Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Personal Injury Law Blogs -> Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer

Personal Injury Law

: Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer

Part II: Tort Reform or Pork Reform? My reply to the A.T.R.A.

By Steve Lombardi

I'm back today with Part II to Mr. McKinney and his comments concerning Tort Reform. If anyone thought I should reconsider speaking directly with the American Tort Reform Association you can forget it. As far as I'm concerned I'm just warming up.

The Face of Tort Reform - The one the Chamber won't show you.

Dear Mr. McKinney and the American Tort Reform Association:

Here allow me to point out how one sided and destructive your ideas really are for America.

While you focus on a cup of hot coffee, a pair of lost pants, one laptop and a box of cereal let's see what you don't and won't talk about.

1. Wall Street fraud running rampant and halving the American retirement plan.

2. The CEO's of the American auto industry running the U.S. Auto industry into bankruptcy.

3. Oil companies ruining the economy by running the price of a barrel of oil through the roof while sitting on huge reserves and making record profits.

4. Food manufacturers spreading food poison that sickens thousands because no agency is inspecting their plant and shutting them down. "Confirmed cases of salmonella infection linked to tainted peanut butter continue to grow, rising to 501 in 43 states, according to latest figures from federal health officials.

New cases were reported as of late Sunday by states involved in the outbreak, including Arizona, Iowa, New Jersey, New York and Oregon. One ill person has been reported from Canada.

The mounting numbers of foodborne illness have been accompanied by a deluge of recalled cakes, crackers, cookies, ice cream, energy bars and more from dozens of manufacturers and retailers who bought peanut butter and peanut paste products from a Blakely, Ga., commercial processing facility.", See MSNBC, January 26, 2009. Peanut butter food poisoning cases top 500.

5. Hospital systems operating with MERCA and other uncontrolled hospital borne infections while spending billions of dollars on more brick and mortar projects.

6. Wall Streets accountants using fraudulent accounting practices that give phony information to stockholders; that in turn props up stock prices, hedge funds reap millions and then when the truth is out the stock collapses and the workers and retired people lose it all.

7. Defense contractors are overcharging and profiting while creating inferior armored vehicles and have one cost overrun after the next; meanwhile our government continues to shell out funding without regard to any kind of fiscal limits. "The firm, now known as "Xe," understaffed its security teams assigned to protect the U.S. ambassador in Iraq and other U.S. officials in country. In total, the State Department could have dinged the company $55 million for work it didn't properly perform, auditors concluded." ABC News.

8. Private companies profiteering from the killing and maiming of our soldiers.

9. Lenders and investment brokers reaping billions in bonuses and pay while creating loans based on phony appraisals that later collapse and nearly destroy the American way of life.

10. Lobbyists buying Congressional votes to save billions of dollars in income taxes, while the federal deficit balloons beyond anyone's comprehension, causing our government to become unstable and giving credence to our enemies that we are vulnerable. Did you know the Chinese invented the lobbying profession? Did you know that in 2005 over 34,000 lobbyists swarmed the halls of Congress? You'll like this one, do you want to meet the real ambulance chasers?

"Corporate clients accept the extra cost as the price of success in Washington. At the turn of the year, the American Ambulance Association decided to step up its lobbying and switched to Patton Boggs LLP, the Capitol Hill powerhouse, from a smaller lobbying shop across town. In the process it boosted its lobbying budget by about a third, to more than $300,000 a year." That $300,000 was a retainer paid in 2005. I wish I could get a retainer like that. What does a person have to do to get that kind of retainer? So has it changed in 2009? Oh yeah, the amount spent has gone up along with the U.S. trade imbalance.

"Twenty of the largest insurance and drug companies and their trade groups spent close to $35 million in the first quarter of this year, an increase of more than $10 million from the same period last year, the newspaper said. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which supports some of Congress' proposed changes but opposes the formation of a government-sponsored plan, has spent $6.9 million in 2009 -- an increase of 91 percent from 2008. Pfizer has more than doubled its efforts, bringing its 2009 lobbying expenditures to $6.1 million." Lobbyists Target Health Care, Tobacco, June 12, 2009, Political Hotsheet.

11. The trade deficit is ballooning while our government encourages further business development in other countries. See for yourself that the U.S. trade deficit is currently at over $301,889,288,000.00 and counting. If your organizations get money from China that's probably good news. The higher it goes the more money they can contribute to your causes.

12. Wall Street embraces Ponzi schemes that in one instance alone costed investors or the taxpayers $50 Billion and yet you say nothing about only one man going to prison. How can one man alone steal $50 Billion dollars? Does it bother the ATRA that no one else is going to prison? Are the lawyers who set it up for Madoff culpable or worth discussing in any of the ATRA ad campaigns?

13. The ATRA didn't get a contribution from Bernard Madoff did it?

14. Pharmaceutical companies selling billion dollar drug programs based on fraudulent and phony or rigged research results with research papers written by doctors being paid millions of dollars, while patients taking the Rx suffered heart attacks, strokes, kidney damage, brain damage and paralysis. See Medtronic Paid the Surgeon Accused Of Falsifying Study Nearly $800,000, Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2009.

"Medical device maker Medtronic Inc. says it paid nearly $800,000 over the past three years to a former Army surgeon accused of fabricating a study that reported positive results for one of the company's key spine products.

Some of the consulting payments occurred during the time that the surgeon, Timothy R. Kuklo, was shopping his favorable study of Medtronic's Infuse bone-graft product to medical journals. The paper, ultimately published last August in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, reported advantages in healing the legs of injured soldiers when Infuse was used.

The Army has said that the study is based on "falsified information" and that Dr. Kuklo forged the signatures of purported co-authors. Dr. Kuklo listed his affiliation with Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the journal. He left the Army hospital in August 2006 and joined the faculty of Washington University in St. Louis.

Medtronic disclosed the payments to The Wall Street Journal Wednesday. It says the payments were compensation for Dr. Kuklo's work developing products for the company, training doctors and speaking at company events and that they weren't connected to the study or journal article in any way.", Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2009.

15. Corporate lawyers create shell companies that allow someone to steal $50 Billion and yet you say nothing about them. I'm curious as to how that can be. "The brother of convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff wheels around Palm Beach in a vintage Aston Martin worth more than $235,000, paid for by Madoff Securities, according to court documents filed by London-based bankruptcy trustees.", ABC News,Peter Madoff's $235,000 Company Car Trustees of Bernie Madoff's U.K. Firm Want to Seize His Brother's Vintage Aston Martin.

16. Corporate America walks away with billions in bonuses for doing no more than showing up and running the corporation into the ground. Will you say anything about those CEO's paying back those bonuses? "The man who turned AIG into the world's largest insurance company told a court Wednesday that he sent a private jet to Bermuda loaded with company stock to prevent it from being seized." ABC, Latest AIG Drama: Ex-CEO Jets Stock to Bermuda, June 18, 2009.

Goldman Sachs Redefines Greed - Trial Judges and Juries Need to Take Note, August 19, 2007

"The Wall Street Journal reported on Mark McGoldrick and Goldman this past Saturday in a story titled "Why $70 Million Wasn't Enough."

Mark McGoldrick earned about $70 million in pay last year -- nearly $200,000 a day -- placing bets using Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s money. He was one of Goldman's highest-paid employees."

17. And then there was Big Tobacco and the Tobacco Institute that said for a long time that lung cancer couldn't be proven to be caused by smoking cigarettes. Those are they guys that turned my mother into a widow and made us five Lombardi kids poor. Those are the guys that I watched taking oaths before our Congress and repeated lie. Here look at those CEO's tell us that pregnant woman can safely smoke.

Do you doubt what I say about these issues, but especially Big Tobacco? How about if tomorrow we take up Big Tobacco and the ATRA? In the meantime why don't you think about how to answer the question,

Who and what does the American Tort Reform Association and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce really stand for?

See you tomorrow. Or will you be busy at some meeting? For today you probably have enough to consider.

BTW, in case you forgot, the comment boxes are below.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Steve Lombardi

Full post as published by Des Moines Personal Injury Lawyer on June 18, 2009 (boomark / email).