Terra Extraneus

Should a parent be able to represent offspring in court proceedings without the aid of a lawyer? Apparently several parents are attempting to represent their disabled children against school districts and others required, but refusing, to provide educational and other support services by federal law. Some of these parents have had good success. So far, I’ve not heard of any disabled kids that were disadvantaged by their parents’ zealous but uninformed advocacy.

The United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, in an opinion that you can find here, but that is not marked for full text publication, ordered an appeal dismissed in thirty days, because the parents were representing their child and not a lawyer, and unless the parents obtained a lawyer.

Setting aside for a moment whether in a United States court a parent should have a right to speak for their child, why would a parent want that job? Not only are their non-profit organizations that provide lawyers for such situations, the Legal Services Corporation, www.lsc.gov, will represent disabled kids. Admittedly, I emailed a buddy inside LSC and got that information; it was not easy to find it on either LSC’s website or even the website of “legal aid” in my own state.

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Imagine the richest corporations suing individuals that these corporations know for certain do not have the resources to pay even a nominal judgment, much less attorney fees and costs, too. Further, imagine some of these corporations formed an industry association and funded it, not to conduct research and development to control access to their products and protect their copyrights, but to sue middle class individuals, individuals that do not have the financial ability to pay a judgment. Why would they do it?

Worse, imagine that it does not really matter to these corporations whether they can prove any case at all, much less actual wrongdoing. The important thing to these corporations is using these individuals as the pretext for media pronouncements about the lawsuits.

Imagine that both are pursuing the “weak, the lame, and the aged,” i.e., a slang term not meant to disparage anyone, but only a generic label used to describe those that simply cannot fight back or cannot get away from the corporate bloodhounds. After all, when reporting these lawsuits in the news media, the news media need not be told the true nature of those being pursued. The human factor in news reporting is that the news media sometimes does not realize it is being “played” by these entities.

If this story is unfamiliar, it proves one thing: these lawsuits are not generating enough news attention to accomplish the objective of deterrence.

The software industry and the recording industry are the two most egregious offenders at the present time. Their conduct is both perplexing and unjust. Further, they have alternatives.

However, a resistance movement has formed, at least against the recording industry. A blog has arisen that documents how these insidious cases are prosecuted, mostly without basis, and the effectiveness of resistance. It is Recording Industry vs People.

The Recording Industry, the Movie Industry and the Software Industry have legitimate reasons to pursue hackers and downloaders that are engaged in illegal mass production of their products without paying license fees or contractual permission to do so. But, simply suing every IP address that received a download, or pursuing every downloader with no inkling of whether its for personal use or mass distribution, invariably leads to suits against those who did not know any better, the young, and the unthinking.

Also, software and websites that make downloading a one click event fool the unwary into believing that the access granted is lawful. The result is that the downloader truly cannot distinguish illicit downloads from legal ones.

Litigation against these websites and software issuers by the offended industry might make sense. But, the individuals users are another matter. The users have been schooled by operating systems, for example, to believe that legal downloads contain “certificates” the computers use for validation. Every user of Microsoft XP has been confronted with a validation “certificate,” whether for compatibility or for proper access, it matters not.

Ultimately, however, these industries will destroy the legal framework they lobbied for and are now misusing. While Court’s will generally enforce the law as written without remorse, Court’s will do so inequitably only for so long and up to a point. Eventually, the Courts will begin to wonder, and then begin to insist, regardless of the letter of the law, that these industries prove they were not, indeed, aiding and abetting one click downloading for their own profits, and imposing no protection on access to their products, and thus placing individuals at risk. After all, does anyone really believe the Recording Industry, the Software Industry and the Movie Industry do not have the resources to conduct the research and development to control their own “gate?” To control access? To require “certificates” of authenticity of licensure?

Lawyers have been painted with the crimson stain of “frivolous lawsuits,” regardless of the merits of the claim. Corporations that abuse the system will eventually face the public’s wrath for “frivolous lawsuits,” rather than generate enough knowledge to bring about genuine issue consciousness or deterrence, and this time the charge against the corporations will be true.

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Due to immigrants, it seems, doctors and nurses are not hired, raises are not given, and obsolete medical equipment is not being updated. Is it possible immigrants are milking the system even more than the poor citizenry? Or, is this assertion an example of corrupt race hatred?

One of my favorite magazines, World Magazine, reported in its September 16, 2006 issue, in an article by John Dawson, that the border states and their hospitals are paying for the medical treatment of thousands of illegal aliens. Federal law requires, according to World, that the border hospitals treat through their emergency rooms anyone that seeks aid, regardless of ability to pay or citizenship.

But, this has been the law of the land for many years. In Oklahoma, for example, 800,000 state citizens, at last report, a third of the state citizenry, use Oklahoma hospital emergency rooms as their primary source of medical treatment and the taxpayers of Oklahoma pay their bills because the indigent patients cannot. Indeed, only a few years ago, the Oklahoma legislature projected that the cost of the medical treatment of these 800,000 state citizens carried with it the risk of destabilizing the state budget, or devouring it. This was true in Oklahoma without so much as a mention of immigrants, illegal or otherwise.

Federal promises to cover the costs of immigrant medical treatment, just like older promises to cover the costs of medical treatment of citizen indigents, have been unmet, according to World Magazine. Border states and hospitals claim to be in crisis mode because of these costs, just as Oklahoma hospitals have been in perpetual crisis due to the cost of caring for the poor and uninsured.

Would illegal aliens cross the border to obtain medical care if they could get it at home? United States churches apparently have not seen fit to provide medical care south of the border. Foreign aid apparently does not provide medical care south of the border.

Sadly, World Magazine did not compare the present “immigrant medical care crisis” to the pre-existing “indigent citizen medical care” crisis. World Magazine did not compare the border states to the interior states. As a result of the poor methodology, World Magazine defaulted to prejudice and concluded the immigrants were draining the medical resources of the land, even though poor citizens had the same impact on the system. World Magazine concluded the immigrants were levying a “stealth tax” on the unfortunate border states and their hospitals, but failed to mention the same “stealth tax” the citizen poor were levying in prior years. Finally, World Magazine did not inquire further as to the failure of North American Christianity to address the medical needs of the citizen poor, much less the immigrant poor.

How did World Magazine miss the mark so completely? There is only one logical explanation. Prejudice.

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