Who can I sue?

One day recently while driving home from work in Miami, my mother passed a very peculiar billboard overlooking the highway. It read, simply, “Who can you sue?” The rallying cry of a generation.  We’ve progressed to the point where anything negative that happens to a person is assumed to be someone else’s fault, and that the guilty should be made to pay exorbitant amounts of money for the pain and suffering caused. Lost in much of Obama’s rhetoric is a complete rejection of this sort of thinking. America is responsible for its actions. Our national problems aren’t caused by terrorists, communists, illegal immigrants, minorities, gays, or any influence outside of our control. Even when outside forces act on us, we choose how to respond. America controls its own destiny if it has the will to do so.

There are so many instances in which I see the people around me throw up their arms in frustration and wonder what we can do to change things. Yet no one votes. The 2008 presidential election had an estimated 63% of the electorate come to the polls. That would be the highest number since 1960. In the midterm elections when the President is not on the ballot, that number falls into the 30-40% range easily. In local and state elections, the numbers can be even worse. People constantly complain that politicians are corrupt and don’t care about the people, and yet a United States senator has a 96% re-election rate. These people love to talk about accountability, let’s make them learn about it firsthand. When they screw up, vote for the other guy or write in a candidate, but kick them out of office. Then vote out the next guy too. The only way to shake up a system as stuck in a rut as the American electoral system is to shake it up. It would likely take 4 or 5 election cycles, but they would get the idea that people aren’t going to let them do as they please anymore. If they want to keep their job, they need to work for the interests of their constituents and not themselves or their party.

People complain that American companies outsource jobs, or move their production facilities to the third world where labor is cheaper. Countless jobs have been lost to this phenomenon over the last decade, and yet it continues over the protests of the American public. We ask the government (whom we can’t trust anyway if the public sentiment is to be believed) to step in and save us, and then are surprised when nothing is done. Then we keep buying their products. What happened to the American spirit? In the 60’s and 70’s, Ceasar Chavez organized strikes and boycotts that brought the agriculture industry to its knees, and secured many quality of life improvements for its employees. In the 2000’s, companies fire thousands of employees and set up shop in a different country to save themselves money and we happily give them more. The government can’t legislate our way out of this problem. These companies are concerned only with profit. That’s fine, in a capitalist society, that’s the function they are supposed to serve. However, the consumer has the power as much as they will try to convince you otherwise.  Next time a company closes a factory and moves to Mexico, stop buying from them. Make your friends stop buying from them. This is a country of 300 million people. If even 1% of that catches on to a boycott, all but the biggest companies would feel it.

If CEOs and politicians are the super villains of the “pass the buck” society, then teachers and cops are just under them in the hierarchy of evil. Both are in the unfortunate circumstance of not being able to do anything right in the eyes of the public. The police officer is a simpler case because they are only noticed when they screw up. The phrase “Never a cop when you need one.” snuck into our vernacular as if we think they consciously ignore people in need. People tend to blame cops for crime while they criticize them or being too watchful of “minor” crimes like speeding and marijuana possession. Teachers are thought of in such a negative way that one wonders why anyone takes up the profession any longer. If your child fails a test or a grade level, it’s the teacher’s fault not the child. Teachers are asked to fill so many roles, while having no real authority in the classroom, that it makes their job nearly impossible. So problems with schools aren’t the fault of the kids, parents, administrative officials, or the government, the responsibility falls solely on the teachers.

In my opening anecdote, the billboard posed an interesting query. Who can we sue? Thinking about it, it really doesn’t matter who because only two parties ever win in the end: lawyers and insurance companies. Mostly the latter. Schools, emergency services, doctors, businesses, drug companies, and basically every other public institution you can think of need to keep exorbitant insurances policies just in case someone decides to sue them. If you don’t think all that doesn’t raise the cost of living you’re crazy. In fact, if you really want to lower health care costs, this is where you need to start. For example, my step father is an investigator for the medical examiner’s office in Broward County and had an interesting case recently. A drug addict overdosed on oxycodone and died. Basically, he manipulated the system to get far more of the drug from a prescription than one person should consume in a year. His family wants to sue the makers of the drug because should a powerful pain killer shouldn’t be on the market and it’s the company’s fault their kid died. The sad part is they’ll probably settle out of court because the company won’t want the expense and negative exposure of a trial. Perfect example of the mindset of America today: it’s the drug’s fault I’m addicted to it, whoever made it should pay. It’s the gun’s fault I shot someone. It’s the television’s or the internet’s or video games’ fault that my kids are violent. It’s the school’s fault my kid can’t read. Who can I sue?