THE FAMILY COURT PROJECT HAS COME TO A CLOSE.
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CARSON CITY -- A survey concluding that only a small percentage of Nevada residents would send their children to public schools if they had other options was called a warning to educational leaders that the state public education system is not meeting the needs of parents or their children.
Just 11 percent of Nevada residents who responded to a recent survey on educational issues said they would send their children to public school if they had the freedom to choose any available option, according to the survey of 1,000 Nevada residents for the Nevada Policy Research Institute and the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice that was released Tuesday.
Comments from the Webmaster
While we agree that Nevada public education is dismal, a poll like this
has very little meaning. Who wouldn't send their child to a private
school if given the option?
National and state groups and individuals are challenging a Nevada law that makes juveniles admit guilt to charged crimes in efforts to avoid trial as an adult -- but lets prosecutors use those admissions if juveniles end up in adult court anyway.
In a brief filed in the state Supreme Court, the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, the national Juvenile Law Center, public defenders of Washoe and Clark counties and other groups and activists argued the law is unconstitutional.
Serventi wasn't an officer at the camp, which houses juvenile male offenders. He was what officials nowadays call a "client."
"They did not call us clients back then," the 61-year-old Serventi says, laughing a little. "They called us yard birds." That was back in 1963, when the camp was located in Lovell Canyon.
The youth camp's mission, then as now, was to provide a lifeline and last chance for young male lawbreakers to turn around their lives before being shipped off to the more restrictive confines in Elko or one of the state's adult penitentiaries.
County officials announced the appointment today of the county’s first-ever [child welfare] ombudsman, adding an extra layer of accountability that did not exist before and putting into motion a system that could serve as an agent of change within the child welfare system.
It's not unusual for judges to run midterm for a higher court, guaranteeing that even if they lose, they still have a black robe and a steady paycheck.
...
But Family Court Judge Sandra Pomrenze did something unusual Jan. 7. She filed to run for another newly created department in the same court. So what's with that?
The law was designed to reduce the number of teen drivers killed or injured in traffic accidents. Unfortunately, the latest data indicate that young people just getting their licenses are more likely to be killed in traffic crashes today than were those who started driving under the state's old, less-restrictive licensing system.
These unexpected results suggest that the safety experts may have gotten the teen-driving issue wrong, and that in fact it is not age but greater experience behind the wheel that makes older drivers safer than younger ones.
The latest statistics from the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System show that the traffic-death rates among California drivers ages 16 to 21 who were subjected to the 1998 teen-driver law are 8% higher than among comparable drivers who got their licenses before the law went into effect. This finding, based on figures from 1994 through 2006, factors out the state's population changes, the 3% general increase in overall traffic-death rates and a one-year transition period after the law first applied to each age.
You'd be amazed at the number of respected businessmen, attorneys, police, firefighters and union groups supporting District Judge Elizabeth Halverson.
The Professional Fire Fighters of Nevada, the Las Vegas Lodge 1 Fraternal Order of Police, the National Law Enforcement Association of Nevada, Nevada Concerned Citizens, Veterans in Politics, the Southern Nevada Central Labor Council and La Voce. Law firms including Cobeaga Law Firm and Mainor, Eglet and Cottle. Staunch Republican businessman Jim Marsh. Attorney Robert Vannah.
However, if you look carefully, the endorsement dates are 2006, not 2008. These were endorsements she received when she was running against perennial candidate Bill Henderson. What we have is not a failure to communicate, but one more obvious example of Halverson's deceitfulness. Potentially, the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline could make this a new count against her.
Marelyn Shapiro adopted and is raising seven kids on her own. On the side she also rescues injured songbirds and shelters pet dogs that need a new home.
National Politics: Coke vs. Pepsi
1/21/08:
[National]
Coke vs. Pepsi
(Family Court Chronicles/Glenn Campbell)
Commentary from webmaster. - Linkable
Entry
Comments from the Webmaster
Coke vs. Pepsi.
That's what politics usually boils down to:
one carbonated sugar drink against another.
People get in these big heated arguments
about which candidate is better -- Coke or
Pepsi, Clinton or Obama, etc. -- because
that's the way the system has set things
up, but all I see is a huge waste of
resources. We all debate national soft drinks
while the real tasks that we each have
on our plate remain undone.
Real nutrition doesn't involve either Coke or
Pepsi.
Being one of 200 million voters, it doesn't make
one wit of difference which presidential candidate
I support, and it is wasteful to devote any
of my precious time or energy on it.
Coke and Pepsi are just a distraction from
what is really important in life: making changes
within your own area of control.
The more wine costs, the more people enjoy it, regardless of how it tastes, a study by California researchers has found.
Researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the California Institute of Technology found that because people expect wines that cost more to be of higher quality, they trick themselves into believing the wines provide a more pleasurable experience than less expensive ones.
CARSON CITY -- The 500-bed Southern Nevada Correctional Center in Jean will be closed in July as part of the governor's plan to cut prison spending by $25 million, the prisons director said Monday.
The closure of the Jean prison will save the state $11.5 million. The facility also was [previously] closed between 2000 and 2006.
The prison will be maintained and reopened when additional cells are needed. Because it is the smallest prison in Southern Nevada, Skolnik said, it is easier for the department to close it now and reopen it when additional space is needed.
Inmates in the Jean prison will be transferred to other prisons in Indian Springs, about 45 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as will more than 100 staff members.
Comments from the Webmaster
The closure of Jean is relevant to juvenile justice because the
prison housed a unit for young offenders, such as juveniles tried as adults.
In a survey published in the January issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine, about 45% of Chicago-area physicians responding acknowledged that they have treated patients with a placebo. Almost 1 in 4 of those responding had offered a placebo to at least one patient in the last year, and 8% said they had resorted to treatment with a placebo more than 10 times in the last year.
Placebo treatments, as defined by the researchers and the doctors they surveyed, go well beyond the popular notion of placebo as a "sugar pill." Some physicians do write a prescription for a capsule filled with inert ingredients: a classic "dummy pill" called Cebocap that comes in three colors. (The blue capsules listed as Cebocap No. 1 on the Walgreen's pharmacy website are reputed to be "extra potent," according to the website Over My Med Body, which is frequented by physicians in training.)
This week, parents who want to learn more about the gangs their kids may run into can get some help from police.
D.A.R.E. officers along with Metro and the gang task force will offer training on their "Parents Handbook on Gangs."
Most of the credible scientific
evidence points in the same direction:
Educational programs DO NOT WORK
in controlling impulsive behaviors.
Education can teach technical skills and
impart knowledge but it cannot teach
emotional control to those who have
very little to begin with.
Clark County’s court system has taken steps to reduce the cost of publicly paid overtime by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Court Executive Officer Chuck Short said the measures, implemented in Justice Court in May, are expected to trim the lower court’s $1.1 million overtime budget by 21.5 percent, saving taxpayers roughly $236,000 by the time this fiscal year ends in June.
...
Trimming overtime in the county court system, Short said, has met with resistance from employees accustomed to it.
“We’re finding that we’re dealing with a culture of entitlement,” he said. “Over time, it becomes part of someone’s annual income. They expect to keep getting it.”
But, Short added: “You have to be persistent. You have to be disciplined in telling whoever comes to you that you need to do it this way.”
The state license represents Clark County's on-time compliance with a 2007 legislative mandate intended to create a new level of oversight and accountability at the shelter.
At the time, as many as 164 children were residents of Child Haven until they could either return home or enter foster care.
Under the new license, Child Haven's maximum capacity is 96. Palma doubts the population will near that any time soon. As of Friday, Child Haven's population was 33.
Licensing is a good thing for Child Haven, but the strategies that have led to the reduced population create a new set of concerns for child advocates like Bill Grimm, senior attorney for the National Center for Youth Law.
...
"Capping the population and setting standards in the absence of having standards in the past is a positive move forward," Grimm said.
But the effect is similar to what happens when you press on a balloon, he said. The section you press on deflates, but additional pressure forces the balloon to swell in other places.
While Child Haven has had problems in the past, the bulk of Clark County's child welfare woes have occurred in foster home settings, Grimm said.
"There's been a lack of support and services for children in foster homes," Grimm said.
Comments from the Webmaster
The dramatic reduction of the population of Child Haven is
cause for great celebration... or suspicion.
Members of a state commission, whose aim is to increase public access to court records, today will consider a separate proposal that some say threatens access and derails all of the commission's work since April.
"One provision (of the proposal) completely guts all the work that the commission has done," said Las Vegas attorney Richard Myers, who serves on the state Supreme Court's 10-month-old Commission on the Preservation, Access and Sealing of Court Records. "Given the deliberations of our commission, I would think everybody would be of the same thinking. To the degree this (proposal) guts everything we have done, I am opposed to it."
Marren chose to leave the bench in 1998 and now wants back in. Such a story isn’t unheard of in politics; U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey decided to return to Congress in 2002, a couple of years after retiring.
But a judge? They tend to serve until they retire or lose a reelection bid.
...
It was the temptation of living closer to his then-home of Logandale, he said, that lured him to Mesquite in 1998 as its first full-time city attorney.
Comments from the Webmaster
We suspect that there was a lot more to Marren's 1998 departure than
that last paragraph. This seems to us like a critical question in
his candidacy: "Why did you resign?"
CARSON CITY -- The surprise announcement that Supreme Court Justice Bill Maupin would not seek re-election prompted immediate interest from potential successors Wednesday.
Both Las Vegas attorney and previous high court candidate Don Chairez and Washoe County Family Court Judge Deborah Schumacher filed for the position after Tuesday's announcement that Maupin would step down from the bench after his term ends this year.
Nevada's K-12 education system, which is facing budget cuts, got a D-plus average grade on a national report card released Wednesday by an industry publication. The grade was slightly below the national C average.
The number of marriage licenses issued in Clark County dropped in 2007 for the third straight year to just under 107,000, the lowest number since 1996.
A variety of factors get the blame: the economy, gas prices, national trends in marriage and family, international competition, and a fracas over a rogue wedding chapel that was forcibly closed in October. ...
Las Vegas' downward numbers also could reflect a larger trend: Fewer people across the country are getting married.
The annual marriage rate hovered at just above 10 people per 1,000 throughout the 1970s and '80s, but started falling in the late '80s. In 2006, the rate was 7.3 people per 1,000, the lowest rate in 86 years.
People are marrying later and divorcing less often, said David Popenoe, an emeritus scholar at Rutgers' National Marriage Project. People are also cohabitating without marrying at much higher rates.
INTERNAL ERROR: Cannot open /2008/jan/06marren.txt
This summer, Nevada's juvenile sex offenders will become subject to the strictest sanctions this state has seen. Under new state laws that take effect in July, passed to implement federal laws and keep federal funding, teenagers such as Michael will be punished as adults, lumped in with rapists and pedophiles.
For example: A 14-year-old boy found guilty of fondling a 13-year-old girl one time will have his photograph posted on national public Internet sex offender registries for at least 25 years. He will be there alongside a 50-year-old teacher found guilty of sexually assaulting several students in his first-grade classroom.
Many experts, including social workers, psychologists, academics, attorneys and even prosecutors interviewed by the Sun, question whether this is in the best interests of the child or the community. And some raise even more uncomfortable issues: about children's culpability, how well they understand what they've done, about how we as a society want to treat disturbed youth -- like hopeless felons or troubled teens who need help? About whether we can arrest and punish our way out of this problem.
Comments from the Webmaster
It looks like REAL JOURNALISM has come to Family Court at last!
This is the sort of in-depth reporting we never expected from OUR press --
which is why we suspect an alien invasion. Who is this "Abigail
Goldman" and who does she really work for?
She seems to have nailed complex issue without breaking a sweat.
The State of Nevada awarded Child Haven its license to care for 96 children, meeting a Jan. 1 deadline and ensuring the facility meets state-mandated requirements for safety.
Child Haven was the only facility of its kind in the state that was not licensed. The state will now take frequent looks at the facility’s programs, recordkeeping and safety standards. The licensure marks the first time an outside agency has been given such oversight authority over Child Haven.
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1/30/08:
Family services ombudsman to help address complaints: 'Fact-finder' pledges service to children
(Las Vegas Review-Journal/Scott Spjut)
Entities:
Ombudsman for Children and Families (subject),
Virginia Valentine (quoted),
evanst (subject) 
1/29/08:
County Hires First Ombudsman
(Press Release/Jennifer Knight)
Entities:
Ombudsman for Children and Families (subject),
evanst (appointment announced),
Virginia Valentine (quoted),
reid (quoted) 
1/27/08:
[California]
Wrong way for teen drivers:California's strict law on licenses may not be making the roads safer for young people
(Los Angeles Times/Mike Males)
1/24/08:
Halverson's Web site still lays claim to endorsements from 2006 bid
(Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jane Ann Morrison)
Entities:
Elizabeth Halverson (subject),
Stefany Miley (election opponent) 
1/22/08:
Seven adopted kids -- 'It don't get any better'
(Las Vegas Review-Journal/Joan Whitely)
Coke vs. Pepsi.
1/15/08:
Nevada Supreme Court to Hear Bergeron Custody Arguments
(KLAS-TV/Colleen MacCarty)
Entities:
Bergeron (case),
Nevada Supreme Court (actions before),
Gerald Hardcastle (mentioned),
Barbara Buckley (quoted) 
1/14/08:
Doling out the placebo effect: With a growing belief in mind-body connections, more doctors see smart therapy in 'dummy pill.'
(Los Angeles Times/Melissa Healy)
1/14/08:
Coroner's Program Ineffective? (Family Court Newsletter #30)
(Family Court Chronicles/Glenn Campbell)
2-page printed newsletter distributed at Family Court. Entities:
coronersprogram (subject),
Drug Abuse (treatment of),
Glenn Campbell (author),
DARE (ineffectiveness of) 
1/13/08:
Child Haven prizes licensing by state: Shelter answers calls for more accountability
(Las Vegas Review-Journal/Lisa Kim Bach)
Entities:
Child Haven (subject),
Tom Morton (quoted),
Lou Palma (quoted),
Bill Grimm (quoted),
Lisa Kim Bach (author) 
1/10/08:
Fewer going to the chapel: Number of marriage licenses issued drops for third straight year
(Las Vegas Review-Journal/Alan Choate)
Entities:
Marriage (statistics) 
