Bush, the Republican Party, and Eliminating Competition through “Strategic Initiatives”

NEW OpedNews Forums

Click Here to Access Hundreds of Fresh News & Opinion Articles

-Classics of Liberal Thinking
-archives of articles by our
regular contributors
-Progressive Radio Links
-OpEdNews.Com Site Map

Bush, the Republican Party, and Eliminating Competition through “Strategic Initiatives”

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. The ones guilty of medical malpractice 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.