Saturday, April 11, 2009

Waxman's Folly: Proposed Bill Includes Provision That Allows Global Warming "Victims" to Sue Government

Whenever the Democrats want to pay back their base, everyone must pay for it. This time their looking to bestow their trial lawyer constituency with a significant reward for voting Democrat.

Reps. Henry Waxman (CA) and Edward Markey (MA) wrote a bill that allows individuals to sue the government for ailments allegedly caused by climate change. This could conceivably mean that people suffering with anything from something as serious cancer to something as minor as asthma or sunburns could sue the US, state, and local governments because they neglected to put restrictions on man-made gases that some say cause global warming. Not only that, but one could also sue for ailments that they don't even have but could "expect to suffer" from an ailment.

According to the Washington Times:

"The measure sets grounds for anyone 'who has suffered, or reasonably expects to suffer, a harm attributable, in whole or in part,' to government inaction to file a 'citizen suit.' The term 'harm' is broadly defined as 'any effect of air pollution (including climate change), currently occurring or at risk of occurring.'"

Leave it to two trial lawyers to dream this up. Frivolous doesn't even start to describe this new potential type of litigation. It would create a whole new breed of lawyers. They will make "ambulance chasers" look like boy scouts.

This is absolutely asinine. It's like suing churches because one might believe that God allegedly failed to prevent them from getting sick. The only people that this would good for is the trial lawyers.

They will get rich exploiting the "victims" and the government, and by extension every single taxpayer in this country. The government is having enough trouble paying for the Democrats' wish list as it is.

This will spark a massive onslaught of frivolous lawsuits against the government. As unpredictable as juries and judges can be, it could lead to big sums of money being awarded to people because of activist judges and juries, especially in the more liberal parts of the country.

Many people today are looking for that one big score so they won't have to ever work again. They see Uncle Sam as the rich uncle with deep pockets that they can squeeze some money from without any consequences. However, the government can't pay the bills they already have. We don't need to add more leeches sucking on a piggy bank that has already been bled dry.

How could this ever be considered a good idea? People nowadays are too sue-happy as it is. Do we really need to make it easier for them to sue the government in order to get a big payday?

The bill would limit the amount that any one person could be awarded at $75,000 in a year and $1.5 M lifetime. Considering that there are over 306 million potential litigants,...um I mean people, in this country right now, that would be about $540 M that could be conceivably given out.

The legal theory behind this bill is extremely flawed. Assuming climate change exists, the government isn't directly responsible for the carbon emissions that cause it. It's a stretch to say that they're even liable for global warming effects.

Secondly, how can one be able to sue for an ailment that they don't even have yet? It would be the equivalent of someone suing McDonald's because they "expect to suffer" from coffee burns sometime in the future... maybe.

Plus, you have to wonder where and when would it stop. Being able to sue the government for global warming would open the door wide open to sue companies for their contributions to the release of man-made gases that allegedly cause climate change. This would devastate industries like the automobile and airline industries already teetering on the edge of collapse. It wouldn't just put the final nail on the coffin. It would fill in the 6-foot deep hole with cement instead of dirt.

Other industries like energy, transportation, and different manufacturing industries would be thrown into a tailspin, if this bill was enacted. It'll cost more to make and transport the goods to sell. The only way they could survive would be to pass on the cost of the lawsuits onto the consumer by driving up the prices of everything we use and buy. All kinds of insurance in this country are already sky high because of Frivolous lawsuits. What happened to insurance would happen to most of the industries in this country.

Let's also consider that the United States only emits slightly over 20% of the world's emissions. What about the other 80%? China and the European Union emits 33% of greenhouse gases combined. China's cities have a perpetual fog that surrounds them because of the amount of air pollution in the air.

Russia and India aren't exuding as much gases as the previous countries, but they are industrializing countries that care very little about restricting emissions. Their carbon footprint is getting increasingly bigger all the time.

Can we file lawsuits against those countries for their contributions to the problem? On the flip side of the coin, would this bill allow people from other countries to sue our government for global warming caused ailments? If you consider the $1.5 per person limit from before, the 6 trillion people in this world could bankrupt the US.

Finally, global warming is just a theory, if not a myth. Should we be giving so much weight and plausibility to a half-baked belief in man-made climate change that we could be risking sweeping and devastating consequences for years to come?

This is a transparent attempt for the Democrats to pay back their trial lawyer base. There is no other logical reason to include this provision in the proposed bill.

The mainstream media has buried the story, but it must be brought to light. I would recommend that you call your representative and senators and express your objections to this provision.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Rosa Brooks Loses Touch With Reality Writing Her LA Times Swan Song

In her last article for the LA Times before going to work for the Pentagon advisor for the Obama Administration, Rosa Brooks said the only way for the press to survive so that they can keep government in check is for the government to bail them out.

Please, someone give Ms. Brooks a drug test. She must be on something.

She seems to fail to realize that the great majority of people are usually reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them. As we have seen with AIG and GM, the government will ultimately exercise their ability to control what companies do and who is hired and fired by being able to have the power of the pursestrings over the companies. Therefore, if newspapers and journalists rely on the government for their salaries and survival, they will be less likely to say anything bad about the government because of the fear of losing funding or jobs.

It would give the government too much power over the press. It would bring an end the freedom of the press, at least for the ones that were bailed out. There is a reason why the freedom of the press was in the first amendment in the Bill of Rights. It is one of the cornerstones needed to keep free society like our own free. The government would be able to bury any story that would air their dirty laundry and affect their chances of getting re-elected.

A great example is when Rod Blagojevich tried to blackmail the Tribune Co., which owns the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Cubs. Hot Rod refused to give them any "f'n" money for Wrigley Field unless they would get rid of certain "A-holes" that wrote pieces that expressed their unfavorable opinions of the "damn" former Illinois governor and his policies.

If Rod was able to exert this kind of pressure on the paper and almost succeed with indirect control of a company's money flow, imagine what those corruptable officials in government could do with direct control of their money flow. Our newspapers would devolve into just being a mouthpiece for whoever is in charge in Washington. Our press corps would start resembling cheerleaders much like the press in dictatorships with state-run media in Venezuela and N. Korea have turned into with their coverage of the "Dear Leaders". Then again, the way the papers have covered "The One we've been waiting for" maybe they're already cheerleaders anyway, but at least they have a choice to be a cheerleader or not. If the papers are bailed out, they won't have a choice.

Brooks: "Some might say I have a 'new job,' but because I'll be escaping a dying industry -- and your tax dollars will shortly be paying my salary -- I prefer to think of it as my personal government bailout."

Does she not realize that one of the main reasons why the industry is "dying" is because of hacks like her that distort the truth to promote her own liberal agenda as she did here.

By the way, is it discomforting to anyone else that my tax dollars are going to pay her salary now, or is it just me?

In response to her piece, Ed Morrissey of Hot Air had some major disagreements with her spotty at best theory. First of all, "it’s a myth that faulty reporting led to the war; Democrats and Republicans both used the same intel and gave the same answers on Iraqi WMD, as did all of the Western democracies.  The intel was wrong, a problem that better reporting would not have solved."

He, also, rightly debunks her claim that the media was supportive of the Iraqi invasion in 2003. He goes on to wonder if papers were dependent on the Bush Administration would they do a better job of holding him accountable than one independent.

Let me get my magic 8-ball.

Um...no.

I agree with Ed to a certain extant about Brooks' view on the absurdity of equating the government's role in the newspaper industry to its role in roads and schools. Roads are definitely something that the government should control. Although, I'm not totally sold on the idea that the government should have such a huge role in the school system. They've run our schools into the ground. Why let them keep control of it ? Also, I believe that they shouldn't have so much control over what is taught to our kids especially in relation to evolution and other controversial subjects.

A newspaper bailout as Brooks presents it is a horrific idea. It'll just be another step towards socialism a la Venezuela.