A question of public corruption and pervasive racketeering

Posted on January 25, 2011

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Members of groups or organizations acting in concert to violate the law present a grave threat to society, especially when members of such an organization stand in judgment over the rest of the populace. When no mechanism exists for state authorities to enforce state laws over state employees, it automatically grants the FBI the authority to enforce state and federal laws over those employees.

Why do so many people point to patterns of racketeering activity in California’s judicial branch? Indeed a long list of attorneys, former employees of California’s judicial branch and the public at large point to the Judicial Council and its administrative arm, the AOC being directly involved in a racketeering enterprise. In the ultimate “you scratch my back and I will scratch your back” local courts accused of malfeasance rely on the AOC and its deep pockets to provide litigation support to defend them. This cuts both ways. When the AOC appears before a court, the court, mindful of whom they rely on for litigation support loathes to move forward any litigation that might damage their relationship with the AOC or the Judicial Council. Indeed, it appears that no litigation against the Judicial Council or the AOC succeeds in making its way to a jury. Is all of this litigation or these attorneys who take it all on that bad or are they legally being railroaded into defeat in front of cooperative courts that assume that the AOC and Judicial Council are as infallable as a judge sitting on the bench? Why is it that law firms won’t take on the AOC? Is it that they know (or quickly learn) that their suits will go nowhere, take 10 years to get there and at the end of the rainbow there is no payday? I have heard this allegation from a large cadre of law firms and individuals. So, in short neither the taxpayers nor the legal community may hold anyone accountable, no one in state government exists to hold anyone accountable and no one is minding the candy store.  

The Attorney General of the State of California does not represent the people in the Jacobs/AGS matters. The AG represents the interests of the AOC. As a result, and this has been confirmed with the AG’s office,  there has been no investigation conducted by the Attorney General’s office with respect to the AOC’s role in the unlicensed contractor debacle, even though on December of 2009, Ron Overholt told reporters that the AOC asked the Attorney General to look into the unlicensed contractors debacle and find out how this could have happened.

So who is looking into this? John Judnick’s Internal Audits Division of the Finance department? The exact same finance department that entered into multimillion dollar contracts statewide with two unlicensed contractors in the first place? How long is Mr. Judnick going to stay employed if he writes a report blaming his superiors who created this cluster*uck? Surely, his director won’t be forwarding any Judnick report to the Executive Director or his sidekick tonto. Nor will the report be submitted to the executive & planning committee on its way to becoming an official report on events. It is not possible for anyone to be objective in such a report and for people to keep their jobs at the same time because there is lots of culpability that goes well beyond a simple mistake or oversight. There is an active effort to cover it all up, brush it all under the carpet and whistle like nothing is going on here.

So in summary, unless the FBI is actively investigating these matters – which we don’t believe they are – then no one is looking into these matters of how two unlicensed contractors managed to land tens of millions of dollars worth of work they were never qualified to perform.

Why was the issue of overcharging only brought up by Michael Paul, the Assembly Committee on Accountability and Administrative Review and a few concerned judges who were blown away to find out how much they were paying for these services? While the AOC remains in denial over these overcharges and falsely claims that they would never pay $150.00 to change a light bulb or $175.00 to empty an ash tray, the evidence provided to JCW indicates that there is a minimum billable service time for every call of two hours for every SWO generated. When considering minimum billable service times, travel times to travel from facility “A” to facility “B” to change a light bulb and the minimum service time onsite to actually change that bulb, those are $150.00+ light bulbs.  

In the beginning, and this is the part that the AOC does not want you to know – the minimum value of a service work order was $2,000.00. This obscene SWO amont was the underlying basis for lowering a flag to half-mast for $1,000.00 and raising it the next day for another $1,000.00. The minimum value of a service work order was lowered to $500.00 some time in late 2008 which interestingly is as far back as the AG’s lawsuit goes to recover this money. Again, taking the issue of gross overcharging with the $2,000.00 service work order minimum value off the table because most of that happened before two years ago.

What is abundantly clear is that there is unlawful collusion between the AOC and its vendors and a cover-up of epic proportions happening. Tens of millions of dollars are being tossed aside in an effort to protect the idiots who really caused the judicial branch harm with those $2,000.00 minimum value service work orders at a time where trial court budgets were being slashed.

And no one but John Judnick is empowered to look into these irregularities? Nobody but the AOC is permitted to manage the litigation against the vendors they are colluding with? No one asks why the financial number given to the Assembly Committee on Accountability & Administrative Review spanning the last two years of service work orders coincides exactly with what the AG’s office has said they seek from the two unlicensed vendors, when both vendors have been doing work for four years? Is there any rational explanation for any of this?

Is there anyone who can ask these questions and get an answer that holds water?

Posted in: Administrative Office of the Courts, AOC, California State Assembly, California State Senate, California's Executive Branch, Court Corruption, Judicial Council of California, Legislation, Lifting Judicial Immunity/Quasi-Immunity, Office of Court Construction & Management, State of California, Trial Courts