ThePopTort

Things That Aren't Funny

Okay, so humor is very subjective.  Like in 2004, George Bush’s joke during the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner, “those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere,” he said as he looked under seat cushions in the Oval Office.  That "joke" was thought to be in pretty poor taste as those sent to war continued to die.

Then there was that skit put on by Merck employees about Vioxx, which came to the public’s attention through the recent class-action lawsuit now going on in Australia.

In the skit, employees use hairstyle puns to mock their “tough year” – you know, the one when they had to pull Vioxx off the market because it caused heart attacks and strokes in thousands of people.  For example, the “hilarious” skit called Eric Topol, (the lead author in a study that linked Vioxx with an increase in cardiovascular events) Eric “Toupe,”  joking that “Toupe et al published an article in the Journal of American Mullet Association examining three Vioxx studies and one dreadlock study."

Except it was not a joking matter when Merck did publish articles from fake medical journals that sang the praises of their drugs without stating that the journal-looking articles had been paid for by the company.  

Now that is really not funny.

AIG, Mismanagement, and the "T" Bomb

Ex-AIG CEO, the legendary Maurice “Hank” Greenberg who was brought down for fraud, liked to blame the insurance industry’s periodic liability insurance “crises” and its price-gouging of policyholders on claims and lawsuits brought by injured people and once even likened the attorneys for injured people to “terrorists.”

On the other hand, we liked to say that insurance industry mismanagement and greed were the real reasons for the insurance “crises” that would hit policyholders periodically. 

With the Federal Reserve now taking over AIG because of mismanagement and greed and asking taxpayers to foot the bill for the company’s shoddy business practices at a cost of $85 billion dollars,  wonder who was right?

The truth is AIG’s mismanagement stems from the way it makes most of its money, by investing premiums dollars it collects.  A lot of its recent investments have failed to pan out (including many related to residential and commercial mortgages).  As a result, they can’t afford to pay off their “bad bets” and still honor their commitments to policyholders. 

So taxpayers are left holding the bag.

Lost in this, of course, is the notion that companies that make wagers with other people’s money should be held accountable when they fail to assess the soundness of those gambles—not to mention, when they negligently “bet” more money than they have.

Ah well—at least no one is calling civil justice attorneys “terrorists” this time.

How did we get so lucky?

When you’re a small advocacy group like the Center for Justice & Democracy, there’s nothing like a little free publicity.  So thanks to the Manhattan Institute’s blog, PointofLaw.com (you know the Manhattan Institute – the kind of group that boasts about recently hosting Dick Cheney, who called them an “impressive think tank”) - we just got a shout out on CJ&D's new report "State Attorneys General: The People's Champion".

There wasn't much of an analysis of the report.  I take that back. There was no analysis of the report.  They opted instead for the ancient art of schoolyard tactics known as name calling (if you can call it that). CJ&D is a "trial-lawyer front group," they exclaimed!  So we checked around, and it seems so is Consumers Union (publisher of Consumer Reports), the Environmental Working Group, Public Citizen, the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (now ConsumerWatchDog.org) – indeed, like trial lawyers, anyone that successfully fights for consumers!

I guess you know you’re effective when the only tool in someone’s attack arsenal is a name.  We’ve heard some doozies.  Like the one who called me a "Holocaust denier" after we posted this.

One of my favorites was the 2002 release by Physicians Insurers Association of America attacking Public Citizen for its statistical report about the insurance industry.  And I quote, "Fighting to the death for the right to chase ambulances and hover over the sick and dead, this group of wolves in sheep's clothing has turned nothing less than rabid. Their rantings have gone beyond the bounds of rationality and descended into the maelstrom of sheer lunacy.” Yes, now there’s a thoughtful analysis. 

Here’s another funny thing.  POL writes, “Walter Olson has written about [Center for Justice & Democracy] over the years, aptly describing it as a ‘trial lawyer front group'" and they then proceed to cite themselves.  But among the items they cite are two earlier posts that announce Joanne Doroshow’s participation on the American Enterprise Institute panel on Hurricane Katrina, at the invitation of AEI’s Ted Frank! 

Maybe they should consider adding Joanne to their Dick Cheney page. Might enhance the quality a little.