If you saw the "coffee" reference in the diary title and came looking for more on Mark Halperin or "Morning Joe," you're in the wrong place. -- this is about a subject that is a lot more important than the latest media kerfuffle. Last week, a small film called "Hot Coffee" played at SilverDocs, the American Film Institute's annual documaentary festival (in the Washington, DC suburb of Silver Spring, MD). The documentary took second place in the audience award competition. Unfortunately, the documentary filmfest circuit is a very small niche that enables the participating films to reach just a few thousand people.
Earlier this week, "Hot Coffee" got a national airing on HBO, but, again, I fear it didn't reach very many people because the company did not give it anything like the promotion this excellent movie should have. I think this may well be the most important American documentary since "An Inconvenient Truth." If you want to understand what's been happening in this country over the last 25 years, as corporate money has been leveraged to remake the legal and political landscape, you must see this movie. There are some additional connections the film does not make, which I wish it had, but the film does an excellent job of laying out the real agenda which lies behind all that corporate money that is funding the conservative movement.
The truth of America in the 21st Century is that corporations have been working together to buy all three branches of government and this amazing movie shows how and why, tracing the line from the infamous McDonald's 'hot coffee' lawsuit to Citizens United decision. Our democracy has been stolen -- or bought -- and this film exposes the plan and many of the key players.
I know that there have been a couple of diaries about this movie already -- I think you should definitely read dansk47's excellent diary about the film. I'm writing because I think the movie needs a great deal more promotion than it's been getting. I liken this documentary to "An Inconvenient Truth." The Al Gore film made great inroads, with a major nationwide release and a concerted effort to get the film into our nation's schools. Like "An Inconvenient Truth," the "Hot Coffee" film is something every civic-minded American should see. If it weren't so damn critical of certain infamous Republicans and their corporatist agenda, I would be pushing for it to be required viewing in law schools and high school civics/law classes. Unfortunately, the clear political bent makes "Hot Coffee" a too-hot political potato.
"Hot Coffee" seeks to dispel the myths of "jackpot justice" surrounding the famous McDonald's coffee spill case, showing the gruesome burns suffered by the victim, Stella Liebeck. The film portrays the company's indifference to the problem which had led to 700 reported cases of injuries caused by the dangerous temperatures at which McDonald's kept its beverage. Jurors are interviewed, as is the victim's family, and we come to understand why the jury voted to penalize McDonald's with a $5.6 million dollar punitive damage award, well in excess of what the plaintiff actually sought.
That, however, is just the starting point of the film, as it explores the corporate response: a three-pronged strategy led by Karl Rove to remake the legal landscape in favor of corporate America. If you think you understand what the years of the Rove-Bush project was all about, this highly illuminating film may give you a fresh and deeper understanding of the real aims.
"Hot Coffee" exposes the roles of Rove and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in trying to enact "tort reform" on a national level, then in the states, and finally to pack the judiciary with corporate-favored candidates. It tracks the origin of astroturf groups, which were first conceived to make it appear there was grass-roots movement for something called "tort reform." When Pres. Clinton vetoed the federal tort-reform bill, the Chamber took aim at state legislatures with a hugely expensive p.r. campaign that pressured state governments to enact a variety of caps on punitive damage jury awards, non-economic injury awards and in some cases caps on total recovery. This where Rove comes in, as he saw an opportunity to recruit and use George W. Bush as the spearhead of a campaign to enact tort reform in Texas, and later to crusade as President against "frivolous lawsuits."
As some judges began to rebel against this political initiative by ruling that such caps were unconstitutional, Rove saw that he could make himself invaluable to his corporate clients by working on recreating the nation's judges, replacing neutrals with Chamber-approved judges. These judges would not only approve of caps if faced with legal challenges, they would use their power to strike down large jury awards against corporate defendants. The Chamber of Commerce now invests tens of millions each year in pushing the elections of judicial candidates who have the Chamber's seal of approval.
To illustrate the scope of this plan, the film focuses on the curious case of Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz. Most of us are familiar with the great abuse of the Justice Dep't during the Bush Administration, particularly the political prosecution of the Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama. I was only vaguely familiar with Diaz, but his case may be one of the most over-the-top examples of abusive political prosecution in this country's history. After beating back a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign by the Chamber of Commerce against him, Justice Diaz found himself being prosecuted by the Bush Justice Dept. for a loan arrangement he used to finance his own ads. A week after he was found not guilty by a jury, Justice Diaz was re-indicted for tax evasion. Once again, he was found not guilty. While he retained his freedom, Justice Diaz was forced off the high court for three years while he defended himself. Ultimately, he was defeated by a Chamber-approved challenger in a subsequent re-election campaign.
If you want to read more about this most egregious example of how the Chamber of Commerce has subverted our democracy, please read Scott Horton's excellent Harper's Magazine article on l'affaire Diaz.
Rove and his Chamber of Commerce clients have really remade the legal landscape in this country, spending obscene amounts on judicial elections to ensure the election of judges friendly to the corporate agenda. No doubt, they used their influence on Republican governors to make similar inroads with appointed judges. The film does note that the corporate money is now totally unfettered thanks to the Citizens United decision. Of course, that money can now be used without any restriction to elect judges and to elect politicians who will also appoint Chamber-friendly judges, wherever judges are chosen by that method. There was a time that I favored doing away with judicial elections, but I'm now at a loss to decide which method will produce the worst, most un-democratic, incompetent and politically-motivated judiciary.
The corporations also had a Plan C, which the movie describes by using the example of Jamie Leigh Jones, the Halliburton employee who was gang-raped in Iraq by fellow employees and then imprisoned by company security agents until she was able to contact her father, who got his Cong'l rep to push for her release. This segment shows how companies have managed to rig the legal system so that they do not even have to take their chances with judges who might show independence. With mandatory binding arbitration clauses, companies have ensured that virtually all claims will be forced into a system that is hopelessly rigged in their favor because of the economic incentives for arbitrators who must rely on the companies desires to give them repeat business.
I've given the outlines of the film, but it's still well-worth seeing...and absolutely worth recommending to anyone and everyone. I'm a lawyer myself and I found I learned much about the concerted nature of the changes to our legal landscape. Things I thought were just coincidence are shown to be part of a clear nationwide strategy pursued by the Chamber and Karl Rove.
There's another piece that the movie doesn't really explore, and that's the role of a certain Indiana attorney, James Bopp, who has spent over 2 decades executing the legal strategy that has led to the Citizens United decision which has virtually guaranteed that corporations can now buy all elections, whether they be judicial, legislative or Presidential. Perhaps someone can do a companion film on that piece of the puzzle. NPR did a very informative piece on Bopp last week.
One thing the film does a truly amazing job of showing is the level of ignorance in this country about what "tort-reform" is al about. Those who think all these big awards mean there's a plague of frivolous lawsuits miss one salient point: If someone wins a big award like the one in the McDonald's case, then, by definition, it wasn't a frivolous lawsuit. The verdict was one considered by a jury who took their task seriously, after hearing the evidence. That's how the system is supposed to work, and it's this system that the corporations have worked so hard to undermine. I hope this film can serve as an antidote to this political cancer.
I know that some people like Rachel Maddow think that restricting abortion rights is the real agenda of the right. I think that's just window-dressing, being employed to motivate -- to activate an army of campaign workers on the right. It's a side-show -- a distraction and a tactic being employed -- consciously -- to recruit foot soldiers to a campaign that they would never support if they understood the real aims. The real agenda is to free up corporate America -- to severely restrict the government's ability and willingness to regulate big business, to severely limit the recourse of individuals to use the courts to address the problems that will be the inevitable result of a lack of government control, and to limit taxation of these businesses. It's all about money and control of the levers of power -- so, really, it's all about money. They've got it and they want to keep it.
***Update -- Thanks for the Recs. I hope y'all see this movie and talk it up. I also wanted to thank RichM for his observation that there are a whole host of so-called issues that are trumped up to distract the public and recruit unwitting supporters to the corporatist campaign agenda. Weapons of Mass Distraction, no?