Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

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Obama transition on health care costs

Coyote also points to this page, which magically promises simultaneously to reduce health premiums while requiring insurers to cover pre-existing conditions and doing lots of other generous stuff. Total discussion of medical liability issues consists of the following bullet point:

Prevent insurers from overcharging doctors for their malpractice insurance and invest in proven strategies to reduce preventable medical errors.

Yes, because suppressing current malpractice insurance rates by adopting artificially rosy premises as to future payouts worked out so well when tried in New York. Update Monday: transition yanks entire “Agenda”, this section and others.

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“Community service”? Yep, mandatory (Update: they’ve revised)

Well, that didn’t take long. Coyote spots language on the Obama transition site that seems to make explicit what was left studiously vague during the campaign:

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.

Update 12:15 a.m. Saturday: After my post was linked by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit (thanks!) and began drawing thousands of visitors, the Obama website administrators at change.gov silently replaced the “require” language with something new and different:

Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by setting a goal that all middle school and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year and by developing a plan so that all college students who conduct 100 hours of community service receive a universal and fully refundable tax credit ensuring that the first $4,000 of their college education is completely free.

Robert Bidinotto noted the switch and Mike LaSalle saved the original page as a PDF for those who didn’t see it the first time. Glenn Reynolds did a second post taking note of the substitution and quoting the witty comment of reader Nancy Anne Potts: “Looks like the change.gov site is true to its title – it changes!” More: Acre of Independence. Update Monday: transition yanks entire “Agenda” from web, this section and others.

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Asphyxiating Detroit, the UAW way

Under a regulation known as the “two-fleet rule”, automakers must meet CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards separately for their domestically produced and for their imported vehicles, rather than just hitting the same overall number through an average of both. The economics of production and transport tend to favor the domestic production of large cars and the importation of small economy cars. “For 30 years, to make and sell the large vehicles that earn their profits, the Detroit Three have been effectively required to build small cars in high-wage, UAW factories, though it means losing money on every car,” writes the WSJ’s Holman Jenkins, Jr. It’s “nonsensical” and “a naked handout to the UAW at the expense of the companies and their customers.” (“Yes, Detroit Can Be Fixed”, Nov. 5).

P.S. Of course the actual legislative responses we’re in for will probably be very different. Mickey Kaus: “So the UAW wants a $25 billion bailout and an end to the secret ballot … Because Wagner Act unionism clearly worked out so well for Detroit.”

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Microblog 2008-11-06

  • Expects to have to fight Obama on policy, wept anyway when he came to podium for victory speech [Jonathan Blanks] #
  • Every self-respecting insider-trading ring should include an exotic dancer and a Croatian underwear seamstress [Bainbridge] #
  • New panel discussion: why are schools so bureaucratized and what can we do about it? [NewTalk] # @sekimori “Bureaucracy is to protect the system from litigation.” Not cynical to think this is one big part of the problem. #
  • @bschuelke: “Why is it so difficult to get clients’ medical records? Should be easy but is often the hardest part of the case.” #
  • Primer on role of Delaware in corporate law [NY Times] #
  • Ways to find good, underrated people [Ben Casnocha h/t Tyler Cowen] #
  • Cluelessness alert: U.K. cabinet minister criticizes blogs for not “allowing new voices” [Massie] #
  • Dems swept races for judge in Houston — unless their names were too unusual [Houston Chronicle] #

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“‘Bong Hits 4 Jesus’ student nets $45,000”

“The Juneau-Douglas (Alaska) School District and former student Joseph Frederick have reached a settlement in the ‘Bong Hits 4 Jesus’ case …. The school district will pay Frederick $45,000, [and] it is ‘required to hire a neutral constitutional law expert to chair a forum on student speech’ at its high school at a cost of up to $5,000.” (DRJ @ Patterico, Nov. 6; earlier).

P.S. And, yes, to clarify in response to commenter Melvin, the student lost his high-profile case last year before the U.S. Supreme Court. Imagine what the school would have had to pay if he’d won.

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Don’t you mention that tax

The state of Kentucky enacted a new sales tax on the services of telecommunications companies. It also forbade the companies from breaking the tax out as a line item on customer’s bills — that might get people mad at the legislators, after all. The Sixth Circuit, Sutton, J., ruled that under the intermediate level of First Amendment scrutiny applied to limitations on commercial speech, the “no-stating-the-tax” provision was unconstitutional. (BellSouth v. Farris, Sept. 9).

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