For The Corporations Tell Me So

Every year, our nation’s corporate interests line up before state legislatures, claiming emptied pockets and with outstretched hands they ask for help.  What kind of help?  Why, letting them off the hook for killing or injuring people, of course!

And we allow this because… well, most of us don’t even know this goes on.  And we certainly don’t know exactly how it’s done.  But thanks to the Chattanooga Times Free Press, we have a little insight into part of this process.  This is the part where they try to get the media on their side.  It's an important part.

Today the Chattanooga paper let me and everyone know that earlier this week the Tennessee nursing home industry corporate executives and their attorneys came to lobby the paper's reporters and editorial board.  They spent close to an hour trying to convince the paper to support legislation to severely weaken the legal rights of the elderly who have been abused or neglected in nursing homes. 

It's hard to imagine how anyone could support this, but given what I've seen so far, I put nothing past the nursing home industry.  Hopefully, the paper starts hearing from people who would actually be hurt by such atrocious legislation.  I would love to tell them about a few people I know. 

So next time you read an editorial and think, "gee, I wonder where they got this from?" ...

Comments

[Genghis]

From the linked article:

"[B]ut [the proposed law] would allow nursing homes to require that new patients sign an arbitration agreement before entering the facility."

Let's see here. If every nursing home in the state CAN do that, every nursing home in the state WILL do that. Under those circumstances, calling it an arbitration "agreement" is dissembling at its most ham-fistedly ugly, and is about a quarter of a bubble off from outright fraud.