Monday, September 12, 2005

Legal Theft: When Lawyers Win, Retirees, Workers, and Taxpayers Lose

The legal establishment in this country thrives on chaos. Senators extort in the halls of Congress, propagandize with the media's help, and hold a large economic bludgeon over the head of any business it targets.

If you ran CNN or the NYT, you would know from day one that while the government (voice of the electorate) cannot interfere with freddoms of the press, the legal establishment through lawsuits (libel, defamation), injunctions and class action suits could ruin your business.

Who, then, would you be friendlier toward? Is it any wonder then, that the news media are slanted toward the party that is run by lawyers, supported largely by trial lawyers and favors candidates who are lawyers? Is there any wonder that lawyers in the opposing party do not seem as loyal as they ought to be when push comes to shove?

Is the legal establishment in the U.S. already too powerful to be checked? Unfortunately, the power structure can only be altered every 2 years (House = 34% lawyers) or 6 years (Senate = 53%). When the Executive branch is headed by a lawyer (e.g. Nixon, Clinton) change takes 4 years, of course.

For all practical purposes, the federal Judiciary is populated by lawyers in perpetuity.