Bush: "Corporate Welfare Whore"
James Simpson
He was long ago bought off by big-business interests, who contributed
millions to his campaigns (for governor of TX, and for the presidency). I
see now why he's so anti-environment and anti-consumer, and so Pro-Corporate
Welfare. It's just sad that he was able to fool so many middle class voters
who voted for him due to his promised "tax cut", which will in reality favor
only large corporations and the very, very rich. As usual, Joe Average will
be left to pay for billions of dollars in Corporate Welfare, which costs
taxpayers about 100 billion dollars more per year than welfare for the poor.
James
From http://past.thenation.com/e2k/recent/0124sherrill.shtml
January 24, 2000
GEORGE W. BUSH DOESN'T NEED IDEAS; HE GETS PLENTY FROM HIS BUSINESS BACKERS.
The Man in the Empty Blue Suit
by ROBERT SHERRILL
"He can't speak, he can't govern, he doesn't have any ideas, he's done
almost nothing--what can he do except disappoint people? Just wait till you
get to know him.... If you think his daddy had trouble with 'the vision
thing,' wait'll you meet this one. He doesn't seem to read about or care
about how government actually works."
That's Molly Ivins's appraisal of George W. Bush.
The point is, Bush isn't supposed to govern. The powers that put him where
he is, the entrenched business interests, are supposed to govern. And they
do. Bush is merely the front man, the agent, for the mighty industrial
tycoons of Houston and the insurance and banking tycoons of Dallas-Fort
Worth and the oil and gas tycoons of every corner of the state. During the
five years he has been Texas governor, he has given total allegiance to the
whims and demands of the moneyed interests that put him in office and shaped
all parts of state government.
Bush has been the champion and main facilitator of the so-called tort reform
movement in Texas--or tort deform movement, in Ralph Nader's formulation.
Here's what Nader and his co-author, Wesley Smith, have to say about this
wrecking crew in their book No Contest: Corporate Lawyers and the Perversion
of Justice in America: "The tort deform movement is a brazen effort by
corporations and politicians beholden to corporate interests to pull off...a
nationwide perpetual bailout for polluters, swindlers, reckless health care
providers, and makers of tobacco, defective vehicles, dangerous drugs, and
many other hazardous consumer products. The effort to wreck the civil
justice system has grown over recent years into a veritable industry
[supported by] America's richest industrial and insurance companies and
their power-lawyer lieutenants."
If Bush gets into the White House and Republicans continue to control
Congress, they'll achieve what they want, which is the demolition of the
civil justice system. As governor, Bush, with the avid assistance of his
allies in the legislature and on the state's Supreme Court--all of whom have
been heavily bankrolled by the same tightly knit corporate cabal--has
already done a pretty effective job of wrecking the system in Texas. The
civil courts are being made almost useless for ordinary people who sue
corporations and professional knaves (doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc.)
who cause physical hurt or financial harm.
For his 1994 and 1998 campaigns, Bush collected $41 million, the biggest
haul ever made by any gubernatorial candidate in history. Nearly half of it,
according to a Los Angeles Times/CNN analysis, came from the following
special-interest groups: banks and insurance companies, energy and mining,
realtors and developers, manufacturers, lobbyists and big-time defense
lawyers, wholesale and retail companies, and the medical industry--in other
words, to a very impressive degree from those who want to kill pollution
controls and worker lawsuits.
Craig McDonald, who has worked with Nader for nearly two decades and now
runs Texans for Public Justice, the state's most militant watchdog group in
tracing the connection between money and power, says $4.5 million of the
contributions came from outfits established specifically to give the
business community and the healthcare industry immunity for their dire
actions.
Chief among these outfits is Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR), which has
perhaps the biggest political action committee in the state. The group knows
how to play rough. In 1995 the Dallas Morning News exposed TLR as a partner
with Philip Morris in trying to dig up dirt that would discredit
environmental and consumer groups like the Audubon Society, Public Citizen
and Consumers Union.
TLR claims more than 4,600 members statewide, but you can forget that
democratic pose. The muscle and money come mostly from just sixteen of the
state's wealthiest people, who contributed half the million dollars TLR
spread around in last year's election cycle. The "Sweet 16," as McDonald
calls them with suitable irony, are all connected to businesses or
professions that have good reason to want weaker liability standards.
Since energy and construction industries lead the state in workplace deaths
and injuries, it isn't surprising that TLR's core members include tycoons
like the Weekley brothers, who are among the nation's top builders of homes
and shopping malls. Other TLR leaders include William McMinn, a top exec at
Sterling Chemicals, whose Texas City plant belched 228 million pounds of
toxins into the atmosphere between 1988 and 1996; Kenneth Lay, the boss of
Enron Corporation, North America's largest natural gas marketer as well as
the continent's largest supplier of nonregulated electricity; and Robert
McNair, head of Cogen Technologies, the country's largest privately held
power producer. The conscience of this rich fraternity can perhaps be
measured most accurately by its desire to win legislation shielding it from
financial responsibility when the most vulnerable employees--contract
workers--are killed or injured at their work sites.
One of the most interesting, and most diversely motivated, is Dr. James
Leininger of San Antonio, a religious zealot who has given millions to
support the school voucher crusade. He supports the tort reform movement
because his company, Kinetic Concepts, has faced lawsuits claiming its
oscillating hospital beds crushed and strangled patients.
It was enormously rich interests like these who made Bush governor of Texas
and now hope to use him at a higher level.
Bush's top promise while campaigning for his first term was that he would
put a heavy lid on punitive damages and hogtie plaintiffs' attorneys. And he
did. It was his first order of business after being sworn in. He designed
his tort reform package as an "emergency," so it zipped through the
legislature. The new laws were tightfisted; punitive awards were capped at
$200,000, or two times economic damages. The new laws set strict limits on
who could file lawsuits and where they could be filed. Also, by increasing
the bond plaintiffs would have to post from $2,000 to $5,000, his
legislation made it harder for low-income people to file medical malpractice
suits.
Perhaps the most stunning "reform" was the blanket protection given some
professions. Craig McDonald explains: "Texas had a very good Deceptive Trade
Practices Act, under which a consumer could bring a lawsuit for triple
damages against almost any business that lied about a warranty, deceptively
sold you some goods or services, or didn't represent you well enough. It was
a very good statute and a model for the country. The professionals and tort
reformers wanted to gut that statute, and Bush did it for them in his first
term. The framework is still there but the penalties are gone. Professionals
got absolute immunity for their misdeeds. Doctors, lawyers, anyone who is a
member of the professional class--now you can't bring suit against them
under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, because they are exempt. We're not
kidding about this. Now you can sue your auto mechanic, but you can't sue
your doctor."
Bush's service to the tort reform gang was gratefully acknowledged. Ralph
Wayne, president of the Texas Civil Justice League, a big anticonsumer lobby
that gave generously to Bush's campaigns, said the pro-industry changes in
tort law "would never have happened without George Bush. He kept his word
far and beyond."
Meanwhile, the Texas Supreme Court was doing its share to crush civil
justice.
Texas elects its judges. That means campaign money shapes justice [see
Sheila Kaplan and Zoė Davidson, "The Buying of the Bench," January 26,
1998]. For most of its history, the Texas Supreme Court has been bought off
generously by various industrialists, medical interests, business moguls and
their defense lawyers. This has been the accepted Texas way of dispensing
justice. In short, one might be kind and call them geishas, but in fact the
justices are whores.
For virtually its entire history, the court has been occupied by
conservatives. But there was one brief, miraculous period when progressives
seized control of the bench, with campaign money coming abundantly from
plaintiffs' attorneys. This bright era began to develop in the late
seventies. For the first time in the memory of man, ordinary Texas citizens
who sued for damages were winning most of their cases. By the mid-eighties,
they were winning an astounding 70 percent of the time. Were these new,
progressive justices whoring, like the conservatives of yore? Perhaps. But
if so, for once they were our whores.
Naturally, the establishment couldn't allow that to continue, so it fought
back with ingenious propaganda and mountains of money. First, in 1987, it
enticed the crew of CBS's 60 Minutes to put together a program titled
"Justice for Sale," which implied that the corruption of the progressive
court was something new. For everyone who knew anything about the history of
the Texas Supreme Court, the CBS "exposure" sounded as bizarrely comical as
the prefect of police's claim in Casablanca of being "shocked, shocked" that
gambling was going on in Rick's saloon. (The 60 Minutes reporters said
nothing about the prior corruption of the conservative court.)
Next, the Republican tycoons poured millions of dollars into what was
ballyhooed as a "Clean Slate" of judicial candidates. Their pious campaign
worked. By the time Bush was elected governor, conservatives once again had
a majority on the court, and today it is solidly Republican.
The "Clean Slate" Republican justices are wallowing in huge piles of
campaign money, most of it coming from corporations and medical groups and
their lawyers with cases before the court. Craig McDonald's watchdogs at
Texans for Public Justice completed a study this year showing that the eight
sitting members of the court elected since 1994 raised $7.2 million, or 69
percent of their total war chests, from corporate PACs, corporate-funded
"tort reform" groups and defense lawyers, and that "in 60 percent of the
opinions issued by the Texas Supreme Court in a recent four-year period, one
or more of the justices took campaign contributions from at least one lawyer
or litigant involved in the case."
Plaintiffs' attorneys, once the deep pockets for Democratic challengers, saw
they couldn't win against that kind of money and simply gave up. "They have
won," Hartley Hampton, president of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association,
told the New York Times last summer. "We're just trying to keep them from
bayoneting the dead."
How obvious was the whoring? Texans in general probably weren't paying much
attention, but members of the legal industry knew they were operating in a
high-priced bordello. A recent survey by the State Bar of Texas found that
four out of five lawyers were convinced that campaign money shaped judicial
decisions, and--will candor never cease?--half of Texas's judges admitted
campaign money influenced their decisions.
At the Supreme Court level, that certainly seemed to be true. The trade-off
can be quite blatant. In one recent year, the Texas Society of CPAs was at
the top of contributors to the Supreme Court. Three of the biggest
accounting firms had three cases before the court that year, and won two of
them. "If federal judges take money from HMOs, insurance companies, nursing
homes, polluters, lawyers or other parties with cases before their court,
they run the risk of bribery charges," says McDonald. "Here in Texas such
practices are business as usual."
After the 1995-96 Supreme Court session, in which defendants won more than
80 percent of the time, Walt Borges, director of the pro-consumer Court
Watch, said, "Consumers who are injured by poorly designed products,
patients maimed by negligent doctors and hospitals, and anyone who must sue
the government know that the acceptance of their case by the Texas Supreme
Court usually is the kiss of death for their efforts to recover damages."
Things didn't improve. The medical and insurance industries are among the
most generous in stuffing the justices' pockets. Perhaps that's why
insurance companies won ten of eleven cases in the court's next session;
physicians, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies were defendants in seven
cases--they won all seven. In the 1997 session, insurance companies won ten
decisions and lost three. Doctors and hospitals won eight, lost none. Also
faring well that year were manufacturers of defective products, who won
eight and lost three. In worker and whistleblower cases, the bosses won
eight and lost none.
In the years when progressives controlled the court, individual consumers
and injured plaintiffs won far more than half the time. Since the
ideological turnaround, their fortunes have been dramatically reversed. As
already mentioned, some years they have lost 70-80 percent of their appeals.
McDonald points out that since 1995, "injured workers have prevailed in just
one workers' compensation case before that court."
It can get pretty raw. A baby was delivered at Houston's St. Luke's Hospital
with a permanently disabled arm. The parents sued the hospital because the
doctor who delivered the baby had been given staff privileges despite having
been repeatedly sued for malpractice and despite lacking proper malpractice
insurance. The court ruled against the parents, saying the hospital wasn't
to blame for the doctor's misconduct.
Did the ruling have anything to do with the fact that lawyers for St. Luke's
had contributed $28,450 to the five justices who voted for the majority, and
that the Texas Hospital Association had given $4,500 to the justice who
wrote the majority opinion? Admittedly, these amounts were trivial fractions
of the total given to the court by members of the medical community, which
in a typical year passes out more than half a million dollars.
And what did Texas hear from George Bush while scandalous conduct of this
sort went on, year after year? He was silent, of course, and understandably.
He could hardly pretend to be outraged. After all, through appointments to
fill vacancies and by helping to guide their campaigns, he and his top
political advisers had virtually created the court.
What we have been describing is not merely bought-off justice. It is
literally the destruction of the civil justice system in Texas. To expand
the destruction on a national scale, Bush as President would simply have to
appoint people to the US Supreme Court who would, in the name of states'
rights, leave such matters to the whim of state courts--many of which are
itching to follow Texas's example. He could manage this quite easily.
The current US Supreme Court contains five on the right wing, four in the
middle. The last sign of lively liberalism disappeared from its chambers ten
years ago. No member of the present court opposes the death penalty, and
long gone are the days when there was a Brennan or a Blackmun or a Marshall
to write passionate opinions supporting social justice for underdogs.
Bush would only need to retain that five-vote majority for his mischief, but
the odds are that he could soon boost it to seven. Chief Justice William
Rehnquist is 75 and is said to be tired of the job and just hanging around
waiting for a Republican President to name his replacement. Justice Sandra
Day O'Connor, 69, has had a bout with cancer and is said to be in the
retirement mood. Justice John Paul Stevens is 79, and you can draw your own
conclusions. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 66, recently had an operation for
colon cancer; the New York Times health columnist Jane Brody noted that the
cancer "was found only after she experienced significant symptoms, which
were initially misdiagnosed as diverticulitis and which suggest she may have
a more advanced stage of the disease."
The disappearance of Stevens and Ginsburg, both moderates, would open the
way for Bush to create a court that would be overwhelmingly reactionary far
into the future. Justice Antonin Scalia is 63; Justice Anthony Kennedy, a
Reagan appointee who acts it, is also 63; Justice Clarence Thomas is only
51. Bush has said he would appoint Justices of Scalia's philosophy, which
is, like Thomas's, medieval.
Odds like that are what provoke Nader and Wesley Smith to talk dourly about
the possibility of "a nationwide perpetual bailout for polluters, swindlers,
reckless health care providers, and makers of tobacco, defective vehicles,
dangerous drugs, and many other hazardous consumer products."
Steven D. Litvintchouk
>
> After reading the article below, I now understand why Bush was (s)elected:
> He was long ago bought off by big-business interests, who contributed
> millions to his campaigns (for governor of TX, and for the presidency). I
> see now why he's so anti-environment and anti-consumer, and so Pro-Corporate
> Welfare.
Both Bush and Gore received millions of dollars from business
interests. You could have checked this for yourself at
www.opensecrets.org, www.politics.com, and other websites. (How do you
think Gore paid for all those expensive TV ads? Who do you think were
in those hospitality suites and skyboxes at the Dem convention?)
A number of large corporations (including liquor companies!) actually
contributed more to Gore than to Bush.
If you wanted to vote for a candidate who took no soft money, you had
only three choices: Nader, Hagelin and Buchanan.
--
Steven D. Litvintchouk
Email: s...@mitre.org
Disclaimer: As far as I am aware, the opinions expressed
herein
are not those of my employer.
James Simpson
news:3A667EAD...@mitre.org...
> James Simpson wrote:
> > After reading the article below, I now understand why Bush was
(s)elected:
> > He was long ago bought off by big-business interests, who contributed
> > millions to his campaigns (for governor of TX, and for the presidency).
I
> > see now why he's so anti-environment and anti-consumer, and so
Pro-Corporate
> > Welfare.
>
> Both Bush and Gore received millions of dollars from business interests.
True, but according to www.politics.com Bush received almost twice as much
as Gore ($82,555,880.00 to $46,784,770.00). I'm aware Dem's and Repub's
alike are bought and paid for, but Repub's do tend to receive significantly
more from large corporations. And if you compare (at www.opensecrets.org)
the amount of PAC dollars Dem's and Repub's receive, in almost every case
you'll find that Republican candidates receive many times more than Dem's.
Until someone like Nader has an actual chance of winning, the Democratic
party does seem to be, at least overall, the "lesser of the two evils" in
relation to big business allegiance.
James
Steven D. Litvintchouk
>
> "Steven D. Litvintchouk" <s...@mitre.org> wrote in message
> news:3A667EAD...@mitre.org...
> > James Simpson wrote:
> > > After reading the article below, I now understand why Bush was
> (s)elected:
> > > He was long ago bought off by big-business interests, who contributed
> > > millions to his campaigns (for governor of TX, and for the presidency).
> I
> > > see now why he's so anti-environment and anti-consumer, and so
> Pro-Corporate
> > > Welfare.
> >
> > Both Bush and Gore received millions of dollars from business interests.
>
> True, but according to www.politics.com Bush received almost twice as much
> as Gore ($82,555,880.00 to $46,784,770.00). I'm aware Dem's and Repub's
> alike are bought and paid for, but Repub's do tend to receive significantly
> more from large corporations. And if you compare (at www.opensecrets.org)
> the amount of PAC dollars Dem's and Repub's receive, in almost every case
> you'll find that Republican candidates receive many times more than Dem's.
> Until someone like Nader has an actual chance of winning, the Democratic
> party does seem to be, at least overall, the "lesser of the two evils" in
> relation to big business allegiance.
Unfortunately, the Dems more than make up for that lack in other ways.
Among their biggest contributors and supporters are the teachers' unions
NEA and AFT, and the state/local public employee union AFSCME. These
folks have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of local
government and the failings of our public school system.
My dad was a blue-collar factory worker who belonged to a union. But I
believe that was a very different thing than being a government
bureaucrat who belongs to a public-employee union.
KMFDM
> >
> > After reading the article below, I now understand why Bush was
(s)elected:
> > He was long ago bought off by big-business interests, who contributed
> > millions to his campaigns (for governor of TX, and for the presidency).
I
> > see now why he's so anti-environment and anti-consumer, and so
Pro-Corporate
> > Welfare.
Does this make Gore & Clinton Chinese whores?
James Simpson
So, teachers' unions and employee unions, middle class workers, give to
Democrats. Is this bad? Those are low-paid workers, making less than even
some blue-collar workers. Compare the Dem's donors being "teachers' unions"
and "public employee" unions to Repub's donors being large corporations like
"banks and insurance companies, energy and mining, realtors and developers,
manufacturers, lobbyists and big-time defense lawyers, wholesale and retail
companies, and the medical industry." I see a major difference, with Dem's
being supported by the Average person, lower to middle class, the "working
Joe", while Repub's donors are largely anti-environment, big business, big
money, that only care about making more money. And when a party's backers
are only interested in making money, even if that requires plundering the
environment, that party is no longer representing the people. Why is it that
Blacks voted 92% Democratic in the last election? I think it's because they
don't feel represented by the Republican party, which is mostly White, and
mostly rich. I'm not saying there are no Democrats that fit that description
also, but for the most part the Democratic party is the party of all people,
the poor and the rich of all races. I'm glad the teacher's and public
employees have unions, since they have so little political influence; they
have to be organized to take on the cold-hearted corporate influences that
would deny them a liveable wage and benefits so that their corporate heads
can make millions. Teachers and public employees support the Democratic
party because they feel Dem's will support them more than Repub's. These low
paid workers are not a powerful political force, because they don't have the
huge sums of money to donate which large corporations do. The corporations
that give these huge campaign donations to people like Bush, they're the
ones that wield great power. Follow the money trail, and you'll find the
truth. This article http://past.thenation.com/e2k/recent/0124sherrill.shtml
reveals in detail GW's money trail; he's simply taken much too much money
from corporate interests to be trusted, in my view. I only hope McCain is
successful in getting the campaign finance bill passed, because the system
is broke now.
James
David Maynard
Yes, this is 'bad' because the members of those unions are required to
pay dues that then go to political contributions they have little or no
say in. And, in many states, are required to be in the union even to
work.
Dark Angel
PEOPLE, HE WAS SELECTED BY THE
SUPREME COURT.