Ok, maybe counsel over shot the jury a bit in the trial of Senator Robert Menendez. The Senator is facing allegations of bribes from Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen ranging from luxury vacations to luxury flights to campaign contributions. After presenting a fairly complex case of gifts, influence peddling, and nuanced criminal standards, a question can back from the jury. The juror asked the judge “what is a senator?”
This may prove that the jury actually does reflect the population at large since 64 percent of Americans cannot name all three branches of government.
U.S. District Judge William Walls declined to answer the question.
Of course, if the allegations are proven, Menendez seems to have forgotten the answer to that question some time ago.
Judge Walls could always send this answer to the jury:
A great example of America’s government school education. Wonder what the chances are this person even understood the charges. And these people walk among us.
Reportedly, the fastest growing, tax-funded K-12 contractor schools in the U.S. are allegedly associated with a Turkish national/Muslim cleric living in Pennsylvania.
What position do you speculate that curriculum relating to the 3 branches of the U.S. government holds, on the schools’ priority list?
By contractor school you mean public school? Have not heard this. Is this through the Dept. Of Education? Thanks for the info.
No…a K-12 public school has a board elected by the community’s voters. It’s expense records are available for public review and more stringent rules apply to them. In some states the tax-bought school assets belong to the contractors instead of the community. The assets of public schools belong to the community. As an example of rule differences, students and staff of contractor schools can use class time to lobby state legislatures while public schools are prohibited from the practice.
Bill Gates and the Walton’s have spent more than $1 bil. to expedite the process of making taxpayer-funded community schools into contractor schools. The contractor schools do not have a mandated process for community input to decisions i.e. taxpayer representation. Control is supposed to come from consumers who can move their children to schools of “choice”. The choice works both ways. The contractor schools can reject the children they choose to reject. If the model proceeds as predicted and eliminates “government” schools, then the future American workforce will include workers without schooling.
Bill Gates (the individual, not his foundation) and Zuckerberg are investors in the largest for-profit seller of schools-in-a-box, which is the direction that I think is planned for American worker training, in other words profit taking from job preparation which begins in pre-school and replaces the broader values of K-12 education. The originator of schools-in-a-box stated that the product’s anticipated 20% return would attract investors.
In D.C., Gates funds a Congressional senior staff network for education. He spent money last November in Washington state to defeat judges who had rendered verdicts favorable to public schools.
Neither political party opposes the “large scale branding” for the charter/contractor school model that Gates advocates (with big bucks) for the nation’s schools.
IMO, the colonialist model that is popular among tech titans created the political action surrounding education. Tech kings contribute big dollars to the parties. You can read about the overarching Gates’ plan, online, at Philanthropy Roundtable in the Kim Smith interview. She created a number of the organizations like New Schools Venture Fund that reflect Gates’ goals. He funds the organizations with millions of dollars.
Massachusetts voters have been the first to reject privatization. Representatives of both Obama’s admin and the Repub. admin. favored and promoted the privatization, which the voters resoundingly opposed in 2016.
Did not realize it was this complicated. Have heard that Bill Gates is behind the Common Core method of instruction and I do not agree with that. My children are grown, but I have several grandchildren. Need to become more informed. Thanks again for the information.
Thanks for the reply. I hope you will spread the info. Our local taxes, our communities and we are unable to keep the schools that our kids attend out of the control and clutches of big political spenders.
If you follow the draft legislation of the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council, you will see what citizens are up against. There’s a site, ALEC Exposed, that breaks down the info. by state and topic.
Will check it out. Thanks again.
Juror: “What is a Senator?”
Judge: “Among other things, a cigar.”
Menedez does have the right to have a jury of his peers. Peer confirmed.
It was a single juror who posed the question. The judge not only refused to answer, he arbitrarily refused to provide a transcript of a closing argument. Can we please pass federal and state laws removing criminal penalties for physically assaulting judges? A little physical pain administered them might induce them to behave better.
And it’s a reasonable wager the other jurors could have explained it to him, were it not some perverse verbiage in the state’s model jury instructions.
Jury. noun, a panel of 12 ignorant people.
jury (n.): A more intimate form of voting that ruins a single person’s life instead of the entire nation.
One juror posed the question, Mr. Innumerate.
And since your idea of ‘knowledge’ is to imbibe every conspirazoid fantasy that comes down the pipe, every man of sense would prefer an ignoramus on the jury to you on the jury.
I feel for the prosecutors. I once had a jury of licensed drivers send out a message to the judge asking what a “yellow caution sign” on a roadway meant.
mespo – did the judge send in the standard answer from the state driver’s manual? 😉 That had to give everyone a little pause unless they were looking for a strict definition.
No he just rolled his eyes and send it back.
mespo – do they take their cell phones away from them now in the jury room, but I would be looking it up on my smart phone. 😉
The bailiff’s don’t take ’em but they are told not to bring them into court.
Vote early and often. But not for Menendez.
The correct answer to the jury’s question is : a hockey player from Ottowa or a member of the Washington American League baseball team from 1901-1971.
The judge probably gave one of those stupid instructions about not using your fellow jurors for knowledge things. However, this may be a lesson to future prosecution. This is a Senator. This is a federal judge. He/they should have gone over his oath of office, etc.
Still, it was the great Woody Hayes who started a football practice after a loss saying, “We are going back to basics. THIS is a football.”
This is what we get ever since Bill Clinton asked what the meaning of “is” was.
Unfortunately, these jurors probably received the wrong version of Schoolhouse Rock as students:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_1LfuZjWJk
Not surprising…..these are the folks who elected Chris Christie.
And Barrak Obama both 2 times
Christie’s opponent in 2013 was an unremarkable state legislator who’d had an unremarkable legal career. His opponent in 2009 was Jon Corzine. Just how are New Jersey voters stupid for preferring him?
Christie – a political hack or Corzine – an exMatne and self made billionaire, you back the hack, very telling.
Ex Marine, id est.
Now you know why the American Founders never intended for the “poor” or women to vote in their new restricted-vote republic, wherein “…supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote…” – Merriam Webster, which was distinctly not a one man, one vote democracy.
Alexander Fraser Tytler
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy–to be followed by a dictatorship.”
Looks like America has the best of both worlds: A superficially functioning democracy with a ruling class dictatorship as the shadow government swamp.
The spelling error in this report was especially wounding.