Word: tobacco
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Washington, however, was little comfort to Republicans who saw how well the issue was playing on the campaign circuit. Democratic attacks caught them unawares in special elections in California and New Mexico. John Linder, who chairs the House Republican campaign committee, warned G.O.P. candidates that while strangling the tobacco bill wasn't hurting Republicans, giving aid and comfort to the managed-care companies would. So G.O.P. candidates have been taking cover where they can find it. In the House, Norwood counted 90 Republicans among the 232 sponsors of his reform legislation; in the Senate, no less a bulwark...
There are other groups that I would like to see become easy targets--the insurance companies, the NRA, the tobacco industry--but they don't, because they have political leverage. Unfortunately, all teachers do is teach. All they do is show up every day in front of an often intractable group of students and do their best to share knowledge...
...these must be sweet times to be a gun-industry lawyer, right? Well, maybe not. Some legal observers say the tide may be about to turn. The model is tobacco. For 40 years cigarette companies had a perfect record: 813 claims filed against them, no losses, no damages paid. But with popular opinion shifting against smoking and 47 states now suing to recoup their medical costs, Big Tobacco is worried enough about its chances going forward that it's offering hundreds of millions of dollars to settle. The key point for guns, like tobacco, is that negligence law turns...
...access to the private records of the gun industry. In the past, suits like these were usually dismissed in the early stages. But in the New York case, plaintiffs have been able to conduct discovery, the stage when lawyers wade through the other side's documents. With tobacco, the climate changed abruptly when plaintiff lawyers got hold of papers revealing internal cigarette-company marketing strategy. Lawyers in some of the gun cases hope to come across evidence that manufacturers have marketing strategies designed to move guns into cities with tight gun-control laws or into high-crime areas...
...Friday the President was sounding more bareknuckled, denouncing Republican proposals for a stripped-down bill as "a charade." The Senators, he said, "voted not to implement a program that can save a million lives a year. It was a vote against our children and for the tobacco lobby. It's as simple at that." The goal for him now is to inflict the maximum political pain on the Republicans without totally killing any prospect of a deal. But a political campaign for a new bill requires focus, which is something this White House has largely lacked during the second term...