Like the child who kills his parents and then begs for
mercy because he is an orphan, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce now is begging
President-elect Barack Obama to protect corporate interests in the nation’s
civil litigation system as a way of restoring jobs and bolstering an economy
shattered largely (as we now know) by corporate greed and misfeasance.
Talk about your gall.
Here is what the president of the Chamber’s legal arm wrote in an open
letter to Obama: “We understand the critical necessity of revitalizing the
economy by restoring American jobs, encouraging the growth of U.S. businesses,
and protecting the savings and investments of millions of Americans. However,
we are concerned that the potential expansion of legal liability significantly
impairs these much needed steps toward a national recovery.”
The quote may be roughly translated this way: “Now that corporate America
has helped screw everything up and led us into the greatest economic crisis
since the Depression, we need to make sure that corporate America isn’t
aggressively punished for its misdeeds or legitimately thwarted from misdoing
them again.”
This is either an astonishing hypocrisy - Is corporate America unaware that
the rest of us are in on the secret of the causes of the recession? - or
the clearest indication there can be that Big Business is, always has been,
and always will be about protecting Big Business.
The Chamber has been pushing tirelessly for decades to rein in plaintiffs’
attorneys (who look to punish corporate negligence or fraud with civil
lawsuits), deregulate industry and commerce (we all know how well Wall Street
did with its freedom), and nullify important consumer protection laws
(like the one in Maine which is allowing smokers to go after tobacco companies
for false advertising). The lobbying effort has been national and local,
highly-public and super-secret, and devastatingly successful.
Thanks in part to the Chamber and its Orwellian-named Institute
for Legal Reform, the Securities and Exchange Commission backed off its
scrutiny of screwy deals and schemes, the Congress was lax in its oversight of
the mortgage industry, litigators were thwarted or punished, and the White
House and Justice Department pushed a legal doctrine ("preemption")
that almost always helped employers over employees.
All of these things, and more policies and practices endorsed by the
Institute, helped unshackle the savageries of corporate America and left
individuals less protected against an ever-freer and more predatory market.
Indeed, aside from the occasional Supreme Court decision that has helped the
little guy, and the heroic efforts of states to help protect consumers and the
environment, the history of our “litigation system” (as the Institute puts
it) over the past 20 years is one of unremitting advances for the Chamber and
its fellow travelers in law, politics and governance.
The Environmental Protection Agency has been reduced to a shadow of its former
self so that polluters have gone unpunished, the Madoffs of the world have
been nurtured and coddled and thus have flourished, and the brutal Savings and
Loan crisis of the late 1980s has been made to look like a bake sale compared
to the trillions of investment dollars lost and the hundreds of billions soon
to be spent by our government.
Even the Web site for the Institute reads like a cruel parody. Not
surprisingly, it does not highlight the personal stories of the millions of
victims of corporate greed or managerial incompetence. It does not measure the
number of lives saved, and fortunes protected, and pollution cleaned through
these lawsuits. Instead, under the banner of “lawsuit abuse,” it tracks
the lives of people who believe for one reason or another that they have been
unfairly sued.
[Now, tell me, have you ever known someone who believed that he or she had
just been fairly sued?]
Plaintiffs’ attorneys aren’t responsible for the mortgage-fueled economic
meltdown. Class-action litigation isn’t, either. And don’t blame
overzealous regulators or greedy employees who want better pay or conditions
in their own factories. The people with whom the Chamber and the Institute do
battle are not the people who invented or allowed the great pyramid schemes
which brought down Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. They did not force consumers to
spend more than they earned or save less than they should. Corporate America
is directly responsible for what has just happened to corporate America, and
if you don’t believe me, ask the folks at Ford, GM and Chrysler.
The economic meltdown came about because business interests were able to
greatly decrease the vital tensions between industry and regulation,
between oversell and oversight. And it will take the restoration of those
tensions by government leaders not just to help bring us out of our slump but
to help ensure that the next downturn doesn’t come again for a long time.
So it seems to me that the last things the Obama administration ought
to do once it takes over is further shackle lawyers, or stifle well-meaning
state laws, or make it easier for businesses to avoid liability and
culpability for their actions.
The Chamber and the Institute want us to believe that one of the problems
which created our misery also happens to be one of the solutions to it. They
call it “reform.”
I call it nonsense.