March, 2006

The President’s Thoughts

Corporate America is trying to sell a ridiculous story to "fix" a "problem" that does not exist, i.e. that "lawsuit abuse" has driven 200,000 manufacturing jobs out of the state of Illinois. The truth is that the rising trade deficit is the major factor in the loss of nearly 3 million U.S. manufacturing jobs since 2000, as U.S. companies move production overseas to lower wage nations. Many economists believe those manufacturing jobs will never come back. And in those foreign countries the corporations can earn even higher profits, since the workers are not entitled to any of the benefits such as health insurance, pensions, etc. that are taken for granted in the United States. Meanwhile, in the U.S., corporations compensate their top executives very richly while they unabashedly break promises to fund pensions and provide health insurance, even to the point of running to bankruptcy court to eliminate those obligations, and to re-emerge from bankruptcy resuming their success in reaping great profits.

Radio ads, paid for by ITLA and the Illinois AFL-CIO, appeared on radio stations from February 15 to February 22 throughout the state, getting out our response to the attempted corporate takeover of our courts. The text and the audio of these ads are available on the ITLA website. I encourage all of you to disseminate them to everyone you know. Thanks to all members, particularly the Board of Managers and Board of Advocates, for creating the fund from which ITLA paid its share of these ads. The other side, able to access its huge profits at will, has a virtual "cash station" at its disposal for funding PR. We do not.

On February 14 and 15 I testified in Springfield in opposition to two bills that are part of the attempted corporate takeover of the court system sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce/Illinois Civil Justice League. I was joined by representatives of Citizen Action, the Center for Justice and Democracy and the Illinois AFL-CIO. Committees in the Senate and House voted on a straight party line vote to reject those bills. If you have not already thanked the committee members who stood up to these powerful special interests, please do so. See page 3 of Vested Interest for their contact information. Please remember that politics matter and all of us must participate in order to continue winning these battles. Don’t assume this is over. The next time you are notified of an impending vote in Springfield and are asked to contact members of the General Assembly, please do so before the vote. Please do not take any vote for granted.

The Bush administration just delivered another blow to the healthcare profession by submitting a budget which would cut over $1 billion dollars in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals. But there is at least one hospital that can apparently survive this. It was recently reported that Northwestern Memorial Hospital achieved the milestone of having $1 billion dollars of assets.

Recently, Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert R. Thomas asked the Illinois General Assembly to allocate less than 1 percent of the entire proposed state operating budget to fund the judicial branch for the current fiscal year. This is a small price to pay for the entire third branch of our government. Please contact your state representative and senator, and any other members of the General Assembly that you have a relationship with, to strongly urge them to support Chief Justice Thomas’s budget request.

Pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request made by a privacy organization, a federal judge recently ordered the Bush administration to turn over documents regarding the domestic eavesdropping program. This is a giant step beyond what any congressional committee has taken to investigate this secret and illegal program. Stay tuned for more developments.

And last but not least, see page 5 of Vested Interest for some enlightening testimony from Donald Udstuen on December 8, 2005, at the George Ryan corruption trial. In light of this testimony, why isn't ISMIE seeking to recover the $4.9 million golden parachute it gave Udstuen in April, 2002?

Keith A. Hebeisen, President
Illinois Trial Lawyers Association