The Wall Street Journal's Alan Murray has forgotten why the class-action bill did not pass Congress this year. He writes:
WSJ.com - Political Capital: In the election's wake, business lobbyists have been salivating over the prospect that legal-reform bills would be the first measures to benefit from a new political climate. First up, they argue, should be a bill to curb class-action lawsuits, which enjoys the support of a majority of senators and nearly passed earlier this year...
The implication is that the bill was filibustered--because that's how bills that enjoy the support of a majority of senators don't pass. It wasn't. Frist and Hatch pulled it so that they could have more time to debate gay marriage, and because they would rather have corporations on the hook for the issue making big contributions to them for another year.
But let's look at how Senator Carper tells the story:
Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: National Journal's CongressDaily: Judiciary - Carper Almost 'Unglued' By Defeat Of Class Action Measure: Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., told business executives today that the Senate's GOP majority was to blame for the collapse of a compromise bill to overhaul the rules for class action lawsuits. He said election-year maneuvering spelled the end of a bill he co-sponsored and was supported by business interests. "You all are too smart to be played like this," Carper said during a legal summit at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Carper said he was "bewildered" that GOP leaders failed to move the bill through the Senate, even though 63 senators pledged their support for the legislation. "Any time you've got that kind of majority ... and you can't bet a bill passed, boy, that's just bizarre," Carper said.
Deliberations on the bill fell apart in July, after Majority Leader Frist tried to bar senators from offering unrelated amendments on all issues except the minimum wage. Frist needed at least 60 votes to block a filibuster by invoking cloture on his procedural motion. But Carper and most other Democratic co-sponsors of the bill joined with their Democratic colleagues and a few Republicans to reject cloture on a 44-43 vote. Republican and Democratic leaders have blamed each other for the bill's demise. GOP leaders argued that Frist had tried to prevent Democratic opponents of the bill from killing it by attaching unrelated, politically motivated amendments. But Democrats said Frist guaranteed the bill's failure by denying them an opportunity to be heard on their priority issues.
Carper said he was stunned by Frist's attempt to limit nongermane amendments and "fill the amendment tree" by allowing an unlimited number of germane riders. "When he did that, I literally ran -- I sprinted from my office in Hart -- to the Capitol, and I said, 'What are you doing?'" Carper recalled. "[Senate Judiciary Chairman] Orrin Hatch was standing right next to him and said, 'Democrats didn't want to do this [bill] anyway.' I almost came unglued. I said, 'I want this bill a lot more than you do, buddy.'"
Carper said a Republican colleague, whom he did not name, later told him privately that some Senate Republicans did not want "guys like [Carper], who worked out this compromise, getting credit for what they'd done." Carper said that senator also told him the expectation that Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., -- a trial lawyer -- would become the Democratic vice presidential nominee factored into the bill's demise. He recalled his colleague telling him, "If this issue is resolved, and if asbestos [legislation] is resolved, frankly it's harder to pan [Edwards] and the Democrats for being in the pockets of class action attorneys." Carper said he will continue pushing for class action bill...
The news pages of the Wall Street Journal are usually excellent. However, its readers do deserve to be reminded just why the class-action bill did not pass this year. Throwing that piece of information down the memory hole does them no good service.
Posted by DeLong at November 16, 2004 11:57 AM | TrackBackHave you noticed, by the way, that the process by which the class-action bill failed was, basically, the politics of a single-party state?
o/~ These shall deal our justice out/Sell, deny, delay. ~/o
...or perhaps that's DeLay.
Posted by: Randolph Fritz at November 16, 2004 12:28 PMNo doubt this "reform" was curtailment of my right to sue. Thank goodness we have class action lawsuits. My father died from asbestos poisoning. Noone was lining up to give him any compensation until the "Evil Lawyers" smelled blood. Yes, I usually expect more of Alan Murray.
Posted by: repoman at November 16, 2004 12:31 PMhttp://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/16/business/worldbusiness/16irishinflation.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Boom Time's Inflation Proves Stubborn in Ireland
By BRIAN LAVERY
DUBLIN - Most people in Ireland realized it a while ago, and the government has finally acknowledged it: along with insufferable traffic jams and longer working hours, the Celtic Tiger boom of the 1990's left Ireland saddled with some of the highest prices in Europe.
Inflation began climbing in 1998 and reached a peak of 7 percent in 2000, as the economy experienced double-digit growth. But now, officials in the Department of Finance proudly point to figures like those published last week, showing that inflation has fallen to a respectable 2.5 percent in the last year.
But a recent report by a government-run research organization, the National Competitiveness Council - in one of its rare statements on a specific economic issue - found that Ireland was practically tied with Finland as the most expensive country in the euro currency zone, and that only Denmark, which does not use the euro, is more expensive.
The change has been across the board, from groceries and clothing to services and utilities, and the price increases have caused a gradual series of social, as well as economic, effects.
Housing prices are still rising quickly - up 14 percent in 2003, according to the Irish mortgage lender Irish Life and Permanent. Those high prices prevent young people from settling down in their own cities or cripple them with huge amounts of debt. By September, the rate of growth in housing prices had moderated slightly. But houses still averaged 252,431 euros ($324,636) nationwide and 330,603 euros ($425,169) in Dublin.
Young couples furnishing new homes fly to Scotland on Ryanair, the low-budget airline, to shop at Ikea, because zoning laws prevent the company from opening its furniture warehouses in Ireland. In a weekly column, The Irish Times compares the prices of everyday goods, like microwave meals and electric toothbrushes, which range from 12.25 to 21.50 euros ($15.54 to $27.27). Travel agents say they book hundreds of Christmas shoppers each weekend on trips to New York.
And consumers can be heard complaining about prices just about everywhere.
"You're spending 60 euros, where you used to spend 50 for the same amount of stuff," said Brian Payne, a 40-year-old bookkeeper carrying two bags of groceries outside a Tesco supermarket in a central Dublin shopping mall. When he bought a television recently, Mr. Payne said, he sought out a discount electronics outlet because regular stores were too expensive, and then bought a generic model. "I used to be able to get the name brand," he said.
And now that a pint of Guinness stout costs $5, and lagers like Heineken or Budweiser cost nearly $6, the Irish go out a lot less, and keg sales have fallen more than 5 percent in the last year, according to the Irish Brewers' Association. From 2000 to last year, the price of a pint rose 20 percent, or 70 cents, and has edged up further since.
Beamish stout, Guinness's bitter rival, increased its sales by 140,000 pints last quarter when it promised to delay a price increase until next year, said Ruth Norton, marketing manager.
The tourism industry, long a mainstay of the Irish economy, saw the warning signs first, because of feedback from international visitors, and the government cabinet minister for tourism has issued several stern warnings to hotels and restaurants that they would eventually price themselves out of the market. In a survey last year, 13 percent of visiting North Americans told the state agency Tourism Ireland that they were dissatisfied with "value for money" on an Irish vacation, up from 4 percent in 2001.
"Consumers are definitely reacting," said Jim Power, chief economist of Friends First Asset Management in Dublin. Growth in retail sales, which was 11 percent in 2001, tapered to around 2 percent this year, he said.
Most analysts said that Ireland's period of runaway inflation was a result of some short-sighted government spending and some inevitable fiscal changes at the introduction of the euro, like rapid exchange rate fluctuations and ceding control of interest rates to the European Central Bank. But the analysts do not see high prices today as a problem.
Inflation is a "natural element" of Ireland's rapid economic growth, said Austin Hughes, an economist at IIB Bank, a mortgage lender with more than $9 billion in assets. "It's a consequence rather than a leading indicator," he said. And given the benefits of Ireland's economic growth in the last decade, "it's probably a cost that we're willing to pay."
Businesses are also feeling the impact: energy costs are up more than 20 percent since 2000, and rents for retailers have almost doubled. But companies in the service sector keep margins high by passing price increases on to customers, said David Croughan, chief economist at the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation, an employers' lobby group.
Anne,
WTF?
Sorry, wrong thread.
Posted by: anne at November 16, 2004 01:36 PMAnne,
Interesting info -- and don't worry about the wrong thread: if you can't post this on Brad's -- an economist's -- blog, where can you?
Posted by: pat at November 16, 2004 02:35 PMWell, Pat is nice :)
Posted by: anne at November 16, 2004 03:56 PMSorry. Should read- ???. Much more polite. I must of come over from Atrios.
Posted by: Zues at November 17, 2004 05:51 AMThe failure of the class action bill reveals that Tom DeLay's GOP is little more than a shakedown operation. They've kept the religious right in a state of perpetual frustration so as to harvest their votes every four years. But, contrary to popular assumption, they've scarcely treated business much better. With the exception of tax cuts and corporate welfare, what substantive changes has the GOP delivered for business? I'm talking torts, privatization, budget cuts.
The question is: at what point will managers realize that they're paying protection? Or are the tax cuts alone sufficient to satisfy the mass of corporate contributors?