Dems need to hammer on the Tort Reform issue

[PurityOfEssence]

Okay, we're paranoid about full-frontal class warfare, I understand that. (I don't agree or like it, but I understand it.)

Junior is running ads now insinuating that "junk lawsuits" are responsible for the health care crisis, and he mentions tort reform in the process. To the average voter, it might as well be some recipe change for European cake.

Say something like this: George Bush wants to make sure you can never sue a corporation. Halliburton can poison you with as much asbestos as they and Dresser want, and you can do nothing. They want to make it so you have no recourse if your spouse is killed by their corporate friends. Why does this administration always side with the powerful against the weak? Why do they demand that workers be responsible for their lives and success, yet multimillionaires should be protected by the government?

The following, of course, is to incendiary, but it needs to be addressed somehow.

Insurance companies make shocking profits, and lost lots of money through idiotic investment in the tech bubble; they took it out on doctors by raising their rates. Insurance companies WANT doctors' rates to be ruinous so they can force immunity from responsibility. Once again, like holding up Homeland Security until they could crush the unions, this administration cares more about personal profit than the well being of the people. They'd rather people die than for their friends and contributors to ever be held accountable for their actions. As such, they consider themselves a virtual monarchy.

[Catfight]

1. Reminds me of the IronicTimes.com "French pastry chefs claim torte reform

[smiley_glad_hands]

2. When did the truth become incendiary?eom

[PurityOfEssence]

8. At the dawn of time, and it's been ritualistically quashed ever since

Well...you asked...

[northernsoul]

3. I couldn't agree more

People are going to get suckered into wanting "tort reform" and 20 years from now they'll wonder why they can't get any justice when a loved one is killed by corporate malfeasance.

Get the truth: www.atla.org

[Jacobin]

4. It's practically impossible to break through the hypocrisy

One of my partners does personal injury work. Some of his clients are huge BushBots and "frivolous lawsuit" complainers. However, when they have a fender bender with minor to no injuries, they are the MOST demanding and want the MOST money and go doctor shopping to run up the biggest medical bills to inflate their claims.

The problem with trying to reason with these hypocritical, amoral, selfish, pricks is that they don't give a rat's ass about anyone or anything but themselves. Those in the middle, the undecideds, who don't think much and are not well informed, just go along with the "yeah, all these frivolous lawsuits are making my insurance to expensive" mantra.

[Guava Jelly]

5. My mother died 359 days ago the ambulance took twice as long as

it should to get to my dieing mother as her heart stopped.
being only 20 minutes and taking 40 plus minutes to get there my mother died!!!..The kicker is that since it was a volunteer ambulance service that 911 called because on tort reform My Family cant punish or bring suit against their neglegence.And now someone else's mother my meet the same fate....

[Warpy]

6. Is your child's life junk?

That's what calling all malpractice lawsuits "junk" should be telling people, that the lives of their nearest and dearest are "junk" to the GOP, that they have no value, and if they're injured or killed by bad products or drunken doctors it's just fine, because they're utterly worthless.

THAT should be the talking point from our side.

[PurityOfEssence]

7. Now you're talkin'!

I like that.

For years now, many of us have suggested not only using their words against them but their actual recordings. The Dems are doing this now, and that empty factory commercial is a real corker. This would be a fabulous way to take it.

The Republicans have no compunction about using the most shrill and emotional examples, and they deserve every minute of it. Corporations that habitually poison and kill need to be accountable for their actions; from a dispassionate standpoint alone, it causes too much strain on the system to take care of catastrophic illnesses, families thrown into destitution and the other attendant repercussions. One's actions cost, and Capitalism is based on profit, so sustaining unsound businesses (or ones that leech off of the the public services, like Wal-Mart) is a sin against the concept of the market itself.

If they REALLY believe in Capitalism, incompetent and destructive corporations deserve to fail; they're not viable models.

They'll make America one big Love Canal, and IF it's cleaned up, it'll be at our expense.