Posts Tagged ‘karen kerin’

Nothing is more distressing than injustice where justice should prevail. Yet the evidence demonstrates that is the state of affairs nationally and in Vermont. Most recently, we have a Justice Department lawyer in the civil rights division resigning a top career job because political leadership dismissed a case of voter intimidation in Philadelphia by the “new black panthers” after the case was already won. The story is even worse as racial matters further make the case an outrage. There have been claims of voter irregularities in Vermont, but between the Secretary of State (a liberal lawyer) and the attorney general, the issues have died without any media pursuit of the truth. It gets worse.

In several instances of police shootings where considerable evidence suggested wrongful actions by the police, the attorney general found no wrongful actions. In one case in Brattleboro, a civil case resulted in a cash settlement. Yes, life has a worth in dollars in the eyes of the legal system, but justice can’t be had. More recently, another mentally disadvantaged person was shot and killed by a SWAT team of state police. It gets worse. The father, step mother and brother hastening to the scene are intercepted and handcuffed with the father being arrested and charged, although the charges were ultimately dropped. What were they being prevented from seeing? We will never know as a following law suit by the father resulted in a loss to him based on testimony by the very officers that shot his son. Does it sound suspicious? The media apparently didn’t think so as they have been largely mute.

To practice law, you must be a member of the bar, the lawyers union. You cannot be a judge unless you are a member of the bar for some years. Virtually all of the states attorneys are members of the bar and an increasing number the side judges are members although there is no legal requirement for membership in either. The attorney general, the only state wide officer not in the Vermont Constitution, is not required to be a member of the bar, but certainly should know the law and particularly the constitutions of the state and nation. That is not what we see in the courts, where so called “case law” is cited as authority. It is not authority and even the law schools teach that it isn’t, but it may be persuasive according to the so called mainstream of legal thinking. Spend some time around a law school and you will soon discover that the mainstream of legal thinking is what the liberal professors there think.
Our justice system needs help.

Many people do not realize that the constitution does not give the bar control of the judiciary.  Yet, unless someone is a member of the bar, they cannot be a judge or countermand the so called mainstream legal thinking.  That mainstream is frequently in direct contradiction to Article III authority in the constitution.  Karen will work hard to reverse that and restore the government to the people.  It is after all our government, not a new nobility of elites.

For sixty-six years I have been a staunch republican, but over the last few years I have been astonished at how many office holders elected as republicans embraced a different philosophy. The ideal of less government, lower taxes and less regulation of our lives, appeared to fall by the wayside, when it seemed advantageous for a republican to sacrifice principles to stay in office. I did not come to this easily. It was the product of examining the votes of legislators in view of the enormous growth of the body of laws. The evidence is beyond dispute.

When I was born, four months before D-Day, Vermont Statutes were a single volume about three inches thick. That held steady until the early 1960’s when the laws began to mushroom, ending with our current “Vermont Statutes Annotated” occupying three of my bookshelves. By what constitutional provision do annotations (prior court decisions) attain the status of law? How in the world did it suddenly become necessary to have such a prodigious growth of law in less than fifty years? The answer is in many parts.

First of all, the supreme law of the land is the U. S. Constitution per Article VI, Clause 2. By extension, the supreme law of Vermont must be the Vermont Constitution, as far as it is in conformity with the supreme law of the land. Any statute, whether federal or state that is contrary to the constitutions is without authority, although that is not the same as unconstitutional because the power to make that declaration resides with the courts when the machinery of government works properly and an offended party brings suit. It is the constitutions that represent the standards by which I must examine the government and the elected people who comprise the operators of that government. Clearly, as evidenced by the enormous growth of government and Vermont laws, the two major parties have not been faithful to the constitutions because legislation bringing us to this bloated government could only happen with the agreement of the two.

Second, there has been a huge shift of authority away from a government of, for and by the people to a government of professional politicians, the lawyers union and bureaucrats. Elections have become nothing of substance and all about popularity and slick PR. Obviously, the ability of large parties makes possible slick PR with political science majors and advertising gurus conjuring 4-5 word catch phrases that get repeated endlessly. That is particularly destructive of good law and too often stands in direct contradiction to the constitutions. Most annoying is one third of our government is only open to the members of the lawyers union, also called the bar. Nothing in the constitution of the nation or the state authorizes this surrender of a critical part of the government to a new nobility, after the founders fought to get us free of the one in England. I care nothing about lawyers and their mainstream of legal thinking today, as the measure must and always be the constitution.

Third and finally, after many years of being in the chorus, I have finally recognized that the incessant bickering and finger pointing between the two major parties serves only one purpose. That purpose is to distract us from what they are doing. The media loves it because it gives them instant stories. We, the people, are poorly served as the distraction keeps us from observing the facts and it is the facts that are making a wreckage of our constitutional republic.

As a libertarian attorney general, I will work in a non-partisan way to restore the laws to what the people have always thought they were, so help me God.

I do not consider myself to be a politician, but I do abide by the unwritten rule of not speaking ill of an opponent. That said I must express my disgust with both state and federal government:

• Lawmakers have enacted a health care bill federally that purports to compel folks to purchase health insurance to be funded by others, unlike Medicare which is available only to people who have paid for their social security. It is pretty clear that the scheme will drive out many practicing doctors and no law can force them to practice medicine. What kind of nonsense is federal legislation and the state knock off of that legislation? Doctors may refuse to treat such patients lacking either regular insurance or Medicare. That is useless a division of the people as senior citizens are denied Medicare benefits they paid for and younger folks are taxed more heavily to support the schemes of the lawmakers.

 

• When Mexican President Calderon spoke to a joint session of Congress roundly condemning Arizona for passing a law to help protect their citizens, I was appalled to see my president and most of the congressional members applaud him. It particularly upset me to discover that all three of our congressional members were among those rising to applaud. It is outrageous that any member of congress would applaud a foreign leader attacking one of our united states. While it is not treason, and might be tough to make a case that it is seditious, it is certainly in very bad taste not befitting a Vermonter as well as unethical.

 

• The energy bill congress is currently considering will cause a dramatic increase in costs to all of us for heating, transportation, and electric power. And then, we have the current off shore well in the Gulf with the oil spewing from the sunken drill rig. Shockingly, those very deep well rigs are not being allowed to explore in the shallower off shore areas because environmental groups oppose such safer drilling. Clearly, the environmental groups deserve a share of the blame. In Vermont the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant is denied an operating license renewal by renegade legislators. Why, when that will increase the cost of electricity for Vermonters? Would it not be smarter to continue using Yankee until there are inexpensive alternatives? In fact, there are at least two viable alternative small scale nukes that would comport with distributed generation, thus reducing the need for high voltage power lines running over the mountains while providing GREEN energy for communities seeking lower costs.

 

• Vermont has a swarm of unelected boards, commissions, and advisory entities that seem to stand athwart any opportunities for businesses to provide opportunities. Indeed, the courts seem to support these groups when they block any development. In the early 1960’s there was only one book of Vermont Statutes, but today there are three bookshelves of “Vermont Statutes Annotated”. The annotations are the comments of unknown editors citing Supreme Court decisions as if they were law, (case law the lawyers call it). In fact, the court does not make law for that is the job of the legislators, yet reading court documents one finds them peppered with citations to court rulings on the thin claim that they are persuasive. That is patently false. The founders accepted the court having the power to declare a statute unconstitutional, but that is the extent of their law making and unmaking powers. Why should Vermont accept this nonsense which flies in the face of a government of, for and by the people? It is our government, not belonging to the lawyers union, but to the people and it is causing terrible hardship in the Green Mountains.

Q: Why isn’t the Vermont Attorney General in the Vermont Constitution as a state-wide office?

A: That is a fair question, for which there is no provable answer. It has been speculated that after the state supreme court did the updates to the constitution, they either felt it was outside of their mandate or consciously determined to keep that office under the thumb of the court. It is only possible for the court to control the AG if he or she is a member of the bar, which Karen is not.