Adopt a Highway.

We've all seen the signs along our nations roadways. Adopt-a-highway. A wonderful program that keeps our highways and biways clean, while at the same time providing a bit of adverstisment and showing of good will from local businesses and community groups. However, the competition among those who want to sponsor the clean-up has gotten fierce. With the long waiting lists, the difficulty with governmental red tape, and all the administrative and regulatory costs, people are looking elsewhere. "It was a shock the first time we got a foreign application," says Rudu Constantinescu, president of the Romaninan equivalent "adopt-a-highway" promgram, the ARM (Adopta Românesc Magistrală), "but now, over 70% of our adoptions come from America. It is wonderful for our economy. It had created thousands of jobs, and a boom for the local broom factories in Bistriţa-Năsăud." Not all of his countrymen appreciate the foreign influence over cleaner highways. Oana Tariceanu, of the nationalist Muri Tigane Party says it has increased crime across the country. "No one is doing things according to the rules, there are backroads that spring up overnight and are sponsored the next day. Gangs of gypsies trash the roads from their magic wagons, then charge exhorbitant fees to clean them up again, or they will send photographs of the ugly highway back to the American sponsors. And they steal babies!" On home soil, local adoption groups discourage the adoptions taking place in places like eastern Europe and China. "There are plenty of needy roads here in our own backyards," says LeAnn Binger of the grassroots Road Less Traveled program. "People claim there aren't any road left to adopt, but they just adopt the big new highways, and forget about the backroads that are just as much in need. Everyone wants to be like Brangelina and adopt the Ho Chi Minh Trail or whatever."