OUR VIEWS

Brown and BEA

That dispute and the strike it triggered never were so much about the money as they were about the fact that Brown has shaken up the way the system operates. Some teachers, adminstrators and support personnel are uncomfortable — to put it mildly — with those changes. They much prefer the way things used to be and they have the controlling voice within the ranks of BEA.

Unfortunately, the way things used to be was a disaster for the people the schools are supposed to serve — the children.

When Brown took over in 1997, 57 of the system's 79 schools were under academic warnings from the state Department of Education because of low scores by students on the Stanford Achievement Test. Currently, 54 city schools are in the clear.

While one can argue, as we have, that Stanford test scores should not be the only standard for measuring how well a school is doing its job, the scores should be one component in any assessment of a school's performance. An improvement of the magnitude that city schools have achieved tells us that Brown is doing something right. And further improvements are already under way in meeting the long neglected physical needs of the school system.

In short, Birmingham schools have already improved from what they were when Brown arrived. They're not where they need to be and probably won't be there for a long time to come. but progress is being made.

Far from "tearing the system apart," as Sykes claims, Brown is in the process of rebuilding a system that was badly broken when he arrived.

Leaving behind a catch

Before Heller used it, the word "catch" had as one of its meanings those conditions that pop up to thwart some desired outcome. But in his World War II novel, one particular catch became something especially dismal and threatening. It seems that a bombadier wanted to stop flying missions and figured he would pretend he was crazy. To his dismay, he discovered that if you want to stop risking your life, that's considered sane. The only way you could prove you were crazy to the Army Air Corps was to keep flying those missions. Catch-22.

The novel pointed to the absurdity of war. Some felt the book was overly cynical, that it mocked courage and patriotism and combating evil, for instance, and there may be something to the charge.

Even so, isn't there room to take note of the way bureaucracy and life itself can cleverly trump our seemingly reasonable hopes while we still cling to faith in the nobility of much human effort?

Heller's own literary efforts mattered. The writers who leave behind such phrases — phrases that illuminate and sum up large hunks of experience — have contributed something important to the rest of us.

Backing up

Why, yes, these converts are saying, it is clear enough that the law was meant to allow the regulation of drugs with medicinal uses, not tobacco. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor pointed out, the FDA is supposed to make sure such drugs are used safely and effectively, and as she also pointed out, it is a joke to think tobacco can be used safely.

But many of those who see this truth now did not see it earlier, and they still don't seem to grasp another obvious truth. The states' lawsuits that brought them billions in tobacco dollars were a fraud. They were based on a long string of false notions, among them that smokers are not accountable for their own informed behavior.

The critics are certainly right about one thing, and always have been: Tobacco consumption kills tens of thousands of people. If they believe it is government's job to protect people from their own unhealthy practices, they should advocate that Congress pursue this objective constitutionally, not that anything goes if frustrated on Capitol Hill.

No matter how noble the cause, it is injurious to the health of the republic and to the rights of one and all to argue the end justifies unconstitutional or otherwise illegal means.

YOUR VIEWS

Christmas isn't just for Christians

Christmas is not just for Christians. Originally the time of year we celebrate as Christmas was a celebration of the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year or end of the year celebration.

Whatever your religious belief, you may celebrate the holiday season as the winter solstice, as the end of one year and beginning of a new year. It is a time when you may reflect upon life and resolve to be born anew in the spirit of love and goodness.

That Christians celebrate this time of year as the birth of Jesus Christ may not be appropriate if you are of the Jewish, Islamic or other faith. You may make Christmastime a special time of year in your own way.

You may resolve to do a good deed for a family member or friend. You may donate something of value to your favorite charity. You may write a poem or hug a child. You may help your parents by doing some work around the house or yard. You may give a homeless person a coat, blanket or bag of food.

If you don't like the commercial aspect of Christmas, you may make your own special holiday greeting cards or presents. Friends and loved ones often appreciate receiving gifts that are handmade and come from your heart.

Even if you are an atheist or don't believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God, you may still celebrate the winter solstice and New Year. You will find that by giving gifts of love and doing good deeds your heart will grow in proportion to the love you share. That is really what the spirit of Christmas, Santa Claus and the New Year is all about. For Jesus Christ was a child of love and to love one another was his greatest teaching and most precious gift to the world!

Terry Lynch
P.O. Box 241035
Montgomery

No profit

One could argue that the law is political. Why does the law mandate that seat belts be worn as prescribed? Is the reason to save lives? It would be hard to make a case that saving lives is the reason even though lives will be saved. The easy passage of the seat belt law is more assuredly due to the fact that there are no agencies that would profit monetarily by lobbying against the seat belt law.

If the law is legitimately enforced to save lives, then why are so many people wearing seat belts while puffing on cigarettes, which definitely cause many deaths, respiratory and heart conditions? Tobacco lobbyists make it difficult and you could say almost impossible to ever outlaw smoking. The same can be said for alcohol and firearms. It is questionable that you can enforce a law where no monetary gain is possible and not pass and enforce a law where money anesthetizes the conscious of the lawmakers regardless of the consequences. If "it" is popular to many (mountain climbing, bungee jumping automobile racing etc.), or profitable for the powerful, there probably won't be any laws that will stop ''it."

Lindsey Ray
164 Miller Creek Drive
Montgomery

Temper please

Armond ''Si" Simmons
104 Wadsworth Lane
Pell City

Education proposals aren't so new

Consider, merely as an example, the Alabama Scholarship Assistance Program, announced at the State House with great fanfare on Oct. 19 by mostly Republican legislative leaders. It purports to be a comprehensive scholarship plan similar to the one championed by Gov. Don Siegelman but with higher academic standards. It would be funded, we are told, without the need for a lottery or any new revenue sources by (1) raising even higher the out-of-state tuition of non-native college students-, and by (2) reducing the funding of existing programs and activities in the annual Special Education Trust Fund bill and diverting some of the annual ''growth" in education funding sources. What could possibly be wrong with such a ''new" proposal?

First, as noted, it's not new; it's the same ''Fobinghood Plan" proposed by our last governor and some of his legislative allies, which the Legislature rejected. It divides old and/or diverts new dollars.

Second, ASAP isn't comprehensive. If fully funded, it wouldn't help 86 percent of Alabama high school graduates, according to published remarks by legislative budget analysts. It won't, it can't, ''transform" higher education and thus Alabama as the Siegelman Plan would have.

Third, the plan does not address at all the pre-K program that would have been funded by lottery proceeds, perhaps the most important part of the governor's vision, giving poor students the head start they need at the time they need it (even the first grade is too late).

Fourth, and more fundamentally, ASAP would be funded by robbing some revenue sources of higher education to pay for "new" programs elsewhere in higher education. For four years during the last James administration, then-current and "growth" dollars were diverted from the colleges and universities to help K-12. (''Growth" funds such ''minor" matters as inflation-related salary increases and operating expenses!) As a result, public higher education in our state was brought to its knees, a position from which it is only now beginning to rise.

Our future should not be a return to the days of Fobonomics. But it would be if opponents of the Alabama Education Lottery are misled by the siren song of ASAP and other, related proposals likely to be forthcoming, including the "voluntary tax increase!" Funding public education in our State requires a broader and fairer system of taxation than the century-old, antiquated one our 1901 constitution and subsequent statutory laws were designed to accommodate — one that would generate new revenues, not just a redistribution of existing ones.

To know that, and to appreciate it fully, one has to have "already existing knowledge" of past efforts to "reform" educational funding in Alabama, none of which have ever gotten, and aren't likely ever to get, anywhere, because true reform would mean taking on the monied, corporate special interests in our state (think: ALFA and the Alabama Power Co., automobile dealers, and insurance companies generally, which are major beneficiaries of tax breaks in our state). Until the now "politically active" preachers in Alabama begin to talk about that from their pulpits (not to mention our indefensibly "regressive" tax system), all of the recent rhetoric about "working with the governor to improve education" will continue to ring hollow. As will such otherwise commendable ideas as the Christian Coalition's John Giles' call for development of a master plan for public education in Alabama. That idea is so good I proposed it myself in detail in a week-long series of articles in the old Alabama Journal more than 15 years ago (!) — an idea Gov. James never took seriously, even after John was apparently assigned the task of implementing it.

The past is prologue for good reason, we can't change the future in the present without using what we already know about, in this case, the sad, sad past state of affairs in Alabama.

Dr. Jim Vickrey
4454 Blackwood Drive
Montgomery

OTHER VIEWS

South Carolinians are fighting an unnecessary battle

By GEORGE F. WILL
WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP

While most Americans are too busy making money to wage culture wars, South Carolinians find time to be at daggers drawn with each other over a symbol. The issue is whether the Confederate battle flag should fly, as it has since 1962, over the state Capitol.

That building is itself a battle flag — or perhaps a bloody shirt — in stone, its walls marked with wounds inflicted by Gen. Sherman's guns. Gov. Jim Hodges probably wishes the Capitol were closed for refurbishment, as the governor's mansion is.

Hodges, a Democrat elected last year, knows a standoff when he is stuck smack in the middle of one. Tourism is the state's biggest industry, and the NAACP is urging a boycott of the state until the flag comes down. Pro-flag forces refuse to budge under the duress of the boycott.

A proposed compromise has been cobbled together with the help of some members of the state Legislature's black caucus and three legislators who are members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. (The Adam's Mark hotel chain, which operates in 12 Southern cities, has asked the Sons not to schedule more meetings at its facilities. When Alabama's chapter of the Sons met at an Adam's Mark hotel in Mobile, the profusion of Confederate flags so offended the hotel's largely black service staff, many called in sick and hotel executives had to make beds.) The compromise would move the flag to a Confederate monument not yet built on the Capitol grounds and the governor would press to make Martin Luther King's birthday a state holiday.

One reason the compromise is not working, yet, is that some Republicans believe, mistakenly, that they lost the governorship in 1998 because their incumbent, David Beasley, joined the run-it-down-the-flagpole side. But many of the most intense supporters of the flag as a symbol of a valorous heritage are rural and blue-collar Democrats. Many business-minded Republicans, whose most revered symbol is "$," think the flag is bad for business, so furl it.

Pro-flag people understandably worry that the anti-flag forces' appetite for cultural cleansing will only be whetted by victory at the Capitol. Southern towns large enough to have Dairy Queens have Confederate monuments and street names, none of which would be safe. Why, the University of South Carolina might have to rename Longstreet Theater. (Considering General Longstreet's sorry performance at Gettysburg, the Sons of Confederate Veterans might favor that renaming.)

But now come George Campsen Jr. and George "Chip" Campsen III, father and son, with a Solomonic solution. The father, now 70, was a legislator in 1962. He has polled surviving members of that Legislature, who refute the accusation that the flag was put up as an act of segregationist defiance.

In 1957 Congress called upon states to commemorate the coming centennial of the Civil War, and in 1960 President Eisenhower urged that the commemorations continue for four years. The surviving legislators argue that the flag was put up for that honorable purpose. And they say it was supposed to fly only during the centennial — that it was a mere oversight that the legislation putting it up did not contain a date to take it down.

Chip Campsen, a Republican state legislator, says the argument has been framed improperly, forcing people to choose between preserving a heritage and extirpating racism. He wants what he calls a "paradigm shift," one confining the argument to the actual issue at hand:

"The universal and timeless criteria for a flag to fly over a capitol is that it must be the flag of an existing government that has jurisdiction over people inhabiting the state."

So, the flag can be removed from the Capitol without conceding any imputation of racism, and the reason for removal cannot be used to attack other commemorations of the Confederacy. Will this bring an armistice to the flag fight?

This flag dispute has lasted longer than did the Confederacy, which amounted to a piddling 1.2 percent of the 33 decades of South Carolina history since some planters from Barbados helped get the colony up and running. Now the state has a way out of the dispute, but probably will not take it, such is the state's appetite for argument.
George F. Will can be reached c/o Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. Northwest, Washington, D.C. 20071-9200

Donating your organs could empty your pockets

By HOWARD BROAD
POST-HERALD REPORTER

Every time I saw an article about the shortage of organ donors, I was puzzled. Did people think that they needed their kidneys, livers, hearts, corneas and bodies in general when they left this earth? And after reading a recent article in Life magazine, I was convinced that now was the time to donate.

My first minor annoyance came when I phoned the 1-800-number LIFE provided. The phone was answered by one of those machines that told you to press one for something, press two for something else, etc.. etc.. A human voice was not an option. I gave this machine my name and address and a few days later a letter arrived with a local phone number. It was pleasing that when I phoned the provided number, a live voice answered.

"What would you like to donate?" I was asked. In an overly magnanimous way, sort of like when Scrooge became a good guy, I said, "It's all yours, take whatever you can use." She was thankful. Then almost as an afterthought, not wanting my wife and family to have a corpse without eyes or skin or brain tissue, I said, "Dispose of what you can't use if anything is left."

She explained that she could not do that. I was amazed that they could remove every conceivable body part, but were unable to simply dispose of the rest. However, she had a phone number I could call that would accept my donation and dispose of whatever remained.

I immediately phoned the number she provided and was connected to a live person at the University of Alabama at Birmingham who was understanding and sent me a form to fill out. With the form was a nice letter saying how thankful they were for my generosity. And the next paragraph said that if my family agreed to pay them $750 they'd accept my body, take what they needed and dispose of the rest.

The letter made me think of an old Vaudeville routine that used to break everyone up. It was called the "automobile bit." The seller of an automobile believed he was getting $30 for his car, while the "buyer" thought he was getting the aforementioned $30 to dispose of it.

If you've read this far you may simply feel that I have a ghoulish sense of humor, but I really don't. I simply can't understand how the medical profession can constantly plead for body and tissue and organ donations on one hand and then with the other send the donor's family an invoice.

Then again, maybe the medical profession has the right idea.

This Christmas if any of my friends or family send me a fruitcake, I'll bill¥'em.
Howard Broad can be reached
at 325-2343 or mailbox@postherald.com

LOOK BACK

50 years ago, Dec. 16, 1949: London's 2,800 power plant workers end three-day wildcat strike.

Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin announces British recognition of Communist China.

25 years ago, Dec. 16, 1974: New York Mayor Abraham Beame lays off about 8,000 city workers due to stagnant revenues and mounting costs.

Jefferson County Sheriff's Department ballistics tests link slayings of Harbin Oil Co. President John Harbin, 49, and Tuscaloosa firefighter Buddy Copeland.

Top of page