False Claims Gold Rush?

I read in the Wall Street Journal Editorial section Friday an article called "False Claims Gold Rush." First, to explain why I even have this paper, a bastion of right-wing theodicy matched only by Fox "News" Channel - my wife had frequent flyer miles that were to expire and she could convert them to various subscriptions, one of which was the WSJ. She's an auditor and thought that it might be good to get that paper. So now I read the editorial and opinion pages every morning (just about) to see what insanity the right-wing is up to that day. But back to the article.


The first thing that struck me about this article was that isn't it interesting that the GOP "let's privatize what the government does because for-profit entities do it better" people are totally against privatization when the businesses who benefit tend to support Democrats (and thus tend to spend those profits on Democratic politicians). Apparently a profit motive when it comes to doing government work is evil when those who seek the profits support Democrats. As opposed to GOP companies like Halliburton, who do other government work for profit, who are beyond reproach, even after billions of dollars have gone missing.

But of all of the bullshit in the article, this is my favorite part:

"Recoveries" in these suits have also long been defined as treble the amount of money the federal Treasury lost due to fraud. The new bill would change this to treble the amount of the contract. So, if a company made a $10,000 mistake on a $1 million contract, a trial lawyer could get in on a $3 million suit.

Gotta love the rhetorical sleight of hand. These are false claims suits. These are suits against entities that commit fraud against the government. Fraud is a deliberate act. You can't commit fraud "by mistake." And yet the closing of the article has a law that allows private entities to help punish criminal wrongdoing against the government cleverly changed into a law that allows "evil tort lawyers" to get millions of dollars from some minor thousand-dollar innocent mistake. Poor, poor defendants. Whatever will they do?

Gotta love the bullshit shoveled on the pages of the WSJ. What is really sad is that it seems that the WSJ wasn't sufficiently pro-GOP, so Rupert Murdoch is replacing the editor with someone else.

Sometimes I wonder if the alleged brains of the GOP really believe this bullshit or if they just shovel it out for the unwashed masses. The GOP schills I know personally seem to buy into it all hook, line, and sinker. But then they also think a sky god tortured his "human son" as a proxy for everyone else that somehow magically makes us all immortal. So I guess if you'll swallow that level of bullshit, you'll swallow anything. Then again, not every religious person is GOP. Though sadly, not every non-GOP religious person is any better at critical thinking, and even the non-religious, non-GOP can be just as bad, as evidenced by some of the garbage I've read in the left-wing blogsphere. If I had a battle cry, I think it would be, "Be reasonable!"