South Carolina has 11,000 registered lawyers. We have 2,800,000 men and women who work and pay taxes.
So, one quarter of 1% of South Carolina employees are lawyers.
51 of the legislators in Columbia are lawyers. There are 170 legislators in Columbia. That means that 30% of the legislators are lawyers.
That is not REPRESENTATIVE government. Lawyers have a 1,200% over-representation compared to you and me!
Merrill Smith is a lawyer. He is the Speaker of the House of Representatives in Columbia. He has the power to assign every member to committees and decide who will chair those committees.
The two most important committees are the Judicial Committee and Ways and Means (the committee responsible for our annual budget).
Who heads those two committees?
Ways and Means is headed by Bruce Bannister, a lawyer!
Judicial Committee is headed by Weston Newton, a lawyer!
I understand how a lawyer chairing the Judiciary is probably important. More about that in a minute. But a lawyer to chair Ways and Means?
Another important committee is the Ethics Committee. The Ethics Committee has 10 members, 8 lawyers, and one of the other two is married to a lawyer.
As many of you know, we have a Judicial Merit Selection Commission that is responsible for deciding who is eligible to become judges. They “vet” the candidates who apply for a judgeship.
The JMSC currently has 12 members. All of them are lawyers!
In the process of screening our potential judges, the staff that looks at all those applications and decides what they want to say about those applicants when they report to the JMSC is the staff of Senator Luke Rankin, a lawyer, and the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate.
So, what I’m trying to show here is this thread that is strangling the people of South Carolina.
This lawyer-dominated, lawyer-controlled thread is so tightly wound around the power within the South Carolina legislature that it takes away from the power of regular people.
Regular people don’t have a say on what goes on in the statehouse in the most important areas (by law, the only two things the legislature must do each year is create a balanced budget and elect judges).
When I said earlier that I would talk more about that Judiciary Committee in the House and that I understood that it probably needs a lawyer to head it. BUT, of the 23 members currently serving on that Judiciary Committee, 18 are lawyers– very few regular folks sitting on that Judiciary Committee –PEOPLE WITH “OUTSIDE THE COURTROOM REAL LIFE EXPERIENCES” who may not think like a lawyer.
There are few voices who want laws written so they can be understood by regular folks. The Judicial Committee majority want laws written so complex that nobody really understands them.
That’s day one.
Tomorrow, I will weave that “lawyer” thread through the rest of our state government
to show you how it works so well for the “connected” and not so well for “We the People.”
CALL TO ACTION:
If this opened your eyes, I need your help.
Please SHARE this post publicly.
The only way to break this thread of power is for regular people — not insiders — to spread the truth.
