Occupy Lansing, Lansing, MI 15 October 2011, © 2011 Michael Maurer Smith

My wife and I attended the Occupy Lansing demonstration at Michigan’s state capitol building on the 15^th of this month. It was remarkable for the intelligence and civility on display.

Contrary to the criticism of some writers in the Lansing State Journal, that this demonstration and its Occupy Wall Street counterparts in other cities are without focus, I found the focus clear and apparent. Stated simply, it is time for citizens in this democracy to reclaim and assert their moral and legal rights in the face of rampant corporate greed, incompetent and uncaring government, a biased and partisan Supreme Court, and a banking industry that through its callous disregard for the nation’s well being has driven this country to the brink of disaster.

Occupy Lansing, Lansing MI 15 October © 2011 Michael Maurer Smith

The speakers I heard did not condescend to those assembled. Instead they addressed complex issues with words and facts that reflect the enormity of this nation’s situation and its many dimensions—legal, social, environmental, political, medical, financial and moral.

Occupy Lansing was an invitation to dialogue, challenge, think, observe, learn and awaken as people—as citizens.

© 2011 Michael Maurer Smith

Whatever the truth of those allegations a larger question looms. That is the abundance of lawyers in our society and the disproportionate effect of the legal mindset upon our society and government.

Michigan has more than 40,000 licensed attorneys, and each year the law schools graduate more. Where will they find work? And what is the correlation between this abundance of lawyers, the number of frivolous lawsuits and the public’s increasing distrust of lawyers and government?

Consider the current Congress (112^th) of the United States. There are 148 lawyers serving in the House and 52 lawyers serving in the Senate. By comparison there are 15 medical doctors serving in House and 2 in the Senate. In the House there is 1 physicist, 6 engineers and 17 farmers. So whose professional influence and approach to problem solving is likely to dominate?

Much of the political circus in Washington owes its mediocrity, inefficiency, ineffectiveness, waste and lack of imagination to an entrenched legal mindset with its emphasis upon winning. The interminable arguments and legal maneuverings too often negate meaningful, substantive, timely, and effective action and have brought our country to its economic and cultural knees.

Our adversarial legal system teaches that the client, no matter how reprehensible he, she or it may be, is entitled to the best legal representation. So when lawyers are elected to public office they come predisposed to framing every issue as a contest—as something to be argued and won. The problem is that the greater public good isn’t easily identified or defined as a client or contest. Nor can it lobby for itself or sign checks.

© Michael Maurer Smith 2011

NOTE: Columnist John Schneider published portions of this piece in his blog in the Lansing State Journal. Responses to the remarks may be seen here.

Dante was wrong. Hell is a morass of lanes and ramps, of mesas, plains and canyons of concrete, where millions of of steel and fiberglass capsules hurtle at, around and sometimes into each other at speeds exceeding 70 miles per hour. These vehicles are aimed and guided by all kinds of drivers including the: halt, lame, mad, maniacal, idiotic, naive, frightened, stupid, homicidal, suicidal, timid, impatient, angry, oblivious, preoccupied, intoxicated, patient, considerate, kind, brutal, and distracted.

Driving along the John Lodge in Detroit, or some similar conduit of madness, I wonder about the driver who rips in front of me from three lanes over, sliding his Accura through the gaps between vehicles with less than 10 inches to spare—is she a Ph.D in astrophysics? Is he a graduate of Harvard law school? Is she a highly respected Oncologist or just a clerk at Home Depot? Then I imagine this person after the pile up, their life devastated or terminated by a momentary hesitation or miscalculation that turned their $45,000 plus social networking, communications and entertainment center on wheels into a blood spattered mass of jagged steel, shattered glass, and flame—a shredder that sliced and diced them like carrots without regard to their personal values, dreams, goals, purposes and importance and left them as matter to be shoveled and hosed off the pavement like smashed watermelons.

This we call progress and civilization. It is inevitable we say. The sacrifice of some for the many is an acceptable cost. So in the name of convenience, freedom, status and the American Way, we encourage our best, brightest and innocent to share the highways with dim wits, drunks and lunatics. And too often they are one and the same.

So the descansos lining our roads and highways are increasingly prominent and more numerous than the Golden Arches and the future for trauma centers, rehabilitation clinics and funeral homes seems brighter than ever.

Bailout Express © 2011 Michael Maurer Smith

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