Budget crisis puts LA court system at risk (17 courts closed, 50 more to close soon)

Source: AP

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The Los Angeles court system has already closed 17 courtrooms and another 50 will be shut down come September unless something is done to find more money. The judge who presides over the system predicts chaos and an unprecedented logjam of civil and family law cases in the worst-case scenario.

The crisis results from the financially troubled state's decision to slash $393 million from state trial courts in the budget this year. The state also decided to close all California courthouses on the third Wednesday of every month.


Custody hearings, divorce proceedings, small-claims disputes, juvenile dependency matters and civil lawsuits have been delayed amid the courtroom shutdowns in Los Angeles. Drivers who choose to fight traffic tickets now have to wait up to nine months to get a trial started.

Complex civil lawsuits, those typically involving feuding businesses, could really feel the hit. It now takes an average of 16 months for such cases to get resolved, but court officials expect the cuts to bog down these civil matters to the point that they take an average of four years to finish.

. . .

"It's unprecedented," said McCoy. "Even during the Great Depression we did not close down court operations. We kept the courts open."

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100422/ap_on_re_us/us_court_crisis

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Closing civil courts just makes it easier for businesses to get away with fraudulent activity. As if there isn't already enough fraudulent activity these days.

Most of those employees were college educated and making a good wage. Hell, even the Bailiff's earn a 'living' wage, at the very minimum. Think that any of those poor people are going to be able to find anything other than service sector jobs in the very near future?

California's unemployment and foreclosure rate are already extremely high....and the domino's continue to fall.

Not trying to minimize the Bailiff's, mind you. It's just as far as I know, you don't need a college degree to become a Bailiff. Their job is extremely important.

all over but the shouting. Arnie the Idiot could have attentuated the destruction but he was too busy pretending to be Governor.

years Los Angeles would be under total control of drug lords like Tijuana, Mexicali, Juarez, Nogales and others cities. I need only a few months notice to vacate. Then again, I thought Mexico ceeded Southern California and all States in the Southwestern US on Feb. 2, 1848 at a treaty signed at Guadalupe Hidalgo.

they're "under total control of drug lords" because they're right next to the huge market up North, where the idiotic War On Some Drugs has vastly inflated prices, creating a bonanza for the said drug lords -- and disaster for the oridinary Mexicans living under their "total control".

about these people. But they won't..because they can't. Their police departments are even more corrupt then ours. Do you know how you get out of a ticket on the road going to ensenada? Pay the cop $20.00.

I must say it will be nice not to have to do jury duty so often too.

Private jails still get to keep getting fresh meat and fat fees from the criminal courts.

I mean, you are correct, this is civil courts, but my kid got busted for false ID, and I actually felt sorry for the judge, he had this huge stack of cases to get through, and he looked so harassed.

In Illinois, well over half of all lawsuits filed are business v. business disputes. The largest bulk of these are insurance company suing insurance company. In a rational system these would be put into private, self-funded arbitration. However, it is done on the public dime since it is cheaper for the insurance companies.

so to speak. People who cannot afford private arbitrators will not be deprived of justice. That means, for example, that if you get into a car accident, you will have to choose between accepting the settlement the insurance company offer of settlement. That is because, without so much as the threat of a lawsuit with which to pressure the insurer, your only choice other than accepting that offer is to wait for your turn in court.

Again, here is how the economics works.

Tax cuts put too much capital into the investment end of our economy and too little into the consumption end.

Faced with less money to spend, consumers were forced to pinch pennies and bargain hunt.

The bargains were of lower quality and imported from third world countries. They looked like the higher quality products but were just cheap, often poorly made (like a material that looks like leather but is actually leather fragments pasted together that falls apart with wear), legal knock-offs.

We changed our trade policy and entered into treaties like NAFTA in which we relinquished not only the ability to insure the competitiveness of our economy in the world but also our ability to insure the safety of our environment and the job security of our workers.

To "compete," i.e., make lots more money American manufacturers gradually moved jobs from the U.S. to locations overseas.

To "compete" even better, American companies then moved service jobs overseas.

American wages stagnated and, in terms of purchasing power, fell.

And, as companies outsourced jobs, to "compete" even better, especially in terms of the salaries and bonuses for top management, they also outsourced their profits -- to banks in tax havens, and thereby reduced tax revenue to the U.S. government.

Income tax rates remained pretty much the same or were reduced on higher bracket incomes.

Tax revenues fell across the country.

In California, the taxpayers' revolt that took place decades ago meant that California could not raise property taxes or other taxes to make up the shortfall in income taxes.

Outsourcing jobs bankrupted the middle class and continues to bankrupt the middle class in California.

Outsourcing jobs meant less tax revenue for the state.

Wall Street attacked the 401(k) retirement savings funds of many American seniors beginning in the 1990s and culminating in the sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2008.

The public pension funds will fail next. Guess who will be called upon to bail them out?

Public pension funds were part of the contractual pay agreements entered into by our state government and its employees. It will be hard to get out of paying them, and besides, cutting pensions and laying off state employees could start yet another round of unpaid mortgages, food stamp applications, tent cities, etc.

The irony is that Republicans continue to preach that tax cuts will make people more independent and improve the private economy.

But, as we see, the tax cuts have resulted in outsourcing and lost jobs in both the private and public sectors -- and increased the numbers of people needing food stamps and government assistance.

Way to go, conservatives. Your economic theories threw the whole country, maybe the whole world, off its axle.

To put ourselves back in balance, we need to elect progressive Democrats to Congress this year -- Democrats who will attack the real problems: higher taxes for wealthy corporations and individuals and drastic changes in our trade and currency policies.