HomeDpot chief "This is about lawyers pushing jobs out of this country,"

[underpants]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-121504econ_lat,0,2175622.story?coll=la-home-headlines

According to the panel's moderator, Commerce Secretary Don Evans, "junk and frivolous" lawsuits account for 2% of the GDP, or about $250 billion a year.

Critics of the president's proposals have argued that the cost of such lawsuits are considerably less than claimed by the administration — and that by definition, the "frivolous" suits rarely make it to court.

Among those who helped Bush and Evans make the case for tort reform was Bob Nardelli, chairman of Home Depot, a big Bush-Cheney campaign fundraiser who blamed excessive litigation for the loss of U.S. jobs offshore.

"This is about lawyers pushing jobs out of this country," he said.

Earlier, Nardelli described lawsuits against big business as a matter of "deep pockets colliding with shallow principles."

[mohinoaklawnillinois]

1. Hey, Mr. Nardelli, what about all those cheap Chinese made

ceiling fans that you sell at Home Depot?

Once again, Repuke hypocrisy in action.

[liberal N proud]

2. How in the hell would this guy know this?

He is in the same boat as wal-mart, pushing the producers to ever lower prices on their products so HD can have the lowest price on the cheapest crap they can find.
Wal-Mart & Home Depot have been the largest contributors to jobs going off shore, companies have had to find third world labor to keep the cost where WM & HD will buy the product.
This guy truly is a repuke in his thinking, divert the blame to some obscure target while achieving another goal of the admin.

I will drive the extra five miles to shop at home town lumber yard, so I can avoid Home Depot.
As for Wal-Mart, I can't avoid them, they are half the family income.

[underpants]

3. No no no that is ACCOUNTANTS taking jobs off shore

He was specifically talking about LAWYERS taking jobs offshore.

:eyes:

[Ironpost]

24. Not wanting to be ugly here,

So I'll apologize first, but how much government subsidies are the other half?

[blondeatlast]

4. Nice how the wingnuts are making shopping so much easier for me.

Pretty soon it's going to be just CostCo and the local bakery (fresh, homemade bagels daily--envy me!)

[bunkerbuster1]

5. Home Despot Chief adds, "I pulled that number out of

my hairy ass, and people believe me, just like they believed our Preznit when he spouted similar garbage during the debates! Goddamn, Americans are gullible, ignorant morons!"

[tanyev]

10. "Oh...did I just say that out loud?"

:+

[no_hypocrisy]

6. No, it's about the "little people" who are innocent consumers of

manufactured products, medical services, etc. or employees trying to survive on inadequate salaries without medical benefits or pensions who are injured as a DIRECT RESULT of the manufacturer, the doctor, the hospital, the lab technician, the sleepy or drunk driver of the truck hauling freight, etc.

The pain and suffering pay for the projected expenses IN THE FUTURE. The disability does not disappear after the jury award.

What * is trying to do is to cap the jury awards for compensation for the medical expenses and attorneys fees. I'm not sure about the expenses of salary lost during disability or workers comp.

By the time a plaintiff finishes a personal injury or strict products liability trial, s/he doesn't "enjoy" a windfall necessarily. The legal team gets a chunk of the award (even the lawyers don't "enjoy" a huge chunk as they have to re-imburse expert witnesses charging $10,000/day, trial preparation, etc.).

If * gets his way with this one, PI cases will drop precipitously as it wouldn't be "affordable" for lawyers to file suit and carry it to its conclusion.

[underpants]

8. BTW- tort reform says nothing about capping med.malpractice premiums

and the inusrance comapnies never claim that they will. That part is conveniently left out of most reports.

http://www.insurance-reform.org/

[BurtWorm]

7. He must be refering to the Republican lawyers in Congress

who are making it easier to get away with exporting jobs without paying a tax penalty.

[leesa]

9. LAWYERS pushing jobs out of the country?? These GOP thieves

have NO SHAME.

[RuleofLaw]

11. Its funny to talk about the GDP

When you turn on the lights in your home, you contribute to the GDP. It's not called the Gross Domestic Product for Nothing. Just because, if we are to believe his numbers, lawsuits make up 2% of the GDP, it does not mean they are a waste. You could call it wealth distribution. You could call it preventive litigation. (If a company is liable for a potential million $ lawsuit, don't you think they would think twice about it?). Imagine how much money is saved by forcing companies to take their liability risk serious?

But once again, the media don't report, they relay with no independent analysis of their own.

[Chovexani]

12. This is why I shop at Lowe's (n/t)

[gratuitous]

13. $250 billion annually, huh?

Two words: Prove it.

{Sits down to wait. Decides to pop in all 16 Lord of the Rings Extended Version DVDs, as this will take a little time . . .}

[cap]

14. let's calculate the economic damage to the economy of

dangerous goods, poor health of workers, impact on consumer's health due to goods being manufactured that should be.

[flygal]

17. LOL - get comfy

[elehhhhna]

15. Here's a list of suits against HD:

Below are all the cases and settlements that match home depot
Boo-frickedy-hoo

The Home Depot Inc. and Lowe's Companies Inc. A $4M settlement for misleading customers about store cred card promotions and interest deferred purchases.

Home Depot. A $5.5 million dollar settlement has been reached in the discrimin..

Home Depot allegedly not paying employees overtime while traveling.

Home Depot Inc. for allegedly selling the potentially toxic CCA-treated wood.

Home Depot is allegedly not paying employees accrued vacation pay.

http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/search.html?keywords=home+depot

[gratuitous]

16. See?

See how much more profitable Home Depot would be if it didn't have to follow those namby-pamby labor laws, and truth-in-advertising laws, and don't-poison-your-customer laws? It's all the lawyers' fault for making Home Depot pay its employees and sell tainted goods! If we just went back to the good old days of caveat emptor, everything would be just as right as rain.

Fucking robber baron corporate greedhead lying weasel scam artist hucksters may they burn in h-e-double hockey sticks.

[tsuki]

18. He's a wannabe. He wannabe a "deep, bulging pocket with shallow

principles."

[barb162]

19. the HD guy is a total fucking idiot since corporate greed is

pushing jobs out

[enki23]

20. as the vast majority of those are suits by corporations...

and usually against other corporations... they're not going to do a fucking thing about the real problem. instead, they will further limit the rights of flesh and blood citizens.

[jmowreader]

21. Nardelli's a curious one

His latest Big Push is something called BEAR--back-end area restructuring. Basically, he wants to automate reorders. We've got the BEAR manual at the store and none of us can completely figure it out. It is that complex. We have, however, figured out that it probably won't work exactly like the book says. District says "do what you have to."

Nardelli came from GE, a manufacturing concern, to Home Depot. The two environs are totally different--at GE you could predict what everyone there would be doing six months out. At Home Depot, I can't predict what I'm going to be doing half an hour out. I think he's just really frustrated that he can't use a pure systems approach to managing this company and is venting by becoming a Bushite. (This is better than becoming a heroin addict, but just barely.)

[underpants]

22. "The all too necessary expense that is human resources"

-from The SpongeBob employee training film but it sounds like it applies here.

[jmowreader]

23. In this case, automation won't cost jobs

We have six people whose whole purpose in life is to walk around the building ordering stuff. (This is out of about 135 people total in the store.) We have definitely got new positions for them--their purpose in life will become "making sure the counts stay accurate." My computer is so fucked in the head it's unreal. We brought a new table saw into our inventory and piled the eight we received right in the middle of the floor. In the last couple of weeks, we've sold three of them. We haven't received any more, but we will soon--tomorrow is payday and we'll probably clear out the inventory over the next couple of days.

This is one of those neat questions that you find in the "how smart are you?" quizzes online: If you received eight saws and sold three, how many do you have left, and how many does the computer say you have left? Obviously I have five left, which explains why the computer says I have fifteen on hand.

I don't think BEAR is gonna do what Nardelli says it will.

The other automation-related bitch I've got is that when they came through the stores and replaced all of the terminals, they didn't go far enough. When I first started working there, Home Depot used HP green-screen dumb terminals for most purposes and 60MHz Pentium-based Windows PCs for our design workstations. Pentium as in "Pentium when it first came out." In the first big IT push we did, we replaced all of the dumb terminals with fast Pentium 4-based PCs...but the design workstations are still 60MHz grandpa Pentiums. The three biggest programs we use are 20/20, which is for designing kitchens; Edgenet (Millwork Quoting System), which is for ordering windows and doors; and CADQuest, which is for designing decks, sheds, garages, pole-frame buildings... Those three monster programs are all on the slowest computers in the whole shop.

[Liberty Belle]

25. There's a boycott of Home Depot effort started.

I sent their PR department a note informing them that I will no longer be publicizing Home Depot in my magazine articles on home improvement and urged a boycott until they stop putting profits above safety--and quit donating money to the GOP. I cc'd the e-mail to Moveon, Democracy for America, and other liberal groups.

Please go to www.homedepot.com and send e-mails to their customer service department (link at contact us) and to their public relations department (link through corporate info section).

[President Jesus]

26. Complete list of Nardelli's political donations

full list: http://www.newsmeat.com/ceo_political_donations/Robert_Nardelli.php

$58,000 Republican
$1,480 Democrat
$36,100 no party affiliation
total: $95,580