Reflections  

Timequake — In the winter of 2004 in the Indian Ocean, the earth took a great step in its long journey, and an enormous number of its passengers tumbled down its shoulders to be lost forever. Amid the chaos and destruction that followed the subaqueous earthquake in the Indian Ocean, something much more fundamental was altered: time.

Geophysicists theorize that enough of the earth's mass moved toward its center to cause the planet to spin microseconds faster, shortening our days. While the change may not be noticeable to the average human as he goes about his business, governments of the world have taken notice. Here's a few of the adjustments that will be made:

• Drinking-age limits will be raised due to a slight lack of maturity.
• Tax rates will be raised to compensate for reduced annual revenue.
• A new federal holiday will be created due to the loss of vacation time.

Additionally, the French government has applauded the change, as it shortens the work week for all employees worldwide. — Kasey Allen

Cuckoo for coca paste — Late last year President Bush made a point, on his way back from the Asian Pacific Economic Conference in Chile, of stopping off in Colombia to praise Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's sterling effort in fighting the drug war.

In claiming that victory is just around the corner, the president noted a sharp increase in arrests, more spraying of poison on coca fields (Colombia supplies about 90% of the cocaine that the U.S. imports), and seizures that have kept 475 tons of cocaine from reaching the United States. The cost to the U.S. is about $3 billion in military and economic aid over the last four years, along with 325 U.S. troops and 600 civilians doing contract work in Colombia.

Statistics about spraying and seizures, however, are not especially relevant. What matters, if the drug war is really about reducing drug use, is whether all this effort and expense has any impact on the price and availability of cocaine on the streets of America. That story is hardly encouraging.

Just last August, "drug czar" John Walters (a little closer to the ground than the president on this issue) took an AP reporter on a flyover of blackened Colombian coca fields and let slip a few candid comments. "Thus far we have not seen a change of availability in the United States," Walters admitted. He quickly added that the drug warriors expected to see those kinds of results sometime soon — maybe in the next year or so. But they've been promising that since the 1970s.

I talked to San Ho Tree, who follows Colombian developments at the Institute for Policy Studies and visits the country often. He told me the price for a kilo of coca paste in Colombia has remained steady at about $800 since the inception of Plan Colombia, back under the Clinton administration. He worked with a reporter who called the New York Police Department a couple of months ago to get an idea of how things are on the street. The NYPD says the price, availability, and quality of cocaine are virtually unchanged over the last several years.

The drug war does drive some of those who are less efficient at violence and concealment out of business, thus buttressing the most vicious of the drug lords. If that's good news, maybe the drug war is a success. By any common-sense evaluation, however, it's a failure. But President Bush wants to nick $566 million from taxpayers for Plan Colombia next year. It would be less damaging to flush that money down a toilet — as they'd have to do if the stupidity narcs ever threatened to break down the president's door. — Alan W. Bock

All I needed to know about government, I learned at the stop light — My friend, Herb, says he never met a traffic light he liked. "They're just like laws. Lousy ones never get dismantled and they clutter up the intersections of my life." The last piece of legislation Herb respected was the Magna Carta. Who needs more?

"And when's the last time you saw a traffic light removed?" he adds. "About the last time a Muslim was voted president of the Southern Baptist Association. Traffic lights and laws — as irreversible as a speeding bullet." He may be right. When's the last time a politician stood up in broad daylight and admitted to a lousy piece of legislation and called for its revocation?

And when did your traffic engineer admit that the light at Rural Road and Lullaby Lane was a needless impediment; and so proclaim on the front page of your local paper?

"Motorists, me and my staff are really sorry about the five-minute light we put on the corner of Gran Prix Boulevard and Old Rural Lane. Your bomb threats have convinced us. It's a bummer. (We just couldn't resist the 2-for-1 special from ACME Signal Corporation.) We'll take it down tomorrow evening (during rush hour, naturally). There'll be free beer for all. And glass and metal fragments will be dispensed as souvenirs. Again, apologies to you patient Gran Prix travelers. If anybody lived on Old Rural Lane, we'd apologize to them, too."

What's operating here is the sin of pride. Lovers and weathermen are always apologizing. Traffic engineers and politicians, on the other hand, never do.

Both traffic signals and laws should attend to the delicate equilibrium between society and individual freedom. The stoplight that stacks up traffic on the eight-lane parkway is there to allow the eight residents of Serenity Lane to get out into the world. For them it's freedom, but for the 10,000 whose parkway progress is disturbed daily, it's a pain in the transmission. Trouble is, there's a constituency for Serenity Lane and not for the eight-lane parkway.

One Wednesday night long ago, before the expressway was encumbered by traffic lights, those frustrated Serenity Laners gathered at the municipal council meeting and raised the devil about the mortal danger of the Parkway-Serenity Lane intersection. They spoke loudly and waved signs picturing maimed toddlers and shouted slogans like "Kids should be seen, not hurt."

Noisy voters bonded by a common cause, who wave signs and write letters to editors, often get what they want — their own traffic light. This Serenity Lane community that dreams of easy access to the world outside their environs is, in the classic sense of the word, a special interest group. And city planners have to please vocal constituents, especially sign wavers who write letters to editors. Result? BAM! A new light quicker than J. Lo sheds boytoys.

Think any of the expressway users scattered all over the county dropped in at that Wednesday night meeting? Nope. They are geographically and politically dispersed, as cohesive as pebbles on a beach. Therefore, they will pay the price for Serenity Lane's cohesiveness: a two-minute delay on the way to work. Not so terrible. But if the natural process of pleasing special interest groups adjacent to the expressway continues . . . well, the expressway is no longer an expressway. It's a thicket of lights. Gridlock — like Times Square on New Year's Eve.

And even when the ex-expressway has congealed into a parking lot, not one of the Serenity Lane folks will go down to city hall to sacrifice their highway access for the great good of the commuting multitudes. That's human nature. And it shapes our political as well as our automotive freedom. — Ted Roberts

No bias here, no sir — On Jan. 10, the committee appointed to investigate the CBS News scandal finally issued its report. The 224-page document, a fascinating study of bureaucratic incompetence and malignity, led to the firing of four CBS personalities but acquitted CBS News of political bias in its broadcast of faked documents reflecting discredit on George Bush's service in the National Guard.

We are supposed to believe, in other words, that in the midst of an election campaign in which Bush's character was a major issue, employees of CBS News (according to the organization itself)

• pushed a faulty story so fast that they didn't have time to review it for accuracy;
• mounted a "stubborn 12 day defense" of the story when it was questioned;
• made "virtually no attempt . . . to determine whether the questions raised had merit";
  and further, that
  
• "the producer of the piece, Mary Mapes . . . call[ed] Joe Lockhart, a senior official in the John Kerry campaign, prior to the airing of the piece, and offer[ed] to put [the purveyor of the faked documents] in touch with him . . . a 'clear conflict of interest that created the appearance of political bias'". . .

BUT THERE WAS IN FACT NO POLITICAL BIAS.

Huh?

If you believe that, maybe you're prepared to believe that the documents weren't faked in the first place. — Stephen Cox

© Copyright 2008, Liberty Foundation

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