Corp Reform - Not Tort Reform

Waterboarding

You know what pisses me off?  The fact that no one wants to answer whether waterboarding is torture, and they refuse to answer on national security grounds.  This makes absolutely no sense.  Allow me to debunk some arguments.

1. "But if we say we use it, so might the enemy!"  Nope, the enemy is too busy beheading us.  I'm sure it's a horrible experience, but I'll take waterboarding any day over beheading.
2. "It's a special proprietary secret on how we do it."  Sorry, that cat's out of the bag too.  See Wikipedia, CNN, etc.
3. "If they know we don't use it, they'll be emboldened!"  Get real.  We're dealing with people who tape explosives to themselves - waterboarding isn't likely to scare them.  It also can't possibly be a deterrent, considering we also kill them.
4. "If they know we use it, they'll seek revenge."  See argument 1.

The only reason not to answer the question is because (a) we use it, and (b) we're afraid of public condemnation.

Technorati Tags: Waterboarding

Edwards ends his campaign. I'm sad.

(sigh)  I blame the media for this.  They've been so caught up with reporting "Oh my god, a black man and a woman are running for President" that they had no use for a white guy... nevermind who is the most qualified for the job.

ABC News has learned that Edwards made the decision to bow out in the last two days. Telling signs that he was dropping out included his canceled scheduled campaign stops in the Feb. 5 states of Alabama and North Dakota. Instead, the Edwards campaign announced yesterday he was going to New Orleans to make a "major poverty address." Edwards was also scheduled to go on the air yesterday in several Feb. 5 states with television ad that had been delivered to local television affiliates -- but the ads did not go up as scheduled.

ABC News: 'It Wasn't Going to Happen': Edwards to Abandon Presidential Bid

I think Edwards was the most electable candidate.  Maybe I'm just overly biased against the south, but I just don't think that your average redneck is capable of voting for a black man or a woman.  You've gotta remember that in a good portion of the country - especially the south - it's not politically incorrect to use "the n word" in public.  If anything, saying "African American" would be considered inappropriate.  I truly hope that my beliefs are wrong and southern voters have no problem voting for a minority... but I'm very skeptical.  Yes, Obama did very well in South Carolina.  But everyone who voted for him was a Democratic primary voter.  Primary voters of any party aren't your average voters.  I'll go ahead and pay lip service to the fact that a lot of blacks voted for Obama, but I don't think race is nearly as relevant in a primary.  It's not like those people who voted for Obama just because he's black are going to vote Republican if Obama doesn't get the nomination. 

I've got a very bad feeling that today marks the day the Dems lost the 2008 Presidential election.   But maybe I'm wrong, and I'm overestimating the amount of racism and sexism in the country.

Technorati Tags: John Edwards, 2008 Election, Racism, Sexism

Hillary Clinton Hypocrisy Alert

I don't like Hillary or Obama - I'm an Edwards guy all the way.  I laughed out loud when I read this:

Since that declaration Clinton has done just that, attacking Obama's plans for health care, Social Security reform and diplomacy with Iran. She even went so far as to dig up a kindergarten essay of Obama's entitled "I Want to Be President" to accuse him of lying about not having a lifelong lust for the Oval Office. "So you decide which makes more sense: Entrust our country to someone who is ready on day one ... or to put America in the hands of someone with little national or international experience, who started running for president the day he arrived in the U.S. Senate," Clinton said in Iowa Monday. (Emphasis added.)

Will Clinton's Obama Attacks Backfire? - TIME

Hillary is just as guilty as Obama when it comes to running for President the day she started in the Senate.

And for God's sake, who attacks a presidential candidate based upon a kindergarten essay?

Technorati Tags: Hillary Clinton, 2008 Election, kindergarten

The price of computer illiteracy? Only $1,149! Oh, that and your reputation.

Scott Bloch is an idiot.   

Mr. Bloch had his computer's hard disk completely cleansed using a "seven-level" wipe: a thorough scrubbing that conforms to Defense Department data-security standards. The process makes it nearly impossible for forensics experts to restore the data later. He also directed Geeks on Call to erase laptop computers that had been used by his two top political deputies, who had recently left the agency.

Geeks on Call visited Mr. Bloch's government office in a nondescript office building on M Street in Washington twice, on Dec. 18 and Dec. 21, 2006, according to a receipt reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The total charge was $1,149, paid with an agency credit card, the receipt shows. The receipt says a seven-level wipe was performed but doesn't mention any computer virus.

Jeff Phelps, who runs Washington's Geeks on Call franchise, declined to talk about specific clients, but said calls placed directly by government officials are unusual. He also said erasing a drive is an unusual virus treatment. "We don't do a seven-level wipe for a virus," he said.

Head of Rove Inquiry in Hot Seat Himself - WSJ.com

$1,149 to wipe a hard drive?  That's enough money to buy 15 hard drives.  If I were in his shoes, I'd have simply destroyed the hard drive with a big fat hammer and bought a clean replacement.  Even if other services were involved, how wise is it to outsource the destruction of evidence... and then allow the service to be documented on a receipt that's paid for with a credit card?

Scott will likely be even happier to learn that programs to do what he paid $1,149 to do are available for free on the Internet, and require very little computer savvy.  Had Scott had the requisite amount of computer savvy, he could have wiped his own drive and then had the Geeks on Call reinstall all of his software.

Technorati Tags: Scott Bloch, destroying evidence, Karl Rove, idiot, waste of money, computer "virus"

Can you imagine the outrage if this were Richard Scruggs?

Law.com reports on a deal that would make the average reformer's blood boil if the recipient of the funds were Richard Scruggs, Willie Gary, or any other famous plaintiff's attorney.

Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft's law firm could earn $52.2 million helping the U.S. Attorney's office in New Jersey monitor a leading maker of knee and hip replacements, according to recent public filings.

Ashcroft's firm is among five legal teams U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie hand-picked to watch the manufacturers, who agreed in September to pay $311 million and hire monitors to settle allegations they paid surgeons to use and promote their devices.

Law.com - Former AG's Law Firm May Collect More Than $52 Million for Monitoring Medical Device Maker

Remember, it's only wrong when plaintiff's firms earn multimillion-dollar fees through personal connections with government officials.

Technorati Tags: John Ashcroft, Richard Scruggs, Medical monitoring, IOKIYAR

Club For Greed, Indeed!

No one will be surprised to know I'm hoping to vote for John Edwards in 2008.  Even if he doesn't get the nomination, I'll still probably vote for the Democratic candidate.  But I have to admit, I do need to start looking at Mike Huckabee.  As the following article explains, he's starting to sound like John Edwards, which is a good thing in my book.

Honestly, the main reason I'm such a Democrat is because of the Republican party's unabashed obeisance to the almighty dollar.  (That and the party's holier-than-Christ attitude towards religion.  And its harsh attitude towards gays, while members of their own rank try and seduce teenage boys or meet men in restrooms.  And the way they claim to be fiscally conservative but will piss away 3 trillion on a bullshit war for oil... that doesn't even get me cheap gas.  And the way they claim to be strict "law and order" types when the criminal is a poor minority, but not when it's a wealthy CEO who raises millions for the Republican party.)  Anyway, I liked the "Club for Greed" line. 

"Like many of his rivals, Huckabee brings his own deviations from conservative orthodoxy from the table. Ordinarily when a presidential candidate declares that he’s “for Main Street, not Wall Street” and laments that he doesn’t want his party to stand for “the CEO making $100 million instead of the guy who gets laid off because of that,” one’s reflexively response is “oh, go back the hair salon, John Edwards.” But these are Huckabee’s words....

Hearing Huckabee refer to the Club for Growth as “The Club for Greed” is enough to make most free marketers take an angry spit-take. But opinion polls have shown for quite some time considerable national anxiety about the economy, despite a booming stock market and steady growth in the GDP. Huckabee’s rhetoric may match the times, and with a Fortune magazine cover declaring “Business Loves Hillary!” and detailing how Wall Street has filled her coffers, one may wonder how many times a Republican presidential candidate must come running to the rhetorical aid of corporate executives."

Jim Geraghty on 2008 on National Review Online

Of course, the fact that Huckabee doesn't (seem to) worship the wealthy will no doubt doom hi

Technorati Tags: Mike Huckabee, Club for Growth, Club for Greed, 2008 Election, John Edwards

s campaign.

Have John Engler and the National Association of Manufacturers been naughty?

Technorati tags: John Engler, NAM, ATRA, ATRAF, tort reform, illegal contributions, Grover Norquist, bad guys

I haven't fact checked any of this, but one blogger points out the possibility that the NAM is illegally funneling money to other tort reform groups.

In 2005, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) funneled $870k through the American Justice Partnership (AJP) to American Tort Reform, according to the 2005 AJP 990.  Another $451k went to pay a "service fee". Total AJP expenditures were only $1.7 milllion.

Was AJP set up in 2005 to facilitate NAM's contribution to American Tort Reform? Is NAM legally prohibited from contributing directly to American Tort Reform?

The answer could, in part,  depend on which American Tort Reform received the $870k, the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) which is a 501(c)(6) or the American Tort Reform Foundation (ATRAF), a 501(c)(3).

This is not the first time that I have suspected NAM of disguising illegal contributions. Last year, I speculated here in the TPM Cafe about whether the 2004 $650k grant made by Grover Norquist's Americans For Tax Reform to the National Alliance for Worker and Employer Rights (NAWER) was funded by NAM. NAM is prohibited from contributing directly to NAWER by law

Source: American Justice Partnership, Another NAM Scam | TPMCafe

I'll do a little digging and keep my eyes open for more about this story.

Is "trial lawyer" losing its stigma?

The triumph of trial lawyers in the 2006 election might mean just that: 

The days when Republicans can win an election by smearing a candidate as a “trial lawyer” are over.

18 “trial lawyers” ran for Congress in 2006. 14 of them won.

Source: Stop Cornyn » Blog Archive » The Death of a False Right-Wing Talking Point

Then again, it could have been anti-Republican backlash.  The article is also a good read for explaining why the Republicans embrace tort "reform" so much - it puts the screws to the Democrats. 

Technorati tags: Democrats, Republicans, trial lawyers, tort Reform

" 'Reform' is Republican for 'screw the poor and the middle class.' "

 If you're looking for a great f-bomb laden critique of the Bush administration and its pro-business, anti-consumer policies, Lance Mannion just posted a good one: 

Don't worry.  The market will take care of it.  When enough people get sick and know what companies' products made them sick and stop buying from them and when enough stores that carry those products close and enough lawsuits are filed, then all that tainted and spoiled food will just magically vanish from the marketplace.

Except the Republican Free Marketeers want to take away your ability to sue.  They call it tort reform.  It's like Social Security reform.  "Reform" is Republican for "screw the poor and the middle class."

Nevermind.  At least on your sickbed or in your grave you'll have the satisfaction of knowing your suffering saved the rest of us a few pennies per pound on imported produce.

Source: Lance Mannion: They poison everything they touch

He's right.  A great many "reformers" do indeed think the invisible hand of the market will sort everything out and that government regulation will just cost money.  It seems all the invisible hand can do these days is flip us a very visible bird.

Technorati tags: Lance Mannion, tort reform, Bush, invisible hand

Even MORE evidence that the U.S. Chamber is Full of It

I recently wrote about how Mississippi passed a bunch of "reforms" but still rank near the bottom of the Chamber's list.  Here's some additional evidence that the legal climate in a state isn't nearly as important to attracting new business as such old standbys like tax breaks and geographic location:  

JFP: Most of the people I know, back in 2004 were really intrigued with the idea of tort reform because we were led to believe that our insurance rates would go down, but nobody that I can think of are bragging that their rates went down. I know mine havenҒt. Were we supposed to actually benefit from that or was tort reform aimed to benefit somebody else?

Ross: Mississippi has benefited. I gave you Toyota as an example. After we fixed our legal system, it was no longer an obstruction to them coming here.

Former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove told the JFP that the issue of the states legal climate never came up in numerous conversations he had with Toyota executives in 2003.

ғToyota was comfortable with our business climate, Musgrove said. ԓWe had passed significant tort reform in 2002, and the Toyota proposal came in 2003. It just was not an issue for them.

Toyota Senior VP, Dennis Cuneo said in a company press article that Toyota passed over Mississippi for an $800 million Toyota plant in 2003 because of a number of factors unconnected to the stateԒs legal climate.

According to Cuneo, one of the crucialӔ factors in the decision to pick San Antonio was the big money Texas committed to build two separate rail accesses for the plant. The state also committed $116 million in training and tax breaks for the plant.

Arkansas officialswho had also been competing for the plantחadmitted to the Associated Press in 2003 that Toyota executives told them that the plant in Texas would be a doorway to a virtually untapped market of pick-up truck buyers in Mexico and Latin America. Texas, itself, was the biggest market of pick-up sales in the nation, and Toyota was looking to seduce Texans with a new home team.

Finally, the legal climate in Texas, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was not so rosy at the time either, with Texas ranking No. 46 out of 50 in judicial fairness in February of 2003the same month that Toyota decided on San Antonio. (Emphasis added.)

Source: Mississippi StateDesk

Not sure why the formatting is goofy.  But it's still not as goofy as the notion that the best way to attract new business is to gut your state's civil justice system.

Technorati tags: U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Mississippi, tort reform