Posted on 10/24/2005 5:56:40 AM PDT by aceintx
Thank you, dub! I remember that like it was yesterday!
-good times, G.J.P. (Jr.)
For a long time, the alternative to IOLTA was that lawyers would hold onto that money themselves, and skim the interest. Because the money was held only for a short period to time, nobody really noticed, but the cumulative amounts could add up for attorneys whose work involved a large number of such transactions. Obviously, that's unethical.
IOLTA was created as sort of an answer to the question of what you do with the interest that's earned. It's not practical to track it for individual clients. So they figured it was a way to fund representation for the poor.
Not everyone who is poor is a lefty parasite undeserving of representation. Maybe they have an eminent domain case, etc. Some good conservative causes out there, and lawyers are supposed to have an ethical obligation to make representation available for those who can't afford it anyway. And the Feds fund some of that stuff anyway.
I personally don't think the problem is as much the funding as it is the lefty bias of some of the activities that may be funded. But that's a separate problem, and one that varies between states. An IOLTA-funded public service firm in Massachusetts has nothing to do with Texas -- each state runs its own program.
Anyway, I'm not a huge fan of the pogram myself, but this is getting overblown -- particularly when people start citing to cases in other jurisdictions and act like that's Miers' fault.
This is the one I hate.
http://www.hhs.gov/newfreedom/
So the fact that George W. Bush wants to enlarge the mistakes of his father-and the venerable Senator Hatch-shouldn't surprise anyone.
I strongly suspect the biggest lobbiest for Miers was Laura Bush.
I don't like anything, and I mean ANYTHING about Jorge W. Arbusto.
Did you listen to Chertoff on Hannity's radio show Friday? Sean did an admirable job of holding his tongue, but when Chertoff spelled out the "plan" it's not pretty and very disappointing.
Most of the legal challenges have argued that the confiscation of interest from an IOLA account constitutes a deprivation of property without due process of law and violates equal protection of the laws in that it treats lawyers' escrow accounts differently than other types of escrow/trust accounts. I am unaware of any case, however, where someone has challenged IOLA under the First Amendment in that IOLA effectively forces a person to associate with groups, ideas, or interests that the person would rather not be involved with for moral, religious, political, or any number of other reasons. Although state legislatures often give away our tax dollars to objectionable groups and causes, if we don't like the way the the legislature is spending our money, then at least we can try to vote them out of office. IOLA accounts are different in that the money is not allocated from tax revenues by an elected legislative body, but rather, the money is collected from attorney escrow accounts, without the knowledge or consent of the client, and then deposited into a special trust account that is managed by an unelected board of trustees, consisting of 15 members appointed (in New York, for example) by the governor. The board of trustees is given broad discretion to spend the money on legal services to the poor and other groups that are "underserved by the legal profession" (whatever that means), and for "the improvement of the administration of justice" (whatever that means).
I am also unaware of any challenge to an IOLA law on the ground that it constitutes an unlawful tax under state law. For instance, under New York Law, all state expenditures must be approved by the State Legislature on an annual basis as part of a budget bill, and those expenditures must come from the general fund, which consists of tax revenues that the State has raised through tax laws enacted by the Legislature. (The primary exception concerns user and service fees that in theory, have some rational relationship to the benefit or service provided to the user (i.e., tolls, park entrance fees, filing fees, etc.). IOLA funds, in contrast, are raised by the State and arguably used for a State purpose, but they don't come from the general fund and the expenditures aren't approved on an annual basis by the Legislature as part of a budget bill, as required by law.
Sorry for rambling, but this whole IOLA thing really pisses me off. Maybe The Great One, Mark Levin, will read this and start a lawsuit challenging IOLA laws on the grounds that I have suggested.
He's done more for Mexico than Fox's crony, Santiago Creel, ever has.
Plus, I betcha he'll have a better shot at defeating Manuel Lopez Obrador.
And we won't have to deal with three more years of placating our "friends" south of the border, down Mexico way.
I think you are correct.
Now is exactly the time to voice our concerns. This isn't a congressman or senator -- it's SCOTUS and a lifetime appointment.... and the main reason many of us worked night and day to get this man elected President.
The Republican Party will realize-to its detriment-how many single issue voters there are in this country, when the next off-year elections hit.
If the U.S. Senate thinks that this Miers debacle will just "blow over," then it is sorely mistaken.
"The Senate is bending over backwards to see her confirmed."
I saw somewhere the other day that Specter has virtually done a 180 on her... This after "rumors" that he was bought off for the price of admin support for stem cell research.
This administration approaches every setback the same way: They simply reach for their (our) wallet and ask "How much will it cost?".
Done. She is burnt black as charcoal. Pretty soon she is going to be nothing less than ashes. Somebody have mercy on this woman. Pull the plug. Be done with this mess. It is killing Bush. It is making conservatives so angry they can't see straight. It is demoralizing to new prospective GOP candidates for the upcoming 2006 elections. Dubya, please swallow your pride, admit your mistake, pick Janice Rogers Brown and move-on with a motivated conservative base. Please!
Whether any sort of deal has been reached, I don't know.
What I do know is that political retribution-as far as Specter is concerned-is off the table, thanks to his narrow defeat of the great Patrick Toomey.
We can all thank President Bush for that little gem.
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