Governments behaving badly

Sometimes governments do silly things. Glancing through the headlines over the past two weeks, two stories struck me as odd: Two different items, in different regions of the country and different levels of government, each representative of what happens when elected officials lose touch with reality.

First, I planned to write about Alaska's famed Bridge to Nowhere. The state of Alaska sought (and was about to receive) almost half a billion dollars to build two bridges, one of which (valued at almost $250 million) would have connected an island of 50 people to the Alaskan mainland. These appropriations, small pieces of the notoriously pork-filled annual highway bill, were patently ridiculous. At a time of massive debts, this country simply cannot afford such patently expensive pet projects.

Before I could put pen to paper, however, it seemed as if Congress would actually try to police itself. After an outcry by true conservatives and liberals alike, an amendment was offered by Senator Tom Coburn to shift the money from Alaska to the Gulf Coast recovery zone. Alaska Senator Ted Stevens responded by throwing a hissy fit, threatening to resign from the Senate if his pork-laden pet projects were canceled. Officially, the House Appropriations Committee confirmed that the line items were scrapped, and Stevens remained in the Senate — crisis averted.

Or not. As usual, the conference committee managed to compromise away any real action. If you read between the lines, it is easy to see why Stevens is still in the Senate: Alaska is still getting its money. All of the nearly $500 million is still going to Alaska to be used as the state sees fit. Congress managed to duck the PR nightmare that would have come with officially funding the bridge to nowhere, but it still managed to slip Anchorage all of the money without most people noticing. Senator Stevens is happy, Alaska gets its money, and Congress avoids a fiscal black eye. Who gets screwed? For starters, the people of New Orleans. More important, however, is the fact that the American taxpayer loses more than anyone else. Congress — Republicans and Democrats alike these days — seems to be hooked on spending. No amount of the people's money is too substantial to be spent on pork. All that matters is that the voters are too preoccupied to care where their money goes.

Unfortunately, recent events show that local governments are equally incapable of making wise decisions. On Nov. 9, a 15-year-old boy in Jacksboro, Tenn. brought a .22 caliber handgun to school. He opened fire, eventually killing an assistant-principal and wounding two other administrators. Even before the investigation was complete, the AP quoted the local district attorney as saying that the child will be charged as an adult.

This isn't the first time that minors have been tried as adults. In other cases, kids as young as 11 have been tried as adults. I understand the rationale — an adolescent committed a violent crime that could have turned into a Jonesboro-style massacre. Minors in the United States are almost universally releasable from prison at age 18 with a sealed record, and these crimes deserve to be met with stricter punishments. Trying children as adults, however, is a horrible idea. Our system is built upon the gradual expansion of liberty and responsibility. We pair increasing amounts of personal freedom (to drink, drive, vote, sign and live independently) with increasing responsibility (selective service, higher tax rates, etc.). We do not extend these privileges to minors because they are not mature enough to use them wisely, and thus, they cannot be held as responsible for their decisions as their adult counterparts. This system doesn't imply that everyone under 18 is inherently immature, but it provides an effective, arbitrary distinction with which we as a society can comfortably operate.

Tinkering with arbitrarily determined age differentiations opens a massive pandora's box of problems. If I could demonstrate that I was developmentally and emotionally more mature than other members of my freshman class, could I get legal permission to drink at 19? Could I get my driver's license at 14? I'm sure that most of us were more informed at 17 than a great deal of 25 year-olds. Should we have been able to vote then? If a kid can be charged as an adult selectively, don't some of us deserve adult privileges?

This is just another example of out-of-control government. We let bureaucrats make uninformed decisions because we're not willing to get involved or even elect someone who will. We need to bring back the days when citizens were watchdogs over their elected leaders and did not let them roam free. Matthew Gold is a politics major from New York, N.Y. He can be reached at mggold@princeton.edu.