Archive [June 1999]

Money to Burn

Remember the billions that states won from Big Tobacco? The $246 billion tobacco settlement, to be paid out over 25 years, was supposed to be used by states to pay for the effects of smoking or to fund anti-smoking programs. Well, the states had other ideas.

Oklahoma has proposed using the money to augment its teacher retirement funds. In California, Los Angeles wants to spend its share on sidewalk repairs. North Dakota wants to renovate a morgue. And, my personal favorite: Rhode Island wants to use the money to reduce car taxes.

Naturally, anti-tobacco groups and “public health advocates” are incensed. “The real losers will be our nation’s children and the states’ taxpayers who will pay to care for another generation of sick adults lured into tobacco addiction in their teens,” complained Cass Wheeler of the American Heart Association. The AHA and the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids released a report on state spending plans, urging the feds to intervene. President Clinton said he was “disappointed that so few states are devoting tobacco settlement funds to reducing youth smoking.” Meanwhile, Congress has upheld the states’ rights to spend the money as they see fit.

This one isn’t over, folks. You think Bill Clinton is going to let that huge pot of money just sit there?

SO WHAT?

Last month, a bunch of business students at San Diego State University were caught: cheating. No big deal, right? Cheating is now so routine that a story like this probably wouldn’t have made The San Diego Union-Tribune, except for one detail: the name of the course. These idiots were cheating in their ethics class.

After being tipped off that students were getting quiz answers from an earlier class, business ethics lecturer Brian Cornforth set a trap – and caught 25 cheaters, about a third of those enrolled. All were given an “F” in the course. “A line must be drawn in the sand,” Cornforth said.

Obviously, this guy hasn’t gotten with the program. Why should these students be penalized? Everybody cheats! And everybody lies about ethics! Besides, cheating is a private matter; it doesn’t affect how they do their jobs. This teacher is clearly just a partisan student-basher.

Writer Wrong

It has been widely publicized that Hillary Clinton’s 1994 treatise, It Takes a Village, was actually written by someone else. You may not know that the ghostwriter, Barbara Feinman Todd, was royally dissed by Mrs. Clinton and her minions—and nearly cheated out of a royalty payment.

The contractual deal was that Todd would be credited in the acknowledgments, but not on the cover. Fine and dandy. When the book came out, however, Todd got no credit at all. Zero, zip, nada. A Hillary decision.

Apparently, the First Lady was furious that while she was claiming to have penned Village herself in longhand on legal pads, Beltway insiders were whispering that Todd had authored the entire book. Off with her head!

“These rumors started coming out of the White House that they’d had to fire me,” Todd told Capital Style magazine. “They were trashing me to diminish my contribution.” When Todd called the publisher, Simon & Schuster, to see why they refused to pay the last $30,000 of her $120,000 fee, she was told: “The White House doesn’t want you paid.” (She eventually got her money.)

Obviously, another opportunity for the White House to employ its most successful domestic program: trashing inconvenient women.

Mr. Clinton, Tear Down This Sign

America’s children are at long last safe from billboards of the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel. April 22 was the deadline required by last year’s $206 billion agreement between tobacco producers and 46 states. All those giant Joe Camels, terrorizing schools and playgrounds with coolness, have been expelled. All those huge racist Marlboro Men, intimidating minority neighborhoods, have ridden off into the sunset. Well, almost all.

Though the children’s liberators have tried not to let anything stand in their way, there have been some problems. When workers were removing a Marlboro sign outside Texas Stadium last year, they discovered a family of endangered red hawks, with two chicks nesting. Federal law demands that the birds not be disturbed. But for our children’s sake, the Marlboro Man had to be made extinct. What to do? The authorities waited patiently for months until the chicks could fly – then used blaring horns to get them to leave. Ah, the genius of compassionate government!