War on the Poor, Round

ONE hardly knows where to begin when trying to address Rael Jean Isaac’s “The War on the Poor” [May 15]. She brings up every old, discredited story ever told by the far, far Right about Legal Services. I have been the chairman of Legal Services Corporation for just a year and a half, but I do have the ability to look at the record, and it doesn’t look at all as Mrs. Isaac paints it.

Farms: In 1990, the GAO examined charges much like Mrs. Isaac’s and concluded that there was nothing to them. The report said that in the two years that they studied, 1987 and 1988, grantees successfully negotiated settlements in 80 and 87 per cent of their farm cases, respectively. Our records indicate that for subsequent years—1991 through 1993—settlements always exceeded 85 per cent.

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About the Author

Douglas S. Eakeley

About the Author

Rael Jean Isaac

Rael Jean Isaac is a co-author, with Virginia Armat, of Madness in the Streets: How Psychiatry and the Law Abandoned the Mentally Ill.

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ONE hardly knows where to begin when trying to address Rael Jean Isaac’s “The War on the Poor” [May 15]. She brings up every old, discredited story ever told by the far, far Right about Legal Services. I have been the chairman of Legal Services Corporation for just a year and a half, but I do have the ability to look at the record, and it doesn’t look at all as Mrs. Isaac paints it.

Farms: In 1990, the GAO examined charges much like Mrs. Isaac’s and concluded that there was nothing to them. The report said that in the two years that they studied, 1987 and 1988, grantees successfully negotiated settlements in 80 and 87 per cent of their farm cases, respectively. Our records indicate that for subsequent years—1991 through 1993—settlements always exceeded 85 per cent.