Just. Wow.
Our 100th post. Your 1000th comment. All on the same day no less. Congratulations to blogger Nathaniel Woodhull for being the 1,000th commenter! In your own way, each of you that participates in this online community is not only getting things off your chest but each of you provides a valuable public service to the thousands of people that read this blog each week.
We would love more participants and towards that end, Michael Paul has generously offered JCW bloggers the “Yen Interactive Online Community Involvement Award” that comes with a $200.00 thank you check for the blogger achieving the 2,000th post here at JCW.
(note: To avoid any conflicts or user identification, our bloggers can also either assign the payment to the non-profit or other community benefit organization or charity or allow Yen to make a donation to the non-profit of Yen’s choice in the blogger’s name.)
Get involved. Change your world.
From the Oregon border, stretching into the legislative hallways of Sacramento, over into the AOC offices at NCRO, San Francisco and SRO, throughout the California court system all the way down to our border with Mexico – your voice is heard loud and clear in ways you would never imagine. They’re just pretending they’re not listening. They do that lots.
Judicial Council Watcher is your eye in the sky, working with others to coordinate an effective, in-depth media response to the crisis in our judiciary. We could never do this work without your assistance.
Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher and CPA Karen Covel of San Diego:
“Why are they incapable of counting money and delivering the core services that they’re supposed to provide ?” (News10 San Diego)
CJA leadership – Tossing ethics aside to provide a disservice to the people of the State of California.
Judicial Council Watcher 
Michael Paul
March 27, 2011
To all fellow bloggers out there –
Words cannot describe many of the emotions I have felt over the last four years and change since I found out about this mess. I didn’t create it but I’m resolved to ensure it gets straightened out. The information that you’ve provided to JCW and the information that you’ve provided to me and other media organizations has all but silenced the organization we affectionately call pravda, rendering them ineffectual.
Our work is far from over.
In offering these awards, its my desire to encourage more community involvement here at JCW. Should it have the opposite effect (um, no one else has posted this morning and I hope that’s not a message…) or others indicate to JCW it isn’t a good idea, I’ll happily withdraw them.
I’ve been at a loss to think about what more I can possibly do in these matters and hope that all consider these awards in the spirit in which I offer them, nothing more, nothing less.
Thanks again for all of your contact with the press, the stories you’ve told, the examples you’ve shown to others and the questions you keep on asking.
We’ll get ‘er done.
Thanks,
MAP
SF Whistle
March 27, 2011
Michael–
I could not agree more—-
Yes—there are things happening that are cause for encouragement—but the battle to make the largest Judiciary in the western world accountable, transparant and responsive to those it represents and protects IS FAR FROM OVER—-efforts to bring about reform are best characterized as germinating seeds or in it’s infancy–
I have written here before that I am convinced that little will happen until there is ORGANIZED opposition…..
JusticeCalifornia
March 27, 2011
Sunday night musings. . .
All of us writing on this blog had to face a fork in the road somewhere along the way. . .and took the steeper road less travelled. That has led us here, taking part in making history. Because that is what is going down. The largest judiciary in the Western World is necessarily undergoing a forced massive, corrective change, because no one intended so much money and power to be placed in the control of one person– the Chief Justice–who until now has enjoyed no oversight whatsoever. The phenomenal, unchecked concentration of power that was effected under Ron George isn’t healthy, it isn’t democratic, it isn’t what the trial courts were promised, it isn’t fair to the public, and IT ISN’T WORKING.
What a lot has been said and memorialized on JCW. How sad and silent we all were when AOC watcher went away, which left the JC/AOC powers that be without astute oversight and commentary.
JCW took the bull by the horns, and here we are. This blog tells it like it is, sometimes eloquently, sometimes not, because top leadership needs to know if you want respect you have to earn it. If you play a dirty game you earn a dirty name, and you cannot cry about it when that name shows up here. If the emperor is running around naked, embarrassing the entire court, no one on this blog is going to pretend otherwise.
This blog allows us to neutralize Pravda, provide key focused support when necessary, spread the word as fast as lightning (Wendy is REALLY good at this), and share victories.
This blog confounds those in the branch who have used taxpayer funds and a bully pulpit to claim black is white for so long that they cannot understand why no one believes them anymore–
Knowledge is power, and the accumulated (and in many cases as-yet untapped) knowledge of those writing and/or reading this blog is immense.
Long live JCW.