Op-Ed

The Supremes are probably right about prayer at football games in the Santa Fe School District case, but you must admit that there's a slight cultural gap here. The court's decision noted that the Fifth Circuit had ruled that students could offer prayers at graduation, but not in the far less solemn and extraordinary setting of a football game. That's all they know about Friday nights.

I've heard a good many proselytizing public prayers offered in this state, as opposed to the "To Whom it may concern: Let no one get injured in tonight's game, Amen" variety, but I doubt you could prove that this increases intolerance. On the other hand, in May, three Santa Fe High students were arrested on accusations that they threatened to hang a 13-year-old Jewish boy, an eighth-grader at the middle school. If true, we would have to say that the three have failed to grasp some of the central tenets of the Christian faith, let alone the principles on which the country is founded.

HOUSTON -- My favorite thing at the Texas Republican Convention was the advertising in the back of the hall that constituted an almost perfect record of the major scandals, conflicts of interest and bad public policy that have occurred during the W. Bush gubernatorial administration. There they all were, proudly displaying their gratitude to Bush and the party. It was a near-perfect metaphor for American politics today.

Chemical had several of the small billboards for each part of the hall. Dow and the rest of the chemical industry were given one-third of the seats on the Texas equivalent of the Environmental Protection Agency when Bush got into office.

He appointed a lobbyist for the Texas Chemical Council to the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. This citizen had spent 30 years working for Monsanto. He used his position as one of the top environmental officials of Texas to go to Washington to testify that ozone is benign and to oppose strengthening federal air quality standards. Being in Houston during the lovely summer ozone season reminds us all how grateful we must be for this kind of zealous watchdoggery of our air quality.

A public-interest group is urging sportswriters to resist a free-enterprise wave of the future. "Corporations are seizing the names of our beloved parks and stadiums, and replacing these with their own," Commercial Alert complains in a letter that has just arrived at newspaper offices across North America. The organization adds: "There is no law that says that you have to call a sports venue what a big corporation wants you to call it."

In recent years, several dozen companies have bought major-league naming rights. Baseball teams now play in Tropicana Field (Tampa Bay), Bank One Ballpark (Phoenix), Coors Field (Denver), Network Associates Coliseum (Oakland), Pacific Bell Park (San Francisco) and Safeco Field (Seattle). Pro basketball games are happening at branded sites from Continental Airlines Arena in northern New Jersey to American Airlines Arena in Miami to Arco Arena in Sacramento. Football and hockey are in the same groove.

Here's an idea. Since the House of Representatives thinks it's so important to give a $30-billion-a-year tax break to the richest 2 percent of Americans, why doesn't it do the same thing for the poorest 2 percent, as well? For the sake of symmetry. As a member of the Texas Lege once said, "In a artistic sense, it works."

Thirty billion to the richest, 30 billion to the poorest -- and boy, will that ever boost the incomes of the poor. And then, just for the complete balance of the whole, how about $30 billion for the middle? All in favor, vote aye.

You have to admit, that House of Reps -- they used to call it "the People's House" -- what an imagination, what a sense of humor. Here we are looking at an income gap between the rich and the rest of us that is almost beyond human comprehension -- the richest fifth of Americans now have 80 percent of all the total wealth of the nation, leaving 20 percent of the wealth for the other 80 percent of us in a practically harmonic convergence -- and the House thinks the rich need a big tax break.

So you're going along thinking it's the year 2000, Information Age, digital revolution, high-tech economy, all that jazz, and then you look at the headlines.

American General, one of the biggest insurance companies in the country, right up until this April was charging black customers up to 33 percent more than white customers for policies designed to cover burial costs. Huh?!

Coca-Cola -- not exactly a hick, backwater organization -- has just settled a race-discrimination suit filed by current and former employees. The terms of the settlement are confidential, but it was enough to knock 38 cents off Coke's stock price.

Nextel Communications Inc., a wireless communications company, just got hit with a suit by 300 current and former employees complaining about racial and sexual discrimination.

Thirty-nine current and former agents of State Farm are asking Congress to investigate "deceptive, predatory and illegal conduct" by the country's largest insurance company. State Farm says the allegations are "unfounded." The agents are complaining about red-lining and overcharging.

AUSTIN, Texas -- First there was good news. Let's hear it for the U.S. Senate, a profile in courage. A 57-42 vote on requiring "527s" -- the tax-exempt organizations that secretly raise and spend millions to influence elections -- to actually report who gives them money and how they spend it. Amazing.

Then let's have a big, fat raspberry for the House, which voted AGAINST the measure, 216-206. That's even more amazing, since a majority of the House managed to gut it up and vote for McCain-Feingold last time, and these 527s are MUCH worse than the soft-money problem.

Congratulations to Majority Whip Tom DeLay and the rest of the Republican leadership for allowing this rank corruption to continue. The 527s were discovered by tax experts in '96 and have multiplied like maggots. They're phony front groups that can spend unlimited amounts from anonymous sources.

One notable case was Republicans for Clean Air, which ran attack ads against John McCain and turned out to be the billionaire Wyly brothers of Dallas, friends of George W. Bush. Something billing itself as Shape the Debate has ads attacking Al Gore.

There's a slick new term surfing its way into the mass media. "E-government."

Al Gore has given it a big shove forward with a major campaign speech. "The power of government," he proclaimed, "should not be locked away in Washington, but put at your service -- no further than your keyboard." Gore promised online access to almost every government service by 2003: "Together, we will transform America's collection of ramshackle bureaucracies into an e-government that works for every American."

Many citizens would be glad to see the Internet streamline their dealings with federal agencies. But we're now hearing claims that go way beyond matters of efficiency -- to conflate convenience and democracy. "You should not have to wait in line to communicate with your self-government," Gore said in his June 5 speech, evoking visions of "a new system of e-government."

AUSTIN, Texas -- At the mythical Fearmonger's Shoppe ("Serving all your phobia needs") in Lake Wobegon last week, there was a special on ways to prevent your early death from the frightful menace of bad handwriting by doctors. A puzzled pharmacist studies an impenetrable prescription and mutters: "Hmm, hmm, looks like 50 milligrams arsenic ... odd. ... Oh well") and you go home. In eight hours, you're lying in a huge refrigerator and your family is planning the memorial service.

Poor penmanship among doctors is estimated to cause as many as 198,000 deaths a year. I bring this up because my reaction to this wonderful whimsy was, "I bet it's happened." And that brings us to the most useful paranoia in our public life: growing concerns about privacy.

AUSTIN, Texas -- My friend Linda Aaker recently visited Europe and came back talking, as Americans so often do, about the great public transportation in this country, the terrific child-care system in that country and the wonderful public housing in another. "Face it," said Aaker, "the United States is the Texas of the advanced countries."

The Texas. We all know what that means -- crude, backward and having miserable social services.

In this festive election year, our governor has put us once again in the national spotlight, and it's not flattering. Texas, where three white guys out looking for a good time decide to drag a black man to death behind a pickup. Where the retarded and the insane are executed to barbaric yowps from drunken frat boys in Huntsville. Where the guv's response to the dirtiest air in the nation is to politely ask polluters if they will please volunteer to quit polluting instead of making them do it.

AUSTIN -- Well, isn't that special? The governor has granted a 30-day stay to a man on death row so we can figure out from DNA evidence whether the guy should be on Death Row. He may well be, but it'll be nice to be certain for a change.

It took Bush only 131 executions to find a case where he thought there might be some doubt about the matter. No, I take that back. He did once grant a pardon: He had to. That was the memorable case of Henry Lee Lucas, the serial liar, who confessed to 150 murders before our brighter law-enforcement minds started to wonder if he was telling the truth.

The impeccable Texas criminal justice system -- about which the governor is so certain he has repeatedly said he has never had a shred a doubt about any of the 131 executions on his watch -- managed to convict Lucas of a murder that rather demonstrably occurred while Lucas was in another state entirely. Ooops.

It is particularly entertaining to watch Bush on national television solemnly explaining that those on Texas' Death Row have "full access to the courts."