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Boston Bar Not Truthful About Seeking State Money
April 2001
The Boston
Bar Association tried to mislead those on Beacon Hill again last
month in an attempt to get more money from the legislature for
lawyers.
Its president,
Joan A. Lukey, wrote in a column in the Globe that 60% of the
people who seek help from poverty lawyers have to be turned away
in Massachusetts.
President
Lukey then led a march of lawyers to the Statehouse in an attempt
to triple the amount of money that the state gives to lawyers.
But the economists
at the Beacon Hill Institute discovered last year that the 60%
number we've heard from the lawyers for so many years is simply
not true.
Less than
7% of the poor have their needs unmet ... and those few could
be helped if the poverty lawyers only operated more efficiently,
say the economists. The lawyers don't need any more money, according
to the economists.
The economists
also point out that the umbrella group for the lawyers, the Massachusetts
Legal Assistance Corporation, already receives $7.5 million in
state money every year and this is only a fraction of the total
$57 million that is being spent by taxpayers on lawyers for the
poor.
Massachusetts
News revealed in its March 2001 issue how the feminists of the
state are using these millions of tax dollars to destabilize marriage
and to push their other political projects, while talking about
helping the poor.
All of these
monies are administered by the feminist Chief Justice, Margaret
Marshall, at the Supreme Judicial Court.
Last month's
column by President Lukey was heart-rending: "The statistics
are quite staggering. ... It is fair to say that the shortfall
in legal services dollars for the poor is at a crisis level. The
problem is that we tend to become hardened to crises that continue
from year to year without having a material effect upon us personally.
It is somebody else's crisis, so perhaps we can just pretend that
the problem isn't really there."
After the
flotilla of wealthy lawyers arrived at Beacon Hill, they were
briefed about what to say to the Senators and Reps as they made
their calls.
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