Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 114, Ed. 1 Sunday, May 14, 1989 Page: 2 of 46
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A-2—THE NEWS-TELEGRAM, Sulphur Springs, Tsxas, Sunday, May 14,1989.
editorials
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Runoff only right
for council seat
The now-contestgd-race for the Place 4 seat on the Sul-
... out
com-
ity, May 20.
Sulphur Springs municipal government has had its ups
and downs over the years, and there certainly has been
infighting on the council before. The community and the
governing board have survived.
But it would have been disappointing and likely
detrimental for the future to have had a situation wherein
an uncontested race -— which traditionally has drawn a
low number of voters — was utilized to place an unnan-
nounced candidate into office. This would have set a dan-
gerous precedent.
There is, of course, a proper role for a write-in can-
didacy, but it normally should be restricted to cases where
the makeup of a contested race changes between the filing
deadline and the actual election date. It is not a secret in
this country when elections are to be held, or as to which
positions are to be placed before the voting public. It is a
c on tn<
The opinion page
Bennett worries Congress
By Robert J. Wagman
WASHINGTON (NEA) - William
Bennett has been in his new job as Di-
rector of Drug Policy for only two
months, but already some of his ac-
tions — particularly his “emergency
plan’ for the District of Columbia —
are worrying Key congressmen.
During the Reagan administration
Congress established a single cabinet-
level office to coordinate all anti-
drug efforts, both enforcement and
treatment. Many wanted its head to
be more than a so-called ‘drug czar.'
They wanted him to be a drug dicta-
tor, able to command the resources of
any federal agency However, this
concept was bitterly opposed by the
Reagan administration
Finally, after years of debate, the
drug policy office was established un-
der a single director, Bennett, the for-
mer secretary of education But this
new drug czar was hardly given abso-
Will the drug fighter’s style turn off people
instead of getting them to work together?
Robert
LUagman
drug problem here in Washington The
way he's gone about it has made some
in Congress wonder if their worst
fears about the drug czar are coming
true.
Bennett's “emergency plan" for the
District — carrying a price tag of
about $80 million — calls for building
more prison space, beefing up the
court and prosecutor systems, and ex-
panding a federally coordinated
Washington-area task force
As some in Congress see it, the
problem with Bennett's program is
that it is completely enforcement-ori-
entated and seeks only very short-
term solutions. Less than 5 percent of
the money involved would go for
treatment and prevention programs
Most anti-drug experts agree that
the District of Columbia's drug treat-
ment program is a shambles Origi-
nally designed to treat heroin addicts
in the 1970s. it has been overwhelmed
with thousands of new crack addicts
seeking help Heroin addiction Js
treated slowly over a long period with
substitute drugs like methadone:
crack addicts need quick and sharp
intervention through detoxification,
often many times
Today in the District an addict can
spend weeks, or even months, on a
waiting list before getting into a de-
toxification program And then the
follow-up is inadequate at best.
This crisis has worried proponents
of expanded drug treatment pro-
grams — like Rep Charles B Rangel,
D-NY, chairman of the House Select
Committee on Narcotics. They sus
pect that Bennett will seek to attack
the drug problem almost completely
from the supply side.
Other members of Congress, like
Rep Larry Smith. D-Fla . who also
sits on the select committee and was a
key drafter of the drug czar legisla-
tion. are worried that Bennett just
does not have the temperament to be
both negotiator and persuader
Bennett approached the Washing
ton situation confrontstionally He
started by lashing out at the adminis-
tration of Mayor Marion Barry and
saying that the federal government
would take over the anti-drug effort if
the District government was unable
to.
‘This fulfills ooe of our worst
fears," says Smith, ’that Bill Ben-
netts style is going to turn off people
instead of getting them to work
together’
Bennett brushes off this criticism
'Wait till I send Congress my pro-
gram in September Then I think they
will see their fears are groundless '
© IMS NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN
council
to bring about change. In fact, there should be a lot more
encouragement toward public service. But it is not fair to
place such citizen-volunteers into a position of relying
solely upon the support of one clique rather than seeking
a wide-spread mandate from the general public.
So it is good that the issue is back in clear focus.
And while focusing on the runoff election, the individ-
ual voter might pause a moment for reflection on the ab-
solute fact — proven in Sulphur Springs last week — that
given the proper conditions and complacency, as few as
200 voters out of a registered voter total of upwards of
6,000 can decide issues. -It’s worth noting that the same
number of dedicated voters out of nearly twice that many
potential ones registered in the Sulphur Springs Inde-
pendent School District could have accomplished the
same thing this year.
No way
one way
Gossip around town has it that the federal government,
which pretty much controls what happens on Interstate
highways and their access roads, is considering making
rialDnv
Shannon Road and Industrial Drive one-way streets.
Whoa, Sulphur Springs isn’t Los Angeles.
It isn’t Chicago.
It isn’t even Austin.
It’s a small city in which the streets that cross Interstate
30 (League, Broadway, College and Loop 301 East) are
about a mile or more apart. If the access roads are made
one-way, that means that drivers would get to take the
scenic route rather than the direct route.
If we want to take the scenic route, we’d prefer to
make that decision ourselves and not have it forced on us
by the U.S. government or anyone else.
When a crossing is ronstnirred Mockingbird Lane or
Radio Road or where deemed necessary, another if, then
the time will-have arrived to consider the one-way routes.
Until then, we’d appreciate it if the Feds would con-
centrate on other highway problems.
, m." —Mary Grant
lute power His primary mission was
to formulate a unified national en-
forcement and treatment policy, and
then to coordinate that policy with nu-
merous federal agencies
The czar was effectively a general
without troops, with no direct author-
ity over the DEA FBI. Customs Ser-
vice, Coast Guard or any of the myri-
ad federal agencies involved in the
drug war Rather than giving orders,
his job would be to persuade these
agencies to cooperate in'fulfilling his
plans
Congress also mandated that the
new czar operate with two high-level
deputies — one involved on the ’sup-
ply’ side (enforcement), and one on
the “demand" side (treatment and
prevention).
For many congressmen, both Dem-
ocrats and Republicans, the biggest
concern was that the new czar would
be a law-enforcement type who would
focus solely on enforcement and ig-
nore treatment and prevention.
Under law, Bennett has six months
to come up with his initial program.
But long before completing this re-
view of past actions and formulating
his own national plan, Bennett has
chosen to attack the out-of-control
if*
DO MOT
PROVOKE
THE
ANIMALS
Ernies
WASHINGTON D
Why should taxpayers do bailout?
By Jack Anderson
and Dale Van Alta
WASHINGTON - The current bai-
lout of the savings and loan industry
will plug the wrong hole, solve the
wrotiK crisis, answer the wrong ques-
tion. Each and every taxpayer will
likely have to chip in $2,400 to pay for
the mistakes of a few savings, and
loan officials who were smart enough
to put Congress in their pockets.
The emphasis must switch from
the financial to the political arena
Jack
Anderson
called “It if was kept' down that
small, by 1989 there would be a new
administration that would find itself
with a problem so bad that only a
massive taxpayer bailout would solve
The perfect villain
By Waiter Mears
WASHINGTON (AP) — As the
villain, Manuel Antonio Noriega is
perfectly cast He even sounds like
a dictator. His pockmarked cheeks,
his shouted speeches, his bel-
ligerent manner all mark the strong
man of Panama as the obvious bad
guy.
Furthermore, by the measures
known to American political lead-
ers, many of his own countrymen
hate his guts. He also is predict-
able: everybody said he would steal
Sunday’s Panamanian elections and
the evidence is that he did so.
With traits like that he ought to
be an ideal adversary.
But he also has been a survivor.
“Our policy remains that Noriega
must go,” White House press secre-
tary Marlin Fitzwater said Tuesday.
But the policy prior to that one
involved a secret partnership with
the Panamanian general against
Nicaragua’s Marxist-run govern-
ment
That may be one of the reasons
that he is a survivor. The United
States has been trying to bring him
down since *1987, with negotia-
tions, political opposition, threats,
economic sanctions and criminal
charges, all of them withstood.
As head of the Panamanian
Defense Forces, Noriega’s power is
solidly rooted in the military. Un-
fortunately for 1989 policymakers,
before beginning the effort to get
rid of him, the U.S. government
tried to use him.
The Kfcagan administration’s
Nicaragua fixation led to collabora-
tion with Noriega. The'
government’s statement of facts at
the Oliver North trial told of an of-
fer from the Panamanian boss in
late August 1986:
” Noriega's representative pro-
posed that, in exchange for a prom-
ise from the U.S. government to
help clean up Noriega’s image and
a commitment to lift the U.S. go-
vernment ban on military sales to
the Panamanian defense forces,
Noriega would assassinate the San-
dinista leadrship for the U.S. go-
vernment.”
North said that would be illegal.
Noriega’s man replied that the
Panamanian could help in other
ways, as when he had helped blow
up a Sandinista arsenal in 1985.
According to the court papers.
Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter,
then the White House national
security adviser, said that if
Noriega “had assets inside
Nicaragua, he could be helpful. The
U.S. government could not be in-
volved in assassination, but
Panamanian assistance with
sabotage would be another story.”
In September 1986, North said
Noriega wanted to meet him in
London. Poindexter and Secretary
of State George Shultz both ap-
proved that meeting. North retur-
ned to report that Noriega “would
try to take immediate (actions
against the Sandinistas.
That cozy relationship lends an
ironic flavor to warnings in Con-
Panamanian experience is that drug
enforcement took a back seat to
perceived foreign policy concerns,”
he said last week.
iiate lactic
s. .. .’5
ship lends
lings in Cc
gress that if Noriega got away with
stealing an election, tne Sandinistas
would have scant incentive to
deliver on their promise of free
elections in Nicaragua early next
year.
The era of U.S. collaboration
with Noriega withstood initial ac-
cusations that he was involved in
drug trafficking. However, the
Reagan administration was trying
to get nd of him before federal
grand Junes in Florida returned
drug-dealing indictments against
him in early 1988.
Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mas^k
calls Panama an example of what
the dreg trade does to democracy.
“What is clear from the
Bush and a unanimous 100
senators declared in advance of the
Sunday voting that the United
States would not tolerate a rigged
election and would respond accord-
ingly. They also declared in ad-
vance that Noriega’s candidate
could not win anything but a rigged
election.
The question now is what will
work. TWo years of gradually es-
calating sanctions have battered the
Panamanian economy without dis-
lodging Noriega.
The preferred option, of course,
would be for the Panamanians to
get rid of him themselves, rising up
to insist on the leadership they are
said to have chosen with their bur-
ned ballots.
Bush is urging Noriega to step
aside because of the verdict of his
countrymen. Should it require a
heavier push from the outside, the
United States needs to have it come
from other Latin American capitals.
Noriega long ago mastered the
political art of rallying supporters
and even some skeptics by claim-
ing Yankee interference in Panama.
Even Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega
turned up in Panama City in June
1987, to express support for
Noriega against U.S. pre sure to
get him out.
That was less than a year after
Noriega was said to have sent
North the secret offei to assassinate
the Sandinista leadership.
Reforming campaign financing is the
best antidote to the rampant abuses
in the savings and loan industry.
As long as campaign donations re-
main a pressure point in American
politics — a pressure point exploited
by special interest groups who en-
gage in legalized bribery of Congress
— taxpayers will always be forced to
pay for tbe mistakes of others. Tbe
bottom line is, the taxpayer has only a
vote, but tbe political action commit-
tee has clout
The savings and loan crisis is a
classic example. In 1983, President
Reagan appointed his old friend Ed-
win J. Gray to head a sleepy govern-
ment agency called tbe Federal
Home Loan Bank Board. Little did
Gray know that be really wasn't tbe
chief regulator of the savings and
loan industry He found out he was to
answer to a higher authority than
Ronald Reagan The real boss was the
U.S League of Savings institutions,
the industry’s chief trade group and
the folks who brought you the debacle
for which you now must ante up.
Gray has had a first-hand look at
watching the tail wag the dog He
soon learned that no piece of legisla-
tion, no regulation, no regulatory ap-
pointment is approved by Congress
without first being cleared by tbe US.
League
“The fact is. when it came to thrift
matters in the Congress, the U.S.
League and many of its affiliates
were tbe de facto government.’ Gray
told Congress last January. ’What the
league wanted, it got. What it did not
Sound familiar7
The chief agenda for the U.S.
League and friends this year is to
minimize the amount that the indus-
try must pay to close down the 1,000
or so insolvent and crippled institu-
tions whose losses overwhelm the de-
positor insurance fund. The industry
has had little trouble in the past ro-
mancing Congress, thanks to the fact
that, in the past two years, candidates
for the House and Senate have re-
ceived more than $1 million through
industry political action committees.
House Banking Committee Chair-
man Henry Gonzalez, D-Texas, re-
cently pointed out that Congress ‘has
given thrifts everything they have
asked for the last two decades, and
look where we are.* Thrifts have put
the squeeze on Congress, state legis-,
latures and federal regulators to al-
low them to grow and expand into
new businesses. Deregulation has giv-
en the thrifts license to make risky in-
vestments in real estate develop-
ment, windmill farms and Arabian
horse sperm banks, to name just a
few of the gambles.
The rebuttal from the industry
sounds like it was written by the Na-
tional Rifle Association: Deregula-
tion doesn’t kill thrifts, people kill
thrifts. How ironic. Before the thrift
industry was deregulated in 1982 the
collapse of a savings and loan was a
rare event.
According to a recent report in the
Congressional Quarterly, the b:^ st
thrift industry PAC is run by the U.S.
League. It was the fifth-largest
among financial industry contribu-
tors. Its PAC also normally falls
within the top 50 of the 4,200 federal-
ly registered political action commit-
tees. The second largest savings in-
dustry PAC is managed by tbe rival
National Council of Savings
Institutions.
More than one-third of the U.S.
League’s charity goes to members of
the House and Senate committees
with direct jurisdiction over tbe thrift
industry. The league also showers
money on members of the House
Rules Committee. The committee did
to allow
it would
have authorized the depositor insur-
ance fund to borrow $5 billion and fi-
nance the payback through insurance
premiums charged to the thrifts.
its job, at one point refusing to
a bill to come to the floor that
want from Congress, it had killed. Ev-
day that I served as chair-
EDITOR'S NOTE: Walter R.
Mean, vice president and colum-
nist for The Associated Press, has
reported on Washington and na-
tional politics for more than 25
years.
ery single day i
man of the Federal Home Loan Bank
Board, the U.S. League was in control
of the Congress as an institution And
this is simply tbe truth of tbe matter.’
Tbe conventional Washington wis-
dom is that House Speaker Jim
Wright D-Texas was responsible for
bottling up legislation in 19M and
early 1997 to recapitalize the insol-
vent Federal Savings and Loan Insur-
ance Corp. and force the industry to
pay par* of the bill In fact Wright
was a bit player compared with the
strategists in the U.S League. In an
interview with our associate Michael
Binstein, Gray outlined some of the
motives underlying that strategy.
‘In private conversations, some in-
dustry leaders told me personally the
strategy was to keep the amount of
the FSLIC recapitalization down to
$5 billion or less which dearly
wasn't nearly enough,* Gray re-
Berry's World
./
C IM> by MCA me
‘Could you tetl us ho*v to get to The Gravy
Train' and 'The Pork Barrel’?"
\
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Keys, Clarke. Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 111, No. 114, Ed. 1 Sunday, May 14, 1989, newspaper, May 14, 1989; Sulphur Springs, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth823448/m1/2/?q=%22~1~1~1%22~1&rotate=90: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Hopkins County Genealogical Society.