Protective order?
Firestone’s legal secrecy cost lives

Few people are probably rushing out to buy Firestone tires. The news that Firestone tires are under investigation as the cause of accidents that have claimed more than 100 lives is nothing new to most people.

What might be new to some, however, is that the first known death linked to the tires was in 1992 when the first of nearly 200 lawsuits blaming the accidents on the tires was filed against the company.

The lawsuits have not been brought to public attention until now because Firestone settled out of court under a protective order — an agreement between the plaintiff’s attorney and the company which virtually seals all the documents involving the lawsuit.

According to Firestone executive vice president Gary Crigger, protective orders are necessary. In a Senate hearing he testified the company had to keep the documents sealed for “competitive reasons.”

In other words, these protective orders are designed to protect the company, not the consumer.

But who is defending consumers from companies who put profits before quality? The government?
Sadly, protective orders are perfectly legal.

According to Lorna Schofield, head of a bar association task force, “The purpose of civil cases is for a private party to settle its dispute with another private party and to get money for its injury. That’s what the system is designed to do. It’s not designed to publicize all the ills in our society.”

Gail Touchton, widow of Florida minister Rev. Bill Touchton whose life was claimed just this year in an accident involving Firestone tires, doesn’t seem to agree.

“If the covering up and the lying had not occurred, if the truth had been exposed sooner, my husband would still be here.”

Civil cases were not designed to expose social ills. Perhaps they should..

The school system in this country is a joke. Repeat: it’s a total, absolute, utter, complete, unqualified, outright, categorical, (I’m running out of synonyms, here) joke. It might be the most corrupt aspect of a thoroughly corrupt government.

Kids in schools these days just keep getting dumber and dumber, according to test scores, and it’s a sad state of affairs when students are more likely to give their teachers a bullet than an apple.

Who do we blame? Umm ... well, I just don’t know!

So, since Clinton is leaving before any of the rap falls onto his shoulders, I’m stuck having to point the finger at that evil of all evils: The System.

Bluntly put, The System is crap! The U.S. Congress, no model of efficiency itself, recently released findings that the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) has, in the past two years, forgiven $73 million worth of defaulted loans, placed $500 million in the wrong treasury accounts and then spent the money without saving any receipts, and double-paid contractors and grantees to the tune of a cool $150 million. And these are apparently low-ball estimates!

The Department of Education is clearly operating in the worst kind of faith. The accountants at Ernst & Young told the government that it was impossible to audit the department because the books were in such a state of chaos. And yet, the money doesn’t stop coming in, does it? Well, we didn’t all just up and quit paying our taxes, right? As long as the government is seeing fit to take money from my paychecks and give part of it to the DOE, the DOE seems more than willing to waste it.

As if a failure to keep proper books weren’t enough, there seems to be an alliance that’s voted faculty accountability right off the island. Kids these days are testing awfully, and I don’t think that anyone put “dumb potion” in the water supply. More likely, lazy teachers and inefficient administrators are the culprits.
We need to raise the standards for our high school and elementary teachers and principals in this country because they’re waaaaay too low.

Of course it’s hard to argue for making it tougher to become a teacher when there’s such a dramatic shortage in the field. The fact still remains — the current system is not working, and it’s only getting worse.
I think it’s time we elevate the teaching profession to what it should have always been. Require an advanced degree in some sort of subject specialization to increase their effectiveness and then hook them up come payday. I understand that the field is a bit short on manpower, but if we increase the prestige and compensation for the job then perhaps we can select our teachers from the intelligentsia and not from those who eked out a minimal certification.

Which brings me to the topic of private school vouchers. Why is there even a question, here? The school system is already being run like a business, just an incredibly bad business. The beauty of capitalist theory is that increased competition will lead to high quality product.

The problem is that the public schools face almost no competition.

Numerous studies will affirm the quality of a top-notch private school education, yet they don’t really compete with the public system because they tend to be a bit cost prohibitive. But why should taxpayers have to pay for the public school system, a product that is so far below the available standard?

If more people had access to the better education that private schools offer, then the public schools would be forced to reform to keep up. That magic well of tax money would dry up a little bit, and the corrupt administrators and lazy teachers would be forced to either shape up or get the heck out of Dodge.

The System is an out and out (hey, I found another synonym) failure in need of drastic reform. At this point, I’d try just about anything. Well, anything but an alphabetical voting system … we all know how that worked out.

Daniel Bramlette is a senior radio-TV-film major from Ogden, Utah. He can be reached at (d.c.bramlette@yahoo.com).

Science has the wonderful ability of creating medicines that better people’s living conditions. I always look with awe and appreciation on those men and women who have the ability to relieve pain and heal disease.

owever, when it comes to mind-altering drugs such as Prozac, are the effects good or bad?

This question arose in my philosophy seminar and led me to wonder about the topic. The issue was mentioned as part of a “quality of life” discussion that debated which was better: to be unhappy yet retain your personality, or to use altering drugs through which a state of happiness is achieved at the loss of true personality? Opinions differed as students debated the values of personality and happiness, and what conditions allow a person’s true character to shine. Where does a person’s character lie — is it dependent on a natural state or on the stability of an individual’s emotions? Do drugs such as Prozac truly cause a loss of identity or simply sharpen the ability to define personality without the concerns of depression?

I have always been under the impression that the drug was great in its ability to better people’s lives by taking away depression and anxiety. To my knowledge, no one close to me has used Prozac; therefore, my ability to observe its influence is nonexistent and I am dependent upon others’ commentary.

My curiosity during class was piqued at the use of Ernest Hemingway as a case study. Hemingway suffered from bouts of depression, which resulted not only in the creation of dark stories with unhappy endings, but also in his suicide. My professor proposed that, had Hemingway been put on Prozac, his personality would have been so altered that instead of writing “A Farewell to Arms,” he would have been employed by Hallmark to compose greeting cards.

Had Hemingway chosen to use Prozac to alter his personality, the world would have missed out on a great literary mind — it would not have mattered so much that he was unhappy or killed himself if only he had retained his true self in order to write.

I’m not sure if I agree with this. I believe a change of mood does, to a degree, alter the personality — yet that can be healthy if a person is spending his or her life feeling worthless or sorrowful. Happiness would hopefully bring a greater appreciation of life and a desire to use abilities to their greatest degree.

To continue the Hemingway example, perhaps he would have still retained his ability to write well, but the matter of his novels would have shifted. With medical prescriptions, he may have avoided both suicide and Hallmark by being happier and writing better endings to his novels; thus the world would have been able to keep a great literary mind longer while also feeling better about the ends given to his characters (I hold a grudge for the ending provided for Jake in “The Sun Also Rises.”

The drugs of today allow for better living conditions while not pushing the limit and creating a society like that envisioned by Aldous Huxley. After all, the drugs do not wholly prohibit human feelings such as sadness, anger or frustration; they simply provide a greater balance.

Perhaps true personality has the ability to thrive even when a person uses medication to help him or her maintain a stable emotional life. Perhaps it makes it easier to express that personality without the restraints of unhappiness.

Then again, I may just dislike Hemingway and wish he had been able to attain such help.
I haven’t figured that one out yet.

Miranda Nesler is a freshman English major from Houston. She can be reached at (m.g.nesler@student.tcu.edu).

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret. — Matthew 6:5-6

Republicans are so cute when they try to think.

My recent favorite tidbit of Republican propaganda is this clamor to “Bring God back into the schools.”

One particularly right-wing political cartoon shows two children outside Columbine High School. One asks: “Why didn’t God stop the shooting?” The other replies: “Didn’t you hear? He’s not allowed in school anymore.”

Wow, that’s dumb.

I never understood this assumption that believing in God or promoting worship of God would suddenly solve all the problems facing youth today.

People seem to have forgotten that believing in God does not automatically make one a better person. Anyone remember that little tiff in Europe called the Crusades? Boy, did those guys love God — and boy, did they show it.

In that vein, I’d like some proof that those who are constantly exposed to God are better people than those who are not. Can I statistically chart that religious faith is inversely proportional to violence or cheating?

Moreover, there remains a not-so-subtle form of conversion. People call for God in schools, but they never say which god. I can be crafty here and say, “Well, we all worship the same God, so it doesn’t matter,” but in truth, it very much does matter. This is a predominantly Christian country (86.2 percent worth, as of a 1990 poll by Kosmin), and therefore, if decided in a democratic fashion by each local community, the God worshipped in most schools across the nation will be the Christian God.

My favorite moron, Pat Buchanan, wants the Ten Commandments posted in every schoolroom, and many of his constituents want the Gospel recited daily. Why not passages of the Bhagivad-Gita or Koran? Why not have the Eightfold Path up on school walls?

The very term “putting God back into the schools” is misleading. No one is stopping a student from praying privately between classes or wearing a necklace with the Star of David. Some schools even give special considerations for religious students of any faith, allowing them to put off their exams until their ritual fasting is completed.

The truth is, we don’t need a “formal” institution of worship in schools set up at all. If a father wishes his son to pray every morning, he should wake him up 10 minutes earlier or send him to parochial school. Yet the desire for a defined regiment of worshipping God in the schools remains, and such a desire comes from two equally sad and confused bases.

The first base stems from those who do not feel like they have done a good enough job instilling religion or ethics in their own children and wish schools to pick up the slack. We see this quite a bit. Parents will blame schools for not mandating morals or principles that the parents themselves neglect to teach their kids. In this case, forcing schools to do such a job will only lead to further laziness from already apathetic parents.

The other base stems from those who honestly do believe that prayer and religious readings in schools will make for a better community. Sadly, these people are mistaken. They wish to believe that somehow, a few prayers will clear away raging hormones that beg for premarital sex, stop the urge for fitting in that can lead to drug use and even stop all the feelings of rage, rejection and confusion that spur on violence.

And here we reach the very core of the argument against mandatory prayer in school.

It would cure absolutely nothing.

The debate will never be solved, but luckily we do not need to teach “God” to teach morals and charity and love. So while Buchanan and Republicans waste valuable time and money trying to pass legislation for mandatory prayer time, another school goes without new textbooks and with sub-par teachers.

This is, in all senses of the word, a sin of the highest degree.

Rikki Fields is a columnist for the Daily Targum at Rutgers University.
This column was distributed by U-WIRE..