The Dodd-Frank Act was passed earlier this summer to reign in Wall Street abuses that very nearly led to collapse of our economy. The rights of corporations to do whatever they want whenever they want has even been couched in terms of civil rights.
It is funny how the loss of over $11 trillion in wealth in 2008, over $5 trillion in the last 3 months alone, has taken a back seat to a cynical and fairly disgusting reinvention of civil rights arguments to promote corporate profits. The two are not unrelated.
How so you ask?
1. The right is fighting against Wall Street and financial reform in the midst of the worst recession since the great depression.
2. The right is fighting against regulation of off shore drilling in the midst of the worst environmental disaster in history.
3. The right has fought successfully to allow credit card companies to jack interest rates for no reason other than the need to beef up profits while consumers are buried in already high interest debt.
4. The right is fighting to limit liability for BP and its partners for damages to thousands of businesses and millions of taxpayers along the Gulf Coast while seeking tax credits for the oil industry.
5. The right is fighting for the repeal of healthcare reform to maintain the profits of health insurance companies while suggesting that cheap healthcare is somehow bad for the poor and middle class.
6. The right is fighting for the repeal of various inconvenient constitutional amendments such as the 14th amendment civil rights protections.
7. The right is fighting for the right of businesses to discriminate as they please against both employees and consumers calling our government fascist for reaching out to workers, the poor, the sick, the little guy.
8. The right is fighting for unencumbered police power to stop and question citizens upon the most trivial suspicion of illegal immigration status while again calling our government fascist for tax breaks for the middle class at the expense of the top 1% and affordable healthcare at the expense of the health insurance industry‘s record profits.
9. The right fights to prevent medical malpractice lawsuits despite the fact that the Institute of Medicine estimates that up to 98,000 people, typically the little guys, die each year from medical negligence.
10. The right fights for the insurance industry rights to inflate the medical malpractice insurance costs for doctors while the number of medical malpractice lawsuits has steeply declined over the last 10 years, Strangely, even doctors have now dropped in status to the little guy. Ask any doctor and he or she will tell you..
Finally, the right is fighting against trial lawyers who after all the above proves successful will be the last possible outlet for individuals to protect their rights, their freedoms, their jobs, their families, their homes, their health and their financial security. The right will not hesitate to take up a corporate cause and corporate profits. Who will fight for you when the right achieves their goals? Like it or not, it will be trial lawyers who have always stepped up to protect the little guy particularly when as now our elected officials are prevented from doing so by those same corporate interests.