What's Wrong with Nebraska?

For most of its history, Nebraska has been a conservative, solidly Republican state. In fact, the GOP has carried the state in all but one presidential election since 1940. The one exception being the landslide election of Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. It’s no surprise then that Nebraska also shares the conservative distaste for a woman’s right to choose.

Despite the state’s insistence that it champions civil rights activism, often citing the 1912 formation of Omaha’s chapter of the NAACP as proof, progressive politics have played an insignificant role in Nebraska’s history. But to say that all Nebraskans are neo-conservatives wouldn’t be fair either. The region has experienced serious issues with declining populations over the last decade, commonly known as “rural flight.” Eighty-nine percent of the cities in Nebraska have fewer than 3,000 people. Rural flight has so severely impacted the state that many of the schools have been forced to consolidate in order to remain operational. What Nebraska’s rural flight means to me, economics and housing aside, is that a good number of its citizens may be more progressive than not.

Nebraskan women who cherish their rights would certainly object to the state’s avowed intolerance for Roe v. Wade. In the summer of 2000, for instance, the Supreme Court ruled that a Nebraska law banning a controversial abortion procedure imposed an “undue burden” on women, and that it was too broad. The Court argued that the loose wording of the law could be construed to apply to all abortion procedures. This marked the first time in history since 1992’s reaffirmation of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that a major abortion dispute came before the Supreme Court. And Nebraska brought it.

But to really put a fine point on it, look what the upstanding folks of Nebraska did to Dr. LeRoy Carhart, one of the state’s three abortion providers and the filer of the lawsuit. Under the existing law of the time, Carhart would have faced felony charges resulting in the loss of his license and up to 20 years in prison, a $25,000 fine, or both. He won his case, but at the expense of his home and his animals, which the godly protectors of unborn life in Nebraska burned to the ground. They destroyed Carhart’s house and 17 horses, which were trapped in the barn when the blaze was set. The perpetrators also killed his dog and cat. The irony of situations like these makes it difficult to truly understand or sympathize with anti-abortion activists. Their message is ostensibly one of protecting life, and yet they so easily take it when it suits their needs.

Nebraska wants women to have their babies, even when the birth puts the lives of the mothers at risk. And who knows? Perhaps the fetus they save could grow up to be the next Kennedy or Obama or King or Hawking or Einstein or governor of Nebraska. Perhaps it could grow up to be the next Hitler or Hussein or Milosevic or McVeigh or Manson or Dahmer or bin Laden. It’s an interesting conundrum, really.

What needs to be examined is the societal and fiscal impact of outlawing abortion.

Without legalized abortions, thousands of women facing health risks from carrying the pregnancy to term could die, producing a generation of orphans left to the mercies of the state and an ill-equipped foster care system. And abortions will continue, but they will be performed illegally, at high cost, and in dangerous or unsanitary conditions. Without legalized abortions, more babies will be born to women in poorer socioeconomic groups, who will be the more likely to require public assistance. Outlawing abortion will increase the number of babies born addicted to or damaged by cocaine, heroin, nicotine, and alcohol. To outlaw abortion will create more dependent people, more welfare recipients, and will result in higher taxes and an increased burden on an already overtaxed and overburdened system. To outlaw abortion will cause poverty to escalate. Indigent families will be burdened with still more unwanted children, thereby reducing their standards of living even further. To outlaw abortion will increase the costs of social services paid for by the taxpayers. To outlaw abortion will result in increased child neglect, increased child abuse, and increased child abandonment. Which brings us to Nebraska today.

What states like Nebraska have failed to understand is that outlawing abortion does nothing to enforce or encourage parental responsibility. A ban on abortion will not prevent children from being unwanted or abandoned. Eliminating a woman’s right to choose is no guarantee that she will then choose to raise or take care of an unwanted child. For this reason, most states in the country have adopted “Safe Haven” laws, which protect “dumpster babies” by allowing desperate young mothers to abandon their newborns at hospitals without threat of prosecution. Although these laws have proven successful in mitigating infanticide, they have placed additional burdens on the country’s tattered foster care system, which is problematic and difficult to oversee.

The welfare of foster children is also a concern, with high incidents of reported abuse leading to more cases flooding the encumbered legal system. Then there’s the issue of adoption. The restrictions and costs placed on adopting a child are so extreme that most families have turned to overseas agencies, leaving American children to grow up as parentless wards of the state. Safe Haven surely offers no panacea, but in Nebraska they take even this a step too far.

Nebraska’s Safe Haven law is so ambiguously worded, that it allows parents to abandon any child under the age of 18. Because lawmakers there could not reach an agreement on an age, the law merely applies to a “child.” It begs the question: if you could legally abandon your child, for any reason, would you? In Nebraska, they apparently do.

Since the law’s inception, more teens have been abandoned than the newborns the law was designed to save. Out of 33 cases, more than half were teens. Of the 20 teenagers, six were 17-year-olds, two were 16-year-olds, six were 15-year-olds, three were 14-year-olds, and three were 13-year-olds. The eight children were between the ages of 11 and 12. Five of those children came from out of state. Officials have now aggravated the problem, after hesitating to respond, by announcing a special session to amend the disastrous law with wording that will clarify its application to newborns exclusively. Since notifying the public of the upcoming change, the volume of abandonments has tripled to about three per week. It seems that parents in Nebraska just can’t get rid of their kids fast enough.

Can you imagine placing your 17-year-old up for adoption? Because he didn’t mow the lawn? Because she wants to date the boy with the fast car? Because he or she has a learning disability or special needs? Can you imagine living with your child for nearly 20 years and then deciding you had no more love to give? You can’t make this argument with abortion. There’s no case to plead. The embryo has no personality, no developed intellect. You never met it or spent time with it. You didn’t watch it learn to walk and talk. You never read it bedtime stories or felt pride in its achievements. You were never disappointed with its behavior or amused by its antics. You never heard it say, “I love you.” It wasn’t viable, it wasn’t capable of these things, it wasn’t a person. But you lived all these moments with your teenage children.

It’s one thing, one very difficult and intimate decision, to abort an underdeveloped collection of cells and matter. No woman makes it lightly or eagerly. But it’s quiet another thing to be allowed to discard a human being.

In some cases, parents have dropped off their teens because they were frustrated with the responsibility of parenthood. One woman attempted to drop off her 18-year-old, believing she had no choice after a recent flurry of assault, stealing, sleeping around, and cutting school. To her credit, she is a foster parent and the teenager has a diagnosed mental illness and history of childhood abuse. But children, unlike old appliances, cannot be donated to Good Will or exchanged for a better model.

It’s amazing how mightily Nebraskans have struggled to prevent women from terminating unwanted pregnancies, regardless of the mother’s situation. Whether the pregnancy comes as a result of rape or abuse, or whether it endangers the mother’s life, Nebraska would rather deal with the severe social, economic, and psychological fallout of abandonment than allow termination procedures. Because, I suppose, that’s God’s will. And if you get bored with your teenager and decide to dispose of them on the hospital steps, I suppose that’s His will too. At least it is in Nebraska.

Disney's Dreadful Security

The safety and security of our guests and our cast members is of paramount importance to us and is evident in programs throughout Disney.

So asserts the company’s mission statement. The reality, however, is far less savory. The stories of Disney’s overly aggressive, abusive and yet surprisingly ineffective private security force are legend among insiders and fans. The truth of the matter is that Disney’s mission statement addresses only half of its purported goal.

I’ve had the opportunity to study Disneyland’s video surveillance systems and monitoring initiatives. When the park undertook its massive expansion effort, which led to the creation of Downtown Disney, California Adventure and a towering parking structure, Disneyland Security also augmented the presence of security cameras throughout the resort’s sprawling properties. To allay some of the more conspiratorial concerns, the intent and use of the surveillance systems has little to do with intrusive spying, voyeurism, or other violations of personal privacy. Unfortunately, the camera systems also have very little to do with the “safety and security” of Disneyland’s guests and cast members, which is said to be “of paramount importance” to park security officials.

No, Disneyland’s cameras exist to protect Disneyland against you and me. With the amount of OSHA claims, safety violations, and fraudulent liability claims levied against the park each year, Disneyland uses the cameras as evidence to protect its financial interests in court. Shoplifters cannot be accurately detected or tracked by most surveillance systems; Disneyland wisely relies on undercover security operatives for these purposes. Safety is overseen, to the extent that it is, by uniformed security officers located throughout the park. Sadly, security officers and practices at the Magic Kingdom are often unjust, abusive, hostile and beyond the limits typically accorded to private security forces. The state Department of Consumer Affairs Bureau of Security and Investigative Security Services protocols do not apply inside the floral ramparts that protect Disneyland from the rules, civil liberties and safeguards of the outside world. And yet, for all the Spartan measures in which Disney Security frequently partakes, are we any safer? The answer is No.

Over the last 12 months, I’ve been replicating standard Government Accountability Office (GAO) undercover tests to assess the potential for significant breaches of security. Disneyland has failed repeatedly.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PROBLEMS

In 1989, the Boozer family of Idaho Falls visited Disneyland. Outside the Space Trader gift shop, a Disney security guard confronted the Lonnie and Karen Boozer, and their two young daughters, with accusations of shoplifting. According to the security officer, one of the family members (never identified specifically) stole a piggy bank. The family was shuffled off to the backstage security office, which is for all intents and purposes a private jail. There, in violation of their rights, the family was unlawfully detained for questioning. The family eventually filed a $1 million lawsuit against Disneyland.

In the summer of 1995, Billie Jean Matay, who once performed on Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club television program, was accosted at gunpoint by a man in the parking lot who took her credit cards and $165 in cash before fleeing. After the assault, Matay located a park security officer to report the crime and obtain assistance. Instead of helping the 52-year-old and her grandchildren, security personnel escorted the family to the security office where they were detained for hours against their will.

These problems extend across all Disney business landscapes and include Disney World in Florida. According to an Associated Press article from 1996 ("Disney Shows Two Worlds" by Mark Fritz, AP, September 30, 1996), “[Disney World] also has a reputation for toughness, aggressiveness, and litigiousness that is unrivaled in the entertainment industry. And some of its critics say it sometimes goes too far to protect its interests, shunning compromise in favor of confrontation. Disney insists it runs its business and defends its interests in a legal and ethical manner. The company wouldn't comment on some specific legal cases that are most likely to supply ammunition to its critics.”

One such case involved the injury of a park guest visiting from Uruguay. Park officials attempted to exploit the woman’s insufficient grasp of English to get her to sign a waiver. For Disney’s negligence and attempted coercion, jurors in the case award the plaintiffs $100,000.

Another incident mentioned in the AP piece:

Disney's undercover unit, called Fox, uses security officers dressed as tourists to intercept shoplifters at its many retail emporiums. Typically, Disney will get people to agree to a $200 fine if they admit wrongdoing.

But there are complaints that innocent people are sometimes snared in the intense interdiction effort. People who profess innocence face a tough, costly fight to prove it.

Terri Dorsett, a 17-year-old from Yadkinville, N.C., got a lesson in relentlessness after she visited the park with her high school band last year.

She and a few classmates visited a Disney store and were arrested for shoplifting, taken to the security office, fingerprinted and, her father says, prevented from calling anybody. "She was hysterical," said Thomas Dorsett, a North Carolina businessman. She also was innocent, she said.

One of the other girls admitted dropping a $1.98 Mickey Mouse pen into Terri's shopping bag without her knowledge. He said his daughter passed a polygraph test he arranged.

Dorsett said he met with prosecutors and Disney officials who seemed sympathetic. He thought for sure the company would drop her case. But it never did.

"Disney would not back off," said the family's lawyer, Harrison Slaughter.

Dorsett spent $15,000 fighting the criminal charge that eventually went to trial. His daughter was acquitted. Dorsett now has filed a federal civil suit against Disney and says he is convinced that Disney maliciously prosecutes innocent people.

"It's scary what can happen to a child," Dorsett says. "The prosecutor's office, they are scared of Disney. Disney rules that area with an iron fist. It's a joke."

According to an Orange County Register article in November 1996 by Anne Mulkern, "no official group scrutinizes the behavior of Disney security, a force nearly as large as the 382-officer Anaheim Police Department, Orange County’s second largest law-enforcement agency."

According to David Sklansky, a law professor at UCLA, "One of the major problems is that we don't really know what Disney security agents are doing--how often they stop, interrogate, search or detain people. "They're not subject to the same regulatory control as the civil police."

Of the numerous people Mulkern interviewed, all of whom reported severe problems with Disney security practices, "Several allege Disney security held them up to four hours in a small room with no access to a bathroom, telephone or water before the Anaheim police were called. Disney disputes these allegations. Parents said Disney security questioned their children without calling the parents first, and sometimes told adolescents they must confess or be sent to jail."

And despite the excessive force of its private and unregulated security personnel, Disney accomplishes nothing in the way of cast member and guest safety.

In 2003, Disney released a press release about post-911 security enhancement measures and increased screening protocols:

Code Orange at Disneyland – With the nation at war, and the terror alert standing at "orange-plus," the Disneyland Resort has noticeably increased its security.

Resort security is again wearing their bright-orange vests, and uniformed Anaheim police officers are frequently spotted inside the theme parks. The Disneyland K-9 unit has been spotted on stage several times, once walking around Town Square, sniffing at trash cans and strollers.

Some visitors report experiencing more thorough package checks at the main entrance, often being asked to remove items from bags, or to open their overshirts and jackets.

At most, these additional precautions have led only to an increase in guest inconvenience.

While it’s true that Disneyland has a trained K-9 unit, the problem lies in notification. Security, to be effective, must adhere to the following principles, in a phased approach: observation, detection, notification and reporting. Before the elite Disney officers or their K-9 forces arrive to defuse a bomb or harass a would-be terrorist, every phase up to notification must be followed. That means those semi-retired ticket counter workers who stand distracted and disaffected in the security screening tents must be vigilantly observing and detecting potential security risks, then notifying the proper authorities. Herein lies the problem.

Purses, handbags, backpacks, diaper bags and other satchels are routinely opened and cursorily inspected by the Disney screeners. Depending on the extent of the screener’s training and profiling abilities, the occasional request to open a jacket is made. In the last year, I have easily entered the park with guns, knives and enough simulated explosives material to make a devastating suitcase bomb. And with each attempt, Disney screeners smiled and waved me through.

TEST RESULTS

The following data represents a series of undercover attempts to breach Disney security. I am a licensed agent with clearance to carry concealed firearms and weapons. These tests should not be reproduced or undertaken by unlicensed or untrained persons.

• February 18, 2007 at 11:10: Entered the park with large pocketknife. Security did not check my jacket or my pockets.

• March 11, 2007 at 13:00: Entered park with butterfly knife, switchblade, and large pocketknife. Bulges in coat and pants pockets made obvious. Security made no effort to inspect me.

• April 22, 2007 at 9:59: Entered park with hunting knife in belt of pants, switchblade and butterfly knife in coat pocket, and pocket knife in hand, attached to key ring. Although my coat partially obscured the hunting knife, I ensured that it was as close to my front as possible, and easily visible. A guest in line commented on the knife. Security waved me through without checking, even as I waved back with a pocketknife in my hand.

• May 27, 2007 at 17:30: Entered park with licensed firearm, a 9mm pistol secured in a shoulder holster. The holster created a visible bulge under my coat, to the left. Security did not order me to open my jacket, and I was waved through. I immediately turned and exited the park.

• August 26, 2007 at 19:47: Entered the park with my two children. Firearm secure in shoulder holster under an unseasonably heavy coat, with a second licensed firearm tucked into the waist of my pants, toward the back. Security spoke with my two children and ushered me through without inspection or scrutiny, without requesting me to open my jacket, and without questioning why I was wearing such a heavy coat in the warm weather.

• September 23, 2007 at 9:00: Entered the park with backpack. At the bottom of the bag, wrapped in white butcher’s paper, was five pounds of Silly Putty, fashioned to simulate plastique (plastic explosives material). The material was obvious in the bag. In addition to the Putty were a water bottle, a sandwich in a clear bag, a digital camera, an iPod, a cell phone and a bottle of sunscreen. Security looked through the bag and questioned the contents of the package wrapped in butcher paper. I informed security that I had stored some food for lunch, which I was going to stow in a locker in the designated picnic area. Again, I was permitted entry into Disneyland without incident.

Had I been a terrorist, I could easily have detonated a large-scale incendiary device within Disneyland grounds, at the cost of many lives. Disney’s bomb-sniffing canine units never would have been called in because the security screeners failed to take notice of the suspicious parcel in my bag, much as they have failed to detect knives and guns. Disneyland Security is not equipped, trained, experienced, or prepared to handle a real threat to guest and cast member safety. As a symbolic target, one would imagine a more regimented and focused training effort in profiling and physical security. And as a company obsessed with the mitigation of liability, the risks are abundant and financially dangerous.

There’s an old saying in the security industry: you can’t guarantee someone’s safety, but you can guarantee peace-of-mind. Translated, this means that security systems are largely cosmetic, sold to make consumers feel safer, even though the implements themselves do little to promote or ensure safety. Disneyland’s increasingly cumbersome and abusive security practices operate in much the same way.

The next time you’re trapped in the endless security screening queue at Disneyland, cursing under your breath that it’s all for show, enter the park with the peace-of-mind of knowing that it is. Always remember, at Disneyland the employees are cast members and the workplace is a stage. In short, Disneyland is a realm of fantasy. Its security is no exception.

Proposition 83 - Another Dreadful Security Fallacy

In terms of security, I’ve fielded a lot of questions about ballot initiatives sponsored by private interests purporting to "protect our children." It's unfortunate that to achieve selfish monetary ends people will use children as the means. But neither the security industry nor its stakeholders have proven themselves historically immune from such temptations.

Proposition 83, less formally known as “Jessica’s Law” is one such fallacy, and perhaps the most recent to gain widespread notoriety. Political activists on the left argue that measures such as this contribute to private interest causes that violate the rights of prisoners. The issue of what rights prison inmates should have is debatable and part of a larger, more complex and unrelated discussion. The activists on the right are, more often than not, benefiting from the private interests at stake, and so support them. They argue their stance using some imagined moral high ground where examples of innocent lives in peril are hypothesized, the initiative becoming the only means to mitigating the dangers described, usually with dubious logic. What are not being considered at all in these discussions are real security concerns and a nationally unproductive prison industry that contributes to our compromised safety issues. As a security expert with more than 20 years of high-level tenure, let me tell you why I would not vote in favor of Proposition 83 or others of its kind.

First, everyone must be clear on this: apart from sex offenders, no one in this country favors relaxing protections for our children or the children in our communities. That’s a given. But that doesn’t equal supporting flawed policy. And Prop 83 is flawed.

Proposition 83 (Sex Offenders, Sexually Violent Predators, Punishment, Residence Restrictions and Monitoring Initiative Statute) does nothing to protect children. It merely promotes a false sense of security, pandering to a very emotional subject for most voters. Furthermore, the measure underscores financial support for subrosa pork programs that serve certain special interest groups involved in the booming prison industry and law enforcement labor unions. And, yes, the prison industry is big business. Very big.

The Business of Incarceration:

In 1997 alone, prisons across the country were generating more than $30 billion in revenue. But this money was not the result of consumer spending or organic sales growth, which one would typically associate with a private or publicly traded business. Unfortunately prisons, even private prisons, earn their pay from the pockets of tax payers. Prisons come in three flavors: state, federal and private. And private merely means government contracted, which means the government pays its contractors with money allotted from your taxes.

Prisons also generate billions of dollars by outsourcing the cheap labor of prisoners to various Fortune 100 companies looking to bolster their bottom line profits while avoiding expensive compliance issues with federal and international labor standards. The businesspeople who have invested in the goods and services produced from the prison industry have uncovered a little known goldmine of cheap labor (akin to offshore sweatshops), which exists without notice or public attention. Keep in mind that prisoners cannot strike, collect unemployment insurance, take vacations, accrue collateral compensation, and are not bound to labor laws regulating rest times, working hours or working conditions. Refusal to perform work often leads to punitive stints in solitary confinement for the dissenting inmate.

There are more than 2 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to a report issued by California Prison Focus, “No other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens.” But the nature of the dispensation of justice is not key to this discussion. Most citizens would agree that criminals should face punishment and be removed from open society. But the profit margins created by the prison workforce hold such appeal that little is being done within the prison system to combat recidivism, encourage rehabilitation and social integration efforts, or find ways to reduce the prison population. Instead, corporations, their shareholders and their lobbyists have found an unlimited profit center in prison labor, which has fostered incentives to lock more people up, in order to expand and maintain a cost effective workforce.

Although well known within the notoriously tight-lipped security industry, many tax payers remain unaware that they are paying upwards of $25,000 per year to feed and shelter each inmate. (National Center for Policy Analysis [NCPA], “Economic Impact of Prison Labor” reports). More disturbing, however, is the length to which lobbyists have gone and succeeded in passing legislation that favors longer and more unreasonable sentences. The “war on drugs,” a much debated topic in fiscal and moral courts, has certainly played its part in contributing to this. The minimum sentences for minor drug possessions often equal those of more heinous or violent crimes. A typical sentence for possession of less than 2 ounces of rock-cocaine or crack generally runs 10 years or more. The infamous Nelson Rockefeller anti-drug laws of New York provided mandatory prison sentences of 15 years to life for possession of 4 ounces of any illegal drug, including marijuana. While I staunchly support the legalization of drugs, prostitution and other victimless crimes, I do so with the concerns of security and societal wellbeing at the forefront of my mind, rather than straight economics. Many proponents of this kind of legalization tend to cite economic improvements to support their positions. The increase in overall economic health, which would theoretically come from the taxes that applied to legalizing such programs, would offer benefits across the board, they say. While there may be merit to this theory, many people have little or no idea how much money the government makes from the war on drugs, prostitution or other vice crimes. I believe legalization has not occurred because of the tremendous loss the government and its contractors would incur.

Since its inception in 1970, the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act has provided incentive for police departments and government agencies, like the DEA and ATF, to levy severe punishments for minor crimes. For the most part, mafia-esque racketeering operations involve time consuming, expensive and resource-exhausting operations that are difficult, if not impossible, to prosecute. But drug possession crimes also fall under RICO. And drug trafficking is much easier to handle. But why does RICO provide incentive? Because Title 18, Section 1963, paragraphs f through m describe the process by which the United States may collect, seize and "direct the disposition of the property by sale or any other commercially feasible means." More specifically, in paragraph f:

"The proceeds of any sale or other disposition of property forfeited under this section and any moneys forfeited shall be used to pay all proper expenses for the forfeiture and the sale, including expenses of seizure, maintenance and custody of the property pending its disposition, advertising and court costs. The Attorney General shall deposit in the Treasury any amounts of such proceeds or moneys remaining after the payment of such expenses."

I've seen quite a few agencies take their cut, justifying all manner of outrageous expenses and bureaucratic proceedings. Even now, agencies friendly with shady government contractors such as Halliburton are considering bringing motions of racketeering against these companies in the near future. How could that make sense? Because it will allow the government to recover its losses, which it squandered on fruitless no-bid contracts with friends and cronies, and which it will use to pay for more no-bid contracts for other projects being planned - with these same companies. It happens all the time in government. Consider the selling of Nixon to the American people. Nixon won the first election based on a promise to end the war. After committing an extra 100,000 troops and invading Cambodia, further complicating the war, he won his second term reelection in a landslide...promising to end the war. Government rhetoric at its finest is compelling and convincingly misleading. At its worst, it is recursive. But it always seems to work.

The point is: whether it's the cheap and plentiful prison labor or the windfall earnings from RICO cases, corporations and government agencies, often working in concert, are making money off the war on whatever-crime-is-being-used-as-a-talking-point.

Other laws passed in favor of appeasing the prison industrial complex have included inflexible “three strikes” laws, which in one case sent a man to prison for more than 25 years for stealing a bicycle; the passage of laws requiring minimum sentencing terms, regardless of the circumstances; and longer sentences without any imposed rehabilitation or psychological assistance programs. And these programs have every chance of success when one considers that 97 percent of federal inmates have been convicted of non-violent crimes, that two-thirds of the one million state prisoners have committed non-violent offenses, and that 16 percent of the country’s two million prisoners suffer from mental illness. These are crimes born from poverty, unemployment and drug addictions. All are treatable. And the mentally ill, who have little or no understanding of their actions, should be hospitalized rather than jailed and forced into slave labor for Corporate America.

And which companies are investing in prison labor? Large corporations familiar to tax payers and consumers. In fact, if you are a consumer who regularly purchases products from one of these businesses, consider that your tax dollars are also going to the prisons where the manufacturing workforce for these companies reside. And it’s not uncommon for prisoners to earn about 25 cents-per-hour for their work. That’s less expensive than labor costs for offshore workers in outlying island nations. So why haven’t these companies passed along the savings to you? Good question. Write them and ask:

IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target, and Nike. Nike, in fact, was urged by Oregon State Representative Kevin Mannix in 1995 to close its Indonesian production facilities and relocate back to the United States where manufacturing costs would be more competitive through the use of prison labor.

And now, these same private interest groups have created an emotionally charged proposition that can only further their efforts, with no guarantee of delivering the protections promised to voters by Proposition 83.

The money to be allocated for the dubious “Jessica’s Law” would be better spent on child care programs, expanding health care for underprivileged families, and improving educational opportunities. Vote for it if you enjoy throwing away lots of money. Because no provision of this law would have any real effect in protecting children from predators.

Some Things to Consider:

More than 90 percent of the victims of child rape knew their offenders. The offenders were neighbors and friends. More than half the time, the offenders were relatives of the children. In all of these cases, the attackers were not stalking any of the public areas where the proposition attempts to restrict access. These offenders, the vast majority of all child predators, already had access to the children. The sponsors of the bill have spent a great deal of time and money trying to scare voters into support, or to exploit a sensitive visceral response. They would have voters believe that sex offenders lurk in the shadows near school and parks, waiting to violently attack or kill children. And truth told, that is exactly what happened to Jessica Lunsford, the inspiration for the eponymous proposition. But this scenario is extremely rare. According to Department of Justice (DOJ) research, such incidents average one per-state per-year. Again, the bulk of sexual offenders are not only known to their victims but are trusted and welcomed.

Another problem with the bill is that it mandates tougher restrictions on where registered offenders may live. On the surface, this portion of the bill would seem unimpeachable. However, relocating offenders accomplishes nothing more than just that — moving them elsewhere. Imposing residential limitations on offenders pushes them to sparsely populated rural and suburban areas where law enforcement personnel and resources are thin. In states where such measures were previously enacted, the results were unfavorable. Counseling, psychiatric and other related social services for the mentally ill are lacking or largely non-existent in these areas. All the bill achieves is redirecting offenders from one neighborhood to another. Sadly, this is exactly how the Catholic Church chose to cover up and deal with its sex offenders — by moving them from one diocese to another — and we saw how well that protected our children.

And then there’s the lifelong GPS monitoring program for not just registered child molesters but all registered sex offenders. This program would cost millions of dollars to accomplish very little. Opposition to imposing the lifelong GPS system is not a matter of protecting a criminal’s civil liberties, as far right wing pundits would have voters believe; it’s a simple matter of economics and efficiency. An entirely new bureaucracy and law enforcement division (estimated as being equal to the initial number of troops sent to Iraq) would need to be established to monitor these people. And the law itself does nothing to deal with offenders who simply remove the device.

Having worked with these systems myself since 1990, I have witnessed and tested how incredibly easy it is to disable or remove a GPS device from an ankle. The only response by law enforcement in this situation would be to respond to the offender’s home or last known location, as transmitted by the GPS beacon. And during this futile response, the offender may have already violated or harmed another child. Simply put, the proposition offers no contingency for the removal of the GPS device; it merely states not to do so. And despite the best GPS beacons and monitoring facilities, police can only respond to the last known location of the device, if it is no longer in motion or has been disabled. They would have no way of knowing where the subject had fled. It would then require more law enforcement efforts to track down the escaped offender and move him or her back through the complicated legal channels, hemorrhaging your tax dollars all the way.

This law can only be effective when dealing with known and registered sex offenders, who currently comprise the minority of this criminal community. According to a Department of Justice study, there are roughly 85 percent more non-convicted sex offenders than released offenders. This means that the majority of people committing sex crimes against children were never arrested or convicted for these crimes initially; they were serving sentences for other offenses, non-sexual in nature. Therefore, 85 percent of these sexual predators are not registered as such, and would not be covered under the provisions of Jessica’s Law.

And as with all propositions or bond measures that require allocating money, which require taxation, the economics of the bill must be considered. In the typical prison environment and in the typical economic climate, the average cost for incarcerating and caring for an offender is between $22,000 and $25,000 per year, not including treatment or rehabilitation efforts. The cost of supervision and treatment of a sex offender by a licensed treatment center ranges between $5,000 and $15,000 per year. Studies conducted in the recidivism rates for sex offenders all conclude that those offenders who sought treatment in a medical facility had a much lower likelihood of repeating future crimes. Because the bulk of sex offenders suffer from some form of mental illness, treatment options abound. In prison, these options are limited or nonexistent.

The prison system, to the cheers of many authoritarians, does not promote or endorse any real form of rehabilitation. Proponents denounce rehabilitation and claim that that’s not the role of prison; the role of prison is to punish. And it is well established that the violent atmosphere of most U.S. prisons often increases the propensity for criminal behavior and mental illness. The logical fallacy here is in questioning what happens to society when these criminals are finally released at the end of their sentences. Without rehabilitation, there is a strong chance of recidivism. But for those profiting off the ever growing prison industry, that’s just more money in the bank. And more crime on the streets.

If you’re truly interested in protecting your children, laws and measures like Proposition 83 are not benefiting you. Truly, they are not designed to.

The best way for parents to protect their children is to talk to them, to teach them safety, to known where they are, and to monitor the actions of family and friends who are close to the child. Warning signs and red flags should be self evident. Consult a professional counselor if you believe a relative or friend has exhibited these signs. Taking this action as soon as your comfort level has been compromised assures you are near perfect change of preventing a situation before it occurs.

By creating an open atmosphere for conversation and trust, your child will be more comfortable coming to you with a concern about being touched or violated by a friend or relative. And like it or not, 90 percent of the time, these are the people committing the crimes. By using tax dollars to bolster after school programs, child care programs, health care and treatment programs, and to increase community safety by putting more police officers on the beat, you can make real progress in reducing the occurrence of crimes against children. But a Proposition 83 will accomplish none of these things.

Planned Obsolescence

How many Southern California residents remember when rush hour was truly an hour? For those teens who began driving in the 1990s, the answer is “not many.” According to U.S. Census Bureau data, the 1990s saw the largest population growth in United States history, both as a result of new births and a spike in immigration. That growth also led to more vehicles on the highways.

Now, how many Southern California residents and visitors to Disneyland remember the narration that accompanied attractions such as the People Mover and Monorail? The attractions often made visionary statements such as, “Someday the PeopleMover may take you on a shopping tour through stores in your community, and this is how it might be.” The future is here and yet we’re still sitting in traffic. And as I sat unmoving on the same stretch of freeway for nearly 15 minutes, I realized that a monorail would fit nicely in the area reserved for the center divider, wondering what might have been.

Based on the findings of the 2005 Urban Mobility Report, the average Southern Californian commuter can expect 93 hours of traffic delay a year on top of the total standard commute time, which is increasing exponentially. When the standard commute time is factored out, the remaining 93 hours of delay translates to missing 11 days of work as a result of freeway gridlock. Many commuters would gladly consider public transit, but Southern California’s sprawling infrastructure makes this largely impractical. The trains currently being constructed are expensive, difficult to plan, and the routes must often times be indirect because of the existing roadways and the location of both urban and suburban communities. A commuter could elect to take a bus, but these vehicles must travel the same highways, confront the same potential delays, and are required to make frequent stops along the way.

Many of Southern California’s freeways, never designed to handle the intensity and volume of today’s traffic, have been forced to undergo lengthy, costly, and cumbersome expansion efforts. But these efforts have had little impact on solving the problem; after years of construction, the ever-growing commuter population inevitably increases to numbers beyond the new capacity of the roads. For California, it has become an endless cycle of futility, resulting in nothing but a massive hemorrhaging of cash. And where does the cash come from? Generally, the state government must raise taxes, registration, and other related vehicle licensing fees to compensate. While some political groups, such as Libertarians, persuasively argue that contracting private businesses in favor of using government agencies like Cal-Trans may alleviate the tax burden and yield more timely and efficient results, the problem itself remains. But should it? Are there other alternatives?

Of course there are. Public transit systems in Southern California were the primary means of transportation between the 1920s and 1960s. During that time, a network of rail lines and electric streetcars connected Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties. During the 1950s, however, automobile manufacturers launched aggressive marketing campaigns that created such a high demand for cars, appealing to the consumer's desire for the freedom and individuality they offered, that the electric transit systems faded away. Clean, affordable, and efficient transportation in Southern California gave way to gridlock and pollution in 1961, when the last Red Car was decommissioned. And since that time, automobile companies have maintained a stronghold over Southern California commuters.

A more critical examination of the automotive industry reveals how manufacturers have succeeded for so long. In short, much can be attributed to “planned obsolescence.” The core concept of planned obsolescence involves an agency’s deliberate decision to produce a commodity that will become obsolete in a given time frame. The idea came about during the production boom of the 1920s and 1930s, and clever business people quickly realized the financial benefits that awaited them when they considered the adoption of such strategies.

When a product becomes outmoded in the mind of the consumer, a perception influenced by a company’s successful deployment of a planned obsolescence policy, the incentive to purchase a newer product is created. That’s why we continue to see “new” model cars each year that bear only minor improvements. We know that there are better, more efficient, and more environmentally sound technologies available: a variety of alternative energy vehicles exist and have been used successfully; continuing to rely on petroleum fueled vehicles accomplishes little for the consumer. For one, oil is a non-renewable energy source; it will go away one day. Then what? What is the plan when oil becomes obsolete?

While it’s difficult to say for certain, the problem of planned obsolescence remains. Los Angeles is desperately trying to rejuvenate its public transit system, but the consumer’s desire for automobiles has not diminished. Neither has the automotive industry’s powerful marketing machine. In fact, the industry is doing its level best to combat the increasing “problem” of hybrid vehicles. Though many take issue with old conspiratorial tales of the oil and automotive industries buying out and concealing inventions that turned ordinary water into fuel, there is nevertheless some semblance of truth to the lore. Solar vehicles, electric vehicles, and biodiesel vehicles all exist. But the automotive industry, far behind in these technological developments, continues to find ways of eliminating the competition, regardless of the benefits offered by the alternative technologies. Once again, planned obsolescence trumps progress.

Which brings the focus back around to the Monorail. Specifically, Walt Disney’s Monorail. The Disneyland Monorail was first conceived in 1957 when Disney’s engineering group visited the Alweg Corporation near Cologne, Germany, to examine its monorail system. In 1958, Disney had adopted the basic design and, through a joint venture with Alweg, created the first daily operating monorail system in the western hemisphere. The system, considered by experts to be a hallmark of engineering, eventually received recognition as a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark in 1989 by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Each train has ten pneumatic tires that carry the weight of the vehicles along an elevated beamway, which guides and stabilizes the train. The braking system is a combination of both dynamic and air braking on the drive wheels. The trains are electrically powered, operating on 600-volts of direct current transmitted along a pair of copper and steel buss bars, which are mounted on the right side of the beam. Each train is powered by four 100-horse-power motors, capable of reaching speeds in excess of 50 miles-per-hour. More interesting, the report by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers notes that “the system is intended to apply to urban transit.”

That’s right, urban transit. Although visitors to Disneyland find the “futuristic” trains to be a pleasant attraction, whose only functional transit role is to shuttle guests to and from the surrounding hotels and Disney shopping districts, the Monorail was never envisioned to remain an amusement park ride. Immediately following the summer of 1959, Walt Disney brought numerous city transportation groups to ride his new Monorail. Disney was so taken with the concept and its potential benefit to the community that he was trying to promote the train as a solution to the mounting transit problems in America’s cities. A related story appeared in the Real Estate section of the Los Angeles Times in June, 1959. Written by Al Johns, the story extolled the same advantages that Disney perceived.

But it was the now legendary Imagineer Bob Gurr who foresaw the demise of the project before it had ever gotten off the ground. In a skeptical statement, Gurr had said, “city and transit line officials in Los Angeles are letting rapid transit get further and further away by studying and talking the issue to death instead of getting in and building a system.” Forty six years later, there is still no monorail in Southern California outside the Disneyland park.

Non-polluting, energy efficient, space conserving, and rapid, the Monorail system still remains a viable alterative to the state’s growing traffic problem, not to mention its positive impact on the environment. Because the elevated platform, supported by narrow pylons, takes up very little space, the monorail system could conceivably run more direct routes than existing commuter trains. Because of its lightweight fiberglass design and electric motors, the train could offer a more economically sound system of mass transit. Because California is one of the top two most polluting states in the country, realistic methods for moving away from oil based products continue to haunt eco-conscious consumers, who would welcome the advantages a Monorail could offer.

Disney had predicted today’s traffic problems in 1959, and had gone so far as to offer what can still be considered a solid solution. More people in Southern California communities would be able to affordably travel greater distances to seek better employment opportunities, which current limitations in transit options and finances prevent them from taking. The environment would benefit greatly from less vehicle emissions. Incidents of road rage and personal stress levels would abate. Costly freeway expansion and construction projects would become less pressing and less frequent issues, reducing taxes and vehicle licensing fees. Families, no longer affected by increasingly long commute times, would have more quality time together.

In today’s society, so controlled by the power of consumerism and the bureaucratic influence of big government and pork barrel spending, there is little chance of getting around the inefficiencies of Cal-Trans or reducing the number of vehicles on the roadways. Fringe political groups, perhaps Libertarians or Green Party members, may try. Consumer and community activists may try. But they are fighting lobbies with power beyond that of some nations.

As strange new taxes are being imposed on hybrid vehicles, just one omen of their planned demise, there is little hope that responsible and conscientious consumers can escape the grasp of the automobile and oil industries…or of the planned obsolescence they impose. But they can still ride Disney’s Monorail, briefly sharing a vision of how simple the solutions to complex problems can be, and wonder what might have been. With the 93 hours they will squander sitting in traffic this year, there should be plenty of time.