Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (490880)	11/11/2003 5:03:28 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769670

did you read the article before foolishly spinning ??

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (490880)	11/11/2003 5:04:16 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769670

He made the Brooklyn Democratic Party boss a member of his law firm. And the boss, Assemblyman Clarence Norman Jr., put him on the panel that screened Democratic nominees for Supreme Court judgeships, a powerful position since the nomination is tantamount to election in heavily Democratic Brooklyn. "He's very well known," said Justice Reinaldo E. Rivera of the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court, when asked how Mr. Batra came to offer welcoming remarks at his swearing-in ceremony last year. "Everybody knows Mr. Batra." Indeed, a review of Mr. Batra's cases and interviews with judges and lawyers who know him provide a glimpse into a seldom seen corner of the court system where cozy relationships can play defining roles in who becomes a judge and who benefits from the decisions that judges make. In Mr. Batra's case, he took the tried and true tools of networking — schmoozing, flattery, mutual back-scratching — and practiced them to an extent that tended to blur, or even ignore, the boundaries between the bench and the bar. Judges who were his friends, or who visited his house or who joined him for dinner, gave him appointments or presided over cases in which he had a stake, according to court records. Twice he was awarded fees that state monitors later found unusually high. In one instance, defendants who paid Mr. Batra $225,000 to settle his own civil suit said they never realized he knew the judge in the case as well as he did. nytimes.com

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (490880)	11/11/2003 5:10:36 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769670

The case, in 1994, concerned a fall Mr. Batra said he had from a swivel chair in his office. He sued the Brooklyn company that sold him the chair. He said the fall had left him with herniated disks, loss of height, worn-down teeth, heart damage and frustration and anger that "leaks out in certain relationships," according to court papers. He sought $80 million — for his suffering, but also for a patio bar and a game room with table-tennis and air-hockey tables "to permit activity without injury or waste of travel time," the papers said. The case was assigned to acting Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Diane A. Lebedeff, someone with whom Mr. Batra became friendly. While she was hearing the case, they occasionally shared a meal, according to interviews. More significant, she gave him several court appointments, including a 1999 case that state investigators found troubling. In that case, the judge asked Mr. Batra to evaluate whether a wealthy 94-year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease needed a financial guardian. Mr. Batra charged $400 an hour for his work, nearly double the usual rate, state investigators found. And when he determined the woman did need a guardian, Justice Lebedeff gave him that post, too, with the family's consent. All told, he made $84,753 in fees paid from the woman's assets. The investigators noted that he charged $100 for each of 80 short phone calls and never listed their subject matter. Eight lawyers involved in the swivel-chair case say that Justice Lebedeff never told them about these appointments. Leonard Chipkin, a lawyer who represented the furniture store's insurer, said she should have. "In any personal injury case, credibility is an issue," he said. "If I make a motion challenging the credibility of the plaintiff and I've got a judge who trusts this man with a great deal of money, that's something that I would have wanted to know." In an interview, Justice Lebedeff defended her conduct as appropriate and impartial. She said she could not recall whether she had disclosed the appointments in court or whether she needed to. "If I had thought it was appropriate to do so, I would have done it," she said. Mr. Batra said the judge did not need to disclose the appointments because the lawyers knew about the relationship, having sat in a hearing about the woman's case in court one day. Mr. Batra ultimately won a settlement in the swivel-chair case after six years. Defense lawyers said his case was helped by several orders from Justice Lebedeff — one of which was overturned by appellate judges who said Justice Lebedeff had not objectively reviewed the history of the case. Mr. Batra said the defendants paid him $225,000. The facts, he said, were simply on his side. "The impartiality of the court process," Mr. Batra said, "substantively cannot be toyed with."

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (490880)	11/11/2003 5:14:59 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Respond to of 769670

Soros's contributions are filling a gap in Democratic Party finances that opened after the restrictions in the 2002 McCain-Feingold law took effect. In the past, political parties paid a large share of television and get-out-the-vote costs with unregulated "soft money" contributions from corporations, unions and rich individuals. The parties are now barred from accepting such money. But non-party groups in both camps are stepping in, accepting soft money and taking over voter mobilization. "It's incredibly ironic that George Soros is trying to create a more open society by using an unregulated, under-the-radar-screen, shadowy, soft-money group to do it," Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson said. "George Soros has purchased the Democratic Party." In past election cycles, Soros contributed relatively modest sums. In 2000, his aide said, he gave $122,000, mostly to Democratic causes and candidates. But recently, Soros has grown alarmed at the influence of neoconservatives, whom he calls "a bunch of extremists guided by a crude form of social Darwinism." washingtonpost.com