The so-called Institute for Legal Reform (or ILR, a subgroup of the US Chamber of Commerce) has been tossing around a lot of smack lately in mass emailings and online editorials about how our economy is in crisis, American employers are at risk, and “empowering our job creators is the only thing that will get our economy moving again.” Fair enough—except that the conclusion that they pair with these observations is that the best if not the only way to fix America’s broken economy is to fix what they call “America’s broken legal system,” by reducing the threat of “frivolous lawsuits against our employers:”
America’s legal system is broken — and is a major barrier to American employers struggling to survive in the down economy.
We invite you to view this video about American business owner/entrepreneur Chris Moser by clicking here now.
Chris embodies the American dream — a technology entrepreneur building his business one client at a time. Business owners like Chris are the key to rescuing our economy.
But Chris’ story shows how lawsuit abuse can threaten that American dream — and threaten our country’s employers’ ability to create new jobs.
End frivolous litigation — and you remove a major barrier to American prosperity.
Join the Fight for Lawsuit Reform.
With your support, we will bring an end to lawsuit abuse, reform America’s broken legal climate and empower American employers to start creating jobs and economic prosperity. -ILR email.
If it sounds a lot like those ads you’ve been seeing on tv for the presidential election, that’s because it uses the exact same propaganda techniques. Spin most people who aren’t too legally savvy a couple of over-simplified, one-sided examples of how some misguided or mishandled lawsuit resulted in economic troubles for one small business owner with a one-syllable name who’s just trying to make an honest all-American living, and it’s likely they’ll agree that though they hadn’t thought of it before you brought it up, frivolous lawsuits are indeed one of the biggest problems America’s economy faces.
The trouble with propaganda, of course, is that it never gives you the whole story, but creates the impression that a desperate situation is imminent, and asks you to take serious action without having any information apart from the misleading tidbits it’s hand-picked for you.
In the case of so-called lawsuit abuse, what the ILR does not mention is that America’s economic crisis is happening right now as a result of the deregulation of the financial industry, or in other words, the accountability-free zone the Bush administration has given to America’s largest businesses to screw around in. The corruption and greed that now runs rampant in these businesses, and which both parties recognize as the ultimate root of the financial crisis, has grown to its cancerous proportions not because of lawsuit abuse, but because of tort reform, which has already given our biggest businesses carte blanche to risk—and lose—the jobs, retirement plans, and life savings of everyday Americans without the threat of legal consequences.
Let’s all recognize the ILR’s “Broken System” (BS) for what it is.
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