Anyone who looks at my profile can see that I’ve been here for a long time. I make comments now and then on diaries I find interesting, but I don’t write many diaries myself. But I want to tell you a brief story about a little office building downtown I used to work at. Its a pretty small office building truth be told, and from the looks of it you’d assume it wasn’t anything special. Nice enough, but nothing too fancy to look at. But if you step inside, you’d find some of the best people our country, and the legal profession, has to offer. You’d find a group of lawyers, paralegals, legal secretaries, and other vital support staff, many of whom literally spend their entire careers fighting for the little guy who too frequently gets left behind in our society.
As if we needed further proof of how despicable Trump is, his budget proposes a total elimination of funding for the Legal Services Corporation which funds Legal Aid programs across the nation. In the past I've worked for, and my wife currently works for a Legal Aid program in Texas, so this is very personal for me. Legal Aid is an absolutely vital program for people who have disputes with the IRS, are facing domestic violence, have problems with their landlords, who are facing homelessness, have problems with Social Security. The almost 2 million people nationwide who were assisted by Legal Aid last year alone aren't the ones who can afford to have an attorney on retainer. They are the folks who too often end up on the losing side in court because they can’t afford their own attorney or they can’t make their way through the Kafkaesque maze that our legal system can sometimes be. They aren't rich and can't help line his pockets, so the President doesn't give a shit about them as his words and actions continue to show.
I can say from personal experience that the people who work at Legal Aid are already overworked and underpaid, but nevertheless they persist. They go to work everyday and they fight to make the system better. Sometimes that’s fighting for a particular client, other times its fighting the system at large. I'm proud of the work I did at Legal Aid. I'm damn proud of the work my wife does at Legal Aid. I'm proud to call the people I know who work in Legal Aid my friends. For whatever its worth, I will proudly stand with those who’ve answered that call to civic duty.
And why is this program, and many other worthwhile programs, set to be gutted? So Donald Trump can get his racist vanity project built and so military contractors, and other Trump cronies, can line their pockets at the expense of our fellow citizens who simply need some help.
As a lawyer, a Democrat, an American, a proud Texan, but most importantly as human being, you disgust me at the most visceral level Pres. Trump for this and a thousand other things you've already said and done. My contempt for you burns with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns. I hope there is a hell Donald Trump, and I hope you, and anyone else who supports or enables this corruption of our nation's soul, end up there whenever you shuffle off this mortal coil.
As anyone who knows me in real life can tell you, I sometimes go off on rants when I get worked up about something. Usually I get off my soap box pretty damn quick, but this is one time and one soapbox, I’m not getting down from.