Money is no object to some of America's top lawyers, especially if it's ours!
Ostensibly set up to provide free legal services to the poor, the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) has spent $5 billion in federal money since 1974. A great deal of this money has been spent to litigate or lobby for the alleged rights of felons, drug addicts, welfare recipients, illegal aliens, abortionists, and perverts.
The Legal Services Corporation deserves much of the blame 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 on the High Court to require a hearing process before benefits can be cut off.
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 gets another federal subsidy for its growing array of destructive behaviors, it expands the ranks of the dependent and increases the burden on the taxpayers who support them. It is thereby hastening the decline of our free society.
This federally-funded dispenser of liberal largesse is not without its supporters, however. An open letter to the House of Representatives appeared recently as a half-page ad in a Washington D.C. newspaper. Paid for by a group called the Committee of General Counsel for the Preservation of Legal Services, it petitioned Congress to reject a proposed 50-percent cut in funding for the Legal Services Corporation. The Committee consists of the general counsel of 18 of America's largest corporations: Ford, General Motors, Unisys, The Limited, Kodak, GE, Colgate-Palmolive, Procter & Gamble, Georgia-Pacific, Nike, AT&T, Shell, Merck & Co., Mutual Life Insurance, Xerox, Bank of America, DuPont, and Tenneco.
In their open letter, these top corporate lawyers claim that the Legal Services Corporation has "undergone a number of important changes to increase accountability." They assert that LSC has "accepted and responsibly implemented the restrictions placed upon it."
These top corporate lawyers sanctimoniously assert that they are "deeply concerned that reducing funding for the legal services program would leave the nation's poor without real alternatives for assistance on critical civil matters." Alleging that welfare reform has created "considerable social upheaval," they claim it is "particularly important to assure the poor that they will continue to have access to the legal system." If they're really so concerned, however, these highly-paid attorneys could easily donate their own time and money to provide legal services for the needy. But no, they'd rather spend taxpayer money to promote an agenda that most Americans find objectionable.
