Reason Magazine - Contributors

Bureaucratic Slumlords

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Sun, 01 Oct 2000 00:00:00 EDT

The federal government, it seems, is not simply a questionable park owner. It’s also a terrible landlord. More than half of its 1,682 buildings are in dire need of repairs, some requiring more than $20 million of work to comply with safety standards. What’s more, the problem isn’t new. According to a General Accounting Office report released in April, the federal government’s property management agency has failed to repair many building problems that were identified almost a decade ago and have undoubtedly gotten worse–and more expensive to fix–over time.

Why? There are more repairs than the agency has money to fund, despite spending an average of $580 million on improvements each year. At the end of 1999, there was still about $4 billion of work left to be done. Plus, the property management agency’s computer files on repair status are a mess.

The feds have a new strategy, though, borrowed from the private sector: They’ll give repair priority to those buildings that would yield the highest rent, thus giving the fund more money to fix additional buildings.

Just Kidding

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Sat, 01 Jul 2000 00:00:00 EDT

In April, with the collaboration of police and fire officials, Redondo Union High School called its seniors in for a special assembly. Officials at the suburban Los Angeles school told the teens that the night before, a horrendous drunk-driving car accident had killed one of their classmates and badly injured another. For dramatic effect, a tow truck dragged in a mangled car, allegedly the vehicle involved in the crash.

The school kept the students going for about 10 minutes, then told them that it was all a hoax--for their own good, of course. The idea, presumably, was to scare the kids away from driving while drunk, not to teach them to disbelieve anything the authorities tell them.

In a metropolitan area where more than a few carloads of teens have been in fatal accidents in recent months, the story hit close to home for some students. "I totally fell for it," one senior later told The Los Angeles Times. "It scared me. I got really upset." School officials have said the negative reaction to the skit has made them think twice about pulling the prank next year.

Rescuing Baywatch

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Thu, 01 Jun 2000 00:00:00 EDT

Pity poor Hawaii. It sits alone in the great Pacific, so far from the mainland and, more important, from Hollywood and big production fees. Despite its exotic scenery and the onetime popularity of such shows as Hawaii Five-0 and Magnum P.I., the island state isn't a huge draw for film and TV units. Why drag your equipment, stars, and production crew 3,000 miles across the Pacific to a place known for its high costs when you can dress up a nearby California beach on the cheap?

So when the state had a chance last year to lure Baywatch's production team from Los Angeles to Oahu's North Shore, it offered a $3 million incentive package and pledged to pay cast and crew air fares and accommodations on top of that. Despite a similar offer from Australia, Baywatch decided to go Hawaiian.

What did Hawaii get out of the deal, besides some outside investment (estimated at $20 million per year) and a chance to spot celebrities around town? For one thing, the flesh-fest changed its name to Baywatch Hawaii, thus plugging the 50th state to 100 million viewers worldwide. The show also promised to hire and train local production workers.

State Rep. Mark Takai (D-Oahu) liked the arrangement so much that he introduced a bill in January to create a Hawaii television production committee, with a budget of as much as $5 million, to "assist the production of television programs to ultimately promote Hawaii to the world." The committee will hand out grants and loans both to local TV and film productions and to those from the mainland interested in a change of venue. (USA network's Pacific Blue is reportedly interested in moving to Hawaii.)

As lawmakers wrangled over the bill, Baywatch asked the state for another handout, claiming that a budget deficit might otherwise keep the show from shooting its second Hawaii season. When that hit the news, the local media gave Takai's proposal a nickname: the Baywatch Bailout Bill.

Space Cruise

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Mon, 01 May 2000 00:00:00 EDT

Cruising through the Sunday newspaper coupons a few months back, you may have been surprised to discover that one of the more fabulous vacation giveaways would take you to a beachless spot less than 75 miles from home--or, rather, above home. Dole Foods was giving away a sub-orbital journey on a tourist-bearing space shuttle cruise.

The grand prize: a week-long "space experience" package with Virginia-based Space Adventures, including two days at a space institute, three days of astronaut training, travel, lodging, meals, and, of course, a spaceman's view of the big blue marble. It's a pretty pricey giveaway (retail value: approximately $100,000). Then again, the odds are even more astronomical than usual. That's because the trip's vehicle, the Vela Space Cruiser, isn't actually built yet. (Dole includes a disclaimer that says the winner will get $50,000 if the trip fails to blast off before the end of 2003.)

The lack of an actual spaceship hasn't stopped more than 140 people from plunking down deposits to reserve spots on Space Adventures' future cruises, says company spokesman Chris Faranetta, who adds that liftoff is scheduled to launch by 2004. For those who can't wait, Space Adventures--an established adventure outfitter--already books tourists on space-related journeys, such as high-altitude rides on Russian fighter jets and zero-gravity adventures aboard parabolic flight aircraft. It also does more mundane tours, such as U.S. Space Shuttle launches and stargazing.

Several other companies are also thinking up ways to lure you and your vacation dollars into space: Virgin Atlantic's Richard Branson has announced plans for his next venture, Virgin Galactic Airways, and other established companies have talked about building hotels in orbit. To cynics, it may all sound hopelessly starry-eyed. Then again, it wasn't that long ago that no one but soldiers and scientists traveled to the North Pole or Antarctica. Now cruise lines regularly shuttle tourists to those terrestrial spots.

City Beautification

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Mon, 01 May 2000 00:00:00 EDT

In Waukesha, Wisconsin, the city officials are dreaming of a pretty downtown, with fixed-up buildings, a rejuvenated business district, and none of those loud, alcoholic, pee-in-the-stairwell types who populate run-down city centers across the country. Rather than merely pine for such a place, police in this small city of about 62,000 just west of Milwaukee plan to ban people who have committed a crime in the downtown area from setting foot on its streets ever again.

Called "mapping out," the new law is sort of a geographic restraining order. To qualify, someone must be arrested for a crime committed within the downtown ban zone. Then police will look at the suspects' background to see if they have a history of committing crimes in downtown--or even non-criminal behavior that happens to be annoying, such as drunkenness, noisiness, or boisterousness. If they fit the profile, they won't be allowed back downtown upon conviction.

Early this year, this unique rule caught the attention of local newspapers. Milwaukee writer Joel McNally opined in the Madison Capital Times that "Waukesha law enforcement authorities have come up with a nifty plan to adapt some of the handy tools of a totalitarian government to clamp down on the wanton freedom of citizens in a democracy." He also likened the geographic prohibition to ethnic cleansing, positing that police would inevitably target racial minorities.

Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher argues that the ban is not that different from the already accepted practices of prohibiting sex offenders from the areas where they committed their crimes or keeping convicted retail thieves from returning to the stores they stole from. Law enforcement won't go after people "willy-nilly in a certain geographical area," Bucher says. "We're being very selective." To back this up, he points out that his office has already rejected the few candidates for exile that police selected in the first month of the ban.

Nonetheless, the county's public defender is concerned about the new system, noting that police could use it to kick vaguely defined "undesirables" out of town. Since the ban has yet to be actually applied to anyone, it's unclear whether anyone will challenge it in court.

Pizza Wars

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Mon, 01 May 2000 00:00:00 EDT

In the fast and loose world of advertising, every product hawked is the best, or at least better than something else--not to mention new and improved. In this respect, at least, we customers aren't dumb: We know that this is a bragging game and that we shouldn't take every claim literally.

But apparently we aren't smart enough to figure that out about the slogan, "Better Ingredients. Better Pizza," used by the Louisville-based chain Papa John's. In January, a Dallas judge ordered Papa John's to stop using the slogan, and to pay Pizza Hut almost $500 million for the damage the ads had allegedly done.

The war began a few years ago, when Papa John's launched an ad campaign comparing its ingredients to what "other chains use," making particularly derisive references to dehydrated tomato paste. Pizza Hut responded with a "Stoppa the Poppa," campaign, which included such inspired silliness as putting Papa John's name on miniature punching bags and doormats. Finally, Pizza Hut sued its upstart rival for deceptive advertising tactics, arguing that Papa John's could not prove its pizza and ingredients were "better" than the Hut's.

Papa John's is appealing the ruling. In the meantime, it has apparently decided that it can play the legal game, too: It has asked the U.S. patent office to reject Pizza Hut's slogan, "Best Pizzas Under One Roof."

Mental Detector

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 EST

Has Johnny threatened another student or a teacher? Does he write dark poetry? Or maybe he plays too much Doom? In Los Angeles County, some schools aren't just noting such behavior. At the behest of the district attorney, they're testing a computer program that they think will help them identify potentially violent students. Called Mosaic 2000, the profiling program asks 42 questions about a kid and then figures out--"scientifically," of course--whether his anti-social ways constitute an "escalating pattern" of problem behavior.

The district attorney's office insists that the information won't be used in a sinister way. In fact, a D.A. spokeswoman says each individual's data will be deleted after the information has been entered and an evaluation completed.

Maybe L.A. schools will choose to store the information Mosaic 2000 gleans, and maybe they won't. But other school districts around the country are saving that type of information for later use. In Wallingford, Connecticut, teachers and administrators are keeping files on troubled students--not just to find the already violent ones, but to pick out those "predisposed" to violence. Schools in Granite City, Illinois, are gathering the names of "at-risk" students, which can simply mean students who watch questionable movies or write bleak fiction.

Not surprisingly, this trend has raised the hackles of civil libertarians, particularly the American Civil Liberties Union. "We're concerned about decisions made to discipline students based on the fact that they fit a profile that might include information as disparate as what movies they watch and books they read and whether parents have guns in the home," the ACLU's Ann Beeson told The Christian Science Monitor.

Strikeout Reform

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Sat, 01 Apr 2000 00:00:00 EST

It was a tragedy--a middle-aged twist on Romeo and Juliet. In November, a 46-year-old Sacramento man and his 45-year-old girlfriend killed themselves rather than be kept apart for the rest of their lives. It wasn't a family feud that drove the couple to lock themselves in a garage with the car running. It was a minor criminal offense: possession of less than an ounce of marijuana and a small amount of methamphetamine, plus a weapons charge.

According to newspaper reports, the man had just found out that the crime, coupled with prior convictions from about 20 years earlier, had triggered California's harsh three-strikes law. In the Golden State, a third felony conviction automatically leads to a prison sentence of 25 years to life, regardless of the severity of the crime. Although judges have some discretion to disregard minor offenses, the law still forces many nonviolent offenders to spend long stretches behind bars.

Now a group called Citizens Against Violent Crime is circulating an initiative to reform the law. The revamped rule would apply only to violent or otherwise serious felonies, and not to small-time crimes such as drug possession. The initiative is co-sponsored by Sam H. Clauder II, a political consultant in Orange County who worked to pass the original law but later decided it was too severe, and Joe Klaas, grandfather of Polly Klaas, the Northern California girl whose murder was the catalyst for the original law. If adopted, the initiative would empty an estimated 23,000 to 45,000 jail cells in the state, Clauder says.

There have been three unsuccessful efforts to reform the three-strikes law in the legislature, but this is the first ballot initiative to be attempted. The initiative's supporters have until June 1 to get the 420,000 signatures they need to qualify for the November ballot.

Y2Kaos

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Tue, 01 Feb 2000 00:00:00 EST

Thanks to the Internet, the telling of urban legends has been recharged. Along with resurrected old favorites (e.g., rings of organ thieves, fingers in soft drink cans), we now have e-mail tall tales about underarm antiperspirants causing breast cancer, an endless parade of imaginary sick kids whose dying wish is that you forward their treacly messages to 15 people, and, of course, the specter of Y2K.

Amid the myriad computer-virus warnings, for example, was the Net rumor that the Russians would use the confusion around Y2K to launch a first-strike nuclear attack against the U.S. and then say, "Oops! It was an accident." Another warned that the Christian Rapture is scheduled for sometime in 2000, and all sinners should beware.

A persistent and popular rumor asserted that the government planned to impose martial law on January 1, whether or not the Y2K bug shut down systems, and that this was true because somebody's uncle or brother or dog had seen an undercover shipment of plastic road signs in a truck somewhere. Naturally, the first thing a government does when it imposes martial law is to put up road signs that say "No Civil Rights Past This Point."

But even if that rumor turns out to be fake, it doesn't mean it's time for easy breathing. According to another e-legend, if the Y2K bug didn't shut civilization down, the Feb2K bug will. That's because 2000 is supposed to be a "super" leap year. The "science" behind the super leap year is a bit dense, but it has something to do with a supposed accumulation of seconds over the past 400 years that will finally catch up to us and add not one but two extra days to the year. The effect on computers will, of course, be catastrophic, particularly to day-book planners, and the glitch will likely--no, certainly--launch nuclear missiles across the planet.

Betrayed Principals

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 EST

The public school experience sure has changed since today's parents put in their time. Staples such as gym class, driver's ed, wood and metal shop, dances, and recess have been curtailed or eliminated at many schools. Elementary- and secondary-school principals across the nation blame liability concerns for those changes, according to a survey conducted by the American Tort Reform Association in conjunction with two school principal associations.

The survey, the results of which were released in September, was sent to 5,000 principals, and 523 responded to the four-page questionnaire. Respondents reported spending as many as 10 hours a week documenting events or attending meetings to avoid lawsuits.

Overwhelmingly, the principals said they tailor their administrations to avoid lawsuits. They said insurance concerns mean fewer choices and fewer programs for students. A quarter of the principals said they've had a lawsuit or out-of-court settlement in the last two years, compared with only 9 percent in 1989. That number probably will rise further: 60 percent of the respondents said they expect an increase in litigation as a result of the May 1999 decision by the Supreme Court making schools liable for student-to-student sexual harassment.

Fast Burn

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Mon, 01 Nov 1999 00:00:00 EST

It's not a figment of Y2K mania: Wildfires in the great forests and open spaces of the western United States really are getting worse.

For decades, firefighting agencies from the feds on down to local volunteer outfits have aggressively fought back the fires that break out en masse during the summer and autumn months, throwing enough resources behind the battles to make Smokey the Bear breathe easy. While such actions may keep national forests and parks open during tourist season, they also disrupt a natural cleansing cycle. Fires are an integral part of the ecosystem; they enrich and renew the soil and get rid of old and diseased vegetation. Some trees, such as the Lodgepole Pine, can't reproduce without fires.

In a shift of its traditional position, the U.S. Forest Service, which oversees 191 million acres of national forests, now says that quickly snuffing out fires actually increases the danger to national forests in the interior West. In the days before fire-retardant foam and aerial water drops, smaller and more frequent naturally occurring fires would burn unchecked until they ran out of fuel. The ardent fire suppression of the past few decades means that a lot of underbrush, fallen branches, and dead and dying trees that would otherwise burn away every couple of years haven't done so. So now, when the fires do start, there's a huge amount of highly flammable material lying around. That's a recipe for massive, often catastrophic wildfires, the likes of which have been more common in recent years.

The Forest Service's realization that fire suppression has contributed to fewer but more intense and destructive fires brings the agency more into line hard-core environmentalist thinking, which favors a "let it burn" policy. That's not to say the Forest Service is ceding all control to Mother Nature. The agency is developing a brush-reduction plan for 39 million acres of at-risk forests that would entail setting planned fires known as "controlled burns."

According to recent congressional testimony Barry T. Hill, an official with the U.S. General Accounting Office, the price tag for the plan might run as high as $725 million a year. While such "controlled burns" often have good results, they also present problems of their own: There are the myriad environmental hurdles to consider, including rules about clean air and water. There's also the potential for torching endangered animals. And contrary to their name, controlled burns aren't all that controllable. Intentionally set blazes often jump their lines, scorching numerous acres of land and homes. This Fourth of July weekend, for instance, a controlled burn in California ended up burning 23 houses to the ground.

Gang Bang

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Fri, 01 Oct 1999 00:00:00 EDT

If you're a gang member, it's hard enough to hang out on the streets, what with all the police scrutiny and gun-toting rivals. But for 35 alleged members of the Crips in the Venice section of Los Angeles, a court order issued in July has made it tougher still just to walk out the door.

Earlier this year, the city filed a civil suit against the men and got a ruling from a Santa Monica, California, superior court judge enjoining them from engaging in certain activities in a "safety zone" comprising the gang's traditional turf. Much of the proscribed behavior is not criminal per se, but believed to be "pre-criminal." For instance, the men can't carry even legal weapons or ammo in Venice. They are also under a 10 p.m. curfew and barred from having pagers, signaling to cars while walking down the street, hanging out with known gang members, and being on private property without a note of permission from the owner.

Lawyers for the defendants argue that the injunction sets the men up for constant police harassment. As one attorney told a local Venice newspaper, the order means that if the 35 men "step out of the door, they're going to get arrested."

The case has attracted organized opposition from black community groups such as the Nation of Islam--the men named in the order are African American. While claims of racism and unconstitutionality didn't stop the injunction, they did bring early publicity to a practice that will become more controversial if and when it becomes more widespread.

Contract Clause

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Sun, 01 Aug 1999 00:00:00 EDT

A big reason charter schools are so successful is that they can work outside of the typical school bureaucracy. That allows them the freedom and flexibility to create innovative programs tailored to the needs of their particular students.

Such latitude, however, is exactly what scares the hell out of those opposed to charter schools. And where fear and political clout meet, there is legislation. That's what happened in California this spring when the state's burgeoning charter school movement faced a potentially lethal challenge: a bill that would have forced charter schools to join the teachers union and operate under the existing contracts in their districts. Proponents of the law, including the state's biggest education union, the California Teachers Association, presented it as a benign measure that would simply extend to charter school teachers the same rights enjoyed by conventional public school teachers.

Charter school advocates responded immediately, pointing out that the defining characteristic of charter schools is precisely that they are exempt from the usual requirements. Besides, they added, many charter school teachers already operate under a union contract. Even Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, who as governor of California supported unions, vowed to fight the bill to the bitter end. The message got through to lawmakers in Sacramento, and by June the legislation's teeth had been pulled. The CTA and charter school proponents made a compromise that put into words what was already in practice: Charter teachers can organize into unions if they want to, but they don't have to.

The fight was short but important, says Sue Bragato, executive director of the California Network of Education Charters. If it had passed, "it would have closed schools down," she says. California approved charter schools in 1992 and last year increased the number of charters allowable to 250 in 1999. Some of these will be brand new schools, but many will be traditional public schools that convert to charter status. Bragato believes that the CTA is running scared as charter schools become less of an experiment and more of an established alternative to public schools. After all, she points out, if more schools open or convert with no official union requirement, the CTA stands to lose a lot of money.

That's one reason this latest anti-charter skirmish is unlikely to be the last. Indeed, even as they vanquished union-sponsored legislation, charter school advocates were fighting against an attempt to stop funding for charter schools that are not based in classrooms, such as home schools.

Alternate History

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 EDT

One of the ironies of capitalism is that socialism sells, especially when plugged by millionaire movie stars and rock idols. That helps explains surging sales for A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present, a leftist chronicle by Boston University professor emeritus Howard Zinn. Originally published in 1980 and revised in 1995, the book has sold more than 500,000 copies--a total that is climbing rapidly due in no small part to a prominent product placement in the popular 1997 film Good Will Hunting. Matt Damon, who co-wrote and starred in the movie, and Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder are among the celebrities who have publicly touted the book to their youthful fans.

As a result, the book has become standard fare not only at left-leaning independent bookstores throughout the country, but also at mall-style chain stores. Of course, glitterati advocacy alone can't account for such success--and certainly doesn't explain the weekly additions to the list of reader reviews found on Amazon.com (where the book maintained a sales ranking of around 500 for some time). Mostly favorable, the reviews include comments such as, "This is the ONLY U.S. history book that matters," and "brilliant."

Why do people love it? Despite its anticapitalist mentality, A People's History is a great example of product differentiation, entering underserved markets, and giving people what they want.

Zinn has a master storyteller's touch and he tells the tales of folks often left out of other texts--Indians, black slaves, poor whites, women, and immigrants--from their perspectives.

And, in the best Hollywood tradition, the book is packed with violence, sex, and intrigue. Consider, for example, Zinn's NC-17 treatment of Jamestown residents during the colony's "starving time" in the winter of 1609-1610: "One among them slew his wife as she slept in his bosom, cut her to pieces, salted her and fed upon her till he had clean devoured all parts saving her head."

Now that's entertainment. So much so, in fact, that media baron--and arch-capitalist--Rupert Murdoch is among Zinn's fans. Indeed, Fox has inked a deal to develop a mini-series based on the book.

Social Insecurity

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Thu, 01 Jul 1999 00:00:00 EDT

If you worry about your Social Security number falling into the wrong hands, a recent government report says you've got good reason for such anxiety. Your number probably already has been used in ways you might not have expected--or authorized.

Because Social Security numbers are increasingly used by government agencies and private companies to identify individuals--and because of complaints about that trend--the House Ways and Means Committee's Subcommittee on Social Security asked the General Accounting Office to investigate the extent of governmental and commercial use. The GAO found that practically everyone--from credit bureaus to police departments to tax collection agencies--uses the numbers to identify individuals.

In fact, those groups were emphatic that they needed a single, widely used number to track people. Absent Social Security numbers, tax agents said that it would be nearly impossible to identify taxpayers; credit bureaus said it would make it difficult for them to conduct credit reports; cops worried that it would be easier for offenders to hide traffic violations; and health care providers said it would be difficult to maintain medical histories.

Such widespread use, however, is precisely what discomfits the public. Armed with your Social Security number, virtually anyone can track down your personal information, from your credit rating to your driving record. In the wake of the GAO report, lawmakers are considering legislation to restrict the use of the nine-digit identifiers.

Got Milk?

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Tue, 01 Jun 1999 00:00:00 EDT

In March, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) introduced a bill that would give employers a tax break if they set up a room with equipment for their working mothers to express breast milk in private.

That sounds pretty benign, but the bill is broken out of a larger breast-feeding "promotion and protection" act that was introduced in Congress last year. The comprehensive bill sought to regulate everything possibly related to lactation and employment--including mandating extra, unpaid breaks to express milk; setting FDA standards for breast pumps; and drafting anti-discrimination rules prohibiting employers from treating breast-feeding women "differently from other employees."

Such legislation may be good politics, but it exasperates Diane Barnes, the owner of three small shops that sell breast-feeding equipment in the Detroit area. She opposes the tax credit--and the other parts of the comprehensive bill--because employers are already moving in that direction voluntarily. Government mandates, she says, tend to kill evolving cooperative efforts.

Noting that major employers in her area, such as Ford and Chrysler, have already set up breast-feeding rooms without a push from the federal government, Barnes observes: "The laws are unnecessary. We already have companies responding to the needs of women who are breast-feeding."

Rep. Maloney, though, knows better. Though her comprehensive bill went nowhere last fall--it got lost in the shuffle following November's electoral upheavals--she intends to introduce the other parts in piecemeal fashion, so we can look forward to more attempts at regulating breast-feeding in the workplace.

Aspartamania

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Sat, 01 May 1999 00:00:00 EDT

Aspartame--the artificial sweetener used in products such as NutraSweet and Equal--is wreaking havoc on the health of America. If you didn't realize it, don't feel too bad. I didn't either, until some concerned friends and relatives forwarded me a pseudo-scientific, faintly official-sounding e-mail message warning that the stuff is causing health problems ranging from dizziness to death.

Among other maladies, the widely posted missive blames the sweetener for killing diabetics in droves and causing epidemics of multiple sclerosis and lupus. The message also implicates the sweetener in Gulf War Syndrome, Alzheimer's disease, vertigo, depression, memory loss, and tinnitus. But what really makes readers pay attention is a far more terrifying claim: Aspartame makes people fat by causing an insatiable craving for carbohydrates.

Before you toss that case of Diet Coke, though, there's one more thing you should know: The aspartame letter is a cybermyth, the electronic age's answer to an urban legend. As with the Internet-spread tales of rogue doctors gutting business travelers for their organs and the "official" memo implicating the U.S. military in a 1996 TWA airplane crash, its claims have been thoroughly debunked. And yet, the message was so widely read and its claims so potentially scandalous that NutraSweet's manufacturer, Monsanto, and various health groups responded both in cyberspace and on paper. The American Diabetes Association issued a statement that the sweetener posed no threats to diabetics, and both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration--the agency that approved aspartame in the first place--disputed the veracity of the message.

Iain Murray, a senior analyst at the Statistical Assessment Service, a nonprofit group dedicated to improving the public's understanding of scientific information, explains that the aspartame hoax had been circulating in cyberspace for more than a year but only reached critical mass in December. Ironically, he notes, the one side effect that researchers have proven to be associated with aspartame--headaches for people with a certain syndrome--was not mentioned in the diatribe.

While this latest e-mail imbroglio may provide precious little information about the actual effects of aspartame, it does suggest how the Internet simultaneously facilitates cybermyths and disseminates information to counter them. For a full accounting of the aspartame hoax (and dozens of similar cybermyths), turn to the Urban Legends Reference Pages (www.snopes.com), a Web site maintained by the San Fernando Valley Folklore Society. The site not only provides a handy, searchable database of such hoaxes, it provides an in-depth history of each one.

Tax Murder

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Sat, 01 May 1999 00:00:00 EDT

Here's a movie worth watching: An Atlanta-based company called The Script Shop that hawks TV and film scripts by mail and the Internet refuses to sell its wares in its home state of Georgia. The culprit: a state sales tax system every bit as twisted--and unbelievable--as the plot to Hollywood thrillers like Basic Instinct and Mission: Impossible.

Georgia has a base sales tax of 4 percent. But depending on which county you're in and what year it is, the actual tax rate could be as high as 7 percent. As a helpful Department of Revenue official explains, each of the state's 159 counties can add up to 3 percent. For example, two counties in the Atlanta metropolitan area charge an extra 1 percent to subsidize MARTA, the local mass transit system. And many counties tack on an extra 1 percent tax to build new schools, fund new streets or sidewalks, or pay for special projects. The supplemental sales tax can't be levied for longer than five years without reauthorization, so some are expiring as others are going into effect.

The inherent complexity of the system--and the massive paperwork necessary for compliance--has caused The Script Shop to shut down production when it comes to the Peach State. "The sales tax requirements are so complicated and the paper work is so time consuming that we actually lose money if we sell our products in Georgia," explains The Script Shop's Web site (www.scriptshop. com). Not a Hollywood ending, exactly, but a totally understandable one.

Renaming History

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Thu, 01 Apr 1999 00:00:00 EST

Mt. Reagan, Alaska? Reagansburg, Poland? Planet Reagan? These places don't exist--not yet, anyway. But if the folks heading the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project get their way, every state in the country--and even some other countries-- will eventually have some landmark named after the president who attacked government as "the problem."

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, dreamed up the naming plan in 1997 as a way to instill appreciation for the Gipper. The country isn't quite sure how it feels about the Reagan years, says Norquist, who worries that the former actor's presidency is doing a slow fade in the public imagination. "That must not happen to the legacy of Ronald Reagan," declares Norquist.

The legacy project had its first big success early in 1998 with the renaming of the Washington (D.C.) National Airport to include Reagan's name. A few months later, Florida state officials agreed to
rename the Florida Turnpike (I-75) after Reagan. And there will likely be a Mt. Reagan designated sometime this year by a group of climbers who plan to claim an anonymous Alaska peak in the statesman's name.

The effort is also stretching to Eastern Europe, where Reagan's role in destroying the Soviet Union makes the project an easy sell. "Most of the people there are pretty fond of Reagan, even more so than some people here in America," says Michael Kamburowski, executive director of the legacy project.

To be sure, there's more than a little irony in naming public facilities after a president who campaigned on reducing federal expenditures. The inconsistency is one reason the renaming of the D.C. airport caused a controversy. But Kamburowski says his group is seeking only "appropriate" targets for the Reagan brand. Changing the airport name made sense, he says, because Reagan was instrumental in turning the airport's federal control over to a local authority.

Tax Nightmares

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Thu, 01 Apr 1999 00:00:00 EST

If the mere act of filing your annual tax return isn't unsettling enough, here's something else to keep you tossing at night: The Internal Revenue Service is doing a lousy job of protecting your annual filings, including your payments and your personal information.

That's the conclusion of a recent General Accounting Office study that documents how the IRS screws up in some astounding ways. During peak filing months, for instance, the agency hires thousands of temps to handle millions of dollars worth of receipts but doesn't get background check results until well after the workers are gone. Between 1995 and 1997, says the GAO, 12 thefts at IRS service centers were committed by temps with arrest records. The GAO also notes that one district office used a bike messenger to deliver daily deposits of up to $100 million. Another courier reportedly left a deposit of more than $200 million unattended in an open vehicle.

So what does this mean to the taxpayer? The GAO warns you can get hurt by this lax tax system in two basic ways. First, your payments can be stolen by check cloning operations (that's what happened when a bad employee sent checks to members of a New York crime ring). Second, criminals can use your sensitive personal information--bank account numbers, addresses, signatures, and Social Security numbers--to perpetrate identity fraud. Pleasant dreams.

Home-Invasion Ruling

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Mon, 01 Mar 1999 00:00:00 EST

Christmas came early last year to the home-schooling families of Lynn, Massachusetts. In December, the commonwealth's top court ruled that a law giving public school officials expansive rights to visit home-school households was unconstitutional.The decision in Michael Brunelle, et al. v. Lynn Public Schools ended seven years of legal battles. The court ruled that the school district's policy--which essentially allowed officials to enter a home-schooler's residence at will--violated federal and commonwealth protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

"This is a big victory for home schooling not just in Massachusetts but across the country," said Michael Farris, president of the Virginia-based Home School Legal Defense Association, which served as the plaintiffs' counsel. The association's main fear was that a decision in favor of the school district would have given a green light to similar policies in other parts of the country. By Farris' count, school districts in about a dozen states were likely to adopt similar requirements if the Lynn school district prevailed. Indeed, other states, including Rhode Island, New York, and South Dakota, have already tried to pass similar laws.

"We've picked them off one by one, normally through legislative means," Farris said. "We've used the legal system successfully at times, but other times it's been the predicate for legislative action."

Steven Pustell, whose family was one of the two represented in the lawsuit, was thrilled with the outcome. "It reaffirms the independence of home-schooling parents to raise their children the way they [see fit], without unwarranted government intrusion," he said.

The 48-Hour Fix

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Mon, 01 Feb 1999 00:00:00 EST

It's quite the rage these days to be mad at health care insurers, particularly those offering managed care. Health horror stories about patient dumping, "drive-through" procedures, and denial of emergency care abound in the news media. Politicians have gotten a lot of mileage from publicly lambasting health plans for putting profits above quality care.

One of the most compelling such tales concerns so-called drive-through deliveries: heartless insurers kicking mothers and their newborn infants out of hospitals, sometimes only a few hours after birth. Mothers being treated like so much cattle made for great sound bites. President Clinton himself condemned the practice and called for a law to force the nasty health plans to be nicer. And so we got the Newborns' and Mothers' Health Protection Act of 1996, which took effect at the beginning of 1998.

Some insurers have indeed shown poor judgment, but that's not the end of the story. Nor did the legislated solution make everything right. In fact, some health care providers say the law, offered as a panacea, is really just an ill-fitting band-aid. The law may actually endanger those it's supposed to protect by stunting the growth of a new health care market niche. With the strong Democratic showing in the recent elections, some form of a "patient bill of rights" is again a legislative possibility, so it's especially important to examine carefully the effects of government intrusion into health care.

Contrary to popular myth, shorter hospital stays after birth stemmed from the desires of families, rather than from a cost-cutting frenzy by insurers. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the movement toward shorter stays began in the 1980s, when people were looking for something between home birth and the full hospital delivery experience. This development accompanied an overall growth in the home health care industry, as consumers increasingly opted to get treatment outside of the hospital when possible. Not surprisingly, health plans liked the idea of shorter postpartum stays, which could save a bundle on expensive hospital bed days.

But the movement to recuperate from birth at home left a gap: Mothers still needed follow-up care. Nurses and traditional home health care companies recognized this emerging health care need and moved quickly to fill it.

By the early 1990s, a fast-growing maternal home health care niche had formed. Companies like Healthy Homecomings in St. Louis, founded by two former maternity ward nurses and later sold to a larger health care company, capitalized on the trend by offering home nursing visits to new mothers. The companies marketed their services to insurers by telling them it was fine to send mothers home early as long as they followed up with some sort of home health care.

It seemed not only workable but an ideal solution. Coupling shorter hospital stays with home visits by nurses allows mothers to recuperate in the familiar surroundings of home (to say nothing of the improvement at mealtimes). A home health nurse can better assess the progress of mother and child in their natural habitat. Nurses can make sure breast-feeding is working out OK. (New mothers don't automatically know what to do, and often nurses have to instruct them on how to feed their hungry babies.) More important, nurses can catch problems that could send a baby to the emergency room. Conditions like sepsis or jaundice--one of the bigger concerns for newborns because it signifies a liver problem--often do not show up until after 48 hours.

Best of all for health plans, shorter postpartum stays followed by an in-home checkup save money. A day in the hospital can cost thousands of dollars. A home nursing visit, by contrast, comes with a price tag of no more than a few hundred dollars.

Despite what seemed an obvious money-saving formula, maternal home care providers say it wasn't easy to convince health care payers to add a home visit to the care package. So mothers continued to go home earlier and earlier, but often with no follow-up care until the next pediatrician visit.

Unfortunately for this new business niche, there are always some who will take a good idea to its illogical extreme. Some managed care companies and health plans abbreviated post-birth time in the hospital so much that people started getting upset. The public was appalled by the stories of women sent home dazed and sore with a baby only a few hours old.

The reaction reached its highest pitch in 1996, whipped up by politicians quick to jump behind a popular issue with an appealing name. Several states adopted legislation setting mandatory hospital stays. By the end of the year, the Newborns' and Mothers' Health Protection Act was law. It prohibits insurers from forcing new mothers to leave the hospital before 48 hours after a normal birth, 96 hours in the case of a Cesarean section.

While regulating health care--which depends on a variety of factors, many having nothing to do with money--is often tricky, the solution to "drive-through deliveries" must have seemed crystal clear: Keep new moms in the hospital for two days--one day to sleep, the other to get ready to leave. Problem solved.

But according to Lenore Williams, co-founder of Professional Nurse Associates, a Cleveland company specializing in maternal home care, the problems were far from solved for health care workers fighting to persuade insurers of the preventive value of postpartum home care. In fact, the new legislation has made it tougher for them to convince health plans that such care is important, even though, on average, it takes only one low-cost home visit to determine if the baby is off to a good start. Suddenly, all a health plan had to do to be a good guy was to let moms stay in the hospital for two days after delivery. "They think, `We've met the letter of the law and we don't have to do anything now,'" Williams says.

No one has been able to state with certainty the ideal time that a new mother should stay in the hospital; each delivery is different. But even 48 hours is likely too short a time if it's not followed up, Williams says. Some of the health insurers she works with recognize that and have continued to provide outpatient home care for mothers and their newborns.

It works, too, Williams says. She recalls a recent day she had two postpartum home visits. In both cases, she found the babies in dire need, nearly requiring blood transfusions. In fact, if a nurse had not visited the babies, that's very likely what would have happened later--costly emergency room visits for a couple of very sick babies.

Study after study abstracted in the American Medical Association's database supports Williams' assertion: Shorter hospital stays don't necessarily hurt the future health of newborns, provided they get follow-up outpatient care. Further, the American Academy of Pediatrics stated in 1995 that "discharge of a newborn from the hospital should be the decision of the physician caring for the baby, not by arbitrary policy established by third-party payers." But what might make medical sense doesn't always translate into a simple, public-pleasing solution that can be enforced by another regulation. Simply mandating that mothers be kept in the hospital for a certain amount of time impedes the evolution of health care, which allows people to be treated in alternative ways and places. Granted, that evolution will sometimes beget a monstrosity, and the public will want it dead. But as with all evolution, the road to stronger systems has some jarring bumps.

For now, the road ahead appears to lead instead to more regulation. With the supposed success of the "drive-through delivery" legislation, we can look forward to blanket rules covering more health care "problems." Next target for our caring lawmakers: "drive-through mastectomies."

Leak Proof

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Fri, 01 Jan 1999 00:00:00 EST

Thanks to a new over-the-counter test kit, the war on drugs can now be waged in the privacy of one's home.

In October, the Food and Drug Administration cleared the way for U.S. sales of QuickScreen, the first test for illegal drugs available to consumers. Created by Phamatech, a company that develops a variety of clinical home test kits, QuickScreen costs about $30 and comes in two models. One looks for evidence of cocaine, marijuana, opiates, amphetamine, and phencyclidine (PCP) use. The other detects cocaine, marijuana, opiates, amphetamine, and methamphetamine. QuickScreen works similarly to home pregnancy tests: A test strip inserted in a urine sample can tell within 10 minutes whether traces of any drugs are present.

Parents or educators who suspect their children or students are under the influence are expected to make up the bulk of QuickScreen consumers, says a company spokeswoman. But results indicating drug use need to be sent to a designated lab for confirmation and analysis. Because some foods and legal medicines will cause positive drug test results, worried parents may not know right away whether their kids are snorting coke, taking the occasional puff of marijuana, or merely fond of poppy seed bagels. And the FDA warns that people can test positive for marijuana if they have been around heavy marijuana smoke--even if, like our president, they never inhaled.

Trapping Copycats

mariel@reason.com (Mariel Garza) — Tue, 01 Dec 1998 00:00:00 EST

Jim Robinson describes his Web site (www.freerepublic.com) as a big electronic town hall meeting where members pass around notes and discuss news stories.

But two major news organizations, the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post, don't want Free Republic's users passing around any of their articles. In September, the newspapers filed a copyright infringement lawsuit to stop Free Republic from copying and posting stories from the Times and the Post, a move that could have lasting implications for the reproduction of copyrighted information on the Internet. Robinson, a computer programmer from Fresno, California, says his defense is the First Amendment and the "fair use" doctrine of copyright law, which allows individuals to use copyrighted works within the context of providing commentary.

But it might not be that simple, says David G. Post, a professor at the Temple University School of Law in Philadelphia. The Free Republic copies may well constitute straightforward copyright infringement. A fair use defense can be tricky, Post says, as the courts look at a number of factors, such as how the articles were used and whether they were transformed significantly. The courts also attempt to determine whether reproductions have caused any reduction in the value of the copyright owner's work.

In the lawsuit the newspapers claim that by posting their articles, Free Republic is siphoning potential business from the newspapers' commercial sites (the Times charges users to download reprints). But as any dedicated cybersurfer will know, the Internet is rife with copies of other people's work. So why pick on Free Republic? "It is a little bit odd that the Post and the Times would be going after a small and insignificant operator like that," Post says.

Whatever the motivation, says Post, any overly broad rulings could have lasting implications for other Internet copyright cases. Particularly at risk may be Web providers such as cybergossip Matt Drudge (www.drudgereport.com), who links his site to wire services and other news outlets. No significant court rulings have dealt with linking.