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Of the 12 months Colorado inflicts on us, we tolerate 11 of them so that we can be here to enjoy in September, which is neither too hot nor too cold. The summer hordes have departed, but neither snowpacks nor hunters have invaded.
It's a good thing that our tourist-marketing wizards haven't yet discovered and promoted September. This is the best part of the year, and by some unaccountable stroke of good fortune, it is reserved for residents.
But I saw my quota of incandescent aspen Saturday, so I didn't feel real guilty about staying inside to watch the presidential debates Sunday evening.
One problem is that what we saw wasn't really a debate.
If I recall correctly from high school, a debate is a
formal argument, rather like a courtroom trial, wherein one
side advocates and the other opposes, such as our old
favorites, Resolved: Red China should be admitted to the
United Nations,
and Resolved: The food served in
school cafeterias should be identifiable.
Instead, this debate
consisted of answering
questions that weren't asked, and of not answering
questions that were asked. My attention sometimes lapses,
though, so perhaps I missed it when Dukakis named the three
federal programs he would eliminate, or when Bush explained
just how long a woman would have to go to prison for
getting an abortion if he had his way. He does consider
abortion murder, and several times he stated his support
for the death penalty, so perhaps a mere prison sentence
isn't what he had in mind anyway.
We did learn that both men are solid patriots who stand for defense and against the federal deficit. They oppose drugs and favor doing something about the homeless.
Although the vice-president didn't mention it during the
debate -- he wanted to require the teaching of
values
to American schoolchildren, which must mean
he wants to reverse the traditional Republican belief in
local control of education in favor of a national
curriculum issued from Washington -- he has said he has
no problem with
the zero-tolerance
program.
If your memory extends to last summer, you'll recall
that under the zero-tolerance
program, an entire
ship was confiscated by the federal government because a
bit of marijuana was found in a crewman's clothing.
Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug -- according to the Census Bureau, there are 22 million people using it now. Since these people don't hibernate, you can assume that even at this moment, they are circulating in the homes and autos of clean-living sorts, occasionally dropping seeds and leaf fragments.
It seems safe to estimate that at least 50 million people would be affected by a thorough zero-tolerance operation. If they're typical of Americans in general, each has a net worth of $84,047 that would be confiscated by the government. The resulting increase in federal assets would be about $4.2 trillion.
That is enough to retire the entire federal deficit of $2.4 trillion, and still have $1.8 trillion left to finance the Strategic Defense Initiative, to prop up scores of Third World dictators and to keep prosecutors busy with defense procurement scandals until well after the millennium.
Further, this crackdown would put at least 10 million houses into federal hands, which should allow the government to house the homeless.
Some real-estate agents would complain, perhaps, that the federal government already owns too many houses that it keeps trying to sell, thereby depressing the market, but there has to be a way around that. As we all know, the protection of real-estate prices is one of the highest and noblest goals of government, or why else would Rep. Dan Schaefer be so concerned about HUD sales in the metro area?
Granted, the debate was worth an April afternoon or an October evening, but I feel rather dismayed at giving up any of a precious September afternoon. George Bush had a chance to announce a solution for drugs, defense and the deficit, all in one masterful stroke, and our vice-president missed it.
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