When deciding where to start a business, expand operations, or relocate, entrepreneurs prefer states with balanced tort systems that discourage abusive lawsuits. In 2006, job growth was 57% greater in the 10 states with the best tort climates than in the 10 worst states. Business leaders are leery of Michigan because of its sky-high tort costs and skewed courtrooms.
Fear of lawsuits also causes companies to withdraw or withhold beneficial products. Volkswagen planned to sell a 46 m.p.g. three-wheel vehicle. This “green machine” would have cost only $17,000, but VW decided not to market it in the United States because of lawsuit fears.
Total direct tort costs were $255 billion in 2008. Abusive lawsuits cost every American a hidden “tort tax” of about $2,000 a year in higher prices and insurance premiums, fewer jobs and new products, lower wages and benefits for working people, reduced access to health care, and higher taxes to pay for court costs. And the current system is very inefficient at its intended purpose – less than 15 cents of every tort-cost dollar goes to compensate plaintiffs.
Here’s a video about the Tort Liability Index, which tracks which states have the best environment for business based on tort costs.
This is one reason why states like North Dakota have low unemployment while anti-business states like New York have high unemployment. And North Dakota has massive budget surpluses whereas New York is running massive deficits.
A federal judge in Boston has ruled that the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which enshrines in law the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman, is unconstitutional.
Judge Joseph Tauro claimed in a ruling Thursday that DOMA violates the right of homosexual couples to equal protection under the U.S. Constitution.
“This court has determined that it is clearly within the authority of the Commonwealth to recognize same-sex marriages among its residents, and to afford those individuals in same-sex marriages any benefits, rights, and privileges to which they are entitled by virtue of their marital status,” wrote the judge.
“The federal government, by enacting and enforcing DOMA, plainly encroaches upon the firmly entrenched province of the state.”
The DOMA bill was passed by a Republican-controlled House and a Republican-controlled Senate. Republicans believe in traditional marriage.
And some reactions to the recent ruling:
[Democrat] Attorney General [Martha] Coakley, who made headlines earlier this year as the U.S. Senate candidate unexpectedly edged out by Republican Scott Brown, applauded the ruling Thursday. She called the decision “an important step toward achieving equality for all married couples in Massachusetts.” Massachusetts was the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex “marriage.”
[…]Posting on Twitter, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the ruling “great news!”
[…]…DOMA is likely to face a tough battle in the Supreme Court, especially in light of the nomination of Elena Kagan. Should Kagan be confirmed to the highest court in the land, she would bring another certain vote in favor of striking down the law, as she has already come out strongly in favor of the homosexualist agenda.
In addition, pro-family leaders have pointed to a controversial brief authored under Kagan as U.S. Secretary General, in which the legal defense for the law was gutted by rejecting the ideological basis for maintaining marriage as between a man and a woman. Instead, the brief acknowledged that the Obama administration considers DOMA “discriminatory, and supports its repeal,” before arguing that the plaintiff in the case lacked standing.
Interesting. So this is what Democrats think about traditional marriage. They don’t believe in the right of children to have a stable relationship with the man and the woman who brought them into being. They’re committed to the breakdown of traditional marriage and family. And they don’t care about what is best for children. They care about votes from powerful special interest groups.
Complacency and “general hopelessness” have been blamed for the failure of young British men as research reveals that underperformance in school and university is now creeping into their working lives. A report published today by the Higher Education Policy Institute thinktank says male graduates are far more likely to be unemployed than their female counterparts.
Figures show that the economic downturn caused an increase in graduate unemployment from 11.1% at the end of 2008 to 14% by the end of last year. But when the figures are broken down by sex a stark picture emerges of 17.2% of young male graduates failing to find jobs compared to 11.2% of women.
[…]Bahram Bekhradnia, the HEPI’s director, spoke of the “general hopelessness of young men”. “The increase in unemployment that occurred between 2008 and 2009 is striking. For those graduates who have not found work it is a personal tragedy – a really bad start to their working lives,” he said.
He pointed to forecasts that suggest women will dominate the professions within 15 years. “That has all sorts of implications for things such as family creation, child-rearing and so on. The situation in some countries is even more extreme. An American woman told a conference I attended of the fury of black American women who found it impossible to form relationships with men of the same race with similar educational attainment because black American males weren’t going to university.
[…]Around half of the difference can be put down to subject choice, but the rest is unaccounted for and could indicate discriminatory forces.
[…]…the underachievement of men in school, university and adulthood is now an international phenomenon and it is one that is being increasingly studied in psychology.
Why are men struggling to find jobs? Well they are not doing very well in school.
In 2006, the high school dropout rate, which was 1.5 points higher for girls in 1970, was 2 points, or almost 20% higher, for boys (10.3% vs. 8.3%).
A 2007 study led by James Heckman of the University of Chicago asserted that “the pattern of the decline of high school graduation rates by gender helps to explain the recent increase in male-female college attendance gaps.”
The gender gap in college attendance for at least the past several years has returned. In late April, Uncle Sam’s Department of Labor told us that after three years of almost equal gender enrollment by high school graduates (2006, 2007, 2008), 202,000 more women than men from the class of 2009 went on to college. Women make up almost 55% of the current year’s freshman class.
The problem is that there are almost no male teachers and also that boys don’t learn well in co-ed classrooms – they get distracted by girls. The curriculum is not suitable for boys, who learn better with different materials that focus more on things that boys like, like wars, guns and adventures. Boys learn better with male teachers and all-male classrooms because they need male role models in order to succeed.
The organization MenTeach, a Minnesota organization dedicated to increasing the number of males working with young children, posted a survey on its Web site showing that males constitute less than 20 percent of America’s 2.9 million elementary and middle school teachers. The 2008 survey, based on source data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed even more drastic differences among different grade levels:
44 percent of America’s 1.2 million secondary school teachers.
18.8 percent of America’s 2.9 million elementary and middle school teachers.
2.4 percent of America’s 685,000 pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers.
Most women want men to be strong husbands and fathers, so they’ll need to make sure that men have jobs. In order for men to have jobs, they’ll want to oppose feminists who discriminate against men in the education system.
