ralph nader

“Odd Couple!” Nader/Public Citizen Attorney and Richard Epstein Urge Supreme Court to Hear CEI’s Tobacco Case

by Christine Hall on December 16, 2010

in Legal

“Odd couple.”  That’s how a Forbes report just described a pairing of former Nader/Public Citizen attorney Alan Morrison and University of Chicago Law School Prof. Richard Epstein.  The duo, along with Stanford Law professor Kathleen Sullivan, has filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of CEI’s constitutional challenge to the 1998 tobacco settlement.  Meanwhile, another amicus brief by prominent legal experts urges the Court to consider the settlement’s antitrust implications.

CEI has petitioned the Court to hear the case, arguing that the $200 billion tobacco deal between 46 state attorneys general and major tobacco companies violates the Compact Clause (Article I, Section 10), which requires states to get the approval of Congress for any multi-state compact.

The Morrison amicus brief argues that “the lower courts in this and other similar cases have not properly understood the meaning of the Compact Clause …  and have not understood its place in the federalism provisions of the Constitution.”

While Morrison, Epstein and Sullivan do not take a position on whether the tobacco settlement is sound public policy, they argue that the MSA is “subject to the Compact Clause and that to allow States and private companies to enter an agreement of this type and with this massive impact, without approval of Congress, threatens to create an imbalance in our federal system.”

Moreover, “that imbalance can produce serious harms to both non-participating States and the Federal Government, in addition to the economic harm to competitors of the tobacco companies that are parties to the MSA and to consumers of tobacco products.”

The second amicus brief, written by George Mason University law professors Todd J. Zywicki and Joshua D. Wright and by attorney C. Boyden Gray (counsel of record), urges the Court to hear the case due to the “wide-spread and entrenched nature of the national tobacco cartel” arising from the settlement. Specifically, the brief focuses on the question of whether state immunity from antitrust laws (known as “Parker immunity”) applies to a “cartel-facilitating arrangement with significant interstate effects.”

A third amicus brief in support of CEI’s petition was filed by Freedom Holdings, a discount cigarette producer.

Read more about the case, S&M Brands v. Caldwell, Docket no. 10-622
See: “Odd Couple Files Brief Against Tobacco Settlement,” by Daniel Fisher

Ralph Nader’s shocking solution to the Toyota “problem”

by Michael Fumento on February 28, 2010 · 1 comment

in Nanny State, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

The answer to the problem of Toyotas running amok, says Ralph Nader in a Los Angeles Times op-ed today?

Choose one response:

1. More regulation.
2. More regulation.
3. More regulation.
4. All of the above.

He observes that the budget of the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) has declined to half what it once was, thereby making disasters like this more or less inevitable. Yet he also admits that every year cars get safer and safer. They were getting safer when NHTSA’s budget was growing, and safer when NHTSA’s budget was shrinking. Some people might say that indicates there are factors at play other than federal regulation, but not Ralph Nader.

I have repeatedly blogged on the Toyota witch hunt and have a forthcoming article showing it’s exactly that. But then again, Nader knows all about witch hunts.

Nader came to fame with his 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed, in which he hounded the sporty little Chevy Corvair (see inset) into extinction, claiming it had a defective rear suspension making it prone to flip. But two separate NHTSA studies later found it was as safe as any other car on the road at the time.

Thanks, Mr. Nader.

Fraud in More Ways Than One

by Iain Murray on February 19, 2009

in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, International, Legal, Regulation, Sanctimony

The news of the federal fraud charges against billionaire Texan financier Sir Allen Stanford (he got the knighthood from his dual citizenship from Antigua) has been greeted with glee by pro-regulatory forces because he dared to lobby against financial regulations in the early part of the decade. The Huffington Post huffs and puffs:

Though tough anti-money-laundering legislation overwhelmingly sailed through the House Banking Committee in 2000, it had difficulty getting to another vote as powerful GOP lawmakers — then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey, then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay and then-Senate Banking Committee chair Phil Gramm stymied its future.

DeLay was among the largest recipients of Stanford’s largesse. And “DeLay’s committees paid for flights on Stanford’s jets at least 16 times since 2003, including on Oct. 20, the day the former House majority leader was booked in a Houston courthouse on money-laundering charges,” according to Bloomberg News.

There are a few problems with this black-and-white evil-GOP-lawmakers-stand-in-way of-good-regulation narrative. First, as Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen relates (Case Study #3 here), it was actually Democrats who controlled the Senate at the time, and Majority leader Tom Daschle was a prime recipient of Stanford’s cash:

Stanford became the single largest contributor between July 1, 2000 and June 30, 2001 to the 527 groups of Daschle and Frost. (Public Citizen’s efforts to discuss these contributions were rebuffed by a Stanford Financial Group spokesperson.)

Stanford also contributed the maximum allowed to Daschle’s 527, given Daschle’s self-imposed limit of $10,000 per donor per year. Stanford contributed $10,000 from his company and $10,000 from himself in both 2000 and 2001.

Why? What was Stanford trying to get from Daschle, the highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, and Frost, the third-highest ranking Democrat in the House?

We should also note that the bills Stanford appears to have lobbied against were also opposed by that strongly conservative body, the ACLU (see quote from Greg Nojeim, legislative counsel, here).

Finally, as Public Citizen notes, the legislation Stanford lobbied against passed through Congress, with Daschle as a prime mover, after 9/11. It appears to have done nothing to prevent his alleged fraud.

Oh, and look who he’s been palling around with lately.

The only lesson from Stanford’s lobbying appears to be that lobbying is an equal-opportunity employment opportunity, and that the only way to get less government corruption is to have less government, not more.