William Lerach, the brilliant legal mind who helped create the class-action lawsuit industry, has pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge for arranging kickbacks to people who agreed to be early plaintiffs in the legal attacks against businesses. The San Diego Union-Tribune covered Lerach’s court appearance and plea in Los Angeles, as did The Los Angeles Times. Lerach is the eighth person to plead guilty in connection with the conspiracy, and as the Times reports:

The government has been investigating the New York firm where Lerach once worked — Milberg Weiss — for seven years. According to a 2006 indictment, the firm paid $11.3 million in kickbacks to plaintiffs in lawsuits targeting huge companies, including AT&T Inc., Lucent, WorldCom, Microsoft Corp. and Prudential Insurance.

The early, paid-off plaintiffs gave Milberg Weiss the ability to shape their legal cases to their own advantage and increasing their take of the payouts.

Lucrative. Corrupt. And all from a law firm that helped create the modern class-action shakedown industry, contributing to a broken system of civil litigation that imposes an estimated $865 billion cost to the U.S. economy every year.

It is time for high-profile investigations and oversight hearings from Congress into the lawsuit industry, demanding accountability from these spoilers. Let’s investigate their impact on the economy, the abusive model that Milberg-Weiss established, and the harm their predations do to the children. Make the witnesses take the Fifth, if it comes to that. At the very least, the public shaming will serve an educational and deterrent effect.

What a tremendous opportunity for the chairmen of the respective committees. Surely oversight hearings are just around the corner.

In a CNBC interview today with co-anchor Bill Griffeth, Indiana Governor Daniels (as always) lays out the issues in sharp form, making the case for tax reform and giving credit to manufacturing for state’s economic health.

GRIFFETH: Where does your job growth come from right now?

Gov. DANIELS: A lot of it has been industrial. We are the first state in America with three Japanese assembly plants the only state with two Toyota plants, the only state with Toyota and Honda, just for instance. And again, many other international companies have been part of this. We’re also getting a great diversification in the life sciences, in information technology, and AG-related business, agriculture is growing quickly in income and its contribution here once again.

GRIFFETH: But like many states in your situation geographically and otherwise, you’ve had to offer tax incentives to companies to grow jobs in your state, haven’t you?

Gov. DANIELS: Yes, but much more modest than other states. We operate the whole business of economic development as a business. I changed it to a nonprofit corporation model. I chair its board. We’ve got hard-fisted business people on there and one of the metrics we look at most carefully is dollars of income and new jobs per dollar of state subsidy. And we have routinely won competitions with other states while offering fewer subsidy dollars. These things most often, Bill, are won by macro criteria of economic climate, transportation, and so forth.

The Indiana economic development website, complete with the theme, “Accelerate Your Business,” prominently features manufacturing sites.

The Wall Street Journal’s excellent manufacturing reporter, Timothy Aeppel, has an interview with Charles E. Bunch, chief executive of PPG Industries and chairman of the NAM Board of Directors. Chuck connects the issues of environmentalism, energy and U.S. manufacturing competitiveness. It’s a subscription link, but should be good for the rest of today.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Why are companies like PPG getting more active on environmental issues?

MR. BUNCH: Some of it is tied to dislocations in the global economy on the availability of energy supplies. Take the case of natural gas. With a lack of a comprehensive energy strategy, the regulatory environment has really discouraged any development of alternative sources of power. So most of the new electrical generation over the last 10 years has come from natural gas. What has developed now is that you have more users competing for natural-gas supplies, which historically have been the purview of primarily industrial companies.

At the same time, we’ve capped or limited the supply of new developments of natural gas. We’ve had restrictions passed for new exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, or in the coastal areas, or in Alaska.

Today we’ve taken what had been an advantage for an industrial company like PPG — our use of natural gas — and now we’re paying higher prices for natural gas here in the U.S. than the Chinese are paying, or the Russians or the Europeans, who all have access to cheaper Russian gas. This is why energy is a real competitive issue for us.

Larry Kudlow makes the case for working with Chairman Rangel on his tax proposal:

Okay, okay.

House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel’s “mother of all tax reforms” has some very serious flaws. My supply-side friends have been trashing his plan mercilessly since its unveiling late last week. And as I told Mr. Rangel, when I interviewed him last Thursday night on Kudlow & Company, raising the top tax rates on America’s most successful earners and investors is not a good idea. It’s a surefire way to damage U.S. competitiveness. It also will reduce our potential to grow (not only long-term, but in the short-run, as the economy is softening.)

Still, I come to praise Mr. Rangel, not to bury him.

Charlie Rangel is the first Democrat in Washington — or on the campaign trail for that matter — to propose a pro-growth tax cut, namely a reduction in the corporate tax rate. No Democrat has gone there before. That’s big stuff. It means something. Democratic leaders are backing away from Mr. Rangel due to their unwillingness to propose pro-growth tax cuts and their obsession with punishing the rich. The last pro-growth Democrat to propose lower tax rates was the late President John F. Kennedy. He lowered taxes across the board for all individuals and companies. Might Charlie Rangel be part of the JFK tradition?

Kudlow concludes:

We need to encourage tax reform by maintaining an open, friendly conversation with Mr. Rangel and nurturing additional, specific, tax-reform ideas from GOP leaders. Just as I’ve always preferred optimism to pessimism, and positives to negatives, I also prefer friendly discussion to holier-than-thou trashing.

Seems like a productive approach.

Governor Jim Doyle has finally signed the state budget after a lengthy legislative fight left Wisconsin the only state without a spending plan.

We focused our energies here on the governor’s unconstitutional plan to tax oil company revenues but then make it a CRIME to pass those increased costs onto consumers. It was a horrible idea, violating the Commerce Clause, and Doyle indulged in populist cant in attacking the companies that provide energy to his state’s citizens. Terrible.

But there were other lousy proposals in the budget that have fallen by the wayside, thanks in part to the dedicated and active work of the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. And some good things passed, too. From WMC’s news release after legislative passive of the budget:

Key WMC victories include:

Defeat of a $15.2 billion state-run health care plan.

Defeat of a new tax on gasoline, amounting to over 7 cents a gallon at peak summer prices.

Defeat of “combined reporting” corporate tax hike.

Defeat of higher taxes on real estate investment trusts.

Restoration of property tax levy limits and continuance of the Qualified Economic Offer.

Creation of a new state tax deduction for health insurance premiums, totaling nearly $150 million when fully phased in.

Creation of new state tax breaks for college tuition, child care, retirement income, angel investors, and electronic medical records.

Defeat of new health care insurance regulations relating to mental health and autism coverage mandates.

Good work. (WMC also ran full-page ads hailing the budget.)

And even better: “But Doyle said he would not try to resurrect his plan to tax oil company revenues.” So congrats, too, to the Wisconsin Petroleum Council.

The Washington Post on Sunday editorialized in strong support of a federal media shield law, i.e., Free Flow of Information Act, shocked that, “Journalists have had to lawyer up …” Well, welcome to U.S. society, circa 2007.

Still, it’s a reasonable editorial, noting the two versions of the legislation.

The House bill that passed 398 to 21 would compel the disclosure of sources in federal court only to prevent bodily harm or death, to identify a person who unlawfully revealed a business trade secret or “nonpublic personal information,” or to prevent a terrorist attack on the United States or harm to national security. The Senate bill applies to confidential sources except if they were eyewitnesses to crimes or if disclosure would prevent a terrorist attack or bodily harm. While there are other distinctions between the two proposals, we support both of them. The Washington Post Co. continues to lobby actively for a shield law.

Our emphasis.

Thank you, editors, for acknowledging the business and trade secrets element in the House legislation. We had barked at the Post for a self-absorbed attitude about the legislation, focusing only on the impact on journalists. This editorial recognizes the broad scope of these issues.

And, on balance, it looks like the House bill is preferable on that basis.

Marlin Steel Wire Products is a small company, with just 18 full-time workers.

But President Drew Greenblatt is an expert at getting his company big play in the press.

Greenblatt and his company have recently been spotlighted in Washington Post Magazine, Fortune Small Business Magazine, and on the front page of the Baltimore Sun business section.

Greenblatt, whose Baltimore-based company manufactures made-to-order wire and hook products for Toyota, Chrysler and other customers, said other NAM members can easily duplicate his media savvy.

Many companies fear the press, thinking they are a bunch of sharks out to do a “gotcha” expose, a gregarious Greenblatt said after I visited his business recently.

“They think you’re Dan Rather from ’60 Minutes’ with a dorsal fin,” he said.

However, Greenblatt, whose company’s logo sports a leaping marlin fish, said it’s easy to hook reporters. Here’s how:

The American Association for Justice, né the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, is sponsoring a daylong program in New York today: Pharma and Beyond: Litigation Today with Special Guest Mark Lanier.

Taking lessons learned from going up against big pharma, this one-day program will offer unique insights beneficial to all plaintiff lawyers. Special guest Mark Lanier will be joined by an outstanding faculty of trial lawyers and consultants who will share with you the insights, techniques, and strategies they developed in handling landmark pharmaceutical cases. This seminar is designed to teach you how to take these valuable tools and apply them to every type of case you handle.

Cost of the seminar: $695. Now which client can we bill this to?

Guest speaker is Harold Ford Jr., the former Tennessee congressman and now head of the Democratic Leadership Council, the self-styled moderate/center group. You know what would be gutsy, in a moderate/center kind of way? Telling the audience that tort reform is necessary to help rein in medical costs and restore true accountability to our system of civil litigation.

P.S. Lanier’s law firm website is here. The Wall Street Journal Law Blog wrote about Lanier and his Vioxx suit last year.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took some grief last week for this assertion in a news conference:

One reason why we have the fires in California is global warming.

Reid quickly backed off the statement, perhaps recognizing that 1. It would be better for leaders to support the people of California, rather than scoring political points. 2. There have always been fires and Santa Anna winds in the hills of California. 3. Global warming did not cause powerlines to fall and spark, arsonists to set the fires, or human activity to become more widespread in an arid yet forested area.

Unfortunately, Representative Ed Markey seems not to care about those points. This Thursday, his taxpayer-financed bully pulpit, the House Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee will be holding a hearing, “Wildfires and the Climate Crisis.” From his Dear Colleagues letter, dated Oct. 19th, before the latest, worst fires:

Evidence shows that as a result of global warming, forest fires in our western states are burning more frequently and with greater intensity than we have ever seen before. Last year was the worst fire season in recorded history and this season is already second, with eight million acres burned.

This is not evidence, this is testimony from the scriptures of the Church of Global Warming, in which all earthly events lead back to transcendental climate change.

Trouble is, you can’t debate faith. But you can debate the propriety of politicizing every bit of human tragedy in the world.

From The Examiner, the latest on Judge Roy Pearson, who sued his drycleaners for $54 million for supposedly losing his suit pants.

WASHINGTON (Map, News) – After months of painstaking proceedings, a judicial panel is expected tonight to formally fire the man who became known as the “pants” judge.

The five-person commission will vote to finalize a letter notifying Administrative Law Judge Roy Pearson that he will not be reappointed to the bench of the D.C. Office of Hearings, a little publicized but influential department that hears disputes between city agencies and residents and businesses.

The organization formerly known as the Association for Trial Lawyers of America (now American Association of Justice) made some news playing against type last May when it called for a disciplinary hearing against Pearson. The spin: See, we oppose abuses, these instances of individual excess. Implicit in the posturing was that the civil litigation functions just fine institutionally, and no reforms are necessary.

AAJ, nè ATLA, has been quiet since on the topic. We expect a news release endorsing Pearson’s firing if it comes to that, right?