Washington DC is overrun by vampires all year long -- not just on Halloween. Lawyers and lobbyists flock there to suck the lifeblood out of our economy.
The Legal Services Corporation (known as LSC) has spent $5 billion in federal money since 1974. That money did not help the needy. It supported left-wing activists in their ongoing attacks against the society that sustains them. LSC used that $5 billion to prevent the eviction of drug dealers from public housing, to shield the criminal records of violent offenders, to obtain creature comforts for incarcerated convicts, and to secure the premature release of mental patients. It used that $5 billion to lobby for abortion rights, gay rights, the rights of criminals, the rights of drug addicts, the rights of welfare recipients, and the rights of illegal aliens. We'd have been better off if the money had just been burned.
The Legal Services Corporation deserves much of the credit for the spiraling costs of welfare. LSC instigated the court case that led to the 1968 Supreme Court decision that the behavior of welfare mothers cannot be considered when determining eligibility for benefits. The following year, LSC persuaded the Supreme Court to lift the one-year residency requirement for welfare eligibility. In 1970, LSC prevailed upon the High Court to require a hearing process before benefits can be cut off.
The Legal Services Corporation stands second to none in the campaign to coddle criminals. As a result of LSC's class action suit against the North Carolina penal system, each of 13 state prisons was ordered to provide softball and basketball equipment for two teams, a piano, a set of drums, three guitars, and five Frisbees. Thanks to LSC, Chicago prisoners now enjoy cable television and expensive weight-training facilities.
The Legal Services Corporation is continually reaching out to the weak, the wicked, and the weird. LSC has gone to court to force public housing officials to rent apartments to unemancipated minors, to define opium and alcohol addiction as disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and to overturn Georgia's prohibition against Medicaid reimbursement for sex-change operations. Every time LSC secures another federal subsidy for its growing array of destructive behaviors, it expands the ranks of the dependent and increases the burden on the middle class that supports them. It is thereby hastening the decline of our free society.
Hillary Rodham Clinton once served as the chairman of the board of the Legal Services Corporation, and like-minded leftists continue to use it as a vehicle for waging class warfare and erecting a socialist state. With its parasitical pursuits, LSC has added as much as $2 trillion to the national debt. Republicans in Congress can demonstrate their commitment to reducing the size of government by driving a stake through the heart of the Legal Services Corporation.
