Stop Telling People to Have Kids

Concerned with dropping "fertility rates", there are people who encourage others to have (more) children. This is one of millions of examples of why that's a terrible idea.

Hannah Fry reported in the Left Angeles Times...

The city of Napa and Napa County will pay $5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the father and grandmother of a 3-year-old girl who was tortured and killed in 2014.

The City of Napa and the Count of Napa. That means the taxpayers of Napa. That's because they were supposed to somehow only have government officials and employees who would have prevented this.

Kayleigh Slusher died in a Napa apartment in January 2014 after being neglected and abused by her mother, Sarah Krueger, and her mother’s boyfriend, Ryan Warner. Both were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, according to court records.

They should have gotten the death penalty.

After Kayleigh’s death, the girl’s body was stuffed in a duffel bag and stored in the freezer for three days before she was placed in her bed, where police ultimately found her. The girl’s cause of death was multiple blunt-force injuries to her head, torso and extremities. She had suffered a broken rib and damage to her small intestine and was covered in bruises before she died, authorities said at the time.

Don't you tell me that lethal injection is "cruel and unusual". The people who wrote and adopted that phrase into our Constitution would have done far worse to her murderers.

Kayleigh’s father, Jason Slusher — who was serving a prison sentence when his daughter was killed — and her grandmother, Robin Slusher, filed a lawsuit against the city and county in 2015 alleging that despite obvious signs of abuse and neglect, police and child welfare officials did not intervene or remove Kayleigh from her mother’s home.

Why was her father in prison? Was he wrongly convicted? Or was Sarah Krueger just that good at picking men? Whichever it was, Jason made a terrible mistake in knocking up Sarah. And his mother... how did she raise that guy? All that being said, I do recognize that there are legal principles that apply here that say they could be rotten people (not saying they are, but they COULD be) and they still have standing to get big bucks because of what happened to their daughter/granddaughter.

The lawsuit said that in the three weeks before Kayleigh died, Napa police and child services had been called to the girl’s home five times regarding possible abuse and drug use.

When officers visited the home, they “would have seen that she was covered in bruises and in excruciating pain from a broken rib and the intestinal infection that was slowly killing her,” but they did nothing, according to a statement from Slusher’s attorneys.

Is anything being done to the people who responded to these calls? Demotions? Loss of jobs? Criminal prosecutions? Stuff like that has been pursued in SoCal after a highly publicized torture-murder of a boy. Or is Joe Taxpayer the only person who's paying?

I have no idea if the responding personnel were simply callous or jaded or secretly hate little girls, or if they made genuine mistakes, or if they were sincere but completely incompetent. I wasn't there. I wasn't in their heads. It certainly looks like they failed to take action when they clearly should have. It's a terrible position to be in. If you make mistakes, kids die or you take kids out of a loving home, at least for a while.

But let's not forget who put that little girl in that position in the first place. Her own parents. When parents can't or won't protect their children instead of torturing and murdering them, how do we expect a bureaucracy to do it effectively on a consistent basis? Answer: It can't. Which means horror stories are inevitable.

Stop telling people to have children. They really shouldn't, unless they're prepared and willing to be good parents.

They Do Everying But Name the Guy a Murderer - UPDATED

The first suspect in criminal homicide cases is usually going to be either the last person who saw (or admitted to seeing) the victim alive, or the victim's spouse (ah, marriage), A good example of the first scenario is this tragic case unfolding right now in Orange County, California. A university student by the name of Blaze Bernstein went missing, and then was found dead over a week later. This article by Kelly Puente in the Orange County Register cites a police document, referring to the "friend" of the victim:

The body of 19-year-old pre-med college student Blaze Bernstein was found Tuesday in brush near a Foothill Ranch park where he went missing more than a week ago, and records show that a high-school classmate who reportedly was the last known person to see him alive appeared nervous when interviewed by detectives.

That's just the start of it.

California Marriage Amendment on Trial

Will a court that is supposed to be bound by the state constitution place themselves above the constitution? Or will they affirm the California Marriage Amendment, voted in as Propostion 8? The Playful Walrus explains.

I Have a Right to Force Others to Give Me a License

After hearing some very good news this last week, I went down to my local DMV office here in California and asked for driver’s license.

Those mean, bigoted DMV workers wanted me to take a driving test. Actually, I’m sure they weren’t all bigots, but were just doing that the mean bigots in authority had told them to do – kind of like Nazi soldiers.

Anyway, they wanted me to take a driver’s test. Well phooey on that. I have known since I was a little boy that I don’t like driving. It just doesn’t appeal to me. The first time I rode a bike, though… wow… bells went off in my head. I knew I was bicyclist.

I was able to join a bicycling club at school, and that helped me feel better about myself. I got picked on and teased by those guys with those souped up cars. They just don’t understand anyone different from them.

So there I was – I wanted my driver’s license, and these DMV employees wanted me to drive. I told them I didn’t want to drive. I had no desire to drive. But I’ve had the same bicycle and have been committed to taking care of it for a long time now. Other people get driver’s licenses. I should be able to get one, too. After all, my love for my bicycle was no different than someone else's love for their car.

They offered me a California I.D. card. They told me it will get me many of the same things as a driver’s license.

What?!? Separate but equal??? I was being treated like a second-class citizen, simply because of my love of bicycles. Why should I have to drive a car to get a driver’s license?

The told me driving was a privilege, not a right. But I’ve seen all of these car drivers getting driver’s licenses. Why should I be denied one just because I don’t like cars?

The good thing is, I know the California Supreme Court is on my side. Someday soon I will be able to get a driver’s license from the people of California, even though those people don't approve, for me and my bicycle.

My next stop will be to get my licenses to practice law and medicine, though I have an aversion to taking tests and blood. Why should I be denied the same respect that doctors get? I will also be stopping at the VA to get some veteran's benefits. Why should be I be denied those, just because I am a pacficist? That one might be tough, seeing as how it is a federal thing. I will also be applying for grants for ovarian cancer research for men. I mean, they can't discriminate on the basis of sex, can they?

Tips at Starbucks

Recently, a California court ruled that Starbucks “baristas” in California were due money because they had to share tips with shift supervisors, who got a portion of the tips in the store tip jar.

I don’t get this.

Shift supervisors are the first level of management, true, but they are working right there on the front lines with the baristas. If I was a shift supervisor at a Starbucks in California, I would henceforth refuse to do anything but “manage”. Down a barista and the baristas who showed up are overwhelmed? Too bad! Why should a shift supervisor have to do work that baristas are tipped for, but be denied the tips?

Noelle Kooler of Beverly Hills wrote in to the Los Angeles Times, making my point:

As a former barista and shift supervisor at Starbucks, I am angered by the court's decision. Yes, I am a part of the class-action group that would receive additional tip money. However, the principles behind this lawsuit are outrageous. I've worked in three stores, and in every one, the shift supervisor does almost double the work of a barista. They help customers, make drinks, train new baristas and ensure that the store functions when the managers are away. They earn only a few dollars an hour more than a barista. When I worked at Starbucks, I was a struggling college student and needed those tips. To rule that baristas are more deserving is ludicrous -- tips should be shared evenly.

But I have to wonder why courts are involved in this anyway. I mean really – if some baristas were not happy with the tip situation, why didn’t they just quit and work elsewhere? That’s what people should do when they don’t like a company’s policies or procedures. Nobody is holding a gun to your head to keep you there.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, why are people tipping other people for doing their jobs? I tip for personalized service. Putting coffee into a cup is not personalized service. Carrying my bags a distance is. Waiting on me is. But don’t worry, you baristas – you won’t be making coffee for me and then not getting a tip from me - I don’t frequent Starbucks because it is incredibly overpriced and the whole thing is pretentious.

Hmmm, maybe I should put a tip jar on my desk at the office. Or maybe on my office door, right under my name.