Austin Car Accident Lawyer

Hot Coffee | Cold Truth

2011-06-28T08:45:00.000-07:00

No matter what your background—Tea Party Republican or Daily Kos Democrat, if you care about the American judicial system, you need to watch this film.

Trailer

Trial Lawyers v.

2011-06-16T12:01:00.001-07:00

I'm not in advertising, but I enjoy communicating a simple message. This time I thought I'd try to brand the good that "trial lawyers" do everyday.

Problem is, trial lawyers, as we call ourselves, get a lot of bad press. Some of it we bring on ourselves. But some (maybe most) of it is an orchestrated attempt by corporate and insurance PR departments to brand trial lawyers as self-interested leaches on American capitalism.

These eight billboard concepts are an attempt to quickly and succinctly show what most trial lawyers, in our heart-of-hearts, are trying to do—fight David-and-Goliath battles against powerful and well-financed organizations on behalf of people.

Hope you enjoy them and pass them along.

Stuff that bugs: Retail clerks who handle phone or drive-thru orders while you’re standing in front of them.

2011-06-01T20:37:00.000-07:00

I’m the one who got up off my couch, got in my car, drove to the store, found a parking spot, walked in, and got in line. Someone else dials a cell phone. Who does the clerk attend to first? Of course, the cell phone guy.

The customer who sacrifices most should get the most attention. It’s common sense.

I was at a McDonalds this morning. The place was a beehive of activity—there were at least six employees attending to all the incessant beeping that goes on in McDonalds. I was the third person in line. There were two more people behind me. There was no employee at the front counter. They were all running around in the back and over at the drive through window. The one employee attempting to fill dine-in orders was running around like he was new and didn’t know an Egg McMuffin from a McDLT.

It was obvious he needed help. But none of the employees made eye contact with any of us standing in line. After about five minutes, I asked if someone could help and someone did.

That bugs.

Vote

2010-11-02T07:58:00.000-07:00

I voted early last week and, admit, there were a few races I had no idea about. I usually leave those blank. But, in case you want to know who I voted for in the local judicial races, here you go:

353rd Judicial District Court of Travis County

Tim Sulak

Austin 3rd Court of Appeals

Kurt Kuhn

Travis County Justice of the Peace-Precinct 3

Susan Steeg

And, if I still lived in Houston, I would make sure to vote for my old mentor Olan Boudreaux, who's running for the 190th Civil District Court. Here's his website.

Now go vote!

Litigation

2010-09-21T08:14:00.001-07:00

Times must be tough for the insurance companies right now. Because they'd rather us sue them than settle cases for reasonable amounts. That means they hire lawyers, pay them to bill by the hour through countless legal motions and discovery, only to pay out more than they would have paid to begin with if they just accepted our reasonable offer in the first place. We don't mind. It's what we do. But it almost makes you feel bad for the poor Allstate guy...

Jon

Orrin and me

2010-08-31T08:26:00.000-07:00

I'm not a huge fan of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. I didn't vote for him when I lived in Utah because he's been in Washington too long and makes really bad CD's of himself singing patriotic and religious songs.

But this morning I'm feeling pretty good about him. CNN reports he thinks what I've been thinking about this whole "Ground Zero Mosque" thing.

"If they decided to build it," Hatch told a Utah TV station, "I'd be the first to stand up for their rights."

Amen.

Hatch and I are Mormons—a group that knows a lot about being on a outskirts of popular religious opinion. Every time our church tries to build a temple somewhere (outside of Utah or the American West, where there's quite a few of us), a mini-ground-zero-mosque-like debate pops up about our right to do so.

Most recently, in Boston, opponents used local zoning laws to attempt to thwart construction of a Mormon temple. Hatch and then Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy co-sponsored a law—the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act—to prevent that sort of thing from happening.

It's happening again. At Ground Zero.

Here's the law: If someone owns a piece of land and wants to build something there, as long as it follows local zoning laws, they can do it. Period. It doesn't matter what public opinion thinks. It's no different from me opposing my neighbor's ugly new garage or a strip mall behind your backyard. If you don't like what they're doing with the property, buy it yourself and do what you want.

If someone has the power to prevent a Islamic mosque from being built, they have the power to prevent a Mormon temple from being built. They have the power to block a Jewish synagogue or a Evangelical Christian mega-church.

It's not the way me and Orrin roll.

News correction of the day

2010-07-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

Classic news correction from my hometown newspaper, the Spokesman Review. Sorry Idaho.

Why Americans die in cars

2010-05-28T12:38:00.000-07:00

Click here for a great New York Times discussion about road traffic deaths. They are preventable if we drive slower, sober, and cell-less.

Please have a fun and safe Memorial Day weekend.

Jon

End of the World as We Know It

2010-04-19T11:10:00.000-07:00

I'm amazed by the otherwise highly educated, wealthy folks who think Barack Obama and the Democrats are ushering in the end of days.

I'm not kidding. The Tea Party protests this weekend only highlighted what is becoming a low-grade right-wing meltdown. I've heard people—well-educated, professional people at the highest levels of society—tell me Obama is the anti-Christ. Not "might be" the anti-Christ—but "is" the anti-Christ. There are harmful threats against lawmakers. I heard a popular Austin radio host this morning say that, if the mid-term Congressional elections don't go his way, the "next step" is armed conflict.

Hold on a second. The Founders designed a perfectly good system for dealing with popular sentiment. Actually the Greeks designed it first. It's called an election.

Here's a quick lesson for Tea Partiers who may have skipped a couple high school civics classes:

Every two years, the entire U.S. House of Representatives is up for reelection. The Founders did this for a reason. They figured, by checking in so often, the House elections would take an instant pulse of national sentiment. If you don't like what's going on, you can kick out the entire House every couple of years. And Reps. don't have much time to do anything other than campaign based on what's popular. It's why they're always out there on the road in town-hall meetings. It's what they have to do to stay popular.

Senators, on the other hand, are elected in staggered, six-year terms. This was also designed so that there would always be at least one group in Washington who had been there before. It was so they would be a little more connected with each other than with their constituents. This is why the Senate is usually the slower, more deliberative body. It's why it takes months for them to do anything. They have the time to think.

The President, of course, sits in the middle, elected every four years. The President combines the House's popular pulse of frequent elections with the Senate veteran's approach to politics.

If right-wingers think Obama is flirting with Armageddon, vote him out. Same goes for Congress and state and local office holders.

This system has worked for almost 225 years—through a Civil War, two World Wars, The Great Depression, myriad business cycle recessions, tax cuts and tax raises, political and personal scandals, and the rest of modern American history. Anyone who thinks we are at an unknown crossroads of national status has not read or does not understand history.

Good Laugh 2

2010-04-09T08:57:00.000-07:00

While we're on the subject of good laughs, The Onion ran this hilarious piece this week that had people wondering why I was laughing so hard at my Torchy's taco as I read it.

Good Laugh

2010-04-08T08:06:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for a good laugh (and don't mind a little irreverence), the South Park kids made a pretty funny episode about Facebook last night. Check it out.

iPad

2010-04-06T08:35:00.000-07:00

Just got back from the Apple store. The iPad is cool. Very cool. No I did not buy one Suzette...yet.

Good Government

2010-03-22T21:22:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, Sunday, I watched C-SPAN from four in the afternoon until midnight. I told my wife not to be mad, because a lot of husbands do that all Sunday long—during the football playoffs.

But not me. I was looking at a live video feed of the U.S. House of Representatives in session. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before. I’ve watched Congress in session from the House gallery before. I worked on the floor of a state House of Representatives as a political science student in college. But I had never seen this.

My parents’ generation got to see this. They got to see Congress do big things. They saw Congress pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They watched Medicare and Medicaid created on the floor of the House just a year later. And their parents watched Social Security take form in the same place in 1935.

But us—my generations of X, or Y, or whatever we called ourselves who were born to the baby boomers, we never saw anything like this before. Maybe that’s why we got so cynical. Maybe that’s why we think Congress is more corrupt that the Sicilian mob. Whatever we thought, that went out the door yesterday.

Yesterday, I watched Congress—our government, elected officials, politicians—do something I had never seen before. It was the first time in my 34 years that I watched government do something for us.

Usually, Congressional resolutions go something like this: AN ACT to provide for the privatization of certain military functions. Or AN ACT to increase foreign investment in renewable coal power plant technology. Or AN ACT to bypass certain trade restrictions on Idaho potatoes. Or, in other words, AN ACT to do nothing but something for some well-heeled self-interested power group.

This was different. I read sections of the House Resolution passed last night, waded through the legal mumbo jumbo and section headers and references to other laws and strike-outs and underlines, and read something that actually does something for no other reason than that it is good.

I read provisions etched in law that go against every notion of Darwinian capitalism—just to protect the vulnerable. I read parts of law that fly in the face of moneyed corporations who have everything to lose and nothing to gain. There are paragraphs that tell health insurers, who have long been acting like the monopoly in a company town, what they can and can’t do—who cares how much money you have.

And I saw politicians—yes, slimy, dirty, rotten politicians—put their careers at stake to do something good. No matter what you think about the 219 House members who voted for the legislation yesterday, you can’t say they lacked fortitude.

And for the first time in my life, I got inspired by government. I felt good about what it did yesterday. It made me think, in all my cynicism, that the government can do what’s right.

I hope we see more of that.

Dear Representative Doggett

2010-03-21T06:32:00.000-07:00

I just sent this letter to my U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who the Statesman reports this morning is one of the last Democratic holdouts in the house on whether he will vote yes or no on health care reform in today's vote.

Dear Rep. Doggett:

Thank you for your service. I am writing to ask you to please vote yes today on health care reform.

One in four Texans don't have health insurance. Health care is one of those things that we all band together as a community to purchase for one another. It's not optional. It's not something we can "shop" for on the open market anymore than we can shop for the best fire department to protect our family. It's a necessity.

I don't care if my taxes go up if it means my fellow Texans have access to health care. Please vote yes today.

Thank you,

Jon

Access to Care

2010-03-19T05:32:00.000-07:00

In case anyone is still sitting on the fence about whether or not the House of Representatives should summon its backbone and adopt the Senate health care bill, Nicholas Kristof has this to say.

He argues good health outcomes (like longer life expectancy rates) are not a matter of getting the best or the most high tech health care. In most cases, most of the time, they are simply a matter of getting health care at all.

Reconcile the Bill

2010-02-24T07:25:00.000-08:00

Remember before the election and Rush Limbaugh was telling us all to watch out for Barack Obama, the ruthless machine pol from Chicago?

Well, watch out.

Chicago Barack is hosting a nationally-televised health care summit tomorrow at the White House. He's invited every influential Republican to come over with their ideas to fix health insurance. He says he's ready to listen.

I always love it when you can pull off a Brazilian jiu-jitsu move that takes all the energy of your opponent and flips it back around on them. I try to do this all the time in court cases. It works great. Just when your opponent is sticking it to you the hardest, you pull back a little and watch him fall flat on his face.

WHITE HOUSE HEALTH CARE SUMMIT

SCENE I

Barack: Step back.

Republicans: Fall on face.

Republicans have been whining for months that they haven't been included in this health care redesign. It's been too closed-door, they said. Too wonky. Too inside-beltway. It's taking over "one-sixth of the economy," they claim, and isn't bipartisan.

Well, come on in and have a seat at the bluff-calling table.

Chicago Barack has done this before—to John McCain, when Mr. McCain "suspended" his campaign to supposedly deal with the economy. President Bush called a big meeting—presumably to let McCain shine as the leader-to-be, while the young community organizer from Chicago sat in the back, trying to poke his ears above the crowd.

At the end of the meeting, Chicago Barack spoke up. In jiu-jitsu style, he asked McCain for his thoughts. Problem was, McCain didn't have any. Obama even chuckled. Even Bush Sec. of Treasury Hank Paulson was blown away by Obama's brashness and McCain's bumbling.

Now we're there again. Republicans are hard charging after winning their 41st Senate seat (the least powerful minority in a generation). Health care is dead, they said.

Chicago Barack is talking about pushing health care through on a so-called reconciliation vote—bypassing Scott Brown's 41st Senate vote.

That's how they reconcile things in Chicago.

The iPad State of the Union

2010-01-28T07:15:00.000-08:00

I'll admit it. I watched Steve Jobs' iPad keynote instead of the State of the Union last night.

After returning home from touring an airplane hanger with my local Boy Scout troop (I did have the State of the Union tuned in on the radio for the boys to listen to on the way home), I ate a little dinner, kissed Suzette on the forehead as she sat on the couch watching "Grey's Anatomy," and headed straight for the office to watch Jobs work his magic as he introduced the new Apple iPad.

Nevermind that I had texted Suzette from the hangar to ask her to please record the State of the Union speech. And nevermind that I was mildly intrigued on the way home hearing President Barack Obama declare his intention to seek significant cuts in the student loan burdens most graduating college students face after school (me included).

But what I was really intrigued about was how Steve Jobs was going to convince me that I must have Apple's most recent invention.

I have mixed feelings about Mr. Jobs. In a fit of rage one day during Apple's fetal stages, Jobs fired my dad (Jon Selden, Apple employee #29) for speaking up about the technical limitations of Jobs' then latest creation, the ill-fated Apple Lisa.

The Lisa, Apple's precursor to the Macintosh, was the first computer to use a newfangled thing called a "mouse" along with a "graphical user interface"—the first modern personal computer. Dad, a Princeton- and Standford-educated computer engineer, was on the original Lisa design team.

Apparently dad attracted Jobs rage by criticizing him for not considering other, non-mouse "pointing devices" like the touch screen. Jobs fired him, and a few other engineers on dad's side, on the spot.

We all heard the story second-hand from mom. Dad (who passed away with brain cancer in 1991) never talked about the episode. But, in a videotaped interview shortly before his death, he called it "the first time I ever failed at anything."

I won't claim vindication for dad, but I imagine he cracked a little smile of self-satisfaction wherever he was yesterday, watching Jobs unveil what he called the "magical and revolutionary," mouse-less, keyboard-less, 100 percent touchscreen iPad.

And don't worry Dad. I'll be standing in line in March to get one.

Winter

2010-01-07T08:19:00.000-08:00

It's 32 degrees in Austin today and water mains are breaking. The Austin American-Statesman front page this morning declared: "Arctic Blast Arrives."

I'm going to Minnesota tomorrow for my Grandpa Walt's funeral. The high is expected to be 5 degrees. The low is -15 degrees. That's negative 15 degrees. Electrons stop revolving around atoms at temperatures much lower than that.

But I love the cold. It's in my blood. My Dad grew up in Minnesota winters and told us stories of playing ice hockey on frozen fields and ponds.

He moved our family to the cold, cold mountains of the Inland Northwest when I was five. He bought a Ford Bronco to drive around in. The kind with the rubber floor coating.

I grew up pushing old cars out of snow banks. I can't smell the gasoline-infused exhaust of an old car and not think about pushing my friend Brian Holdaway's '66 Mustang out of three-foot snow drifts on the way home from school.

Cold and snow and dim grey skies freeze themselves to your soul and never let go.

So I wore my wool sweater and put on my trench coat this morning and tried to get cold—even though I was sweating.

Read the bill

2009-11-20T07:02:00.000-08:00

I just got a "Health Care Reform Alert" from my senator John Cornyn (see picture below of the Hon. Mr. Cornyn and my sweetheart at a Pat Green concert at the Nutty Brown).

In what has become one of the Republicans' primary attacks against the health insurance reform bills, the first sentence of Cornyn's email lambasts the Senate's "2,074-page health care bill."

Who cares how many pages it is? Or how long it takes to read it. What does the number of pages have to do with the purpose of the law?

Sure, some big bills are also horrible laws. President Bush's Patriot Act, which snuffed out centuries-old civil liberties after just a few hours of congressional debate, was 348 pages long. The U.S. tax code is currently 67,204 pages long and counting.

A lot of big books are classics. Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" tips the scale at almost 1,400 pages. Heaven only knows how many pages are in the Bible. And some small texts are equally poignant. The Gettysburg Address is famously only 186 words. Depending on what you think about hunting from helicopters, Sarah Palin's "Going Rouge" is a meaty 413 pages.

In the same way, small page numbers don't necessarily correlate with good laws. The Congressional resolution authorizing the Iraq War was just six pages long, including this goodie: "Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States and...continu[es] to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seek[s] a nuclear weapons capability, and support[s] and harbor[s] terrorist organizations."

The much-reviled "Troubled Asset Relief Program," also known as the Wall Street bailout bill, was comparatively light reading at just 169 pages. The "Cash for Clunkers" bill handing out $4,500 of your hard-earned tax money for P.O.S.'s like 1998 Chevy Blazers: 21 pages.

And what about reading through all these pages? Reading a bill is not like reading "The Catcher in the Rye." A lot of it is made up of endless references to and quotations from previous laws—striking out, amending, and adding new language.

I wonder when the last time Sen. Cornyn curled up by the fireplace with a good copy of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (the goliath legislation largely responsible for our current health insurance system that he's defending). I doubt he has. I know I haven't.

Worth a lot of money

2009-11-19T04:43:00.000-08:00

Last night the Congressional Budget Office leaked its cost numbers for the Senate health insurance reform bill: $849 billion over ten years. Move that decimal point over to the left and that's almost $85 billion a year. Sound like a lot of money? It is. Here's what else costs a lot of money:

Social Security: $612 billion a year

Iraq War: $117 billion a year

NASA annual budget: $19 billion

Interest payments on the national debt: $249 billion a year

All national defense spending: $613 billion a year

Department of Transportation: $68 billion

Microsoft annual revenue: $58 billion

UnitedHealth Group annual revenue: $81 billion

Aetna Inc. annual income: $31 billion

Humana Inc. annual revenue: $29 billion

ExxonMobil annual revenue: $477 billion

Wal-Mart annual revenue: $406 billion

American's annual spending on tobacco products: $89 billion

Americans annual alcohol expenditures: $97 billion

American's annual spending on health care: $2,200 billion ($2.2 trillion)

My point? A lot of big, important things (roads, exploration, defense, secure retirement for senior citizens) cost a lot of money. But, of all the things we choose to pool our tax money together and buy, health care may just be the most important.

We pool our money together to make sure the elderly have some kind of retirement fund (Social Security) and free health care in their golden years (Medicare). We all pitch-in to explore outer space (NASA). Of course, we gladly contribute a hefty sum to make sure we're safe at night (defense). And we all necessarily pay a little each for freeways and air traffic control systems (Dept. of Transportation).

But, so far, the insurance industry has kept us from deciding to pool our money together to buy adequate health care for almost a quarter of our population.

To come clean, I'm perfectly happy with my current health insurance arrangement. I pay a modest co-pay when I go to the doctor's office and my premiums are a little over $2,000 a year. But that's just for me—a (relatively) young and healthy 34 year-old man. But what if you're a woman who just found out she's pregnant? Or a middle-school kid with diabetes? Or you lose your job and can barely make the mortgage payment? Then finding reasonably-priced, adequate health care coverage is impossible.

Does this mean, under a national health care plan, that we're all going to get better care for less money? Maybe not. I imagine there will be less access to care like I've enjoyed in the private system. I might have to wait a few extra minutes in the waiting room. I may have to endure government bureaucratic headaches as I navigate a new national health insurance plan. But so will everyone else—because they will have access to care. And that's worth it.

Let me get this straight

2009-11-10T20:36:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago a great friend of mine, who also happens to be a physician, forwarded me the following email. The subject line was "Let me get this straight."

"Let me get this straight. We're going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose head says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it, signed by a president that also hasn't read it, and who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's nearly broke. What possibly could go wrong?"

To this, I simply reply:

Let me get this straight. Our health care industry is run by MBA's in suits, who pay doctors who are millionaires and hospitals owned by Wall Street shareholders a fraction of their overinflated bills, but no one knows how much they pay for their medical bills because health insurance companies send 'Explanation of Benefits' letters that read like an Enron income statement, but patients can't change health insurance companies because their employers select which insurance company they get, and the same insurance company spends most of its time tying not to pay bills because it's searching for 'pre-existing conditions,' even though it earns more profit every year and charges so much that almost a quarter of the population can't afford it, and, in the end, we all end up paying twice as much just to be half as healthy as the rest of the civilized world? What is wrong?

So far, but yet so close

2009-11-10T19:05:00.000-08:00

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Affordable Health Care for America Act Saturday night. That’s good news. The bad news is that the gray-hairs in the Senate are moving (full glacial speed ahead) toward passing their own version of health care reform—a watered down bill that doesn’t include a government-backed insurance plan or allows states to “opt-out” of one.

Getting the more-conservative Senate Democrats to pass a bill that will dovetail with the House’s is a long-way’s off. But, going back to Theodore Roosevelt, real health insurance coverage for every American has never been so close.

Here’s what we need to do to get there:

Email or call our U.S. Senators to tell them:

We want a strong government insurance plan included in their health care legislation. No other idea will force the health insurance industry to play fair more than this one. That’s why they’re so opposed to it. Right now, the chief executives of Blue Cross Blue Shield, United Health Care, Aetna, and Cigna are scared. They will do almost anything (maybe anything) to stop a government insurance plan from forcing their rates down. They say a so-called public option will force everyone into the arms of the federal government for insurance.

Why? They know they charge too much. They know they won’t be able to raise their insurance premiums every year just to pay fewer medical bills. They know they can’t compete with a government plan that puts patients ahead of Wall Street stockholders.

States should not be able to opt-out of the government insurance plan. Not only does this possibility raise Constitutional equal protection questions, but it prevents health insurance reform from reaching the people who need it most.

It’s no fluke that the most conservative states also have the most uninsured citizens. And these same states will be the most likely to “opt-out” of any real health insurance reform. Texas leads the nation in uninsured people (1 in 4), but is arguably the most conservative state in the country. If I know Tex. Gov. Rick Perry like I think I do, his Royal Hairness will be tripping over himself to jump in front of a microphone to be the first to opt-out.

I can hear him now: “Folks, Texans don’t need the federal government in Washington (cue slow zoom, black-and-white photo of political opponent Kay Bailey Hutchison) telling them what to do. So that’s why I’m setting a match to this stack of new health insurance policies covering every uninsured man, woman, and child in this great state of Texas. GIG ‘EM!”

If the Senate Democrats get this message, they will help make history. If they don’t (and the health insurance lobbyists roaming their chambers get their way), they won't.

A conservative Texan explains why “government-run” health care ain’t so bad

2009-08-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

I don’t know why so many conservative Republicans like me reflexively flinch away from what their pollsters have told them to call “government-run health care.” Their arguments against it have been around at least since the infancy of the Clinton presidency (back when Monica Lewinsky was a college sophomore), and usually go something like this: “We don’t want health care run like the post office” (or the DMV, Social Security office, or any other traditionally inept government agency).

One of the problems with this faulty logic is that it projects that every “government-run” institution is run poorly, and it assumes that all privately-run enterprises are run properly. We all know this isn’t true. But the biggest problem with this argument is that it rejects the power of individuals—something conservatives like me champion.

There are plenty of non-government institutions that function just as inefficiently as the worst government agencies. Want proof? When’s the last time you stood in a long customer service line at Wal-Mart? Tried to deal with the Best Buy warranty department yet? How about sitting on a JetBlue plane on the tarmac for eight hours? Catch my drift?

Secondly, as hard as it is to admit, the government actually runs some pretty darn good operations. For instance:

Texas, where I live, narrowly loses to Utah every four years in an informal competition to see which state turns red first on the presidential electoral college map. But every fall, the state instinctively turns burnt orange (some Texans say they even bleed the color) when the University of Texas football team takes the field. Texans revere the school like the Bible and cold beer. And no one seems to care that the University of Texas is, to quote the Republican pollsters, “government-run.”

We all support the soldiers and sailors in the military. Texans especially—with the highest number of military personnel per capita in the country. No Chevy Suburban here is complete without a yellow ribbon magnet. And no one complains about the “government-run” military.

In Texas, high schools are the epicenters of any communities. Entire towns show up at Friday night football games. Banks shut down for things like prom and homecoming. Teachers and coaches are local celebrities. And no one ever scorns them for being run by the government.

These government-run outfits succeed not because they’re run by the government, but because of the people running them on the ground.

The University of Texas is revered (U.S. News says it’s a top-tier school, with a top-15 law school and top-18 business school) not because Texas government is so great (we all know that’s not so), but because it’s faculty, staff, and coaches are so good.

The military is honored because its soldiers and sailors are brave and fearless, not because the brass in Washington ink the best no-bid contract deals.

And high schools are the pride of every Texas town because teachers and coaches love kids and take pride in what they do—not because school district administrators make crazy curriculum decisions about Bibles and evolution.

Our present health care “system” (if you can call it that) is run by a part-hydra, part-goliath combination of private insurers, for-profit and non-profit hospitals, physician groups, and government agencies. It’s succeeded in producing the current, as they say in the military bases around here, FUBAR situation we find ourselves in. It’s minted phrases only a lawyer could love like “co-pay,” “pre-existing condition,” and “explanation of benefits.” It charges $28 for a Tylenol and $5,000 for a CT scan, but shafts doctors and hospitals out of billions of dollars every year because almost 50 million uninsured Americans can’t pay. Texas has it worse than anywhere. One-in-four of us—5.4 million Texans—don’t have health insurance. Our hospital emergency rooms are packed with uninsured folks who will never pay for the treatment they get.

So there’s no question the “system” needs fixing. Even Houston right-wing nut jobs and Austin environmental wackos can agree on that.

But the current health care debate has been so wrenched away from the people—the individual doctors, surgeons, and nurses—who actually run it that we ignore their individual greatness. Because politicians, insurance executives, and pollsters have turned health care into talk about dollars and numbers, or maybe because we’re getting too cynical, we won’t let ourselves believe that most of our doctors, surgeons, and nurses are whip smart, love what they do, and want to help us. We won’t believe that good doctors and good nurses and good biochemists will keep treating and curing injury and disease even if the government is paying. We insult them by arguing that—if the government steps in to manage their industry—they will be just as inefficient and inept as the 9:05-to-4:55 timecard punchers at the DMV.

This argument diminishes healthcare providers’ power and worth as individuals. As a conservative, I believe that individuals—not government or corporations—are what make this Country great. It’s wrong to say that the same individuals working for government or corporate organizations will perform worse or better than the other. Regardless of whether we have government-run or corporate-run health care, as conservatives we must have faith in the individuals who will actually do the work.

That’s why I’m not so scared of government-run health care.

If you can steal wood, you can work!

2009-04-11T04:51:00.001-07:00

Just finished two hours of shooting photos of me around Austin for our upcoming web site redesign and advertising campaign. Not fun.

I haven't had this much attention paid to me since my friends and I got arrested for stealing scrap wood to build a tree house when I was in high school. Also not fun.

I had a broken arm in a cast at the time and was off work as a boat dealership "lot boy" (affectionately known as "L-B" to the two frequently drunk and always entertaining salesmen at the dealership) because I couldn't climb in and out of the boats I was supposed to be cleaning.

Best quote following that incident, from my mother: "If you can steal wood, you can work!" I went back to work--with the cast on--that day and haven't stopped since.

By the way, the broken arm was from another exploit (skipping church to play football) that led to another great Gloria (my Mom) quote: "I HOPE it's broken!"

New News

2009-03-02T15:45:00.000-08:00

We are pleased to announce a new client newsletter sent today for the first time to all current and former Selden & Company PC clients. We hope this new addition to our practice will further enable us to stay in better contact with our clients and help them feel in-the-loop as we work on their cases.

Kenneth Jindal

2009-02-26T07:22:00.001-08:00

If anyone watched Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's response to President Barack Obama's speech Tuesday night, they probably noticed Jindal was speaking very unlike the Rhodes Scholar he is. His gee-whiz phrasing, combined with an exclamation point at the end of virtually every sentence made for painful listening.

But it sounded oddly familiar. I was thinking about it on the way in to work this morning and it hit me: Jindal must be watching episode-after-episode of the Emmy-winning NBC sitcom "30 Rock" and trying to emulate the show's lovable country bumpkin page, Kenneth.

I'm apparently the 30 millionth person to think of this. From the Chicago Tribune to the Huffington Post, it seems like everyone is as smart as I am.

See for yourself:

Offers and acceptance

2009-02-20T07:35:00.000-08:00

It seems recently that insurance companies—reeling from the effects of their dismal economic performance and poor investments during the housing and credit boom of the early 2000's—are now tightening up and making terribly low settlement offers.

The problem is, this only gets their insureds in trouble. I immediately am forced to file suit and take the insurance companies into court—along with their insureds. The insurance companies have to hire their own lawyers and their own lawyers (who are paid by the hour) make sure to bill the case into extinction until they finally agree to settle (on the day before trial) for the amount I originally demanded. It's a ridiculous business strategy and the same one that landed the insurance companies in the place they're in now.

Here's some free business advice: Treat your customers (your insureds) well and do what they're paying you to do (protect them from lawsuits) by making reasonable settlement offers.

Running

2009-02-18T08:31:00.000-08:00

Went running this morning with a good friend. It was my first run in a week or so and I was sucking wind. But, as always with running, it felt great. There's something good about working to accomplish a goal—whether it's making it to the top of the next hill or settling a big case. Now my goal is to just go running again this week.

Back at work

2009-02-17T08:08:00.000-08:00

Suzette and I just got back from a weekend in San Francisco and the Bay Area. We visited friends and family and saw where I was born and raised in a little house in Sunnyvale.

It is a beautiful place—the Bay Area—and we had a great time.

It's also good to be back at it this morning.

What I'm doing right now

2009-02-12T07:31:00.000-08:00

I just read a David Pogue story in the NYT about Twitter—this web site where you're supposed to tell everyone you know what you are doing right now. I've also seen this in Facebook and probably it's part of Myspace and all that other internet social Web 2.0 gobily-gook. What I don't get is what people care about what I'm doing right now. "Surfing the internet" "looking for hotels in San Francisco" "wasting time" "updating my Twitter status." In fact, why doesn't everyone's twitter status say "updating my twitter status"? Isn't that really what they're doing right now. I don't know, maybe I don't have enough time or think too highly of what I'm doing right now, but it seems like everyone is so busy with what they are doing right now to care about what I'm doing right now. Right now I will to quit typing this blog post about what I'm doing right now. That's what I'm doing right now. Now.

Free legal work

2009-02-10T12:45:00.000-08:00

Right now I'm working on what lawyers call a "pro bono" case. That's Latin for "free legal work." It's part of my job--just like hunting down and suing drunk drivers is part of my job. It's part of my job--just like treating people with no insurance is part of a doctors job. It's just what I have to do. The case I'm working on now is for a good friend who got into some legal trouble. Sometimes its for someone I don't know really well, but just want to help out. We all run into trouble at some point or another (some more than others), and need someone to help out. It's what I do and I'm happy to help.

Liza

2009-02-09T10:00:00.000-08:00

Liza Felici just joined the firm as our new administrative assistant. She is incredibly well- (if not over-) qualified and is a pleasure to work with. Please give her a call at 512-364-0655 and say hi.

Marketing

2009-02-09T09:56:00.000-08:00

Just working on a new marketing plan for the firm today. It's harder than it looks--getting folks involved in car wrecks to give us a call.

There are a lot of great lawyers in Austin and a lot of people who are very good at representing car accident victims. Lucky for me, I was trained by one of the best and have a lot of these same great lawyers who send me new customers from time to time.

It's a great thing--running your own business and creating an atmosphere where good people trust you to handle their affairs. I'm honored to do it and it's one of the best things about being a lawyer.

So give us a call at 512-364-0655 and let us help you.

Obama

2009-01-20T09:53:00.001-08:00

OK, so President Obama blanked on the Presidential Oath of Office. But Justice Roberts didn't help when he railroaded over President Obama saying his name and then handed him the wrong line. Who cares. Change is here.

Insurance Company Shenanigans

2008-11-17T13:27:00.000-08:00

The economy is tanking and insurance companies are going down with the ship. After years of milking consumers for all they're worth and making record profits, insurers—like A.I.G.—are now losing money. And they're taking it out on—no surprise here again—consumers like you and me.

I've seen an uptick in the brashness of some insurance companies as they delay, deny, and defend claims that just a few months ago would be paid fairly and promptly.

The thing is: I don't mind. I still win.

But I feel bad for the insurance companies' poor insureds, who now must face the prospect of being dragged through prolonged and protracted litigation as their insurer makes up excuses.

Think of this: If someone causes a car accident and injures one of my clients. I will make every reasonable effort to settle with that person before dragging them into court. It's a last resort and one that that is terribly inefficient.

But the way insurance companies are acting now, they are all but forcing me to sue their insureds in order to obtain a reasonable settlement. It's not fair to my clients. And, more importantly for the insurance industry, it's not fair to their customers.

If you are getting into legal trouble because your insurance company won't settle a case against you, maybe it's time you get your insurance company into some legal trouble of their own. Call the Texas Department of Insurance at 888-327-8818 and then call me.

SNOW

2008-11-06T15:20:00.001-08:00

Alright, I admit it. My name is Jon and I am a snow-a-holic. I live for all things cold and this time of year begins my annual obsession with checking the snow reports and web cams of my hometown ski hills on an hourly (and sometimes semi-hourly) basis. It's a ton of fun for addicts like me.

Try it yourself:

and

Obama

2008-11-05T10:53:00.000-08:00

Change. It's an uncomfortable word. Most of us don't like it. It's nice to sit back and stay in our routines. But it's inevitable and, most of all, required for us to grow.

No matter who you voted for yesterday, it is time for a change. Because nothing feels better than bucking the status quo.

Vote

2008-11-04T14:56:00.000-08:00

I just got back from my afternoon run along the Colorado River in downtown Austin and thought of all the unintended side benefits of the election today--no matter who you vote for.

1. No more "Crawford Ranch" news stories.

2. No more presidential ranch at all.

3. No more worrying just how much control the oil companies have in the Oval Office.

The list goes on. Please add your own below.

First Post

2008-10-03T10:49:00.001-07:00

This is my first post. Stay tuned for more.