A Discussion and Editorial on the Morality
of
Judge Helen L. Halpert and judges
like her.
Copyright
(c) 2002 All Rights Reserved
"Judge" Helen L. Halpert
Preface:
For
readers entering this site through this page, an explanation is
appropriate:
In
December of 2000 I became disgusted with the dishonesty,
incompetence and drug use of my two immediate supervisors, Mark
Mcfarland and Delann Lamb, at T&L Leasing (Dart International
Trucking) in Kent, Washington. I had quit previously, but had been
begged to reconsider, which I did. But in December I'd had enough.
I gave a week notice, and quit. My bosses were documentably angry
when I quit, and voiced their anger publicly. They also
crank-called me. These are facts, not merely opinions or
suspicions.
I
remained polite, but gently began asking them for a written
reference, since I had put in three years of extremely good and
reliable work. They played games with me over the next months,
saying they had lost my request for a reference, or the fax
machine had destroyed it, or coffee had been spilled on it, etc.
etc. ad nauseam. Finally, now disgusted, I wrote them a pointed
letter in which I said, "It would not be in your best interests to
blow me off again [with regard to a written reference]." I was
willing to go to court to get a reference, and I was considering
picketing their company gate with a sandwich board; therefore, it
would not be in their best interests to continue to play childish
games. Of course they were free to write any reference they
wished---I simply needed something in writing, because I was
curiously unable to find a new job after each prospective employer
talked to Lamb or Mcfarland. If they wrote a poor one, of course
they would be sued. Lamb and Mcfarland knew this, therefore they
were unwilling to write a poor reference. But they were also
unwilling to write a good reference, or even a neutral reference,
because they were angry that I had quit. (Many months after going
to court I discovered an internal T&L Leasing office document
which I was never intended to see, listing my rehire prospect as
"Excellent".)
I also
posted my "exit interview" (a short document listing my reasons
for quitting) on the Internet. That stirred up the little hornet's
nest, as I knew it would. And instead of supplying a simple,
one-paragraph reference, as logic and decency demanded, they filed
two anti-harassment suits against me, seeking to have my exit
interview removed from the Internet. Two days before they were due
to come to court, their bosses, Paul Martin and Colleen Butler,
filed two more. Never mind that I'd never met or heard of these
two bosses.
When it
came to court, the suits from the two corporate bosses were thrown
out as being ridiculous and unfounded. But against all odds (the
fact that I was dumb enough to go to court without an attorney
helped), Lamb and Mcfarland were granted two identical orders
which removed my exit interview from the internet. Of course I
appealed, and the case came before the illustrious Helen L.
Halpert, featured on this page.
Halpert
ruled in my favor regarding every major issue of the case. I won.
But Halpert also left a few shreds of the original orders intact,
even though they had absolutely no basis in law, or in fact. The
logic she used to justify that portion of her decision is nothing
short of madness. The factual errors she made are numerous and
glaring. She even made up events which neither side had ever
alleged! In short, Helen L. Halpert's decision was NUTS, in every
sense of the word.
I might
have been compelled to simply take my win, and move forward, not
worrying about the remaining parts of the decision which didn't
really concern me in any material way. However, there really is
such a thing in the world as principle, as right, and wrong, and
truth, and honor, and Halpert's ruling was so INCREDIBLY insane
that I took exception to it and have aired it on this site.
The rest
of this site contains many documents, including several of my
polygraphs. Perhaps the most distressing of all Halpert's official
comments was when she said, in writing, in the public record, that
it was her finding of FACT that I had posted
pornographic pictures of Lamb and Mcfarland on the Internet, and
that this was an instance of criminal harassment.
The problem with this statement is that while Lamb and Mcfarland
lied dozens of times on the stand in an il-fated attempt to shut
this website down, they never once even TRIED to accuse me of
posting pornographic pictures of them on the Internet! They never
even suggested it MIGHT have happened! The FACT is that no such
thing ever happened, nor would it ever, and everyone knows that
full well, including Lamb and Mcfarland. The whole idea is beyond
ludicrous. But for some unknown reason, Halpert said that this had
occurred. She didn't say where such pictures had been posted, or
when, or what they were, or who had made the accusation she was
choosing to believe. She couldn't supply the URLs of such images,
because of course no such images had ever been posted anywhere.
But Helen L. Halpert, in what we might presume was some
Halcyon-induced state of psychosis, imagined that this thing had
occurred (either that or she flat-ass lied, which I tend to
believe is more probably the case), so she made it part of her
ruling. And a growing number of people want to know WHY.
When I
saw it, (among dozens of other similar statements by Halpert), I
was livid. I was nearly apoplectic. I was disgusted, and afraid.
It was like "Planet of the Apes." My attorney immediately served
Halpert with a document which pointed out just a few of these
bizarre, factual errors. But Halpert never once
responded. Halpert made these errors; then, when she was shown
that they were, indeed, FACTUALLY incorrect (the proofs are right
there in the public record), she did not possess the honor or
simple human decency to correct them. And that's unforgivable. And
that's why this site spends so much time focusing on Helen L.
Halpert, "judge". Halpert is the Appeals Court judge. Halpert is
the person who's entrusted with the grave responsibility of
catching the mistakes of the lower courts. Yet Halpert is the one
making the mistakes. Not only is she making the mistakes, but in
her supreme and disgusting arrogance she's refusing to correct
them when they're demonstrated to her! And of course we discover
now that judges have so cleverly insulated themselves from the
consequences of their errors that they are immune from being sued.
Once again the academic escapes reality. What a wonderful state of
affairs.
I don't
believe this woman could hold a job at Burger King (and I mean
that quite literally). Yet she is, day in and day out, making
life-changing decisions over other human beings in our community.
Gimme a
break.
Editorial:
We've always known that
good must fight evil.
What is good?
Good is that which builds.
Sometimes good must first destroy in order to build.
What is evil?
Evil is that which destroys
for no reason.
Good is many things. Evil
is nothing.
America has always
endeavored to fight evil. Sometimes America has been its own enemy.
America has fought tyrants
and evil dictators. America has fought those who would take our
freedom and force us to their own wills. Usually these enemies are
outside our borders. Increasingly, we are finding them embedded in the
very backbone of the country. We call them judges.
I submit that Osama bin
Laden and all like-minded followers retire. They need not have
attacked us to beat us. They need not attack us in the future to beat
us. They need only sit back, relax, and watch America's embarrassingly
inept judicial system tear the country apart from the inside out. We
understand why we must fight terrorists. We do not understand why we
must just as tenaciously fight our own judicial employees who would,
if left alone, do us as much harm as Al Qaeda.
I lived next door to a
judge once. I remember one time he had made an appointment with an
auto service center to have the oil in his car changed. He went out to
drive the six blocks to the garage, but decided to check his oil level
before making the journey. The crankcase was one quart low. He
returned to the house, called a cab, and used it to go to the store
and buy a quart of oil. He returned in the cab, put that oil into his
engine, then drove the six blocks to the auto shop where they promptly
drained the oil back out and put new oil in. The judge did this
because he had no experience with the real world. He existed solely in
an academic ether of theories and postulations, where the consequences
of cause and effect are so distant and obscure as to be nearly
meaningless. The man did not own one molecule of horse sense. In the
real world, we call this "stupidity".
I used to own an offshore
rescue company. I rescued ships in trouble. Often a vessel might catch
fire or capsize, and be abandon by her crew. My company might then
negotiate with her owners, and make a contractual arrangement to
either attempt to rescue the vessel, or, in many cases, to buy it
outright on the speculation that we could find it and rescue it. The
business was.......quite profitable. One time we purchased a vessel
that had capsized and been abandon. We were certain we could find it,
so we bought it, and, sure enough, several days later we did locate
it, high and dry on the beach near an upscale housing development. As
we came in toward the beach aboard one of our tugs, we noticed that
the vessel, while not surprisingly damaged, had been stripped bare of
every light fixture, every cleat; her anchors were gone, her windows
were gone, the doors had been pried from her compartments, the galley
was stripped of even the sink. What remained was a wooden hull and the
part of her engine that no band of thieves could carry. We located the
local sheriff and went door to door with him through the community. We
retrieved a piece here, a bobble there, but these were just
accessories. We wanted the meat and potatoes back. We finally found
75% of the missing bootie in the backyard of the local judge. Buried.
We asked for its return, which was sheepishly and grudgingly granted.
The judge never faced us, but he instructed his son to explain that
the loot had been buried "to preserve it" for us. In the real world,
we call this "dishonesty". This judge was, documentably, a common
thief.
I used to drive truck. At
the time I had a perfect driving record---no citations in ten years. I
was proud of it, and wanted to keep my record clean. So I drove my
brand new Caterpillar-powered semi to the Caterpillar dealer and
instructed the service manager to set the computer-controlled engine
so that the truck could never exceed 61 mph under any conditions. This
was done by interfacing a computer with the truck's engine computer,
and making the adjustments. The setting could not be changed by any
mechanical means. It could only be changed by the dealer, using a
special computer interface, with the correct password. Even my
employer, the owner of the truck, a large California trucking company,
did not have the password with which to access this feature of the
truck's computer. The vehicle's cruise control could still be
manipulated on-the-fly by the driver. But only up to a maximum speed
of 61 mph. There was simply no way to go faster. I went on my merry
way, secure in the knowledge that I needn't worry too much about my
speed. A few months later I was pulled over by a trooper. I knew I was
going 61 mph, as I'd had the throttle pegged and was watching the
speedometer. I got out of the truck in a good mood, and told the
trooper he had me fair and square. I surely had been speeding in the
55 mph zone, and I was prepared to take responsibility for the ticket.
He looked at me and announced that 71 in a 55 was more than a minor
mistake. I stared back at him aghast. I didn't argue the issue much on
the spot. Troopers lie. Truckers accept it. I figured I would simply
beat the offense down to the actual speed in court. I was actually a
little elated at finally, finally finding myself in a position
where I could prove that a trooper was lying. I called the dealership
after signing for the citation, and they assured me they would be most
happy to testify on my behalf. The truck was physically incapable of
exceeding 61 mph. Period. I hired an attorney and she fought the
ticket. $900 later I was informed that the judge had ruled against me
and found me guilty. I was doubly aghast, and demanded to know how
this could happen, when the case was so cut-and-dried, so easily
proven. My attorney explained that the judge had simply refused to
allow my proof into court. I wanted to know how it was that a man was
not allowed to state his case. She said it could be fought and
overturned---but at the cost of another $900. I paid the $281 fine and
let the matter go. In the real world, behavior such as this judge
displayed is called "arrogant and corrupt".
I sued a couple many years
ago for fees associated with the salvage of their sunken vessel. The
judge decided he didn't like the people I was suing, and awarded me
many times the amount I had asked for. I declined the award, and made
the judge re-write the ruling to grant me only that which I sought,
and which was legally and morally mine. He did this grudgingly. This
judge was totally, utterly, 100% wrong. Yet he took it upon
himself to punish people whose manner he personally found
objectionable. In the real world, we call this "despicable". The judge
should have been knocked off the bench for that---figuratively and
literally. Yet he retired from that bench many years later. How much
damage had he done to the trust of his citizenry?
I have a couple dozen such
stories. Everyone I know has a dozen of their own. The papers are full
of hundreds and thousands more. Hundreds of thousands more are buried
in archived court records, never to be known. No one but a lawyer
would argue that we (the public) would probably be just about as well
off flipping a coin as to take any matter to court. My Father used to
say, "Judges aren't required to make good decisions; judges are
only required to make decisions." The plain and simple fact is
that judges in America aren't doing their jobs. Is it a matter of
laziness? Partly. Is it the "Animal Farm Syndrome"? Partly. It's also
due to the fact that positions of power and authority tend to attract
personality types which are exactly unsuited to positions of power and
authority. Police departments know this well---that's why patrol
applicants are psychologically screened. It so happens that judges
enjoy far more power than cops, yet precisely no screening is
required of them. All judges need do to secure their jobs is to
schmooze, and socialize successfully with that snippety 1% of society
which pulls the strings. In many cases, they don't even have to work
to get elected---they are appointed. They then get to "try out"
for the job for the next three or four years, ruining lives and
futures and fortunes as they practice, and selling the trust of the
people for their wages. It's barely short of madness.
All that stuff sets the
judicial system up for failure. But it's even worse. What's really at
the root of the problem?
Engineering firms across
the country are having one heck of a time finding and hiring engineers
who can design a decent product. When one of their engineers designs a
product that doesn't work, or warrants a mass recall, or injures or
kills some kids, let's say, it's bad for the company. Manufacturers
hear about these things, and are reluctant to buy any more stuff
designed by that firm, because they share in the liability.
Manufacturers are also loathe to buy the plans to shoddily designed
items because it costs a lot of money to put something out on the
market, and if it doesn't work, fortunes will be lost. So a few years
ago, desperate engineering firms began brainstorming methods of
finding engineers who could do the job, and design things that
worked. They needed to improve the quality of their engineers
so they wouldn't go broke. It was a simple concept.
In an effort to figure out
why the stuff their existing engineers was turning out didn't work,
they started looking at the personal backgrounds of those engineers
whose thought processes seemed a little weak. They compared what they
found with the backgrounds of engineers whose thought processes were
conducive to making items which did work. They found one amazing
difference in the two types of engineers. The group that designed
junk, by and large had a purely academic background. They may have
studied at the best Universities, had the most colorful degrees, were
the president of the most things, sat on the most prestigious boards
and joined the coolest clubs. But they couldn't make a toothpick that
worked. It was because they had no real sense of cause and
effect. Everything they'd ever learned, and hence, everything they
did, was theoretical. If they made a boo-boo in the design of a piece
of equipment, a lawn mower, let's say, well, they wouldn't even know
about it for a year or two, or more, down the road. In fact, they may
never be aware of it. Someone else would make a better lawnmower, and
it would enjoy better sales, and the first company might go out of
business and never know why. Perhaps it was the fault of the sales
department, the unemployed workers from factory "a" would opine. The
faulty-minded engineer, then, was free to stumble along in a perpetual
state of ignorant bliss, all the while thinking he was doing a pretty
good job.
Engineering firms figured
all this out. And they began to seek a type of employee who did
understand cause and effect. And after awhile they knew where to look.
Many engineering firms
today screen their engineer applicants in a different way from the old
days. They're interested in their academic qualifications, of course.
But they also want to know if the person can work with their hands...
Because THAT, and that almost exclusively, teaches the joys and pains
of cause and effect.
People learn best when
there's an immediate and appropriate reward or penalty to their
actions. In horses, for example, if one misbehaves, you have about two
or three seconds to effect a meaningful discipline, whether it be a
harsh word or a swat on the rump. Once the window has closed, you'll
do more harm than good. And people aren't a hell of a lot smarter than
a horse.
The mechanic who forgets to
tighten the oil plug on his car is offered a timely lesson in
cause and effect. The pilot who can't fly, dies. The carpenter who
smacks his thumb with a hammer learns a lesson, and he learns it
well, and is extremely unlikely to repeat the mistake. The
academic who makes a mistake doesn't learn the same lesson. There may
be a consequence, but not often enough, and by the time it finally
rolls around, it's diluted, and has lost its sting, and can usually be
overcome by some other method of effort. There is not sufficient
consequence to the academic's mistakes to foster the learning of
real-life lessons. The man with the smashed thumb gets no such
leniency or second chance. He has learned to act differently.
The academic, most often, has not.
Major engineering firms are
now asking applicants weird things like, "Do you do the maintenance on
your personal vehicle?" or "Have you ever built a house?" or do you
even own a toolset? They ask because they've done the research, and
they know that people who are in some way grounded to physical
reality will by habit, and design, do a better job.
Judges tend not to be of
this caliber, because they are almost exclusively academic beings.
The judicial system has tried to set itself up as an autopilot for
society---no thought required. The problem is that when the
autopilot doesn't work, and thinking is required, judges aren't
up to the task, and they do it badly.
Consider the case of Judge
Helen L. Halpert, an appointed Seattle judge who ruled on the appeal
of the Mark Mcfarland and Delann Lamb case. Halpert is
an academic. Halpert made up facts which had not even been
suggested by either side. She stated events had occurred which had
not, and were not even alleged to have occurred. She over-ruled a
higher court. She failed to even read the transcript of the case she
was ruling on. She stated that one side had offered "virtually no
defense" when that side had hotly contested virtually every single
allegation, in writing, and submitted it formally to her twice.
The list goes on and on and on and on, ad nauseam. She did all
these things because she has no direct experience with the simple laws
of cause and effect. She did these things because it was utterly
unknown to her that any mistake she made could have consequences to
her, or to the people she lied about or made errors concerning. The
concept of "consequence" is not in her vocabulary. When her factual
errors were made known to her via proper channels, she continued to
ignore them. --Because she knew there would be no consequence
to anything she did. She's been taught that her entire life! She
KNOWS it to be true! And guess what? She's right! She's right
almost all of the time. --Except, of course, for those few
humiliating and embarrassing times when she isn't, and this is just
such a time.
I submit that Helen L.
Halpert and all judges like her, are bad engineers.. They can't
make things work correctly, and even when they're shown the mechanics
of why their design failed, their lack of honor and decency prevents
them from correcting the flaw. The mistakes Halpert made were
factual, not open to interpretation or opinion. They're black and
white, part of the record. Yet even though we can prove she was
notified of them, she simply doesn't care enough to correct them. And
that's unconscionable.
Do we want to hire bad
engineers? No. Do we want to use products designed by bad engineers?
Of course not. The engineering firms of the world can't afford them,
and neither can this country. A virtually non-functioning judicial
system is straining the country to such an extent that the terrorists
might as well stay home. Their job is done. They can watch the
unfolding anarchy on CNN. With judges like Helen L. Halpert, who needs
bin Laden.
But is it really as bleak
as all that? I mean, isn't there something to be done?
There ARE some good
judges. I've known one, and I've heard of others. But they don't
constitute ten percent of the judges in the country. How they can
continue to meet insanity and ego and vanity and incompetence and
dishonor and sneakiness and underhandedness and stupidity and laziness
on a staggering scale with quiet, persistent logic and truth, day in
and day out throughout a lifelong career, is beyond me. But some do
it, and God bless them.
But consider that most
capable people are driven nearly to apoplectic seizures by incapable
people, and one can understand why the judicial system is run by
people who couldn't hold a dishwashing job at Burger King. Capable
people, for the most part, simply can't stand to be around 'em.
Capable people either stay away from the judicial system by instinct,
or, having had a nasty whiff of a very bitter broth, get out of it
quickly. The rare exceptions are those hearty souls who believe they
can protect a few of the innocents from the ravings of the insane.
Even those professionals burn out early, and Fly Over the Cuckoo's
Nest. The judicial environment acts as a centrifuge, a sieve,
straining out and holding a particular kind of individual, while
making sure another kind passes through the media. We like to think
the sieve is straining out the good ones. That's what I used to
think---until I began to interact with the judicial system enough to
understand that it is sifting the litter box and keeping the turds.
But is there anything
we can do?
We can vote.
For turd "A', or turd "B".
And that's a waste of time.
We can appeal to regulatory
agencies and commissions---peruse this site and you'll see that that
way lies madness. The regulators are of the same worthless stock as
the offenders. Put the fox in the henhouse to guard the chickens from
the wolf.
We can "go public", tell it
like it is, demand outrage and action from the unwashed masses. To
what end? The masses are already outraged. No one else knows what to
do about the problem. Everyone already knows it exists.
We can set up judge-watch
clubs---but again, the behavior of these judges is already being
reported. So what? They seem incapable of experiencing humiliation, no
matter how odious their misguided deeds, so embarrassment no longer
seems a motivating force.
We can appeal. And appeal.
And appeal again until we're bankrupt. But Halpert is the appeals
court judge.
We can appeal to their
basic and universal scale of right and wrong, but I honestly do not
believe they have one. They know technicalities and theories and
book-knowledge. They don't know---were never taught---that to lie is
simply wrong, that if we all lied the world and society and
civilization and progress would simply collapse. They only know that
it's wrong to get caught. But even that remnant of honorable
thought is fading fast, because even when they're caught, there is
no consequence, and no incentive not to do the same damned thing
again.. Look at the convicted child molester who was elected to
another term on the bench. Look at the convicted drug dealer, also
re-elected. Look at all the judges who are overturned again and again
and again on appeal, yet they keep on making the same mistakes,
collecting their pay, ruining lives and futures and bank accounts, and
flushing the trust of the people down the freaking toilet. And there's
nothing we can do.
My God, they've quietly
arranged the system so we can't even sue them!
It's been argued that if we
were to fire all the judges, and randomly select and educate, say,
every fifth or eighth person off the street until all the positions
were filled with those people, our judicial system would continue on
exactly as efficiently and as competently as it does right now. Some
say that's bunk---the system would run better. But is that
true? Do judges represent a fair cross-sampling of society's morality?
Of course not. Most judges sought their positions because they also
seek power---and anyone who seeks power over another is automatically
suspect. It's said that absolute power corrupts absolutely. But the
problem is more insidious than that, because the formula also works by
degrees. A judge tends to be corrupt in direct proportion to the
amount of power he or she has garnered--a little power, a little
corruption; more power, more corruption. Take a person basically
incompetent at the mechanical business of life and corrupt them with
power, and you have a real problem on your hands. Now corrupt their
overseers, and arrange the system such that they're all virtually
untouchable, and you have anarchy masquerading as order, pettiness
posing as justice, and fraud cloaked as integrity on a National scale.
It rots the fabric of loyalty and patriotism. It's a cancer that
stunts the very evolution of society and morality. Bin Ladens of the
world, rejoice.
It's a fair statement that
real-life judges like Helen L. Halpert, James Doerty, and John Lawson
make outrageous TV fools like "Judge Wapner" and "Judge Judy" seem
almost competent by comparison. And that's terrifying. If these judges
are so far-removed from reality that they are incapable of rendering
fair, impartial, informed and intelligent decisions, they should at
least forego their emotional shortcomings on the bench and simply
defer to the structure of the law. But they won't even do that.
They won't even do it when it's demonstrated to them that they are
breaking the law! They won't make intelligent decisions, they won't
follow the law, they won't correct their mistakes----BECAUSE THEY
DON'T HAVE TO.
When we consider the outrageous, embarrassing behavior of judges
like James Doerty, C. G. Jung’s associate, Jolande Jacobi, probably
got it right when she wrote: “For the type of man who is
intellectually developed but has remained affectively and emotionally
a boy is a widespread phenomenon which is characteristic of our epoch,
and which perhaps is connected with the emancipation of women in the
twentieth century. . . . [that could have] unwittingly prevented the
development of the masculine ego to full responsibility. The man who
remains fixated on the level of [a] pubescent, not infrequently has
homosexual leanings, and remains a puer aeternus, an infantile adult,
for the rest of his life. Alarming indeed, since often, if he holds an
official position, he holds the fate of the world in his hands."
**
I used to dream of leaving the country. I'd be in good company with
gentle, honorable, ultra-competent souls like Charles Lindberg, who
once announced to the judicial system over the handling of his infant
son's kidnapping and murder, "You people are crazy." And he left. But
while there are countries better run than America, they're still prone
to the same shortcomings of the human animal. Why move ten thousand
miles only to find oneself at the mercy of yet another crooked, stupid
judge? Maybe there are fewer crooked, stupid judges in Sweden,
but one is enough to ruin your life---or even take it, e.g. all the
poor slobs on Death Row or serving thirty years who've been proved
innocent by DNA---the 100th celebrated his release just a few months
ago. His gripe is bigger than mine.
If this piece has no real
meaning for you, it's because you've not yet been to court, or you've
not been there enough. Give it time.
It seems to come down to
one inexorable point, the problem and the solution in a nutshell:
If human nature is the
problem, retreat from human nature.
I get along just fine with
"me". And, thank God, there are still little pockets of the world
where the animals rule with pure logic and common sense. And I trust
them implicitly.....to be exactly what they are.
The difference between the
animals of the wilderness, and the animals of the judicial jungle, is
that in the bush, I can defend myself from things that would do me
harm. From the illogical, mean-spirited, biased, bigoted, arrogant,
corrupt and stupid being that sits on a bench, I do not believe there
is any defense at all.
10-4-02
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