Two kind of totally unrelated stories here but they both illustrate the way corporate power in the U.S. is completely out of hand. 

First up, the pox that calls itself "tort reform" but is really a hugely successful attempt to choke off access to the courts for ordinary citizens. Here's an op-ed by filmmaker Susan Saladoff about her new documentary "Hot Coffee":

Taking away people’s rights to access the courts is not that new for corporations. It has been going on for more than 25 years. It has been done through legislation, judicial elections, contractually and supported by a massive, corporate-funded public relations campaign.

Most Americans, however, have no idea – and, again, don’t seem to care — until something bad happens to them personally. Then, people understand, usually for the first time, how their constitutional rights — which stem from the 7th Amendment — have been taken away.

And after the jump is some info on the new corporate assault on ICANN, the entity that manages top level domain names on the Internet.

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by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

According to Robin Marty of Care2.org, today’s young whippersnappers are snorting bath salts and plant food to get their kicks. I knew I was getting old when I had to check the media to find out about the latest youth drug menace.

But, before you go and blow your allowance at the Body Shop or the garden center, keep in mind that “bath salt” and “plant food” are just euphemisms that web-based head shops use to sell these amphetamine-like drugs , according to a 2010 report by the UK Council on the Misuse of Drugs. The active ingredients of this legal high are mephedrone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV).

Despite what the media would have you believe, these designer drugs are not ingredients in common household products. You cannot get high on actual bath salts or plant food. Sorry. Gardeners, if you bought exotic imported “plant food” online, and it arrived in an impossibly tiny packet, don’t feed it to your plants.

Anti-choice black op linked to James O’Keefe

At least a dozen Planned Parenthood clinics across the country have recently been visited by a mysterious, self-proclaimed “sex trafficker” who was apparently part of a ruse to entrap clinic employees. Planned Parenthood reported these visits to the FBI.

In each case, the man reportedly asked to speak privately with a clinic worker, whereupon he asked for health advice regarding the underage, undocumented girls he was supposedly trying to traffic.

Jodi Jacobson reports at RH Reality Check:

[Prominent anti-choice blogger] Jill Stanek and other anti-choice operatives, including Lila Rose of Live Action Films are effectively claiming responsibility for sending  pseudo “sex traffickers” into [Planned Parenthood] clinics, and also warn of “explosive evidence,” of which they of course present…..none. They appear to have no credible response to exposure of their efforts to perpetrate a hoax on Planned Parenthood.

As Jacobson points out, sex trafficking is a very real problem. And a sex trafficking hoax diverts time and resources that the authorities who could be hunting down real traffickers. She adds:

Victims of sex trafficking, after all, also need sexual health services because they are effectively being raped regularly and are more likely to contract sexually transmitted infections and experience unintended pregnancies. Does this help them get treatment?

Lila Rose of Live Action Films is a former associate of right wing hoaxster James O’Keefe, who orchestrated a sting operation against the social justice group ACORN. O’Keefe was sentenced last year to three years’ probation for scamming his way into the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) in January, 2010.

Sex, lies, and the classroom

To mark the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the National Radio Project presents a discussion of sex ed in American schools, federal funding for sex ed, and advocacy by interest groups and parents. Guests include Phyllida Burlingame of the ACLU and Gabriela Valle of California Latinas for Reproductive Justice.

Hot coffee!

Remember the woman who sued McDonald’s after she spilled a hot cup of coffee in her lap? Corporate interests made Stella Liebeck into a national joke, even though she won her suit. Hot Coffee is a new documentary that tells the story behind the one-liners. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! interviews Ms. Liebeck’s daughter and son-in-law.

McDonald’s corporate manuals dictated that coffee be served at 187 degrees, in flimsy styrofoam cups. A home coffee maker usually keeps the brew between 142 to 162 degrees, and most people pour their Joe into something sturdier than a styrofoam cup. If you spill that coffee on yourself, you have 25 seconds to get it off before you suffer a 3rd degree burn. Whereas if you spill 187-degree coffee on yourself, you’ve got between 2 and 7 seconds.

Companies are expected to produce products that are safe for their intended use. McDonald’s was serving coffee to go, through drive-through windows, with cream and sugar in the bag. By implication, it should be safe to add cream and sugar to hot coffee in a car. In the pre-cup-holder era, millions of Americans were probably steadying their coffees between their legs to add cream and sugar every day. A responsible restaurant would not dispense superheated liquids in flimsy to-go cups. Indeed, McDonalds’ own records showed that 700 people had been scalded this way.

In 1992, the plaintiff was a passenger in a parked car, attempting to add cream and sugar to her coffee while steadying the cup between her knees. When she opened the lid, the cup collapsed inward, dousing her with scalding coffee. The 79-year-old woman sustained 3rd degree burns over 16% of her body. She needed skin grafts to repair the damage. Initially she only sued to recoup part of the cost of the skin grafts. But the judge who heard the case was so outraged by McDonald’s disregard for customer safety that he urged the jury to award punitive damages.

Another theme of Hot Coffee is how medical malpractice caps are forcing taxpayers to cover the medical costs of people who are injured by negligent health care providers.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Disclosure: I'm proud to be working with the American Association for Justice to protect patients' rights.

With the passage of Health Care Reform in the House, the stakes are rising by the day. As we saw this weekend with the adoption of the Stupak-Pitts amendment, changes to the bill can be made with blinding speed and millions of Americans can lose out in hours.

Thanks to a well-funded and decades long campaign by the insurance companies, "tort reform" -- the systematic denial of fundamental legal rights to patients harmed by medical negligence -- always looms when a heavily lobbied Congress talks about health care.

As Joanne Doroshow wrote on Huffington Post:

If you listened to the rants and harangues of those trying to kill the House health care bill on Saturday, you couldn't miss the endless blathering about tort reform, a term that almost no one really understands unless you happen to be a victim of medical malpractice or corporate wrongdoing. And then, you know.

Tort "reform" is a doozy of a misnomer. There is certainly nothing positive or beneficial about it. Tort reform laws, which now exist it nearly every state (although you'd never guess that after listening to those complaining how much we need it), make it more difficult for average people who have been injured, assaulted, or harmed in any way, to sue those responsible. The tort reform movement was created and funded by insurance companies, manufacturers of dangerous products, the tobacco industry, the medical profession, and other industries and professions. This movement is backed by enormous sums of money funneled primarily into conservative "think-tanks," public relations, polling and lobbying firms. Tort reforms always hurt patients, consumers and average people. They are also extremely dangerous for the rest of us.

The video at the top of this post is part of an effort to tell the stories of the real people whose lives are devastated by medical malpractice and "tort reform". Learn more at 98,000Reasons.org.

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Disclosure: I'm proud to be working with the American Association for Justice to protect patients' rights.

"Tort Reform" has long been a bugaboo of the right wing. A hugely successful one. More than 46 states have enacted some form of it -- every one seriously diminishing our legal rights to seek redress in a civil court. Now it's being thrown into the mix of the health care debate.

As a Texan, I fought the 2003 state constitutional amendment that gutted patients' rights. Now it's utterly evident that Texas "Tort Reform" did nothing to cut medical costs.

AAJ President Anthony Tarricone blogged yesterday on the Seminal:

As part of a "grand bargain" to create a bipartisan health care bill, some have said tort reform should be included. For most people, the term "tort reform" is empty and meaningless. But here's what it means: taking away the legal rights of patients, injured through no fault of their own, and preventing them from obtaining legal recourse. And it isn't fact-driven or grounded in reality; rather, it's just part of the Washington sideshow to distract from what really plagues our country's health care system.

Look at what the actual data says: 98,000 people dead every year from preventable medical errors, at a cost of $29 billion. Countless more are seriously injured with astronomical costs. The Congressional Budget Office and Government Accountability Office have looked at tort reform multiple times, and said it will save practically no money. They also found no evidence of so-called "defensive medicine," finding that doctors run more tests because of the fee-for-service structure, or because of the benefits extra tests have on patient care.

Additionally, a 2006 study from Harvard found that 97% of cases were meritorious, totally debunking the idea that frivolous lawsuits plague our courts. And while 46 states have enacted some kind of tort reform, health care costs have continued to skyrocket, while injured patients often can't seek justice.

The AAJ has launched a new web site: 98,000 Reasons which punches enough holes in the case for trading away patients' rights as part of the health care reform that anyone can see through the B.S.  

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In thinking about a recent Op-Ed that I posted on my legal blog, I realized that many Americans don't really understand the facts regarding the civil justice system.  Here's a few:

• Medical errors are the THIRD leading cause of death in the United States. (Source: The JOURNAL of the AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (JAMA) Vol 284, No 4).

• Malpractice claims make up less than 1% of the health care costs in America.  So, even if you completely eliminated all malpractice claims, 99% of the costs would still be present. (Source: Congressional Budget Office, Limiting Tort Liability for Medical Malpractice 1, 6).
  

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