Tort Reform: How Bob Perry Bought Texas for Karl Rove

Remember that Bob Perry is the financial backer of the swiftboat smearers. See the original article URL for the verification links. ---BBB

"Tort Reform":Truth to the Lies, Part 1: How Bob Perry Bought Texas for Karl Rove
by mikepridmore
Mon Sep 6th, 2004 at 16:08:50 GMT
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/6/12850/70319

George Bush and Dick Cheney and the US Chamber of Commerce, among other Republican operatives, have all engaged in some version of the "Trial lawyers are bad because they bring frivolous lawsuits that hurt businesses" schtick. President Bush resorted to this shameless canard in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

As I have traveled our country, I have met too many good doctors, especially OB-GYNS, who are being forced out of practice because of the high cost of lawsuits. To make health care more affordable and accessible, we must pass medical liability reform now. And in all we do to improve health care in America, we will make sure that health decisions are made by doctors and patients, not by bureaucrats in Washington, DC.

Not only are these "We need tort reform to protect businesses" lies demonstrably false, but they are part of a master plan that Karl Rove thought up and Republicans used to gain control of Texas. The "demonstrably false" part, particularly with respect to health care, will be addressed in mind-numbing detail in a separate entry in this "Tort Reform": Truth to the Lies series. This current entry will mostly show how Karl Rove and Republicans used this issue to gain control of Texas.

Diaries:
mikepridmore's diary:

James Moore laid out some of the details in a recent Salon article. In the late 1980s, Rove began collaborating with Bob Perry. Their goal was to fund various Republican candidates and provide a fake issue to be used in political campaigns. Using these tactics, they little by little patiently expanded Republican power in Texas. I have added the internal links but the the text is from Moore's Salon article.

Perry worked with Rove early in the consultant's political ascension. The Houston homebuilder, who has developed into the biggest giver to Republican causes and candidates in Texas, was the finance chairman of the 1986 Texas gubernatorial campaign of Bill Clements. Rove managed that race for Clements and Perry was an important fundraiser, helping Rove generate the donor lists he used to rebuild the Texas Republican Party, and, ultimately, finance the climb of his prize client, George W. Bush.

Rove had already convinced Perry to begin raising money to elect state judges -- funds used to help launch the Texas Civil Justice League. The Civil Justice League was Rove's initial surrogate organization and carried the message that trial lawyers were bad people who were screwing up the business climate with frivolous lawsuits. The chorus singing about the evils of lawyers in Texas was later joined by Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse (an organization that Rove helped grow and with which he maintains close contact today), and yet another front group called Texans for Lawsuit Reform. As they chanted their messages across the state about the horrors of litigation, Rove's political clients were able to publicly acknowledge the concerns of these groups. Thus an entirely artificial movement, conceived and funded by Rove, was used to change the state's judicial system and, of course, became an essential step in Rove's master plan to elect Bush governor and then president.

As a side note and a hint of what future entries in this series will address, take a look at how Rove's plan was expanded upon nationally:

Jul 26, 2000

"Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse" Groups Linked to National Network Funded by Major Tobacco and Corporate Money

**The CALA blueprint was honed in South Texas in the early 1990s. Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who raised more than $4 million in his gubernatorial races from Texas "tort reform" groups, has been one of the Texas CALA's most prominent champions.

**A principal focus of CALA groups since the mid-1990s has been to ensure the election of pro-industry state judges and the defeat of judges who typically support plaintiffs' verdicts or have voted to strike down state tort law restrictions as unconstitutional.

When Rove went to Washington, Tom DeLay picked up where he left off in Texas and collaborates with Bob Perry to help build upon the "tort reform" foundation laid by Rove.

He (Perry) has given almost $1 million to the Texas Republican Party. He has donated at least $200,000 to Texans for Lawsuit Reform, one of the most successful ''tort reform" organizations in the nation.

In the 2002 election cycle, he also provided about $700,000 for the GOP's effort to dominate Texas politics. That included $165,000 given to Texans for a Republican Majority, an offshoot of US House majority leader Tom DeLay's Americans for a Republican Majority, formed to help conservatives get elected.

The election that year of a slate of DeLay-backed Republicans -- all supported by Perry -- gave the GOP control of the state House for the first time in 130 years. That paved the way for passage of a host of conservative measures, such as abortion restrictions and limits on medical malpractice cases. The GOP also redrew congressional maps for Texas, a move designed to shore up Republican control of Congress.

As seen in this May 2003 article by Molly Ivins, the Texas work of Rove and DeLay gave control of the state legislature to the Republican party, which proceeded to dismantle the rights of consumers under the guise of "tort reform." The new owners of the legislature, including Bob Perry, watched approvingly.

The ugliest fight of the session, which naturally had nothing to do with the $10 billion deficit, was over tort deform, yet again. As you recall, the state has already been through two major rounds of tort deform, and each time we are promised that if we will just give up even more of the right to sue doctors and corporations that have done us terrible damage, insurance rates will fall, "frivolous" lawsuits will disappear, our teeth will be whiter, our breath fresher, and there will be sunshine and joy in Mudville. Every time, they promise us the world, and every time it doesn't work -- because we never regulate the insurance companies. So they come back and do it again.

Since Texans for Lawsuit Reform, the tort-deform business lobby, paid for the election of the new Republican majority in the House, it naturally expected value-for-money -- and got it. The debate in the House went on for days, as nasty, uncivil and intolerant a display as I've seen since Gus Mutscher was speaker. Speaker Tom Craddick didn't just ignore open debate and fair play, he made a mockery of them. The D's, led by Jim Dunnam of Waco and others, tried again and again to amend the hideous bill. They deserve credit for a valiant and impressive stand -- they fell fighting to the last man, in the great tradition of Texas liberalism.

During the days of debate in the House, three of the top donors to Texans for Lawsuit Reform sat in the House gallery along with the speaker's wife. This section of the gallery was christened "The Owners' Box" by Democrats, and that's just what it was.