Op-Ed

SAN QUENTIN, Calif. -- The moon, a bit more than half full, glowed in a sky of stars and darkness. Only a faint breeze was blowing across the San Francisco Bay. A few yards from the dark water's edge, vans from local TV stations lined the road ending at prison gates. The state was ready to kill.

The premeditated murder went smoothly. Six minutes after midnight, a lethal injection began. Eleven minutes into the morning, observers reported, Darrell Rich's face changed color. The official time of death was 12:13 a.m., March 15, 2000.

The Associated Press quickly sent out a 270-word report that began: "A serial killer who threw an 11-year-old girl more than 100 feet to her death was executed by injection early Wednesday..." The dispatch did not mention that several hundred people had gathered at the gate to protest the death penalty.

By now, when the government takes a human life, it's usually not much of a national story -- maybe a few inches in the newspaper or a fleeting mention on a newscast. With 3,625 people on death row in the United States, and more arriving all the time, a macabre rhythm has taken hold.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Man bites dog! Or, how special interests accidentally steered us toward good public policy. In a pleasant change from the norm, we have a reversal of the usual dreary political story in which big donors and special interests shaft the public: House Republicans Drop Call for Rollback of Gasoline Tax.

Isn't that nice?

Leaving aside, as our elected leaders so often do, the wisdom of repealing the 4.3-cent-a-gallon gasoline tax, lo, regard with wonder the politics of the thing.

You may recall that this buffle-headed suggestion was made last week by Gov. George W. Bush, backed by some Senate Republicans. Dubya, as we know, has little interest in policy, but excellent political skills. And what could sound better, as prices at the pump soar across the nation, than an offer to cut 4.3 cents a gallon off the total? Great politics: Vote for that guy, or you'll have to be Bill Gates to fill up the pickup, not to mention those monster SUVs.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Walter Hall, that wonderful citizen, died Sunday at 92. Hall was, of all things, a liberal banker active in the public life of Texas for many decades. He has so many credentials on his resume that it could give you an inferiority complex just to read it.

To be called a "do-gooder" anymore is a sneering insult, but Walter Hall did good. In addition to all his work as lifelong liberal Democrat (and proud of it), he helped everybody from the Boy Scouts to the cause of clean water to tackling organized crime back when it ran rampant in Galveston County to schools to libraries to the Texas Bill of Rights Foundation to his alma mater, Rice University. One of his last, loveliest gifts was Helen's Garden in League City, Texas -- a park full of old oaks and flowers in memory of his late wife, Helen Lewis Hall, who so loved flowers.

He was one of the organizers of the Texas Independent Bankers Association and once owned banks in Dickinson, Alvin, League City, Webster and Bay City. At his death, he was chairman of the board and owner of Citizens State in Dickinson and the League City Bank & Trust.

AUSTIN, Texas -- We've already seen how disgusting the results can be when politicians drag religion into politics, so perhaps we should be depressed at the news that education is going to be the major issue in this year's presidential campaign. Lord save the children.

However (she observed with lunatic cheerfulness), perhaps some good can come of it. Right away, I can think of a dandy demonstration project that could settle at least one significant policy difference.

One of George W. Bush's big applause lines is: And if a school is failing, we should cut its money. He wants to take all Title I money away from low-performing schools -- and give it in the form of vouchers to the families of disadvantaged students. The parents could then use the vouchers (worth about $1,500 per student) to pay for after-school tutoring or to help pay for private-school tuition.

If a school is failing, take away some of its money ...

AUSTIN, Texas -- Oh, pooh, the fun's over. At least for a while (said she, always optimistic to the point of idiocy). But it was sure swell while it lasted.

Who can forget those glorious moments: George W. Bush railing against "terriers and bariffs," Al Gore wowing us with earth tones, Bill Bradley wowing us with ... um ... getting endorsed by Michael Jordan. Connoisseurs of political fun will have to look to the Reform Party for the nonce. However, we can hope that by fall we'll be ready for the clash of those titans Gore and Bush.

You must admit, at least this abbreviated primary season got folks stirred up, involved and out to vote. And that was fun. Everybody popping off with an opinion, lots of down-and-dirty campaigning, candidates being shocked and outraged all over the place.

Your cynics will conclude that all this proves is: (a) negative ads work, (b) you can't beat big money, and (c) there's not much democracy left in the U.S. of A. All of which is true. It was over before most of us had a chance to vote.

In Monroe, La., Kathy Looney, 29, convicted of abusing three of her eight children, was ordered at the end of February to undergo medical sterilization, or face lengthy jail time. District Judge Carl V. Sharp issued a 10-year suspended sentence, and placed Looney on five years of probation. "I don't want to have to lock you up to keep you from having any more children, so some kind of medical procedure is needed to make sure you don't." Looney's lawyer asked the judge to reconsider.

The eugenic impulse is always lurking. These days, it's surfacing once again, not only in old-fashioned coercive sterilization, such as that imposed by the Louisiana judge, but in programs of genetic improvement, using all the new splicing technologies. Know-how, as so often in medicine, sprints ahead of moral considerations. In this context, the Annals of Internal Medicine has just published an interesting comparison by Drs. Andre N. Sofair and Lauris C. Kaldjian of German and U.S. sterilization policies from 1930 to 1945.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Republicans for Clean Air, a group previously unknown to the Federal Elections Commission or anyone else in politics, is now running an ad in Tuesday's primary states claiming that Gov. George W. Bush passed laws that will reduce air pollution in Texas by more than a quarter million tons a year!

The mystery of "Republicans for Clean Air" was solved Friday when The New York Times revealed that Dallas billionaire and Bush pioneer Sam Wyly was fronting the money for this singularly hilarious example of what is called the "sham issue ad."

And just the other day I was noting that one loophole in Bush's campaign finance reform is that it doesn't address sham issue ads.

In the ad, Sen. John McCain's face is superimposed on a backdrop of smokestacks belching dark clouds, while a voice-over announces:

More than two months have passed since America Online and Time Warner announced plans to merge. Big news at the time, the formation of the world's largest media firm is already old hat. And so it goes: Like the rest of us, journalists quickly get used to the latest consolidation of media power.

One of the country's most perceptive media critics, Herbert Schiller, died a few weeks after the unveiling of AOL Time Warner. A professor of communication, Schiller had been warning against such corporate trends for decades. He urged people to consider the dire consequences when giant companies dominate and wield the latest media technologies.

"It is not necessary to construct a theory of intentional cultural control," Schiller observed in 1989. "In truth, the strength of the control process rests in its apparent absence. The desired systemic result is achieved ordinarily by a loose though effective institutional process."

For Americans watching TV news, March began in typical fashion. When five people were shot on the first day of the month in a town near Pittsburgh, cable networks swiftly jumped into action. They devoted hour after hour to the tragedy -- giving viewers plenty of live footage from helicopters, interviews with terrified eyewitnesses and grim official briefings. Correspondents functioned much like schizoid ghouls.

The television industry is good at deploring bloodshed -- while milking it to boost ratings. But the hypocrisy only begins there.

On the last day of February, the shocking news was that a 6-year-old boy in Michigan killed a classmate. How would a little boy get the impression that pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger is appropriate behavior? Not exactly a tough question.

But it's too tough for the nation's up-to-the-minute TV journalists -- especially when their jobs involve playing dumb.

AUSTIN, Texas -- The trouble with Granny D, the 90-year-old crusader who walked across the entire country to support campaign finance reform, is that she makes the rest of us look like such schlumps. Whew, what a record for citizen action: 3,200 miles. Sure makes me feel like an armchair warrior.

Granny D's real name is Doris Haddock, and she's been walking for 14 months -- from Pasadena, Calif., to Washington, D.C., including all of last spring in Texas. (It always takes a spell to walk across Texas.)

She got to D.C. on Tuesday by walking about 10 miles a day. She had to be hospitalized for dehydration in the Mojave Desert. She got snowed on, rained on and sleeted on; she has arthritis and emphysema; and she just kept going. And all to draw attention to the root of the rot in American politics: money.