“Or…Well, Of Course, The Perpetrators Of Fraud Against A Government Want To Weaken The Laws That Protect Whistleblowers.”
Both the State of New Jersey and the federal government have what are called “Qui Tam” laws which effectively protect whistleblowers who work for private concerns that are defrauding the government (state or federal). Such fraud takes many forms, from fraudulent healthcare claims processed on a mass level to misuse of government grant money, funding, etc.
Fraud against the government by private corporations costs the state hundreds of millions of dollars each year, and the government many tens of billions.
One of the only incentives for a whistleblower to come forward is that, if the fraud turns out to be true, the whistleblower is able to obtain some small proportion of what the government recovers for the whistleblower having “related” that fraud to the government. Obviously, to the extent that the whistleblower is then punished by his employer, remedies currently exist to protect the victim and punish the oppressors.
The United States Chamber of Commerce is a wonderfully misnamed entity whose sole function since the late 70s and early 80s has been to attack the civil justice system, attack government regulation of corporations, attack the rights and remedies to a jury trial, attack laws that protect working people and their families, and “uplift” the wealthiest one percent of our country and the worst corporate offenders.
That is their sole mission in life. Anything else they tell you is nonsense.
Currently, the US Chamber of Commerce and Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) and other “anti-whistleblower corporations” – those that punish whistleblowers most consistently – are trying to destroy what has been documented to be the most important whistleblower law ever passed, the Federal False Claims Act.
The latest battle is before the United States Supreme Court where KBR and the Chamber of Commerce are trying to drastically limit the scope of employees who can use the law. As part of this campaign, the Chamber filed a brief attacking whistleblowers as raising “meritless claims” and urged the justices to shut the courthouse doors on employees who they paint in the most derogatory possible manner.
In response, the National Whistleblower Center filed an amicus (friend of the court) brief in the matter. This brief, of course, rebuts the KBR bullshit and the Chamber’s nonsense as well as refutes the attack on whistleblowers. The first eighteen pages of the brief explain the vital role of whistleblowers and how whistleblowers are some of the most “important sources of information in uncovering fraud.”
The National Whistleblower Center filed this brief in order to counter the derogatory and demeaning statements against whistleblowers that the federal Chamber of Commerce has effectively used in its ad campaigns and its well-financed lobbying effort on behalf of corporate wrongdoers. The Center’s brief can be found online at www.whistleblowers.org.
If you make a donation to the National Whistleblower Center of $15.00, you receive a copy of the “whistleblowers handbook” as a token of the center’s appreciation.
You should also support them online. Why should you do this? Well do you have a job working for someone else? Does a member of your family or close friend work for someone else? Most everyone does. Really, it doesn’t matter how much you earn. Even if you’re a six figure earner, at some point, you may have to be a whistleblower, you may have been one, or you’ll know one.
We want whistleblowers on that wall. We need whistleblowers on that wall. We need whistleblower protection and we need access to the courts for whistleblowers that are retaliated against.
Corporations have billions and trillions at their disposal and every day, the Chamber of Commerce and richest people in the country wake up and go to sleep thinking of ways to take more money and safety away from you, your family and your friends, and how to use the money they’ve already got to do this. Don’t think that what corporations say is in your best interest, ever. Support the efforts of the National Whistleblower Center and of legislators and trial lawyers that try to keep the courthouse doors open. It’s the only way we’re going to have a free and economically balanced society.
