Many cashed in on their new found fame.

The O.J. Simpson trial showed how much society had regressed in the late 20th century. Tribalism had taken hold; it didn't matter what you did, what group you belonged to determined whether you deserved punishment, facts and evidence be damned. It was okay to exploit the tragedy of a double murder if it meant a lucrative book deal.

The genie was out of the bottle, and there would be no turning back.

Portland, OR: Where the People Get What They Want

One of an estimated 800 encampments in Portland

Portland reverses its 3-year Progressive experiment on "victimless" drugs.

Oregon’s political leaders...are now on the cusp of ending a three-year experiment as the first and only state in the nation to allow people to freely use drugs from heroin to cocaine to fentanyl...

Backers of the 2020 ballot measure, which passed with 58% support, successfully convinced their fellow residents of the left-leaning state that decriminalization would mean fewer nonviolent drug addicts in prison and more in treatment.

But while the first part of the prediction proved true, the second didn’t. Without the threat of imprisonment, few people have proved willing to take advantage of the expanded addiction services the measure funded. Instead, public drug use has become rampant, as people can now smoke fentanyl and use other drugs on sidewalks with no consequences.

Residents, business owners and law-enforcement officials have become infuriated, and a poll last year found most people wanted to reverse course and make drug possession a crime again. Advocates said they would try to put a measure on this year’s ballot ending decriminalization if the legislature didn’t act.

Up and down the West Coast people are realizing that these nostrums don't work. Homelessness, property crime, and deaths from substance abuse are all up because of the Progressive belief that "carceral" systems not only unjustly punish but are racist to boot. The whole episode has a silver lining: democracy works, because the voters got what they wanted in 2020, and now they're getting what they want in 2024.

Sad Denouement

Jose Inez Garcia Zarate

After nine years the Kate Steinle murder case reaches its sad denouement:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to deport a Mexican national who was acquitted in the high-profile 2015 murder of Kate Steinle in San Francisco, the New York Times reported.

Jose Inez Garcia Zarate, who is undocumented, was acquitted by a jury in 2017 of murder and manslaughter charges but convicted of being a felon in possession of a gun. The trial drew national attention and was used by politicians as a talking point in immigration debates.

Steinle, 32, was fatally shot while walking along Pier 14 with her father.

According to Garcia Zarate’s attorneys, he found a gun along the waterfront and accidentally fired it – causing the bullet to ricochet off the pavement, striking Steinle in the back. The gun was stolen from a federal Bureau of Land Management ranger’s car.

Garcia Zarate’s gun conviction was later overturned by a court of appeals in 2019.

Garcia Zarate remained in prison for federal probation violations until February, the New York Times reported. In mid-February, Garcia Zarate was transferred to ICE custody and the agency plans to deport him to central or southern Mexico within the next week, a Department of Homeland Security official told the New York Times under the condition of anonymity.

Before the 2015 shooting, Garcia Zarate had been deported five times. He was in federal prison on a conviction of felony re-entry into the U.S. but instead of deportation, he was brought to San Francisco, where he was wanted for a possession of marijuana charge. That charge was dismissed and Garcia Zarate was released from custody under the city’s sanctuary policy, which limits local law enforcement’s cooperation with federal immigration officials. Federal immigration officials had requested he remain detained until they could pick him up and were not notified of his release.

Former President Donald Trump used the case to criticize sanctuary cities.

Kate Steinle's death did not cause "sanctuary cities" to renounce their policy of non-cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). And so it is that illegal immigrants continue to be arrested and released by local authorities before they can be turned over to ICE, and some go on to kill American citizens.

The murder of Laken Riley in Georgia last week by an alleged Venezuelan illegal threatens to become Kate Steinle 2.0 this political season. The problem was never solved but only grew worse, and it will be surprising if the voters don't exact a price this November.

On Kalakaua Avenue

A stroll along Waikiki's tony Kalakaua Avenue is helpful in determining what's trendy. Case in point: Hemptuary, a clever portmanteau that combines "hemp" and "sanctuary."

Marijuana cannot yet be sold legally for recreational purposes in Hawaii, but it is permitted for medical use. If a patient has at least one of ten "qualifying debilitating medical condition[s]" (e.g. cancer, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), MS) he may receive a prescription for cannabis. Hemptuary has doctors at the ready to help a patient get a qualifying "329 card" and issue a prescription to said patient.

In related news Senate Bill 3335 is wending its way through Hawaii's Senate Committees. If it becomes law, recreational use for adults can begin on January 1, 2026, upon which strolls along Kalakaua Avenue will become positively uplifting.

Mountain Lions: the Facts Have Changed

The Mercury News runs a front-page story about the over-estimation of the mountain lion population "by several thousands": [bold added]

The total number of mountain lions is estimated to be between 3,200 and 4,500, which is thousands fewer than previously thought. The count was conducted by state and university scientists who used GPS collar data and genetic information from scat samples to model population densities across the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Mojave Desert and Southern California’s patchwork of weedy, fire-stripped wilderness...

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife had for decades estimated that the state’s mountain lion population was roughly 6,000 — even despite relentless vehicle strikes, wildfires and encroachment by land-hungry humans throughout their range.

“That old figure was just a back-of-the-envelope calculation without much data to support it,” Dellinger said. “The new, more accurate information we collected will be used to conserve and manage mountain lions more appropriately.”

The updated population numbers increase the likelihood that cougars could be classified as "threatened":

If the state Fish and Game Commission agrees, the state Department of Transportation would not be allowed to build or expand highways in core mountain lion habitat without implementing adequate measures to ensure linkages and safe passage over them.

In addition, large-scale residential and commercial development could be prohibited or limited in mountain lion habitats within a region covering roughly a third of the state.

Two years ago the tony town of Woodside attempted to thwart a State law that mandated denser housing by its claim that such construction would endanger mountain lions. Woodside backed down when threatened by State officials.

If environmentalists are serious about the importance of species protection, this new mountain-lion population report should cause them to back Woodside when and if it tries to halt housing construction again.

It will be very interesting if the State ultimately values housing construction over animals, because that will show that the Endangered Species Act is not absolute, which opponents will exploit not only in California but throughout the nation.

An Easy Fix

from Instagram

Two months ago we noted how San Francisco parking officers routinely issued tickets to stolen vehicles that have been abandoned. Mayor Breed ordered the practice stopped. [bold added]

Breed ordered the MTA to stop ticketing stolen cars hours after an Oct. 11 Chronicle investigation exposed the practice. The report showed that from May 1 to Sept. 17, SFMTA parking control officers ticketed 411 vehicles that had been reported stolen, issuing fines totaling nearly $70,000. Some were written up multiple times; one received eight citations.

The fix was simple.

The MTA and SFPD said in their letter to Breed that they coordinated with the state’s Department of Justice to obtain California’s stolen vehicle plate file. Then, according to MTA spokesperson Erica Kato, they loaded the file onto ticket writers’ devices. Now, whenever a ticket writer enters a stolen plate number into their device, they receive a message the car was stolen.

By not correcting the problem San Francisco increased its ticketing revenue. When it got caught, no one tried to defend the strategy. It's a small sign of encouragement that City officials had enough of a conscience to feel shame.

Wishful Thinking

The City not only tickets stolen cars, it painted a curb red
while a car was parked, then issued it a ticket.

Yesterday's post was about San Francisco ticketing stolen cars, rather than attempting to reunite them with their owners. Mayor London Breed reacted immediately to the Chronicle article:[bold added]

Mayor London Breed on Wednesday ordered the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to stop ticketing stolen vehicles and to instead notify their owners that their cars had been found...

Breed ordered the SFMTA and the Police Department to work together to implement a system in which stolen cars are identified and recovered. The two departments have a 45-day deadline to respond to the directive.

Just because London Breed is the Mayor doesn't mean that she's in charge:

San Franciscans will have to wait, however, before the directive becomes reality. City laws governing the use of surveillance technology — such as license plate readers — require multiple reviews by the city’s Committee on Information Technology, as well as a signoff by a supervisorial committee and a full vote of the Board of Supervisors.

The problem of bureacratic obstinacy exists in all governments, no matter who's on top, because bureacrats act in their own self interest, not in the interest of the chief executives or the people who elected them. According to public choice theory

There is abundant evidence that governments throughout history and throughout the world do not do what they are supposed to do. In some cases the government employees do not do anything useful. In others they will not do their job unless they are paid specifically to do a task. The English language calls this payment a bribe but this is a misnomer in that the word bribe is also used to designate a payment made to a government employee to do something illegal. The payment that is mentioned above is one made to get the government employee to do something that is not only legal but is also his or her job.

We wish Mayor Breed all the best, but there's no way she'll have her integrated database up and running in 45 days. The Transportation and Law Enforcement bureaucracies will ensure that it will occur at double that length of time, if at all.

SF: Adding Insult to Injury

Cars are ticketed $63 for not curbing wheels when parked on San Francisco hills.

The goal is safety first:

The purpose, according to the [San Francisco Municipal Transit] Agency, is to keep parked cars from rolling into traffic if they were hit or if their brakes were to fail.

The obvious tip for visitors to our fair City is: before calling the cops because your windows have been smashed and your stuff taken, curb your wheels. Your car shouldn't be rolling into traffic.

Stolen-car owners shouldn't feel neglected by the SFMTA either. [bold added]

Between May 1 and Sept. 17, over 2,000 vehicles were reported stolen to the Police Department. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, or SFMTA, had, as of Sept. 26, ticketed 411 of those while they were still officially considered stolen, issuing fines totaling nearly $70,000, according to a Chronicle analysis of public records. Some vehicles were written up multiple times.

San Francisco parking officers could locate stolen cars, though it would require a technological fix that accounts for the fact that non-police agencies generally don’t have direct access to law enforcement databases.

....Fifteen years ago, SFMTA parking officers used handheld ticketing devices that included auto-theft information from a city crime database, the Chronicle reported at the time. The department no longer has that automated capability, [SFMTA spokesperson Stephen] Chun said.

High-tech San Francisco had better tech 15 years ago. It's just coincidental that parking fines on stolen vehicles due to the lack of cross-referencing have turned out to be a moneymaker.