And Ye shall know trial lawyers and tribulations
I wanted to say something briefly about my boy John Edwards, specifically it was raised that in his previous civilian life he was a trial lawyer. This has been trumpeted about as though it had been revealed that Edwards was a practicing druid. In fact given the current state of the republican party I suspect they would have viewed druidism with more favor. Trial lawyers are an a priori evil. They constitute an active terrorism in the midst of our good, behaved, civil society. There is no such thing as a civil law suit in a civil society. Tort is short for torture.
I have nothing against lawyers myself. My sister is a lawyer. Of course she started out as a corporate lawyer - defending the redoubts of America inc. from the circling hyenas in the shadows beyond. Now as AT&T cowers in the corner while the baby bells eat it alive, they thank my sister and her fellow S & A attorneys for having survived to see this day. The deputized classes among the Republican now take pains to show us that lawsuits are nuisances and frivolous. A million dollars for a cup of coffee that turned out to be hot. There oughta be a law...um a law... against, whatever law allowed a suit like that to come forward in the first place. Or maybe no laws at all. The White House sent the Treasury secretary around recently to tell us all this legality is bad for America Treasury Secretary: Lawsuits hurt economy.
Previously we were lead to the view that regulations were bad for economy. I've handled undergraduate economics textbooks that state that it is a fallacy that the Market Failures that regulations purport to correct exist. The real purpose of regulations is a disguised tax. So de-regulate was the command and not to worry because the rigour of our courts and legal system are there to protect the interest of the comman man. Republicans are a Panglossian tribe. The world is as it is is as good as it gets, nothing further can or need be done to protect the powerless from the powerful. We neded no protection from manufacturers of defective products, none from providers of unsatisfactory services, because these things do not exist, perhaps, a small firmly ceilinged damage award as a gentle reminder when things go awry. Nothing that would show up in an annual report, someting that funds from petty cash could cover. The Free Market of pure theory exists robust among us, capable of organizing and extemporariously ordering all things to perfection. Quite utopian, really, except that it can bear no human interference, which breaks it. There are no lawyers in a utopia. All a Utopia needs is hope.
George Springston was my best friend growing up. His father was a mechanical engineer who designed high speed weaving looms for a company called Drapers in a town named Hopedale Ma. Drapers sold looms all over the world even Iran. Hopedale was originally a Utopian socialist commune in the mid nineteenth century. George and his family lived in my town Holliston, on Courtland Street, an original Holliston street from the 1690's not like the manufactured-in-1965 street I lived on. George moved to Inman South Carolina at the end of his junior year because North American Rockwell Industries bought Drapers and they transfered his father from Hopedale to Spartenburg where they had him work on aerospace and military contracts for Rockwell's facility there until he retired.
11:48:20 PM  ;;
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