Originally posted from 11-14-04 to 11-21-04
In God We Trust...
by Lady Liberty

...but apparently in almost nobody else. In fact, pervasive distrust has become just about universal. Consider:

Families worried in an age of excited TV and Internet reports on child molestation and other sex crimes are more and more inclined to look into the past history of that new neighbor or the guy down the block who waves to their kids whenever he passes the playground. Despite cries of invasion of privacy from various civil liberties groups, myriad online resources exist for the concerned parent not least of which is the centralized Sex Offender Registry Information Center.

Of all people, we should each of us trust our doctors. But when a doctor tells us something we don't want to hear, rather than proceeding with some course of treatment many of us get a second opinion, thank you very much. And when it comes to our confidential medical information, those of us concerned with the privacy of our most personal information may conceal or even overtly lie so that it won't show up in medical records that aren't kept truly secure (if you think HIPAA offers any significant protection, you might want to think again).

In turn, and with some justification, many of our doctors no longer trust us to be honest about our medical conditions or history. But to turn the tables right back on the doctors, the government doesn't trust them not to overprescribe medications that you and I might be inclined to abuse; which, on the flip side means, doctors aren't so sure they trust us when we tell them we're in pain.

When we buy a service from a vendor, we check with the Better Business Bureau to ensure they're reliable and competent; when we purchase goods, we want guarantees of our money back or replacement products. We insist on such recourse because we don't trust manufacturers or vendors to necessarily provide us with the product or service as advertised. Meanwhile, the vendor wants payment in advance, an ID before he'll take a check, or credit checks prior to offering payment plans.

Some years ago when I relocated and had to find a new bank, I walked into a local branch of a bank I'd previously used elsewhere and asked about depositing several thousand dollars into an account there. Despite the fact I was going to give them money rather than asking that they give me some in the form of a loan, employees there insisted on doing a credit check on me claiming that poor credit risks were often poor customers (for the record, I ripped up the paperwork and took my deposit elsewhere).

At one time, you applied for a job with an application and a résumé. If you were the most qualified applicant, you'd get the job; if you weren't, you wouldn't. Obviously, there have always been select professions that warranted background checks. People wanting to be FBI agents, for example, or engineers looking for a job with a defense contractor that required security clearance. But now a significant number of employers conduct background or credit checks as a matter of course, and in some instances, a bad credit check can cost you the job regardless of your qualifications. Worse, the frequency of background checks is increasing, and such checks are becoming more and more comprehensive.

In our personal lives, when we meet new people, we more often than not take what they say with a grain of salt until they prove themselves. In the dating world, "googling" our opposite number has become popular as a way of conducting a sort of low-end and informal background check of our own. Should those dates result in marriage, we show our ongoing distrust with matters ranging from pre-nuptual agreements to private detective agencies formed solely to check up on spousal activities to bizarre products that let us confirm whether or not one of us is cheating.

But here's the sad part: Most of our distrust is warranted.

We wouldn't feel the need to check on our neighbors if it weren't for the facts that sex offenders are likely to reoffend, and that our current judicial system often releases them to new areas (ostensibly so that, in new surroundings, they won't face the same temptations that put them behind bars in the first place, but likely also because their old stomping grounds won't have them back).

Our medical information is now so widely disseminated that there are statutes on the books to prevent employers from discriminating against those with ailments or disabilities of various kinds when, in fact, most of those ailments are undetectable by laymen; we worry about the further spread of such information to places like banks (who are ostensibly at least potentially able to get the data because of holes in HIPAA) who might use it to discriminate in the offering of various services. As for doctors committing malpractice or overprescribing, or patients overindulging in medications, well, an occasional read of your local newspaper ought to be adequate to show you that the distrust of both sides is legitimate.

Speaking of banks, since the advent of the USA PATRIOT Act, it's become even more invasive for those needing to conduct business at some financial institution or another. Every single one of us is now presumed a potential terrorist and is eyeballed accordingly. (It would, of course, make more sense to watch those who've given some cause to be watched, but apparently it's easier to watch everyone than it is to make some kind of rational determination as to who might have committed some action or another that might actually warrant some monitoring.)

Employers aren't really out to invade our privacy. Their actions are the result of being burned one too many times by prospective hires who've lied on applications or résumés, and by employees who have lied, cheated, or pilfered on the job.

As for checking out our dates or prospective mates, well, I don't imagine there's a one of us who's managed to reach adulthood without seeing enough to pierce our own veil of trust. Don't we all have at least one or two personally known examples of lying, cheating, and worse between husbands and wives? And who isn't aware of a break-up gone frighteningly awry with one or both parties seeking to wreak vengeance on the other?

So we're not trusted, and we don't trust in return. But the notable exception to all this may be the single most frightening of all due to its all-encompassing repercussions. That exception is the government. For example:

Local law enforcement doesn't trust us to protect ourselves with our own firearms and we're told we should dial 911 instead. But repeated cases and the subsequent court rulings have shown that the police aren't liable if they fail to protect us, whether that failure be due to a lackadaisical response or an inability to mount an adequate response in time. What do we do? Despite a mountiain of evidence that should see us conclude the opposite, we (oh, not me, and certainly none of you who favor liberty, but far too many!) clamor for more gun control even as we look to the police as heroes in blue who'll arrive just in time to save the day.

Politicians repeatedly make promises that sound good to us and so we vote in their favor. But once elected, they conveniently forget or reneg on their promises. And what do we do? Come the next election, we vote for the vast majority of them again.

The Bill of Rights promises us freedom of religion, and our federal government in turn exists to protect and enforce those freedoms. Yet a federal agency under the orders of a federal official put a fringe religious group under siege and eventually murdered almost all of those who were members. What do we do? We villify those who died rather than accuse those who lied.

The Constitution provides that an army exists to protect our national interests, yet in the case of Iraq—whether through failed intelligence or failed policies—the only real danger has been to our soldiers fighting to take the last unconquered bits of ground there. And what do we do? Well, as our representatives, Congress increases the intelligence budget for agencies that should have been restructured, and the duly elected (by us) administration forms a new bureaucratic behemoth to make the chain of command even longer and more prone to kinks.

In a nutshell, sex offenders have earned our distrust by doing something unthinkable and by their potential to do that unthinkable thing again. Doctors have committed malpractice, and patients have proved addicts. Manufacturers have shown themselves to be both fallible and uncaring for those who purchase faulty or flawed products, while employees have demonstrated themselves incapable, incompetent, or untrustworthy. As a direct result, none of us entirely trusts any of them, and none of them place complete trust in us.

So why is it that, when we've been cheated on, robbed, and betrayed in virtually every sense of the words, so many of us still have some kind of blind trust in the government? Isn't it time to open our eyes and take a good, hard look at the evidence, however painful it might prove? And once we do, shouldn't our distrust extend past our neighbors, doctors, employees, and retailers and to those who've most consistently betrayed us and the Constitution? Or is it that too many of us consider the government to be of less import to our lives than our cars or our carpenters?

Just as ignorance or apathy in the case of the child molester next door may lead to tragedy, our refusal to see the ugly truth of too many individuals and agencies in government will eventually (probably sooner rather than later) lead to the loss of that which makes all other things in America possible, that being freedom. While we still have a little of it left, it's time for us to use it to refuse to accept the lies any longer; to demand accountability and recompense for unconstitutional actions; and to work to change or retire those parts and pieces of government that have proved so completely that they simply cannot be trusted.

Originally posted from 10-17-04 to 10-24-04
Cruel and Unusual
by Lady Liberty

Americans on both sides of the death penalty issue are looking forward to an upcoming Supreme Court hearing on whether or not the ultimate punishment is appropriate for those who committed their crimes before they were 18 years old. As is to be expected, those against the imposition of the death penalty are even more against it in cases involving the relatively young; a few seem to have rethought their position where youth is a factor, but many advocates of capital punishment point to the heinousness of crimes they say warrant death no matter who commits them.

I've gone on record more than once that I believe the nature of the crime is what must determine the nature of the punishment. At the same time, I don't think that the IQ of a violent criminal must necessarily be a mitigating factor when you consider that an inability to think in depth about right and wrong means with certainty that the man or woman in question can never, under any circumstances, be rehabilitated and will thus forever remain a grave danger to others. And there are crimes of such violent and amoral nature that I don't think age can't be used as an excuse, either.

As an example of the latter, three teenagers in a community where I once lived were arrested and convicted of the truly horrific torture of a young local woman. The woman, who very nearly died, survived with massive physical scarring and disability surpassed only by the emotional damages she suffered. The subhumans who committed the awful crime consisted of two 16 year-olds and the 14 year-old ringleader. Having read the details of the torture personally, I can honestly tell you I've no problem with seeing a criminal like that, whatever his age, strapped to a gurney with a needle in his arm. I agree we've all been young and stupid at one time or another, but I don't imagine too many of us repeatedly stabbed red-hot tools into living flesh!

My apparent hardline stance on capital punishment is significantly mitigated, however, by one crucial caveat: I believe that criminals must be convicted and punished if they're found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but should only be executed if there's no doubt at all. Too many men on death row have been released after new and more technologically advanced tests are done; too many prisoners have gone free after others confessed or errors were discovered and acknowledged. So a certain grievousness of action must be combined with certainty of guilt before I can say that I'm willing to see capital punishment imposed.

I say all this merely to make it clear to you that I don't necessarily oppose capital punishment. I am, in fact, entirely convinced that there's no more suitable penalty for some particularly terrible crimes. There are those, of course, who disagree with me quite vehemently. But I'm willing to bet that the most angry death penalty advocate and the most vociferous death penalty opponnet could agree with me on two things: that innocents should not suffer such a punishment, and that most crimes don't warrant death.

Just a few days ago, a woman of my acquaintance lost her only daughter. This bright and beautiful young woman will be buried on what would have been her 28th birthday. At the moment, her family is numbed by their loss and stunned at the senselessness of the car accident that took her life. But I'm sufficiently at a distance to wonder if there wasn't some perverse sense behind the accident after all, unjust and immoral as it may have been. You see, she died directly as the result of the commission of a simple theft and the authorities' attempts to punish that crime.

The police received a call from a business owner in Rochester, New York saying that a couple of men were behind his place of business attempting to steal a snowblower. The officers dutifully responded. When they arrived, however, the thieves ran. Instead of making use of any evidence and eye-witness reports at hand, the police took off after the men. To their credit, when police saw that the pair weren't about to stop and that the speed and recklessness of the chase was dangerous, they decided to use the information they already had to catch the men at a later and safer time (a police spokesman says policies in place there consider whether the risks "outweigh the gravity of the offense"). Unfortunately, they didn't stop the chase soon enough.

The van, ignoring traffic signals while still running from the police, stopped only after it hit a car carrying several innocent young women. My friend's daughter suffered serious head injuries in the crash; she lingered for five days in a coma before the impossibly difficult decision was made to remove her from a respirator. A young woman lost her life and her family lost their child. How can this possibly be a just punishment for mere theft no matter who it is that dies? Of course, that an innocent perished makes it worse. But would it really have been much better or more just if it were the thief or a cop who died instead?

Several years ago, an elderly couple in Cleveland, Ohio were on their way to a favorite restaurant for an early dinner. Just before they reached an intersection, a car turned through it at a high rate of speed. As the couple's own vehicle passed through the intersection, pursuing police careened into the couple's car and killed them both. Other accidents across the country have similar tales of cause and effect (and those who live in LA can watch them unfold on live TV on a shockingly regular basis). As a result, many states and municipalities have passed laws having to do with police chases and when the accompanying risks are warranted.

As nearly as I can tell, the equation is a relatively simple one that requires nothing from Congress or state legislators, and not much more than that from common sense. If cops and criminals were driving the only cars on the road, I'd say that they can run and chase as either pleases. But they're not. And since we already know the bad guys don't really care about much else but getting away, it's up to the cops to exercise, laws or no laws, some of their common sense to protect the public they're sworn to serve. Police have got to ask themselves before a high speed chase gets underway if the crime warrants such action. If the suspects don't pull over and, in fact, speed up when sirens and flashing lights are right behind them, or if they run on sight of the police, that's decision time. Waiting until the speedometer already says 90 mph is too late to determine the danger is greater than the crime and to break off the chase. Witness, after all, the Rochester event.

A sniper with a long-range rifle who's just shot a couple of victims and may be on his way to shoot several more; a man known to be transporting a dirty bomb; or a man who's just been seen stabbing an elderly couple to death have all committed crimes I think potentially warrant the death penalty. And since other innocents are clearly at risk even in the near term by letting such criminals go even if only for a matter of hours or days, police should consider the risk of an accident that kills an innocent or two to be one worth taking (though certainly never worth it to any who lose a loved one). But a chase merely to issue a speeding ticket or to recover a stolen snowblower? That's worth a couple of hundred bucks or a short jail sentence. No one should have shed any blood let alone died over such a thing.

Even immediately after the accident, the police claimed to know who the driver of the van was. They have since arrested their suspect. Allegedly in violation of parole, he'll probably have a charge of manslaughter or vehicular homicide added to the laundry list of other allegations against him. The police will likely be praised for bringing the man to justice. But I can't imagine there's anybody out there who would say the price of putting this man behind bars with an additional few years tacked onto his sentence was worth the cost.

We as members of the general public need to cut the police a little slack when they choose to delay the arrest of garden variety criminals for safety's sake. The police, meanwhile, need to pull back a little of their own pride—or hubris, as the case may be—and let the bad guys go if only for a little while. Better still, we ought to take a hard look at eliminating some of the multitude of frivolous and unnecessary laws that have the police seeing illegal actions at every turn, particularly when even those innocent of all but relatively minor crimes have been known to panic sufficiently to run when pursued. Unfortunately, when it gets right down to it, yet another death because of a police chase will probably only result in yet another ordinance to further define when it is and is not appropriate to engage in a high speed chase.

Lisa's life was nowhere near as long as it should have been, but her years here weren't wasted. She loved and was loved, and she brought joy into the lives of those who knew her. That's a worthy legacy in and of itself. Her father has publicly wondered if perhaps the purpose behind his daughter's death was to "get his [the driver of the van] butt off the streets" ostensibly so he wouldn't hurt anybody else. Maybe so, but if that's the case, her life was sold far too cheaply to put a thief behind bars.

Instead, think what a monument it would be to this young woman if her death got just enough additional attention to overzealous law enforcement and an overabundance of laws that some real reforms could be made. It won't bring back this lovely girl whose short life will ever be a bittersweet memory for those who knew her, and whose death will always be a bottomless hole in her mother's heart. But at least it would be something important and meaningful enough to all Americans that it would begin to pay back the smallest portion of everything else that was lost when Lisa died.

In memory of Lisa K., 1976-2004

Originally posted from 10-10-04 to 10-17-04
Give Me Some Space
by Lady Liberty

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a NASA nut. In fact, a significant number of people who don't know me know that I'm a NASA nut. But just because I'm a nut doesn't mean I'm crazy!

I'm all too well aware that NASA is a government agency funded by tax dollars. I'm a little unhappy about the former given that the word "government" doesn't often appear next to a word like "innovative" or efficient," and an agency like NASA needs to be both. I'm a lot unhappy about the latter because, though I think the space program is invaluable, I'm not fond of the government forcing people to hand over their hard-earned cash for much of anything outside legitimate national defense.

The truth is that I'm in love with the idea of space study and exploration in general. I'm in love with NASA because, since the late 1950's, it's been America's all-of-our-space-eggs-in-one-basket agency. Though that's lamentable, it didn't mitigate my happiness at the successful Mars Pathfinder landing when I was fortunate enough to be at a NASA facility to hear the first return signals come back live; and it didn't assuage my pain when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated in the blue skies above Texas and I wept along with the other early shoppers who were watching the display TVs in our local Wal Mart.

On October 4, and separated by mere hours, I found my vision blurred again by tears of both sheer joy and gentle sorrow. Only this time, the events causing such emotions were ones we might call historic bookends, and ironic ones at that. On the morning of October 4, as USA Today put it, a private [space]craft launches a new era. Within hours, that news was poignantly contrasted with the notice that one of the original Mercury astronauts, Gordon Cooper, had died. As the old guard and NASA's exclusivity slowly passes away, it's abundantly clear that a new and frankly exciting space race has begun.

SpaceShipOne, the odd looking craft that managed to reach the lower reaches of space three times in recent weeks—twice within a matter of days to win the Ansari X Prize—was the first civilian effort to make it into space. (In what I consider a decent gesture, NASA gave both of the pilots who flew the ship on its historic flights a pair of astronaut wings). While SpaceShipOne has all of the honor and prestige of being first, it's not likely to be the last. At least two other groups involved in the X-Prize competition are close enough to functionality to claim to be planning regular flight service for tourists within the next few years. Meanwhile, Scaled Composites—the proud builder of SpaceShipOne—has already contracted with Richard Branson (the Virgin Airlines mogul) to provide ships for his just-announced Virgin Galactic flight service. Space travel—at least on a very limited basis—is finally poised to become a truly civilian effort.

And now that civilians are involved, can capitalism be far behind? Probably not in America, no. In fact, one columnist has already called space the final free market; though investors are hesitant until the technology is further proven, Mr. Branson is likely only at the head of the curve rather than the single point of interest. Investing in private space travel is almost certainly on the way just as soon as investors get a grasp on the many potential money-makers involved in such ventures.

These considerations of the free market in space and the accompanying investments brings me back to NASA and its bloated budgets, scaled back goals, and aging and expensive space shuttle fleet. Worst of all is the fact that NASA, after some fifty years as a government agency, has been largely subsumed by a government culture which is, in turn, damping down those all important traits of "innovative" and "efficient" that are so valuable.

I don't argue that research and development done well and properly costs a lot (former NASA Administrator Dan Goldin's "better, faster, cheaper" policies were the direct cause of some spectacular and unfortunate failures). Though I hate that some ambitious NASA projects have been cancelled or postponed due to cost, I understand the necessity for some of the cuts. And as far as the shuttle goes, well, I just visited the Space Shuttle Enterprise on display at the newest National Air and Space Museum building, and can tell you that she's one of the most wrenchingly beautiful things I've ever seen. But she's old. She's built from 1960's dream designs and 1970's lowest-bidder technology. And newer ships, long on the drawing boards, are going nowhere largely due to the substantial expense that would be involved and Congress' hesitation to spend the money (it's too bad Congress doesn't hesitate to spend money on so many other less valuable things, too, but I digress...)

Some free market boosters have crowed, "SpaceShipOne, NASA Nothing!" I only agree with half of that statement. Without NASA, there would probably have been little or no space effort at all, and certainly not one that's reached the heights it has in a relatively few years (at least we can be comforted by the knowledge that the deep pockets of the American taxpayer have accomplished something worthwhile). And though SpaceShipOne relied on some new technologies, it also borrowed from those things NASA dreamed of and did first. And that, my friends, tells us how we can save NASA and its valuable work even while we get rid of NASA and its tax dollar spending. Consider:

I've met with some NASA engineers personally, and I've read more than a few firsthand accounts of others involved in varying ways with NASA. Those men and women are smarter and more creative than most of us have ever dreamed of being. They could probably build a machine that would fly around the world on a cup of water if someone gave them enough time, paperclips, and duct tape. Their dedication is admirable; their genius is, with surprising frequency, astounding. Aside from direct application for space exploration of that dedication and genius, I've seen for myself some of the amazing technological spin-offs that have resulted from NASA research (heart pumps based on jet engine turbines, de-icing equipment now standard on all jetliners, quicker freezing and thus better preservation of food thanks to low temperature fuel studies, and much, much more). These spin-offs are essentially handed to private industry because, well, they were created with tax dollars in the first place.

So let's privatize NASA. If the military wants to launch a satellite, it can pay NASA for the fuel, crew, and facility. If government researchers want to study climate change, they can ante up for the privilege. If a doctor wants to watch a surgery around the world in real time, there's a charge for the satellite time. If Lockheed-Martin wants to have a wing design tested in a wind tunnel, it can rent the building and its expert staff. If pharmaceutical companies want time on the International Space Station to manufacture new or different compounds, they can pay for trip and the stay. And so on.

NASA's work in the past has been incredibly useful to a wide spectrum of industries; there's no reason to suspect it won't be in the future. They might as well get paid—and paid as well as they deserve—for it. (Many people don't know just how important and widespread NASA's contributions to everyday life have been, largely due to a lack of publicity. As a private corporation, you can bet NASA's past public relations failings will be replaced by a slick and very effective advertising program, something the free market has come to expect and which would quite honestly do NASA a world of good.)

The bottom line here is that SpaceShipOne's accomplishment doesn't mean you and I can go into orbit tomorrow (more's the pity), though it certainly shows us that that day is coming relatively soon. But it also doesn't mean that NASA is obsolete. It's apparent that the free market is poised send SpaceShipOne to new heights (assuming the threat of overweening government regulation doesn't ruin these smaller agencies, too). Wouldn't it be a terrible shame if we didn't at least try to let the free market do the same for NASA? A substantial infrastructure of equipment and prodigious talent is already in place there; let's see it employed to its fullest potential rather than merely used as much as possible under what's become grinding bureaucratic and regulatory restraint.

The flight of SpaceShipOne made headline news around the world. Virgin Galactic has already sold a significant number of tickets for its maiden flights. That shows that SpaceShipOne has proved not only that civilian space flight is on the way, but that many ordinary people are interested in space. They're just not interested in big-government bureaucratic space. And whatever my undying passions for the greater universe out there may be, neither am I.

Originally posted from 09-26-04 to 10-03-04
Battling the War On Drugs
by Lady Liberty

Colorado Sheriff Bill Masters is on a crusade. Of course, he does his job working to protect the citizens of his county and arresting the bad guys there. But his greatest passion is reserved for righting what he sees as a truly great wrong, and that wrong is the so-called War on Drugs.

There's little question that Masters is fighting on the right side despite the seeming incongruancy of a law enforcement officer coming out against the War on Drugs. But he's seen firsthand, and heard stories directly from others with similar experiences, just how little good and how much evil the existing drug prohibition in this country has done. Any law enforcement officer who takes seriously his oath to protect "civilians" can't ignore insensible statutes; inconsistent enforcement; draconian penalties all too frequently unfairly applied; the temptations for abuse of authority; and the massive waves of crime and violence encouraged and abetted under prohibition. And Masters doesn't. Instead, he works toward sorely needed reform.

Sheriff Masters was once an uncompromising enforcer of drug laws. In fact, he won an award for being so good at it. But in the face of evidence that showed him the War on Drugs was more of a problem than the drugs themselves, and his notion that there are better ways to deal with those drug problems not actually caused by enforcement activities, he determined that repeals and reforms were the only logical way to proceed. Several years ago, he wrote a book entitled Drug War Addiction. In that book, he revealed much of what he'd learned about the War on Drugs over his years in law enforcement, and he offered his own ideas for ways to address both drug use and drug enforcement in a more efficient, effective, and rational way.

Masters has now published The New Prohibition: Voices of Dissent Challenge the Drug War. This book consists of a collection of essays all discussing and dissecting the American War on Drugs. Masters wrote one of the included essays himself, and serves as the editor for the rest. The New Prohibition isn’t the first book to criticize American drug policy and the War on Drugs. But what sets The New Prohibition apart isn’t its subject matter nor the fact it’s a collection of essays. No, what makes The New Prohibition different and gives it maximum impact is that its viewpoints come from so many different—and authoritative—directions. (For more on The New Prohibition, read our book review.)

After having read both books, I had a few questions for Sheriff Masters which he kindly took the time to address.

Lady Liberty: I've heard it said in the past that law enforcement officers take an oath to uphold the law. It doesn't matter whether they like a particular law or not, they must enforce it. Is that true?

Sherriff Bill Masters: Police officers have a tremendous amount of discretion in the enforcement of law. Few laws (some domestic violence laws, etc.) actually require that law enforcement officers make arrests. 90 percent of a good police officer's activities involve resolving problems without the application of legal processes.

LL: I'm not the only person that has suggested that law enforcement officers simply refuse to enforce a law that's just plain wrong, much as I would advocate juries to take advantage of their powers of jury nullification. Is that what you did in connection with the various laws that make up the War on Drugs?

SBM: No. We, the sheriff's office, do not refuse to enforce any law. There may come a time when the application of the law is the best answer to a problem. Really bad laws are recognized as such only after the police apply the letter of the law to the issue. If the police arrested everyone—not just kids and black people but prescription pill popping and pill sharing housewives, Jeb Bush's ("just a private family matter") daughter, Rush Limbaugh etc.—who violated any drug law, "normal people" (white voters) would demand change. Just like other wars, change doesn't really happen until middle American kids are coming home in body bags with no end in sight.

LL: I trust your decision-making abilities. I've read your books, and you're obviously interested in constitutionality and in what I'd call libertarian logic. But what about those in law enforcement who can't be trusted?

SBM: Listen, the problem is not with law enforcement being trusted. They are just doing what the legislative branch tells them to do and funds them to do. Put the blame on the senators and congressmen who are "states' rights, small federal government" talkers [but who] then vote to fund federal drug enforcement on all levels. Put them on the discussion panels, not the cops.

LL: You determined some time ago that the War on Drugs was wrong. Did you change your attitude suddenly, or was it a gradual shift? What was the "straw that broke the camel's back" so to speak that tipped you to the other side in the War on Drugs?

SBM: I really always felt this way. I just forgot to listen to logic and my true conservative (limited government/personal responsibility) roots. The straw for me was the misallocation of law enforcement dollars away from homicide investigations and now terrorism prevention and into busting pot smokers.

LL: Did you debate the matter with your colleagues?

SBM: Most cops don't debate the law. The ones that do, besides the political hacks, know that change is needed.

LL: Once you made your decision, what was the reaction of your colleagues? How about that of your superiors?

SBM: I am an elected official, so I have no superior other then the public I serve. Most of my colleagues thought I was crazy or a drug user. Most now are beginning to understand that change is in the air. Some even say that the drug war is over.

LL: Many people are convinced that the War on Drugs is bad, or at least unwinnable. The federal government, however, has made it clear that it disagrees. How can local and state authorities overcome the threat implicit in that fact?

SBM: Don't make it a liberal issue; make it a conservative one. It is, pure and simple, a nanny state—big federal government, wasteful spending, no states' rights issues. True Democrats should love it, and true Republicans should hate it.

LL: Obviously, if you had a magic wand, you'd wave it and make a few changes. If you could literally rewrite American drug policy overnight, what would it look like tomorrow morning?

SBM: 1. States decide the drug laws that are best for them; 2. People have a constitutional right to decide what goes into their bodies; 3. People, not objects, are judged harshly for their actions that directly hurt or endanger others.

It's cynical to say so, but I also suspect it's all too true that Sheriff Masters' suggestions make too much sense for the authorities to suddenly adopt. Too many agencies have become dependent on the money they get from forfeitures based on drugs or the accusations of drugs (something Masters addresses in his book Drug War Addiction). At least as many have also become enamored with their own authority. But at least we do know that, when the time comes, there are people ready with cogent alternatives to the War on Drugs. We can only hope that it won't, as Masters puts it, take too many more American kids in body bags to initiate the needed changes.

My thanks go out to Sheriff Masters first and foremost for his thought-provoking books, and for taking the time to talk about his views. For more about The New Prohibition: Voices of Dissent challenge the Drug War, read our book review. The New Prohibition is available from Amazon.com, or directly from the publisher.

Originally posted from 08-08-04 to 08-15-04
 The Truth is Out There
by Lady Liberty

Because I have a very busy schedule, I attend very few events outside of those related to my job or politics. I do, however, make exceptions for things I think I might really enjoy. For example, a few weeks ago, I went to an Alice Cooper concert (for the record, yes, I had a great time, and yes, even in his mid-50's, Alice still rocks). More recently, I was in the audience for a talk on UFO's. Now, I know these things are a little odd, but such things entertain me and that was the sole reason for my attendance at both of these venues.

Despite my best knowledge at the time, it's turned out that both of these things were beyond entertaining; they both ended up having a significant relationship to politics as well. In the case of the Alice Cooper concert, most of you have doubtless seen Mr. Cooper's recently publicized comments concerning rock stars and politics. I confess to being both amused and delighted by his words. Meanwhile, the politics involved in the UFO talk were more subtle, but the implications far broader. When I reflected on those implications further, I also found them to be quite a bit scarier than Alice Cooper, even in full make-up.

The man who spoke about the UFO's is well educated and from a science-based organization (the Center for UFO Studies). He himself doesn't claim to have ever witnessed a UFO, but he talked of the anecdotal evidence as well as presented a brief video clip of an engineer making claims about what he himself had seen some years ago. He told the audience that "we are not alone," and that many UFO's are, indeed, of extraterrestrial origin. To that point, his talk was much as I had expected it to be. I was both intrigued and entertained.

I looked around the room to gauge the reaction of others to the speech. While everyone appeared attentive, some people looked amused. Others looked utterly fascinated. The audience seemed to me to be split right along the lines one might see in any random segment of the general public when queried on the topic of UFO's: a group apparently divided into skeptics, believers, and those who'd really like to believe but who hadn't seen enough evidence yet to feel comfortable doing so.

Then the speaker told of meeting a man who had worked for the federal government in connection with UFO's. The man claimed his job had been that of "disinformation," and he advised he had worked in an official capacity to discredit any witnesses or such evidence as might be found. When this kind of job description is joined to the military and other authoritative cover-ups that have been alleged for years, it's apparent we can only assume a conspiracy of significant proportion underwritten by the federal government itself.

I looked around the room again. And whether anyone thought that little green men had visited earth or not, it was obvious that just about everyone there did believe that the government would pay people to discredit and misinform the American public. I saw people in the audience actually nodding when the speaker talked about that government employee being paid to hide the truth even at the expense of ruining reputations.

There are, of course, plenty of conspiracies to go around. Those connected with UFO's are merely some of the more widespread. Was the CIA involved in the assassination of President John F. Kenndy? Some people think so. I've personally received e-mails from people asking what I know about chemtrails and what I think of them. There are those who believe that Timothy McVeigh was a government agent whose actions in Okalahoma City were ordered; there are reputable people who think that McVeigh was guilty but that there was also an extensive government cover-up as to accomplices and foreknowledge of the bombing. The US Navy's low frequency active sonar project - LFAS - was alleged to be damaging to marine life prior to its testing and deployment. Many now say that's been shown to be the case despite earlier dismissals of such conspiracy theories, and that merely lends credence to other conspiracy theories out there. After all, if one can be ridiculed and turn out to be the truth, then couldn't the same be the case with others?

Personally, I think that definitive proof that UFO's are of extra-terrestrial origin would be such a major discovery that it would be almost impossible to quash. Such a discovery could be declared as "Top Secret" as officialdom might wish, and word would still get out. The more people who knew about such a thing, the sooner the revelation would occur. And to date, the conspiracy theorists have it that many, many people - particularly those in the military as well as high-ranking government officials - do know. So I have a difficult time imagining that the stories would be kept secret for long let alone for upwards of fifty years. In short, while I have no problem believing that the government might try a cover-up in connection with such evidence, I can't imagine it would be successful over the long term.

I explained that opinion to another member of the UFO audience after the presentation was over. He agreed that such a cover-up wouldn't be successful, but pointed out that it hasn't been. After all, the rumors of Area 51 and its reverse-engineering projects on "flying saucers" won't go away despite government denials and ridicule (a former employee there has come forward only to be accused of lying, exaggeration, and worse; his story, despite the damage it's caused him personally, hasn't changed and many believe him). More and more witnesses to the incidents in 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico have gone public to say they were threatened by the military to keep quiet. And people like the man from CUFOS are keeping very, very busy schedules these days.

I can't say that government cover-ups, whichever of them do exist, don't matter. They do. And I can't dismiss all of the so-called conspiracy theories out of hand, though I readily admit some strain credulity with or without the help of "disinformation officers." But there's a phenomenon here that I think government officialdom should worry about a whole lot more than any conspiracy theory real or imagined, and that is this: whether there is an active disinformation effort ongoing in any given instance or not; whether there are lies and cover-ups being created and upheld or not; and whether American citizens are being killed or threatened in connection with such matters or not; the salient point is that a significant majority of us believe that such is the case. In a nutshell, we don't trust our own government, and we trust our individual politicians and military authorities even less.

Harry Truman said, "Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix." And while there's no doubt that Mr. Truman understood the idea of secrecy in connection with specific military matters, his maxim brings a valid point to the fore. Whatever our politics may be, and whatever conspiracies we may personally find believable, it can be no secret that there's some clean-up needed in Washington. Whether it's individual politicians or policies that need to be swept away, the most important thing is that we recognize the dirt for what it is and that we apply ourselves to removing it as quickly as we can.

But sadly, perhaps the ultimate cover-up is our own. We lament that things are the way they are, yet we repeat the same motions that brought us our current circumstances. We should all be asking ourselves why it is that we acknowledge "all politicians lie," yet we repeatedly vote for the same professional politicians when the time comes. Government denials may be something we know about and even expect; how is it that we've also come to accept them? And far worse than that, how is it that we repeatedly excuse our own denials of truth?

If we truly want to take our freedom back, and if we ever want to have respect and trust for our politicians and government again, we must not only acknowledge the facts; we must act on them. Though there are conspiracy theories now popping up on the Internet that voting itself could soon be denied us, for the moment those are just more unbelievable accusations. They'll stay that way if we take action for real change while we still can.

Originally posted from 08-08-04 to 08-15-04
Will They Ever Learn?
by Lady Liberty

The state of Ohio has a problem. On August 3, special elections were held around the state. On the ballots were more than 100 requests from school districts for tax levies. Historically, school funding has been well tolerated by voters who seem to think that a "yes" vote is "for the children." This time, however, three quarters of the levies failed. One Ohio newspaper called the results a "massacre."

Of course, the histrionics began the morning of August 4. Published articles warn of significant cuts to extracurricular activities, employee lay-offs, and a down surge in the quality of education. Many districts are scrambling to get another try at a levy on the ballot in November. Analysts - from both sides of the issue - are dissecting the tallies and talking about "what went wrong."

In the "massacre" story, the reporter concludes that Ohio residents are "maxed out on taxes." But other published accounts suggest that voters are trying to send the state legislature a message. You see, school funding in Ohio has been in trouble for years. In 1997, the Ohio State Supreme Court found the state's method of school funding to be unconstitutional (the court has made the same ruling twice since then). Because school funding there is based on property taxes and thus property values, districts with higher property values - meaning wealthier residents - get more money than poorer districts do. The Court found that to be discriminatory, but didn't suggest any way to fix the problem. The legislature, which considered putting all of the state's property tax money into a slush fund and then doling it out equally based on student population, was roundly chastised for "playing Robin Hood." But no other real solutions have floated to the top, either.

Another facet of the problem is that people with no children - or few children - resent footing the bill for other people's kids. Of course, it's not politic to mention that you don't like paying for something "for the children" whether they're yours or not. But the fact remains that the resentment is there, particularly when property taxes in many places have gone up significantly even without new funding levies of one kind or another.

What may prove to be the biggest problem of all is not whether or not people think their taxes are too high (though they are) or that they shouldn't be forced to pay the bill for children not their own (they shouldn't be), but rather the perception that schools aren't spending the money they do get wisely. For example, in one local school district in my own part of the country, a school administration lamented that it might have to get rid of its swim team and all other pool activities because it couldn't continue to pay some $40,000 a year in pool maintenance fees. But some citizens who questioned that figure did a little research of their own only to learn that an area pool maintenance company would perform identical chores for a quarter of the cost. It would be more than a little surprising if this discovery - and its subsequent announcement - didn't make voters consider just how many other significant and relatively painless cuts could be made if money weren't pouring in without thought.

Ohio isn't alone in its dilemma (although the unconstitutionality of its funding process and the legislature's ongoing inability or unwillingness to address the problem is fairly unique). Other school systems in other parts of the country are experiencing similar difficulties. Seattle residents can expect to see a levy on their special election ballots in September that will, if passed, almost double the amount they're currently paying in property taxes toward school funding. In Oregon, upcoming school levies aren't just for education purposes, but in one instance is intended to help build sidewalks near a school. Kansas and Missouri residents will also see levy requests. Only Minot, North Dakota did the reasonable thing when the school district there looked at the money it had, the money it didn't, and created a balanced budget accordingly.

Meanwhile, a certain area of Texas is doing just fine at the moment, but is busy setting itself up for the same problem in years to come. Property values and taxes there have increased, resulting in a windfall for the schools. If past history is any indicator, the schools will spend every nickel. So what happens if property values decrease or some of the biggest taxpayers leave or close their doors? You an bet officials won't tighten their belts, but will - much as everywhere else - plead poverty and beg voters to bail them out.

Although the problems are complex, the solutions need not be. One big step in the right direction is the establishment of charter schools. These schools are typically a combination of private and public, and are often administered by private companies which, unlike public schools, are held accountable for both their expenditures and the results they get (although the levy failures provide at least a peripheral argument that accountability may have finally arrived). According to the Center for Education Reform, charter schools have a good success rate with their students, and are doing the job for less money than are the public schools. Private schools, too, offer a better value in both terms of quality of education and the cost to provide it (according to a report from The Heritage Foundation, the national average cost per public school student per year as of 2002 was $7,524; private school tuition averages just about half that for elementary school students, and about $1,500 less for secondary school attendees).

Even if Ohio's legislators would take a good look at some of the most viable alternatives to lower school costs in the state, they're going to have almost as hard a time developing that option as they did when they threatened to take from rich districts to give to the...less rich. The Heartland Institute says that there's significant opposition in Ohio to the idea of charter schools. And where is all that resistance coming from? From the state teacher's union, which opposes the very concept of a school that's non-union (although charter schools can be unionized, they're not typically started that way). Charter schools are suffering similar difficulties for similar reasons in Minnesota and in Michigan.

If taxpayers and lawmakers alike really want to solve the school funding problem, they're going to need to stand up to those union factions which oppose the idea of school choice (and for their own selfish reasons, not "for the children" even if that were an argument taxpayers would blindly accept). The Cato Institute has analyzed the circumstances, and says that school choice will not only improve the quality of education but solve many budget woes as well. In its report, the group even suggests that it might not be a bad idea for states to pay private school tuition for those students who want to go. Costs are, of course, cheaper per student than in public schools, so the state would actually save a substantial amount of money by footing the tuition bills, money that could then be spent to address budget shortfalls in other areas.

Better still, why not get taxes and the state out of school funding all together? Give all of the tax dollars used to fund schools back to the taxpayer. And then let those taxpayers with children pay to send their kids wherever they'd like. (Yes, more kids would cost more money, but responsibility would dictate you don't have children you can't afford, and irresponsibility ought not be the problem of the state or, for that matter, your neighbors.) Those who can't - or won't - afford tuition can homeschool, an option that also, by the way, typically offers a higher quality education than does a public school.

Lower taxes. Better education. Teachers who have to perform like other employees or who will get fired like other employees. Parents taking charge of and responsibility for their own children's education. It's simple. It's cost effective. It offers demonstrated quality. And it's eminently logical. Unfortunately, the reasons for undertaking such reform are precisely the same reasons government institutions almost certainly won't do so. If you want to teach a few lessons yourself, try to keep that fact in mind whenever it is you vote again.

Originally posted from 07-11-04 to 07-18-04
Doctor Fix-It
by Lady Liberty

This past week, I had surgery. Although the surgery itself went smoothly and my recovery is proceeding apace (thanks for asking!), events leading up to the actual operation weren't nearly so easily managed.

My particular problem wasn't life threatening, but it was serious enough that it cost significant dollars to fix and required advance approval from my health insurance carrier before I could go ahead. So I got all of the required paperwork together, and sent it along with the recommendations of both my doctor and my chosen surgeon for review and approval. The review process was to take six to eight weeks. How long did it actually take? Well, I first submitted paperwork in early October of 2003. I had surgery in July of 2004. You do the math.

It's easy to get mad at the insurance company in situations like this. After all, I did everything I was told to do and had ample evidence to back up my request. Yet I still ended up having to wait months before I could have my problem taken care of. Exorbitant insurance premiums should have, at the very least, ensured I got the attention I deserved from the carrier! But insurance companies are inundated with requests for unnecessary procedures ranging from medical tests to surgeries, and they're as careful as they can be not to spend one nickel beyond their contractual liability. Actually, they're sometimes careful not to spend one nickel even within their contractual liabilities, and typically demand a good deal of paperwork before they finally pay providers their due.

Why is it that insurance companies have become so difficult to deal with? Well, it's probably in part those unnecessary procedures I mentioned. At one time, hysterectomies were a very common operation. Now they're done on a far less frequent basis. That's not just because of the advances of modern medicine, but rather due to the fact that some doctors' solution to virtually every female problem was once to recommend she have a hysterectomy. Today, antibiotics are prescribed far too frequently and often for conditions antibiotics can't affect. But in the matter of hysterectomies some years ago, and antibiotics now, doctors are capitulating to patient demands on the premise that the hysterectomy or the antibiotics won't hurt the patient, and it will shut them up (this was before we really knew much about the dangers of hormone replacement therapy, of course, or began seeing bacteria that had evolved into antibiotic resistant strains due to the overuse of antibiotics).

So how come doctors give in to patient demands, despite the fact they're often not especially good medicine, or order myriad tests not all of which may be necessary? Well, the technical term for it is CYA (I trust most of you know what that means). Doctors are highly educated, and the vast majority of them are quite competent. But that doesn't mean that even the best of them doesn't occasionally make a mistake, and in medicine, mistakes can be extremely injurious or even fatal. When that happens, doctors are typically sued which in turn necessitates an expensive legal defense. And the potential for that situation is what makes doctors order every possible test just in case the one they miss is the one that would catch the one-in-a-million problem of a particular patient. It also, of course, does a nice job of CYA when the worst happens because no one can say, "Well, why didn't you perform the XYZ test?" or "Shouldn't you have considered the Alpha Beta procedure?"

Of course, a similar though less deadly argument can also be used to explain exactly why it is that medical providers' bills even for the most necessary of procedures are often so high by the time insurance companies get them. That's due to the fact that insurance companies typically only pay a certain percentage of even covered procedures, most reimbursements of which are not at a realistic level (the "usual and customary" charge described in many policies is frequently neither usual nor customary unless you happen to live in Appalachia in 1963). So in order to recoup their own costs as well as to pay high malpractice premiums, keep qualified staff, and incidentally make a living themselves, doctors and hospitals charge as much as they can for anything and everything they can. Aspirin at $3 each? I've seen similar on my own previous hospital bills. In fact, a small sample-size box of Kleenex once showed up as a $5 fee on a bill, as did a $25 charge for a plastic cup. Obviously, insurance disallows most of such charges, but does pay some of it. Since some is better than none, doctors and hospitals have absolutely no incentive to charge more realistic fees or to eliminate some charges all together especially when they're desperately trying to make up for the legitimate fees that have been denied or at least cut drastically.

Some instances of high charges would be far less problematic if so many doctors weren't so afraid of being sued. But they are, and they have every right to be. The blame for that falls squarely at the feet of the average litigious American. In a country where people sue because they burn their tongue on Burger King tea, or because they break their leg falling through a skylight during a night time robbery attempt (both those suits are, lest you wonder, real), doctors are prime targets. In fact, many obstetricians don't deliver babies any more because parents are strongly inclined to sue the doctor if anything goes wrong whether the doctor had anything to do with the infant's problem or not.

Sky high malpractice insurance premiums alone (it seems a good time to point out that only about 5% of medical professionals cause about 80% of malpractice claims, but that all doctors must bear the penalty for those few) mean that office visits can't be $10 or a basket of eggs any more. After all, somebody's got to pony up for premiums that can be upwards of a quarter million dollars a year! And that somebody is us. And since most of us can't afford high medical bills on our own, the majority of us have insurance.And our insurance is billed high dollar figures it pays little of because doctors are probably padding their bills, which means doctors raise their fees still higher and so on, ad infinitum. Exasperated by this vicious circle, more than a few doctors have decided they're not going to wait for malpractice reform (they also say that Medicare reform is another issue that very much needs to be addressed, by the way) and they're retiring or going into other careers leaving more than a few regions of the country facing significant shortages of medical care providers.

There are some who believe that the best "fix" for the medical system in America is to nationalize it. Let the federal government take charge, and prices for drugs and treatments will go down; every American will have insurance (government sponsored insurance, of course), and all will be right with the world. This solution is, of course, demonstrably a bigger problem than the problems we've got now. Under socialized medicine, the program quickly goes broke if it doesn't draw a line between which procedures are covered and which are not. And then, in the most discriminatory way imaginable, the rich will get better care than the middle class, who will in their turn be bankrupted by taxes to pay for care for the poor who, despite somebody else footing the bill, won't get the level care they deserve, either. In addition, without significant financial incentives, drug companies won't work as hard to develop new drug therapies; researchers won't have the wherewithal to study as many medical problems deserving of study; doctors won't develop high end - and expensive - techniques that will save previously doomed patients; and so on. Lots of countries in the world have such socialized medical care. That's how we can know for certain such a plan won't work. And the final straw against nationalized health care is this: guess where the rich people in those countries come for treatment?

But there is, without a doubt, a Catch 22 that must be broken. Doctors charge more than they need to because insurance companies reimburse less than they should; insurance companies reimburse less than they should because hospitals pad their bills; and insurance companies and medical providers alike live in fear of medical malpractice awards that juries have handed out to the tune of multi-million dollar settlements. What to do, what to do?

One of the first things that must be "fixed" is the tort system. It's ironic that, even as I was undergoing surgery, the Senate couldn't stop arguing about legislation that would have provided the bare beginnings of some reform in that it would have placed some limitations on class action lawsuits. Eventually, if it were ever to actually happen, real tort reform could reduce malpractice premiums to realistic levels, and damage awards to figures based on the grievousness of injury rather than the capriciousness of a jury (perhaps we should also demand that doctors see their Sixth Amendment rights honored, and let their cases actually be judged by a jury of their legitimate peers - good doctors aren't any more fond of bad doctors than you and I are, but they have the added ability to actually understand all of the testimony in such cases).

Another thing that will have to be "fixed" is the burdensome regulatory system in this county. New drugs and therapies are approved in Europe much more quickly than they are here. The substantial time and myriad hoops drug companies or researchers must jump through to get past the FDA is a very significant expense that must somehow be recouped, and can really only be paid for via high charges for the finally approved drug or service (and don't forget that all of those unapproved things cost money, too, which can only be recovered by charging even higher prices for those that do get approval).

The bottom line is that getting rid of the regulatory snare that's got the medical industry in a stranglehold would mean that there's nothing about medicine that the free market couldn't handle (with the possible exception of hospital food). In much the same way the free market has already given America such top notch medical facilities, it would also ensure we'd have relatively reasonably priced - and working - drugs and therapies; that insurance premiums would be more realistic and competitive because procedure charges would be more realistic and competitive; and that providers would face malpractice sanctions - professional, financial, and/or criminal - only if they actually committed malpractice.

My own surgeon was extremely competent. The anesthesiologist was not only good at what he did, but could probably have a second career as a stand-up comic if he really wanted to. The nursing staff in the recovery room, both before and after my operation, was both cheerful and professional. And nobody, not even for a moment, patronized me (something that I personally am far more likely to try to sue over than anything trivial like an infection or a misplaced surgical sponge). Each and every one of those that cared for me deserves the money that he or she is paid for the job (actually, they probably deserve more because the truth is that I'm a lousy patient). Thanks, guys!

It is unfortunate that the money they get will be so much less than the fee they'll have to charge, and that I and my insurance company are probably going to battle back and forth more than once just to get the financial end of things settled. It could just be the pain pills talking, but I'm convinced that we can do better. The sad part is that I'd have to be seriously under the influence to think that very many politicians are presently inclined to do what's necessary to try.

Originally posted from 06-20-04 to 06-30-04
Now and Then
by Lady Liberty

This summer, my parents are celebrating their Golden Wedding Anniversary. An event of this magnitude requires a celebration of course, and I'll travel back home to be there for the festivities.

While I've been preparing for my upcoming trip, I've noticed that a few things have changed since 1954 (not that I was there then, mind you - I'm sure Mom would like me to make that clear). Obviously, the technological advances in the last fifty years have been awesome as have the corresponding improvements in the quality of life. But other things haven't gotten better, and it's those that have particularly struck me in recent days.

In 1954, the rate of divorce was less than half what it is now. People who married then were in it for the long haul unless something truly unforgivable occurred within the marriage. Acceptable rationale for divorce then meant such things as cruelty, adultery, or desertion. Most couples, providing they lived to a reasonably healthy age, would celebrate their 25th, 40th, and 50th anniversaries. But in 1969, a Miami lawyer by the name of Stanley Rosenblatt proposed in a publication called "The Divorce Racket" that we move to a "no fault" type of divorce instead of requiring some demonstrable blame for one partner or the other. He hoped to put lawyers out of work in divorce matters as well as to make divorces easier on those doing the divorcing.

Unfortunately, one thing that Rosenblatt didn't take into account was the upcoming generation's general lack of desire to do anything that required too much effort. When "but I'm just not happy" became a legal reason for divorce, people got divorced more and more often. The divorce rate climbed to an all-time high in the 1980's and early 1990's (all too accurately referred to by some as the "me" decade). Surely some of these divorces were due to abusive or adulterous behaviors, but many more than that were the result of "this is too much work for me" reasoning, and that in turn was common because divorces became too easy to get. (Rosenblatt's other mistake was in not realizing just how rabid some lawyers would become in generating more work for themselves.)

By now, a 50th Anniversary is even more rare and precious than it was in the past. Statistics from "Divorce Magazine" indicate that, as of the year 2000, the percentages of married people who reached milestone anniversaries like their 25th (33%), 35th (20%) or 50th (5%) were lower than ever. A less mathematical and more emotional (though significantly less objective) picture can be seen in the microcosm of my own life: My parents have a few friends who have been widowed, but none who have been divorced. I, on the other hand, literally have no one in my own local circle of close friends who hasn't been divorced.

My parents, I'm sure, had some hard times in their lives and their relationship. For example, they lived in an almost unbelievably small mobile home while my father was stationed far from home in the Air Force, and their later attempts to start a family proved to be a difficult and long term struggle; after his discharge, my dad started his own business, and my parents lived in a small apartment in the basement of the building and both worked long hours until they could get it off the ground. But they came through these stresses with the marriage intact and perhaps, even stronger because of them.

Meanwhile, couples today frequently decide the stress is just too much or the frustration more than they're willing to deal with, and they're off to divorce court accordingly. Plenty of those marriages, too, might have come through the other side of adversity and been even more rewarding for both partners if each had only had the necessary maturity and commitment to see it through. Unfortunately, that level of commitment is becoming almost as uncommon as Golden Anniversaries, and Rosenblatt's well-intended "no fault" divorce idea is as much to blame as is a "me first" society.

My parents taught me responsibility, commitment, and hard work were critical attributes for success in both my private and professional lives. They proved those lessons by their own example. One thing I should have learned better but didn't was my father's admonition about credit: "If you can't afford to pay cash, you don't need it." Of course, that lesson is far less simple today when such things as cars and houses are such pricey items that almost nobody can simply open a checkbook and buy them outright. But in general, the concept is still rock solid and it's one that I ignored to my detriment when I was first out of the house and living on my own.

Once I managed to dig myself out of that financial hole, I also became an advocate of payment up front and in full. But new rules and regulations don't make that easy any more! Want to rent a car? You can't, not without a major credit card. Want to get a major credit card? You can't, not without a credit history - which essentially means a history of not paying up front and in full for things. Want to buy a plane ticket? You can still pay cash, but you can also expect to see federal agents on your doorstep shortly thereafter as cash transactions for plane tickets are considered telltale markers of such crimes as drug-running or terrorism. Want a telephone, cable TV, or electricity in your house? Not without a credit check and a Social Security number, you don't! There are rules and regulations everywhere to be followed, and every single one of them requires more and more personal information from each of us. (It can fairly be said that this may have become so in large part because too many people are not to be trusted to keep their contractual word.)

My parents married in Alaska where my dad was stationed at the time. To get there, my mother and her bridesmaid took several flights. All of them were on turboprop planes, and I can remember her telling me of the noise and the turbulence of those rides (her first time on an airplane as it happens). But she and her wedding gown arrived in time, and the small wedding took place as scheduled. Today, jets get us where we're going far more quickly and smoothly. But all of the time we save in flight is more than made up for by the time we spend on the ground going through the many hoops set up by the Transportation Security Administration in the name of security.

Like sheep, we line up in airports to be processed, never really understanding that random searches actually do mean "random," and that many who most nearly fit the profile of "terrorist" are ignored lest someone cry "racism" while kids and grandmothers are taken aside. In my parents' youth, authorities who conducted random searches like that would have been run out of town on a rail both for their offensiveness and their ineffectiveness; today, we're told that we're unpatriotic if we don't approve the methods chosen by the TSA.

A frequent flier I know told me she doesn't really mind the security measures if they'll keep her safe; I told her that they weren't really very effective and suggested the ultimate in safety would be provided by letting passengers who wished to carry their firearms do so. She was horrified, and told me she'd rather be searched. In other words, she trusts poorly trained, largely uneducated and uncaring government employees working a low wage and thankless job more than she trusts gun owners who, as a group, are typically far more responsible than the average citizen. (For the record, despite the trip being a long one, I'll be driving rather than subject myself to air travel security measures which are about to include the intrusive - and also largely ineffective - CAPPS II Program.)

The propaganda spread by a government that is of the firm opinion that we need its interventions if we are to be safe, healthy, and free has taken firm hold; the fact that the latter of the carrots held out by the federal stick isn't even a real option any more doesn't seem to matter to many. Compounding that apathy is a generation that will be the first in decades that isn't likely to live better than its parents. We can blame higher tax rates and a global economy for that, of course, and we won't be entirely wrong. We can point out higher population densities and a struggling public education system to share some portion of blame as well. But the real fault - and the one that underlies all of the other problems we have - is a growing disinterest in and disrespect for commitment.

The people of America's previous and eminently successful generations were committed to their jobs and to doing their best work, not their "good enough" work. Their word was their bond. Their marriages struggled through thick and thin, but they did make it through. Family was paramount. They were better educated in high school because they buckled down and worked - and because their parents and their teachers disciplined them if they didn't behave themselves - than many college students are today. And their idea of safety involved a little common sense and a big stick (or a handy shotgun), and a whole lot of personal responsibility.

On the occasion of my own parents' Golden Wedding Anniversary, the best gift I can give them is to reflect on the lessons they taught and the lives they've led. Many of us could do far worse than to do the same thing. And the best thing that we can do, perhaps, is to finally take our parents' lessons to heart. When we do, I suggest we also take the time to teach our children not to live as many in our generation do, but to look, instead, to Grandma and Grandpa.

We may not generally live better than our parents. But our children and our grandchildren might if we step up to some of our own responsibilities once and for all. Good examples, taken along with a healthy dose of skepticism for the federal behemoth and a distillation of a love for liberty, will make all the difference. Just as the downturn is largely ours, let the turnaround also begin with us, and our generation will have served. I assure you, our parents would be proud.

Originally posted from 06-13-04 to 06-20-04
What Are You Saying?
by Lady Liberty

Whether you're forming a group or starting a business, one of the first and most important things you consider (after deciding where your focus will lie, of course) is the name of that group or business. Short, sweet, and to the point is usually best. If you get too cute, people may not take you seriously. If you get too clever, people may not recognize who you are or what you do.

A property rights group I know of was formed to fight an eminent domain proceding against a group of local residents and small business owners. Because they considered their efforts to be on behalf of the character of their city and its neighborhoods, they called themselves the Committee for City Name.

That's not a bad name for a group. You know the minute that you hear it that it's a committee and thus a group of people as opposed to an individual. You also know it's almost certainly not a business. You get the idea that the committee is located in City and that it's working on matters within City. The people who named this group did everything right. So why did I learn just last week that the group is undergoing a name change?

The people in the group like the name just fine. It's printed on all of their literature, and that's how local news reports refer to them. They've got the name recognition so many groups work so long and hard to achieve. It would seem that a name change at this juncture would be counterproductive.

Unfortunately, the name itself has turned out to be counterproductive. How could that be? Well, it seems that when interested people look for the group's web site, they have a hard time finding it. That's not because the web site isn't in the search engines - search by group name, and it comes up in first place. And it's not because the name isn't appropriate. No, it's because apparently too many people just cannot spell the word "committee."

Now, you might think that sure, there are a couple of folks out there who, bright as they might otherwise be, are poor spellers. Or you could consider that, despite most adults having no problem with a simple and frequently used word like "committee," a few people just aren't all that bright. In both instances, you'd be wrong. The group isn't going to so much trouble merely to accommodate a relatively small number. No, the group has received so many complaints and dealt with so many problems that organizers believe the risk of losing - at least temporariily - their well established name recognition is worth the change to something that more people can spell.

I understand, of course, the desire for such groups to find as many supporters for their cause as they can. That means that they need to be found by as many potential supporters as possible. But I think it's a shame that they're "dumbing down" their name when it would be so much better in the long run to "smarten up" those in the general public who can't spell a relatively simple word like "committee."

Too many schools and far too many businesses let students and employees by with poor spelling and grammar because, "Well, it's good enough," or because, "Everybody talks that way." I've personally received business correspondence that the average 10 year-old should have been able to improve significantly, but companies let such missives go out on company letterhead, offering an image of their business I can't imagine any owner would appreciate. Is this because such letters aren't read by the person who signs them? Or is it because the person who signs them isn't any brighter than the person who writes them? I fear that the latter is the case...

The truth of the matter is that I should probably not say "brighter," effectively calling some letter writers stupid. Many of them aren't dumb. They've just been allowed to get away with poor grammar and spelling for so long that they actually think what they're saying is perfectly fine. And for this, I blame teachers and parents. I blame schools that make tests easier instead of classes harder just so enough students will pass to make the system look good. And I blame the general public for considering such things as academic excellence far less important than Friday night football games or whether or not Sally has stylish clothes.

Kids are capable of - and deserve - far better. This year at the National Spelling Bee competition, five of the words from the first round of competition included: Biedermeier, onomatopoeia, gyascutus, boeotian, and rijsttafel. The first round! Not only could I not spell these - and I'm pretty good at spelling - I'm not even sure just what four out of the five actually mean. (I suspect most of you don't either, so I'm going to try not to feel too bad about it right now.) Granted, a lot of these kids are the best and the brightest. But even if you can't spell (or pronounce) "onomatopoeia," even the least among us ought to be able to manage plain, simple English with even a little effort.

But that, I'm afraid, hits on another sore point with me and the real underlying cause of the problem: kids typically don't put forth much effort unless they have to. Teachers and parents are supposed to be encouraging - and forcing, when necessary - that effort, not catering to laziness. And unfortunately, the catering that's become all too frequent in schools and in homes is slipping over into the rest of the world. I see with disturbing regularity billboards with misspellings or incorrect punctuation. I hear newscasters on television say words like "anyways." I actually heard a Senator the other day pronounce the word "Illinois" with an "s" at the end! And nobody blinked!

So now those kids disinclined to put forth much effort aren't made to learn in school, and their lack of learning is reinforced in the world outside the classroom by such things as those poorly written billboards and badly spoken newscasters. Instead of reading - even comic books are just fine! - kids are vegetating in front of their Play Stations because parents are too lazy to be real parents and limit their childrens' use of electronic toys while encouraging more mentally stimulating activities. And the end result of all that is that those apparently relative few who still know how to read, write, and speak properly are sinking to the level of the lowest common denominator (newspapers for some years have said that articles must be written for the average sixth grader's reading level, and I suspect it's gone down from there by now) when we should be challenging others to come up to some level of competency.

If we continue to let kids get high school diplomas when they're functionally illiterate, and if colleges continue to pump out grads that can't communicate well or properly (to be fair, colleges are having a heck of a time giving remedial English classes to incoming freshman who are nowhere near high school graduate level), we're all going to lose something important. After all, it's the ability to communicate clearly that keeps us all informed of things large and small, from office parties to our medical care, and from funny stories to urgent warnings. Communication is the single greatest factor in our ability to learn new things or to teach others from our own areas of expertise. It's the skill to say exactly what we mean and to convey our own inner thoughts for another's understanding that lubricates all of our relationships from the most casual to the most intimate. Communication is, in short, not something we can afford to be lazy about - or frankly, to let others be lazy about, either.

I'm toying with the notion of forming a committee to take some action on this serious problem. But I'm limited, obviously, in what I can call it. At the moment, I'm considering calling it "Duh." Short, sweet, and to the point, just like names ought to be, and with the added bonus of being inherently descriptive. But with a silent "h" at the end of the word, I kood just bee axing for mor trubble then its werth.

Originally posted from 05-30-04 to 06-06-04
Beyond Tomorrow: Some Not So Special Effects
by Lady Liberty

Memorial Day marks not just the start of summer for many, but the start of the summer movie season for Hollywood. Traditionally, there are a couple of major action or disaster flicks that open on Memorial Day Weekend, and this year's offering in that genre is the critically maligned The Day After Tomorrow. In the case of this film, however, there's much more at stake - or at least, some assert that there is much more at stake - than a diverting couple of hours in a movie theatre.

The Day After Tomorrow focuses on the end result of global warming: a catastrophic climate change that will see the entire northern hemisphere plunged into an ice age. Obviously, great loss of life and infrastructure occurs; habitat and animal extinctions are certain; and the cost to humanity is substantial on virtually every level. We can doubtless all agree that this would be a very bad thing if it were to happen. The problem, of course, arises due to the fact that there's some question as to whether or not it will actually happen, and if it does, how much we can control matters either way.

In the movie, it's shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that humankind is responsible for much of the global warming, and that the climate change will take place at an extraordinarily rapid pace once the delicate natural balance is pushed over the edge of equilibrium. Explanations for the devastating storms are offered (a significant change in the Atlantic current generated largely by the melting of ice at the poles), and storm effects explained (super cold air sucked downward from the upper atmosphere among them). In the unlikely event you still don't get the point that a) it's our fault, and b) it'll be very, very bad if we don't do something right away to stop it from happening, there's a speech near the end of the film that makes it abundantly clear for even the most obtuse in the audience.

The obvious thing to say about a movie like this is that it's "just a movie." And it is. Movies are allowed to take the poetic license to exaggerate - even almost beyond recognition - to make a scene more dramatic or a plot more plausible. The Day After Tomorrow shamelessly does just that. The problem is that too many people have jumped on the movie's storyline as either a call to environmental action or as a political vehicle when the reality of the film is, well, completely unreal.

Former Vice President and long time environmental crusader Al Gore has endorsed the movie as a banner around which to rally the environmental cause. MoveOn.org is promoting the film and calling it "the movie the White House doesn't want you to see." A British newspaper has reportedly projected that John Kerry will win this November's presidential election due in large part to the effects of American reaction to The Day After Tomorrow. Instead of letting these dubious claims and campaigns stand on their own shaky legs, the Bush administration has given its opponents - and incidentally the movie - added credibility by forbidding members of the administration as well as NASA (the prohibition to NASA has only just been rescinded) from commenting on the film.

Meanwhile, for anybody with the slightest interest, the truth of the science behind the movie is easy enough to find on the Internet or in the library. The bottom line: Global warming almost certainly exists. But in ages past, it's proved to be cyclical. The fact that we happen to be at the beginning of such a cyclical up tick has nothing to do with fossil fuel burning or anything else. The effect of humanity on global warming, according to the vast majority of scientists, ranges from the negligible to the barely measurable. In other words, even reversing every little bit that we might contribute to global warming would make just about the same amount of difference, that being approximately none.

As for the movie's disaster scenario, well, that's where truth and science utterly depart from Hollywood's script. There's no question that, as CNN put it, the movie is more science fiction than fact., or as the Christian Science Monitor says, it's chock full of bad science. But herein lies another problem, and this is the one at the crux of my point: Most people these days know so little of science in general, or of climatology in specific, that the movie is utterly plausible to them. And when environmentalists endorse it, the current administration refuses comment, and onscreen characters offer wild explanations with straight faces, the general public often swallows it whole.

It doesn't matter whether or not manmade pollution has a significant effect on global warming. No one can possibly argue that pollution is a good thing, either for the local environment or for the biosphere as a whole. It seems obvious that we should work to curtail toxic emissions of all kinds, to develop cleaner technologies, and to remember that recycling isn't a bad idea, either. But there are plenty of solid reasons that we should do these things. We don't need the irrational hype of a Hollywood movie to scare us into such responsible behaviors.

In fact, it would be irresponsible to take any precipitously drastic action. The damage to the economy alone would be dramatic, and the economic fall-out would unquestionably have a detrimental effect on those companies currently working to develop those wonderful clean technologies of the future (the movie condemns economic concerns, showing the scriptwriters' knowledge of economics to be almost as inadequate as their understanding of physics).

Should we have concern for our environment? Absolutely. Should we protect our air, water, and various biological species? Again, the answer is an unqualified yes. Even rewards (whether it be tax breaks, loan forgiveness, or something else) to companies that develop products and technologies to assist in such efforts might be perfectly appropriate. But there's a real danger in basing our actions - both in kind and in scope - on mistaken science.

Hollywood has long tried to influence politics, sometimes successfully (Michael Moore just recently won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his do