2004-10-03
by Jack Dalton
Bush, the Republican Party, and
Eliminating Competition through “Strategic Initiatives”
“The accumulation of all
powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of
one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may
justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” James Madison, Federalist
Paper 47
For the past three years Bush
and company have been consistent in their pontification of how liability
lawsuits are forcing Doctors out of the medical profession, and how liability
lawsuits are creating an “un-necessary” and “unfair” financial burden on
corporate America. Both of which, by all accounts, are false. Doctors are not
being forced out of practicing medicine as it is the ones guilty of medical
malpractice that are getting nailed with lawsuits, generally speaking. Medical
liability insurance even in the states with liability caps are still on the
increase—lawsuits are not raising the insurance rates, greedy insurance
company’s are raising rates and it has not a thing to do with liability
lawsuits.
It’s pretty much the same
with the liability lawsuits against corporate America—along with innumerable
criminal legal actions against “them.” Pollute and get sued. Cook the books,
get caught, get sued and maybe go to jail. If corporate America would play by
the “rules” it wants all of us to play by; was as concerned about the people of
this nation--without whose purchasing dollars corporate America would not
exist--as it is with the bottom line, its profits, maybe, just maybe, they
would not get sued for doing harm, or have fines and penalties levied for
illegal activities like violating labor laws for example.
Both of these issues, medical
malpractice lawsuits and corporate liability lawsuits as such, are not the
focus of this commentary. This in no way suggests they are not important
issues, as they are very important issues. How else are we able to compel
companies, Doctors, organizations to conduct their business and practices in a
fair, just and professional manner but by, and through letting them all know if
they violate our trust we will see them in court. If we are harmed, we will see
them in court. If they poison our water, our air, our land, we will see them in
court. These are issues that will be dealt with in another commentary.
That being said, at the core of Bush and the Republican Party
wanting to “cap” or, if possible, eliminate liability lawsuits by individuals
and especially class action lawsuits, is a much broader strategy to “de-fund”
the Democratic Party. A substantial portion of the Democratic Party’s funding
is donations from trial lawyers and their associations. These are the lawyers
that generally speaking are the ones that hold the practitioners of bad
medicine and companies that violate the law accountable by representing those
that have been harmed.
In short, eliminate the
lawsuits, you eliminate a chief source of funds for lawyers and therefore their
ability to donate to the Democratic Party. Lose enough funding sources and you
might as well hang a sign on the door saying, “Gone fishin’ don’t know when, or
if I’ll be back.” George Lakoff, professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics
at the University of California at Berkley has given this a name, “Strategic
Initiatives.”
According to Prof Lakoff a
Strategic Initiative is defined as “a plan in which a change in one carefully
chosen issue area has automatic effects over many, many, many other issues
areas.” It works like this for example: take the issue of tax cuts—seems easy
enough and pretty straight forward, however, the tax cuts have reduced the
funds in the treasury available for social spending so they, the social
programs get reduced funds or are cut entirely—the result is what they are after
in the end—“Starve the Beast” and eliminate all social safety net programs of
the past 50 years.
Then there is the issue of
liability lawsuits. Stifle the lawsuits; make it more difficult to get into
court by switching from state courts to federal courts; end these lawsuits
(which the Bush cabal refers to as Tort reform) and with one stroke of the pen
they will have eliminated all the potential lawsuits that will be the basis of
future environmental legislation and regulation.
“If parties who are harmed
cannot sue immoral or negligent corporations or professionals for significant
sums, the companies are free to harm the public in unlimited ways in the course
of making money. And lawyers, who take risks and make significant investments
in such cases, will no longer make enough money to support the risk. And
corporations will be free to ignore the public good.” This is what is at the
heart of the Bush cabals push to, at the very least, greatly curtail liability
lawsuits under the guise of “Tort reform.”
Bush and the Republican Party
do not care primarily about the individual lawsuits in and of themselves; what
they are actually after is not enumerated in their proposal. As what Bush and
the Republican Party are after is the elimination across the board of
environmental, consumer and worker/labor protections.
When looking at “strategic
initiative” one must keep in mind what Bush and company have been doing to and
with the federal courts in terms of those that have been given lifetime
appointments as federal judges to sit on those courts. Those that Bush has had
placed on the courts will be the ones making the decisions on the Bush and
Republican Party’s proposed liability lawsuits. Those that Bush has placed on
the courts are like minded political ideologues—one only need look at the
decisions being made by Bush appointed judges to discern this. The ultimate
stacked deck!
It does not take a genius or
rocket scientist to see and understand the direction this nation is being led
under Bush and the Republican Party’s “leadership” (and I use that term
loosely)—a highly centralized government with them as its head. A
Theocracy-Oligarchy combination, a one party system, an American “Taliban” of
sorts in which individual freedoms, personal liberties, democracy will just
evaporate as what we will be left with is a nation with the trappings of
democracy without being a democracy in actual fact.
Four
more years, or 40 more years? Your vote in November is not just a vote for
President, but a new Supreme Court.
Suggested Readings:
Moral Politics:
George Lakoff
Don’t Think of an Elephant!
Know Your Values and Frame the Debate:
George Lakoff
Tort Reform Reader
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7245
Tort Reform Myths
http://www.citizen.org/congress/civjus/tort/myths/articles.cfm?ID=5671
Starve the Beast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
Independent Judiciary
http://www.independentjudiciary.com/
Save Our Courts
http://saveourcourts.civilrights.org/
Pending Bush Nominees
http://www.naral.org/Issues/courts/pending_anti_judges.cfm
The Rockridge Institute:
Prof. George Lakoff, Senior Fellow
http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/
Jack Dalton
is a disabled Vietnam veteran and freelance writer that lives in Portland,
Oregon and can be contacted thru his web site at www.ommp.org His
email address is jack_dalton@ommp.org