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REASON Express

1) Spies Are Us
2) I See Your Homosexual and Raise You Two IUDs
3) Remember Internet Appliances?
4) Home is Where the Cash Is
5) Quick Hits

The spy plane standoff ended about as well as can be expected for such a nasty chain of events. The next step is the fallout.
There is a strong tailwind blowing in Washington in favor of somehow punishing China for her transgression. Blowing the hardest in this direction is Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol

Kristol nearly achieved escape velocity on NBC's "Meet the Press" over the statement President Bush sent--but did not sign--to Beijing.

"This was a humiliating document," Kristol declared. Apparently the phrase "We appreciate China's efforts to see to the well-being of our crew" is offensively disingenuous to Kristol, a dangerous sign of trying to get along with the Chinese and faintly corrupt to boot.

But that phrase is just a jumping-off point for Kristol's argument for a more overtly hostile policy toward China, the kind of big picture fight that makes nations great and national greatness theorists greater still.

"Well, I think we're engaged in a kind of Cold War with China," he explained. "I think the right combination of pressure, and some inducements, could work to help topple, ultimately, the dictatorship in China. That should be the goal of U.S. policy, not to get along with dictators who are brutalizing their own people and who are aggressive abroad."

That's quite a commitment. Overthrowing a government can't be done on the cheap. It took Ronald Reagan--whose name Kristol and the neo-Bull Moosers never tire of invoking--a decade and many billions to stare down a much more expansionist, hence overextended, and immediately more threatening Soviet Union.

It is also unclear how a standing Cold War with China actually advances U.S. interests, which lie in protecting free trade and free markets the world over. A belligerent stance with China merely guarantees that the Chinese military gets to say, "toldya so" to the populace as it crafts an anti-U.S. response.

Instead, right now and the weeks ahead, the PLA looks silly. It gambled and lost, giving back in prestige and loss of face a chunk of whatever hardwired benefits flow from having sneaky spy plane to play with for several weeks.

In heavy media rotation, totally harmonious interviews with the fresh-scrubbed, corn-fed American crew can leave little doubt the Chinese pilot was at fault. They will provide the lasting impression of this little dust up.

The throwaway diplomatic pat on the head for the civilian Chinese who didn't want to put the crew on trial--the thanks for their well-being that so exercises Kristol and company--recedes into the mists. As, one would like to assume, the White House knew it would.

Not that Bush aced his first foreign policy test, far from it. Someone in the White House better be arranging extemporaneous speech lessons for a president seemingly incapable of making precise statements without note cards.

It is not too much to ask for the commander-in-chief to have command of his material roughly on par with that of a Dairy Queen district manager. Right now, Dubya would make the management trainee appellation a stretch.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,9515,00.html

http://www.msnbc.com/news/559887.asp

It is always fun to watch politicians caught between implacable interest groups. Even better when they try to pretend it isn't happening.

President Bush selected Scott Evertz, a gay, anti-abortion Republican, to run the White House AIDS office, touching off howls of indignation from social conservatives.

Yet something of the kind was in the making ever since Bush met with a group of gay Republicans during the campaign. Not appointing Evertz--or another gay with similar qualifications--to the AIDS post would've bitterly disappoint the Log Cabin GOPers and exposed as a sham Bush's campaign claim that in his administration, sexuality wouldn't be an issue for qualified people.

Of course, that runs directly counter to the views of social conservatives who sincerely believe sexuality is a qualification and that appointing a homosexual is a direct challenge to their faith and way of life. They predict that Evertz's appointment will have dire consequences for Republicans in the 2002 elections, which means their direct mail fundraising letters should be back from the printer any day now.

This conflict helps explain another fight that Bush is on the cusp of picking. He wants to roll back a Clinton addition to the federal employee benefit package: birth control. Insert joke here.

The very same Family Research Council that abhors the Evertz appointment loves the coverage rollback idea.

"We're quite pleased because fertility is not a disease," said Susan Orr, senior director for marriage and families for the group. "It's not a medical necessity that you have it."

It is not hard to imagine a political calculus inside the White House that says that yeah, the social conservatives may hate the gay guy, but they gotta give us credit for the birth control stuff.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7825-2001Apr11.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8147-2001Apr11.html

- - Misapplied Art - -

Sometimes markets work in such blindingly obvious way it is hard to take notice. Contrary to market critics who mistake behavioral psych experiments for real life, it is exceedingly hard to make a bunch of people do something they don't want to do just by telling them--and telling them-- to do it.

Internet appliances were as hyped as any new product since clear Coke and they have been about as successful. It was never clear how the Net apps would ever replace a multi-purpose tool like the personal computer.

To have any hope of coexisting with PCs, each appliance had to be bulletproof in executing at least one task in truly new and useful ways. And, yes, they had to do it cheaper.

Now that the stocks of many of the vendors and suppliers of appliances have cratered, analysts and tech heads are falling all over themselves to state the obvious and distance themselves from the fad.

"There was simply no proof the market wanted this," said Rob Enderle, a research fellow at Giga Information Group. "The technology wasn't ready for what people expected. The whole thing was very poorly thought out."

This is just scant months after big names like Compaq and Gateway jumped into the appliance pool with both feet. Today 3Com has already killed off two different appliance offerings.

Now analysts say what is needed is an installed base of broadband-powered home networks to hang neat little, efficient, and cheap things off of. But all that stands in the way of that is the development of home networking software that average computer users have a prayer of getting up and keeping up. That and actual deployment of dependable broadband to the nation.

The latter requires nothing less than an act of Congress and the former the biggest leap in consumer software design since reliable spreadsheet programs.

http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/04/16/net.appliances.idg/index.html

- - House Call - -

President Bush's budget provides a textbook case of government mission creep that puts spending on a never-ending upward spiral. The $200 million he proposes to use to help low-income families become homeowners could be the seed of a massive new government transfer payment--if Congress ever signs on.

The American Dream program runs counter to existing programs that allow federal housing money sent to states to be used as the state sees fit. The Bush pot of cash would have to be used for down payment assistance.

This program is supposed to help 130,000 first-time homebuyers make down payments. For every dollar provided by a third party, the program will provide $3, up to $1,500 per family.

Of course, if and when 130,000 recipients are found, it will merely demonstrate that the program should be expanded. And state and local opposition to the idea would melt away if the money was brand new money, rather than a re-direct of current spending.

They might even agree to a smaller "trial program," which is Washington speak for spending at a rate slightly lower than you'd hoped for.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13126-2001Apr12.html

"We don't want this to become the leak in the dike," Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, describing the appointment of a gay Republican to the White House AIDS office.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8147-2001Apr11.html

Here's one off the plate of Utah's porn czar: hip clothes hawker Abercrombie & Fitch doesn't bother sending its steamy catalog--which manages to sell clothes by depicting men and women sans theirs--into the state. Company lawyers think the 300-page A&F Quarterly might run afoul of Utah's "soft porn law" that bans publications with risque nudity from stores frequented by minors.

http://www.sltrib.com/04122001/utah/87882.htm

Residents of Tweed Heads, Australia are busying themselves by diving for the 24,000 bottles of beer a truck trailer pitched into the Tweed River after it crashed. Authorities say the diving-for-draft operations are technically theft.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/australia010416_beer.html

The New York Times and Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal, both plan layoffs, so watch out for more sky-is-falling reportage from a press corps unable to look past its sector to the economy as a whole. The broad economy has definitely slowed, but newspaper execs are throwing around the word "depression" to describe their loss of advertising dollars.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13409-2001Apr12.html

Story of the implosion of online wine sales. Wine.com and others just couldn't buck the 1933 vintage laws that keep wine distribution and sales artificially bottled up. That and online sellers tried to grow profits in a niche market.

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/106/business/Grapes_of_wrath+.shtml

The Scene! Check out Reason Editor-at-Large Virginia Postrel's frequently updated observations on current events and ideas. Visit The Scene at http://www.dynamist.com/scene.html

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