In its’ November issue, Texas Monthly magazine published a story by Senior Editor Mimi Swartz with the inflammatory headline “Hurt? Injured? Need a Lawyer? To Bad!” The story can be simply summarized: Small group of rich business types spend millions to pay off the legislature to pass a tort reform bill that locks poor deserving Texans out of the Court House to the benefit of these same rich business types. In this case the villains of the story, the rich guys, come packaged in an organization called Texans for Lawsuit Reform (TLR).

Needless to say the TLR didn’t like Ms. Swartz’s article and provided Texas Monthly with a lengthy brief claiming to set the record strait. Texas Monthly responded it would allow TLR to present a condensed version of its accusations and apologize for any mistakes but warned it would rebut the rebuttal. TLR passed and responded on its own Web site and via a direct mail campaign. Now Texas Monthly has posted TLR’s original six point rebuttal of Swartz’s story along with its rebuttal of that rebuttal on the Texas Monthly Web site. Unless you are a lawyer my advice is not to bother reading either - unless you lack a life.

So how fair and balanced was the article? First, a disclaimer: I ran a firm in the mid-90s (Temerlin McClain PR) that worked for the TLR and I managed the account. Let me add that I was not just a disinterested hired gun working for a pay check. I believed in everything the TLR was about. While at Texas Business and later at the Dallas Morning News I regularly outraged trial lawyers with stories, columns and editorials calling for reforms they saw as a threat to their incomes and, if you grant them sincerity (and I do) – a threat to justice for average folks.

So what was my take on Swartz’s article? Was it an editorial or a fair and balanced discussion of tort issues? Neither. It was a wet kiss for the Texas Trial Lawyer’s Association (TTLA). The title said all, and carefully selected, but mostly accurate, facts were presented to back up the title. While that may bother the TLR it doesn’t bother me. I did that to the Trial Lawyers all the time. And Texas Monthly is not the Texas Lawyer. Legal briefs don’t sell magazines - human interest stories do.

What Swartz did do was wave a bloody shirt. The trial lawyer style is to present a handful of egregious cases and suggest there is no amount of money to adequately compensate the wronged (they are usually right). Their argument then proceeds to assert that whatever problems the system might have it could not be fixed without denying these poor souls due justice. In other words: Look at the trees not the forest.

That was because the forest was dying. The soaring cost of insurance premiums in Texas was causing doctors to retire early, placing an enormous burden on small businesses, and making out-of-state companies think twice before doing business in Texas. Indeed, many small businesses were “going naked” (carrying no insurance). If it was hit with a law suite a “naked” business just went out of business leaving a lot of unemployed people and a plaintiff with zero.

The problem with the system was that juries were willing to make huge awards to the desperate little guy because they felt he deserved help regardless of fault and since the insurance company was paying – well, what the hell. Of course, it was really you and I paying either through higher insurance premiums of our own, or higher prices charged us by businesses trying to cover higher premiums.

The Trial Lawyers have always dismissed the idea that headline grabbing billion dollar awards have any affect on insurance premiums. They correctly note only a tiny percentage of cases ever go to trial and of those a tiny percentage ever delivers outlandish jury awards. What they don’t say is that these set the risk ceiling. Insurance companies look at what they might have to pay in a trial based on the few that actually go to trial. If they see an upside risk of say $100 million they might rather settle for policy limits of $10 million than defend a case they otherwise think they can win and pay zip. Call it justice by actuary.

The problem wasn’t economic damages that could be fairly easily and accurately fixed but “punitive” damages awarded by juries for subjective pain and suffering. These damages were out of control. Juries were coming to see the tort system as a matter of wealth redistribution. The tort reformers were about taming these punitive damages. Yet, punitive damages are where Trial Lawyers make their money.

And this is the crux of the matter. It is absolutely true that most Texans cannot afford a plaintiff’s lawyer on even a slam dunk case. Trial lawyers take cases based on “contingency fees” that allow them to collect a big percentage of punitive damages. A large prospective settlement means a large prospective fee and so trial lawyers will tote the note for the case (actually there are investors often willing to fund law suits). If you cap punitive damages you cap Trial lawyer income. If the sad people in Swartz’s article are unable to find lawyers it is because the lawyers don’t think they can make enough money not because the law locked anyone out of the court house.

Texas Monthly defends the article by noting Swartz ends her tale with a fair and balanced summation: “In the battle between the trial lawyers and the tort reformers, each side accuses the other of excessive greed and mendacity; each side is convinced that only its side represents the truth. The middle ground is reserved for the all-too-human collateral damage of a bitter ward involving big money and partisan politics, seemingly without end.”

I’ll grant that while neither side wins a “warm and fuzzy” award both sides are mostly sincere. I’ll grant both sides represent big money. I’ll grant that trials lawyers are mostly Democrats and reformers overwhelmingly Republican. But I cannot grant that placing “all-too-human collateral damage” between the two illustrates fair and balanced. This was a wet kiss.

The wonder of the Internet is that most of it is free and interactive collaboration is encouraged.  A lot of people don't like that.  A lot of people plan to do something about your fair use rights.  If you value those rights, says Doug Bedell, you had better stand up for them.

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PS.  DallasBlog made the national news - sort of.  To see Doug's interview on CNBC visit the second post on Technofile.

“I believe that children are the future….” So goes one of the 1990s most cloying, yet irritatingly catchy songs. “Teach them well, and let them find the way….” I’ll bet the treacle melody is already running through your head right now. Hard to get out, isn’t it? Try slapping a classical CD into your PC—Mozart, maybe. Let good music drive out the bad.

Still, the sentiment is sound. And like most clichés (such as “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world”) it’s anchored in the truth. Such simple realities, which are easily obscured by ideology, don’t go away just because we hide our eyes.

Careful parents know that the help they give their children in choosing a college will make a profound difference in how they turn out—in the development of their souls as well as their scholarship or success. That’s why millions of dollars are spent every year on tutors, SAT preps, campus visits, expensive applications, and 1000-page college guides. But too few of these resources address what is really the central question of college education—what does a given school teach, how well, and why? That is what we try to do in Choosing the Right College, a regular publication of Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Serious high school students also want to know what College best fits their interests.

In the current edition of Choosing the Right College, which I edit, over 130 schools are covered in greater depth than you’ll find anywhere else. Here is what we have to say about Texas schools which are covered. They are in alphabetical order:

This Installment:  Texas A&M University

This school has undergone rapid changes during the last 40 years, none greater than in 1963, when the college converted itself from an all-male military academy to a full-fledged coeducational university. But Texas A&M, which every year hosts a traditional candlelight “Aggie muster” ceremony, has retained much from its military-school past. The university still sponsors the Corps of Cadets, which, with 2,000 members, is the largest uniformed body of students outside the three U.S. service academies. And it is still in agriculture and mechanics that the university excels. However, A&M is actively attempting to improve its liberal arts programs.

The agricultural and engineering programs at Texas A&M have been and remain among the finest on campus. Roughly 20 percent of the undergraduate population majors in some type of engineering. Virtually every engineering program offered, from aerospace to petroleum, ranks among the top 20 in the nation, and several are among the top five.

The university’s offerings in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences are certainly extensive. A student interested in this area can even major in somewhat obscure fields like agricultural journalism, dairy science, or wildlife and fisheries sciences. The College of Veterinary Medicine is widely considered to be one of the most advanced in America .

In 2000, the college was the birthplace of the first animal specifically cloned for disease resistance. (For the record, we’re not at all convinced that this is cause for rejoicing.) After testing hundreds of cattle, Bull 86 was found to be naturally disease-resistant to brucellosis, and resistant to tuberculosis and salmonellosis under laboratory conditions. Cells from Bull 86 were used to produce a genetic clone, Bull 86 ² . Since then, Texas A&M researchers have also cloned goats, pigs, and cats, making the university the “first academic institution in the world to have cloned four different species,” according to the university. Happily, the Texas legislature seems likely to ban human cloning—setting at least some limit to the mad science practiced at College Station .

The university’s former president, Ray Bowen, left the helm in 2002 to take a faculty position in mechanical engineering. He was replaced by Robert M. Gates, who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the early ‘90s. Bowen’s departure and Gates’s arrival were welcomed by many at the university. Bowen had made several moves that some alumni thought were aimed at conforming A&M to the progressivism often characteristic of elite public universities, such as Bowen’s Vision 2020 report, a set of 12 recommendations designed to make Texas A&M one of the top 10 public universities in the nation by the year 2020. One of the goals posited by the plan was to “diversify and globalize the A&M community.”

To achieve this result, Bowen adopted a “plan that will require students to take six hours of international or cultural diversity classes.” Conservatives contend that the plan was implemented merely to pacify critics who say that A&M students suffer from their culturally - deficient surroundings. One conservative student says that the multiculturalism requirement is “just one step in a larger plan to sacrifice the values that make A&M special” for greater academic reputation and prestige. The student follows this assertion with the worst accusation one can make against an A&M president: “He wants to make us just like the University of Texas .”

Life is not fair.  Life in the NFL can be even less fair.  But to survive long in the NFL you must learn to deal with problems as they arise. If you dwell on bad calls or make excuses, you do not win. If you look at bad calls as obstacles you must overcome, you will have an easier time dealing with them.

It’s the same in life say Norm.

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Consider these shocking statistics: Of 401 U.S. House incumbents who ran for re-election in 2004, only seven were defeated. Four of them were in Texas. These figures may explain why the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear the case challenging Texas’ redistricting plan.

As reported in the Saturday Wall Street Journal, the case highlights growing concerns that sophisticated redistricting made possible by technology has created too many safe havens for incumbents. In 1992, 88.3 percent of congressional incumbents were re-elected. Already bad enough, but in 2004, that election rate was an astonishing 97.8 percent.

The Texas redistricting plan in question favored Republicans, resulting in a net gain of six seats, but it came after a history of gerrymandering in Texas that favored Democrats. So the concern is that both parties are becoming too adept at drawing districts that reliably elect their candidates.  The result is less competition between parties and increasing polarization in Congress.

Again, this theory is substantiated by other figures, again thanks to the WSJ, about the 2004 election, when:

· only 22 House contests were decided by a margin of less than 10 percentage points.

· there were only 59 “split” districts – where voters chose one party for president and another for the House. That was just 14 percent of the national total. By contrast, in 1972, there were 192 “split” districts.

What these figures mean is that voters increasingly have little choice for change other than within a party primary. But incumbents are usually protected there, as well, by fundraising ability, voter familiarity and party machines.

How can districts be made more competitive? If they’re drawn by a nonpartisan or bipartisan panel instead of by Legislatures. However, recent moves in that direction have been unsuccessful in a couple of states. California rejected a ballot initiative in November that would have had an independent commission of retired judges draw the state’s districts, and a similar measure was rejected in Ohio.

The undeniable conclusion is that partisan protection gained through redistricting diminishes the democratic process in this country. How can the court rule in a way that will put the genie back in the bottle? I can’t imagine.

Having taken the Dallas Morning News to task last weekend for its giving short shrift to the legacy of Sen. Eugene McCarthy and main headline status to comedian Richard Pryor let me know provide the News with praise. Anyone who lives in the City of Dallas, or who owns property here, or does business here, should read today’s front page story about Mayor Miller’s relationship with affordable housing developers Brian and Cheryl Potashnik. The story, headlines “Developer ties hurt many, but not Miller” by Grommer Jeffers, Jr., and Reese Dunklin.” In this case “developer ties” shows a Mayor acting as a virtual business development officer for the Potashnik’s company while receiving $10,000 in contributions from same.

The Mayor is at her sanctimonious best allowing as how there was zero connection between the couple’s support for her and her support form them. Only her opponents would engage in such but never the Mayor. The Mayor protests that her multifaceted support was only given because the Potashnik’s are outstanding citizens and, gosh, surely everyone understands she only takes contributions from those with the best interest of the city at heart.

Readers of this story may also begin to understand how and why Rufus Shaw (see his past View from South of the Trinity) in his Dallas Blog can say that the city’s African Americans feel they are being unfairly targeted. Many white readers of DallasBlog.com have asked in amazement if the black community really feels the way Shaw says they do. When I answer “yes” they shake their heads in wonderment that anyone could really think that way. Read this story and you will understand why the black community feels their politicians are being unfairly singled out.

There a lot to this story (and a lot of this story) and it represents the type of outstanding work the city needs from its only daily newspaper. The Dallas News deserves unqualified praise.

Robert NovakLooks like Robert Novak finally got the boot from CNN. According to a post by Poynter’s Romenesko, CNN has announced the departure of Novak, after 25 years with the network, effective Dec. 31.

Jon Klein, president of CNN/U.S., said in a cryptic release: “Through the years, Bob has offered incisive analysis for much of CNN's programming, including Crossfire, The Capital Gang, Inside Politics, Evans and Novak, The Novak Zone, and Novak, Hunt and Shields. Bob has also been a valued contributor to CNN's political coverage. We appreciate his many contributions and wish him well in future endeavors."

Only appropriate, I would say, after his role in Plamegate. Novak was the first to “out” Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, and we still don’t know for sure his source(s).

Dr. Alan MacDiarmidDr. Alan MacDiarmid, Chairman of the UT Dallas Nanotech Advisory Board and 2000 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry is working to create a partnership between the University and Brazil that would establish a global center for research into bi-fuels in Dallas.  Why?  Because the world and the United States need affordable non-fossil fuels.  Why Brazil?  Because Brazil leads the world in developing and manufacturing bio-fueled vehicles with 6 million manufactured since 1985.  The opportunities appear substantial.

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