Here is a second selection of quotes from recent issues of TIME magazine:

• June 25 2007: "The New Action Heroes" (Michael Grunwald) -- an article on California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and how they and other mayors and governors are attacking, and effectively winning on, social issues that the feds won't touch (but should). What caught my attention was this description of gun control:

  To Bloomberg, Washington means gridlock, extremism and pettiness. It's the place where homeland-security funds were "spread out like peanut butter" for political reasons, so that rural states got more per capita than New York. And it's the place that's blocking him from cracking down on illegal guns. In 2005, after a rash of shootings, Bloomberg's aides told him that 90% of the illegal guns used in local crimes came from out of state and that 1% of U.S. gun dealers supplied 60% of its crime guns. And the Bush Administration had stopped tracking the problem; in fact, the GOP Congress had enacted NRA-backed language restricting federal officials from sharing gun-trace information with local police. Bloomberg appealed to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales but got the brush-off. So the mayor hired investigators to run stings in gun shops nationwide and sued 27 of the shadiest dealers; a dozen are now under court supervision. He also started Mayors Against Illegal Guns to fight the information-sharing restrictions; the group has recruited more than 220 mayors in a year, but Congress has not reversed the policy. "Ultimately, you have to blame the public," Bloomberg says. "They're not holding Washington accountable."

• July 9 2007: The Growing Dangers of the China Trade (Jyoti Thottam) With recalls of lead-tainted toys and lethal toothpaste, this article is particularly pertinent. We

  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is also struggling to keep up [as are other federal product-safety agencies]. Shipments of FDA-regulated goods from China have jumped fourfold over the past decade, according to the Congressional Research Service. But the FDA has only 1,317 field investigators for 320 ports of entry. The agency inspects just 0.7% of all imports under its purview, half of what it did 10 years ago. We've dropped our guard.

  Sure, it would be great if the FDA could stamp every import with its seal of approval the way the Department of Agriculture does: meat, poultry and eggs can't be imported without meeting its standards. But David Acheson, who was appointed the FDA's assistant commissioner for food protection after the recall of tainted pet food in March, says that kind of monitoring for 16 million shipments of everything from cough syrup to toothpaste would be "too complex and cumbersome."

  So instead the FDA saves its fire for the high-risk goods that have caused health problems. That's what happened in early June with Chinese-made toothpaste. Following 100 deaths in Panama linked to cough syrup containing diethylene glycol (the ingredient had been mislabeled as glycerin, which is harmless), the FDA issued an import alert on all toothpaste made in China, tested the tubes it could find for the toxin and recalled the questionable batches. "Obviously it's not possible for us to test every product that is coming in to make sure it's meeting every standard we have," Acheson says. "It's got to be based on risk."

  That's an efficient use of resources, but it makes the FDA a "tombstone" agency: nothing happens unless someone dies. "Consumers are the canary in the coal mine for this system," says Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "That's not what a government program should do. It should anticipate and prevent problems." ...

  Large global corporations have, for the most part, assumed that responsibility. Nike, the athletic-apparel company, sources 78 million shoes from contract manufacturers in China and requires them, in writing, to meet Nike's standards, says spokesman Alan Marks. When the company recently decided to reduce its environmental impact by using a water-based adhesive in its shoes, Nike added layers of checks to make sure its contractors followed the new specs. Nike's product specialists developed a list of banned substances; there is systematic monitoring in the factory and quality control of the finished products. In some industries, like electronics, manufacturers pay outside-testing outfits such as Underwriters Laboratories (UL) to fill that role. UL has been testing products like extension cords from Chinese companies for the U.S. market for almost 30 years. ...

• July 16 2007: "Giving the Poor Their Rights" (Madeleine Albright) -- an article about the powerlessness experienced by those *NOT* having a birth certificate, legal address or deeds to their shacks and market stalls. (Something I had never considered before, but intriguing. On the reverse side, having a paper trail gives Big Brother your name and whereabouts--something only someone with a birth certificate can appreciate, I suspect.) Quoting Ms. Albright,

  In Kibera--and in thousands of other urban settlements around the world--poor citizens like Margaret have no legal identity: no birth certificates, legal addresses or deeds to their shacks and market stalls. Without legal documents, they live in constant fear of being evicted by local officials or landlords. Joseph Muturi, 33, who runs a small clothing business in Toi market, says, "We live with the thought that bulldozers can flatten our stalls anytime. I know that in a matter of hours, all this can disappear." ...

  The problem is twofold. Illiteracy is a major reason poor people often choose not to seek the protection of local courts, since in many countries, laws established under colonial rule have never been translated into local languages. When would-be entrepreneurs do set out to legally register a business, they are easily discouraged by the mass of bureaucratic red tape and costly fees. In Egypt, for example, starting a bakery takes 500 days, compliance with 315 laws, visits to 29 agencies and the financial equivalent of 27 times the monthly minimum wage. A recent study by the Inter-American Development Bank in 12 Latin American countries found that only 8% of all enterprises are legally registered and that close to 23 million businesses operate in the shadow economy. The proprietors of these businesses cannot get loans, enforce contracts or expand beyond a personal network of familiar customers and partners.

  As a result, the poor have no choice but to accept insecurity and instability as a way of life. But when governments grant people legal means to control their assets, they empower them to invest and plan for the future. In San Francisco Solano, a barrio outside Buenos Aires, Argentine economists studied the experience of two communities--one that received title to its land in the early 1980s, another that did not. The group of neighbors that had received legal title to its land surpassed the group without title in a range of social indicators, including quality of house construction, education levels and rates of teen pregnancy.

  Our organization is visiting settlements around the world to map out practical paths for change. We are also working with partners like Sheela Patel of Slum Dwellers International, who is helping to relocate more than 23,000 households in Mumbai by organizing communities to present their demands directly to state and municipal governments. The challenge is to replicate that experience globally--to give the poor a platform for demanding legal rights and hold political leaders accountable for responding. The commission is also partnering with CIVICUS, an international alliance dedicated to strengthening citizen action, to put this vital issue on the agenda in the global fight on poverty. You can get involved by visiting our website, where you can vote in a CIVICUS poll.

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  Albright, former U.S. Secretary of State, and de Soto, president of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, are co-chairs of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor

All of these articles can be found at TIME's archives -- www.time.com. Use the title of the article to search.

Journal entry dated 29 August 2007
Category: Eye on a world becoming