VI. Grabbing a Senate Seat with a Little Help from his Trilateral Friends 257extravaganza” that favored banking, creditors and other corporate interests. David Sirota, the
former spokesman for Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, commented on
CAFA in the June 26, 2006 issue of The Nation, “Opposed by most major civil rights and
consumer watchdog groups, this Big Business-backed legislation was sold to the public as a
way to stop “frivolous” lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill’s real objective was
to protect corporate abusers.” Nation contributor Dan Zegart noted further: “On its face, the
class-action bill is mere procedural tinkering, transferring from state to federal court actions
involving more than $5 million where any plaintiff is from a different state from the defendant
company. But federal courts are much more hostile to class actions than their state counterparts;
such cases tend to be rooted in the finer points of state law, in which federal judges are reluctant
to dabble. And even if federal judges do take on these suits, with only 678 of them on the bench
(compared with 9,200 state judges), already overburdened dockets will grow. Thus, the bill will
make class actions, most of which involve discrimination, consumer fraud and wage-and-hour
violations all but impossible. One example: After forty lawsuits were filed against Wal-Mart for
allegedly forcing employees to work “off the clock,” four state courts certified these suits as
class actions. Not a single federal court did so, although the practice probably involves
hundreds of thousands of employees nationwide.” Why would a civil rights lawyer knowingly
make it harder for working-class people (Or the people of Hunter Point suing Lennar) to have
their day in court, in effect shutting off avenues of redress? (Matt Gonzalez, “The Obama
Craze,” Counterpunch)
Washington is full of corrupt congressmen who are experts in this kind of flimflam; but the truly
galling thing about Obama is the sanctimonious hypocrisy with which he envelops each and every
criminal sellout of the public interest.
Obama has always been the trimmer, and has sought to avoid above all things an irrevocable,
clear, and principled stand on any major issue. One of his favorite tricks in the Illinois Senate was
to constantly vote present when he needed to take evasive action:
These seemingly unusual votes wherein Obama aligns himself with Republican Party interests
aren’t new. While in the Illinois Senate, Obama voted to limit the recovery that victims of
medical malpractice could obtain through the courts. Capping non-economic damages in
medical malpractice cases means a victim cannot fully recover for pain and suffering or for
punitive damages. Moreover, it ignored that courts were already empowered to adjust awards
when appropriate, and that the Illinois Supreme Court had previously ruled such limits on tort
reform violated the state constitution. In the US Senate, Obama continued interfering with
patients’ full recovery for tortious conduct. He was a sponsor of the National Medical Error
Disclosure and Compensation Act of 2005. The bill requires hospitals to disclose errors to
patients and has a mechanism whereby disclosure, coupled with apologies, is rewarded by
limiting patients’ economic recovery. Rather than simply mandating disclosure, Obama’s
solution is to trade what should be mandated for something that should never be given away:
namely, full recovery for the injured patient. (Matt Gonzalez, “The Obama Craze,”
Counterpunch)OBAMA BLOCKS REFORM OF THE MINING LAW OF 1872
An entire separate detailed study would be necessary to fully cover the extent of Obama’s
involvement with been ruthless corporate barons who run the mining industry. Some Southern