SOME LAWS AREN'T WRITTEN; THEY JUST HAPPEN

During its long trudge across the centuries, humanity has forged a number of laws that have never been written. They just happen. For example, there's the ever popular law of unintended-consequences which happens every war. Or that equally poignant law you-don't-appreciate-it-till-it's-gone which happens every wake.Then there's the law which says it's the exception-that-proves-the-rule.

This last one, though, doesn't always hold up to the test of time. Take for instance pitcher Gil Meche of the Kansas City Royals who just turned down a $12.4 contract, because "I didn't feel like I deserved it with my shoulder injury." What...? Or the Ohio man suing a South Carolina golf club where an alligator bit him "because I couldn't see your signs about alligators in the water." Oh really...?

It will be hard to argue these exceptional gentlemen prove any rules of about either baseball players' sense of justice or golfers' sense of sanity. However, the exception/rule law seems alive and well in today's mass media.

The rule of journalism is it's not news when a dog (or alligator) bites a man; it's only news if the man does the biting. And so, true to form, reporters ferret out the exceptions. Like the $5000 toilet seats in Pentagon budgets. Or the multimillion dollar bridge-to-nowhere in Alaska. Or, better yet, the gazillion dollar salaries and life styles of movies stars.

Trouble is, the only rule these exceptions prove is that they are exceptionally exceptional. Consider how the average annual salary of most film actors today hovers around $ 30,000/year.

Still, the media and its subscribers will not be denied their exceptionally lurid headlines. Among the latest are the rapacious city and state pension plans! When we hear about retired superintendents and criminally prosecuted police chiefs hauling in hundreds of thousands of pension dollars, taxpayers are righteously indignant. Only these disgusting exceptions are just that -- exceptions.

Look, the vast majority of public employees in schools, fire departments and police forces worked hard and honestly for their bosses, the taxpayer. And the taxpayer had no objection when they served the taxpayer well for extremely modest salaries. Now, however, when the long-promised, long-underfunded pension bills come due, the taxpayer is being enraged by heady headlines about fat pension checks and double-dipping loopholes which are killing city and state budgets.

Except that these reprehensible 2% exceptions prove very few rules about the other 98%.

Public pension plans should indeed be re-visited for future public workers. And loopholes should indeed be slammed shut. Only not like a noose looped around necks of currently pensioned teachers, firefighters and police officers who did their job for their bosses for many long, low-paying years.

So here's another unwritten law for consideration: Promises made and fulfilled today are still promises to be honored tomorrow.