Some months back I read an article in Wired Magazine written by Bruce Schneier about the sad state of airport security:

"Security systems fail in one of two ways. They can fail to stop the bad guy, and they can mistakenly stop the good guy. The TSA likes to measure its success by looking at the forbidden items they have prevented from being carried onto aircraft, but that's wrong.

"Every time the TSA takes a pocketknife from an innocent person, that's a security failure. It's a false alarm. The system has prevented access where no prevention was required. This, coupled with the widespread belief that the bad guys will find a way around the system, demonstrates what a colossal waste of money it is."

I have to draw a strict parallel between Schneier's views and the current climate of overzealous rulemaking in Texas. Every time some new mandate comes down from on high which is supposed to protect me from the unscrupulous sorts in the industry, requiring me to waste my time and money in an effort to play along, the system fails.

I've never signed a contract with lawyer nor litigant in my life, never printed a transcript with a secondary margin, and have led a pretty clean life, so why is it that all these "anti-contracting" measures impact my and so many other honest reporters' businesses so profoundly? Since we're all innocent, shouldn't this be a nonissue?

But it's not, and that's exactly my point. Texas reporters collectively waste literally thousands of man-hours jumping through these State-mandated hoops, and to what end? No "contractors" have been drummed outta business, frog-marched to the state line and told not to return, nor has the implementation of the Uniform Format Manual forced ER from our courthouses. Instead, I get to comply with all these statutes, along with the many that will surely follow, and my reward is the large hole left in my bottom line from 18 months of 10-pitch transcripts. Enough is enough.

So to the state association, lobbyists and whoever else deigns themselves capable of speaking on my behalf to the powers that be, let me make my position absolutely clear: I am opposed to any further rules unless they are intended to protect my work product from being copied by cheapskates, I am against any more psuedo "anti-contracting" legislation, and I'd really just like my damn pocketknife back!

"My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music." - Vladimir Nabokov