Veterans Child Support Project: Helping Homeless and At-Risk Veterans with Child Support Problems - Pro Bono Opportunity

The Northwest Justice Project is seeking volunteer attorneys and law students to provide pro bono legal assistance to low-income veterans with child support problems. A free "Child Support 101" CLE will be held for volunteers at Seattle University School of Law on Friday, August 13, 2010. Registration information and other CLE and project details will be provided to those who volunteer.

Child support obligations are a barrier to housing, employment, and self-sufficiency for many homeless and at-risk veterans. Many veterans incurred these child support obligations while they were homeless, in a phase of active addiction, or otherwise untreated for a serious mental illness. For incarcerated veterans, the growing arrears from unpaid child support can be a significant barrier to reentry into the community. Many veterans may be able to reduce their child support obligations to a more manageable level and help eliminate these barriers.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the American Bar Association (ABA) are piloting a project in Seattle and eight other cities to assist homeless and at-risk veterans with child support problems. The local partners for this project include Northwest Justice Project, Open Door Legal Services, VA, DSHS Division of Child Support, and the HHS Seattle Regional Office of Child Support Enforcement.

The local partners are recruiting private attorneys to provide pro bono legal services to veterans who need assistance with their child support obligations. Services will include assessments to determine whether the veteran meets criteria for renegotiation of child support payments and assistance with modifying child support obligations and negotiating payment arrangements and adjustments for child support arrears. Experienced mentors will be available to assist volunteers in providing these services.

If you are interested in volunteering for this project, please contact Bridgette Murphy, Northwest Justice Project, 206.464.1519 ext. 615, bridgettem@nwjustice.org .

Divide and Conquer. (Wise words from the past)

I don't know where this came from but it's well worth watching...

First Harvest: Front Yard Salad!

Our First Harvest this year was greens from our front and side yard microgardens. We got about a bowl of salad (red lettuce, ragged oakleaf lettuce, and another kind with tiny leaves whose name I can never remember) plus a little bit of chard.

It's not fantastic wealth but it's so satisfying to enjoy what we raised ourselves ... and there's a lot more to come! The labor time is essentially free since I tend the stuff as a work break; the act of planting, watering and tending is very physical and meditative, almost the opposite of writing. Perhaps, just as we have to exercise and stretch the extendor muscles to balance the work we do on the flexors, we have to exercise the part of the mind that deals with little physical things to balance the part that deals with huge abstract things.

Immigration Theater: Can We Admit Everyone Has A Good Point?

The most intractable arguments tend to be those on which everyone has a good point.

Everyone gets to point at their  point and ignore the other guy's.   Perhaps "ignore" is too strong a word but can we agree that just about every point-of-view on immigration policy has at least some small measure of validity?

IS2M that the immigration brou-ha-ha is a tool for people with bigger agendas (winning at the ballot box and thereafter robbing the Treasury). Like abortion (...which Dr. Brin deconstructed pretty well a while back...), immigration is a perfect political issue for rousing the Faithful so long as it remains unresolved, which may explain why it has remained unresolved for so long.

I suggest we approach the subject de novo; all political factions have sinned, if all were punished according to our desserts who would yet stand?

The first question to ask is: What is the best immigration policy for America?

I suggest some priorities:
(A) maintain the Constitution
(B) maintain liberty
(C) maintain security
(D) maintain a healthy economy.

We can argue which oughta be ranked higher or even what some of those words *mean*, but if we accept the above ranking, the answers on immigration policy simplify.

As to LIBERTY: A "papers please" law mandating that you carry proof of citizenship or face a penalty, however mild, violates liberty completely. BUT proving that you have right-to-work in the USA at employment time is no additional infringement on liberty, since you have to submit tax information anyway to both state and federal bodies. (It's worth noting that Arizona's aggressive eVerify requirements has been accompanied by a large reduction in the number of illegals in that state.)

As to SECURITY: Any illegal traffic is a security threat because it establishes channels through which nastier payloads than an illegal drywaller can travel. However, it is simply not possible to seal our national borders physically and it is worse than silly theater to try; setting up barriers establishes laboratories for smugglers to experiment with (just think what Prohibition did for speedboat technology!) But a legalized, regulated trade in booze did, and in labor will, shut down the smuggling operations by simple applications of the laws of economics.

As to ECONOMY: the only reason you hire illegals is that they're cheaper than Americans, for reasons discussed ad nauseum. That undercuts wages paid to Americans and contributes to unemployment. (And it's not just in the farm sector; how can legitimate drywallers and roofers and meatcutters compete with illegal labor?) Why don't we figure out roughly how many  immigrants we want here to supplement our citizen work force and issue that many work visas? And if you're caught paying an illegal, your fine is the entirety of the prevailing wage - meaning, you paid the market wage anyway, and whatever you paid the illegal was a gift.

IIRC there used to be a minority of conservatives who could talk rationally about immigration, e.g. John McCain, but in our current political climate, silly theater like Arizona's law and a border fence is too valuable for diverting attention away from serious discussion of serious solutions.

"I Write Like" Mark Twain?

I gave the "I Write Like" website took a sample of my writing ("Dirt Cheap Salad Fixings") and it spat out the answer: I write like Mark Twain!

I write like
Mark Twain

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Do I believe it? Of course I do! Mark Twain was the greatest American writer I know of, so naturally, I am inclined to believe the site. Don't we tend to believe what we want to believe?

But maybe I should try a few more samples and see if the results change.

• Planted This Week: Armpit Mint is like David Foster Wallace
• T-Mobile Tussel is like Arthur C. Clarke
• Evolution's Problem of Transitional Forms and Something There Is That Does Not Love A Neatly Stocked Bookself is like David Foster Wallace again - uh-oh!, I'm beginning to worry. But then I find:

• Theory of Gravity DISPROVEN! by Science is like Edgar Allen Poe. 

That's just fine. Poe, Clarke and Twain are fine by me. I'm not clear who David Foster Wallace may be, but I've seen some of his novels at the thrift store. I don't know that I need to read any, if I can get the same effect just reading my own stuff!

Dirt Cheap Salad Fixings

Ingrediants:

Seed packets: very cheap. There are often packets of last year's seeds around that are almost as usable as this years; they're supposed to have reduced potentcy, meaning, that  a fraction of the seeds won't sprout. But they're so cheap or free that the difference makes no difference. Keep your eyes open for neighborhood "Seed Swaps"; often they left over from your last year are what someone else is looking for this year, and vice versa.
Red clay pots: They're all over, especially if you kept you eyes open throughout the year and helped out friends who were ridding themselves of excess pots.. Never buy them new; they are very inexpensive 2nd hand, often free because if they have a slight chip they don't sell even though that doesn't affect the functionality.
Space: there are all sorts of spaces begging for a row of clay pots. Next to your house, or on the edge of a sidewalk next to a wall. No-one walks that close to a wall anyway so why not put the space to use?
Dirt: Oddly enough, this is the part that cost me the most. I got a pickup truck load of nice gardening soil for $20. Your prices may vary.

Directions:
Put it all together according to the seed packet direction. Pad the bottom of the pot with a little extra green and brown matter (leaves, twigs - but not pine needles; they're too acidic). Add dirt, seeds and a little water, and you're almost done.

You don't have to set up a whole lot of pots all at once. Everyone has a different schedule. I like to take a break once a day or so and set out another plant or seed another pot. This method means I'm not doing too much all at one time; I can still get my other work done, and use gardening as a fun break instead of a chore. But you must adopt the schedule that its your lifestyle.

The Payoff:
In a few short weeks, nice salad greens! Or perhaps some chard, or mint, our what-have-you. This arises with minimal effort on your part; the quality is great because you know exactly went into making the plant ... and best of all: it's dirt cheap!

OEF/OIF PTSD lawsuit deadline: July 24

A July 24 deadline to opt-in to lawsuit for OEF/OIF vets discharged due to PTSD and shorted benefits is coming up fast.

That means if you qualify, NOW is the time to sign up and opt-in. If you don't, you can still sue on your own but it'll be a whole lot harder without the help of your buddies or the lawyers who are working on the case at no cost to the veterans.

You can learn about it at this website: http://www.ptsdlawsuit.com, but here are the key points:

"This website provides information about a class action lawsuit known as Sabo v. United States. This lawsuit is very important to some (but not all) veterans who were diagnosed during military service with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and then discharged from active duty due, at least in part, to their PTSD.

This lawsuit does not affect most of the tens of thousands of veterans who have been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) over the last 30 years. It only involves veterans who

(a) served on active duty in the U.S. Army, Navy, Marine Corps, or Air Force,
(b) were found by a Physical Evaluation Board to be unfit for continued service due, at least in part, to the individual's PTSD,
(c) were assigned a disability rating for PTSD of less than 50%, and, as a result,
(d) were released, separated, retired, or discharged from active duty after December 17, 2002, and prior to October 14, 2008 (regardless whether such release, separation, retirement, or discharge resulted in the individual's placement on the Temporary Disability Retirement List).

If you are one of the veterans described above, a legal notice about this lawsuit has been sent to you by the National Veterans Legal Services Program (NVLSP). You should receive this legal notice by January 29, 2010. If you receive this legal notice, please read the four categories on the left of this page and click the category that fits your case. This will describe the additional benefits you potentially could receive if you join this lawsuit.

If you are one of the veterans described above and do not receive a legal notice from NVLSP by January 29, 2010, please click on "I DID NOT RECEIVE THE LEGAL NOTICE" on the left of [the website].

To answer a few more questions that might have occured to you, the website FAQ says

• The lawyers who represent the veterans in the Sabo lawsuit are not charging the veterans a fee for their services. These lawyers have agreed not to charge you or other class members a fee if you choose to join the lawsuit.
• If you join this lawsuit, neither the Court nor a military records correction board can reduce the PTSD rating(s) that the PEB assigned to you absent fraud or unusual circumstances.

One problem that I see with all this is that there may be more than a few people with PTSD who aren't receiving their mail at any address that the government has on file. And sometimes mail gets thrown out; it's not a conspiracy, it's just the way things work. So if you think you might qualify or you know someone might qualify, you have about two weeks to contact the National Veterans Legal Services Program Sabo Class Action Litigation and see if you (or the person you know) might qualify. Why not do it now?

LEARN MORE:

• The Complaint
• The United States Court of Federal Claims (not terribly helpful at this time...) 

And a shout-out to my buddy Susan  Avila-Smith at VetWOW for alerting me to this!

Gambling On Hunger: Evil, Or Very Evil?

Another video today, this one really interesting:

Remember when gas was over $4 a gallon in 2008? Remember the global food crisis that resulted in dozens of food riots around the world and plunged over 100 million people around the world into hunger?

Watch this video and explore the rest of the site to learn more about how speculators brought about 2008’s food and oil bubbles. Most importantly, write to your members of Congress telling them to take action to avoid future bubbles. They need to know that this is important to you. Right now, they are only hearing from Wall Street.

Clearly, this seven minute video is a simplification of a complex issue, but it sums up the history behind and key problems brought on by the deregulation of commodity futures markets.

MORE INFORMATION AT:
http://stopgamblingonhunger.com/
Or if you prefer to read text, try "Goldman Sachs Gambled On Starvation".

And of course this ties into the Giant Pool of Money program a while back. Ya know, we humans have got to figure out what to do with that Giant Pool (or Blob) before it hurts more people!

Neighborhood Reading of Declaration of Independence!

This looks like fun ... next year, try doing it in YOUR neighborhood!
More information here.