And you should also read this analysis of the shenanigans going on in Charleston these days:
Legalizing crime in West Virginia
Early in the Legislature's 2015 session, the Republican majority took aim at wages. Bills on prevailing wage, right to work and the wage payment act would all serve to drive the wages of working West Virginia families downward. Those pushing that agenda would say that lowering the wages of working people would somehow make West Virginia more “competitive,” but there is no concealing the fact that the primary effect of these bills would be smaller paychecks. Public hearings and resistance from leaders in the Democratic Party, including an appearance from U.S. Senator Joe Manchin last week, have exposed the harm these bills would do to West Virginians who work.
But as the session continues, a new theme is emerging from the Republican House and Senate: legalizing crime. A host of bills being moved by Senate President Bill Cole and Speaker Tim Armstead identify bad (and formerly illegal) behavior and make that behavior more difficult to police, reduce the punishment for it, or outright legalize it. Every West Virginian, from children riding to school in their parents' car, to workers on our roads or in coal mines, to our elderly in nursing homes, stand to lose if the laws that protect them are weakened or repealed.
Example: the Senate's bill to end implied warranties for automobile sales will get a lot of attention, because of the transparent self-interest demonstrated by a new Senate President who sells cars pushing a bill to give his own company immunity for wronging its customers. As the Charleston Gazette reported this past weekend, the Republican lemon-law bill would take away a remedy for car buyers even if they unwittingly buy a vehicle that isn't safe to drive. A working single mother who buys a car, even if she buys it from Senator Cole, ought to be able to count on it being basically sound and safe enough to drive her children to school. Repealing the law that gives her that right not only legalizes a crime, it encourages a tragedy. [This bill has since passed.]
That's not all. One of the real scandals ongoing in West Virginia is the care our seniors receive in nursing homes. Too many nurses and aides are overworked and underpaid, leading to poor care in nursing homes. The results include bad hygiene, bedsores and even deaths from malnutrition and dehydration. Republican bills respond to this crisis by seeking to help the companies avoid any punishment for preventable deaths. One bill stated that even if a company intentionally neglects a patient and causes their death and even if there is overwhelming proof (“clear and convincing evidence”) that this has occurred, the punishment should be lessened from existing law. Shouldn't we be increasing the penalties, until companies stop neglecting our seniors?
Once again, pressure and amendments from Democrats stopped the Republican bill from totally ending punishment for deliberate neglect of our seniors. But why are Republicans seeking to protect lawbreakers from accountability? Where are the bills to raise standards, to protect working families and to protect seniors? Not one bill so far proposed has a positive effect on accountability for nursing home companies, for the quality of products like cars that we buy or for the safety of our workers.
Of course the most destructive and shocking bills advanced by the Republican majority deal with worker safety. Both the ill-named “Coal Jobs and Safety Act” (it has no provisions that create jobs) and the “deliberate intent” bill are bills designed to legalize crime. The deliberate intent law currently provides that when a company intentionally breaks the rules and a worker or miner is injured or killed, the right to a day in court is preserved. Keep in mind, under current law, negligence or carelessness is not enough – the company has to break the rules on purpose or you can't go to court. A Republican bill sought to totally abolish the right of victims of the worst type of corporate crime – the kind that gets men and women killed on the job.
The so-called coal safety act is even worse. It is a law that takes away safety rules West Virginia established after mining disasters and deaths – the hardest and most costly lessons our state has learned. Note how taking away West Virginia's safety rules works in concert with weakening the deliberate intent law: when the rules no longer exist, companies will say there are no rules for them to “intentionally” violate. Heads they win, tails you lose.
Spinning these bills, Republicans say they are meant to hurt trial lawyers. Not likely. First of all, lawyers rarely go down in the mines and they are almost never killed on the job. These laws don't hurt lawyers, they hurt people – they hurt the victims of all these forms of crime the Republicans are legalizing. If a certain kind of case can no longer proceed in court, those cases simply won't be filed or pursued. The loser is not the lawyer, who moves on to whatever work the law allows him or her to do, but the working family that loses a breadwinner, the senior citizen neglected in the nursing home, or the child hurt in an unsafe vehicle.
West Virginians should be asking why protecting those who intentionally harm our citizens has become such a priority for Republicans. Who is pushing them to take these reckless and radical steps to reduce accountability and punishment for the very worst kind of wrongdoers? Sure the lemon-law will has an easy answer when the Senate President is a used car dealer, but what about the rest of it: who is writing these bills and pushing them to the top of an agenda that was supposed to be about jobs? Who would want to legalize a crime, except someone who planned to commit one?
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