Bush,
The Republican Party, and Eliminating Competition Through
"Strategic Initiatives"
October 8 2004
Counterbias.com
by Jack Dalton
"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:
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.
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