The Corner In The Middle

Recently,there has been an upsurge by the media covering the Toyota recall.  Tuesday, several stories covered that Toyota took too long to do safety recalls of it’s vehicles.  I ask you this:

Do you remember the Ford tire fiasco a few years ago?  When they didn’t even stop production on the vehicle, denying there was any problem at all, even blaming the customers for driving over 55 mph?  What about the Pinto?  Remember that little economy car that Ford put out that had that pesky problem of blowing up when it got hit in the ass end? 

Even worse, and frankly more offensive to me, than vehicle recalls, what about the mass country wide beef recalls in the last three years from “mash” hamburger containing deadly ecoli that killed children and paralyzed adults? Or even the recalls that never happened?   For instance, on October 6, 2007, Cargill Meat Solutions Corporation recalled 845,000 pounds of frozen ground beef patties produced at its Butler, Wisconsin location because of possible E. coli o157:H7 contamination, or the almost two million pounds of recalled meat from the now defunct Topps meat conglomerate, or this one from a NY Times article about the same issue?   Where is the federal investigation and public outrage on that?  That meat went to schools, where children ate it, and according to the article, 3,000 grocery stores encompassing 41 states?  And, it wasn’t recalled for several months, even after officials in both the government and the corporation admitted they knew about it, but they had “discussions” to decide the best way to handle it? 

Friends, how can you stand by and pronounce that you care about consumer safety when the news is being flooded with reports that Toyota took too long to acknowledge it had an issue, but there is nothing about the food products that you put in your mouths to depend on for life and the lack of actual government oversight?  Is this Toyota outrage really about safety?  I suggest it’s that instead of the invisible poor eating this crap “mash” bacteria filled meat, this brake safety issue effected upper middle class consumers, and they have the money and voice to criticize those who dare encroach on the image they drive around in.

Responsible society needs responsible attorneys, not attorneys who cater to those with money.  Remember why you went to law school, remember how it felt when you had no voice?

You are going to be paying loans back for many, many years, you might as well make a little use of your inherited social powers and fix something that is broken… 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 6:15 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.