janbtucker.com Blog

The Bible tells us that the children of Isaac, the Jews, and the children of Ishmael, the Arabs, are all the children of Abraham.  If true, we’re all cousins.  When you follow the DNA trails of Jews, Arabs, and other Middle Eastern peoples, you find that there’s some considerable truth in us all being related way back when.

So it really pains me and pisses me off when we behave like this towards each other, as reported today by the Associated Press:

Palestinians have long accused those among them who sell land to Jews of betraying their homeland, and last week similar language was heard from a group of rabbis. Meeting in Pisgat Zeev, they issued an edict denouncing Jews who sell land to Arabs as “traitors” and barring them from participating in communal prayers.

“This is a war, and if the Arabs conquer one neighborhood, they will conquer others and they will strangle the Jews,” said Hillel Weiss, a spokesman for the “New Sanhedrin,” which takes its name from the supreme court of ancient Israel.

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When my parents were first getting ready to buy their first house in the San Fernando Valley, my dad was being taken around by a real estate agent to look at various neighborhoods.  My dad didn’t fit the stereotype that most people had of Jews in those days:  his name as Tucker (an Anglo name) and he was a millwright – machinist (Anti-Semites think we’re all rich and definitely can’t work with our hands).

My father looks down this street, sees some nice homes as the real estate agent was driving, and asks to check out the area.  The agent tells him, “no, you don’t want to live there.  That’s where we put all the Jews.”

My father punched him in the nose and walked home.

Any Jew who has learned the lessons of what discrimination means for ourselves or our parents or earlier ancestors ought to punch any Rabbi in the nose for suggesting that we behave as people have behaved towards us.

Leviticus 19:33

“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.

Leviticus 19:34

You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.

Since the Bible tells us that the Arab people are our cousins, we should treat them as family.

I’ve been watching the pundits a lot on television recently and following the ongoing national debate about whether torture was or was not used and whether it was justified.  Often, it’s a semantical discussion in which defenders of the Bush administration claim that waterboarding isn’t torture, but that whatever it was, it was absolutely necessary.

One point of contention is whether the lawyers who wrote the legal opinions ought to be prosecuted and/or disbarred or otherwise disciplined for writing those opinions in bad faith in order to justify illegal torture.  Last year I read a book by German historian H.W. Koch, called  “In the name of the Volk:  Political Justice in Hitler’s Germany.”

If anybody has doubts as to whether lawyers should be held accountable for these actions, they should read that book.  They should also watch the Costa Gavras film from France, “Special Section,” about the courts of the Vichy regime and how they were perverted to fulfill Nazi demands to produce bodies for execution in a way that seemed to meet the requirements of “law” and the “constitution,” even if it defied the substance of justice.

Equally important is the movie, “Judgment at Nuremberg,” which starred Spencer Tracy, William Shatner, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, Burt Lancaster, Maximillian Schell, Montgomery Clift, and Werner Klemperer amongst others.  It’s all about why we prosecuted judges who served the Nazi regime.

Finally, think about the legislation passed in the haste of the September 11, 2001 catastrophe when the administration began jailing people without releasing their names and/or whereabouts, giving them no access to lawyers.  Then read Jacobo Timmerman’s book, “Prisoner without a name, Cell without a number,” about his experience in Argentina, arrested for the crime of being a newspaper publisher.  It’s more than vaguely reminiscent….

I’m sitting here at the Torrance courthouse on jury duty.

Jury duty is always inconvenient to me, but going to prison and losing your liberty, or worse yet your life as a result of a death penalty case, is even more inconvenient.  If people use excuses to get out of jury duty, they dishonor those who died for the rights of all people to serve on juries to insure that people get fair trials.

Many people know that Viola Liuzzo, Medgar Evers, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman, amongst others, died for the right of people to vote.  They also died for the right of everybody to serve on juries.

The ultimate question about “The Garden,” a purported “documentary” about the fight to save the “South Central Farm” in Los Angeles produced by Scott Hamilton Kennedy is, ‘is Scott a photo-journalist who produced a truthful documentary or is he Leni Reifenstahl in drag.’  Now that “The Garden” is up for an academy award at tonight’s Oscar presentations for best documentary, this will become a salient issue.

Kennedy crafted the film to make certain people appear as heroes:  Rufina Juarez, Tezozomoc, and the law office of Hadsell & Stormer.  The film makes others, especially Mayor Antonio Villaraigoza and City Council Member Jan Perry, look like villains.

The fact is, that for an inquiring mind, something that a photo-journalist documentarian would be concerned about is the search for truth.  Now, I do know something about the search for truth, having been a private investigator for thirty years come March 2009, serving as a sixth term Chair of the Board of CALI, the world’s largest private detective organization, and as somebody who teaches a course in Epistemology & Formal Logic for the Private Investigator (covering the applications of Goedel’s “Impossibility Theorem,”  Heisenberg’s “Uncertainty Principle,” and “Ockham’s Razor” principle to private investigation).  I also know something about journalism, having served as First Vice President of Newspaper Guild Local 69 for years.

So, here are some of the questions that need to be answered for somebody to make an intelligent  judgment about the quality of “The Garden” and whether or not it deserves an Oscar.  I will not attempt to answer them today (even though I know most of the answers or at least know why they should be asked); I’ll reserve explanations for after the Oscars presentations tonight:

1.  In the original version of “The Garden,” Miguel Perez was sub-title identified as a “ex” Brown Beret.  Kennedy had that corrected in the current version.  Who told Kennedy that Perez was a “former” Brown Beret and why didn’t he verify the purported fact by asking Perez before printing something that could potentially cause someone harm?  Or, is he so out of touch with reality that he didn’t perceive the potential harm he could have caused?

2.  Miguel Perez stops appearing in the film about half-way through?  Is that accidental, was it inadvertent, was he no longer an important factor, or…..(pregnant pause) would including his continuing perspective have changed the villains into heroes and the heroes into villains?

3.  What happened to the money that was raised at the concert depicted in the film?

4.  Why didn’t the film explain that the farmers themselves claim, all of whom were dirt poor, that they had been “taxed” by Rufina and Tezozomoc  to pay for legal fees, when the attorneys maintain publicly and Rufina herself claimed at the Landmark Theater presentation of “The Garden” the attorney work was pro-bono?

5.  Since Juan Gamboa (featured in the film) is a named Plaintiff in Case No. BC 311110 of the Los Angeles Superior Court (appealed all the way to the California Supreme Court) along with Tezozomoc and Rufina Juarez (and other farmers) and since Hadsell & Stormer have been Juan’s attorney of record for the past several years, when was the last time that Hadsell & Stormer communicated with Juan Gamboa (or any of their clients other than Rufina and “Tezo”)?  When was the last time they communicated with their clients Ediogenes Luvianos “Don Eddie” Rumbos, Margarito Salgado, and Pedro Barrera (whose plots were also seized by Tezo and Rufina)?

6.  After Tezo got Juan and his sister arrested and Juan prosecuted for allegedly attacking Tezo, why did Hadsell & Stormer continue to represent all the original parties to the action?

7.  Did Hadsell & Stormer obtain the informed written consent to continue representing everybody concerned that may have been required by State Bar Rules of Professional Conduct Rule 3-310 after Tezo and Rufina had one of their other clients arrested and seized his farm plot?

8.  After Scott Hamilton Kennedy personally heard me ask Tezo at a showing of “The Garden” on behalf of a number of the farming families to produce copies of two 501(c)(3) IRS Form 990’s so that they could figure out where their money went (990’s are public record and IRS Regulations require them to be made available on request) didn’t he think that there was something funny about Tezo’s long rambling explanation of what happened to the money that he admitted had been collected for legal fees since Tezo admitted that they weren’t spent on legal fees?

9.  When I told Kennedy yesterday that Tezo had promised in writing to produce the 990’s and now — months later — he still hasn’t produced them, Kennedy said, “Great!  I’m thrilled to hear that!” (and he actually said it in front of witnesses).  Why isn’t Kennedy concerned to find out whether the farming families he glorified in his film, and who made it possible for him to appear tonight before the Oscars in what he described would be his Hugo Boss suit, were ripped off by the people he makes look like heroes, or whether the money they scraped together for the fight was spent honestly and appropriately (California law defines embezzlement from money held in trust as utilizing the funds for a purpose for which it was not intended)?

10.  The film at the end points out that farmers got other land from “the City.”  Why doesn’t it mention that they got the land thanks to the efforts of Mayor Villaraigosa and Council Member Jan Perry, or is that an inconvenient truth?
Well Scott, inquiring minds want to know the answers to these and other questions your film raises and leaves unanswered.  If anybody out there in the blogosphere wants some answers to these questions, email me at admin@janbtucker.com.

Open Letter From a former customer of Proposition 8 Supporters to Ken and Wendy Lee

Dear Mr. Ken Kiwook Lee and Wendy Wonok Lee:

As the owners of the Bubble Bath Hand Car Wash located at 1831 W 213th St Torrance CA 90501 I wanted you to know that while I always used to be very satisfied with the service I received when I used to patronize your business, I haven’t been there since before the November election and I am enclosing the Bubble Bath get one for free after ten washes card which I have cut in half.

Because of your having allowed or directed the placement of Yes on Proposition 8 signs at your business, I will no longer be patronizing the establishment.  It means that instead of driving to a location in my immediate neighborhood, I will have drive several miles to another car wash, but I am willing to do so because I do not give my dollars to promote a message that discrimination against minority groups in society is alright.

When I was a young boy growing up in California, the Unruh Civil Rights Act, now Section 51 of the California Civil Code was being debated.  To protest this new law, which prohibited segregation in California businesses, some business owners made their views very dramatic and very plain.  As a child I had to witness a restaurant off the freeway heading North out of the San Fernando Valley towards the Antelope Valley where a gigantic sign had been put on the wall of the restaurant by the owner.  It said, “No Niggers, Jews, or Dogs Allowed.”

I gather from your names that you are probably Korean immigrants or of Korean heritage.  I have many Korean friends and I welcome them to my country as I do all immigrants.  If somebody were to put up a sign in their business that made Koreans feel unwelcome, I would be the first to stop patronizing that establishment.

I feel the same way about my Gay and Lesbian friends and I know that they must feel the same kind of humiliation and anger that I felt seeing that sign as a child–because I am Jewish–that they feel when somebody tells them they don’t have the right to marry because some religions in America have a different definition of marriage that they want to impose on everybody.

Maybe it never occurred to you, but the Unitarian-Universalist Association, the Union for Reform Judaism, and the United Church of Christ amongst others have a different religious outlook than yours which accepts same-sex marriage on an equal basis with opposite-sex marriage.  Who are you, or anybody else, to say that their personal or their church’s definition of marriage has a right to be imposed as a theological outlook on anybody else in America by putting it in a state constitution?

The United States Supreme Court wrote in 1985 in Wallace vs. Jaffree that:

The fundamental concept of liberty embodied in that Amendment embraces the liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment. The First Amendment declares that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The Fourteenth Amendment has rendered the legislatures of the states as incompetent as Congress to enact such laws. The constitutional inhibition of legislation on the subject of religion has a double aspect. On the one hand, it forestalls compulsion by law of the acceptance of any creed or the practice of any form of worship. Freedom of conscience and freedom to adhere to such religious organization or form of worship as the individual may choose cannot be restricted by law. On the other hand, it safeguards the free exercise of the chosen form of religion.”  [citing Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 303  (1940)]

Rocky Delgadillo….hmmmm…..

Some people think that Governor Rod of Illinois is bad.

City Attorney Rocky is worse.  His “pay to play” schemes are publicly recorded…and nobody cares.

On March 8, 2006, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office sued a bunch of downtown businesses under eminent domain laws, including the NAACP and Grant Parking.  The NAACP doesn’t make campaign contributions to City Officials, but Grant Parking’s owners do.On March 15, 2006, “Californians for Rocky” received $5,600 from one Grant Parking owner and another $5,600 from another Grant Parking owner on March 16.  On March 16, 2006, the case was dismissed solely as to Grant Parking.  Surprise, surprise!Rocky Delgadillo’s wife got into an accident in a Los Angeles City owned vehicle while her drivers license was suspended and got the City to foot the insurance bill on the vehicle that her husband was supposed to be using.  She did business with the City utilizing a corporation that was suspended by the Franchise Tax Board and which didn’t have a City business license or pay city taxes.  Nobody bothered to prosecute her when it was publicly exposed.

This is typical municipal behavior in Los Angeles.

Some years ago, the City allowed four suspended corporations all owned by the same Caucasian ex-police officer to have Police Commission permits to run dance hostess clubs.  In aggregate, between federal, state, and local tax liens on the corporations and the owner personally, he owed around $13 million in back taxes.

The City didn’t bother him about that, but it did prosecute his Asian competitors’ business after vice-cops went in and offered Latino dance-hostesses $50 for a blow job and claimed that some said “yes.”  When you’re a young single mom trying to get through community college on minimum wage, $50 might be the difference between the next meal for your children, the toys you can’t buy them for Christmas, or the school books that could mean the difference between passing and failing.  If his competitors had learned the “Pay to Play” game in L.A., i.e., grease politicians with campaign cash, maybe they wouldn’t have been singled out.

More recently, Iranian immigrants in the parking business have been singled out for shake downs by the City government.  Many of them get jacked up with repeated audits conducted by an out of state business the City hired while it was a suspended corporation in its home state and had never qualified to do business in California.  Most of the Iranians put up with it, but when one stood up for his rights and refused to put up with the so-called auditors (who were in essence conducting illegal unlicensed investigations) repeatedly harassed his customers, employees, impersonated city officials in pretext calls, the City criminally charged him with failing to pay city business taxes and filed two civil suits against him for the same thing.

PS…remember that Rocky’s wife did not get prosecuted for failing to pay City business taxes.

PPS….the guy who’s getting prosecuted by the City has paid millions of dollars in taxes and when the city’s computers crashed, erasing the old account numbers, the city refused to accept payments from his employees since there were no account numbers to apply the payments to.  Not to mention that the City is trying to dun him for parking taxes on vacant lots, parking lots owned and operated by his competitors, vacant boarded up buildings, businesses he doesn’t operate which have nothing to do with parking, and even non-existent addresses.

The State Bar Rules preclude attorneys from advancing their cause by means not consistent with the truth, but apparently prosecuting somebody criminally and civilly for failing to pay parking taxes on a print shop or a gas station is okay when you work for the City Attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

It’s better to Pay to Play in L.A.