Tag: license

California CSR Board: We’re Going to Violate the Law and Sweep It Under the Rug. You Cool With That?

Came to my attention that under 2422 California test takers were allowed to review their dictation licensing test. At least one source has stated that since 2020, CSR candidates have not been entitled to review their test.

Since the CA CSR Board has been violating the law for at least four years, they’ve decided to correct that by changing the rules so that they simply won’t allow people to review their test. Ana Fatima Costa is spearheading some activism related to this. Allowing our students to review errors can only improve pass rates. If you want to help, go take a look now. This is really something that you want all your state legislators and the people on Ana’s list to be looking at, because it’s a good example of how government should not be doing its business. It’s shady. I’ll demonstrate how:

Word on the street is that this is about preventing cheating. Oh, I’m glad that we’re worried about cheating suddenly after all these decades and not the alleged shortage of doom that allegedly requires the wholesale replacement of stenographic court reporters with digital court reporters. It’s not our fault you only have 20 tests in the vault and can’t be bothered to periodically write more. Sounds like you manufactured a problem to get a desired result, at least to anyone that thinks about it for more than five seconds.

The CA CSR Board is the poster child for my corruption arguments. Let’s put it this way: If the Board is 100% uncorrupted, they’ve done everything in their power to look as dirty as possible. The CA CSR Board is known for failing to protect consumers and crushing working people. If you’re using all of your regulatory power, authority, and trust to make it harder for us to license actual court reporters, laying down the law on solo practitioners, and hurriedly looking away when the multiverse of corporate America breaks the law by using digital, then you are effectively handicapping our side of the market and the motivations for that become fair game for discussion. Yeah, I get it, it’s pretty lucrative for the government to ignore these things, let these businesses spend some money trying their luck at taking that work off the plates of California CSRs using the companies’ illegal business models, and take a slice every time a dollar gets spent in that competition while simultaneously milking the CSRs for their dues. Does that make it right? Does that mean that we should treat corporations better than people wherever it’s economically convenient?

First Amendment was made for issues like ours.

P.S.

Excerpt from a letter detailing the experience of a California CSR candidate submitted by a Stenonymous source.

I know digital court reporters can’t be court reporters in California. I use the verbiage I do for the standardization of language and so that when people find out digital court reporting is a scam, they don’t get confused! It also picks up better in search engines. It’s like the typing/writing thing. We can’t force the whole world to use the language we want them to use. We can, however, stand up and speak out against state-sanctioned lawbreaking. We can share why we prefer the language we prefer.

I’ve been told a participant in a public hearing was muted because they asked when survey results from a survey done by the board would be published. I sure wish I could use my government-granted powers to silence people that ask questions I don’t like. That’s the American dream, baby.

If any of you have lawyer friends, maybe it’s time for us to crowdfund some writs, or lobbying, or whatever makes us enough of a headache that the games and obvious deflections end. I guarantee you that your success is directly related to how many people you can get to take action.

You cool with that?

Fun History: License Plates

Have you ever seen a stenographic license plate? It’s a funny truth that while there are not so many people who can survive a stenographic education, just about anyone can read stenography if they care to, and we can even be called out on some of what we do.

In 1993 a decision was made (reaffirmed) that in California to be deemed an offensive word unsuitable for a license plate, a word need not be understood in that manner by every addressee. This happened when Anita Kahn appealed the decision by the DMV to revoke her stenographic license plate which had the phrase “if you can” on it. For our non-court reporting audience, this can also be translated as the F word. The court determined that some 50,000 to 60,000 people in the state could understand it, that there was therefore a large enough audience to find the word offensive, and that DMV could revoke the plates.

It’s not too often I get to write about fun or interesting things, so it’s my pleasure to get to write about Kahn v Department of Motor Vehicles (1993) (No. B064070. Second Dist., Div. One. May 3, 1993). Originally brought to my attention via a Facebook post. Indeed, it’s a good reminder that wherever we are and whatever we do, there’ll always be someone to rat us out. Kidding!