abortion

Class Action Lawyers Ripped Off Their Clients, With Approval From Federal Judge

by Hans Bader on April 26, 2010

in Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

Class-action lawsuits all too often benefit only the lawyers, not the allegedly victimized consumers they claim to represent.  The Center for Class Action Fairness takes aim at such abuses.

Today, it filed a brief with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals “appealing a district court’s controversial approval of a class action settlement where attorneys recovered a $850,000 fee for themselves despite failing to provide any benefit to the class.” The lawsuit, “In re Bluetooth Product Liability Litigation, No. 07-ML-1822, alleged that three manufacturers of Bluetooth headsets for cell phones committed consumer fraud because consumers might not be aware that extensive use of headsets at high volume could cause hearing loss. Before the district court could rule on a pending motion to dismiss, the parties settled, with $100,000 going to charity, minor changes to defendants manuals and websites, and $850,000 to the attorneys — an 850% contingency fee. The purportedly injured class members received nothing.” Despite objections, “the district court approved the settlement and the entirety of the fees.”

In short, the lawyers ripped off their clients, with the trial judge’s blessing.

Earlier, I wrote in the Washington Post about how class-action lawsuit “settlements intended to benefit consumers get paid instead to groups that lobby for affirmative action, hate-crimes laws, undocumented immigrants, and public funding for abortions.”  (See Hans Bader, “Not Their Money to Give Away,” Washington Post, December 22, 2007, at A16).

The Washington Post similarly lamented how federal judges use such settlements for purposes unrelated to the underlying lawsuit, giving the money to “religious organizations,” “law schools,” and other organizations that “hire lobbyists” to influence judges  (See Editorial, “When Judges Get Generous,” Washington Post, December 17, 2007, at A20).

The practice seems to be even worse in state court than federal court.  As I noted in 2007, “In California state court, leftover money from a consumer class action settlement is commonly given not to consumer groups, but to groups that have nothing to do with consumers, like the left-wing La Raza Legal Center; the politically correct Employment Law Center of the San Francisco Legal Aid Society (which seeks to curb employers’ First Amendment rights); the ever-litigious Lawyers’ Committee; and groups that specialize in advocating affirmative action, broader definitions of ‘hate crimes’ (at the expense of civil liberties), or expanded access to welfare programs for illegal aliens. This ripoff of consumers is magnified as a result of practices like ‘fluid recovery.’”

Human Achievement of the Day: Liquid Condoms

by Michelle Minton on March 8, 2010 · 1 comment

in Odds & Ends

To continue our daily series of human achievement highlighting, today’s post focuses on what could be the next great revolution in sexual health; the liquid condom.

In the US and much of the developed world sex is funny. And at first a new kind of condom might seem like a trivial advancement, especially considering the many diseases and conditions science has yet to address. However, the impact of this new innovation should not me overlooked. Since the dawn of human civilization pregnancy, childbearing, and sexually transmitted diseases have had been major contributing factors in the quality of life for human populations–especially the females in these populations. Preventing unwanted pregnancy and disease has, until now, largely been in the hands of men. This new technology may change that.

A group of researchers from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City have invented a vaginal liquid condom that is effective as both a contraceptive and in preventing the transmission of sexual disease including HIV, papilloma virus (HPV), chlamydia, and others.  What makes this “molecular condom” so revolutionary is the fact that it puts women in the driver’s seat. The liquid gel can be inserted into the vagina hours before intercourse and becomes a partial solid when it comes into contact with semen. The ramifications of this new device, which they hope to release in the next 5 years, will be huge.

March is Women’s History month: While I’m generally not a fan of damning or celebrating any grouping of individuals, I will point out that as a group the history of the female sex is one of marginalization, abuse, and disenfranchisement. To a large degree those abuses and lack basic freedoms persist in many cultures. In many countries women simply have no ownership of their lives or bodies–a fundamental principle to individual liberty. In addition to the benefits this liquid condom will provide to couples in developed countries, the new form of birth control and disease prevention has the potential to aid in the liberation and improve conditions of women in societies where their bodies aren’t their own and the risks are great.

Unfortunately for women in the countries with some of the highest rates of STD infection and least access to care, the decisions about sex are not often up to them. As this new technology becomes more available though, all of that may change.

Their goal was to protect women in countries with a high level of HIV-positive people by offering them a rather inexpensive way of contraception and protection when their partners do not wear a condom.

“We did it to develop technologies that can enable women to protect themselves against HIV without the approval of their partner,” says Kiser.

Not to be over-dramatic, but women around the world celebrating Women’s History Month should cheer the researchers behind this condom. They should credit human innovation and technology for helping women around the world take greater ownership of their bodies and their first steps toward freedom.

Obama Keeps Lying About His Health-Care Plan, Even After Being Caught by Fact-Checkers

by Hans Bader on August 27, 2009

in Healthcare, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere

You just can’t trust President Obama’s claims about his health-care plan. He keeps on lying even after he is caught lying and his lies have become obvious.

The Congressional Research Service and the Washington Examiner say that illegal aliens WILL be covered by ObamaCare — contrary to what Obama claims.

Factcheck.org and the Associated Press’s Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar earlier reported that abortions would be covered by ObamaCare — contrary to what Obama claims.

Fact-checkers have repeatedly caught Obama lying about health-care.

But when Obama denied that his health-care plan would cover abortions or illegal aliens, an Associated Press reporter suddenly decided that he must be right, just because he said so. The AP’s Philip Elliott declared that claims that ObamaCare would cover abortion or illegal aliens must be “untrue” because Obama, the nation’s “Fact-Checker-in-Chief,” said so. Never mind that his own colleague Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar had earlier concluded, after reading the bill, that it would in fact cover abortions. If Obama says something, it must be true!

(The AP reporter’s strange logic reminds me of the mystifying and illogical claim by Associated Press reporter Douglass K. Daniel in 2008 that it was a racist, “deliberate attempt to smear Obama” for people to criticize Obama’s links to Bill Ayers, an unrepentant former Weather Underground terrorist and self-described communist who sat on a Chicago foundation board along with Obama that “poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.” But Ayers is white, and criticism of Obama’s association with Ayers thus had no conceivable racial “tinge,” as Daniel claimed).

Whether ObamaCare covers abortions or illegal aliens is certainly not my biggest concern about the health-care bill. I’m much more concerned about its immense cost, waste, and potential rationing, and its taking away important health-care freedoms.

But Obama’s lying about them still concerns me, because if I can’t trust the President on straightforward issues like abortion or illegal aliens, why should I trust him – and the Associated Press – to accurately inform me about more complicated (but important) economic issues raised by the bill? The bill is more than 1000 pages long, but some of its supporters, like Rep. John Conyers (D-Detroit) have ridiculed the idea of even reading it. The sheer length and messiness of the bill leads Allan Sloan, who wants universal coverage, to oppose it in today’s Washington Post on the grounds it is “certain to contain enough ambiguities, contradictions and just plain mistakes to ensure years of lucrative employment for countless lawyers” and “lobbyists.”

Obama has also broken many campaign promises, such as his pledge to adopt a “net spending cut,” which he has violated by proposing record budgets funded by over nine trillion dollars in deficits. This year’s budget deficit has already reached $1.3 trillion, part-way through the year, and will grow further as a result of Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package.

The stimulus package is projected to cut the size of the economy “in the long run,” according to the Congressional Budget Office. That didn’t stop Obama from falsely claiming that only the stimulus package would prevent “disaster” and “irreversible decline.” (Countries that refused to adopt big stimulus packages have fared better than those that imitated Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worst in the recession.)

The Obama Administration claimed its stimulus package would deliver a short-run “jolt” that would quickly lift the economy, but unemployment actually rose rapidly after its passage. The stimulus package destroyed thousands of jobs in America’s export sector, and subsidized welfare and waste. The stimulus also ended ended welfare reform, giving states new incentives to expand welfare rolls.

ObamaCare is full of special-interest giveaways and constitutionally-dubious provisions like racial preferences and set-asides, which has led to ObamaCare being criticized by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Obama’s own advisors have called into question his claims about how ObamaCare will supposedly let you keep your health coverage while cutting costs. “ObamaCare is all about rationing,” says Obama adviser Martin Feldstein. Feldstein earlier noted that Obama’s health-care plan would harm people with insurance, and massively raise taxes.

Feldstein, a Harvard professor, warns that “For the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, the Obama health plan is bad news. It means higher taxes, less health care and no protection if they lose their current insurance because of unemployment or early retirement.” Obama’s plan would “cost more than $1 trillion,” and raise the top federal “income-tax rate from 35 percent today to more than 45 percent,” he notes.