Scrapbook

...Because it is precisely the notoriously subjective "pain and suffering" claims that are responsible both for huge payments to lawyers and for the health-care fraud and abuse that the current system perversely encourages...

...After two hours, the business types simply ended the meeting and rushed to their corporate jets to beat the 10 p.m...

...curfew at National Airport...

...In a mass mailing to members and prospective members, ATLA issues a call to arms against auto-insurance reform...

...Not according to the trial lawyers' group...

...And why did the Roundtable water down TV ads last year touting a balanced budget...

...They could still buy exactly the policies they already have...

...The idea behind the Mclntosh-Istook amendment was that the $39 billion in federal grants given each year to non-profits freed up other money in the groups' budgets for lobbying...

...Well . . . nothing, really...

...One of the more interesting fights of the First Gingrich Congress was the effort by House freshmen to restrict lobbying by non-profit groups (many more of them liberal than conservative) that receive federal grants...

...Myott is not without the sort of PR skills that fit in at Clinton-Gore festivities: "Aunt Pam," he says, "represents women in America...

...Well, they never did manage to talk about Agenda '97...

...Sensing the danger to liberal groups living off the dole if this idea should take root, Nan Aron of the Alliance for Justice (the infamous inventor of "Borking") and her allies on the left fought McIntosh-Istook tooth and nail, repeatedly denying that federal funds were fungible...

...Uncle Sam's are obvious, but what the heck does A.P...

...Trial Lawyers In Extremis The Association of Trial Lawyers of America is mobilizing its members once again against a sensible legal reform that might cut into their lavish incomes...

...Oversight Works Wonders The Scrapbook reported two weeks ago that Texas Rural Legal Aid, an arm of the Legal Services Corporation, had returned to the leftie glory days of the 1970s by filing suit on behalf of two Democratic office-seekers who had lost local elections...

...Sometimes it's worth remembering that it really does matter who controls Congress...

...So many questions, so few answers...

...Republicans have long complained that corporate America's flagship organization "will not fight to reelect members of Congress who advocate and vote for free enterprise," as outgoing party chairman Haley Barbour put it just after the elections last November...

...Or they could lower the cost of their insurance substantially if they agree to give up the right to sue for "pain and suffering" in the event of an accident...

...And why, they also asked, is the Roundtable staff loaded with Democrats who play footsie with the Clinton White House...

...Well, the corporation and its tax-supported outposts are not supposed to engage in politics, and certain Republicans were up in arms over it—and amazingly the outrage spread to corporation headquarters back in Washington...

...Aunt Pam is scheduled to make her inaugural debut this year cavorting alongside Uncle Sam on Pennsylvania Avenue...

...Scram, Uncle Sam, Here's Aunt Pam If in another few decades your grandkids come home from school coloring pictures of Uncle Sam and his sidekick Aunt Pam, don't say we didn't warn you...

...And she bears all the hallmarks of a feminist icon aborning...

...stand for...

...Now that the freshmen are sophomores, a similar idea has been incorporated into the rules, adopted by the GOP majority on Jan...

...Whereupon the Legal Services Corporation fired off an alarmed and indignant letter to its Texas subsidiary notifying it of a "substantial violation" of the grant agreement...

...And, in a preemptive strike, he says that nothing should be read into the fact that Aunt Pam has shorter stilts than Uncle Sam...

...The truth, theoretically, will out...

...There is, of course, the small problem of the initials...

...And when it comes to personifying the United States, why should there be a male monopoly on wearing silly costumes and walking around on stilts...

...According to Steve Myott, the Winterville, N.C., drama teacher and actor who is the official Uncle Sam of the Inauguration, his stilting friend Pam Horne came along to a local gig six years ago...

...Nan Aron, et al., are no less unhappy with this...

...The Real Party of Btg Business When congressional Republicans (Coverdell, Gingrich, Armey, DeLay, Boehner) met privately with the leaders of the Business Roundtable on January 9, the plan was to discuss the 1997 agenda after quickly putting to rest the bad blood over campaign donations...

...With fewer years' experience, Horne simply has not yet worked up to the Uncle Sam-scale stilts that Myott uses...

...Why does that matter...

...De-grant the Left...

...But because Truth in Testimony is a House rule, all they can do is whine...

...States like New Jersey (whose governor, Christine Todd Whitman, just made these reforms a centerpiece of her efforts this year) like the Horowitz proposal because it would save consumers large sums, unclog courts, and reduce the amount of parasitic business — mostly dubious medical consultations—created by these "pain and suffering" suits...

...Sounds pretty smart, no...

...And why did the Roundtable take its name off the letterhead of the business coalition that responded to the AFL-CIO offensive against the GOP...

...The letter describes the reform as "a cruel hoax," and "insidious," and pleads: "we urgently need you to help us defeat this latest assault on our livelihood and our clients . . ." Consider the wording here: "Our livelihood" first, "our clients" second...

...when a young boy asked who she was, Myott dubbed her Aunt Pam on the spur of the moment...

...Very revealing, don't you think...

...Instead, the Republican leaders, joined by Bar-bour, persisted in their criticism that the bigwigs give too much to congressional Democrats, who hate the business community and, being out of power, can't help anyway...

...Lobbying will not be restricted, but all witnesses who testify before House committees will be required to list the federal grants and contracts they have received during the preceding three years...

...7, under which the House will operate...

...Long championed by Michael Horowitz, a Reagan administration official now at the Hudson Institute, this auto-insurance reform would allow drivers a choice...

...Which they did at some length in a Jan...

...16 article in the New York Times—so much so that Aron unwittingly strayed off the reservation in her comments to reporter Kathryn Seelye, allowing at last that "money theoretically is fungible...

...After all, Uncle Sam has had the stage pretty much to himself since his creation, supposedly during the War of 1812, making him perhaps the country's longest-surviving manifestation of patriarchy...

...Economists call this fungibility, a concept grasped even by very young children when they realize that the $25 Grandma gave them to buy clothes means they can spend an equal amount of their allowance on the Power Rangers paraphernalia that Grandma disapproves of...

...The rule, dubbed Truth in Testimony, was championed by the Heritage Foundation, which noted that 3,000 or so recipients of federal grants testify before Congress each year and that disclosure would "expose financially self-serving testimony...

...And they prevailed (thanks mainly to President Clinton's threat to veto any legislation containing such an amendment...

...Texas senators Phil Gramm and Kay Bailey Hutchison sent letters to the Legal Services Corporation and the Justice Department alleging "blatant political activity...

...It has nothing to do with gender...

...We're talking about a change in the way automobile drivers insure themselves—a change that would indeed jeopardize the million-dollar contingency fees some trial lawyers earn from car-crash suits...