Grand Juries & Ham Sandwiches

Solomon Wachtler, former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, once said that grand juries were so pliable that a prosecutor could get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.” And after observing a sitting member for the past two months I could not agree more.

Grand juries are seemingly an American anachronism whose purpose in practice appears to be:

1. Rubber stamping the prosecution's argument
2. Providing an extended sabbatical for its participants as all workers:
1. Are paid their salary by their employer
2. Keep their leave 
3. Cannot be fired for participating 

Case in point, today the grand jury indicted 19 people sitting from 9 am to 1 pm with time off for lunch (probably an hour). Another day they handed down 36 indictments in the time of six hours. As far as I know, the grand jury has never voted to NOT indict. 

My incredulity also stems from the fact that a significant amount of effort is put into training participants: 

1. Drive through of every police district at night starting at 8 pm - there are several dozen
2. Tape of an autopsy with explanations
3. Visit to a firing range to learn about ballistics and reaction times
4. Meeting the City State's Attorney 

So if all cases go to trial why bother? 

Blue Collar Coding

Anil Dash posted about creating Vo-Tech schools for coders advocating for an education system that trains people to take up IT jobs maintaining infrastructure. It imagines something similar to how welders or mechanics are trained. This gave me two initial reactions:

1. Are IT jobs homogenized enough that this is possible?
2. Does this lead to a resurgence of labor unions? 

The answer to the first question could be "yes", but I think this requires a stabilization of of client software - looking at you Firefox and Chrome. In large organizations, such as where I work, I think this has happened in practice where I have to use systems that do not work when using new clients. Of course having to use a VM or Terminal Server to connect to these is just awful.

As for unionization, I personally suspect we are the cusp of class wars, as the Gini coefficient of wealth in the US spreads. Unions to me appear to be a resolution to this conflict; if you buy into the notion of a cycle of to these things. Right now membership is at or near an all-time low, but I suspect the floor is near. While I don't think Dash even realizes this may be what he's really writing about I suspect it's tied together.