Ashcroft and Bush make their move.

April 25, 2001 8:29 PM

Ashcroft and Bush make their move. "Justice Department lawyers have warned that they may soon be forced to abandon the federal government's landmark lawsuit against the tobacco industry because the Bush administration has not proposed enough funding to keep the litigation alive, according to a confidential memo reviewed by The Washington Post."
posted by owillis (20 comments total)

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ps.
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posted by moe768 at 8:36 PM on April 25, 2001

Wow, I've never seen as blatant a post as that one, moe768 -- subtlety probably isn't your strongest suit, you may want to work on that.
posted by delfuego at 8:53 PM on April 25, 2001

I keep waiting to hear that the government is going to back off Microsoft.

Moe768, go read some Metatalk.
posted by thirteen at 8:54 PM on April 25, 2001

evil. pure evil.
posted by shagoth at 8:56 PM on April 25, 2001

Thanks a lot Nader voters...
posted by Bag Man at 9:22 PM on April 25, 2001

Excellent news! This was nothing more than a politically-motivated attempt at government extortion combined with a handout to trial lawyers. It deserves to be shut down.
posted by aaron at 9:30 PM on April 25, 2001

Hey, don't blame the Nader voters. Blame the Supreme Court.

I didn't vote for Nader, either, yet even *I* get pissed when people tried to blame him. Hey, it wasn't *his* fault that Al Gore couldn't defeat Bush, despite winning the popular vote. If Gore's dad had been a former president, he'd have fared better.

Moving on...
posted by lannie628 at 9:47 PM on April 25, 2001

Yeah! Those tobacco companies were just some honest businessmen trying to make a buck in this harsh world of ours.

BS.
posted by owillis at 10:13 PM on April 25, 2001

So what's next for the DOJ, suing fast food restaurants for the cost of treating heart attacks?
posted by gyc at 11:56 PM on April 25, 2001

My problem isn't with the idiots that smoked themselves to disease (my mom was one of them). My problem is this:

"U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler last year threw out portions of the lawsuit that covered health care payments, arguing that the government should have acted sooner if it wanted to recoup those costs. But she said the government could pursue claims under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act that the companies "have made countless false and deceptive statements" about the addictive properties and health effects of their products."
posted by owillis at 12:15 AM on April 26, 2001

Thanks a lot Nader voters...

Whadya talkin about? Nader would have done so much more than Gore. Tackling the issues dear to the pocketbooks of the Dems and the Reeps. What if I, as a Nader voter, wanted to see more done in regards to corporate responsibility? Who else would I have voted for? Who else's stump consisted primarily of citizens rights before big business?
posted by crasspastor at 12:36 AM on April 26, 2001

NY Times obituary (free registration required):

"LOS ANGELES, April 25 (AP) Thomas E. Workman Jr., a lawyer who successfully defended the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company in the first civil trial over the death of a cigarette smoker, died on April 18 in South Pasadena. He was 73.

The cause was emphysema, The Los Angeles Times said."

I bet Workman is right now in a place full of cigarettes. And no matches.

Meanwhile (again from the Times yesterday):

"Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, the two biggest U.S. tobacco companies, are boosting wholesale cigarette prices by 14 cents a pack for the second time in just over four months."

If the suit is going to be dropped, I suppose they can use all of that extra money for the celebration, maybe a ticker-tape parade for their lawyers.
posted by pracowity at 2:35 AM on April 26, 2001

It has become by now tiresome to be for or against Nader and what might or might not have taken place had he won or not entered the race. My problem with The Jolly Green Giant is that he never told us specifically what he planned to do to put to kennel the corporations he so often railed against. And how he would get congress to go along with his ideas.
posted by Postroad at 4:32 AM on April 26, 2001

He told us he'd never be beholden to corporate influence in place of the will of the people. He ran his campaign the same way. Whether or not he'd have gotten anywhere with congress is another story.
posted by crasspastor at 5:18 AM on April 26, 2001

Mr. Butts is a long time friend of the Bush family. You could expect they would sympathize with the pitiful plight of their dear LOYAL friend. And we all know that loyalty is much more important than say, honor and integrity. Loyalty translates into money and power while real honor and integrity opens one to assault from those who have power and money. It is a great hypocrisy in our country that such merchants of death wield enormous influence inside the halls of government while comparatively much less harmful addictions cause our prisons to be full.
posted by nofundy at 6:02 AM on April 26, 2001

Nader? How the hell did we get back on that deathless topic? I'm beginning to think that when I die, whatever the situation, just before I draw my last breath, when I'm lying there, helpless and gasping and trying to make peace with my soul, right then in my very last moment on earth, someone is going to lean in and whisper in my ear at the very last possible moment, "Nader." And I won't be able to scream.

Here's a smoker piping up: fuck these lawsuits. If America wants to get into a serious snit about smoking, fucking make it illegal already. At the very least, we wouldn't have to suffer through any more sanctimonious commercials by those little bastards at thetruth.com.
posted by Skot at 10:58 AM on April 26, 2001

Skot: I agree.
posted by jpoulos at 1:12 PM on April 26, 2001

Please, thetruth.com makes me want to smoke.

And, if anyone ever believed that lighting something on fire and sucking the smoke into their lungs WASN'T dangerous, then they deserve what they get. I'm glad these idiotic extortion lawsuits are over.
posted by ljromanoff at 5:43 PM on May 1, 2001

I could be mistaken, but I believe the majority of these lawsuits are from people who started smoking at a time when they were told by the cigarette companies that there was no harmful side effects from smoking, even though the companies knew this wasn't true.
They aren't "idiotic extortion lawsuits," unless you think that a company should be allowed to lie to consumers about the effects of its product.
posted by Doug at 7:07 PM on May 1, 2001

I could be mistaken, but I believe the majority of these lawsuits are from people who started smoking at a time when they were told by the cigarette companies that there was no harmful side effects from smoking, even though the companies knew this wasn't true.
They aren't "idiotic extortion lawsuits," unless you think that a company should be allowed to lie to consumers about the effects of its product.

Yeah, and the meat industry has ads on all the time about how great beef and pork are - that doesn't mean I'm buying it.

Smokers destroyed their own lungs and need to take responsibility for their own lives.
posted by ljromanoff at 6:16 PM on May 2, 2001