All five of you?
Jury duty yesterday. Which, in Cook County terms, translates to getting paid $17 for playing Animal Crossing for nearly six hours straight. Not a bad day, all in all.
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Did You Miss Me?
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4 comments:
Five people?
I'm sure it's at least seven.
Sounds like the jury remuneration is just as generous as it is in Seattle. $10/day here (set in 1959 and never updated).
Yes, I know all the stuff about it being a citizen's duty, giving back to the community, all that stuff - but it'd be nice if the $ actually covered parking and a sandwich.
My wife participated in a study for her jury duty (UW, I think). The results came out last week and that showed that people that show up for jury duty are significantly better off than those who don't. I'm guessing that's mostly because if you're poor it's pretty much impossible for you to show up. If you're making minimum wage and being paid by the hour, your juicy $10/day isn't going to help feed the kids.
Some (I think most) of the courthouses in Cook feature free parking for jurors, probably not the one downtown though. So that's a mixed bag.
CA is $5/day I guess. Illinois used to have a mandatory two week stay, which would suck at any wage. With the exception of a complete craze at work, a 3 day tour of the legal system wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world.
Course, I'm not self-employed. Employer covers up to 5 days of jury.
Still, I kinda like some aspect of citizenship with teeth. Maybe if people had more reasons to do civic duty, they'd vote more and worry about gay marriages less.
Or, maybe not.
Au contraire, I suspect that if there was more stuff you had to do, people would never register to vote in order to evade civic duty altogether.
Still boggles my mind that the whole gay marriage thing was enough to swing an election. Admittedly, the lizard I'd have preferred wasn't exactly great but almost anything would be better than the current lot.
Possibly ... probably ... but if there was a $50 fine for not voting? I know, abstaining is voting. I've used that one myself. So I suppose it wouldn't make for a better democracy.
What grates me most about the "gay marriage will ruin our society" crowd is that after watching documentaries like The Corporation or Walmart, it's clear that something IS ruining our society, or at least fundamentally changing it ... and it sure ain't same sex marriage. Walmart's destroyed way more small towns than a gay priest ever could.
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