April 11, 2006

The Alpine anti-access rant

CA access attorney Ted Pinnock is at it again -- he's sent letters to a bunch of businesses in Alpine, CA, over access violations.

And the media circus of asses braying against him is gearing up.

San Diego's Channel 10 News ran a story about businesses calling him a "greedy lawyer"; the San Diego Union-Tribune ran Lawsuits anger businesses April 6, followed by Business owners in Alpine advised on ADA lawsuits April 7.

The latest to come into my google news in-box is a screed from ultra rightwing harpy Jennifer Roback Morse, who in yesterday's Townhall.com column Standing up to the disability police lets loose a quite a rant.

You'll recognize the standard anti-access lines.

Vague legal requirements leaves every business owner vulnerable to the threat of a lawsuit. For many small businesses, settling is more cost-effective than fighting, even if they are really in compliance.

This is banana republic governance. Make laws no one can comply with. Enforce the laws at random. Favor your friends by selectively looking the other way.

Resisting the lawyer’s demands for settlement means gambling that you are in fact in compliance.

You gotta admit she's got a way with words, writing about "the evil genius of the frivolous lawsuit industry" and the "loophole large enough for disability lawyers like Theodore Pinnock to drive their motorized wheelchairs through":

The Americans with Disabilities Act adds the sympathy card to the lawsuit lottery. The ADA created a new class of Official Victims. We are not supposed to complain or criticize the poor hapless disabled people. Business is presumed guilty.

In case you're in any doubt as to her broader politics, this should clear things up:

American civil rights movements have been plagued by legalized extortion from the beginning. Jesse Jackson and his ilk have been threatening businesses with lawsuits and negative publicity for years. This country would be a better place today if a few businesses had stood up to Jesse Jackson twenty years ago.

I can't do better to explain this anti-rights bigot than paste in, without comment, the bio that runs at the end of her rant:

Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D., is the founder and chief visionary of Your Coach for the Culture Wars, a business devoted to supporting organizations that want to preserve their core values and achieve prosperity by taking a stand in the Culture Wars. She is also the author of Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn’t Work.

I imagine the Alpine media circus is just beginning, though.

Posted on April 11, 2006