Jim Harbaugh
It's refreshing about to hear sports coaches speak out about politics this year, as the University of Michigan's Jim Harbaugh does on the topic of legal aid.
Daniel Strauss reports in Politico Magazine:
On February 28, a couple of weeks before President Trump unveiled his budget, Harbaugh took to his favorite platform with a slightly surprising foray into policy and on an issue that would hardly be considered top of mind even for the wonkiest of Washington insiders: legal aid for the poor.
He tweeted: “I hope reports that White House trying to defund Legal Services Corp aren't true. LSC is CRUCIAL to making justice system fair. #LSCmatters” Obscure though the cause might have been, the tweet got some attention: 2,400 retweets and twice as many likes.
Harbaugh, it turns out, is a part of the leaders council of the LSC (along with baseball great Hank Aaron). The LSC’s current budget allocation of $385 million funds programs that provide legal aid in civil cases—everything from foreclosures and evictions to child custody and restraining orders against an abusive partner—to over 1.8 million low-income people across the country.
Harbaugh got on the phone recently to talk about how he got involved in this cause, where he draws the line for coaches when it comes to political engagement, his go-to quote from the Federalist Papers and what he thinks of being compared to Trump and Obama.
In answers to Politico, the football coach explains his concerns:
"There's issues that people just don't understand. One of the biggest issues that got me most fired up is how fines and fees are being used to punish the poor. I've learned how the devastating effect it can have on lives of low income Americans. I mean across the country 48 states have increased civil court fees since 2010 and they're using those fees to pay for government services and not just courts but roads and generating millions and in some states billions of dollars."
"But basically the crux of it is when people can't afford to pay a fine or a fee for things like a speeding ticket or municipal violation then they get additional fees. Late fees can start piling up and these fees can double, triple, quadruple the total amount due and if somebody has an inability to pay that fine that can quickly snowball into a driver's license suspension or driver time. People aren't even able to go to work. So you can't pay a fine or a fee and then you lose your driver's license. You're not able to get to a job, and a lot of people, I mean, they’ve got to work."
