Veteran journalist Helen Thomas pens a sharp essay about Bush's disdain for trial lawyers. The administration wants to put a $250,000 cap on "pain and suffering." We wonder if any proposed legislation will have a COLA formula built in. If not (our suspicion), then it's going to be a farce a few years down the road (if it ever becomes law).
But back to Helen. She ends her piece with these words:There are two ways of enforcing consumer protections. One is through government intervention. That's the job of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Labor Department, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Federal Aviation Administration and a host of others and their state and local counterparts.
The second way to enforce consumer rights is the private lawsuit. Bush's war on the trial lawyers can only please those from the consumer-be-damned school of corporate wrongdoing. In President Bush's "compassionate conservatism," just whom does he feel compassion for? Thomas is focusing on the "second way", but we hasten to add that Bush doesn't like the "first way" (regulation). One would hope that most problems are stopped with regulation and that litigation is for those cases that slip through the net. But with Bush's emphasis on voluntary-action-instead-of-regulation, the slack has to be taken up by trial lawyers. With caps on awards, that approach is significantly weakened.
Thomas is correct when she says Bush is a supporter of "the consumer-be-damned school of corporate wrongdoing." That explains the absurd Harvey Pitt and his do-nothing SEC. |
