Whistleblower Lawyer & Attorney : LaBovick Law Firm, Florida : Federal False Claims Act, Qui Tam

In my last blog post from the AAJ Chicago convention, I mentioned that I was not impressed with Senator Barack Obama's performance on Sunday at the AAJ convention. However, One performance does not a candidate make. On Monday, I was invited to a meet and greet event featuring Senator Obama at the Chicago Conservatory. It was a very nice event. The wine was good, but not expensive and the beer was Miller, instead of something fancy like Anchor Steam. They served hors d’oeuvres. The important thing was that Senator Obama met every single person in the room and talked with everyone individually.

When you meet Senator Obama, he is warm and genuine; a great interpersonal communicator. He is not a Bill Clinton; the kind of person that fills the room with his presence. Senator Obama is a quiet speaker with a powerful voice. He makes you feel like he is a capable and solid leader but also down to earth and humble. I must say that humble and capable is very appealing after watching the arrogant and incompetent leadership of the past 6 years.

After he met almost everyone in the room, he gave a speech about what he wanted to accomplish as President. He talked about Universal Health Care and getting out of Iraq. He talked about working to create a 60% Democrat majority in Congress so Democrats could make significant changes to help the American people. He also took questions from the floor and was thoughtful. Most of all he has great respect for America and our system of justice and the institutions that make this country great. His one blunder was saying he wanted to close "Guantanamo." I had to find out what he meant by that since, if he meant shutting down our base he would be blasted by the South Florida Cuban community. When I asked one of his nearby party hosts, what he intended to do. They said he was only referring to the prison portion of the base and not the base itself. Senator Obama feels we are doing a disservice to our criminal system by avoiding bringing these suspects to justice and simply trying to hold them without due process of law. He said the Senator, to his knowledge, has never talked about shutting down the entire base.

In a small forum, the Senator is a sincere and warm speaker. He was not scripted. Compared to Sunday’s performance at the convention, he hit a home run right out of the park. I am not ready to support the guy with a wholesale endorsement. He needs to show me that he can hold his own in a crowd of peacocks. I also need to understand his positions on areas like qui tam and whistleblower rights. So far, the other candidates look more assured. However, one on one, Barack Obama is a tough man to beat. He is making his platform and campaign a true grass roots campaign. He is raising a huge amount of money and he is not doing it with large corporate donations. Here is a shocking statistic: Senator Obama has more individual donors than all of the Republican candidates combined! He has a 70+-approval rating in his home state and a 55% approval rating with Republicans. If Senator Obama ran for his seat and only Republicans voted he would still win! At a grass roots level, Senator Obama will be hard to beat and if he wins, I will not feel like the Democrats picked in incompetent guy. I will bet my last dollar that Barack Obama is already more competent than our present leadership.

Brian from "Chi Town"

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I am blogging today from the annual American Association for Justice (AAJ) convention in Chicago, IL. Chi-town is beautiful in the summer. Lake Michigan is like an ocean (without the salt). The great thing about a pre-election year convention, is that Presidential political candidates come out to press palms and ask for money from attorneys attending this convention. Republican candidates would not be caught dead at a convention of primarily plaintiff personal injury attorneys (and a few of us Qui Tam, employment law and consumer protection attorneys as well). As a Republican "Civil Justice Prosecutor”, I think the Republican candidates are making a principled mistake based on the fact that they are being told what to think by large corporations and insurance companies. (I will leave that pulpit for another post).

On Sunday, the top five Democratic Candidates addressed a select group of the convention body. Each of the five candidates had 20 minutes to discuss their platform and list of pre-determined questions. The five candidates were Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Joseph Biden, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton.

Universally the feelings of the audience after each candidate spoke and answered the questions were as follows:

Joe Biden was the most articulate and passionate person on the floor. (I met Joe Biden a year ago with his sister on an escalator in Seattle. My associate, Marvin, and I were coming down the escalator and Joe Biden was behind us. We stopped and spoke to him for about a half an hour.) I came away completely impressed by his sincerity and his knowledge and understanding of the issues. I also think he is unappealing to the American people for being a bit too candid in his opinions. Typically, presidential election winners are not usually overly passionate people. Joe is very passionate.

Bill Richardson was the most likeable person I have ever seen running for President. He just seems like the kind of guy with whom you would want to hang out and have a beer. The audience found him to be competent and articulate. However, for some reason everyone believes he is just trying to position himself to be the VP. I am not sure, his last quarter was respectable with $7,000,000.00 raised.

Hillary was cool, calm and confident, but not as passionate. She has taken a position on medical malpractice reform, which is right out of the Bush playbook. She allegedly likes the idea of a national malpractice oversight arbitration board. This is an idea that really would fit in the Democrat pocketbook but is one that will anger the AAJ membership. She conveniently ignored that topic.

John Edwards was good but not inspiring. This was surprising because he came out to a raucous standing ovation. My personal feeling is that he is almost too good looking to be taken seriously.

Finally, we come to Barack Obama. I purposefully, left him last, even though he spoke third. His presentation and the way he answered the questions did not sound polished. He sounded scripted and looked stiff. He appeared out muscled by every one of the other personalities. I am not sure if he was tired, overly scripted or simply intimidated by the audience of trial lawyers, nevertheless, he came off as unimpressive at the event. This is a shame, because I wanted him to be outstanding.

Judging from the competence level of all the candidates, Joe Biden is the best candidate with Bill Richardson right behind him. The race is Hillary's to lose. Hillary has the big money flocking to her. Hillary has the business community and was anointed the business friendly/conservative Democrat in the field. Hillary has presidential presence and toughness, which sometimes looks like feistiness, which is needed to win in this type of election. In addition, wouldn't it be great to have a female president and a female speaker of the house?

Just one more thought: if Hillary does win the presidency, Bill Richardson would make a great VP and Joe Biden woud make a great Secretary of State.

Brian signing off from Chi-town

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Managing Partner, Brian F. LaBovick is attending the American Association for Justice (AAJ) Annual Seminar and Convention in Chicago this week. Several thousand lawyers and law makers from around the country convene together to learn new things about The AAJ is an organization committed to promoting a fair and effective justice system. The AAJ supports the work of attorneys in their efforts to ensure that any person who is injured by the misconduct or negligence of others can obtain justice in America’s courtrooms, even when taking on the most powerful interests.

Attorney LaBovick will be writing  a synopsis of the seminar for the readers of the Whistleblower Law Blog, when he returns from his trip. He will share pertinent and relevant information that will be of interest to readers of the Whistleblower Law Blog.

The Whistleblower Law Blog is presented as a service of the Private Law Firm, LaBovick & LaBovick, P.A., Civil Justice Prosecutors. LaBovick & LaBovick is a Plaintiff's firm that represents whistleblowers in Florida and throughout the nation in qui tam (False Claims Act) litigation.

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