From: John K.
Pollard Jr. [jkpjkp@alum.mit.edu]
Sent:
To: Gary S.
Gevisser
Subject: Fw: Meet My Neighbor John
Written by B. T. Nicholson a neighbor of John Edwards
Subject: Meet my neighbor
I'd like to introduce you to my neighbor. I'm from
Presidential Candidate John Edwards.
My neighbor John has been in the news
a good deal lately, but it's hard to tell about the man
himself from
the coverage.
Maybe I can help you get to know him better. Even
several years ago, before he was elevated to the national
stage, my
neighbor John
didn't
socialize much with other neighbors. He didn't gather
with other
neighbors
at the Fourth of July and he didn't come out to the
sledding hills to
watch the kids play after a snow. My neighbor John
preferred to jog
through the neighborhood by himself. There's no sidewalk
on
Drive, John's Street in
jogging on the road and didn't slow down enough for his
taste, he'd
flip you the bird.
Even after he became a U.S. Senator, he'd still
come home
to
neighborhood, and
would still flip the occasional bird to passing
cars. He last showed
me his middle finger about four years ago. Since
then, my neighbor John
is
rarely in town.
When he is home, though, we in the neighborhood all know
it. My neighbor John invited reporters from TV, radio,
and print news
organizations to come to his house in January 2003 for
the
announcement
of
his Presidential bid. He didn't want any news vans parked
on his
property
-- in fact, he made sure all the cameras and reporters
waited in the
street at the bottom of his driveway. That way everyone
could get good
footage of him
strolling down the driveway to make his announcement,
young
children in tow.
The news vans drove into the yards of John's
neighbors and park! ed there. I heard two families
ended up
re-sodding their
damaged
yards , and John
never apologized to anyone, much less offered any
compensation. The
family across the street from my neighbor John has
since
put up posts at
their property line to try to keep that sort of thing
from
happening again.
The appearance was good for my neighbor John. Nobody
else
seems to matter
to him. Since then, when my neighbor comes home (as
he
did
July 10, to be
interviewed with John Kerry for "60 Minutes"),
police officers
block off the street. Those of us who live near him
end
up
coming and going
to and from our homes on a circuitous route, on a
bad, unsurfaced road.
traffic,
except
when my neighbor
is in town, because the road has been ripped up for
installation of
new gas and sewer lines. My neighbor's street is a
public,
city-maintained
street, and it is the best way to get to homes just
north of his. If my neighbor is around, though,
apparently none of
the rest of us can use the street at all. It's good for
my neighbor
John. Nobody else seems to matter to him.
My neighbor John
has been a very successful
trial lawyer, but
his practice of law sometimes seems more like
extortion.
A friend of mine
is a doctor in
another doctor, an anesthesiologist, who was named in
a suit filed by
my neighbor John. Apparently a surgeon at a local
hospital had made a
mistake, and
my neighbor John represented the injured
patient. Not
only did my
neighbor John sue the doctor who made
the mistake, but
also sued the
hospital and
a
string of others,
including the anesthesiologist. There was no
problem with the anesthesia -- the anesthesiologist
had done
absolutely
nothing wrong. His attorney said so in a
meeting with my
neighbor John.
John's neighborly response was that he
couldn't care
less if the doctor
had done nothing wrong. That wasn't the
point. The
point was that
clients come to my neighbor John because
of his record
of success and his
reputation for thoroughness. Every
defendant in a
suit he files
pays, regardless of whether they are
actually guilty or
not. My neighbor
John demanded a settlement of $250,000,
and said his
firm was willing
to spend $2 million to get it. The
doctor's
insurance company
promptly paid the $250,000. The rate of
growth in
highest in the
nation. The total cost of health care rises with those
rates. My neighbor
John's slimy extortion is part of the reason.
Forget about right
or wrong, guilt or innocence. My neighbor John did
what
was best for himself. Nobody else seemed to matter. My neighbor John
may be a trial lawyer, but in front of juries he
also claims to be
something of a psychic. You see, my neighbor John
specializes in
cases involving
the
death or serious
injury of children. He claims to receive messages
from dead or brain-damaged children, and the
messages are much
clearer and more specific than those received by the
famous "psychic"
who nearly shares my neighbor's name. When a child has
been killed or
is otherwise unable to speak for him or herself, my
neighbor John
says he has
the ability to "channel" that
child. He tells juries he
feels the child
inside
him, and that he
has messages from that child, which he relays to
jury members. He tells juries about the
car-accident death of his own
son, Wade, and speculates that he may have
received the ability to
"feel"
the souls of dead or injured children
because of the close
relationship
he still feels with his son. It sounds
hokey and more
than a little
creepy, but it seems to play well with
juries, and
results in very
high jury awards.
These awards have
made my neighbor extremely wealthy. He's so
wealthy that he
created a corporation of which he is the only member,
and pays himself most of his earnings as
corporate dividends, not as
salary
or
wages. Medicare
taxes are not levied on dividend income, so my
neighbor has avoided paying $600,000 into the Medicare
system since
1995 by
setting
up this tax
shelter. But he says others aren't paying their fair
share of Medicare taxes. It's good for my neighbor
John, and nobody
else seems to matter. My neighbor made a lot of promises
on his way
to the Senate.
He
promised strong
support for our military, but then voted against body
armor, combat pay,
and better health care for our troops in
partial-birth
abortion, taxes, property rights, and a
host of other
issues. We in
figuratively gave
his constituents the middle finger while
he
ingratiated
himself to
Party leadership.
My neighbor
announced many months ago that he
would not seek
reelection, because he knows he's unpopular in North
this week, when
the Kerry/Edwards ticket was announced, support for
Kerry in
John Edwards. We've been betrayed by him, and we
do not support him.
But as he broke his promises to us, he gained favor
with the
Democratic
Party leadership. Now he's a political
star. I guess
turning his back
on the people he claims to represent has
worked out
well for my
neighbor, John Edwards. Nobody else
seems to matter.
--- Kenneth Hepner
---
khepner@earthlink.net
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