All things considered, I’m probably about as law-abiding a person as you’ll ever meet. I don’t cheat on my income taxes, I didn’t dodge the draft, I don’t drive over the speed limit (or, if I do, I blame it on a faulty speedometer), I put quarters in the parking meters even on Saturdays when the streets are deserted, and I stand up, sometimes with difficulty, when they play The Star-Spangled Banner.
Now that I’ve established my credentials, I’ll give vent to some major law-related frustrations.
Yesterday, I was driving in the right lane down Third Avenue in downtown Minneapolis. As I passed the midpoint on the block, the traffic light ahead turned yellow, so I put my foot on the brake and came to a stop at the corner. In the split second before the cars waiting for the light to change started to move across Sixth Street, a car shot past me in the left lane, going maybe 45 miles per hour, and flew through the solid red light.
Now, people go through red lights all the time, and in doing so, they cause plenty of really bad accidents. That’s precisely why the city installed its Stop on Red system, which automatically photographed the license plates of cars running red lights at certain intersections. The owners of the cars were then sent traffic tickets. The fine: $142. In the first three months of the program, traffic accidents at Stop on Red intersections dropped by an astounding 54 percent.
But then the American Civil Liberties Union, an important organization that I have supported, filed an ill-conceived motion to get rid of the Stop on Red system on the grounds that it isn’t fair to give the car’s owner a ticket when someone else may have been driving. Judge Mark Wernick agreed, and now the highly effective program appears to be dead. Why can the car owner be ticketed for illegal parking when no one is in the car, but not for running a red light? Is there some technicality I’m missing here? If there is, does it outweigh the enormous benefit of a 54 percent reduction in accidents? What happened to common sense?
Another out-of-control situation has to do with federal laws regarding drug dealing. A newspaper column the other week referred to a young man who, when he was in his late teens, got involved with two drug deals. One of the deals involved some cocaine that had the potential to be turned into crack, which then could have been distributed to a lot of people. He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. Now, most of us do things when we’re 19 that we probably wouldn’t do a decade or two later. President Bush has referred to his own not-very-smart youthful behavior, and he’s not alone. Life without parole for a drug deal in a society that has failed to come up with an effective drug policy? I understand the intent of the law, but it’s crazy and misguided. We need to get rid of it and come up with an approach that can work.
Law abiding though I am, I’m outraged at the almost hysterical attacks on UnitedHealth Group’s William McGuire as a result of the alleged backdating of stock options. If there were violations of the law, there should be appropriate punishment, but this whole thing is turning into a lynching party. If improprieties took place during the past 10 years, where was the oversight? Was the board on vacation all those years? Was the Securities and Exchange Commission oblivious, not only to the UnitedHealth situation, but also to the hundreds of other companies doing the same thing? Are they pursuing McGuire simply because he was more conspicuous at his compensation level?
Everyone involved should be reprimanded, inappropriate excess profits should be recaptured, the company’s internal compliance procedures should be strengthened, and appropriate fines should be levied. It makes little sense to turn everybody into a loser: McGuire; the company, which loses his visionary leadership; shareholders, who’ve been battered; and the community, through the loss of the McGuire family’s extraordinary philanthropy.
There’s the smell of schadenfreude here, and that makes for bad, bad law.
