Free Republic

Some are now suggesting that perhaps arbitration isn’t the success story it appears to be, and they want to take it away. Last fall, for example, the pro-lawsuit special interest group Public Citizen released a paper purporting to show that arbitrations find against the consumer the majority of the time. Unfortunately, Public Citizen tortures the statistics to try to make their case.

A federal appeals court considered Tuesday whether the Bush administration can go ahead with a pilot program that allows a small number of Mexican trucks to travel freely on U.S. highways, despite a new law by Congress against it. Members of the Teamsters Union and their supporters packed a courtroom at 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where an apparently divided three-judge panel heard arguments in the case, which may boil down to the meaning of "establish." Several tractor trailers also were parked outside the courthouse and union members and their supporters carried signs opposing the program, which allows participating...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration can proceed with a plan to open the U.S. border to long haul Mexican trucks as early as next week after an appeals court rejected a bid by labor, consumer and environmental interests to block the initiative. ADVERTISEMENT The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco late on Friday denied an emergency petition sought by the Teamsters union, the Sierra Club and consumer group Public Citizen to halt the start of a one-year pilot program that was approved by Congress after years of legal and political wrangling. The Transportation Department welcomed the decision...

A central plank of congressional ethics reform appeared in danger of collapse yesterday when government watchdog groups balked at disclosing their donors. A provision of the proposed reform would force watchdogs to reveal their donors if they file ethics complaints. But the watchdogs, which have long called for openness in government, voiced strong opposition to openness on their own part. The donor disclosure rule is part of a proposal to create an independent ethics panel to police behavior in the House.   Groups such as Public Citizen, Common Cause and Democracy 21 have made the creation of such an office...

OF COURSE LAWMAKERS OUGHT TO PAY INCOME TAX ON GIFTED TRIPS Everybody knows that for years and years and years, lawmakers have taken their spouses along on their little junkets. The travel, meals and hotel rooms have fair market value that the rest of us little people would find ourselves taxed on. So why should the lawmakers think they're so much different from the rest of us. Who really needs to go to Peru anyway? Just to look at an Incan mountaintop? How could that possibly have anything to do with the official business of running the U.S. Senate? And...

Its sinister maneuvers in the Foley scandal have put George Soros' Shadow Party on a collision course with the FBI. THE SCANDAL over Congressman Mark Foley’s sexual misconduct has generated some unexpected blowback.  It has pitted George Soros’ Shadow Party against the FBI. The Soros-funded group CREW has effectively declared war on America’s top federal law enforcement agency. CREW has called on the Justice Department to investigate the FBI.  In an October 5 statement, it accused the Bureau of having “fabricated and disseminated” falsehoods about CREW, as part of an FBI “cover-up” of the Foley scandal. (1) In the war of...

Lobbyists and the political committees they run have contributed $103 million to members of Congress in the past eight years, according to a report released Monday. In the first study of its kind, Public Citizen, a group founded by consumer-rights activist Ralph Nader, matched the names in the federal lobbyist registration database with campaign contributions to members of Congress. Study authors found that 6 percent of lobbyists account for 83 percent of the contributions in a system that funnels millions of dollars into the hands of lawmakers with the power to grant lucrative government contracts and favorable legislation. "This evidence...

Depending on whom you talk to, the Trans Texas Corridor is a daring futuristic plan, the state's most ambitious ever, or it's a money machine and a destructive land grab. But for now, most of all, it's an enigma. There are no construction contracts for any of the 4,000 miles of car and truck lanes, freight and passenger rail lines and utility lines that are supposed to crisscross Texas by midcentury, just a $3.5 million deal with a private consortium to develop plans for the leg paralleling Interstate 35. And nobody knows just where the routes would go, though any...

According to Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, victim compensation depends directly on how much the companies contribute, and the fact that stock prices of asbestos firms have risen with each step in the legislative process of the bill is a clear indicator that the companies are the winners under the legislation. Seven asbestos firms will collectively benefit from an estimated 73.6 percent reduction in their liabilities – down from $18 billion to $4.7 billion – according to the group. W.R. Grace & Co., for example, would see an estimated 86.9 percent fall in liability from $3.2 billion to $418...

For the past three years, an annual conference called the World Social Forum has been the biggest international gathering of radicals on earth, attended by all the leaders of the world left. Labor unions, Communist parties, non-governmental organizations, anti-globalization activists, anti-American 'peace' groups, multiple heads of state, and the representatives of armed guerilla insurgencies all gather yearly at Porto Alegre, Brazil, to make new connections and plan for the future. While the organizers of the World Social Forum claim the event is a "open meeting place" for those interested in building "a planetary society centered on the human person,"...

SACRAMENTO (AP) - When California adopted a law to protect sacred Indian lands and the nation's toughest restrictions on open-pit metal mining in 2003, the twin actions spelled the end for a gold mine in the Southern California desert. Now the mine owner is seeking $50 million in compensation under the North American Free Trade Agreement. It's one of 42 such claims by corporations and investors so far, according to Ralph Nader's watchdog group Public Citizen. Public Citizen, the Sierra Club, the environmental law firm EarthJustice and two California state lawmakers said Tuesday the NAFTA provision lets foreign corporations undermine...

WASHINGTON - House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's legal expense fund accepted improper contributions from two registered lobbyists in 2001 and this week returned the checks, totaling $3,500, fund trustee Brent Perry said Tuesday. House rules prohibit lobbyists from making contributions to a member's legal defense fund. The Tom DeLay Legal Expense Trust has raised more than $900,000 since its creation in 2000, said Perry, a Houston attorney. The reimbursement was prompted by Public Citizen, a Washington-based watchdog group, which combed through DeLay's fund and identified the improper contributions. Asked why it took the fund so long to return the checks,...

A handful of short paragraphs tacked onto a massive federal spending bill could weaken California's fight to approve or veto the location of liquefied natural gas terminals planned for the state. The rider asserts that federal law passed decades ago gives federal regulators, not state officials, the exclusive legal right over LNG siting decisions. The four-paragraph rider, attached to a report on the lengthy congressional appropriations bill, specifically takes issue with the California Public Utilities Commission. The PUC is locked in litigation with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over the siting authority question. Both sides contend they have exclusive jurisdiction...

The Shadow Party: Part I By David Horowitz and Richard Poe FrontPageMagazine.com | October 6, 2004 Part 1: Origins "My family is more important to me than my party," declared Senator Zell Miller, a Georgia Democrat, as he spoke from the podium of the Republican National Convention on September 1. "There is but one man to whom I am willing to entrust their future and that man's name is George Bush." [1] Many Democrats howled in outrage at Miller's "betrayal" - former President Jimmy Carter in particular. In an angry personal letter to the Georgia senator, Carter accused Miller of...

Taken verbatim from here Surprise Surprise, Ralph Nader's Public Citizen group has dedicated time and energy to attacking President Bush. And they certainly aren't hold back any pretensions about their socialist ideas for running campaigns. "The president is a poster boy for why we need elections to be financed by public money, not private money" Yeah, let’s waste even more of the taxpayer’s money every four years, throw 200 million out the window that we certainly can't use or give back to the populace. Two other notes about this bother me. Not only are they using and building this website...

       MATTHEWS: Tonight’s HARDBALL debate, was Dick Cheney the kind of corporate CEO that President Bush wants to crack down on? How much did Cheney know about the accounting practices at his former company Halliburton? HARDBALL correspondent David Shuster has this report.        (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)       UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: The vice president of the United States, Dick Cheney.        DAVID SHUSTER, MSNBC CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Vice President Dick Cheney used to boast about his time at Halliburton.        RICHARD CHENEY, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I’ve been out of Washington for the...

July 3, 2002 TIME TO GO BEYOND THE "QUESTIONABLE DOCTORS" REPORTS By Nicholas RegushI’d like to salute Public Citizen for its reports on "questionable doctors." The latest issue released yesterday focuses on 1,111 doctors "who have been disciplined by Texas’s state medical board and other agencies for incompetence, misprescribing drugs, sexual misconduct, criminal convictions, ethical lapses and other offences." Public citizen also informs that, "most of the doctors were not required to stop practicing, even temporarily." The good news is that this information is online and anyone who wants to pay $10 can do some checking. It might be...