Lawful Waste of Time

I noticed a story online the other day regarding a ruling by a federal appeals court that got me to thinking. The ruling determined that the US Treasury was violating the law with the current monetary notes. Now, I don’t know the complete history of our paper currency in how it was designed and created, but I do know that our paper currency has been the way it is for a VERY long time. I know the artistic design has changed over time to help prevent counterfeiters, but the size and shape of the currency has not changed for a very long while. The appeals court’s ruling stated that the Treasury is violating the law because there are no distinguishing sizes or marking differences between the currency amounts. According to the appeals court, this inhibits the rights of blind people, and therefore it is against the law according to a law passed in 1973.

Notice that this decision has come from a federal appeals court. This is not the first time this action has been “thought” through. Originally, the suit was entered in 2002. It has taken 6+ FULL years to determine this case. Oh, and it was deemed unlawful by a vote of 2 to 1. Not really a resounding win. You might be wondering where I’m taking this article and what my problem with it is. Well, let me put it to you this way. I have nothing against people with physical limitations, but why did it take until the year 2002 for someone to make a case against our country’s currency stating that it was a hindrance to blind people or people who can’t see well? What prompted such action in the first place? Originally, the currency should have been created with distinguishing markings that can be felt and the problem would have been solved. Since it was not, the currency can be altered moving forward by adding a stamp to it revealing its worth. It’s not that hard of a decision to be made.

In all the years of our country, why now? Why did this story end up on the front page of CNN’s website? The suit was promoted by an agency labeled “American Council of the Blind” on behalf of two individuals. This reminds me of the vultures we have amongst us parading about as so-called lawyers. Agencies created to “protect” individual rights are usually in the game for one reason, money. Fame and power are on the heels of this goal. Are these groups trying to protect those who need it or are they using them? I believe that for every legitimate group, we have multiples of groups that are actually exploiting those in need. This issue did not warrant a lawsuit to create change. Why does everyone immediately think that to change something, we need to get our lawyers on the line and immediately start throwing around legal mumbo jumbo to create change? It’s a scare tactic. It works. It makes people back away, eventually choosing to agree because they are afraid of the monetary consequences.

One of the options for making our US Treasury lawful would be to change the sizes of our currency. How costly would that be? Why put forward an option that would basically revamp our entire paper currency that we have utilized for how many years? The simple solution is to put a stamp on the currency to differentiate the values. This would add one more process to the printing of money before it enters society rather than recreating the entire currency development. Other than that, how much time have we wasted in the courts to determine an answer to this particular suit. How many hours of the judges’ time have we wasted in finding out about this “horrendously” unlawful act. Aren’t there more worthy causes for our judges to apply their time to? I would hope so. This suit is one of the “duh” varieties. Yes, of course there needs to be a marking on paper currency so the visually impaired can understand what they have. No, it does not need a lawsuit.

How come some nice congress person didn’t come up with a simple bill requiring distinguishing markings on the currency? I’m sure it would be passed in less than a session. Of course that is if the bill wasn’t weighted down with “pork.” That’s a whole other story though. Such a simple solution could have been achieved and enacted 6 years ago at the first sign of this potential lawsuit. Not only would we have the currency already changed and in use, but we would not have wasted the time of our federal judges and spent money on lawyers researching and pushing the issue. Why does it seem that even the most simplistic idea to help someone takes such drastic measures to change something? Why do we even hear or read these kinds of headlines? It’s one thing to help people. It’s another thing to use the people in need of help.

I believe we have agencies in our society trying to nitpick at certain issues that they view as harmful. They do their research, find a potential issue, search for a few “harmed” individuals and begin their trek for notoriety. They are not trying to protect those they find. They are using them for their own purposes. There are multiple ways to create change within our society and the last resort should be the courts and lawyers. If we cannot determine rational behavior without lawyers and courts, then where are we as a society? Why do we feel the need to have a law or rule on every single little thing we do? Our country was created with freedom at its core, but yet we continue to create laws to manipulate just what freedom we have. We are rational beings and we can make proper decisions without having a lawyer present. I’m astonished that this suit reached the levels that it did. What a complete waste of our judiciary system’s time and energy.

Every time I see our federal courts wasting time, I think of how our tax dollars could have been spent more wisely. Every time I hear of agencies “protecting” groups of people in need, I think of how the group could actually be harming the very people they are trying to protect. What is the true motive behind these suits? Some are actually necessary because the” little man” can be taken advantage of by larger corporations and organizations, but the ones that involve nothing more than a rational thought should not enter the court system. Blind people of course have a hard time distinguishing the value of paper currency without any distinguishing marks. Fix it. It doesn’t take a lawsuit or 6 years to pass through our court system. If that is what it takes, then we have more broken than just our current state of the economy or oil prices. That means we have lost all rational behavior to decide things on our own without a lawyer backing us up. Can I fly my United States of America flag on July 4^th or will I offend my neighbor who refuses to salute our flag? Maybe I should contact a lawyer or civil rights agency and begin a lawsuit “protecting” my right to show my patriotism. Sounds extreme, but is it?

Citation: http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/20/news/money_blind/index.htm?cnn=yes