Hot Coffee

Watched a documentary last night called "Hot Coffee." Remember the famous McDonald's lawsuit? Yeah, it's about that (and more). You think you know what happened. But watch the documentary--because, well, you don't.

So it's about tort reform -- more accurately, tort deform -- how corporate advertising tilts the political climate to the far Right, against the people's own best interests. In this case, the myth of overzealous lawsuits and exhorbitant jury damages awards is used successfully to remove yet another constitutional protection: the right to a jury's determination of proper compensatory damages when doctors, corporations, and others screw or injure us. In this case, the truth of the McDonald's suit was buried in a blizzard of misinformation, and used to persuade us to undo our own constitutional rights. Seems we'll believe any crap we're told if it makes someone appear to be "getting over" at our expense. Like we believe the McDonald's suit was frivolous--until we learn the truth of it.

That's not all. It's also about court packing, the second way Karl Rove and George W. Bush moved America closer to fascism, intentionally, deliberately, and dishonestly. With the help of that parliament of whores called the US Chamber of Commerce (the largest corporate lobbyist in the USA), corporate America wages war on honest federal judges to replace them with bought boys and girls who'll rule against the people in cases of criminal or even tort suits. This they do by side-stepping limits on direct campaign contributions to judges' re-election campaigns and using both donations aggregated by the "independent" Chamber, and (when that fails) specious criminal investigations of any judges who survive their election shenanigans. See Oliver Diaz for a case in point.

There's more. See "Hot Coffee" on HBO "on demand." It's worth your freedom.