Unconstitutional Michigan Laws: Supreme Court Campaign Funds

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Well, I started off this morning with an interesting commentary on one of my earlier posts about Michigan laws being unconstitutional:

m 99.40.95.130 Submitted on 2009/10/30 at 2:22am Its okay my friend, they only have a little bit of time left playing this unfair game. Soon this so called doctors union will crumble like a sand castle. They will spend a good amount of time in hell.

In my post, I had pointed out that doctors are held to different standards than other professionals and are granted special perks in the courts of law that aren’t guaranteed to any other members of the general public.

Since today is an election day in our area, and galvanized by the comment about Michigan’s laws, I thought I would take a look at the Michigan Supreme Court’s rulings and see if there is any correlation between rulings and campaign contributions.

Guess what I found?  Since 1996, Michigan Supreme Court justices have written opinions in favor of the health care professionals in the year of or directly following hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign funding from health care based groups.  (Good sites to check if you are looking in Michigan are the Michigan Campaign Finance Network and the Michigan Secretary of State; both will help you research campaign finance in Michigan.  A good  national source is www.Followthemoney.org )

Justices Young, Markman, Corrigan, and other republican justices, wrote their own opinions favoring doctors, against injured patients, right after receiving hundreds of thousands of campaign finance dollars from doctors’ groups.  Technically, it appears that the justices who received such large campaign donations should have recused themselves to prevent bias, but instead of declaring their campaign contributions from the medical groups and recusing themselves, these justices wrote judgments against injured patients right after receiving pay-outs from doctors.  Something fishy is going on here.

I started doing research back to 1996.  It appears that this is the point at which some legislation had been introduced to bring the medical field into more accountability.  HIPAA was passed in 1996, and this is also the year that the Republican party began dumping hundreds of thousands into Michigan Supreme Court campaigns.  Ever since 1996, the medical groups have spent more money on Michigan Supreme Court candidates than any other politician.

I have long held that these types of laws and rulings are instituted by the Old White Man’s Club (check out the  Sotomayor’s article about her version of the Old White Man’s Club), but in Michigan, with the unemployment for minorities set to hit 25%, and a pay-to-access-the-courts system set up by Supreme Court Justices who refused to recuse themselves after receiving big campaign contributions, it looks like it’s a rigged race.  Judging by the comment I received, I am not the only one who has figured this out.  Dont’ you just love a little ire to start off your week on a good note?

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