[Newspoetry] Protecting the People?

[DL Emerick]

Justices
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/21/washington/21device.html?th&emc=th>
Shield Medical Devices From Lawsuits 
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Makers of medical devices like implantable defibrillators are immune from
liability for personal injuries as long as the F.D.A. approved the device
before it was marketed.
 
Somehow, the idea that law is to protect the people has been twisted out of
shape.  The law is distorted by presumptions that government exists only to
protect business from its wrongful acts, of letting harms fall upon the
people, that government can do no wrong, and having done no wrong, can
shield corporations who have equally done no wrong, by imputations of its
own self-righteousness.
 
The time has come for change.  Obama says that daily.  I think he means it,
but we'll have to wait and see.
 
Government exists to protect the people, says McCain, but he doesn't mean
what his words say, when it comes to granting corporations immunities.  His
idea of protection exists only in the realm of nations, of groups that
threaten nations, the same nations whose governments everywhere are allied
with the corporate groups that find the people are simply their private
market of pigeons and saps, to be conned and fooled, harmed and hurt, and
shielded from those tort lawsuits above all.  McCain won't lift a finger or
lend a word to tell corporations that he will protect the people against
their predatory practices and pernicious products.
 
The time has come for a substantive amendment to the Constitutional
understanding of what is private property, the which can not be taken for
public use except upon due compensation to the owner of that property.  An
injury is private and, sadly, becomes the property of the injured, from the
moment that the injury occurs.  If government chooses to shield a wrong-doer
from lawsuits, aiming at just compensation for having been deprived of their
private property, their life and limb and good health and personal privacy,
then government itself assumes the burden of paying those whom it otherwise
robs of their personal property.
 
Call these assumed debts of the government, or whatever you like, but right
now they are all off budget, unfunded obligations and liabilities.  The
government may be bankrupted by its own corruptions, but its corruptions
should not excuse it from the duty of working off its debt to the people,
debts that it cavalierly assumes, with no consequence of the true costs to
the American people.
 
The time has come for justice in America.  It will be a big change, but we
are ready for it.  We can make it happen.  We shall overcome.
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