IT'S THE MONEY, STUPID

Adam Wheeler, the former Harvard student who lied about his grades to get in, plagiarized others to stay in, and invented a perfect 1600 point SAT score to apply for scholarships, is being held behind bars without bail. "This defendant's actions cheated those who competed honestly and fairly for admissions and for the scholarships that this defendant fraudulently obtained," said Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone.

He isn't in jail because he cheated at Harvard, by the way - that would ordinarily have been handled some sort of internal disciplinary board - he is in jail because he fraudulently obtained $45,000 in grants. Now I see why they're so pissed off. It's the money! You can't just steal money from people and walk away, la-di-da, like this is the way the world works.

Apparently, however, this same principle does not apply to the Wall Street magnates who filched tens of billions of dollars from the American public and proceeded to walk away, la-di-da, with multi-million dollar bonuses for their trouble. I don't see District Attorney Leone turning his legal guns on them. True, they didn't lie about their SAT scores, but they did cause millions of Americans to lose their homes, their jobs, their lives. That ought to be worth just a little outrage, eh?

A SIMPLY CHOICE

Two days ago, the Times ran a column about upcoming bills in the California Legislature which seek to regulate the lives of teenagers. The bills relate to high-sugar-content drinks being sold at schools, helmets for skate-boarders, and the like. The column was called, “Protecting or Nannying.” I wrote the following response to the Times.

If our children are to grow into responsible adults, they cannot be “nannied,” neither by their parents nor by the state. However, if we are to expect them to survive childhood at all, they must be protected from the unprincipled forces of the “free market.” Opponents to a series of proposed state bills would have you believe that today’s teens are more than capable of making these simple, straight forward choices by themselves. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Advertisers spend hundreds of millions of dollars persuading young consumers that this type of behavior or that brand of clothing is the coolest. Protected by the banner of “let the buyer beware,” these ethically challenged business people are concerned only with sales volume, not with your children’s safety. Having carefully woven the cost of potential law suits into their budgets, they have decided in advance exactly how many childhood obesity cases, accidental deaths and injuries they can defend against and still turn a profit.

This is not a level playing field, on which mature adolescents can reasonable be expected to make informed choices; it is a rigged game, in which unsuspecting teens are the designated victims of undetectable dangers . Moderate laws designed to protect our children from overly aggressive retailers are completely appropriate