12 January 2008

More reasons to like John Edwards

The more I hear about John Edwards' campaign, the clearer it is that America would strongly benefit from him being president. His campaign has become a populist mission to assert control over corporate control--halt the relaxing of regulatory control that harms consumers and blunt the greed that destroys human lives.

His book, "Four Trials," documents the kind of greed he saw and fought in his law practice. Perhaps the hardest example is the company that made a children's pool drain pump strong enough to suck the intestines out of a 5 year old child--which it did. Of course, the corporation knew about this risk but ignored it because it did not want to spend money making it safer.

And corporate lobbyists know about his career and apparently fear his presidency.

Ask corporate lobbyists which presidential contender is most feared by their clients and the answer is almost always the same -- Democrat John Edwards.

The former North Carolina senator's chosen profession alone raises the hackles of business people. Before entering politics, he made a fortune as a trial lawyer.

As an aside, note how the Reuters article refers to "winning" settlements when settlements are, by definition, mutually agreed to by the parties and cannot be "won." The media very frequently makes mistakes in their writing about legal concepts.

One more detail is the reference to "litigious" America without any discussion of what that means. I suppose the writer could mean that we as Americans are argumentative, but I doubt it. If you are not a corporation and assert your rights in court, you are litigious, apparently.

2 comments:

yurt boy said...

Edwards is the only candidate that gets me fired up, so I am dismayed at how the media has massively under-reported his campaign -- and already relegates him as an also-ran. No doubt, the two or three media conglomerates that control every mainstream news outlet in our country have nothing to do with this systematic cold shoulder.

Anonymous said...

Well said.