Federal Monies for Lawyers: Exploiting Bad Public Education

An ABA poll, being released today, shows that just over half of adults can correctly identify the three branches of government - legislative, executive and judicial - and explain the concept of separation of powers. How terrible that public education has not done a better job of teaching citizenship and constitutional powers!

Michael Greco, a Boston lawyer who will take over as ABA president this week, asked retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (LAWYER) and former Sen. Bill Bradley, (LAWYER) D-NJ, to help educate people on civics fundamentals. They will be honorary co-chairs of a civic education commission. How uncharacteristically generous of LAWYERS to undertake remedial civics lessons nationwide and entirely at their own expense!

Reality Checks:
How many LAWYERS will the civic education commission employ? Hint: watch for a new name like Civic Education Corporation.
How politically unbiased will civics lessons be? (See About...Blue State, Michael Greco)
Remember, LAWYERS already comprise 100% of the Judiciary and 53% of the SENATE.
When will this education project become permanent and receive federal grant monies?

About the ABA. Is it biased? According to this professer and this lawyer who says "Which, come to think of it, is why I resigned from it several years ago", yes. What about the ABA's new President, Blue State Michael Greco (LAWYER) - Is he biased? Greco, who has resided in Massachusetts for 31 years, co-founded and co-chaired a grassroots organization that helped preserve the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) in the 1980s.

The LSC has resisted reforms because it was designed by LAWYERS to avoid external controls. In affect, it takes public funds (your tax dollars) and transforms them into private funds (LAWYER INCOME), $335,282,000.00 in FY 2005. The Heritage Foundation has alleged that "Unfortunately, taxpayer-funded legal groups, under LSC, engage in political, lobbyist, and cause-advocacy activities, often at the expense of providing real legal services needed by poor people."

More:
In the United States, scholars have analyzed the Legal Services Corporation in terms of the choice between pursuing appellate cases, which might change rules, such as trying to get the housing rules changed through litigation, and pursuing cases that will solve immediate problems of poor clients, such as stopping an eviction. Criticism of the choice to pursue appellate cases colored the opposition to the Legal Services Corporation and lead to its losses in the Reagan administration. (Budget had been $400,000,000.00) What can this mean? Check out these outrages, here.