Veteran Capitol columnist Dan Walters was pretty accurate yesterday in the Sacramento Bee’s Capitol Alert Blog (free registration required and encouraged) when he referred to the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) as, "…a Naderite, Santa Monica-based thorn in the side of California business for the past two decades…"
Apparently the group has decided to change its name to "Consumer Watchdog" — what a farce.
The only thing that this group cares about is creating more and more ways and opportunities to file more and more lawsuits. The FTCR is a vibrant and active front-group for the trial lawyer community.
While they wave a rhetorical banner of trying to "help consumers" — it’s just not true. It hardly helps consumers to see all of the costs associated with virtually every aspect of their lives driven higher and higher with the tremendous costs associated with the litigious society that the trial lawyers foster. But, who can blame the trial lawyers — it’s their livelihood, right? Well, I can, and do!
Literally every time an effort is made at common sense reforms to reduce litigation and end frivolous lawsuits — who is it that steps up to the plate on behalf of the trial lawyers, waving the most egregious example of someone allegedly wronged in order to justify shared pain for every American? You guessed it — FTCR.
This organization receives the bulk of its funding from — you guessed it again — trial lawyers. (They don’t like to talk about that much.) Oh, and they get help from liberal politicians, too.
The group was founded by left-winger Harvey Rosenfeld, whom Walters correctly labeled as a Ralph Nader protégé.
As for Rosenfeld’s "bond" with the litigation-obsessive California Trial Lawyers Association…I couldn’t say it any better than veteran California political analyst Joe Mathews, who stated in his new blog last Friday, "Rosenfeld is close to the trial lawyers."
In case you need some direct and overt praise of the FTCR from a trial lawyer mucky muck, Sharon Arkin, Editor of the "Consumer Attorneys of California" Magazine, heaps praise on the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights in her Editor’s Message in the attached issue of the magazine (see the attached .pdf below — look on page three of the file).
Speaking of name changing, a number of years back, suffering from being "outed" as the architects of our litigious society, the California Trial Lawyers Association changes their name to the "Consumer Attorneys of California" – has a nice ring, eh? (How appropriate that a group of stinkers would have as an acronym "CA CA" – LOL.)
In short, the California Trial Lawyers of Association, and all of their tentacle groups (such as FTCR) can change their names all of they want and it won’t change reality — which is that if you feel like a major contributor to the high cost of… everything… in our state and nation (healthcare, insurance, you name it) is due to our out-of-control litigious system where the lawyers are making all of the money — then you need to put "Consumer Watchdog" on your enemies list — they are a dog all right, a dog with fleas!
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