Dear California voters (Monday November 14th 2005)
Even with the one day one trial law mandatory
jury duty in California can still be difficult
for some people who are summonned because the
summons is always to a distant courthouse that is hard
to get to and might occur on the day of a college
test or a critical workday or result in young
children being left unsupervised for at least one day.
Are there any voters in California who are willing
to vote for or advocate converting all courts to
use all volunteer juries instead of continuing
the mandatory jury summonses ??
(click on
add your comments
below to reply to this question)
Eric Matteson
<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","contact":"ericmatteson2003november@hotmail.com","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"Should California end compulsory jury duty\r\nand implement an all volunteer jury\r\nsystem in every court ??","numcomment":31,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2005\/11\/139323.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":139326,"heading":"Not without Constitutional conflict","article":"Does anyone bother to read the Constitution especially the 5th, 6th and 7th amendments ?\r\n\r\nWhy not just give the rest of your power to government, they'll take care of you...translation: "BRIDGE FOR SALE"\r\n\r\nGo to www.fija.org, and go learn something.","author":"Ben","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-15 22:20:31","modified":"2005-11-15 22:20:31","fileurl":""},{"id":139329,"heading":"I did check Constitution","article":"I want you to understand that\r\nI did check the Constitution\r\nvery carefully and\r\neven though the Constitution has\r\njury trials there is NOTHING\r\nIN THE CONSTITUTION ITSELF\r\nTO PREVENT PEOPLE FROM \r\nVOLUNTEERING FOR JURY DUTY\r\nhttp:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/constitution\/constitution.billofrights.html\r\nis the link to check the \r\nConstitution Bill of Rights yourself.\r\nthe Constitution DOES NOT require\r\ncompulsory jury service and\r\nthe constitution DOES NOT PREVENT\r\nconverting to all volunteer juries \r\nin every court in the United States.\r\n------------------------------------------------\r\n The totally seperate thing that\r\nrequires a constitutional\r\nammendment is the other option of\r\n abolishing jury trials\r\naltogether.\r\nEric Matteson\r\n","author":"Eric Matteson","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-15 23:41:03","modified":"2005-11-15 23:41:03","fileurl":""},{"id":139336,"heading":"Not a good idea","article":"All-volunteer juries would have the same problem as Internet polls- a self-selected sample is never going to be accurately representative of the population.\r\n\r\n","author":"Skeptic","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-16 01:38:02","modified":"2005-11-16 01:38:02","fileurl":""},{"id":139359,"heading":"Should juries be abolished altogether ??","article":"Three TV show executive producers were summonned\r\nto jury duty in California after one day one trial\r\nlaw was started. One Day one trial no longer\r\nallows high income people with important\r\njobs or businesses to get excused from jury\r\nduty. Those three TV show producers wrote\r\nepisodes of their shows that complain \r\nabout forced\r\njury duty and not being able to get excused\r\nany more. Those very\r\nwealthy TV show executives\r\n have a secret plan to\r\nlobby congress to ammend the U.S.\r\nconstitution to\r\nABOLISH JURY TRIALS ALTOGETHER\r\nso they will never be summonned to\r\nserve on a jury ever again after that..\r\nShould the U.S. constitution\r\nbe ammended to abolish jury trials altogether ??\r\nEric Matteson\r\n\r\n","author":"Eric Matteson","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-16 17:26:56","modified":"2005-11-16 17:26:56","fileurl":""},{"id":139366,"heading":"It's Jury "Duty"","article":"It's your duty to serve on the jury. Of course rich people are not exempt. Since when did this country return to monarchy and oligarchy? The fact that we have a monarchical oligarch as a President is not sufficient reason. Not only do we need jury duty, we need more money for jurors.","author":"johnk","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-16 20:55:26","modified":"2005-11-16 20:55:26","fileurl":""},{"id":139387,"heading":"Hear, hear","article":"The current compensation for jurors- 9 bucks a day but the first day doesn't count- is derisory. When I was tapped for jury duty last year, I got a total of 17 bucks, while losing out on $320 in wages for those two days.\r\n\r\nThat wasn't anything like catastrophic, but for people who earn less or have greater financial obligations, e.g. families to support, the loss of even a couple of days of work could be a real problem, and serving on a trial that runs for a week or more a disaster.\r\n\r\nBugger the terrible hardships of the rich juror. If we want juries to be composed of a representative sample of the community, we need to make it possible for working and middle-class people to serve without having to suffer.","author":"Skeptic","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-17 02:01:08","modified":"2005-11-17 02:01:08","fileurl":""},{"id":139442,"heading":"replace current system","article":"The current compulsory jury duty system in 2005\r\nis flawed. Compulsory jury duty creates a\r\nhardship for both poor people and rich people.\r\nRich people have to work very hard at their\r\njobs or busineses and being forced to take\r\ntime off of important work to serve on a jury\r\ncan result in the loss of millions of dollars\r\nand possibly even layoffs of employees.\r\n There are two possible ways to change the courts\r\nto get rid of compulsory jury duty.\r\none is to change the U.S. constitution\r\nto abolish juries altogether. The\r\nother way is to change every court\r\nto use all volunteer juries.\r\nWhich is the better option ??\r\n","author":"Eric Matteson","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-18 00:47:54","modified":"2005-11-18 00:47:54","fileurl":""},{"id":139453,"heading":"Ammend constitution to abolish jury duty","article":"When the arresting posse is the jury and\r\nhangs the defendent it is like police officers\r\nserving on a jury. In California police officers\r\nare disqualified from serving on juries.\r\nAnti DP advocates are irrelevant in\r\nCalifornia. In California death row inmates\r\nalmost always die from natural causes\r\nwhile waiting for endless appeals to be decided.\r\nThere already is no death penalty in California!!\r\n......................\r\nAmmending the constitution to abolish\r\nthe privilege of accused having a trial by jury\r\nis a difficult process. The house and senate\r\nneed a 2\/3 supermajority vote and then\r\n3\/4 of the states legislatures need to ratify the\r\nproposed jury abolition ammendment within\r\na time limit.\r\nOne version of the ammendment would use\r\nthree professional judges to determine\r\nguilt in every court case instead of a jury\r\nhttp:\/\/groups.google.com\/group\/alt.tv\/browse_frm\/thread\/ec6bd637e783188a\/0ab64411fa9bff66?tvc=1&hl=en#0ab64411fa9bff66\r\n..\r\nAre you sure that you want to abolish jury duty\r\naltogether instead of just switching\r\nto a voluntary jury system ??\r\nEric Matteson ericmatteson2003november@hotmail.com","author":"Eric Matteson","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-18 02:38:43","modified":"2005-11-18 02:38:43","fileurl":""},{"id":139457,"heading":"to Eric Matteson","article":""There are two possible ways to change the courts \r\nto get rid of compulsory jury duty. "\r\nfalse dichotomy; no there are more than 2 of your choices.\r\n\r\nThere are many alternatives as in a previous post, raising the pay of jurors.\r\nThe rich already own the courts. ","author":"not true","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-18 03:51:31","modified":"2005-11-18 03:51:31","fileurl":""},{"id":139465,"heading":"raise juror pay needs","article":"Before I vote YES on a TAX INCREASE\r\nto raise pay for jurrors I want to be absolutley\r\nsure that they are serving VOLUNTARILY\r\nby passing an all volunteer jury initiative\r\nFIRST.\r\n The pay increase would only help poor\r\njurrors. Hollywood scriptwriters and big\r\nname actors\r\nand business owners need to be free to not have to\r\nshow up at jury selection because they\r\nhave very important jobs.\r\nEric Matteson","author":"Eric Matteson","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-18 04:46:17","modified":"2005-11-18 04:46:17","fileurl":""},{"id":139467,"heading":"important jobs","article":"If they think this duty is below their citizen pride then they can do what I do when time is money.\r\nI say " yes I'd love to serve on a jury as I'm studying constitutional law."\r\nI guarantee you will not serve.","author":"I understand","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-18 04:54:45","modified":"2005-11-18 04:54:45","fileurl":""},{"id":139513,"heading":"More people being summonned","article":"Things are getting worse.\r\nEven people who used to be automatically\r\nexempt from jury duty such as doctors\r\nand ACLU civil rights lawyers are being\r\nsummonned at least to jury selection.\r\nEven with only one day for jury selection\r\nwithout being put on a case could cause\r\nhardship for a doctor because his favorite\r\npatient might die from lack of medical\r\ncare while that doctor is wasting his\r\ntime at jury selection for one whole day\r\nonly to be automatically rejected for\r\nhaving too much education.\r\nThe compulsory jury duty system we have\r\nin 2005 is much hated.\r\nThere are two alternatives.\r\n 1 ) abolish jury trials altogether with\r\na constitutional ammendment.\r\n 2 ) change to an all volunteer jury\r\nsystem in every court.\r\n....\r\nWhich is the best change ??\r\nEric Matteson","author":"Eric Matteson","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-18 23:00:26","modified":"2005-11-18 23:00:26","fileurl":""},{"id":139515,"heading":"Foolishness Expose","article":">>> Rich people have to work very hard at their\r\njobs or busineses and being forced to take\r\ntime off of important work to serve on a jury\r\ncan result in the loss of millions of dollars\r\nand possibly even layoffs of employees.\r\n\r\nWhat the FUCK are you talking about? Rich people take vacations ALL the time, and their businesses do not collapse. ALL the time, they're at meetings, conferences, secret meetings, vacation, working vacations, whatever. NOT ONE IOTA of productivity hinges on them; at least not short-term productivity. What they have is control over capital.\r\n\r\nThe workers may be able to run the factory themselves. They certainly can for the short term.\r\n\r\nThe working people, however, *do* suffer when they have to do jury duty. The poor work harder, they get paid less, and the pittance you get for jury duty does not compensate for the $60 you lose from not working that day. SIXTY BUCKS, fool. That's $7 x 8 hours and change. The workers do things like take care of their kids, take care of their aging parents, and have to feed themselves. It's very hard to find people to do this for you if you can't pay them, and you are not covering expenses. You can get excused from jury for these reasons -- which ultimately is a euphemism for "not enough money."\r\n\r\nAlso...\r\n\r\nIf someone's on a tight schedule, they should be allowed to reschedule for jury duty. Specify the downtime, and do it then.\r\n\r\nAs for raising taxes, you can forgo your compensation if you care so much.","author":"johnk","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-18 23:22:27","modified":"2005-11-18 23:22:27","fileurl":""},{"id":139534,"heading":"Get Real","article":"BA, you are wrong. You talk about wealth as if it's a system of moral rewards, as if wealth is the product of "hard work".\r\n\r\nWithout doubt, for most people, you have to work hard to make money. But work alone isn't enough to get rich. You have to work, have a reasonable level of compensation, and be able to save money (accumulate capital).\r\n\r\nMany people work very hard, and don't get rich, or even comfortable and safe against poverty.\r\n\r\nAlso, many people, like Bush whom you admire, acquired all their wealth by inheritance. Under capitalism, it's capital that's rewarded rather than work. (That's why everyone in a capitalist economy wants to save money and invest it in low risk assets.)\r\n\r\nAs for the necessities of management:\r\n\r\nThe entire industrial system is based around automating work, and getting people to comply with work rules. That's why one person can manage a company with several dozen workers, and reap a large(r) salary.\r\n\r\nIn most workplaces, the owner is absent. Managers run the company. If the manager exits for a week to do jury duty, it's no big deal -- there are assistant managers. A couple weeks absence, and problems can occur, but, if the workers are empowered to take on managerial tasks, the entire business can move forward for much longer, even indefintely. \r\n\r\nThis is because management work is largely about communication, project planning, and fixing situations that the automated system fails to handle. They provide authoritative answers. When the economy is tight, the managers also act as "slavemasters" and pressure workers to produce more for less money.\r\n\r\nThe process of workers taking on managerial tasks only breaks down when the workers take on all managerial tasks, and then stop representing the goals of the owners. They will start to produce in ways that benefit themselves more than the owner. They will steal surplus and sell it on the underground black market, and take all the profit for themselves.\r\n\r\nThe managers exist primarily, not for their ability to work, but to actively promote the goals of the owners (that is, the stockholders or real owners, not the CEO or President).","author":"johnk","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-19 01:57:38","modified":"2005-11-19 01:57:38","fileurl":""},{"id":139789,"heading":"Actually","article":"Actually the most preferred method as well as the most usual, is inheritance from robber baron family members.\r\n[ G W Bush comes to mind ]","author":"Rob Richmen","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-23 02:01:30","modified":"2005-11-23 02:01:30","fileurl":""},{"id":139800,"heading":"Not just ownership, exploitation","article":"I agree fully that it's critical to own your own business to become wealthy. If you can't own it outright, then becoming a partner or another high-revenue generation semi-owner also works. They key is *ownership*. If you don't *own* part of your workplace, you're going to get screwed out of some of your labor.\r\n\r\nIt's not enough to work for yourself. You must also have others work for you, and you must take a fat cut of their "profit" as your own. Bill for $100 an hour, but pay the person doing the work $40 an hour. Or sell $100 of product, and pay the workers $7. Then, you must replicate this process to grow the company so that the more people you have working for you, the wealthier you become.\r\n\r\nYou *need* to hire people because there's an upper limit to what wage you can demand most labor. The value of labor tops out at around $200,000 per year, give or take some. It simply does. There just aren't many jobs that command more than that. That can be considered a kind of social "maximum value of labor." Anything above that is excess. (My opinion there.)\r\n\r\nTo break out past this barrier, you hire people to do your work, pay them less than you charge for their labor, and collect the profits into your pocket.\r\n\r\nThe owners of the business, ultimately, are dependent on the hard work of the non-owners, to maintain profits above the maximum market value of the owner's labor.\r\n\r\nIn summation -- the harder the toilers toil, the richer the rich will become, because they have *ownership* of the company. With this ownership those who already own, are able to legally have claim to some fraction of the wealth the worker creates. This is a kind of legalized theft.\r\n\r\nThere are other ways to derive more income, via royalties or rent, but these involve the ability to mobilize capital, and invest it. That collects profits indirecly from labor through interest or capital appreciation. Ultimately, it's workers who create the wealth that makes the rich folks rich.","author":"johnk","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-23 05:56:16","modified":"2005-11-23 05:56:16","fileurl":""},{"id":140028,"heading":"The Workers at eBay","article":"You're not being logical, but, that's your forte. There are workers at ebay. Their work produces more revenues than they receive in compensation, and that's why ebay has a (slim) profit margin.\r\n\r\nAlso, it wasn't Meg Whitman that made eBay. It was Pierre Omidyar. Whitman came over from, I think, Hasbro. Much of eBays capital infusion came from internet stock speculation after its IPO, which sent the company's valuation into the billions of dollars. At the time, the valuation of eBay was based, primarily, on the fact that people were trading beanie babies for hundreds of dollars, causing fees on the service to skyrocket.\r\n\r\neBay is a great example of the idiocy of capitalism. A bunch of bored people trading cheap stuffed dolls helped prove that the "market" could produce "wealth" (or at least transactions) over objects that had no real value. Even the people trading beanie babies knew they were running on vapors, but they did it anyway, because, well, they knew there were people more deluded and fooled than themselves!\r\n\r\n(At some level, this degree of ignorance and foolishness is possible only because of American domination over capitalism. It's massive irresponsibility that allows us the luxuries of that kind of speculation. Billion Dollar Beanie Babies = Dead Iraqi Babies.)\r\n\r\nThere are also thousands of people who "work" on eBay without being workers for eBay. It's like any marketplace -- the participants invest time and money in making a marketplace, so that potential customers will visit the market with the expectation that overall transaction cost reductions will result in a lower overall price.\r\n\r\nThe main difference between eBay and a traditional market is that eBay lowers the entry cost into the market, because each vendor can maintain a smaller inventory, and not have to maintain a physical presence in the market.\r\n\r\nA swap meet booth operator, or a boutique crafter (two businesses with low capital costs) might have $1,000 - $5,000 of inventory, while an eBay seller can have well under $1,000 of inventory and maintain their store 24\/7. However, net revenues are also reduced, due to these very same dynamics.\r\n\r\nThis is not really good or bad. It is just further proletarianization of the so-called "Freelance Nation." The labor unions need to really learn how to organize in this sector of proletarian contract workers.\r\n\r\nAlso, eBay is not the fabled idealized capitalism. Part of the eBay business model is based around monopolizing communication between buyers and sellers. They restrict the ability of each party to communicate with the others. They force sellers and buyers to interact via eBay, and pay for the privilege. They are creating information vacuums, and trading on the value of that information.\r\n\r\nI'm really starting to understand why communists always use the word "illusions" to describe the spectacle. Part of capitalism's "ideology", is about constructing illusions about how it works.","author":"johnk","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-27 23:17:31","modified":"2005-11-27 23:17:31","fileurl":""},{"id":140041,"heading":"Monopoly = Exploitation","article":"eBay has a lot of programmers as well as sysadmins. Systems as large as eBay require programming as part of the system administration. What these people "produce" is "uptime" and a database that, over time, becomes more and more expensive to replicate. (That's the accumulation of capital right there.) (More on this below.)\r\n\r\nI didn't say the workers at eBay were "superexploited", only exploited. That's because eBay has a small profit. If they weren't making a profit, I'd have said they were not being exploited yet. I'm using a standard marxist definition of exploitation there.\r\n\r\nI don't think eBay has a monopoly yet, but are pretty close. They can still be toppled. There are still people doing things on Yahoo auctions, and people are still going after eBay. As for exploitation of their customers: all monopolies are potentially exploitative, because they can jack up prices well above the cost of production.\r\n\r\nAt this time, they are realizing some small profits, and I think that indicates that the prices they charge aren't that far above the cost of production. (That includes costs like pointless advertisement.)\r\n\r\nThe big sellers on eBay don't negate the fact that eBay's lowered the price of entry into the market. That's one reason why they got so large. (The big IPO was another reason.)\r\n\r\nThe low cost of entry reduced (and continues to reduce) the power of capital to lock out small players from competing against larger players. However, as I noted above, eBay's big IPO has allowed eBay to write a lot of software, effectively building up a body of technological capital that's formidable and difficult to compete against.\r\n\r\nAs for organizing eBay sellers - the unions don't really know how to organize them, yet. You could have argued the same about the movie industry, where movie crews are made up of independent contractors, but, that is one of the most organized industries in the country. It can be done.\r\n\r\nOrganizing eBay would involve replacing some of the functionality of eBay, allowing a critical mass of people be able to switch their selling to another venue, without significant losses. It's not like industrial organizing.","author":"johnk","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-28 08:34:44","modified":"2005-11-28 08:34:44","fileurl":""},{"id":140082,"heading":"addendum","article":"Re.Exploitation\r\nby Bush Admirer Saturday, Nov. 26, 2005 at 11:35 PM\r\n\r\nJohn - I'm trying to think of a good example of exploitation that has actually happened under Capitalism. It's tough ( here let me help you with this one.\r\nHaiti \r\nAll of South America\r\nSlave labor in Prisons\r\nSlave labor in China\r\nand a whole bunch of others that are too numerous to mention) to come up with one but I think I have it. \r\n\r\nThat would be the excessive benefits ( like weekends, health and safety standards, work hour regulations and other such awful things) the UAW was able to squeeze out of GM by holding the company hostage via threatened strikes ( don't the slaves know their place?!) and work stoppages. \r\n\r\nDid you know that each and every vehicle rolling off the GM assembly line has about $1,050 in employee health benefits ( cause we all know that universal health coverage doesn't put profits into the right hands as pharmaceutical companies and heath care 'providers' lobby intensively to thwart the majority will of the people and crush any attempt to institute a cost saving national tax supported health plan as all other industrial country has) embedded in the cost of manufacture? \r\n\r\nIt's pretty tough to make a profit and stay in business when you're being exploited ( and as books are cooked and pensions are looted, aside from the normal pilfering of company assets for 'golden parachutes' and fat stock option etc...) like that John. \r\n\r\nThough it would be very expensive, I think GM needs to just pack up and move operations to a state where the workers are inherently ( China!) anti-union. South Carolina ( MY home state! where poverty is endemic as well as the racism and corruption -Sheepdog :>) comes to mind. They might also look at moving operations offshore. Anything to escape exploitation by the ( who totally sold out to the management ) UAW. \r\n\r\n\r\nReport this post as:- an insertion by Sheepdog....\r\n","author":"Sheepdog","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-28 19:00:14","modified":"2005-11-28 19:00:14","fileurl":""},{"id":140090,"heading":"Being on a jury is interesting","article":"You get a glimpse into how the judicial system we have works or doesn\u2019t work. It\u2019s not what you think it is till you see it and experience it. Eric raises some points to consider. They should pay jurors more and maybe they could do more night courts or weekend options for people who have conflicts with their work. Most employers say nice things how they understand and may give you some paid days for it, but the reality is that you still have to work unpaid overtime to make up the work you missed and that is not fair. So the state should pay jurors more to cover that. There is an economic hardship excuse you can ask for but it\u2019s hard to get approved.\r\n\r\nThe issue is that the state is drafting you, forcing you to do jury duty. All anti-authoritarians should have an issue with this. Johnk is right about the jury needs to stay public and part of one\u2019s civic duty. The jury must be of one\u2019s peers or that is the end of any kind of civil society. But how you do that and not compromise people\u2019s basic right to freedom of choice is the hard part. \r\n\r\nThe screening part to seat a jury is interesting. A court would never seat some one like BA if they found out his views stated here. He would have to lie to get on a jury.\r\n","author":"Have served","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-28 21:59:46","modified":"2013-11-11 00:36:53","fileurl":""},{"id":140180,"heading":"Exploitation","article":"To keep this thing on topic. Exploitation is getting paid $7 for jury duty.\r\n\r\nSuperexploitation is living in a company town, where the big boss has the power to set the prices of your wages as well as the things you buy and the rent you pay. By keeping the exploited very poor, the workers there are unable to amass any capital to use as leverage to negotiate a better situation.","author":"johnk","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-11-30 11:29:05","modified":"2005-11-30 11:29:05","fileurl":""},{"id":140451,"heading":"Ooops...","article":"I forgot to thank you Sheepdog. Thanks!\r\n\r\nAlso, I didn't know this, but the first president of eBay (meaning the first guy hired by Omidyar) was an MBA by the name of Jeff Skoll. He's now a philanthropist who funds films that right wingers would hate. A quote from his bio:\r\n\r\n"The world is a small and inter-connected place. We cannot ignore the plight of others in less fortunate communities or parts of the world... many of the blights of the modern world (environmental destruction, crime, drugs, terrorism) emerge from the inequities between haves and have-nots."\r\n\r\nHis company helped make the movie Syriana happen.","author":"johnk","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-12-03 12:38:07","modified":"2005-12-03 12:38:07","fileurl":""},{"id":140460,"heading":"yer welcome, johnk","article":"I was afraid that since I didn't have a respondent on the envelope...\r\nGlad to help.\r\n:>)","author":"Sheepdog","parent_id":139323,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2005-12-03 15:34:03","modified":"2005-12-03 15:34:03","fileurl":""},{"id":150869,"heading":"Jury Table","article":"\r\n