The Assembly Speaker, now routinely hailed as the most powerful man in New York government, is described as flexible on every topic but one, liability reform. Fred Siegel of the Manhattan Institute: "Shelly the trial lawyer and Shelly the speaker are the same person. Trial lawyers always make their money not by expanding the pie, but by extraction. He's not interested in reform." Silver does take exception when an interviewer refers to New York's chief justice, who has rapidly been steering the court in a pro-plaintiff direction, as: "Your appointee to the Court of Appeals, your friend Jonathan Lippman." [Orthodox paper Vos Iz Neias?]