The overwhelming passage of class action "reform" is the latest milestone in framing dominance by the right wing. It is the direct descendant of one of the true framing pillars of their movement:
The McDonalds hot coffee lawsuit.
You remember it, a guy sues McD's for a zillion bucks because he got burned by the coffee that he chose to drink when it was too hot. Did he win? Who knows. Did it matter? Absolutely.
The icon was set and it didn't take long before the "common wisdom" took hold. The legal system was f**d because it's clogged with b.s. lawsuits like this. Soon people were pointing to the McD affair as the reason why:
-their insurance rates were going up.
-doctors were quitting because of malpractice abuse.
-criminals were walking free after murdering millions of people.
The next step though was to find a universal villian, and the Attwater/Rovians hit their mark:
flip
The evil trial lawyers.
A stroke of strategic brilliance! Get rid of those pesky lawsuits of all sorts AND demonize a chief supporter of the Democratic Party all in one fell swoop. Not only that, but the trial lawyers were getting RICH - perfect for cementing the class division between pinhead liberals and the workin' man.
And now, we have the latest but surely not the last step in this process: the gutting of class action lawsuits- you know the ones that can get big enough to actually hurt a big corporation?
And what do our Democrats in congress do? Screw the people, they jump on board.
Class action lawsuits were created to give voice to small coalitions of "little" people who would otherwise have no voice in our courts. They are perhaps the prime populist vehicle of our legal system, leveling the playing field against big and greedy corporate interests.
While there are surely some class action suits that are frivolous, part of their beauty is that they are largely self-regulating. The trial lawyers, yes those guys, generally foot the bill for the considerable expenses with no return if they lose the case. Thus, it is very much in their own interest to take on only meritorious cases. This cuts down on frivolous lawsuits and helps keep the system from dealing with crummy cases. Do the lawyers get well paid? I hope so, they take these cases on at their own considerable risk.
Now, thanks to the hot coffee that was poured so many years ago, many of the same people who voted for Bush will have a harder time suing his corporate buddies when they get injured by them.
The miracle of framing. Amazing isn't it?
For Examples of How We Should Be Framing Things, Go To: http://www.attackadoftheday.blogspot.com
