Color My World

by Gene Callahan and Stu Morgenstern

WASHINGTON – America is on yellow alert, facing a "significant risk of terrorist attacks," homeland security chief Tom Ridge said yesterday as he announced a color-coded system designed both to end confusion over terror warnings and to be a handy guide to patriotic decorating.

Ridge and Attorney General John Ashcroft have issued four terror warnings since the Sept. 11 attacks, and local officials have complained the assessments were too vague. Bush advisers feared that the public was getting frustrated with the broad, meaningless alarms and was demanding narrow, almost-meaningless alarms.

"What we're trying to do is work with the states and local communities and the private sector so we have a common vocabulary," the former Pennsylvania governor said in describing the new system in a speech to the National League of Disabled Republican Veterans meeting in Washington. "Someone had suggested English, but we found that most government officials knowledge of it is incredibly thin."

The new system ranks threats by colors, starting with green at the bottom and followed by blue, yellow, orange, red, and day-glow pink, as the level of "populace fright" desired intensifies. The warning level can be upgraded for the entire country or for specific regions and economic sectors – such as the office supply industry, Ridge noted.

The system's guidelines give government officials advice on what to do as threats grow, but no such guidance is offered for the general public, whom, Ridge said, "Can just figure it out for themselves, if their so-called 'free market' is so clever, OK?"

Under Ridge's system, "Code Green" is a low risk of terrorist attack. Emergency response procedures need only be reviewed. "Code Blue" is a general risk, and officials are asked not only to review but update emergency response procedures. Yellow is an elevated condition, meaning there is a significant risk of attack. In addition to reviewing and updating emergency response procedures, officials would be asked to cross-reference and repaginate them. Increased surveillance of local Kinkos copy shops and emergency spell checking would be implemented. "Code Orange" signifies a high risk of attack, meaning the government should coordinate all reviewing and updating efforts with armed forces or law enforcement agencies and redouble its efforts at cross-referencing and repaginating. Red means a "severe risk" of attack and may require the positioning of trained editorial teams in copy shops and government facilities, in order to expedite all-out reviewing and updating. Cross-referencing and repaginating would be shifted to the Federal Bureau of Emergency Interdepartmental Paperwork. Finally, "Code Day-Glow Pink " would mean that the government had run out of file folders in which to store the procedure manuals and, therefore, will nationalize Staples.

A special condition, "Code Mauve," may be inserted into any of the other warnings. If that condition arises, it would result in a "prophylactic cyber-shield" being placed on the web sites of Justin Raimondo, Jeremy Sapienza, and Andrew Sullivan, denying everyone access to their web pages.

"Yes, yes, we know Sullivan is pro-Administration," said Ridge. "But we can't stand his self-absorbed maunderings either, OK?"

Ridge predicted local leaders would take part in the new color scheme, "or else":

Unless we work together so that we have a seamless strategy through the state and down to the local government, I'm afraid that we will have a seamy strategy. Since the effort to invade and conquer the entire world will probably be creating a lot of new terrorists, we must consider this to be a permanent condition that we as a country need to accept as a fact of life.

Ridge was also asked, during his address, if authority for the new "shadow government" the Bush administration has established could be found anywhere in the US Constitution.

"Certainly," he replied. "It is in a 'penumbra' added by the Shadow Constitutional Convention. If you just hold the original Constitution up to a whale-oil lamp at midnight on the Fourth of July, while wearing Benjamin Franklin's first bifocals, you can easily get a look at the 'shadow constitution' where such an arrangement is described in detail."

When asked where citizens can acquire whale-oil, Ridge said, "Oh, they can't – under 'Code Yellow' whale-oil sales are banned throughout the country."

Gene Callahan [send him mail] has just finished a book, Economics for Real People, to be published this year by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Stu Morgenstern [send him mail] was a frequent contributor to Slick Times, until the presence of his articles drove the magazine out of business.

© 2002, Gene Callahan and Stu Morgenstern

Gene Callahan/Stu Morgenstern Archives

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