Thursday, July 01, 2010

Carolyn Lamm's Political Pet Projects



It has been over 154 days since Carolyn Lamm and the ABA said they would "look into" the massive fraud being perpetuated upon the public by out of control tuition gouging, federal student loan abusing esteemed "institutions" of higher learning. Despite the exclusive authority granted to it by the Department of Education to oversee and regulate the law schools, the ABA thinks of itself more as a special interest lobbying organization for hot button left wing political issues.

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/aba_files_amicus_brief_with_district_court_opposing_arizona_immigration_law

41 comments:

Anonymous said...

This site seems to be run by someone suffering from multiple personality disorder.

You complain about the left (which is ironic since civil liberties are not a left or right issue).

Yet, the arguments you are making are actually left wing arguments about the free market like "tuition gouging."

In a free market, buyers are free to pay the price or not. Sellers are free to offer whatever price they want or not. That's a conservative argument.

To dispute their right about the right to set price based on demand requires left wing arguments over fairness, class and income distribution.

I am actually in agreement with you about the gouging. The difference is that I understand that this is a critique of capitalism. I also understand that it has nothing to do with bigotry that you regularly try to cover up under economic analysis. What does the Arizona immigration law have do with you as a lawyer in NYC? If they legalized every immigrant today, it wouldn't affect you. If they make them all illegal and moved them out of the country, you would still be facing the economic situation in the market you are in. That's just a fact based on the participants in your market (the market for lawyers in America).

Please don't list outsourcing as a rebuttal. That would just reaffirm the bigotry since outsourcing is unrelated to immigration except to far right bigots where its all the brown people's fault.

Then again, may be your arguments do make sense. The far right always believes in something until it impacts them directly. Then theirs room for flexibility. Then, the idea is just wrong. Its not "real conservatism." Its fake conservatism to believe in whatever idea is hurting the far right winger.

I would be a lot more sympathetic to your plight if I thought you were someone who believed in fairness. As it is, with a lot of other Americans out there suffering (including a lot of lawyers who get why they suffer and don't blame the brown people for it), you don't deserve any thing other than a general sense of disappointment from me over your inability to see beyond yourself. Its not just boring. It leads to multiple personality disorder.

Anonymous said...

She says only federal law enforcement officers should enforce immigration laws. State cops are so TTT.

Anonymous said...

8:11 you talk too much!

Anonymous said...

oh la di da, those in charge of the ABA are so very upper crust, dear. Who cares if the mexicans take the jobs of some white rednecks.

la di da la di da...

Anonymous said...

At least I have something interesting and consistent to say.

One can not say the same for some of you.

"It is the brown people's fault. It is the ABA's fault , blah, blah blah."

" I am a super conservatives, so it is also the liberal's fault. Now give me a hand out!"

Anonymous said...

The ABA is as useless as tits on a bull.

Anonymous said...

The law school scam is a critique of capitalism? Never mind the billions in federal backed loan guarantees, TALF pumping billions into the system to backstop it from collapsing, the gov't passing special bankruptcy exemptions for itself and using the IRS to harass people for life. How exactly is that a free market? You can say that it is capitalism gone rogue, but without the gov't backing the whole thing up, it wouldn't survive. Sounds more like socialism to me.

You are right about the Arizona immigration law thing. I don't know why the ABA wastes so much resources on it when the issue is so polarizing and when a good chunk of their membership probably support the law.

Anonymous said...

I await for the ABA to claim that illegal immigrants should do doc review since they are jobs "Americans will not do" (read: jobs that pay $10 or less). Also making a long winded arguement that opposition to illegal immigration is racism isn't interesting, it is the same tired talking point stated in 2007 and 1986. I would say 1965 but in 1965 Ted Kennedy stated it was a one time aministy and that they were going to fix enforcement and that certainly there wasn't going to be a human wave of Mexicians.

The worst vicitms of this shift in human capitial downward hasn't been the rednecks. No, it has been blacks who could no longer compete for the low skilled jobs and who have been screwed by the public education system (hey look they vote Democrat) and the large urban centers (hey look Democrat again).

Clarisse said...

Illegal aliens? What about jobs?

Anonymous said...

Don't you guys get it? These non-profits attract leftists like flies. Leftists don't give a fuck about you, they WANT to keep you fucked for life, in debt, entering into sucker mortgages and student loans so you then NEED them to survive. Why can you not see this?

By the way, not sure if you folks saw the "russian spies" story, but one of them wrote for El Diario and the other taught at CUNY. Coincidence that college prfoessors and editors were russian spies? I think not.

Anonymous said...

Speaking of Russian spies anyone take a look at Anna Chapman?

Anonymous said...

802

Keep part of what I wrote: TUITION.

There are public and PRIVATE loans.

Problematic to your own ideological consistency is that you are expecting us to believe that you are "conservative" by arguing that "socialism" called public loans forced you into market of buyers and sellers of education. That you are not a "rational" actor since you couldn't figure out what was the best debt level through the system for you. Indeed, libertarians would argue that you as an actor should serve as an example to other debt borrowers rather than setting up laws to protect someone like you.

Its all a SCAM. You had no choice. Unlike other consumers in other markets. Unlike other workers in other markets. Some one picked up your hand and made you sign up for the debt. Someone forced you into a career that a few days research would have told you is bad.

None of the above arguments are market based analysis. They aren't conservative frames. They are all based on blaming someone else- a system- for your problems.

That system exists even outside of public loan debt. You choose to pay the TUITION. Now, live with it. That's what a conservative argument would be here rather than trying to point out systemic problems. You can explain it as socialism regarding the public debt. But,what about the private? Who forced you to sign up for that?

You only conveniently dwell on the public component (which is actually the better of the two forms of debt) because you have absolutely no excuse for the private debt. That's part of the market too.

Anonymous said...

More of the same:

Carolyn Lamm, president of the American Bar Association and friend of the world’s dictators, wrote a letter complaining about an article about her in Foreign Policy, which I linked to earlier. If you want to read Lamm’s letter, it is available here.

The letter is skilled nonsense, demonstrating talents Lamm no doubt has honed in working to improve the image of the leaders of Libya, the former Zaire, and Uzbekistan (in that latter country, the “rule of law” about which Lamm claims to care so passionately, in one instance, killing a prisoner by immersing him in boiling water, among countless other offenses).

But I have to give it to Lamm for nerve; she wraps herself in the flag of the American Revolution in attempting to defend her conduct:

From the earliest days of our republic, the legal profession has been obligated to ensure that the defense of the unpopular is as vigorous as the defense of the mainstream. In March of 1777, John Adams and Josiah Quincy represented the British Army Captain Thomas Preston following the “Boston Massacre,” winning his acquittal. Condemned by many for the representation, these patriots devoted their talent to ensure access to justice and due process to one accused of a heinous crime.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TtuN8wifKX8J:harpers.org/archive/2009/11/hbc-90006147+carolyn+lamm&cd=9&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Nando said...

Carolyn Lamm ONLY cares about Biglaw. Expecting her to do something about skyrocketing law school tuition is akin to expecting your cat to whip up some waffles, making fresh orange juice and serving you breakfast in bed.

Anonymous said...

PLAN DENTAL LISA NECESITA FRENOS!

Anonymous said...

The ABA is as useless as a condom vending machine in the Vatican.

Anonymous said...

Alternatively, the ABA is as useless as a one armed trapeze artist with an itchy ass.

Anonymous said...

Illegal Alien- 7 bucks an hour. All off the books, of course. 1500x7= $10,000. Pops out anchor baby and/or enters into a marriage of convenience. Collects food stamps, welfare, and Medicaid.
A recent report concluded that in every state in the nation, welfare pays far more than a low-wage job. According to the report, "The value of the total package of benefits [received by AFDC recipients] relative to a job providing the same after-tax income ranges from a high of $36,400 in Hawaii to a low of $11,500 in Mississippi. In eight jurisdictions...welfare pays at least the equivalent of a $25,000 a year job. $10,000 + $25,000=

ILLEGAL ALIEN'S REAL INCOME = $35,000.

---------------------------

TTT grad earns $20 bucks hour in some shitlaw factory. $20x1500=$30,000. Shitlaw worker of course has to pay taxes, or he is hounded to the end of the earth by the IRS. $30,000-6,000=$24,000. Shitlaw TTT grad of course gets no health insurance and is "too rich" to be eligible for Medicaid. Food stamps are off the table if he/she was lucky enough to find a job. Sallie Mae of course comes along and gets her huge piece. $24,000-10,000=$14,000

TTT GRAD'S REAL INCOME = $14,000.


What the hell is wrong with this picture???? This country is FUCKED up beyond belief.

Bionic Commando said...

Anonymous Topic Creator,

Although I won't make the assumption about what the politics of Tom the Temp are, I do agree that you once again have a point about the politics of many of the posters. They just don't get the difference between a "limousine liberal" like Lamm (whose political dabbling is the result of someone who does it out of suppressed guilt over the exorbitant and unjustified income and power she has, or as a way to put a false humanitarian face on the ABA to obscure its real purpose of perpetuating the biglaw mill), and pragmatic liberalism. A pragmatic solution would be to essentially put a cap on how much a school can charge for tuition if they accept government loans. Yet the Republicans would then argue that it would "strangle the free market!"

Then again, as Rand Paul showed with the way he disrespected the band Rush's intellectual property rights (by using their music without their permission for his campaign), ivory tower ideals are to be lauded....until they become inconvenient on a personal level! Don't get me wrong, I find Scotty Bullock's rants on bigdebtsmalllaw hilarious, yet sadly true (and he was a trailblazer in bringing the message to the public), but when he tries to hint that it's some big "liberal conspiracy", it really starts to derail his efforts. Still, the "white-out/fax blizzard" entry on his blog was truly a Homeric epic of bitter yet apt economic realities.

Anonymous said...

9:27 - Great post.

Anonymous said...

9:17 - How dare you say these things? You are a racist. Enforcing immigration laws is racist. You, unlike the saintly and open-minded ABA, are racist. Simply by bringing up these facts you are racist.

Anonymous said...

“Today’s employment report shows continued signs of gradual labor market recovery,” crows Christina Romer, the head of the president’s council of economic advisers. “Private nonfarm payroll employment increased by 83,000 in June and the unemployment rate fell two-tenths of a percentage point to 9.5%. June marks the sixth month in a row that private sector employment has increased. These continued signs of healing are important …”

Indeed they are. Or are they? “A brutal unemployment report this month,” reports Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein. “Payrolls dropped by 125,000. In another one of those unwanted lessons in how we calculate unemployment data, the unemployment rate dropped from 9.7 percent to 9.5 percent — but not because people got hired. Instead, 652,000 people gave up and stopped looking for work. And that number might be higher than it looks, as the natural monthly growth in the labor force is about 100,000 — so to see a 652,000-person drop might mean something like 752,000 current workers left as 100,000 new workers entered.”


Even the most ardent Obama backers find little to celebrate in the latest employment figures.
The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn got this e-mail from Larry Mishell of the liberal Economic Policy Institute:

The fall in unemployment is obviously due to a major withdrawal from the labor force (including people not entering and looking for work) and will be reversed in coming months. Hours of work are stable and wages actually didn’t grow at all, another dismal sign. … Let me add–wages actually fell 2 cents for all workers, they were flat for production workers. More important the Labor Force fell about a million over the last 2 mos, and is lower than when the recession started 2.5 yrs ago!

Well, can anyone generate a little optimism? Sometimes, you have to look in the strangest of place, like … National Review? “Fortunately, positive jobs numbers, small increases in home prices, and modest increased construction activity in housing suggest the economy has bottomed out,” writes Samuel R. Staley at the Corner.

But once the spin starts, it’s hard to stop. “The economy is headed in the right direction,” President Obama told a crowd in Racine, Wis., the other day. It’s unclear whether the assembled Cheeseheads took his word for it. But it’s very clear that even the most liberal bloggers did not.

Anonymous said...

Congress adjourns this week for the July Fourth recess without having passed a bill to extend unemployment insurance benefits to 1.3 million people who started losing them this month.
Democrats have been painting Republicans as unsympathetic to the long-term unemployed who will be unable to collect benefits, but Democratic leaders have rejected several offers by the GOP to vote for the bill if at least some of it is paid for.
"My concern is that the Democrats are more interested in having this issue to demagogue for political gamesmanship than they are in simply passing the benefits extension," said Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, who offered a deal that was rejected by Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Democratic leaders were quick to attack Republicans for opposing the benefits, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., calling their opposition "just cruel" and "contrary to what our country is about."
Republicans, meanwhile, stood firm in their argument that extending benefits should not add to the deficit.

Voinovich told Reid he would vote for extending benefits if at least half of the extension could be paid for with unused money from the $787 billion stimulus package.

"I came to the table with a fair compromise, and the ball is in their court," said Voinovich, whose state suffers from a 10.7 percent unemployment rate.

The House passed a sixth-month extension on Thursday, but the Senate was long gone by then, having shut down early so that the late Sen. Robert Byrd's body could lie in repose in the chamber. Any future action by the Senate will have to wait until lawmakers return on July 12.

On Wednesday, the Senate rejected a measure to extend benefits, with most Republicans and one Democrat, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., opposed to the bill because it would add more than $33 billion to the nation's $1.3 trillion deficit. The Senate came up just one vote short of passage, with Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Maine Republicans, voting yes.

After the bill failed, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., offered a compromise that would extend benefits for two months and pay for it fully with unused stimulus funding. But Reid turned it down.

"The only reason the unemployment extension hasn't passed is because Democrats simply refuse to pass a bill that doesn't add to the debt," McConnell said. "That's it. That's the only difference between what they've offered and what we've offered."

McConnell pointed out that earlier this month, 57 Democrats voted for an amendment offered by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., that would also have used stimulus money to pay for some of the benefits. The amendment fell three votes short of the 60 needed for passage, but Reid was among the supporters.

Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill., told The Washington Examiner on Thursday that unemployment benefits are considered emergency spending and do not fall under the same rules requiring them to be offset.

"We've never done it," Durbin said. "And it is counterintuitive that to stop a recession we have to take spending away from one area and put it into another. We need to put money into the economy."

jm said...

Typical PC liberal bs grandstanding by super rich asshole ABA types.....what next a "diversity" brief...

Anonymous said...

Nasty people such as you deserve to be at bottom. For a long time, I would read these posts, and thought- wow, how nasty. Then, today, I realized, you are a bottom of the barrel, and, I smiled. There is a God.

Sonia said...

Can't we all just get along? Where are the jobs at? If I have to resort to working at Barrashole or S&C again, I plan on tying a rubberhose around my neck and choking myself.

Anonymous said...

Thank God Sonia is back!!! The rest of you are freaks and geeks.

Anonymous said...

I visit US, get treated regal,
So I stay, who care I illegal?
I cross ocean, poor and broke,
Take bus, see employment folk.

Nice man treat me good in there,
Say I need to see welfare.
Welfare say, "You come no more,
We send cash right to your door."


Welfare checks, they make you wealthy,
Medicaid, it keep you healthy!
I go to college, for me it's free,
and now I have a Ph.D.


By and by, I got plenty money,
Thanks to you, American dummy.
Write to friends in motherland,
Tell them come as fast as you can.

Anonymous said...

There was a time when everyone took it for granted that unemployment insurance, which normally terminates after 26 weeks, would be extended in times of persistent joblessness. It was, most people agreed, the decent thing to do.
But that was then. Today, American workers face the worst job market since the Great Depression, with five job seekers for every job opening, with the average spell of unemployment now at 35 weeks. Yet the Senate went home for the holiday weekend without extending benefits. How was that possible?
The answer is that we’re facing a coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused. Nothing can be done about the first group, and probably not much about the second. But maybe it’s possible to clear up some of the confusion.
By the heartless, I mean Republicans who have made the cynical calculation that blocking anything President Obama tries to do — including, or perhaps especially, anything that might alleviate the nation’s economic pain — improves their chances in the midterm elections. Don’t pretend to be shocked: you know they’re out there, and make up a large share of the G.O.P. caucus.
By the clueless I mean people like Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for senator from Nevada, who has repeatedly insisted that the unemployed are deliberately choosing to stay jobless, so that they can keep collecting benefits. A sample remark: “You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job but it doesn’t pay as much. We’ve put in so much entitlement into our government that we really have spoiled our citizenry.”
Now, I don’t have the impression that unemployed Americans are spoiled; desperate seems more like it. One doubts, however, that any amount of evidence could change Ms. Angle’s view of the world — and there are, unfortunately, a lot of people in our political class just like her.
But there are also, one hopes, at least a few political players who are honestly misinformed about what unemployment benefits do — who believe, for example, that Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, was making sense when he declared that extending benefits would make unemployment worse, because “continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.” So let’s talk about why that belief is dead wrong.

Anonymous said...

8:11, you remind me strongly of Yuk Yuk Boy - the guy who had some kind of breakdown on this board last christmas and ruined all our fun. Even if you are not Yuk Yuk Boy, please shut up - you are obviously young and naive and in need of a good whoopin.

Anonymous said...

"What does the Arizona immigration law have do with you as a lawyer in NYC? If they legalized every immigrant today, it wouldn't affect you. If they make them all illegal and moved them out of the country, you would still be facing the economic situation in the market you are in."

But if the government continues to permit an unstemmed tide of illegal immigration, and employers continue to choose such workers over equally or better qualified Americans because illegals can be poorly compensated and easily exploited, the wage floor will continue to deteriorate, which negatively affects all American workers in every field, including law. As a leftist, surely you understand this.

And as a leftist, I also reject your assertion that outsourcing and illegal immigration have nothing to do with each other. They are actually intimately entangled strategems that serve the same ultimate purpose: to globalize the domestic labor market, and irrevocably reduce the compensation and working conditions of American workers. Employment is outsourced to low-wage, high exploitation labor markets in a race to the bottom, while domestic labor conditions continue to degrade based, in part, by an unlimited influx of low wage rightless laborers (whether illegals or H-1Bs) with no bargaining power who exert inexorable downward pressure on wages and conditions for all workers here. These policies go hand in hand and have nothing to do with hating brown people, except for those who seek to channel the completely justified rage of American workers into racist resentment.

Anonymous said...

Why do you think that there has been a proliferation fo law schools and easy student loan money? Same reason we saw a proliferation of sub-prime loans. The "liberal pragmatic" notion that home ownership and education should be pushed through to every schmuck possible has led us here. The ABA is a willing accomplice and should all rot in hell. And I remind us all that your ABA dues support this dragon lady's lifestyle. I think all non-profits should be shut down tomorrow because these are the types they attract. Shills. Absolute shills.

Anonymous said...

"The "liberal pragmatic" notion that home ownership and education should be pushed through to every schmuck possible has led us here."

1. Home ownership for all is hardly an exclusively, or even primarily, "liberal" notion.

2. How did this "liberal pragmatic" notion lead YOU here? Presumably, as a hard-headed conservative, you can see right through liberal dogma. And yet, you are here too, bogged down by student loans and underemployment. How did this happen to YOU?

Brian said...

I have no problem with what the ABA is doing. They were at the forefront of exposing George W. Bush and his cronies as the corrupt war criminals that they are, and again they are at the forefront of Arizona's racist law designed to place blame on innocent, hard-working Mexicans for all of America's problems. The real cause of our problems is George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and their cronies, who raped America and set it up so that the next president would take the blame for everything. Maybe instead of complaining about what the ABA is doing, you should be complaining about how Bush and his henchmen destroyed America to make Big Oil and Haliburton rich.

Anonymous said...

Man for all the whining that some people do about how "conservative" this board is I see the liberals are out in force.

Anonymous said...

Here is what a border patrol officer wrote on flyertalk:

"Almost all illegal aliens have been caught multiple times. It's just there's nowhere to house the 750,000-1.5 million people the USBP catches most years. So OTMs (Other Than Mexicans) are generally housed and formally deported to their home country (they can't be sent back to Mexico as they're not Mexican), whereas Mexicans are simply VR'd (Voluntary Return) back to Mexico where they try to come back immediately. I've caught the same group four or five times in the same day before. You catch them, send them back, catch them, send them back, etc. until one day you don't see them anymore. You think they just gave up and went home? No, they just finally slipped through.

The dragnet works, just the followup sucks. We can't house them and sending them back just doesn't work. Personally I just looked at the process as a filter - you catch them and are looking for the real hardcore criminals (rapists, murderers, etc.). Those you certainly don't want in. So those you weed out and send to prison or set up for formal deportation."

Of course, what would Carolyn Lamm and the pampered elite in the upper echelons of the ABA know about this? I am sure they know better living in their air conditioned, cushy Upper East Side apartments.

Anonymous said...

My friend is a Villanova Law grad 'O8 who can't find a job with a firm in this tight market because he graduated in the bottom half of his class. But paralegals here in the DC area can make $90K plus. So he's gone the stealth route, and is now in a para program at a major university here. He plans on striking the JD from his resume and applying to para gigs...

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