Monday, January 04, 2010
Blowing whistles on the left
A tort lawyer has solicited colleagues of Michael "Hockey Sticks" Mann to blow the whistle on any known "misuse" of federal funds in return for the considerable statutory emoluments available to such people. If such a case were brought it would no doubt reverse the political polarity on the matter of compensated whistle-blowing -- suddenly, the left will deplore paying the blowers and the right will adore it. For my part, I do not like these laws or think they are good for anybody other than cranks and trial lawyers, but if somebody finds shenanigans in this case it will be hard to contain the schadenfreude.
CWCID: Glenn Reynolds.
4 Comments:
By 
, at
Mon Jan 04, 03:53:00 PM:
The law is good for "cranks and trial lawyers," yes. But you repeat yourself.
By 
Brian, at
Mon Jan 04, 10:34:00 PM:
The False Claims Act has recovered $22 billion stolen from the government since 1986:
http://www.taf.org/statistics.htm
And it's been around ever since Lincoln. It's presence as a deterrent is even more important than the money recovered.
I welcome all applications of it against defrauders.
By Brian, at
Mon Jan 04, 10:37:00 PM:
"Its" not "It's". I hate that mistake.
By , at
Tue Jan 05, 09:54:00 AM:
I don't know. The whistle blowers that testified at the HUAC to protect America against the commies in government and Hollywood were hounded even 'til today.
Academics, especially, untenured folks, would fare much, much worse. The chairman of my dissertation committee used to claim that academic political fights were so mean because the stakes were so low.
In the global temperature farce, those who did not lie, certainly abetted and they would make the lives of the whistle blowers unbearable. The money would haveto be very good.
