Lawyers Write Law, And Then Are The Only Ones To Make Millions

Of course, I am sure this was merely a by-product of sincere efforts to assist the poor and oppressed.

 

 

Sent to you by Robert A. Wicks via Google Reader:

 

 

Lawyers Write Law, And Then Are The Only Ones To Make Millions Directly Off Of It

via Techdirt by Mike Masnick on 11/17/09

It's difficult not to become even more cynical when you read stories like the following one. Sent in by Eric Goldman, it's about a state law in California that was mainly written by two lawyers: Joaquin Avila, a law professor from Seattle, and Robert Rubin, the "legal director" for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. So, here's the interesting thing: since this state law has been put in place (seven years ago), the only lawsuits have been brought by Rubin's committee or Avila and they've made themselves over $4 million with a few more lawsuits pending and a bunch more threatened (again, all from either Avila or Rubin's committee).

What a great deal: write a law, and then be the only lawyers to use the law to make millions.

As for the law itself, it was a law that apparently very few people were asking for -- requiring that state courts carve out specific districts that favor minority groups, so they are not excluded from local elections. Here's how the AP describes it:

The California statute targets commonly used "at-large" elections -- those in which candidates run citywide or across an entire school district. Avila said that method can result in discrimination because whatever group constitutes the majority of voters can dominate the ballot box and block minorities from winning representation. As a remedy, the law empowers state courts to create smaller election districts favoring minority candidates.

Officials in several California communities said they never heard complaints of voter discrimination until the lawyers stepped forward. In one case, the Tulare Local Healthcare District, now known as Tulare Regional Medical Center, was sued even though its five-member governing board is a rainbow of diversity -- two emigres from India, a Hispanic, a black and a white. The lawsuit argues Hispanics, who make up about a third of local voters, have been shortchanged.

Of course, there are many reasons why the exact makeup of a governing board might not match the exact percentage of the population (including the simple fact that most people vote on issues, not the ethnicity of the people they're voting for). But, even if there was a problem it seems highly questionable that the two lawyers who wrote the bill are now profiting tremendously from it and appear to be the only ones who do so.

It's stories like this one that make us so nervous about so much legislation. This is the type of law they create: it maysound good (who's going to argue against diversity?). But, the actual law appears to have been nothing more than a way for these lawyers to go around collecting millions, while disrupting communities and schoolboards, and sending their taxpayer money to these lawyers.

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David E. Davis, Jr. on Cash for Clunkers

In the December 2009 issue of Car and Driver (article not available online), David E. Davis, Jr. lambasts the wildly popular "cash for clunkers" program:

Not until the government got involved was anyone stupid enough to pour sodium silicate into the engines of the trade-ins on used-car lots and render them useless except as junk to be sold by the pound.

A fleet of American used cars like, say, 1977 Chevrolet Caprices could be shipped to any country in the Third and Fourth Worlds and would revolutionize the way people live. Women with sick children would not be hitchhiking 50 miles to clinics.

Of course, the environment is far more important than a few million poor foreigners. The government bureaucrats, in their seemingly never ending quest to absolutely perfect their abilities to do evil, work tirelessly to minimize any actually good secondary effects from their actions.

Failing the Irony Test

The UK House of Lords is considering new laws banning forced labor and involuntary servitude. In a shocking oversight, these laws are not expected to cover the huge amounts of labor required of Britons to pay the taxes levied on them by the government. Clearly, private slavery is the only bad kind of slavery.

Ukraine's Got Talent - Kseniya Simonova

My Favorite Collard Greens

Ingredients:

A bunch of collard greens. I literally mean a bunch, as in how they are sold fresh in a grocery store, or an entire plant, if you are one to pick your own.

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

3-4 smoked turkey necks or fatback or strickalean, if that’s your cup of tea. Cut the oil in half if you use either of those.

Large pot with lid (3 gallons or so)

Water

Salt

2 packets of Sazón Goya

Cut and wash the greens in the sink. Wash them at least twice to get all the grit out. Heat the pot on medium heat. Add the oil to the pot and allow it to heat for a minute or so. Put enough greens in the pot to fill it to about 4 inches from the top. They should sizzle. Stir the greens into the oil, steadily adding greens until the entire bunch is in the pot. Stir them to coat them in the olive oil. Add enough water to completely cover the greens. Add the turkey necks, the Sazón Goya, and a tablespoon or more of salt to taste. The amount of salt that different people like in greens varies tremendously, so don’t be surprised if you use much more salt than this. Stir everything up, set the heat to low, then cover it and let it simmer. The traditional way would be to simmer them for about 40 minutes. You could use far less water and simmer them for only 20 minutes for a different sort of dish. I tend to go for the long simmer, which is how my family always did it. Serve with hoecakes (also called hot water cornbread).

Another Difference between Public and Private

I drove through a Walmart parking lot and noticed how well the drainage system they have works. It takes some serious flooding to damage a Walmart to the extent that roads, schools, and government buildings have been damaged during the recent flooding in the Atlanta area. I snapped a pic of it. It was doing a very good job of keeping that parking lot clear. That’s very different from what we see of government “services,” where the need to please the customer is lacking, to say the least.

Rangel’s no Angel

Charles Rangel, the first black man to head the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and Congress’s foremost proponent of slavery, has perhaps topped all of his peers at displaying contempt for those he supposedly serves. In response to reporters’ questions about hidden personal assets, Rangel responded:

I recognize that all of you have an obligation to ask questions knowing that there's none of you smart enough to frame it in such a way that I'm going to respond.

Well, at least he actually does give an accurate assessment of the press. Truth in politics is such a refreshing change of pace.