Web Site of Week-ADULTS ONLY;Week Just Passed; Local-Merryland Gossip

 

2/20/05-2/27/05
The Class Action Lawsuit Victory
Goodness knows the lawyers in our lives can’t have too much money. The trial attorneys fought it mightily and Hillary, in reaction, voted against it.

But the great attorneys who would save us from defective products still have a forum to present their case. They just can’t pick or choose the judge and jury where it will happen.

Suppose yon reader purchases a piece of furniture from a North Carolina manufacturer. Said piece of furniture has a design defect that causes the thing to break during the course of ordinary use. The danger of that breakage is enough to warrant a lawsuit to refund monies across the land to innocent purchasers of this piece of furniture.

So far, seems fair.

Except the trial attorney doesn’t want to present his case in, say, North Carolina, as that is where the manufacturer exists. The jurors from NC might want to defend their own businesses.

The attorney can then pick a state, any state, find a purchaser of the defective furniture in that state and on that consumer’s behalf file a class action lawsuit that all innocent purchasers of the defective furniture can get a buck or two as those things usually go. Ah, but the attorney. He gets that buck or two times maybe a million purchasers.

Now in order to invest the time in pursuit of this windfall of money, the attorney needs a sympathetic judge and jury pool. Some states have garnered a reputation for generous juries and judges willing to give the attorneys a lot of leeway. So much so that there are three specific state court jurisdictions that are the locale of the vast majorities of these class action lawsuits.

This is not a coincidence yon Ladies and Gems. The lawyers have honed in on the state jurisdictions where they’re likely to win. Who knows what these states and generous judges get out of it all.

It’s still damn unfair to a business trying to survive and thrive. A court case is one thing. A court case with all the odds stacked against the business is not quite how it’s supposed to go.

Last week congress passed a law that such class action suits must go through a FEDERAL court. And why not? It does seem logical that court cases affecting citizens across state lines should be tried in a federal court.

The trial attorneys took advantage of this loophole but looks like their free ride is over.

From the NY Post

Bush's triumph came as the Senate voted 72-26 to shield businesses from class-action lawsuits by funneling most cases out of state courts and into the less receptive federal courts.

Businesses, led by the Chamber of Commerce, have lobbied for six years to restrict how and where class-action lawsuits can be heard, but the measure had consistently been thwarted by Senate Democrats.

And from the Washington Times:

THE LAWSUIT LOTTERY SCHEME

“Class-action lawsuits have been in need of reform ever since the lawyers figured out how to game the system: By ‘shopping’ their cases around state courts in search of a sympathetic judge and jury, the lawyers would draw whatever business was in their cross-hairs into a zero-sum game, since the targeted business would usually just settle out of court rather than face bankruptcy. Over the last 10-year period, this little scheme averaged billions of dollars per year in payouts, much of it going straight into the lawyers' bank accounts. And all the while the lawyers had the gall to uphold the facade of helping out the ‘little guy,’ a la Erin Brockovich.”

- Washington Times editorial, 2/14/05

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The Picture Says It All
Excellent Political Cartoon
Requires no additional verbiage as regards congress’ debate over Social Security Reform.
 

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And Yet Another Picture Requiring No Comment
 

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Results of Iraqi Election
 


 

Unusual but We’re All Adults, Right?
So far as I now there aren’t children frequenting this site. And before Kaitlyn gets a gander I’ll erase the post. But it was just too tempting to pass by.

Watch out looking at this one..........The all nude police officer calendar for 2005 comes in an all-male and an all-female version. All pics show full frontal nudity, for both female and males. Just click on the menu to select which one you want to view. They are available for sale on the site -- the calendars, not the officers. Click on the site below to view all 12 (24) totally nude police officers.

ADULTS ONLY CLICK HERE

 

What’s Going on in Merryland?
Technically this is not about Delaware. But second worst almost in that the political action in Merryland is too amusing to ignore.

Persons involved in the intrigue include two FreeRepublic posters, two Washington Post reporters, two Baltimore Sun reporters, possibly, Governor Ehrlich-R-Merryland Governor and Mayor Martin O’Malley-D-Baltimore.

It begins when an individual, posting as PCPAC on FreeRepublic makes friends with another poster using MD4BUSH as their Freep name.

It continues until PCPAC’s real identity is discovered. His name is Steffen and he is an Aide to Merryland’s Republican Governor Ehrlich. Ehrlich fires Steffen when the news story is published in the Washington Post. Seems Steffen was spreading rumors about Mayor O’Malley.

Not to worry for this Blogger has no qualms about spreading rumors. There’s plenty, but the most prevalent and intriguing one is that Mayor O’Malley had an affair with local channel WBAL’s female talking head, Sade Baderinwa. And they have a baby to prove it! Or so goes the rumor.

Governor Ehrlich puts an investigator onto the task of getting to the bottom of it all. Because it seems that PCPAC(Steffen) was not alone in the spreading of such rumors but was baited along by FreeRepublic poster MD4BUSH.

Who Governor Ehrlich’s office suspects is either two Baltimore Sun reporters or two Washington Post reporters working anonymously to get Steffen fired.

Now it can be argued that this Steffen fellow should not have been posting gossip about Baltimore’s mayor on company time and in fact, Steffen himself might have revealed his identity to one of the reporters egging him on.

Assuming MD4BUSH IS a reporter or team of them. Some speculation has it that MD4BUSH is a Democratic operative with a city hall ISP provider name.

I wonder what would Mayor O’Malley gain by having one of his people stalk the hapless Steffen and reveal his identity and gossip tidbits to the Washington Post.

The Baltimore Sun is involved in this a bit peripherally in that Governor Ehrlich has banned his people from talking about anything to two specific reporters at the Baltimore Sun. It is these two reporters suspected as being the stalker of PCPAC(Steffen) and indeed, Ehrlich’s own investigator phoned up the Sunpapers and asked both reporters pointedly if they were the poseurs.

Well it gets more hilarious and complicated than this even. But make no mistake, it’s all politics and all a plan to save Baltimore’s new up and comer, Martin O’Malley.

Who has, it should be noted, done absolutely nothing for Baltimore except raise up taxes, drive more business out of the city and hey, he needed time for an affair or two.

Other rumors have O’Malley living away from his wife in a snazzy apartment near Baltimore city Hall. He is, by the gossip mill, another Bill Clinton.

Somehow we have WBAL, the Baltimore Sunpaper and FreeRepublic all mixed up in this thing and I must snort.

O’Malley won’t keep his little secret very long. He’s a horndog and this day post Clinton, the American people are not going to buy it.

Delaware Task Force Report Delivers Nothing
In fact we do have some Delaware news in this, a state coming up behind New Jersey for most corrupt. Seems Governor Minner hired a ritzy task force to report back its opinions and analysis on Delaware’s “tiered diploma” system. Delaware issues three kinds of diplomas upon graduation because the teachers, who bought and paid for Minner, can’t get the students ready for college prep tests. So some students get a “lower diploma”, however that works.

Anyway, this task force returns its report and HAS NO OPINION WHATSOEVER!

This after paying out $150K and after Nanny Minner told the legislature to wait until this vaunted report before changing Delaware’s diploma system.

Now what?

Now we have exactly what Nanny Minner wanted, of course. She doesn’t want to change Delaware’s education system though the state is 39th across the nation out of fifty for student test scores.

Minner has a lot of buddies in the Teachers’ Union, the biggest contributor to her campaign. Naturally Minner wants nothing changed as her owners want nothing changed as they rather like not having to do their job.

The Expert Panel on Assessment and Accountability presented its report this week, along with a $150,000 price tag.

The report offered no recommendations about the three-tier diploma, saying it falls "outside of any technical area of expertise" and that it is a policy matter that should be left to elected representatives.

Sen. Charles L. Copeland (R-West Farms), a member of the Senate Education Committee, is calling on the Minner/Carney administration to provide answers about their latest education fiasco - spending $150,000 of taxpayer money and nearly a year on an expert panel that recommended nothing.

A panel of three experts in the areas of assessment, accountability, and/or standard setting was appointed by Gov. Minner's Executive Order #54 in the spring of 2004 to "present findings and recommendations" on a narrow field of topics, including "awarding of diplomas."