Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 91, Ed. 1 Tuesday, November 1, 2016 Page: 4 of 16
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OPINION
4A
Tuesday, November l, 2016
Denton Record-Chronicle
Denton Record-Chronicle
Who will
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Published by Denton Publishing Co.,
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Founded from weekly newspapers,
the Denton Chronicle, established in 1882,
and the Denton Record, established in 1897.
Published daily as the Denton
Record-Chronicle since Aug. 3,1903.
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EDITORIAL BOARD
Bill Patterson
Publisher and CEO
Scott K. Parks
Managing Editor
Mark Finley
City Editor
Mariel Tarn-Ray
News Editor
PAST PUBLISHERS
William C. “Will” Edwards
1903-1927
Robert J. “Bob” Edwards
1927-1945
Riley Cross
1945-1970
Vivian Cross
1970-1986
Fred Patterson
1986-1999
I
n a little more than a week, the Repub-
lican Party will undergo a major realign-
ment.
Either it will become the party of Trum-
pism, with or without Donald Trump in the
White House, or it will become the party of
House Speaker Paul Ryan and other eco-
nomic and foreign policy conservatives.
The wheels were set in motion for this re-
alignment in 2010,
when local tea party
groups emerged as a
loose coalition of anti-
establishment Repub-
licans.
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Editorials published in the Denton Record-Chronicle
are determined by the editorial board.
Questions and suggestions should be directed to the:
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■)Iff-
Myth of ‘Patient Zero’
finally laid to rest
Though the differ-
ent factions of the tea
party differed in their
focus on major issues
from state to state, they
had a few elements in
common. Tea partyers
were as suspicious of big business as they
were of big government. They were uneasy
with the demographic changes taking place
in the country and feared that multicultur-
alism and multilingualism would funda-
mentally change the nature of what it means
to be American.
They were older, likelier to be on Social
Security and Medicare, and therefore suspi-
cious of broad entitlement reform. And be-
cause they prided themselves as a bottom-up
movement, many in the tea party rejected
the leadership of the Republican Party and
the agenda that had defined the GOP for a
generation or more.
Populism became the face of this new
brand of Republicanism, and it was ripe for
someone like Donald Trump to capture.
Paul Ryan, on the other hand, emerged
from the deep roots of traditional Reagan
conservatism.
Those in the Ryan wing of the party were
the inheritors of not only Ronald Reagan but
also Jack Kemp, a former quarterback elect-
ed as a congressman from New York who be-
came George H.W. Bush’s HUD secretary
and then the 1996 Republican vice presiden-
tial nominee. Reagan and Kemp were opti-
mistic men who sought to broaden the
GOP’s appeal beyond the base.
Ryan’s supporters come from the busi-
ness community, large and small, and sub-
urbia. They want lower taxes and less gov-
ernment regulation and see the private econ-
omy as the country’s main engine of growth.
His supporters are champions of free mar-
kets and free trade, viewing both as the path
to prosperity for all Americans.
They see immigrants as a resource for the
future and believe that no matter where they
come from, people seeking to immigrate to
America will follow in the footsteps of all pre-
vious groups by learning English, moving up
the economic ladder and becoming a part of
the great melting pot.
But there are temperamental differences
between the two faces of the Republican Par-
ty, as well. The Trump wing is motivated by
anger and resentment. Its members believe
they’ve been cheated in the new economy,
with rewards going only to whom they deem
as the elites — those with college educations
and advanced degrees, who they think look
down on them.
Whereas the Trump supporters are an-
gry, the Ryan wing of the party is cerebral,
maybe too much so.
Speaker Ryan told members of his party
in December: “If we want to do what we be-
lieve in, then we need a mandate from the
people. And if we want a mandate, then we
need to offer ideas.” He laid out those ideas
over the summer in his “Better Way” plan,
which included tax reform, a balanced bud-
get, health care reform, improved national
security and the elimination of poverty.
If the GOP were to become the party of
Trump, I believe that it would wither and die.
Demographics alone would doom it, and not
just because whites are shrinking as a pro-
portion of the population. Any party hoping
for majority status has to appeal to college
graduates and women, at a minimum.
But the Ryan wing of the party faces chal-
lenges, as well. It’s got to convince the Trump
supporters that free trade benefits all Amer-
icans, especially working-class Americans,
whose dollars go much further because of ac-
cess to more affordable goods.
It needs to convince those voters that
newcomers aren’t just cheap labor, that they
fill important niches in the economy that
keep jobs in the U.S., benefiting everyone.
And it has to come up with an emotional ap-
peal that has thus far been lacking in its won-
kish agenda.
LINDA CHAVEZ’S column is distrib-
uted by Creators Syndicate Inc.
Linda
Chavez
ahbelo.com NYSE symbol: AHC
aetan Dugas was a victim of more
than just the AIDS virus. He was also
blamed, posthumously, for propa-
gating the epidemic. He was even given the
moniker “Patient Zero.”
Thanks to some scientific sleuthing, that
rap has been laid to
rest. Patient Zero never
existed.
In fact, Dugas’ “ze-
ro” designation in pop-
ular culture was a sole-
cism propagated in no
small part by the au-
thor Randy Shilts in
And the Band Played
On, his book about the
AIDS crisis. In fact,
Dugas had been as-
signed the letter O, not a number, by a scien-
tist at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. The letter denoted that Dugas
was from “outside Southern California.” It
meant nothing more, according to a report
for the journal Nature.
Testing of old blood samples proved Du-
gas, a Canadian flight attendant who died in
early 1984, carried a strain of the virus that
was already in New York several years before
he ever traveled there.
Researchers now believe that around
1967, the HIV virus first moved from Zaire to
Haiti. From there it was transferred to New
York by 1971. By 1976, gay men in San Fran-
cisco were becoming infected.
Dugas’ vindication has been a long time
in coming. Yet the spread of AIDS in the
United States remains a cautionary tale, not
just about the injustice of demonizing vic-
tims but also about the consequences of
public fear, misinformation, bias and gov-
ernment stalling. Americans died needlessly.
It’s easy to cast HIV and AIDS as a foot-
note of yesteryear, a horrific epidemic that
raged and then was brought under control
by antiretroviral drugs. There is some truth
there. Advances have been made in treating
the disease and blocking its transmission.
Yet here we are, 30 years later, and once
again those being infected somehow don’t
seem to merit public sympathy. They’re the
wrong people, perhaps.
In the early days of the epidemic, it was
gay men who suffered most. Society then
largely reviled homosexuality. AIDS patients
were ignored, even as they were reduced to
walking skeletons. Then-President Ronald
Reagan earned the disdain he still draws for
his refusal to acknowledge the crisis, much
less to agree that the government had a role
in combating AIDS as a public health issue.
Today, high concentrations of the esti-
mated 44,000 new cases of HIV/AIDS in
the United States in 2014 were among Afri-
can-Americans (44 percent) and Latinos
(23 percent), many of them impoverished.
Whites, although still a majority of the pop-
ulation, made up 27 percent of new cases.
Young gay and bisexual men are particularly
at risk.
The term epidemic is still being used but
with the qualifier “concentrated,” as the in-
fection rates are isolated among these
groups. About L2 million people living in the
U.S. are infected. About one in eight (13 per-
cent) aren’t aware that they carry the virus,
according to the CDC.
The AIDS crisis transformed the gay
rights movement, and gay activist efforts
transformed the way the public, the govern-
ment and the medical profession confronted
the epidemic.
Broader public support came after the
AIDS-related death of Rock Hudson,
through the activism of stars like Elizabeth
Taylor and Michael Jackson and outreach
like the traveling AIDS quilt, each panel of
which was dedicated to a victim of the virus.
Princess Diana began to be photo-
graphed shaking the hands of AIDS pa-
tients, ungloved, to convince people that the
virus couldn’t spread by casual contact. And
a young Indiana boy named Ryan White
had to die before parents stopped yanking
their children from schools if it was found
that a student like Ryan, infected by a blood
transfusion, attended.
Today, epidemiologists are concerned
about rising rates of opiate addiction, as
many people inject heroin and share nee-
dles. And despite greater public acceptance
of gay men, many women still contract the
virus through heterosexual sex with men
who have been with other men. Studies
show that many young gay men have a naive
disregard for the dangers of the virus. They
operate as if they are immune, or as if HIV is
curable. It’s not.
We have to wonder, what is the future of
AIDS prevention in the U.S. and the world?
And what — or who — will it take to move
people to care about this still-thriving epi-
demic?
MARY SANCHEZ norites for The Kan-
sas City Star. Her column is distributed by
Tribune Content Agency.
G
Other voices
Chaotic agency
needs real reform
t was good to see state Sen. Jane Nelson of Flower
Mound get tough recently with the head of Texas’
Child Protective Services. When Henry “Hank” Whit-
man dithered on whether raises for his overwhelmed CPS
I
Mary
Sanchez
workers belonged in his emergency plan to help get Texas
children better care, Nelson set him straight.
It did, she said, amid a recent confrontational hearing
in Austin about a series of high-profile CPS failings: “I’m
dead serious.” She gave Whitman 24 hours to rewrite the
plan.
Whitman, appointed by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, deliv-
ered. He proposed $12,000 across-the-board raises for
CPS workers to go along with emergency plans to hire
550 more caseworkers and special investigators.
After months of talk about critical needs for the belea-
guered agency, legislative leaders were right to call Whit-
man on the carpet to come up with solutions now instead
of waiting for the next legislative session.
The action couldn’t come soon enough for the nearly
2,900 children across the state who have not had re-
quired CPS visits, more than 500 of them deemed at risk
of serious injury or death.
A salary increase for caseworkers should help reduce
turnover in this dysfunctional system. The pay is so low
— starting at $34,000 — that caseworkers quit in droves
(57 percent a year in Dallas County). That leaves hun-
dreds of unfilled positions and high caseloads.
These are long-overdue short-term steps that The Dal-
las Morning News has supported for months.
But they’re not enough.
A top-to-bottom overhaul of this chaotic agency is in
order. That we’ve gotten to this crisis point is unconscio-
nable. Kids have died while in state care; there’s no telling
how many continue to be abused.
The state is under pressure from a federal judge to
improve a foster care system that has been so over-
whelmed that some children have been sleeping in CPS
offices. Others have died while in state-sanctioned care.
Caseworkers need more training. Children need more
foster care homes. Experts call for more preventative
measures for families that need help before children even
enter the system.
And advocates say children who enter foster care need
to see a doctor faster than within 30 days allowed by the
state to ensure they’re getting any medicine they’re taking
and to record any evidence of abuse.
Whitman wants his department to better train foster
parents to work with highly traumatized teens and he
wants a special vendor to work with children who have
bounced from placement to placement.
The ball’s now is Nelson’s court. The chairwoman of
the Senate Finance Committee has appointed a team to
review Whitman’s emergency plans. She’s made clear that
the panel will move quickly.
Long-term solutions won’t happen overnight. But state
officials — elected and appointed — must accelerate ef-
forts to protect our most vulnerable citizens. We’ve talked
about these problems for years; now’s the time to get past
the rhetoric and onto real reform.
Letters to the editor
this proposed development on this lot and
no other.
This old argument is usually employed as
cover for someone’s own desires. It diverts
responsibility away from the individual and
places it in the hands of some unavoidable
and amoral force.
But at every step of this proposed zoning
change, there is human agency: The devel-
oper has chosen a project that does not fit
existing zoning; the proposal will be vetted
by city planning staff, who will consider
codes and the surrounding neighborhood;
the proposal has to be approved by our Plan-
ning and Zoning Commission and then by
City Council.
At every step, people will weigh the costs
and benefits and make decisions for which
ELECTION LETTERS
Editor’s note: The Denton Record-
Chronicle welcomes letters to the editor per-
taining to the Nov. 8 general election. Letters
must be received in this office by 5 p.m. Fri-
day, Nov. 4; none will be published after
Sunday, Nov. 6.
Old argument
At a recent neighborhood meeting at the
Civic Center, the folks who live around a pro-
posed student housing complex on Scrip-
ture Street were treated to yet another mis-
leading argument based on the alleged dic-
tatorship of the market.
Mr. Levine from Park7 argued that their
request for a zoning change to allow a five-
story complex amidst single-family homes
and two-story apartment buildings should
be approved, even celebrated, because
growth from UNT in that direction is “inevi-
table.”
— The Dallas Morning News
This day in history: November 1
Today is Tuesday, Nov. 1,
the 306th day of 2016. There
are 60 days left in the year. This
is All Saints Day.
On Nov. 1, 1968, the Motion
Picture Association of America
unveiled its new voluntary film
rating system: G for general, M
for mature (later changed to GP,
then PG), R for restricted and X
(later changed to NC-17) for
adults only.
In 1478, the Spanish Inqui-
sition was established.
In 1604, William Shake-
speare’s tragedy Othello was
presented at Whitehall Palace in
London.
In 1765, the Stamp Act,
passed by the British Parlia-
ment, went into effect, prompt-
ing stiff resistance from Ameri-
can colonists.
In 1861, during the Civil
War, President Abraham Lin-
coln named Maj. Gen. George B.
McClellan General-in-Chief of
the Union armies, succeeding
Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott.
In 1870, the United States
Weather Bureau made its first
meteorological observations.
In 1936, in a speech in Mi-
lan, Italy, Benito Mussolini de-
scribed the alliance between his
country and Nazi Germany as
‘axis” running between
Rome and Berlin.
In 1949, an Eastern Airlines
DC-4 collided in midair with a
they are accountable.
No outside power forces anyone to build
this monstrosity.
Instead, there is opportunity to create
something that benefits everyone and not
just the developer.
Market forces driven by growing student
enrollment, he argued, will unavoidably cre-
ate demand for single-room-occupancy
complexes — a demand that must be met by
Karen DeVinney,
Denton
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Denton, TX 76202
an
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Lockheed P-38 fighter plane
near Washington National Air-
port, killing all 55 people aboard
the DC-4 and seriously injuring
the pilot of the P-38.
— The Associated Press
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Parks, Scott K. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 91, Ed. 1 Tuesday, November 1, 2016, newspaper, November 1, 2016; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1127380/m1/4/: accessed June 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .