Make Money the Old Fashioned Way—Sue for It
The 4th of July is a traumatizing time to be in DC; watching people cheer as the government literally blows up their tax dollars can’t count as a holiday, can it?
This year, we got an early taste of the Confiscate-Waste-Repeat cycle when Robert Farr, the challenger in the Connecticut AG race, released an ad on July 3 that criticized sitting AG Richard Blumenthal for his “silly suits.” In the ad, Mr. Farr suggested that Mr. Blumenthal’s lawsuits have cost Connecticut more in litigation fees than they have won the state in settlement receipts.
In response, Blumenthal said “Money is hardly the only criteria as far as fighting for the public interest” but then estimated that his lawsuits brought in 13 times as much as was spent on the suits.
The AG race boils down to this perverse question: How efficiently can the Connecticut Attorney General’s office fleece the average American citizen? And, efficiency aside, the money these two are bickering about goes either to lawyers or to politicians. So even Conn men and women lose out. When the effectiveness of the Attorney General is measured by lawsuits, state legislators and attorneys (General and generally) are the big winners. Citizens, as per usual, lose out.