Consumer Law

Lobbying against our rights... with our money!

By Kia Franklin

Talk about gutsy... the same corporations that helped create this financial crisis, and are soaking up billions in TARP relief, are now using this taxpayer money to lobby against taxpayers' rights as consumers and employees. In essence, they are using taxpayer money to advance the same objectives of the tort "reform" agenda--less accountability for big business misconduct, and fewer legal protections for the ordinary people affected by it. Ian Millhiser of OverruledBlog fodiscusses this on Huffington Post as a follow up to a post by HuffPo's Sam Stein about the use of TARP funds to lobby against the Employee Free Choice Act. Both are well worth the read.

Is this the new wave of tort "reform," the next step towards fully insulating corporate bad behavior? Mind you, these are the same groups railing against efforts to relieve homeowners of distress and crisis caused by mortgage scams. The message seems to be: people must act responsibly, but not corporations. Corporations can do whatever they want, and if their actions create chaos the government will just give them money to "fix" it. And then they can use that money to wreak more havoc on ordinary people.

Full post as published by TortDeform.com on February 18, 2009 (boomark / email).