Church sues state

The Pilgrim Baptist Church in Chicago is suing the state of Illinois over the promises of Rod 'Only Innocent People Appear on 'The View'' Blagojevich.
After all, they had a fire. And why should they be responsible for covering their own damages when they can just turn to the state? Is not like there is anything in the constitution guaranteeing the separation of church and state...

Here's a few things that tickles my brain in a bad way:
1.) They were promised $1 MILLION even though the damages totaled $65,015.
2.) The $1 MILLION was still given out, but it was given to a PRIVATE school that was leasing the area of the church that had the fire. (Because private schools benefit everyone, not just the parents that can afford to send their kids there.)
3.) I mean really... The state has to pay to defend itself because a corrupt governor made a promise to a church? Like a governor has any business promising statewide tax funds to a small church in an urban area that is many hours away from most of the residents of the state?

If this works out for them, I think I'll drop my homeowner's insurance and sue the state for damages when it burns down.

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

read more: Church sues Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity(wgn)

Separation of church and... I think we've heard this one before

Just going to cover it briefly by broadly summarizing to suit my needs:
The Supreme Court is hearing a case on whether or not a public university should be forced to provide a bit of financial support to a Christian group that violates university rules by not allowing gay folk into their club.
Yes, this church group is suing because they aren't being given their fair share of government funding.
Thank God there is no separation of church and state.

Antonin 'Nipple Fan' Scalia was most eloquent in his argument:
"Frankly, one reason why I am inclined to think this is pretextual is that it is so weird ... to require this Christian society to allow atheists not just to join, but to conduct Bible classes, right? That's crazy!"
At which point he promptly took another hit off his hookah and mumbled to himself "Just crazy man. Crazy."

Yes. Lets give them public funding so they can fend off the crazy atheists trying to teach their bible classes...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

read more: Court Weighs Rights Of Campus Religious Groups(npr)

Overzealous

A 12 year old girl got caught writing on her desk at school with a marker. Her overzealous teacher summarily dragged her to the overzealous principal's office who decided only the police could properly handle such an outrage. When the overzealous officers arrived, they cuffed her and did a perp walk out to the car. She was tried and convicted in a 'Family Court', sentenced to 8 hours of community service and an essay about what she's learned from the ordeal.

Having been chapped from being so spanked, our little graffiti artist got her overzealous father to call some overzealous lawyers to sue both the school district and police department. All the pain and suffering endured by this poor girl must be worth at least $1 MILLION. After all, she was in custody almost the whole day!

The head lawyer in the case Joseph "Opportunity Knocks" Rosenthal, wants to be clear: "We want to stop this from happening to other young children in the future."
Because it has nothing to do with the MILLION bucks...

Overzealous government staffers open the door for overzealous lawyers. And I haven't even mentioned the janitor's time involved in cleaning the desk...

THIS is whynewyorkerspaytaxes.

read more: US girl sues for $1m over arrest for desk scribble(bbc)

Somethings fishy here

And it ain't just Antoine Goetschel's clients.

Seriously. The guy defended a dead Pike in court. And dogs, cats, guinea pigs, cows, horses and sheep. (I don't suspect the sheep was involved in a rape case, but I have no evidence either way...)

No big deal, right? Some hippy lawyer has decided to enjoy his wealth by taking on animal cruelty cases pro bono, right? Sure, he's clogging Switzerland's court system with cases that ought to be handled in other ways, but at least he's not government funded, right?

The hell you say.

Nope. Funded entirely by the government, this guy sued a fisherman because it was reported that the fisherman took 10 minutes to bring the fish in and kill it. To no one's surprise, he had his ass handed to him on this case. However, not only is he wasting a shit ton of a citizens and several government employees time with this nonsense, but he is taking a salary and a pension for this nonsense too. Not to count the allowance he surely has for staffing his office.

And this is all brought up because he thinks that he can't work alone. Oh no. He thinks the Swiss need a fucking mountain of these guys. Sort of a new D.A.s office. Eventually, they'll probably be bringing about involuntary manslaughter charges against everyone who hits a deer with their car. You better hope the deer is resuscitated or you're spending time behind bars.

I'll bet the Swiss even paid for a public defendant for the fisherman.

Just think... A story about overpaid and under worked lawyers milking the system for all its worth that didn't originate in the U.S. Yay!

THIS is whytheSWISSpaytaxes

read more: Swiss ask whether animals need lawyers (bbc)

Someone is at fault for my unemployment... SUE!

A crazy lady in the Bronx is suing the college she graduated from in APRIL because she's still unemployed 3 months later. Because, after 90 days the college hasn't hooked her up with a kush IT gig in a down economy, they apparently owe her $70,000.

Are we to assume that when she does get an IT job at some point in the future she will have to give the award back? I'd also like to see the signed contract where they guaranteed employment upon graduation...

Always somebody to sue for all that ails you...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

read more: Jobless graduate sues her college(bbc)

I'm gonna sue [myself]

At least when Well Fargo sues itself, it has the common decency of hiring two different law firms to prosecute and defend itself.

This is not the case when the Kauai County Government in Hawaii decides to sue itself! Instead, they spend $250,000 dollars and have the county attorney represent both sides of the case against itself.

Here's the deal:
The local residents are being taxed out of their homes. Its not a matter of not keeping up with the mortgage, its a matter of property values being driven so high by out of state speculators that the residents can no longer afford the taxes on their long owned but newly valued homes. Which is fine by the county government, because that means they can pull in tax money from the out of towners and run record budgets as high as $123 MILLION! I mean, what county doesn't need to spend that kind of money on day to day operations?

So the residents, silly as it sounds, decided to pretend like they lived in a democracy. They got a measure on the ballot that caps the property taxes on any home that is owner-occupied. In spite of heavy lobbying by the county government and using the tax gains in a coordinated attack on the ballot measure, it passed by a 2 to 1 margin.

Rather than accepting defeat and trying to get by on tax revenues most counties only dream of, they decided their best course of action was to sue itself. This way, they could get the court to declare that the people of the county had no right to propose and vote on the ballot measure. The Hawaii Supreme Court agreed, saying that only the county government has a right to police itself, not the citizens.

Sometimes the articles I summarize do it better themselves:
Now, under Hawaii law, when government officials do not agree with the outcome of an election, they are free to concoct a friendly lawsuit, fund the litigation with taxpayer money, and ask a local court to strike the measure down.

THIS is whyhawaiianspaytaxes.

read more: HAWAII GOVERNMENT SUES ITSELF TO QUASH PROPERTY TAX RELIEF - AND WINS (flashreport.org)

Bailin' out the lawyers

Lets buy the line that the TARP and other bailouts had to happen or calamity would have ensued. (A calamity that would have leveled the playing fields a bit. A calamity that would have potentially brought many of the super-rich down to our levels. A calamity that would have voided their inherent superiority and MUST NOT BE.) Ok. So we buy that line. Bad things would happen if we didn't start pouring money from everyone's pocket into a handful of fat cat's pockets.

Having agreed to the necessity of giving rich people access to our co-op (tax pool) funds, we would like to assume that the money is used to make right the wrongs. To fix this problem that leaves us on the verge of a calamity. Instead, like a bum that takes your $5 to buy a bottle of booze instead of the sandwich they said they would buy, the banks are making relatively few changes. Sure, they're making it harder for us to borrow that money we gave them, but they are also sure to honor bond insurance claims on questionable funds that have already been bailed out.

Now they've found a new way to spend our money for us: Lawsuits! Somebody has got to be blamed for the financial meltdown and by God, we're going to use our lawyers to find out who it was. Ambac is suing JP Morgan. MBIA is suing Merrill Lynch. The shareholders at Citi Group ARE SUING THEIR OWN MANAGEMENT TEAM! (Apparently, those who bought into Citi within the last handful of years think they overpaid for their [obviously] worthless stocks and should be reimbursed by someone... Did NO ONE understand the word risk? Don't people know that if you invest in a company on the stock market, there is no guarantee of success? You could lose everything. And if that happens, no one is supposed to come along and give you your lost money back?)

At any rate. A significant portion of our bailout funds is now funding a giant mass of lawyers to sue each other. We'll be paying the prosecutors, defenders, court costs, awards, and settlements with the mountains of bailout funs we've given them to play with.

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

When you wish upon a star

When an 18 year old Belgian girl went in to get a tattoo, she went all out. She got stars across half her face. There is no mention of what she was on when she thought this was a good idea, but... ... I imagine it was good.

I wanna be a Star!

When she got home to daddy she got the reaction she had hoped for, outrage. But, it turned out to be a bit more outrage than she was prepared to handle so she went into defense mode and explained to daddy that it wasn't her fault. She is indeed a victim and one that he shouldn't be so angry at anymore.

Her claim is that she had asked for 3 stars but had fallen asleep and woke up right exactly when he finished the 56th star. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it just about fucking impossible to fall asleep when there is someone digging in your face with a needle stabbing you up to 3,000 times per minute? I'm sure she kinda got numbish in that area after awhile, but half of her face? (There is even one on her ear!)

His claim seems much more reasonable to me. After just about every star he stopped and asked her if she was certain she wanted him to continue, knowing full well that she would learn to regret this moment for the rest of her life. If you'll watch the BBC story clip, you'll even notice at the very end of the segment when they spend a tenth of the story time telling his side of the story, that he has her picture in his portfolio. In it, she is not smiling, but she is also not crying, running out of the parlor, or displaying any signs of distress. No, she's posing. Posing to display a job well done.

Of course, the moment she told her daddy the lie, she stuck to it and is suing the artist.

THIS is whybelgianspaytaxes.

read more: Belgian girl's tattoo 'nightmare' (bbc)

There must be someone to sue

George Baldwin, who is 19, parties hardy with a bunch of other teenagers, gets smashed, and decides to drive home. In an amazing twist of unforeseen events, he gets into an accident that leaves him paralyzed from the waist down. (Prior to this he had only been paralyzed from the neck up.) A friend is also injured, but was still able to point and laugh under his own power.

So. This tragic set of circumstances must be someone's fault. Its just GOT to be! (read: There has GOT to be someone to sue for this damage I've done to myself. I've already made the mistake, I can't be held responsible for it too!)

In the end, the insurance company that has insured the house they were drinking in is on the hook for $2.5 MILLION in damages. The kid is also suing the mother directly. They are liable for these damages because the mother should have known that her kids were at home drinking because they had been caught drinking before.

Young man paralyzed in crash after underage drinking party settles lawsuit against Lake Forest homeowner(ct)

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

Not getting what you wanted in life? Sue!

Woman Sues Sac State Over Homecoming Queen Bid(c13)

But don't worry, the 46 year old isn't upset that a woman half her age won:
"I am not a sore loser; it's just the principle of everything,"
Its not about her at all. Its the principalities!

Crazy ladies suing public universities...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

(Who said women don't experience mid life crises?)

Bring it on

Not getting your way in life? Federal Law Suit Time!

A girl who was on the varsity cheerleading squad her junior year didn't get in her senior year.
Federal Law Suit Time! Not just a district court suit, good lord no. We need to get the Federal Government involved in this shit.

Her case: The school never stepped into discipline the squad for bullying her daughter. Perhaps maybe there was some unfair judging.

A bit more history (and a few local tax dollars at work): She had already gone to the school district to have various staffers at the school fired and her daughter reinstated on the squad. Yes, her daughter didn't make the squad, so people should lose their jobs over it.
She hired the same investigator that looked into the McKinney cheerleading mess Lifetime did a movie about.

The school did discipline the girls. Many times. Every time the mother complained of the harassment. Is it really a surprise her daughter wasn't invited to play along the next year?

Mother's taking their cues from a Lifetime movie and making it a Federal case...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

Because Judges have nothing better to do

Check this one out. Kinda blows your mind.

A District Judges daughter in Houston Texas rammed into the back end of a delivery truck while she was at least 3 sheets to the wind. (Blood alcohol content over THREE times the legal limit on 2 separate tests (she was a judges daughter, the cops were smart enough to test twice))
In the accident she killed her boyfriend and smashed up mommy's Lexus.

Get this: She got 4 months in jail and a bunch of probation. Not bad being a judges daughter in Texas, no? 4 months for manslaughter. I'll bet not a lot of Texans enjoy that kind of leniency.

But that isn't even why I'm sharing this story with you, oh no.
Now, SHE IS SUING THE TRUCK DRIVER!!!
She wants $20k for the destruction of the Lexus and whatever the judge or jury might give her for mental anguish.
Not only is she helping to clog up the court system in Texas, she's doing it in grand style. She has listed 16 defendents, including insurance companies and banks. Because, you know, I'm sure the bank has a lot to say about the accident. Basically, they've called all the defendants they could to see if anything will get her her way. Because, she is quite obviously getting her way.

I hope daddy puts a breathalyzer ignition in the new Lexus he buys her. I wouldn't want her killing and suing anyone else.

Judge's daughter sues driver she ran into during crash(hc)

Job security for the court system...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.

ADDENDUM
While I was hoping the father was embarassed of his off the hook and ridiculously spoiled daughter, I've been proven wrong. (after all, how else would she be so spoiled?)
Her blood alcohol content tests was 26 and 28 percent.
He's in the court room acting all a fool on behalf of his daughter. They've gotten expert witnesses on their side, they accused the man that helped the daughter out of the accident of being an illegal alien, they're doing their best to make this a 3 ring circus. The mother cries of the inhumane way the cops arrested her. They went and STOLE THE BLACK BOX from the Lexus before it could be used in court.
Defense expert says deadly crash was unavoidable(fr)
The father has said: the intoxication of his daughter at the scene of the accident makes no difference. He also said that no one is above the law. Well, except for his daughter.

If you read just one article about this fucked up case READ THIS ARTICLE HERE: (its by a blogging lawyer in Texas and is very well written and sums it all up nice and neat)
Frivolous Conflicted Representation. Where Else but Harris County?(dp)

This lawyer points out: If the estate of the dead guy wanted to sue someone for the death, they have an open and shut case against the daughter that has been convicted of his murder. Instead, they join forces with the daughter to sue the truck driver.

The lawyer pursuing the case: On 3 separate occasions he's been suspended from practicing law and has been publicly reprimanded twice. He currently represents the family of the dead guy AND the girl convicted of killing him, at the same time.
He was also appointed to his judge job by the father of the girl that began the whole thing by drinking and driving.

Little Hitler

There really isn't much to say on this one... Friend of mine sent me a link to a story about the wonders of ignorance:
Holland Township man names son after Adolf Hitler(lvl)

Why do I post this story here? How do these crazy bastards cost me tax dollars?

1.) They live off of Social Security. Checks from the government are what keep these people hating.
2.) They will be suing a grocery store for not inscribing birthday wishes to Adolf Hitler, taking up the valuable time of judges, clerks, et. al. because they feel their rights were violated when a grocery store bakery felt their rights were going to be violated.
(not too clear... try this: While they were offended when refused a cake, they get to sue. However, when the bakery was offended by being asked to wish a happy birthday to Adolf Hitler, they either do it or be sued.)

Keeping ignorant dreams alive...

THIS is whyipaytaxes.