Shakedown :: essays research papers

Worry over credentials played a big role in the presidential running -- and plays it still. For persisting inof D.C. is the naive if popular opinion that government is "on our side" -- that it is an impartial protectoreven seeing to it that we sh all told not want. Sure.In "Shakedown" Robert A. Levy, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute, says suopinion leaks. Our Framers were far above such leakiness. Thus did their constitutional checks and balanto fundament abuse of power. They knew that Brutus still lurks about, that as Thomas Jefferson noted in 1788, innate(p) progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."That gain is bring in by the author. He sees working capital, D.C.s leading industry as not touristry but speinterests take outing a giant, most cooperative cash cow, with consumers and taxpayers getting pass by many"baseless lawsuits."Apart from antitrust, the extortion lobby works tripl e routes one, through victimizing smokers and a bsocked tobacco industry two, through anti-gun advocates circumventing the plump for Amendment and stalegislatures by suing in court and in the process victimizing gun manu situationurers and probable gun ownersthree, through seductive tort liability and antitrust systems hobbling our saving via perverse "regulatiothrough litigation."Mr. Levy titles part one of his two-part book "tort Law as Litigation Tyranny" and part two " fairCorporate Welfare for Market Losers." This libertarian pulls no punches.But what about the rebellion tide of tort cases that push up, among other things, medical malpractice insupremiums to six-figure heights and wring many doctors, such as gynecologists and obstreticians, out of buUp go the be of of office and hospital visits, hurting many family budgets.The author supplies a white reply. As a federalist as well as a libertarian, he believes in states rights, inAmendment "Th e powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to tStates, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."He adds, "There is no constitutional right to health care." He sees state medical malpractice advance asubiquitous. He cites more than three dozen states with damage caps, with all 50 states passing or considesome kind of malpractice reform.Mr. Levy decries the fact that many congressional Republicans as well as liberal Democrats milk an exlobby. The author would invoke the 14th Amendment to check state tort laws which deny both proceduraPage 1 of 2 Washingtons extortion lobby -- The Washington Times2/22/2005 http//www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20050219-110442-5649rsubstantive protection against quasi-criminal punishment.