In mid-2002, in the face of widespread criticism (and more than a little derision), National Public Radio dropped its policy of purporting to require webmasters to ask permission before linking to its website, npr.org. (Farhad Manjoo, “NPR Retreats, Link Stink Lingers”, Wired News, Jun. 28, 2002). We noticed the other day, however, that Forbes magazine, ordinarily one of the more sensible and web-literate media outfits, on its Reprints/Permissions page includes the following option: “Request permission to include a link to FORBES.com on your website.” Whoops, looks like we just may have violated that policy (more: Aug. 22, 2002; Dec. 11, 2001; etc.).
Better for her to die?
Lori Wells, a 20-year-old Edmonton woman on dialysis, appealed on the internet for a kidney donor and 36 complete strangers from as far away as Florida volunteered their organs. “When donors contacted the local health authority, their offers were turned down.” Canadian transplant programs “insist living donors be family or close friends” to avoid the possibility that persons will donate organs for reasons deemed unworthy. One result: while 3,000 Canadians languish on waiting lists in need of transplants, only about 1,100 of them get transplants in a given year. (Adam Young, “Organ Donations: Socialism or Laissez-Faire?”, Mises.org, Jan. 19; “Ethicists dash hopes for internet kidney donors”, CBC, Dec. 22). (via Alex Tabarrok)
NAAG enforces tobacco cartel
Who’s serving as muscle to enforce a cartel that costs American consumers billions of dollars a year? Why, the National Association of Attorneys General, that’s who. As reported in our Jan. 13 item, the Big Four tobacco companies are starting to lose significant market share to small, regional and foreign cigarette companies that either do not contribute to the MSA (multistate settlement agreement) or do not contribute as much as the majors proportionally. Now AP confirms that NAAG sees this as a big problem and is urging states to pass laws closing the supposed “loophole” (which loophole appears to consist simply of the smaller companies’ not having to pay for past sins absent any showing that they’ve committed such sins). AP also obtained a confidential September memo from NAAG that’s a bit of a smoking gun, we’d say, as far as illuminating the true motives behind the plan. The memo “warned states to expect a $2.5 billion decrease in settlement payments due April 15, down from a projected $9.3 billion. It says about $600 million of that decrease, or 25 percent, is the result ‘not of a decline in smoking but rather of NPM (nonparticipating manufacturer) sales displacing sales by Participating Manufacturers.’ ‘NPM sales confer no benefits on the States,’ reads the memo…. ‘All States have an interest in reducing NPM sales in every State.'” (“Small cigarette makers cut into Big Tobacco’s markets, states’ pockets”, AP/Raleigh News & Observer, Jan. 16). (via Vice Squad).
“Mr. Edwards’s Bundle of Secrets”
Scathing Washington Post editorial (Jan. 23) about a rather gaping hole in Sen. Edwards’s claim to be the candidate free from entanglements with all those dreadful Special Interests. “Mr. Edwards — alone among the serious candidates for president — declines to provide a list of his major campaign financiers: the men and women who have not only the capability to write $2,000 checks themselves but the networks that allow them to harvest bigger bundles for their favored candidates.” Sen. Edwards has in fact raised a larger proportion of his campaign warchest in $2,000 donations than any of his Democratic rivals, and his refusal to disclose the details of his financial operation is of particular interest because of stories like the one we covered May 8, which suggest that some of his patrons may have much they are interested in concealing about the exact manner in which those $2,000 checks came to be written and bundled. For more on Edwards’s fund-raising, see Aug. 5; Jul. 18, 2002; May 1-2, 2002; Apr. 7-8.
Harassment: do as we say?
“A federal jury on Wednesday awarded $500,000 to a former Cook County employee who alleged she was sexually harassed by her boss, who at the time was the county’s chief investigator of sexual harassment allegations. The jury of four women and three men deliberated for about 3 1/2 hours before deciding in favor of Sharla Roberts, a mother of three who said she was groped by Timothy Flick, the county’s first inspector general.” Flick denied the allegations. (Matt O’Connor, “$500,000 awarded in harassment case”, Chicago Tribune, Jan. 22; “County Official ‘Never’ Touched, Kissed Manager”, NBC5.com, Jan. 15). For more stories from the hoist-on-their-own-petard file, see Jun. 14-16, 2002 (EEOC says U.S. Commission on Civil Rights retaliated against employee who filed bias complaint), Mar. 6, 2001 (EEOC itself accused of age discrimination), Aug. 30, 1999 (U.S. Justice Department charged with ignoring employee overtime law), Feb. 6-9, 2003 (Sen. Wellstone, noted labor advocate, illegally failed to buy workers’ comp insurance for his campaign staff), and this 1998 list.
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Another traffic record; Laura Ingraham radio show
With our commentary on John Edwards drawing links from all over the place, yesterday was another record day for traffic, with 12,908 unique visitors, breaking Jan. 7’s record of 10,798. We’re being forced to upgrade to a new and more expensive hosting plan, but that’s the sort of problem it’s nice to have (to send us an Amazon donation that will help defray the costs, click here).
I’m set to appear as a guest on Laura Ingraham’s national radio show to discuss Sen. Edwards, but not this morning as originally scheduled. It’ll probably be next week.
“Jury: Airline Not Liable for Racist Rhyme”
Updating the “eenie, meenie, minie, moe” saga featured in this space last Feb. 11: “Southwest Airlines is not liable for a flight attendant who upset two black passengers by using a version of a rhyme with a racist history, a jury determined Wednesday.” Attorney Scott A. Wissel had represented the two women in the Kansas City, Kan. federal trial. (AP/Wired News, Jan. 21)
More weblogs threatened with lawsuits
The widely discussed Luskin/Atrios affair last fall (see Oct. 30) was just the start, it seems, as far as webloggers being menaced with litigation over their sites’ contents. In November Justene Adamec of CalBlog (Nov. 14) received a demand letter from a lawyer for a telemarketing firm “threatening to sue me and ‘my agents’ for invasion of privacy, misrepresentation and interference with economic relations” because of critical discussion about the firm in readers’ comments at the site. See also Damnum Absque Injuria, Nov. 9 and Nov. 14 and Right on the Left Beach, Nov. 15 and Nov. 17, which have useful information on the workings of this particular telemarketing firm/directory publisher, Infotel by name. And last month Michael Airhart at Ex-Gay Watch (Dec. 23) received a letter from LightHouse World Evangelism, Inc. located in Rohnert Park, Calif., threatening a defamation suit over a post in which Airhart expressed decided doubt about the medical claims made by Pastor Matthew C. Manning, who has appeared on Pat Robertson’s broadcast “700 Club” to say that he was healed by faith from HIV/AIDS.
Asbestos: send in the prosecutors?
Prof. Lester Brickman of Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law, a noted legal ethicist and the leading academic critic of the asbestos litigation, has a devastating new 137-page article out in the Pepperdine Law Review. His contention: mass attorney solicitation of claimants has combined with willfully unreliable medical screening and witness-coaching by law firms to generate hundreds of thousands of fundamentally fraudulent claims which are obtaining unjustified payouts in the billions and even tens of billions of dollars. The only likely catalyst for reform at this point, he argues, would be a full investigation by a grand jury armed with subpoena powers. (Stuart Taylor, Jr., Dec. 31; Paul Hampel, “Many asbestos suits are fraudulent, professor says”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jan. 13). The article, not online but available to those with LEXIS access or in law libraries, is Lester Brickman, “On the Theory Class’s Theories of Asbestos Litigation: The Disconnect Between Scholarship and Reality”, 31 Pepp. L. Rev. 33. For our coverage of asbestos, see, e.g., Nov. 12, Oct. 24, Sept. 25, and earlier posts.