Kimberley A. Strassel has
this nice piece at OpinionJournal about how Democrats are repaying their biggest donors with bought-and-paid-for legislation and more.
Most Republicans viewed Barney Frank's recent hearing on subprime mortgages as nothing more than typical Democratic corporation-bashing--and nobody is happier about that than Barney Frank. The House Financial Services chief is surely grinning that so few picked up on his bigger purpose: bestowing a big, wet smooch on the trial bar.
Democrats devoted their first months in the majority to paying back unions for their electoral support. Now it's time for the other huge campaign bankrollers. And don't think the trial bar, beat down by years of GOP tort reform, isn't expecting to feel the love. Since 1994, law firms and lawyers have thrown a half-billion dollars at getting lawsuit-friendly Democrats back in the majority. They've also taken care to get their own to Washington. Of the 30 House seats Dems won in 2006, 14 were claimed by former attorneys.
Don't expect anything so brazen as the House bill to eliminate secret ballots in union elections or the Senate drive to organize airport screeners. The Democratic majority might be willing to nakedly use their power to help Big Labor, but are wary of doing the same for a billionaire industry that these days would lose a popularity contest with the Mob. Even the tort bar understands how deeply loathed it is by the American public. The Association of Trial Lawyers of America didn't last year change its name to the bland "American Association for Justice" for nothing.
Strassel says the Dems will use two tried and true techniques to get their donors what they want: hearings and sobpoena power. Democrats have already demonstrated that hearings are nothing more than showboating and grandstanding. The subpoena of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for instance, was designed, not to gain new information, but to embarrass and harass both Rice and the president.
Remember: this is what you voted for last November.
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