Over to the left I share an image of a seemingly younger Lawrence McQuillan of The Pacific Research Institute of San Francisco. Some people might indeed be smiling if they were a kept man. Dr. McQuillan got space in the Mobile Press-Register's op-ed pages today with Good tort system a budget key. Perhaps the print version of the paper identified him as an "economist from the Pacific Research Institute" as Doc's Political Parlor did yet the version via the internets doesn't reveal that he's a paid shill.I've actually mentioned "Lawrence McQuillan, author of the righteous PRI study" before when Lewis Fuller of Alabama Voters Against Lawsuit Abuse and ... went off on a tear combining anti-intellectualism and anger in a rant worthy of the hall of shame. This spawn of George Mason University and Stanford's Hoover Institute, his veracity has been challenged before. He references two "studies" that's I'll tackle.
First we get, "According to a McKinsey & Co. study, when a company is deciding where to expand, tort risks rank second in significance, trailing only the availability of qualified workers." Is it this McKinsey and Company? Their work for a major insurance company doesn't reference the Allstate "Tough Hands" policy did it? While I've labored under space restrictions myself, I think it odd that he passes this "global management consulting firm" off as some sort of pseudo-academic outfit.
He then writes, "A University of California-Berkeley economist found that implementing just one of six common tort reforms boosts a state's employment by 1 percent." It might be that he's thinking of Steve Sugarman? He's actually a law professor but he's done work that might be suitable for use or at least distortion. You'd think space would allow for specificity.
I'm guessing that he's writing of Lisa Kimmel given this Detroit News Op-Ed he penned with National Association of Manufacturers President John Engler. She was but a doctoral candidate when she wrote the NYTs way back in 1999 calling bullshit on one of Bu$hCo's signature issues, that being caps on damages. "To date, no well-accepted empirical evidence shows that these reforms either increased employment or reduced insurance rates." seems clear enough.
Once again, and I'll not bother with a link ... a good number of lawsuits often cited in all these statistics involve disputes between businesses. Also, let us not forget that workmen's compensation laws apply to when employees get hurt on the job. Throw in OSHA and EOC and ... regs and it seems to me that there's not a whole left for states to do as applies to jobs that employ a good number of people.
Is Alabama doing that poorly in the mix? After all, Thyssen-Krupp located a plant near Mobile and even Engler's NAM praised their choice. What about EADS? There's Honda, Hyundai and Mercedes Benz in Bama. What about rumors of Volkswagen? You'd think all these major players would have known better!
I couldn't help but wonder if Gary Palmer and Michael Ciamarra were bothered about an outfit from San Francisco (the home of Nancy Pelosi no less!) treading on their home turf? Anybody paying attention knows they are funded by the same fat cats and share the same mission to distract and divide so as to keep their corporate masters in the money yet I could see them being a bit bothered by not doing their part to keep earning that Wingnut Welfare. John Gunn
No comments:
Post a Comment