Posted on 10/24/2005 5:56:40 AM PDT by aceintx
Another skeleton Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers was deeply involved in an American Bar Association scheme that forces lawyers to pool their clients' funds into checking accounts and pass on the interest to "public interest" law firms, Evan Gahr reports at www.chimpstein.com. The program, known as Interest on Lawyers' Trust Accounts, or IOLTA, was intended to provide legal services to the poor but often ends up promoting left-wing causes, Mr. Gahr said. IOLTA has helped fund "a panoply of left-wing advocates, including a California group that sued to overturn the state's parental consent law for abortion, a gay organization that tried to force the organizers of St. Patrick's Day Parade in Boston to include a contingent of gay marchers, and a Texas outfit that sued to disqualify military absentee ballots," he writes. Mr. Gahr added: "Now, Chimpstein.com has discovered an obscure report which places Miers at the forefront of the American Bar Association's successful effort to foist IOLTA on the nation. This is the smoking gun which at least one conservative group tried to locate and failed." Law professor Charles Rounds, who opposed the scheme, said, "IOLTA is a program, created by state supreme courts or state legislation, whereby lawyers pool client funds -- small sums and large sums held for short periods of time -- into a designated interest-bearing checking account. The interest that is generated on those pooled funds is then funneled through a judicially created legal foundation to various 'public interest' legal firms." Miss Miers in the 1990s served on the American Bar Association's Consortium on Legal Services and the Public, which pushed the idea, Mr. Gahr said.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Well... But she's the most qualified!!! SIGH...
B. How does this disprove the assertion that Miers is anything but a feckless liberal squish?
Interest bearing checking accounts? Isn't money in a client's account property of the client?
Well if you look at it through that lens, who else was in the queue who was willing to get this proctoscopy via backhoe? I don't see anyone reporting that "Miers seemed very upset and disturbed about the hubbub." If Rehnquist had waited a few more months before shuffling off this mortal coil, we'd still be in this spot.
I think I might have time to feel bad.
Wow, almost a hundred posts and no Bush bots. Lest we forget: Bush is our leader. She's the best and we just have to trust him. Did I mention she answers the phone politely? </sarcasm>.
I wish she would just withdraw herself already.
Isn't that the real sticking point?
If it was my money held by my lawyer, I'd feel entitled to the interest.
So, the question becomes, why would I not be entitled to it? Would I have been entitled to any interest earned on the account prior to, in my case, creation of these pooling accounts in 1984 (Texas date)?
Give me a break. The SC is the top of the top for lawyers. That is a sorry excuse since there are legions of more qualified people with a track record.
No one planned on Rehnquist passing when he did, but GWB used it as an opportunity to keep the court status quo, if not move to the left. If anything, it was his opportunity to move it to the right, which he did not do.
That's an interesting description of the program. (What I can't figure is how they can in the space of one paragraph say the IOLTA "allows" attorneys to "pool" such money and then a moment later indicate that each attorney is required to "establish" an account by himself.) What is the penalty for someone refusing to participate, from a suspicion that like so many do-gooder projects, the moral claim of helping the poor is frequently a cover for other causes? If there is a penalty, (for refusing to participate in government-mandated charity to a favored "non-profit") is that not also a symptom of a socialist mindset? Keep in mind I say this not sure whether anyone stated and established that Ms. Miers was pushing it, just on its own merits.)
Glad I was right, and the right here was wrong.
A year on the bench and we would have found out she also a Les...
Now now.
There is a long history of IOLTA in various states, and it has never been implemented as some sort of tax reductio scheme. The issue is simple: huge amounts of money pass through Lawyers's trust accounts. The lawyers want a piece of the action. Without the permission of their clients, they steal that interest and use it to fund their own programs, most of which are left-wing.
Anyone who is for stealing the money of people and giving it to left-wing causes is not a conservative.
Nope, the lawyers have pushed hard in states around the country for that money to go into their own pockets, wihtout the permission of the clients.
I was just teasing. I just think sarcasm tags take all the fun out of being sarcastic.
Miers is not even going to committee. This nomination is dead as a doornail and they know it. If they don't produce WH documents in the next day or two (and we know they won't), there will be a chorus of Senators declaring their lack of confidence in the number of votes she can garner.
By that point, Bush can extricate the nomination as a matter of principle (exec. privilege and not defeat).
There's no way this nomination is going forward at this point. As far as I'm aware, Bush doesn't want to be our generation's General Custer.
Why, you weren't called a "sexist", too? You got shorted....LOL!
Looks like we who first questioned the nominee's qualities amid all of those rattling politicos are seeing those apprehensions validated.
I put the other hand on my crotch.
- nominates Miers and kicks his Base for opposing it
- calls Minutemen "vigilantes"
- Iraq policy is succeeding but MSM continues to control the agenda
- Border still unsecured 4 years after 9-11
- RINOS vote for McCain Amdt. No 1977
- Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) threatens to quite Senate so GOP backs down on spending cuts (bridge to nowhere)
- Syria and Iran continue to support Islamo-fascists in Iraq and all they get is lip service from the White House
- still no plan to achieve US energy independence
- Bush is still touting his Amnesty Guest Worker Enema Program
- Bush hosts Muslim leaders at White House to open Ramadan, while 4 American civilians are slaughtered in Iraq, one burned alive
- Bush publicly telling Israel to make dumb security decisions
- Bush invites Abbas to the White House, who proceeds to blame Israel for Palestinian's woes
- Pentagon quick to jump on troops' errors in the field instead of supporting them (or playing down the incident)
- etc., etc., etc.
Meaning about 20 GOP... meantime the discomfiture of the right will invite Democrats to pile on the left.
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