TORT TERRORISM - DASCHLE DEMOCRATS FEAR TRIAL LAWYERS, NOT ANOTHER ATTACK

Either he's a good actor or Mitch McConnell was genuinely amazed by the way the trial-lawyer lobby dictated terms to Senate Democrats on this week's terrorism insurance vote.

"I've been here 18 years and I can say with total confidence that there's no special interest that completely owns, lock stock, the Republican conference," the GOP Senator told us yesterday. "But, by golly, I think the Democrats in the Senate are a wholly owned subsidiary of ATLA [the Association of Trial Lawyers of America]. They ought to be embarrassed."

"Without the threat of punitive damages, the corporation can decide it's more cost-effective to continue cutting corners despite the risk to American lives." Sen. Leaky.

The corporation now has even more incentive to cut corners, because Uncle Sam, not the corporation or its insurance company, will move in at an early point to pick up the tab for punitive damages under this bill.

And that isn't the most egregious provision. Not only will it open the Treasury to the trial bar, but it is structured in a way that discourages the insurance industry from creating its own risk pools to spreak the risk across a broad spectrum of the private sector. A fatal flaw in my opinion, and one that might well doom it. Also, the retention rates set in the bill, that is, the amount of payoff the industry would have to absorb before the Feds step in, is structured so that instead of a$10 billion threshhold, some companies (not victims) would get a government bailout when the have expended only several million dollars. The whole thing is wrong. Daschle's bill 1) screws the taxpayer, 2) weakens the industry and 3) bails out insurance companies instead of making whole the victims of terrorism, which was the original idea.

Ah, yes, we mustn't forget that the insurance industry is another of the villians. Big business. No heart, not like that of the Congressional Dems, at any rate.

And at the same time we're supposed to not "cut corners" to reduce the propect of damages, we have the same crowd ranting about civil rights for dirty-bomber Padilla and wanting to frisk grandmothers and children boarding airplanes lest anyone doubt their sincerity in avoiding profiling. Talk about your mixed message.

I wish President Bush would take this topic directly to the people. It's pathetic to think that the American trial lawyers are trying to establish an architecture in which they can make piles of money on the next terrorist attack. The airlines don;t have deep pockets anymore. Now its the property owners of targeted buildings that will be bled dry. It's all about money that's plowed back into the Democrat Party.

Additionally, iIf the trial lawyers own the Democrat Senators, then they own the nominations to the Fed courts via the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Dont forget the full Senate is expected to vote next week on the nomination of Judge D. Brooks Smith to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, representing Delaware, Pennsylvania and Deleware. Judge Smith has been confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee by a vote of 12 to 7.

It's hard to believe a great editorial such as this one receives so little comment from the FReeper community. Must be alot of Democrats about (if you just continually ignore a topic, it will just go away).

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