Month: June 2004

Q: Ace, the other day I was shopping at the Food Lion on the corner of Fifth and Harris and saw a cop, in full cop attire, apparently on the job but nothing doing. If our police department is sending officers to hang out at Food Lion, when my neighborhood could use an extra patrolling officer or two, then these be fighting words! What gives?—Virginia Fiveoh

A: You’ve got a point, Virginia. So let Ace be crystal clear about this: Our tax dollars are not being spent protecting Cheerios. With the rights of citizens everywhere on the mind, Ace put in a call to the manager of the Food Lion in question. Despite Ace’s many charms, Ace was immediately rebuffed when the question of Food Lion’s private copper arose. “We can’t answer any questions on store level,” said the woman on the other end of the phone, before referring Ace to an ever-so-helpful 800 number. Ace left a message at the end of an inevitable chain of recorded messages that—surprise!—was never returned.

 Luckily, the Charlottesville Police Department is a bit more user-friendly than corporate America, and Sergeant Michael Farruggio jumped to clarify: There is not just one, but several officers who work at the Food Lion on Fifth and Harris in the evenings. Not only that, but Food Lion isn’t alone in its pursuit of uniformed protection. Friendship Court, Fry’s Spring Beach Club, Wild Wing Café and those naughty Greeks on Rugby Road also have been known to hire an officer or two.

 But trust Ace, “officer for hire” is not as Chippendale’s as it sounds. Like oft-sainted public school teachers, police officers are overworked and underpaid, so who can blame them for wanting to make a few extra Benjamins on the side? Thus, the Police Department has arranged it so that businesses wanting extra security can hire off-duty cops for upwards of $30 per hour for, in Farruggio’s words, “the very official presence they provide.” The companies pay for the protection and Farruggio stresses that such supplemental security detail never takes officers off the street.

 While it may be otherwise elsewhere, the Charlottesville Police Department requires that all security detail be O.K.’d by the department to ensure that officers are not working so much as to interfere with their fitness for duty. Moreover, because all extra-curricular security detail is arranged through the department, officers are allowed to wear their uniforms on commercial security detail.

 In fact, Farruggio believes that hiring out off-duty officers to local businesses is comparable to putting more officers on the street, since, when it comes to honor, officers are on duty 24-7. As Farruggio puts it, “They couldn’t ignore the needs of citizens!” Heavens to Betsy, of course not!

The rise in gas prices has given the Democrats yet another sharp stick with which to poke George W. Bush. They should enjoy the advantage while they can, for come the fall we could very well see gas prices moving dramatically in the opposite direction, an October surprise that would be most welcome to the Republicans.

 Why? Here are the details:

 The recent price surge was not caused by a shortage of crude oil. The world will run out of oil eventually. But as of now everyone agrees that supplies are plentiful; there is no shortage of production capacity. We can also dismiss the theory that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is to blame. As of mid-May the OPEC countries were producing 2 million barrels per day above their official quota. In any event, U.S. gasoline prices have soared by more than 40 percent this year, double the rate of crude oil increases.

 So why are gasoline prices so high? Part of the price rise is normal. In the past 10 years gas prices from December to August—that is, from the stay-at-home winter months to the high-driving summer months—have risen on average by 15 cents per gallon. In 2000 and again in 2002 gas prices rose by more than 30 cents per gallon in the spring and early summer.

The second part of the reason is that gasoline demand has risen faster than people expected. U.S. gasoline consumption, about 45 percent of global use, has risen by 4.5 percent in the last 12 months. Asian economies are booming. China’s economy continues to grow at the astonishing rate of 8 percent to 10 percent a year. The recent impact of this fast-industrializing nation of 1.3 billion people on world commodity prices has been remarkable. Stockpiles of all minerals, from copper to coal to recycled metals, are disappearing into the maw of the Chinese economy. This year China displaced Japan as the world’s No. 1 oil importer. One-fifth of the world’s ocean freight now delivers to Chinese ports, triggering a doubling in the cost of moving bulk freight. Currently the United States is experiencing a shortage of concrete in large part due to the global impact of Chinese construction projects.

 The third reason that gasoline prices have risen more rapidly than normal is the bottleneck in world refining capacity. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates world-refining capacity at about

82.1 million barrels a day (bpd). That is about 2 million bpd above consumption estimates for the first quarter of this year but below estimates for global oil consumption of 82.4 bpd expected in the fourth quarter of this year.

 In the United States refineries were operating at 96 percent capacity as of mid-May. In California, operating capacity is nearer to 98 percent. Nationally, the United States has less than half the number of oil refineries it had when Jimmy Carter was in office. In 1983, California had 37 refineries; today it has 13, and Shell recently announced it would close a refinery in Bakersfield in the next few months, further straining capacity.

 Today when a refinery goes down, the price of a gallon of gasoline in that service area can rise by 25 to 50 cents. A problem at the ChevronTexaco’s El Segundo refinery outside Los Angeles in early February reduced production, precipitating a quick 30-cent-per-gallon increase.

 M.J. Ervin & Associates, a Calgary-based petroleum industry analysis group, estimates that 90 percent of the fuel price hike in Canada since January was a result of a sharp climb in refiner’s margins, from about 44 cents (Canadian) to about 88 cents per gallon. In the United States the refiner’s margin has increased from about 32 cents per gallon to about 48 cents per gallon in the last few months.

 Finally, there is the impact of speculation.

 Many industries, like airlines, buy oil futures to hedge against the possibility of steep price hikes. Speculative funds once operated on the edges of the commodities arena. They now make up about 20 percent of the crude oil and gasoline markets on the Mercantile Exchange.

 This artificially raises the cost of oil. Bill O’Grady, director of futures research at the brokerage firm of A.G. Edwards in St. Louis told Reuters, “it is hard to justify $38 (oil prices)…I see the fair value at $30 to $31.”

 Some are calling this the terrorist risk premium. The late May terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia caused the greatest one-day increase in the price of oil ever. There is a growing fear of terrorists targeting oil pipelines and refineries. This fear is reinforced by the specter of the American (and other governments) buying oil for strategic petroleum reserves even with the price so high. As the Economist magazine reported in March, “The administration’s persistence, coupled with increased strategic purchases by other governments, has fuelled suspicions that officials might have some intelligence about terrorist threats to oil infrastructure.” In February, Congress passed a resolution urging the president to stop fueling these fears by halting strategic oil reserve purchases. The Bush Administration refused.

Who’s winning and who’s losing from the oil price run-up? Oil-producing countries are winning, but not by as much as one would think. The reason is that almost all of the world’s oil is sold in dollars. The dollar has declined in value by about 25 percent in the last year against the euro and other major currencies. Which means OPEC is, in effect, receiving 25 percent less for its oil than a year ago. That fact was what initially prompted OPEC to raise its target price range above the $22 to $28 per barrel.

We might recall that Saddam Hussein threatened to require that Iraq be paid in euros for its oil just before we ousted him from power. And the European Union’s outgoing energy commissioner, Loyola de Palacio, made the same suggestion recently in his call that oil trade be priced in a basket of currencies as a way promote greater price stability.

Oil companies are making out like bandits.

The typical motorist is paying about $30 more per month for gasoline. ExxonMobil recently announced profits of $21 billion last year and that numbing number could go even higher this year. Much of the increased profit has come from the remarkable increase in oil refiner’s margins.

Local gas station owners, the lightning rods for most motorists’ dissatisfaction, are losing. They are making half as much per gallon as they did six months ago.

For Bush the gasoline price rise is bad news. But the election is in November, not in June. By late September we can expect the gasoline prices to drop by 10 to 25 cents per gallon as cooler weather sets in. And speculators can withdraw from the market as quickly as they entered it. If the situation in Iraq stabilizes in the fall and OPEC’s promised increase in oil supply materializes, we could see prices drop by another 20 to 30 cents per gallon. A 55-cent drop in the price of gasoline would be a most welcome October surprise for the Republicans.

Of course, if that does occur the Republicans would probably attribute it to divine intervention.

David Morris is co-founder and vice-president of the Institute for Local Self Reliance in Minneapolis, Minnesota.“What a cute toy!” I hear that all the time. My answer is usually, “Thanks,” but what I should say is, “It’s not a toy, it’s a piggy bank.”

 People admire my scooter and I can’t blame them—it’s a pretty thing. But they admire it for all the wrong reasons. Italian made? Yes, it is. Stylish and surprisingly fast? Yes, again. Easy to park? Yup.

 It’s a sleek machine, but what really puts the “ooh” in cool is its fuel efficiency. Wanna get back at the terrorists? Ride a Vespa.

 Do the math yourself if you don’t’ believe me. I’ve logged 340 miles on my scooter. And my gasoline purchases for the dear ol’ ET 4 have totaled just more than $11. With a tank capacity of 2.4 gallons, my mileage per gallon comes in at just about 60. And that’s all stop-and-start city driving!

 I’m not that different from any other helmeted driver—I like getting the style points for my wheels, I admit it. But thanks to rising oil prices, I have more substantial reinforcement for my choice: I’m saving enough money on gas to make another monthly car payment.—Cathy Harding

In 2002, during the height of the drought, people all over Central Virginia ate off paper plates and drove around in dirty cars. Meanwhile, elected officials crossed their fingers that existing water supplies would hold out, and they wouldn’t have to truck in emergency provisions of bottled water.

 That summer, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority (RWSA) outlined a $13 million plan to expand the area’s water supply. City and County officials spent a year and a half figuring out how to divide the cost of the proposed construction projects, and the RWSA cut a $1.38 million check to the consultants who advised them.

 This spring, the RWSA discovered that the water supply plan wouldn’t work. It wasn’t the first time consultants had steered us down the wrong path—20 years ago, the RWSA spent $6 million on land along Buck Mountain Creek in Free Union with the intention of building a new reservoir there, before they discovered that State and Federal regulatory agencies wouldn’t approve such a massive project.

 Next month, the RWSA will consider a range of options for expanding the water supply. All of them carry heavy price tags, various levels of environmental impact and uncertain results. Now some residents—concerned about a river in their backyards and wary of Rivanna’s history of plans that go nowhere—say that before we spend millions more dollars searching for answers to our water dilemma, we should be sure we’re asking the right questions.

 

A river runs dry

The Moorman’s River begins with fingerlike tributaries reaching high into Western Albemarle’s Blue Ridge Mountains. Rain and snow fall on the eastern slopes of Turk Mountain, Horsehead Mountain and Pond Ridge, then follow the path of least resistance to form Big Branch, Pond Ridge Branch and several smaller tributaries that spill into the South Fork and the North Fork. These two tributaries merge at the Sugar Hollow Reservoir, which spills over the dam to feed the Moorman’s River. The Moorman’s flows east, gathering strength from Doyle’s River and a vast network of streams and creeks, before finally emptying into the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir just north of Charlottesville.

 Postcard-perfect, the Moorman’s was designated a State scenic river in 1989, just a year after Frederick Williamson moved to a 9-acre rectangular property along Sugar Hollow Road. Beside his house, he set up a woodworking studio, where he carves the red maple, cherry and walnut trees growing in his yard into beautiful smooth bowls, which he sells at galleries and local craft shows.

 When there’s enough water in the Moorman’s to cover most of the rocks in the riverbed, Williamson pulls down one of the kayaks hanging in his garage and takes a ride down the river, 300 feet of which runs through his property.

 In the years after Williamson moved to Sugar Hollow, the Moorman’s began running dry. For two miles east of the Sugar Hollow Reservoir, the scenic mountain river turned into a rocky ditch until a stream flowing down Middle Mountain replenished the river. By 1993, the Moorman’s was regularly running dry between early June until mid-November.

 It turns out the RWSA was intentionally killing the river. During the summer, demand for Sugar Hollow’s water exceeded the amount that emptied into the reservoir. So the RWSA simply turned off the tap and allowed the Moorman’s to dry up. Because the Sugar Hollow reservoir was built in 1946, by virtue of legislative grandfathering it was exempted from a State law requiring reservoirs to release water into outflowing rivers.

 Moorman’s lovers were especially irked to discover that the RWSA pipes water from Sugar Hollow to the Ragged Mountain Reservoir, instead of allowing it to spill over the dam and feed the scenic Moorman’s.

 “It shows that the RWSA places no value on keeping water in a river,” says John Martin, who joined Williamson and others in a group called Friends of the Moorman’s River, comprising mostly Moorman’s property owners who lobbied the RWSA to keep the river alive. “To the Authority, water is there to meet demand, period. Thinking about the value of having water in a river just wasn’t relevant.”

 A huge pipe under the Sugar Hollow dam connects the reservoir to the Moorman’s riverbed, but the pipe is so old the RWSA keeps it shut, for fear it won’t close again. In 2000, after much hew and cry from the Friends, the RWSA decided to release 400,000 gallons of water per day into the Moorman’s. That amount still flows into the river each day from a faucet stuck into the pipe leading to Ragged Mountain. It keeps the river wet but doesn’t satisfy the river’s advocates.

 On a recent afternoon, days of regular rain had all local reservoirs filled to capacity. Water spilling over the dam into the Moorman’s kept the river flowing with about 50 cubic feet of water per second—not nearly deep enough to boat, but deep enough that kids could safely use the rope swing at the swimming hole near Picnic Rock, along Sugar Hollow Road.

 The RWSA’s faucet releases about .65 cubic feet of water per second into the Moorman’s.

 “It’s a completely arbitrary amount. There was little real science behind it,” says Donna Bennett, who also lives near the Moorman’s. “It showed that the RWSA just didn’t get it.”

 William Brent, an RWSA board member and longtime director of the Albemarle County Service Authority, offers a different perspective. Temporarily shutting off water to the Moorman’s River may have upset a few people, he admits, but it’s a trade-off the Authority is willing to make to ensure the taps keep flowing.

 “Right now, I’ve got three or four critics,” says Brent. “But if the water runs out, I’ve got 80,000 critics.”

 

Dammed up

“We’re not talking about tree-hugging or aesthetic values,” says Martin. “You have to keep your rivers and streams healthy if you want your water supply to last.”

 In other words, if our rivers are unhealthy, our reservoirs will suffer.

 This is no abstraction. In fact, the principle is at work with the largest of our area’s four reservoirs, the South Fork Rivanna, built in 1966. Since then, the region’s population has more than doubled to about 125,000 people; meanwhile the South Fork reservoir has lost about 500 million gallons of capacity due to sediment that is washing into the reservoir and getting trapped behind the dam. Each year, the SFRR loses about 1 percent of its capacity, according to Stephen Bowler, who studies natural resources for Albemarle County.

 The problem is complex, says Bowler. The erosion of mountains by water is, in part, a natural process. “That’s why the mountains here aren’t as tall as the Himalayas,” Bowler says.

 But economic growth and real estate development exacerbate pollution—erosion happens faster when people remove trees and plants. Furthermore, pavement and culverts channel water into streams and creeks at high speeds; the fast-flowing water gouges more sediment out of the streambed. And sediment pollution wouldn’t be such a big problem for Albemarle if we didn’t have dams that block the particles’ movement downstream.

 The conflict between economic growth and the land on which that growth takes place is certainly a complicated problem, but elected officials have largely ignored the issue. As RWSA board chairman Michael Gaffney points out, the Authority’s job isn’t asking questions about the health of our water supply.

 “The RWSA is charged with providing water to meet the demands of the City Council and the Board of Supervisors,” says Gaffney.

 Created by the City and County in 1972, the RWSA was a marriage of convenience. At the time, the Federal government offered localities millions of dollars to update antiquated sewer systems and expand wastewater services to growing suburbs. To get the money, however, localities needed quasi-independent corporate authorities to oversee the projects.

 Under the Virginia Water and Waste Authorities Act, regional water and sewer authorities have neither the legal mandate nor the jurisdiction to consider the conflict between growth and the environment. That task falls to elected officials.

 “The City Council and the Board of Supervisors wanted to get out of [the] water and sewer business, and they’ve been out of it for 30 years,” says Martin.

 Well, not completely out of it. During droughts, when a lack of rainfall lays bare the shortfalls of our system, officials pay attention. In 1976 and 2002, droughts forced both the Council and the Supes to pass resolutions mandating water conservation. Thereafter, while we were flushing toilets with dishwater, much official verbiage was spouted on the “true value” of water and “delicate balance” of our relationship to the land.

 During each recent drought, concerned citizens and groups like the League of Women Voters called for broad public discussion about the costs and benefits of economic growth, and about what current residents are willing to sacrifice to keep the bulldozers humming. But after the first heavy rainfall, the public’s interest in water dried up, and so did any chance of action from City Council or the Board of Supervisors.

 But the rivers and streams that flow through the Rivanna watershed do not belong only to Charlottesville and Albemarle. They are, in fact, owned by the Commonwealth, which in the past has avoided any serious consideration of the impact of growth on Virginia’s environment. In the aftermath of the 2002 drought, Governor Mark Warner created a committee to take a broader view of the State’s water resources.

 “After the drought, the State realized it needed to take a bigger role,” says Brent. “Nobody really knows what Virginia’s groundwater looks like, for example.” The progress is coming slowly, however—Brent says the Governor’s water committee is so diverse, they can’t come to any conclusions about what to do.

 

Dried faucets

In the 1980s, under the advice of engineering consultants Camp, Dresser and McKee, the RWSA spent $6 million on land around Buck Mountain Creek in Free Union and planned to build a new reservoir. New residents are still paying this back in the form of $200 hookup fees, but it’s unlikely that Albemarle will be allowed to impound more water in the foreseeable future.

 After the RWSA bought the land, as the Authority attempted to secure the necessary State and Federal permits for the new reservoir, they discovered that the Federal Environmental Protection Agency and the State Department of Environmental Quality didn’t just hand out permission to build new reservoirs. The agencies told the RWSA they must first try other, less environmentally damaging solutions.

 One of the problems is that while the State and federal governments have plenty of agencies that tell localities what they can’t do—the Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries are just a few of the agencies that have a say on RWSA’s water supply plan—there’s nobody to help cities and counties through the long and winding path of rules.

 “There’s no advocates for a water project,” says Brent. “They’re all opponents. There’s no agency to help communities build water works.”

 In 1996, the RWSA again embarked on a plan to expand the water supply without any public discussion about balancing economic growth and environmental health. The Authority hired VHB, which subcontracted much of the engineering work to another firm, O’Brien and Gere. At the time, Councilors and Supervisors couldn’t have been less interested in tap water. In the late ’90s, homeowners were suing the RWSA’s sister agency, the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority, because the Ivy Landfill was leaking contaminants into their groundwater.

 “Landfill issues were taking so much of Rivanna’s time for so many years,” says former City Councilor David Toscano. “Council was not as engaged in water issues as it should have been. But, until a crisis emerges, people aren’t focused on it very much.”

 In the fall of 2002, VHB presented the RWSA with a $13 million plan to expand the local water supply by raising the height of the dam on the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir. Brent and City Public Works director Judith Mueller spent a year and a half hashing out how Charlottesville and Albemarle would divide the cost of the project (basically a 27-73 percent split, with the County absorbing more of the cost to reflect the growth occurring there).

 Then, this winter, the RWSA hired a new consulting firm, Gannett Fleming, to implement VHB’s plan. As the consultants and the RWSA reviewed it, they uncovered a major error. VHB had predicted that raising the South Fork dam would add an extra 7 million gallons per day of capacity. In fact, the new dam would only provide an extra 2.9 gallons each day. The project has been put on hold.

 “Basically what happened is that VHB did not understand what O’Brien and Gere were telling them, or else they wrote it down wrong,” says Martin.

 

Tapping in

The combination of intense growth, and the lack of political willpower to seriously examine its impacts, reminds Albemarle resident Ed Imhoff of California, where he used to be a water planner.

 “We’re under pressure because we’re so darn attractive,” says Imhoff. “Everybody came out West, and they weren’t prepared. They paved their rivers and lost their groundwater because real estate was so important. It became a mania to build subdivisions, build freeways and control the water supply. They let the environment go, and they messed up a lot of country.”

 Now, as California spends millions to restore rivers it destroyed during its peak growth years, Imhoff suggests the City and County do as much planning on the front end to avoid making environmental mistakes it might regret. 

 This spring, Imhoff sat on a County groundwater commission that used new data about Albemarle’s geography obtained by the County’s Natural Resources department. The Board of Supervisors is now considering the commission’s recommended groundwater ordinance, which would require developers to drill test wells before breaking ground on a project. They must be able to prove the site has enough groundwater to meet the projected demand. Imhoff says the RWSA should commission a similar citizen panel to help figure out the water supply problem.

 “There’s a lot of talent in this area that’s not being utilized,” he says. “We need something stronger than an advisory committee that’s just going to rubber stamp whatever the Authority already wants to do.”

 Ridge Schuyler, who directs water conservation projects for the Nature Conservancy, a national environmental group based in Arlington, wants to help the RWSA collect data that might help the Authority find a more environmentally friendly way to supply our region’s water. The Conservancy is working on a hydrological model of the Rivanna Watershed, which would show how, left to their own devices, rivers and streams would flow without human interference. The model could help the RWSA develop a water supply plan that minimizes environmental damage. Furthermore, it would help the RWSA coordinate its water supply plans with other jurisdictions.

 “We rely on an integrated system,” says Schuyler. “So we need to think about it in an integrated manner.” The RWSA, for example, is considering piping water from the James River, a source for Louisa, Fluvanna and Richmond. “If we take from the James, and they take from the James… pretty soon there is no James,” Schuyler says.

 Albemarle watershed manager Bowler posits the question this way: “How much growth can you support with the fiscal and environmental impacts we’re willing to accept? The choices need to be laid out and communicated so we can reach a consensus, or come as close as we can.”

 On May 25, RWSA’s lead consultants, Gannett Fleming, presented the Authority’s board with a list of 18 different water supply options, ranging in cost from $17.4 million for doing nothing but replacing worn out infrastructure to $82 million to raise the dams at Ragged Mountain and Beaver Creek.

 On a recent afternoon, Hannah and Charlotte Lowson, who earn money nannying during the summer, brought Charlie, Henry and Lola Manning down to Picnic Rock to swim. Now, after heavy rains, “my dad can’t stand up out there, and he’s 6’2",” says Charlotte. In drier times, when excess water is piped over to Ragged Mountain, “it’s only about waist-deep,” she says.

 “What a great place to be a kid,” says Frederick Williamson, after Hannah points out the spots where the snakes sunbathe and the swallowtail butterflies congregate. A hopeful bare-chested kayaker drives by, one bare foot out the window of his car, boats strapped to his roof. As local waterways fall increasingly under technological domination, Williamson hopes the RWSA sees the value of life in the Moorman’s.

 “It’s so easy to just turn on your faucet,” he says, “but I think if people saw where their water comes from, they’d be more careful with it.”

Q: Ace, I recently read on George Loper’s website that a man named Uriah J. Fields had been asked to leave City Market for singing too loudly. Loper’s website mentioned that this man often sings on other, political “occasions.” Could you offer me a bit more information about the City Market incident, but perhaps more importantly, who is this man?—Old Man River

A: Uriah J. Fields, or “U.J.” as he is known, is Charlottesville’s very own Paul Robeson, and has been singing his political concerns up and down the Downtown Mall (and further afield) for years. As you noted, the City Market incident was first mentioned on the website of local media archivist and editor, George Loper, (http://george.loper.org). On hearing about a situation involving “an African-American man with a beard” being removed from City Market for “exercising his freedom of speech on Saturday, May 29,” Loper thought of Fields. Fields confirmed Loper’s suspicions and elucidated further in an e-mail that Loper then posted.

 In short, Fields, who calls himself a “troubadour“ and says that he “makes music whenever the spirit moves him,” is a longtime civil rights activist. While Fields saw his program of such classics as “The Star Spangled Banner” and “America the Beautiful” as “paying tribute to the soldiers who gave so much to preserve the American way of life,” City Market vendors apparently felt that too many “amber waves of grain” struck a discordant note amid the conventional City Market hum of handwoven baskets and exotically flavored cream cheese.

 According to Fields, he was escorted from City Market by the police. However, according to Police Chief Timothy Longo, Fields “wasn’t forcibly removed from the market” and the police officers “only wanted to preserve the peace” while recognizing that Fields “certainly has a Constitutional right to free speech.” In addition, City spokesperson Maurice Jones expresses clearly on Loper’s website that Fields is still welcome at City Market.

 While Fields remains mysterious about his past, saying, “The past tends to be a hitching post and not a sign post [in that] a hitching post keeps you in one place instead of moving on with things,” Ace’s sleuthing found that the spirit has taken Fields from serving as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s secretary during the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56 (about which Fields later wrote a book, Inside the Montgomery Bus Boycott) to fighting in the battlefields of the Korean War.

 There’s no denying that Fields is an original. As he says, “I guess there are some singers that prefer singing alone—Paul Robeson, Pavarotti—some us with strange voices don’t like to feel incumbent on the other folks.” And he tells Ace he’ll keep singing whenever and wherever he feels like it, cream cheese vendors be damned.

Q:Ace, while grabbing a bite to eat at everywhere from Michael’s Bistro to McDonald’s I’ve noticed a paper called Coffee News in distribution bins. It’s not exactly “news” and it’s not exactly about coffee, so what’s the deal? Has it been around long? And what purpose does it serve?—Sugar Ann Milkie

A: Sugar Ann, sit down, have a cup of Joe, and in the age-old words of Ace’s favorite jumpsuit-clad Long Island housewife, Linda “I’m-Getting-a-Little-Verklempt” Richman, “We’ll have cawfee. We’ll tawk. No big whoop.” The latté-hued weekly “paper” to which you refer is ubiquitous these days, distributed in 84 area restaurants. That makes Coffee News’ business look like buttah.

 But go to another town with, say, a population of approximately 50,000 and you might find a Coffee News twin. That’s right, the publication is a franchise that brings the same features we’ve come to know and love in our own Coffee News to communities the world over. So even when you’re on vacation you can still catch up on features from Quoteable [sic] Quotes to Everybody’s Talking, the section packed with important news stories like “Pampered pussy,” about a lady who bought a mansion for stray cats, then hired them a full-time maid and butler.

 But first and foremost, Coffee News is an advertising outlet that only incidentally distracts your eyes from that hottie by the bar. Discouraged by what she saw as the lack of reasonably priced advertising for small local businesses, Winnipeg resident Jean Daum published the first Coffee News in 1982. She sold cheap ads to suffering businesses and claims this endeavor almost single-handedly revitalized her community’s recessed economy. Daum thus expanded her venture into a franchise in 1988 and now pronounces Coffee News “the ultimate recession buster” on the website www.coffeenewsusa.com. Ace suspects she’s been drinking lots of highly caffeinated lattés.

 Enter Matt Peach, a New Jersey transplant who moved to Charlottesville in 2002 in search of self-employment. He found Coffee News online and liked what he saw. “[Coffee News franchises] do well in small to mid-sized communities and…it provides upbeat news and gives front-page ads to small business,” he says when asked why the venture appealed to him. By February 2002, Peach and his wife were receiving copy from headquarters, designing and laying out the ads, adding original copy and distributing the paper locally.

 While Peach admits “Charlottesville is a tough market…[with] about 20 other newspaper machines” out there, he estimates his product pulls in 16,000 to 18,000 readers a week, which is a pretty big whoop for Coffee News advertisers.

 So until next week, talk amongst yourselves. Ace will give you a topic: Coffee News is neither coffee nor news. Discuss!

It sounds a bit like the answer to one of those old late night “so whatever happened to…” questions. Tommy Chong, 65-year-old grandfather, the lesser-known half of the goofy late-’70s burnout comedy duo Cheech and Chong, was convicted of the illegal sale of drug paraphernalia over the Internet (i.e. he marketed a line of glass bongs). In a bit of priceless comedic irony, the investigation was code-named Operation Pipe Dreams. Chong was sentenced to nine months in prison on the second anniversary of September 11.

 Chong, with no prior arrests, is an unlikely figure to wind up in prison for rarely enforced paraphernalia laws. However, much to his misfortune, he does have one asset that the Bush Administration’s Justice Department covets in spades. He’s got a high profile. Chong’s takedown was meant to send a message to every stoner in America: Dude, you cannot wink at The Man.

 Even as issues like Iraq, gay marriage and the environment command greater attention, the Bush Administration has renewed the war on drugs. In this faith-based administration, the drug war is the ur-“values” war, the blueprint for the conservative kulturkampf. In fact, the drug war is even more ancient than most people realize. Temperance as a movement emerged in the early 1800s when drinking, previously considered healthful and a basic component of life, was identified with social disorder. It quickly became an issue of hearth, home and morality.

 Long before Bill Bennett gambled away his virtue book profits and before Richard Nixon, the first president to proclaim a “war on drugs,” was born, the battle between the Wets and Drys was a defining political issue in America. From the 1880s until the end of prohibition, Americans endured 50 years of pitched battle over the drug, alcohol. It’s worth remembering that the drug war gave us not one but two Constitutional amendments: one banning alcohol, then another un-banning it. Despite alcohol’s decisive win, or rather because of it, the battle moved to other fronts.

 In 2000, no sane person following drug policy would have suggested that within three years Tommy Chong would be imprisoned for selling paraphernalia. The trends of the 1990s were decidedly favorable for reform. Between 1996 and 2000, voters passed 17 reform-oriented ballot initiatives on subjects as diverse as medical marijuana, limiting asset forfeiture abuse and treatment instead of incarceration. New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, a Republican, called for legalization of marijuana and ultimately passed a range of reform measures. According to the Drug Policy Alliance (where this writer was formerly the director of National Affairs), 46 states passed 150 notable drug policy reforms between 1996 and 2002. Countries throughout the world, including close allies such as Britain and Australia, began to experiment with reform, often going much farther than the United States without appearing to suffer especially ill effects.

 As a presidential candidate, George W. Bush looked rather moderate on drug issues. In October of 1999, he answered a question from CNN about medical marijuana by stating that “I believe each state can choose that decision as they so choose.” Later, after his election, he said, “I think a lot of people are coming to the realization that maybe long minimum sentences for first-time users may not be the best way to occupy jail space and/or heal people from their disease.” However, the arc of the drug war under Bush veered toward emphasizing morality and punitive policies within months of his inauguration.

Bush turns Right on drugs

Drug Czar John Walters is perhaps the key element in this equation. In the 1980s, Walters served as an assistant to then-Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, and then as Bennett’s chief of staff at the Office of National Drug Control Policy when Bennett became the first cabinet-level drug czar. Walters left ONDCP in 1993 and became a bitter critic of President Bill Clinton’s drug policies. Prior to his return as ONDCP’s director, he solidified his standing in Republican circles as the President of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a far Right-wing nonprofit funded by the Olin, Scaife and Bradley Foundations and the New Citizenship Project, whose goal is to promote religion in public life. Thus, he is not a neocon but more of an old-line Bill Bennett values maven. Walters is in touch with his inner kulturkampfer.

 Bennett and Walters had long sought platforms from which to force national discussion about character and values. Although the drug czar does not command any actual police forces, it is a cabinet-level position that is not only tasked with creating the national drug strategy but also has some ability to force other cabinet officials to participate in the strategy. Walters was a particularly hard critic of Clinton’s drug policies, co-authoring blistering articles for the Heritage Foundation and the Washington Times accusing Clinton of “abandoning” the war on drugs. The articles call for a renewed war on drugs by using the presidential bully pulpit to get an anti-drug message out, stepped up use of the military for interdiction efforts, highlighting the deterrent effects of harsh mandatory minimum sentences, forcing source countries to reduce export of drugs and use of drug testing in treatment.

 As drug czar, Walters has enacted his calls for a renewed drug war by emphasizing drug use as a moral issue and by “pushing back” against perceived cultural permissiveness. He has used his bully pulpit to force discussion of drugs into a black/white, us-against-them paradigm, a paradigm to which the concept of war is already well suited. As a result, the major drug initiatives of the Bush Administration have taken on a distinctly combative flavor. For example, in the first year following September 11, Walters repeatedly sought to link the drug war to the war on terrorism in taxpayer-funded advertising and elsewhere. Indeed, the administration appears to view drug users as one element of a fifth column, a component of the axis of evil inside the United States.

 As part of his efforts to push back against his perception of a countercultural message favoring drugs, Walters has worked to eliminate any visible manifestation of drug culture. Thus, there can be no relaxation of any drug law for any purpose, including use as medicine. As a result, there is a renewed effort to root out physicians who prescribe higher levels of opiates than some of their peers, despite widespread acknowledgement that the American medical establishment routinely undertreats pain. This may also explain the otherwise puzzling use of precious space in Bush’s State of the Union address in January to discuss steroids. It’s a visible, highly talked-about manifestation of drug-related culture.

 Walters has also made good on his desire to invigorate interdiction efforts overseas. In Colombia, the United States is now giving aid to help the government shoot down airplanes suspected of smuggling drugs. In 2001, this type of shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later policy resulted in the deaths of a missionary and her daughter in Peru. Last year, the United States spent nearly $600 million in military aid in Colombia, including tacit endorsement of paramilitary units, despite the Columbian government’s poor human rights record. Unfortunately, reporting on Colombia is almost nonexistent in the wake of the war in Iraq.

 Similarly, Walters is intent on ending drug policy experimentation in the states, a decidedly nonconservative position. He has sought to roll back popular medical marijuana laws in the nine states that have passed them. He also directly opposed drug reform ballot initiatives in 2002 by traveling to, and directing taxpayer-funded ads to, states where drug reform initiatives are on the ballot. In a similar vein, the Drug Enforcement Administration conducted raids on most of the major medical marijuana cooperatives in California, resulting in the arrests of patients suffering from cystic fibrosis, cancer and other ailments. Finally, this pushback really does seem to be about a fifth column in the culture war. Thus, Tommy Chong isn’t merely a paraphernalia dealer, he is a personification of the ’70s—and think how gratifying it must have been to imprison the ’70s.

 In the meantime, Democrats have found it hard to articulate their interests in drug policy and at ONDCP. Why? The framework of the “drug war” is a trap. If, instead of a “war” it was an “effort to minimize dangers from pharmaceutical, alcohol, nicotine and other psychoactive drugs”—if, say, we emphasized health outcomes instead of “fighting a war”—it is very likely that rather than building jails and prisons we would stress health and education. The United States now has the highest incarceration rate of documented prisoners in the world, outstripping even China and Russia. And nearly half of all those in Federal prisons are serving time for drug crimes. In the meantime, it has been estimated that almost half of those who need treatment for drugs can’t get it.

What the Dems can do

Democrats need to find a way to begin to step out of the trap of the “drug war.” Although all too many Democrats are enthusiastic practitioners of the drug war, some are beginning to reevaluate the issue. For instance, Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) was a confirmed drug warrior in the ’80s, but after years of his Harlem constituents being convicted and sentenced to hard time upstate, he has spoken out about overreliance on incarceration, introducing a series of bills to reduce sentencing disparities in crack cocaine.

 Representative Rangel’s turnaround on sentencing is a good example of how the Democrats can begin to change the conversation. They need to tell the real stories of the real people affected by our drug policies. Kemba Smith is an African-American woman who, stuck in a controlling relationship with her college boyfriend, ended up playing a marginal role in her abuser’s drug crimes. Eventually, despite neither actually using nor selling drugs, she was convicted under conspiracy laws of all the crimes of his gang. Under mandatory minimum laws, she received 24 and a half years, a longer sentence than manslaughter in many jurisdictions. She was eventually freed after six years when President Clinton commuted her sentence in 2000. Women, especially African-American women, are now the fastest growing segment of the prison population. Like Kemba, they often play a minimal role in a conspiracy but have little information to bargain with authorities. African-Americans already know Kemba’s story, but white America doesn’t have a clue. It would be interesting to see her onstage at the Democratic convention.

 When Americans talk about drugs in the context of pain management, they express far more nuanced views than our current dialogue allows. The baby boomers are getting ready to retire just as the DEA has announced a war on oxycontin, vicodin and other drugs used with little harm by millions to control pain. Certainly they will be ready for a more subtle dialogue. For the same reason, medical marijuana garners up to 80 percent approval in some recent polls. Americans intrinsically understand its potential benefits as a last resort in helping people to find relief from the pain of cancer or other diseases.

 In addition, people convicted of drug crimes face a set of invisible punishments beyond prison. They lose access to housing and needs assistance, and they are often forbidden from receiving licenses. In one state, they cannot receive a license to be a hairdresser. A particularly self-defeating law prevents people convicted of drug crimes from receiving Federal grants or even loans for higher education. Education is the most likely indicator that an individual will not recidivate.

 In the meantime, parents are screaming for assistance at the community level. There are parents who have lost their houses and their jobs in the process of trying to get their kids into decent alcohol or drug treatment. HIV is resurgent in America, and intravenous drug users, their spouses and children are at particular risk. Study after study has shown that syringe exchange coupled with education can slow the transmission of HIV. Americans want to do the right thing on HIV. The lack of health care and the lack of substance abuse treatment (including the startling lack of most kinds of treatment other than 12-step treatment) is a national disaster. A clear, consistent, highly prioritized message by Democrats on this topic could work.

 Democrats can also emphasize both the out-of-control costs of the criminal justice system and the failure to prioritize more serious crimes over drugs. They know that Tommy Chong is not a major threat to their kids and they cannot be happy that it will ultimately cost the government at least $18,000 to imprison him and many thousands more to prosecute him. Ultimately it is up to Democrats to free themselves from the straightjacket of John Walters’ war for morality.

 As for Tommy Chong? He’ll get out of prison in July.

William McColl is an advocate and activist in Washington D.C.