LASER SAFETY NET, ECONOMIC TRENDS, SCHOOL PRAYER AND CRIMINALS

Airborne laser fills vital need, officer says: Col. Ellen M. Pawlikowski, who earlier this month assumed command of the Air Force's top weapons project, says its success ultimately will change the face of war.

The Airborne Laser Attack Aircraft (officially the ABL, but some call it ALAA) is designed to use a powerful laser to destroy enemy ballistic missiles in midair shortly after launch.

It its aimed primarily at countering the threat posed by an increasing number of rogue nations acquiring the capability of launching theater ballistic missiles, like the Russian-made Scuds that caused havoc in the Gulf War. -- Chicago Tribune

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Imports ... climbing even faster at about 7 percent, near $1.3 trillion, yielding a gaping $330 billion trade deficit. Service-sector surplus keeps shrinking ... will be $70 billion in 2000, $6 billion lower than 1999. Includes tourism, education, finance, medicine, engineering, consulting.

Road-construction industry mergers ahead ... companies linking up with suppliers, rivals. One reason: The government's highway spending spree. The outlook for the next five years is the best it has been in decades. Many family-business owners plan to get out while the market is strong.

Prime takeover targets: Quarries, asphalt plants, cement makers. There's plenty of room for consolidation among them, especially in West.

Expect European firms to buy more companies in a hot U.S. Market. -- Newsletter

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The New School Prayer

Written by a teen in Bagdad, Ariz.:

Now I sit me down in school

Where praying is against the rule,

For this great nation under God

Finds mention of him very odd.

If Scripture now the class recites,

It violates the Bill of Rights.

And any time my head I bow

Becomes a federal matter now.

Our hair can be purple, orange or green.

That's no offense. It's a freedom scene.

The law is specific, the law is precise.

Prayers spoken aloud are a serious vice.

For praying in a public hall

Might offend someone with no faith at all.

In silence alone we must meditate.

God's name is prohibited by the state.

We're allowed to cuss and dress like freaks

And pierce our noses, tongues and cheeks.

They've outlawed guns, but first the Bible.

To quote the Good Book makes me liable.

We can elect a pregnant senior queen

And the unwed daddy our Senior King.

It's inappropriate to teach right from wrong.

We're taught that such judgments do not belong.

We can get our condoms and birth controls,

Study witchcraft, vampires and totem poles.

But the Ten Commandments are not allowed.

No word of God must reach this crowd.

It's scary here, I must confess.

When chaos reigns the school's a mess.

So, Lord, this silent plea I make:

Should I be shot,

My soul please take. Amen.

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Clinton on tour: The itemized bills are in on last month's presidential tour of Asian and Middle Eastern hot spots, complete with a decoy Air Force One and other paraphernalia of modern political intrigue. Published reports say Bill Clinton's voyage of discovery, which was notably devoid of accomplishments, cost the American taxpayer some $50 million. That figure stuck in my head, until I realized it is the same amount that was widely deplored just recently as the price tag for Kenneth Starr's independent investigation of the Clinton White House. In both cases, we witness the cost of elaborate motion: keeping the truth away from the public in the one case, and the president himself away from the public in the other. -- Washington Update

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Significant minority: There is an element to crime that is hardly ever reported: Criminals are a very tiny -- but very significant -- minority.

Consider these national statistics: Some 250,000 Americans die each month. That translates into about 3 million deaths per year. Of those 3 million, fewer than 20,000 are caused by murders. In other words, about two-thirds of 1 percent of the deaths in America are homicide victims. And when measured against the 280 million living Americans, murders victims constitute some 0.00007 percent of the population.

To put it another way, 99.993 percent of Americans do not commit murder. Yet how do we try to deal with our high (relative to other civilized nations) murder rate? By pushing and passing laws that attempt to regulate the behavior of the almost 280 million Americans who will not commit murder this year instead of acting against the small, static minority of violent criminals most prone to become killers.

This is not to say that crime rates -- state or national -- are small or low. All told, there were nearly 9 million violent crimes in America, and that's a lot.

But since criminals commit many crimes, there were a lot fewer violent offenders than that. Arkansas offenders would only be a fraction of that total, and with such small numbers it seems particularly frustrating that they can't be managed more effectively -- especially since we know who the criminals are.

Studies indicate that almost all murderers have a criminal record. A survey of the largest 75 counties in America revealed that 89 percent of persons convicted of violent crimes had previous criminal records as adults.

The law-abiding citizen who decides one day to become a murderer is the exception by far. The rule is the career criminal who starts with petty theft, graduates to assault and/or robbery and then finally arrives at murder. Violent juveniles, whose numbers are skyrocketing against the downward trends in adult violent crime rates, also tend to grow up to be violent adults.

Our system of dealing with crime is being refined as though none of this information existed, however. It is misguided toward dealing with a tiny criminal minority of the population by legislating to the vast majority, which is already obeying the laws.

Take gun control, for example. For all the political posturing and hooraying over the Brady Bill, the actual numbers are underwhelming. Perhaps you've heard Vice President Al Gore or President Clinton claim that "500,000 felons, fugitives and stalkers" have been foiled from buying guns after background check. FBI records indicate that out of 11.9 million background checks since the law's inception on Nov. 30, 1998, only 106,000 denials have been issued. The FBI says that total represents about half of the total denials, since some states have the authority to deny purchases under the law.

In other words, 11.7 million out of 11.9 million people passed muster. So are we prosecuting the 200,000 or so who presumably committed a felony by lying about their criminal record on their firearm purchase application? No, our governments seem much more interested in pushing paperwork on the 99 percent who have no record than in zeroing in on jailing the 1 or 2 percent who do.

While it is silly to imagine that we'll ever rid our society of the evil that manifests itself in crime, it should be our goal to identify, isolate and eventually reduce that crime to a point that America becomes the world's safest society and Arkansas America's safest state. The only people offended by an aggressive pursuit of that kind of goal will be the criminals. -- Dana Kelley, Arkansas Business Journal

~Gary Rust is president of Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspapers.