A blog focused on things eternal and related to the heavenly realm based in Colossians 3:2 -- "Set your affections on things above, not things of the earth."
The jury's out on whether court calling using www.CourtCall.com, rather then appearing at a hearing, is effective. It seems the courts make money from the court calls but I question whether it can be harmful to a person's case to appear that way. It's impersonal and difficult because there's no body language or communication cues. It's easy for a judge to be impersonal and treat you like a non-person as just a voice over a speaker phone.
I think maybe CourtCalls should be used sparingly by legal professionals and really important hearings should be attended in person. Court's don't care either way as long as they get their money. I really do think legal professionals should be careful overusing CourtCall to save on their travel expenses.
Hello, what was that you say? I can't hear you! Maybe it's because ya'll are descending into the pit of hell of a sinking failed state called California. That is, a state where the Mexican military just flies into its airspace without a care of the U.S. government. A state that's the worst in the country for public education. A state that has to give its court system a holiday each month because it can't afford to pay its BAD male chauvinist pig judges.
Yahoo! I just completed my taxes and business deductions for 2009 and am relieved I had enough deductions to reduce my taxes significantly. I also had capital losses I could use when I sold my gold coins for a loss the same year. The deduction is $3,000!
Yesterday I was about to drop the returns in the mail without the capital loss deduction when it suddenly dawned on me as I headed out the door I could include capital losses on Schedule D! It was very simple to do and saved me $800 in taxes. I proceeded to rewrite a check to the IRS for $800 less than I had only 30 minutes prior. Had I later learned to have missed such a significant deduction, I would have been very upset to say the least. I could have amended the return of course, but doing so is always a red flag for the IRS for possible audits.
I had started out doing my taxes with the free e-filing forms the IRS offers on its site only to learn the calculating math sections are buggy. I then turned to Turbo Tax, something I used last year for a more simpler return, but decided to file the old fashioned way. Here's the reason why; I believe Turbo Tax is dangerous to use for more complex tax filings.
Turbo Tax software isn't as complex as one might expect. Turbo leads you to believe taxes done its way will be fast and simple with its internal guidance feature, but I believe it poses a danger to tax payers to depend far too much on the software itself. They also lie claiming filing with Turbo is "free". Not so! You'll not only pay to use the software, but pay a $50 fee to file electronically.
I used to have an accountant do my taxes but decided I could do them myself to save a few hundred dollars. My accountant was great to call up with tax questions he'd answer at no charge. However today's Internet, along with various self-help tax books, allows answers in a matter of minutes. My former accountant's one of those ole fashioned professionals who has no email address or website. I'd have to mail my returns and wait 4 weeks, then be charged at least $300.
Thanks to PDFs and the Internet providing all the information at one's fingertips, doing one's own taxes and deductions is doable. The only question that remains is, does the IRS tend to trust accountant's work over the tax payer doing their own returns much like judges give more credence to attorneys then pro pers (self represented) people? Is there a special protection that comes with using an accountant who signs the return? Only time will tell.
It's interesting to note the primary cause of the dramatic deterioration of California's public education system began when I was back in high school. Within 7 days of my graduation in 1978, Proposition 13 was passed. Back then we had music, sports and performing arts programs along with all kinds of other extra curricular school activities. I remember our music director expressing great fear over the proposition for his job. Over 30 years later, as predicted by many, the proposition steadily caused California to become a failed public education state:
California public schools, which in the 1960s had been ranked nationally as among the best, have fallen to 48th in many surveys of student achievement. Some have disputed Proposition 13's direct role in the move to state financing of public schools, because schools financed mostly by property taxes were declared unconstitutional in Serrano vs. Priest, and Proposition 13 was then passed partially as a result of that case.California's spending per pupil was the same as the national average until about 1985, when it began dropping, which led to another referendum, that requires a certain percentage of the state's budget to be directed towards education. Wikipedia
This state's a mess all thanks to politicians. There are also far too many attorneys in this state contributing to the mess. California used to be a nice place to live. Not anymore.
It's Oscar's time again! This may be the best year for movie animation ever. Here's some interesting film trivia showing how far special effects in movies have come:
The Giant Claw (1957)
A monster movie about a giant bird "...as big as a battleship" starring Jeff Morrow as a pilot. The Giant Claw has gone down in history as one of the worst movies ever made, with some referring it as "The Citizen Kane of bad B-movies", mainly because of its terrible special effects. The bird in particular is considered one of history's worst movie monsters, being an unconvincing marionette puppet with a very odd face. The film is riddled with stock footage, making continuity a serious issue. Jeff Morrow, the star of the film, went to a screening of the movie; the audience laughed and sneered when they saw the ridiculous bird monster, and reportedly Morrow walked home drunk. This was the only "worst B-movie" to be distributed by a major motion picture studio,[citation needed] which featured it on a double bill with The Night the World Exploded. Plan 9 from Outer Space was hailed by The Golden Turkey Awards as the "Worst Film Ever."
Yesterday was a very interesting terrifying day in so many ways I thought I'd share it. First, I'd like to say that I don't intend on being a process server for much longer. I envisioned serving legal documents in my local area to businesses for law firms. Thus far I've had individuals contact me from far away to serve at places I really don't want to find myself in.
Behind Bars on Friday Morning at the SF County Jail!
For instance, yesterday morning I was at the SF County jail waiting for a officer to deliver papers and get a signature from someone behind bars! The waiting area I was in made me feel I was behind bars. I waited 10 minutes behind the waiting area's bars to deliver papers.I don't care what anyone says, is it worth $40 to find one's self standing in a cage at the SF Jail on a Friday morning? I don't think so.
Even when you're searching for an independent life style working for yourself, our system still manages to find ways to make you feel imprisoned in ways I never would have imagined. -Cheryl Meril
Suddenly I'm Whisked onto the 101 Freeway Against My Will
The other example of my day yesterday is I had to serve divorce papers to a teacher at Mission High School in San Francisco. I was told he was never home and it would be best to find him at school. I called administration and confirmed he was there, then hopped in a Zip Car to deliver the papers. It should have been easy to drive there, but Google Maps didn't indicate the route it advised would inadvertently place me on the on ramp to the 101 freeway to San Jose! Suddenly I'm whisked onto the freeway when I was intending on turning right on 16th Street per the directions. There was an on-ramp that came out of nowhere I was forced onto and the terror began! For those who may be following this blog, it should be clear by now, I'm terrified of driving on the freeways so I don't.I was also under pressure because I had to complete my task of serving papers in one hour or face a $50 fee for returning the Zip Car late. If you are as much as 5 minutes late, Zip tacks on a serious fee that would have caused me to suffer a loss on the serve. When I ended up on the freeway, I was so terrified because I don't like high speeds I get vertigo from. My hands often go numb and I become panicked being on the freeway. I fear I could pass out under certain circumstances such as being on a bridge where there's no exit or means to pull off the road.
Back to High School - Barely Got Out With My Head
Anyway, I was fortunate after having been on the freeway for 5 minutes there was a turnoff that led me back to where I needed to be. It took an extra 15 minutes but I got there, not realizing I parked blocking someone's driveway. I then ran up to the school not being able to find the entrance after trying several doors. When I arrived, I asked the administrator to summon the teacher who came down in about 10 minutes to get the papers. He was very upset and called me into a private area to say "are you serving me?" I told him yes. He looked like he wanted to rip my head off but restrained himself and walked away. As I had waited for the teacher, I looked around the hallway at Mission High School a bit and was appalled to say the least. What's happened to the public schools? Awfully nice building and grounds though. I wouldn't have wanted my kids attending that school that looked pretty scary to be in had I had any. Let's put it this way, it wasn't any "Pleasantville" school campus one would have observed during other generations. It looked very scary primarily because there was no overall behavioral discipline evident among the students I could observe.
At Least I Didn't Get a Parking Ticket
I finally got back to the car and realized I was fortunate not to have received a ticket for parking illegally. I had blocked an apartment building driveway without realizing it! I ended up getting the Zip Car back with one minute to spare. Had I received a parking ticket I would have taken a huge loss of $150 because Zip Car also penalizes you for getting a parking ticket on one of their vehicles.
So, I don't think this is the kind of work I'd like to do on a regular basis. I'd prefer to pick and choose what kind of process of services I wish to perform for customers I work on legal forms for in the future. I don't want to be predisposed to these environments and angry people again.
I'm Sorry (i.e., Please Don't Kill Me!) I've actually apologized to certain people I've served devastating lawsuits to. One said "you don't need to apologize, it's your job." The truth is, not really. It's kind of, sort of my job but I don't have to do this work if I don't want to. I thought it might be interesting work. It's turning out that I don't like what I'm being exposed to lately.
Another example is a couple I had to serve papers to a few months ago in a condo in the outskirts of San Francisco refused to cooperate. This means I had to eventually serve the grounds' security guard who also didn't want to accept the papers so I placed them in his windshield wipers. It was extremely cold and windy near the water and I was on foot so it was a strange eerie experience to have to go there several times only for them to tell me on the intercom they didn't want to receive the documents.The first time I delivered papers to the man, but the wife was a real problem to serve. The intercom voice responded "she's away for a month in Tahiti". Uh huh. . .
A Good Young Person's Job
Some people make a lot of money process serving. It can be a lucrative business with very little investment. This may have been something I would have prospered from in my 20's or 30's. This is the kind of work younger people need to get into to have their own independence. I don't understand why more young people don't get into it.
"The housing crash of 2008/2009 was one of the biggest financial disasters in American history. Approximately 6 million homes have been foreclosed on by lenders in just the last three years alone as millions of American families watched their hopes for achieving the American Dream go up in smoke. Since early 2008, approximately 60 million U.S. homes have lost a combined 5 trillion dollars in value."
The Massive Second Wave of Mortgage Defaults is Coming is a scary read. The second wave is set to start in 2010. These 60 Minutes program videos are from the first wave of defaults in late 2008. They provide info on what's to come as well. Then of course, there's the commercial real estate bubble that's in the process of bursting as well.
When I worked for law firms and did a lot of overtime it was duly noted the more I made the more Feds took from my paycheck. This coupled with high health costs deducted from my check, amounted to my working more hours for theoretically less money per hour. When you get bumped into a new tax bracket, what's the use of working the overtime? That's one of the big problems I had with Kirkland & Ellis LLP management's demands I had no choice but to accept any overtime requested of me. This was particularly painful considering my shift ended at 11:30 p.m. Overtime sometimes meant working into the early morning hours. It not only exhausted me, but made me resentful. I wanted to work smarter, not harder.
My other motivation for seeking alternative methods of income was I didn't agree with how the government was spending my taxes on unnecessary wars. I chose being a Notary Public because my fees are non-taxable. For each notarized signature, the money belongs to me, not the government.
I'm so glad I began my own businesses. I absolutely love deducting business expenses from my income. I'm thinking of purchasing transportation and deducting it. Under the new tax law you no longer have to amortize depreciation of capital expenses (i.e., cars, etc.). You can deduct them all in one year, but there's a limit of $250k. I'm thinking of getting one of those cute little SMART cars now and getting my company logo plastered on it. If it's all deductible, I have nothing to lose.
They're going to rock our world, and they mean it literally! The only problem is they're not a rock band but far from it. More people are beginning to realize the unnatural slew of large nation busting quakes is quite unusual.
"Recent large earthquakes in the first two months of 2010 and in Haiti, Argentina, Venezuela, Eureka, California, north of Chicago, Japan, and Chile, would seem to indicate a trend, and not a good one. Read more." SFGate
I've been around long enough to know the recent earthquakes are abnormal. I checked out what could possibly be causing unnatural recurring earthquakes, and something called HAARP came up. After much research, I'm convinced HAARP is committing tectonic terrorism on countries and is making itself known as such to governments such as Japan. This is a well done video explaining how HAARP works:
So whenever a nation steps out of line, they just send a powerful quake to shake them up a bit. No need for manpower or war.
From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction. Potentially, it constitutes an instrument of conquest capable of selectively destabilising agricultural and ecological systems of entire regions. - H.A.A.R.P. - Michel Chossudovsky
Especially angering the Americans were the Latin Americans move this past week during their annual Rio Group summit in Mexico to completely split from the US by their forming a new European Union type alliance to go under the provisional name of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELC), and where Chavez, who spoke of finally throwing off the US-yoke, stated:
Equally angering the Americans was Chilean President Michelle Bachelet’s enacting this past month a number of sweeping changes to her Nation’s defense establishment designed to eliminate the influence of the US Military over the rights of her people, and as we can read from her comments upon the signing of this bill:"
As a great portion of Chile now lies in ruins today, and without a doubt, President Bachelet has received from the Americans their “answer” to her and all of Latin Americas defiance of their true US masters wishes. What remains to be seen is if Chile’s South American neighbors will rise to her defence.
Imagine had Hitler had an earthquake machine! Any country who figures out how to create devastating earthquakes to destroy economies and infrastructures is going to own all the world. One can see how any psycho/sociopath would lust after such a powerful technology. Harnessing and altering mother nature's destructive forces seems to be the goal of a certain faction of psychopathic individuals.
As the old saying goes, those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones!
Attorney Pamela Lauser threw many such stones at me from her glass house in Small Claims Court in Concord, California on my 50th Birthday I posted about earlier this week. I had simply requested a partial refund of the $2,500 I paid for her non-representation services. So here goes. . .
Back in November, 2009 Lawrence Lauser, an architect consultant and husband of Martinez, California attorney Pamela Lauser, suffered a crushing blow when his attorney Frank Sarro was sanctioned. Shortly thereafter Lauser's attorney lost his sanction appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit Court. The Federal lawsuit was Lawrence C. Lauser v. City College of San Francisco, etal.
"Plaintiffs filed a complaint in district court arguing that the College and Unions violated the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) and Labor Management Relations Act (“LMRA”). Plaintiffs alleged that the College wrongfully terminated Lauser and the Unions violated a collective bargaining agreement by failing to represent him in an action against the College. Opposing counsel informed plaintiffs that the claims were unwarranted by existing law, provided specific legal authority, and requested that they withdraw the complaint or be subject to a Rule 11 motion for sanctions. Plaintiffs continued to pursue the suit. The College and Unions moved for dismissal of the complaint and sanctions under Rule 11. The district court dismissed the complaint and imposed sanctions in the amount of $14,774.39 against Sarro. We review for an abuse of discretion, Holgate v. Baldwin, 425 F.3d 671, 675 (9th Cir. 2005), and we affirm.
In this case, the district court properly imposed Rule 11 sanctions on Sarro because he submitted a complaint that was not warranted by existing law and failed to conduct a reasonable inquiry after he was informed by opposing counsel that the complaint was baseless. Fed. R. Civ. P. 11."
So let me get this straight. Ms. Lauser's husband lost his job, filed a frivolous lawsuit using the Federal Court system in which his attorney Frank Sarro was sanctioned, then having lost his appeal. This means the attorney who viciously lied and attacked me on my birthday, did so while living in a glass house!
As an attorney, when one's husband is unemployed filing a frivolous lawsuit abusing the Federal court system, I think it should be brought to the public's attention. I paid $2,500 for one hearing and I did all the paperwork. I got nothing but a body in court who charged me 7 hours @$300/hr for non-representation resulting from a bait and switch. I was viciously attacked when I asked for a partial refund.
I recently learned I've been accused by a particular psychopathic cyber stalker of masquerading as myself. Imagine that! That's an interesting concept, how does one do such a thing? The cyber seems to be confused about one's self identity and how it is ultimately determined in identifying one's self. The reason the cyber's confused is he obviously doesn't know who he is. He's confused with his own identity so he's accusing people he doesn't know of being part of a masquerade.
I can say whole heatedly, a man posing anonymously posting misinformation about me is the cowardly person who is masquerading himself. It is clear who I am, and I have made this known many times by my fruits of singing, compositions and recent education and certifications. The cyber can't handle the truth. It's very simple.
I was a singer who gave up singing last year due to online cyber harassment. I then got an education in law to wrap things up. My voice is as plain as day who I am. A person's voice says a lot about them. A few people from my past summed me up and believed they could take advantage of me. They became shocked when I stood up for myself ultimately leading to their trying to cover-up for themselves. Sometimes I've stood up for myself in ways that made me vulnerable to a backlash. This is what any conflicts I had over a decade or more long ago amount to.
I just thought I'd clarify the cyber stalker who continues to write misinformation about me is a coward and his fruits are obvious to any reasonable person. When one stands up to psychopaths who have no conscience or sound reasoning facility, it usually causes them to backlash because they're control freaks.
This guy cyber stalking and posting misinformation about me is a pompous ass who has no comprehension of what a fool he's making of himself. He's a complete stranger who is proving his motivation is due to lawsuits I've filed last year. He's the one playing a masquerade.
I don't need some stranger and psychopath trying to tell me things about myself in trying to convince me he has a relationship with me. This is generally what this man's activities have amounted to. There is no relationship!Does a parasite have a relationship to a host where it doesn't belong? No! It needs to be removed.
Cyber nut contacted be my email in 2007, I rejected his initial con and exposed him, and he has refused to end harassing and cyber stalking me ever since.
The jury's out on whether court calling using www.CourtCall.com, rather then appearing at a hearing, is effective. It seems the courts make money from the court calls but I question whether it can be harmful to a person's case to appear that way. It's impersonal and difficult because there's no body language or communication cues. It's easy for a judge to be impersonal and treat you like a non-person as just a voice over a speaker phone.
