THE EVOLUTION OF JUDICIAL TYRANNY IN THE UNITED STATES:
"If the judges interpret the laws themselves, and suffer none else to interpret, they may easily make, of the laws, [a shredded] shipman's hose!" - King James I of England, around 1616.
“No class of the community ought to be allowed freer scope in the expression or publication of opinions as to the capacity, impartiality or integrity of judges than members of the bar. They have the best opportunities of observing and forming a correct judgment. They are in constant attendance on the courts. Hundreds of those who are called on to vote never enter a court-house, or if they do, it is only at intervals as jurors, witnesses or parties. To say that an attorney can only act or speak on this subject under liability to be called to account and to be deprived of his profession and livelihood by the very judge or judges whom he may consider it his duty to attack and expose, is a position too monstrous to be entertained for a moment under our present system,” Justice Sharwood in Ex Parte Steinman and Hensel, 95 Pa 220, 238-39 (1880).
“This case illustrates to me the serious consequences to the Bar itself of not affording the full protections of the First Amendment to its applicants for admission. For this record shows that [the rejected attorney candidate] has many of the qualities that are needed in the American Bar. It shows not only that [the rejected attorney candidate] has followed a high moral, ethical and patriotic course in all of the activities of his life, but also that he combines these more common virtues with the uncommon virtue of courage to stand by his principles at any cost.
It is such men as these who have most greatly honored the profession of the law. The legal profession will lose much of its nobility and its glory if it is not constantly replenished with lawyers like these. To force the Bar to become a group of thoroughly orthodox, time-serving, government-fearing individuals is to humiliate and degrade it.” In Re Anastaplo, 18 Ill. 2d 182, 163 N.E.2d 429 (1959), cert. granted, 362 U.S. 968 (1960), affirmed over strong dissent, 366 U.S. 82 (1961), Justice Black, Chief Justice Douglas and Justice Brennan, dissenting.
" I do not believe that the practice of law is a "privilege" which empowers Government to deny lawyers their constitutional rights. The mere fact that a lawyer has important responsibilities in society does not require or even permit the State to deprive him of those protections of freedom set out in the Bill of Rights for the precise purpose of insuring the independence of the individual against the Government and those acting for the Government”. Lathrop v Donohue, 367 US 820 (1961), Justice Black, dissenting.
"The legal profession must take great care not to emulate the many occupational groups that have managed to convert licensure from a sharp weapon of public defense into blunt instrument of self-enrichment". Walter Gellhorn, "The Abuse of Occupational Licensing", University of Chicago Law Review, Volume 44 Issue 1, September of 1976.
“Because the law requires that judges no matter how corrupt, who do not act in the clear absence of jurisdiction while performing a judicial act, are immune from suit, former Judge Ciavarella will escape liability for the vast majority of his conduct in this action. This is, to be sure, against the popular will, but it is the very oath which he is alleged to have so indecently, cavalierly, baselessly and willfully violated for personal gain that requires this Court to find him immune from suit”, District Judge A. Richard Caputo in H.T., et al, v. Ciavarella, Jr, et al, Case No. 3:09-cv-00286-ARC in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Document 336, page 18, November 20, 2009. This is about judges who were sentencing kids to juvenile detention for kickbacks.
Tuesday, December 29, 2015
Civil rights appellants - be aware that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit manipulates its court docket in order to ignore your filings and to rule against you
Frederick J. Neroni's appeal of denial by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York of his challenge to constitutionality of attorney disciplinary proceedings in New York
I must note that Defendants NYS Chief Judge Lippman, NYS Attorney General Schneiderman, Chief Judge of the Appellate Division 3rd Department Peters, Chairman (at the time of filing of the lawsuit, and now Chief Attorney) of the Attorney Disciplinary Committee, Appellate Division 3rd Department Duffy and former attorney of the Committee Zayas (who was, since the lawsuit was filed, let go from the Committee among investigation into allegedly filing false time sheets, but never disciplined) - this illustrative group fought tooth and claw against this brief to be filed in the scope it was actually allowed by the court to be filed.
It is interesting to read this case together with my motion to vacate the order of suspension of my federal law license by NDNY, and with another case, which I am going to report on later today, too.
Stay tuned.
My motion to vacate automatic suspension of my law license in federal court
My jurisdictional statement in appeal of suspension of my law license (state court)
Disciplinary attorney Mary Gasparini proves she is corrupt as she stalls disciplinary investigation of disbarring misconduct of politically connected attorneys Richard Harlem, Eric Jervis and James Hartmann
1) Richard Harlem, of Oneonta, NY, son of late Supreme Court Justice Robert Harlem, former Chief Administrative Judge of New York State 6th Judicial District;
2) Richard Harlem's law partner Eric Jervis, also of Oneonta, NY;
3) James Hartmann, of Delhi, NY, husband to attorney Nancy Deming, law clerk to judge-elect Gary Rosa of Delaware County Family Court.
The complaint was accompanied with an affidavit from a witness other than the complainant proving that the above three attorneys committed fraud and fraud upon the court that warrant their disbarment.
During a month that followed, no attempts were made by the disciplinary committee to call the complainant (not me) to investigate, or to verify the essence of the affidavit with its author.
Which brings me to the conclusion that attorney Mary Gasparini of the disciplinary committee who was the addressee of the complaint, is trying hard to earn her salary as a gatekeeper of discipline against powerful attorneys and as a fabricator of evidence to pull law licenses of critics of judicial misconduct.
And, according to my information, Richard Harlem is lying low and is refusing to engage in communication with the person who he has been claiming as a client for 8.5 years in proceedings in two courts, Delaware County Supreme Court and the Appellate Division 3rd Department.
Actually, in the Appellate Division 3rd Department Richard Harlem, his law firm Harlem & Jervis and, thus, his partner Eric Jervis, continue their fraud upon the court, as they continue to claim that they represent the person who already submitted an affidavit (which is the basis of the disciplinary complaint) that he never hired Harlem to represent him in the Mokay action.
Richard Harlem, Eric Jervis and James Hartmann did not even notify the Delaware County Supreme Court or the Appellate Division 3rd Department where Mr. Neroni's appeal is pending, that one of the alleged Mokay plaintiffs provided an affidavit that was submitted to the disciplinary committee claiming that the individal has never sued my husband Frederick J. Neroni, nor did that individual hire Richard Harlem or his law firms to sue him.
That is the height of "frivolous" and fraudulent conduct, and is a crime.
Yet, Mary Gasparini is not doing anything that an honest investigator and prosecutor would have done to verify the essence of the complaint.
Predictably so.
When a prosecutor is caught fabricating court transcript and lashes back at the person she prosecutes asking the court to put that person in jail for exposing her misconduct, one cannot expect that a dishonest prosecutor will suddenly develop a conscience and do her job honestly.
Monday, December 28, 2015
Will Delaware County be introduced to the modern word of public bidding on contracts?
According to Mr. Marshfield, Delaware County includes no-bid contracts into its annual budgets, thus, in Mr. Marshfield's opinion, eliminating the need to bid out contracts and to separately make decisions on the choice of vendors for services.
And, contracts are not even discussed by the entire legislature of the County, only by "committees", so the County actually never does its job in approving contracts, with or without bidding!
A brilliant scheme, isn't it?
In home economics class, in middle school, they teach to form family budget this way:
(1) ascertain your needs,
(2) assess how much (approximately) your needs will cost (from a market survey of several different vendors) and
(3) ascertain how much money you have, available and coming in in the immediate income or what can be obtained in loans.
Middle schoolers are not taught to first find a vendor you know who will give you the highest price and then build your needs and price your budget in accordance with the prices of that vendor.
You will not do that to your family, because for your family you would want the best service for the lowest available price.
Not so in Delaware County.
In Delaware County, "committees" of local government officials (who also sit on boards of vendors) determine the needs and put them into the budget of the County based on the prices quoted by the no-bid contractors that the County used for allegedly 30 years.
The problem is also that over 30 years, prices for goods and services changed dramatically, information technologies, such as Internet, made information about out-of-state goods and services readily available.
Therefore, the claim that Delaware County is a "large area with small population and few economic resources" which is touted by Delaware County officials as a justification of its 30-year practice of no-bid contracts, is not only a lie, but a stupid lie at that.
The Internet has made the entire world, including vendors from other counties, other states and other countries available for bidding on Delaware County contracts, and the price of submitting Delaware County contracts to bidding is the price of posting the bidding requirements on the existing Delaware County website - which is nothing, since it will have to be done by the already existing salaried employees.
Who knows, maybe it is cheaper to transport goods and services from China or deliver them electronically over the Internet to fit Delaware County needs for services, rather than to use taxpayer money to pay friends and relatives of members of the Delaware County government.
I understand that Delaware County needs to be introduced to the modern world, and it is a matter of time when an out of the area would-be vendor will sue the county for the opportunity to bid for its appropriation contracts.
After all, New York State Comptroller, as of July of 2014, in his report on public contracts stated the following:
And:
Delaware County should take notice.
I will continue to FOIL Delaware County as to its contracting practices and report it on this blog. Stay tuned.
Delaware County taxes and property foreclosures feed its 30-year no-bid inflated contracts to family and friends of local government officials
That is what I know from public records.
What I also know from the same set of documents received from the NYS Comptroller's office that for years, Delaware County employees were not asked to sign conflict of interest disclosures, while for over 30 years Delaware County engaged in a one vendor per service no-bid contracting "system", renewable automatically without public input and without input by the entire legislature, by the Board of Supervisors' "committees" alone.
Moreover, Marjorie Miller said in her interview that oftentimes she was requested to approve budgets without seeing them.
So, Marjorie Miller already spotted the overpriced contract of the County with the coroner (Dr. Ucci, I believe), who Marjorie Miller identified as a friend of the Delaware County Board of Supervisors Mr. Eisel.
Lack of competition in contracts and lack of disclosures of conflicts of interests for 30 years, in a county best characterized as "a land of kissing cousins", where no no-nepotism (prohibition on hiring relatives) policy in employment exists, must necessarily lead to overpriced public contracts.
Those public contracts are financed by you, ladies and gentlemen, taxpayers of Delaware County.
Each year for those 30 years while running those no-bid contracts, Delaware County foreclosed on delinquent county-tax taxpayers and took many homes from Delaware County property owners.
Recently, Delaware County Department of Social Services Commissioner William Moon was caught in buying up such a foreclosed property through his wife who has a different last name.
I wonder how many more of those buy-ups existed over the years of no-bid contracts, but Mr. Moon, apparently relying on his connections in the government and, likely, on the contracts to influential people he distributed over the years, escaped criminal and civil liability for his misconduct.
He only very quickly resigned, as did Judge Carl Becker, who was the legal advisor of Commissioner Moon for many years while the no-bid contract system was in existence and knew his many secrets, if not participated in Moon's little "inside trading" in real estate foreclosed by the County and in doling out contracts to family and friends.
It is my firm belief that support by the well-known corrupt judge Becker derailed judicial election campaign of his student, colleague and subordinate, now County Attorney Porter Kirkwood in the past judicial elections to the Family Court seat this year.
I wonder if property owners whose properties were foreclosed over the period of 30 years will now start questioning propriety of foreclosures to feed the corrupt inflated budgets of Delaware County that was made to accommodate inflated contract prices to family and friends of Delaware County government officials - under the guise of "helping" Delaware County in foregoing public bidding, because Delaware County has "small population" and "lacks economic resources" to verify whether contracts for services paid for with taxpayers' money, are provided at the best available prices.