Wanna Buy a Statehouse?

In an Associated Press article at Pennlive.com we learn that many that the going rate is approximately $150,000 and counting.  Here's an excerpt from the story:

"Pennsylvania state lawmakers [took and reported} more than $150,000 in gifts and free food, lodging and transportation last year, according to the latest set of mandatory reports filed with the State Ethics Commission.

[Le]gislators traveled to at least six states and to China, India, Ireland and Switzerland.  For free, they watched NHL games, two were members of the Erie Yacht Club and one took $2,750 worth of ski lift passes.   The state Ethics Act requires public officials to disclose annually any gifts worth at least $250 as well as transportation, lodging or hospitality worth $650 over the course of the year. The reports were due earlier this week.

Rep. Mike Vereb said Tuesday he didn’t realize until much later the cost of a luncheon he and his wife attended during a Pennsylvania Society event in New York.

'I’m not a New York type of guy, and I had no friggin’ clue [ed. nice mild oath] as to the amount,' said Vereb, R-Montgomery. He disclosed the $1,017 cost, a gift of Alpha Natural Resources, a coal company. Alpha’s largesse turned up on at least four other financial statements.

For the Legislature, the total figures are higher than in previous years, in part because an ethics opinion the commission issued several months ago requires disclosure when members get deep discounts on hotel rooms that are not widely available.

Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, R-Montgomery, listed $12,136 worth of construction services [um, remember Ted Stevens] from a retired builder who is helping him construct a new home after his was destroyed in a fire. 'He refused to take any money,' Greenleaf [explained, ed. sure, good one.]

Three senators and a state representative went to Israel, a trip partially underwritten by the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. Sen. Kim Ward, R-Westmoreland, said she paid all of her cost, while Sen. Daylin Leach, D-Montgomery, said he planned to file an amended report to disclose the trip.

'It was an educational trip,' said Rep. Curt Schroder, R-Chester. 'We meet with members of the Israeli government, press, toured the different hot spot areas, like over near Gaza.'

Rep. Dwight Evans, D-Philadelphia, reported $670 from the Philadelphia Eagles for transportation, hotel accommodations, dinner and tickets to see the team take on the Dallas Cowboys in Texas [ed. another educational trip.]   Evans also received two free $1,000 tickets from the Philadelphia Orchestra for a 'white-tie celebration,' two $1,500 tickets for the Philadelphia National Museum of American Jewish History’s opening gala, and $915 from the Pew Center for the States to attend a 'fiscal leader seminar' in Phoenix. 'The Eagles are a major employer in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania — a lot of jobs, right, all kinds of jobs, a lot of revenue. The orchestra — major attraction in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,' said Evans, who said he takes a particular interest in state financial issues as a former Appropriations Committee chairman.

Sen. John Pippy, R-Allegheny, spent more than a week in China and India last summer. The cost of more than $19,000 was picked up by the Aspen Institute Rodel Fellowships in Public Leadership of Washington, D.C.   The Legislative Leadership Institute Academy of Foreign Affairs in Green Bay, Wis., spent $12,293 to send Pippy for 10 days to Ireland and Switzerland in December. [ . . . ]
The reports also reveal details about lawmakers’ outside income. At least 30 of them have business relationships with law practices, six with insurance concerns and at least three with the military. More than 20 reported rental or real estate income, while others disclosed proceeds from or ties to accountancy or engineering practices, farming, retail stores, lumber sales, universities, auto repair, auctioneering and a funeral home."
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This article brilliantly illustrates why constituents are pre-disposed hate law makers.  The weaseling is just so ... what you might expect.

Criminal Charges for Industrial Fatatlies in Michigan

The State of Michigan has filed criminal charges against a masonry contractor at a University of Michigan construction project in the wake of the death of a worker who plummeted 40 feet off an unguarded scaffolding.  According to a report at AnnArbor.com, Davenport Masonry operates as a criminally dangerous contractor and yet it continues its work on the elite Michigan campus.

This is from Juliana Keeping's article:

"A Michigan masonry company has been criminally charged in the death of a journeyman who fell from scaffolding while working on a University of Michigan construction project.


In a felony criminal complaint filed in Washtenaw County District Court, the Michigan Attorney General's Office charged Holt-based Davenport Masonry with violating the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Act, causing the death of an employee.

[T}he complaint, filed in April, [alleges] the company failed to create hazard-free work place, which caused the February 2008 death of Leo Felty, Jr.  Felty died in February 2008 after falling 40 feet from scaffolding while working on the $42 million U-M Museum of Art addition. The Pinckney man stepped backward off an unguarded end of the scaffolding and died on impact, according to the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation report."
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It is rare that criminal charges are filed in occupational injury and fatalities although we should expect more of this after the astounding Massey Coal Mine and DeepWater Oil Platform disasters.  Any idea, why?

Let me suggest that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of non-regulation and the scaling back on civil remedies for injured workers and their families.  In OurState, the business-friendly legislature and Supremes steadily circumscribed the rights of injured workers to hold employers liable for near-criminal conduct.  When heinous injuries do occur community and societal outrage can only be expressed by resort to criminal prosecutions.  If civil remedies were available would there be the clamoring for the sorts of criminal prosecutions we now demand of BP, Massey Coal, and these contractors who find it convenient not to insist on basic safety procedures?  I doubt it.

Previously, on Bad Lawyer, I talked about my client who suffered severed electric shock while performing maintenance at an electrical substation.  The employer in that case killed two prior employees (including their own daughter!) through the same practices that maimed my client.  The legal liability under the law of OurState at this time required that we demonstrate that the practices that injured my client were "substantially certain to cause injury."  OurState's law-givers, in response to the business lobbyists including the Chamber of Commerce, thought this "intentional tort" law too onerous.  After several re-draftings were "stuck down" by the Supremes, OurState Big Business interests finally were able to buy enough Supreme Court justices to have the legislative reform of this statutory "reform" upheld in a recent ruling. 

I await the next scandalous killing of a worker by an OurState employer, let's see how long it takes for an angry electorate to demand criminal prosecution of the industrial culprit.  You see, in our system money is justice, or else.

Money or Justice?

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing criticized attorney Geoffrey Fieger for wanting "MONEY not JUSTICE" as it relates to Fieger's representation of the family of Aiyana Stanley-Jones.  I reported this story last weekend and there is current coverage at MLive.com, but I want to go back to Mayor Bing's criticism which I alluded to in my original post.

Mayor Bing seems like a fine and honorable gentleman.  A former NBA all star and a local hero, Bing is trying to provide life support for a dying lunch bucket town. Detroit has been dying for a long, long time--twenty-five years ago I remember visiting Detroit and being shocked that the local convenience store in what seemed like a nice neighborhood was essentially encased in Plexiglas for security reasons.  This was at the time that the Renaissance Tower was newly open, providing some architectural excitement. 

But like Baltimore, Cleveland, Buffalo, well . . . you name the town, money and jobs moved to the water-challenged enviros.  Thugs in and out of government and law enforcement create an atmosphere of chaos and existentialism in these old line American cities.  Personally, I've not felt less optimistic about where these cities are at since the 1970s, I'm sure the economy has a lot to do with this subjective reaction. 

I am way off subject--I wanted to talk about Mayor Bing's observation that Geoffrey Fieger is taking advantage of a tragic situation to "get money."  No doubt.  And no doubt that it will take a lot of money to pay for the gross negligence of the Detroit police operation that resulted int eh killing of this sleeping 7 year old baby girl.  Since the beginning of recorded Judeo-Christian (Torah, Old Testament, Talmud, New Testament) civilization money is the measure of civil justice.  Perhaps Mayor Bing can think of some alternative to money?  Any ideas? 

Years ago I was involved in a news conference in a large American city near Detroit relating to the filing of civil lawsuits against an old line diocese, a reporter asked me what I would say in response to the charge that these clergy sex abuse lawsuits were "all about money?"  Impolitic per usual, I said, of course the lawsuits were about money, civil lawsuits can only measure "justice" in terms of monetary awards, civil lawsuits exist to allow a civil society to continue.  When there is no justice, when there is no reasonable hope for justice, there is no peace.  This morning as I write this post, news is coming across the web of the killing of 3 Chinese judges by a deranged Chinese citizen.  China which has no effective civil system of remedies is suffering a spate of these bizarre and insane mass killings mostly of innocent children which I would argue are causally-related to a system of a rule of law.

"Money or justice?" is a false dichotomy, in the civil law system, money is justice.  I am relatively certain, Mayor Bing that the family of Aiyana Stanley-Jones would rather have Aiyana Stanley-Jones instead of money.  I know that the adult survivors of rape, incest and clergy sex abuse would rather have had their innocence, their families and their faith instead of money.