Problem: The Washington Supreme Court is asking the Legislature to approve a $90 surcharge on a court filing fee to help provide legal help for the poor in civil cases, Chief Justice Gerry Alexander said Wednesday. "Some might say, why should we support this when we face tough financial times?" Alexander asked in his State of the Judiciary address to a joint session of the Legislature. "It seems to me in America, where we rejoice in the fact that we are a nation devoted to the rule of law, we should not ration access to justice." The recommendation comes from the court's Task Force on Civil Equal Justice Funding, created in 2001 to look for ways to cope with the sparse amount of money available for such cases. As the task force was studying the issue, $900,000 was cut from state support for civil equal justice services. That prompted the state's two main legal services providers - Columbia Legal Services and Northwest Justice Project - to cut their staffs, Alexander said. The change would increase the cost of filing a lawsuit in Superior Court to $200. The total fee would be split, with 54 percent going to counties and 46 percent going to the state for a newly created equal justice account. Alexander also requested money for five additional Superior Court judgeships and one additional District Court judgeships, arguing that increased caseloads require more judges. Two of the Superior Court judges and the District Court judge would be in Clark County, with one Superior Court judge added in the joint district that serves Benton and Franklin counties and one each in Kittitas and Kitsap counties.

Question: "What did Gerry Alexander ask in his State of the Judiciary address to a joint session of the Legislature?"

Answer: "No Increase in Filing Cost"
Answer: no

Problem: Michigan will lose $2 million in federal funding and $600,000 in state funding to provide legal aid to the poor in 2003, according to Deierdre L. Weir, executive director of the Legal Aid and Defender Association, Inc., the state's largest provider of legal services to the poor. Current federal funds of nearly $10.7 million from the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) will drop to $8.7 million for next year, according to Weir. She said that the reductions reflect a decline in the number of persons in the state who are living in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2000 census. LSC uses census data to determine funding across the nation, and according to the census, the state's poverty population fell from an estimated 1.2 million in 1990 to an estimated 968,000 in 2000. The state's legal aid agencies are also bracing for yet another cut in 2003 of some $600,000 of state funding. A portion of filing fees paid by litigants in the state's circuit courts, and a portion of interest on lawyers trust accounts (IOLTA) are earmarked for Michigan legal aid programs. These funds are expected to drop from currently $7.5 million in 2002 to $6.9 million when the Michigan State Bar Foundation makes distributions next year. Most of the decrease is attributed to the past year's low interest rates. "The irony of these funding cuts is that while there may be fewer poor people in Michigan today, the demand for service will not change because the poverty population remains so large and the legal aid funding so little that local providers will never able to serve all who need our service," said Weir. "It's as if the poor will be victimized twice-once for being poor and again as victims of these funding cuts." The U.S. Census Bureau, in spite of its best efforts, cannot locate every poor person living in a census tract, therefore the poor are also undercounted, added Weir. The brunt of these cuts will be felt most in Wayne County where according to the census some 333,000 poor people live, the largest concentration of poverty in the state. LAD will lose more than $870,000 for legal aid in Wayne County, nearly half of the state's total loss, said Weir. While difficult to measure, the loss of funds will mean that several thousand of Michigan's poor in need of legal service will not receive it, or they will receive significantly limited service. Cutbacks will include service in such civil legal matters as landlord-tenant, bankruptcy, consumer, child custody, predatory lending, mortgage foreclosure, utility shutoffs, social security, wills, and probate. "Local providers will have to work harder and smarter and use more technology instead of staff to provide as much service as we can with fewer dollars," said Weir. "We will be providing more selfhelp training to clients enabling them to navigate the legal system on their own in routine matters, more assistance on the telephone, and less direct representation by attorneys in specific, high impact matters. Currently, Michigan has 13 legal aid agencies covering the state's 83 counties.

Question: "What are the consequences of LAD funding cuts and who will be affected most?"

Answer: "No change to services"
Answer: no

Problem: Hotel California My first thought: I was going crazy. Twenty-four hours of silence (vacuum, remember); was I hallucinating noises now? I heard it again. It was a fine bell, reminiscent of ancient stone churches and the towering cathedrals I'd seen in documentaries. And accompanying the bell, I saw a light. Now, there were two things here that made ridiculously small amounts of sense. First, the whole in-a-vacuum why's-there-a-bell thing. Second, I was floating in the dark remnants of my broken ship, and any conceivable light sources were not within view; starlight is a distinctly different color and significantly less bright. These signals were the heralds of my saviors. The first words they said to me meant nothing. I wasn't listening; I didn't care; I was going to live; I was going to keep breathing. Next to those, nothing else mattered. The recycled air tasted sweet in my mouth, and all thoughts that crossed my mind were cheap metaphors about life-giving substances and how breathing was like sex, only better. (I reserved the right to revise this opinion later.) When I was done mentally exclaiming over my impossible rescue, I looked around. The ship, it was odd and old, either so outdated or so heavily modified that I couldn't tell what make it was, and somehow, the crew standing around me fit the same description, a singularly atypical amalgamation of folk. And me, I guess I was one more piece in their puzzle. I was one more scrap to weld onto the rest, one more stranded survivor who was found. I was now one of them.

Question: "Why did the writer think he was going crazy?"

Answer: "He heard a sound and saw a light in a vacuum"
Answer:
yes