Other questions-for instance, are club owners responsible for checking the licenses of the bands they hire?-also went unanswered. In the face of strong citizen objections, the city claimed state law gave it no leeway in enforcement. But Gainesville musician and lawyer Brian Kruger says that's nonsense. The state merely allows the city to charge occupational licensing fees, he explains. It doesn't define the categories for which the fee must be charged. The "artist" category is a local innovation, not a state mandate.
"If they wanted to make a big deal and enforce it, they'd get their butt kicked in court," Kruger says. "If an ordinance doesn't provide a definition and contains penalties, the ambiguity would likely be construed against the government agency. There are different definitions of professional, and they'd have to pick the least restrictive one that applied to the fewest people. And no one makes their full living as a musician here."
Gainesville's Department of Cultural Affairs has refused to comment, saying it is awaiting guidance from the state attorney general's office
DARE Aware
By Jacob Sullum
Critics of Drug Abuse Resistance Education, the program in which police officers tell kids to just say no, have long been frustrated by DARE's ability to thrive on anecdotes and enthusiasm. Despite the lack of credible evidence that it does what it's supposed to do, it is by far the most widely used anti-drug curriculum in the country, reaching more than 20 million students each day.
But DARE's 17-year free ride may be slowing down. Last summer, calling DARE "a fraud on the people of America," Salt Lake City Mayor Ross C. Anderson pulled it out of the city's schools, saying it should be replaced by a program that has actually been shown to reduce drug use. "For far too long," Anderson wrote in The Salt Lake Tribune, "our drug-prevention policies have been driven by mindless adherence to a wasteful, ineffective, feel-good program."
Although DARE is still used in about three-quarters of U.S. school districts, Salt Lake City's is one of several to abandon the program in recent years. While condemning Anderson's decision, DARE supporters were unable to rebut his charge that published, peer-reviewed research indicates the program is ineffective at best.
In an op-ed piece for The Deseret News, DARE America President Glenn Levant said "we are more than willing to debate the efficacy of DARE" but offered no evidence that the program works. Kathy Stewart, president of the Utah DARE Officers Association, told the Tribune: "I don't have any statistics for you. Our strongest numbers are the numbers that don't show up." And Tibby Milne, executive director of the pro-DARE Utah Council for Crime Prevention, confessed that "it's very hard to say how many kids do not use drugs because of DARE. We're trying to get that information."
The response to Anderson's decision from the local press was largely supportive. "While the decision was not popular, Anderson appears to be on solid ground," The Deseret News said. "DARE is a popular program with broad support," said an editorial on KSL-TV, "but it certainly isn't sacrosanct. Along with Mayor Anderson, communities should dare to question DARE."
USPS.com
By Sara Rimensnyder
Post office bigwigs must have finally heard one "snail mail" crack too many. Or else they listened up when analysts told them that an upstart technology called e-mail was going to gnaw Pac-Man-style into their $35 billion in first-class mail revenue.
On July 31, The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Postal Service had plans-big plans-to assign everyone in the country a free "usps.com" e-mail address, to be used either as an alias or as a new account. The address would begin with a person's initials, followed by her nine-digit zip code and the last two numbers of her street address.
The postal service has refrained from releasing such details as the date, or even the year, that the program would launch. But it has hinted at some rationales for the scheme, including establishing the postal service as the primary communication ferry between the government and the public and helping direct marketers seamlessly shift operations to the electronic world.
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