The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 6

6A The Pes Moines Register Monday, January 6, 1992 PINION Cartoonist's View f-Repealed I 1 A GANNETT NEWSPAPER CHARLES C. EDWARDS President and Publisher GENEVA OVERHOLSER, Editor and Vice President DENNIS R. RYERSON, Editor of the Editorial Pages RICHARD DOAK, Deputy Editor of the Editorial Pages DAVID WESTPHAL, Managing Editor DIANE GRAHAM, Deputy Managing Editor MICHAEL L. PAULY, Senior Assistant Managing Editor LYLE BOONE, Assistant Managing EditorGraphics RANDY EVANS, Assistant Managing Editor WILLIAM J. GHEE, Production Director DIANE GLASS, Vice President, Marketing JOHN M.

MIKSICH, Vice President, Circulation HENRY C. PHILLIPS, Vice President, Advertising SUSAN A. SMITH, Vice President, Controller SUE A. TEMPERO, Vice President, Employee Relations The Register's Editorials Close the revolving door? Iowa Trust scandal is opportunity to examine Legislature's inner workings. STKVK HKNSON'Amzi na Rmw.u: The Register's Readers Say What is obscene, language or actions underemployed and underpaid into meaningful jobs is to give even more tax breaks to the rich; to give even more of our national forests to the scum who own the Republican lumber companies; to allow the low-life Republican oil companies to destroy more priceless wilderness and coastline; to give the Republican chemical companies more freedom to poison our food and water, Greg Nepstad, 2504 RMgewood Drive, West Des Moines.

Fhe Iowa Trust fund scandal has focused a rare spotlight on the inner workings of the Legislature. It is not a pretty sight. From a distance, you could get the impression that the Legislature is a lofty place where the people's representatives deal with issues of general interest things such as the budget, taxes, education. Up close, the picture changes. Day in, day out, much of what the Legislature does has little to do with the big issues.

It involves dull, seemingly inconsequential, matters. Often a change of just a word or two in the Iowa Code can be worth millions of dollars to a particular company or to a certain occupational group worth enough to hire a lobbyist to try to get the change. Maybe it's a tiny change in the tax code, or a slight alteration in a professional licensing law, or a thousand other possibilities. Success or failure in getting such a change or blocking a change sought by a commercial rival can be a matter of having the right connections with the right legislators, or of hiring the right lobbyist with the right connections. Sometimes members of the Legislature act as agents on the inside, such as when legislators who are teachers are put in charge of school laws, lawyers handle changes in the practice of law, farmers push legislation affecting farmers, bank directors deal with banking laws.

Such matters seldom make news because no more than a handful of people care about them. But within the Legislature they can be of intense interest and cause extraordinary maneuvering. So it was with Iowa Trust, an investment pool for local-government funds. The trust sought a change in the law during the last session of the Legislature. It would have permitted school districts to invest in the trust a seemingly small change that could have fattened the Iowa Trust portfolio by millions.

It hired two influential lobbyists, former state senators Calvin Hult-man and Lowell Junkins, who served as Senate leaders and retain many friends among their former colleagues. They're two of a score of ex-legislators who have become lobbyists. Iowa Trust also had someone inside the Legislature Senate President Joseph Welsh, who was a salesman for Institutional Treasury Management the California firm that managed Iowa Trust's investments. Welsh has denied any conflict of interests in working for ITM, but in his role as presiding officer of the Senate he appears to have made a key and questionable parliamentary ruling in favor of an amendment Iowa Trust wanted. The amendment was handled on the floor by Senator Michael Connolly.

Both Connolly and Welsh are Democrats from Dubuque. That's the way the Legislature works. It is a matrix of personal friendships, alliances, enmities, rivalries and lawmaker-lobbyist connections often caught up in narrow, specialized legisla- tion that few people outside the Legislature are aware of. Had not scandal erupted when Iowa Trust's assets were frozen and its investment agent charged with fraud, most Iowans never would have heard of Iowa Trust nor would they have known anything about the strange maneuverings in the Legislature over expanding its investment pool. If the scandal has a good side, it is in the opportunity it presents to examine the inner workings of the Legislature.

It's time to ask whether the legislator-to-lobbyist revolving door should be closed, and whether rules need to be clarified on when a lawmaker's outside employment conflicts with the conduct of the public's business. Fhe Dec. 17 Register reported that Tom Harkin caught heck from a group of 10 elderly ladies for his use of a little profanity earlier in his presidential campaign. They "just couldn't" support the senator because of his language. (Like we've ever had a presidential candidate who didn't swear.

Ha!) Who's more profane: A candidate who utters the word "damn," or a president who doesn't give one about those who are victims of poverty, ignorance, abuse, addiction, AIDS, Alzheimers, cancer and our wars of Intervention? A candidate who uses the word "hell," or a president who turns his back on the living hell of homelessness in which tens of thousands of our children must live? A candidate who refers to "trickle-down" economics at home and milita-. rism abroad as "bullshit," or a president who serves up more of the same to argue that the only way to put the tens of millions of our unemployed, would be best to have another special election so that we could have some-one in Washington on the job. At a recent meeting in Des Moines, Senator Harkin was criticized for his "barnyard" language, which he passed off as "that's the way we talk in Iowa." Frankly, I know very few Iowans who have to use such language. To resort to such language is only an indication of a lack of education in making a better selection of words. Leonard Camp, 123318th Boone.

Recently Senator Tom Harkin told someone who objected to his use of profanity, "That's the way we talk in Iowa." Senator Harkin, most of us do not "talk like that." I was told as a child that anyone who used such language was unable to express himself. Evelyn McCracken, P.O. Box 74, Thompson. An election was held recently to choose a successor to State Senator Jack Nystrom, who could no longer fulfill his obligation to his constituents by remaining in office and holding down another state position. Using similar logic, since Senator Tom Harkin is spending taxpayers' money running around the country six days a week campaigning, perhaps it Can't separate politics from pay issue James Flansburg (Nov.

14) decried the events leading to the trial over the legality of Terry Branstad's veto of the bill providing funds to implement an arbitration decision granting pay increases to state employees. I agree, but I am disturbed by the implications of Mr. Flansburg's argument that it is not legitimate for this to come before the courts. Mr. Flansburg states that "politics, not law, is the game." Of course he's right.

He has stated in the past that removing politics from the political process is both impossible and undesirable. His complaint is actually one of degree, the elevation of political considerations to the exclusion of all else. By his actions, it is clear that Governor Branstad was almost entirely motivated by politics. His negotiation position was to offer state employees nothing, a 1 -percent pay increase that would be offset by an increase in em ployees' share of health-insurance costs. The arbitrators were required to accept either the union's last offer or the state's last offer; they could not split the difference.

By offering nothing, the governor embarked on a game of 'chicken." All or nothing. the arbitrators believed state employees should pay more for health insurance. But they also believed state employees deserved a real pay increase. It is likely they would have agreed to something less than the union's request, but their only choice was all or nothing. Flansburg wrote that "Iowa is facing the prospect of the courts' ordering the governor to sign a bill one branch of government clearly infringing upon the prerogatives of another." That's one way of looking at it, if you believe one branch is above the law.

Another way of looking at it is to remember that a system of checks and balances doesn't mean much if you don't get checked now and then. The arbitration decision constitutes a contract. Having voluntarily agreed to abide by arbitration, once the decision was made, a contract existed. To hold otherwise is to render collective bargaining meaningless. Mr; Flansburg seems to believe the authority of the governor to be so absolute as.

to include the power to abrogate a contract. This should send a chill down the spine of any Iowa company doing business with the state. If the court upholds the veto, collective bargaining is dead. Why make any effort to bargain in good faith? If the court overturns the veto, there are ramifications, potentially damaging, which cannot be foreseen. State Rep.

Rod Hatvorson, 1030 N. Seventh, Fort Dodge. Peace in Central America Fighting will end in El Salvador, but healing will be difficult. Raise military reservists' pay A fine center Fhe last civil war in Central America soon may end. Representatives of leftist rebels and the right-wing government came to terms last week on a United Nations plan to end the war that has taken nearly 75,000 lives.

It has been a sad story, and though the fighting is ending, there's no assurance that El Salvador's troubles will end soon. Throughout this century, the country has known more conflict than compromise, conflict that during the 1980s was partly the result of an American policy that financed an out-of-control Salvadoran army. As was the case in neighboring Nicaragua, Washington picked sides in El Salvador under the guise of fighting communism. But communism had nothing to do with the fighting. The causes were a grossly uneven distribution of land and wealth, military repression and extreme abuses of human rights.

The lack of democratic roots and the deep divisions in El Salvador will make for an uneasy healing process. But the government has agreed to reduce the size of the military, place the national police under civilian authority, and begin economic reforms. It will be expensive. Aid will be sought from other countries. The United States has an obligation to do its share.

Throughout the civil war, Washington professed an interest in democratic principles. Yet the army that fought with U.S. support undermined the very democratic reforms the American government said were needed. The beginnings of peace came about not so much because of American policy, but because of a masterful Central American peace plan put together four years ago by former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez. Central Americans long have asked the United States to let them decide their own future.

Maybe now, with the region's last civil war ending, Washington will allow them to do just that. The Persian Gulf War created many problems for reservists. For many, one was the reduction in family income created by the disparity between the active-duty income and civilian income. The decrease was a hardship placed on the families of men and women serving their country. To alleviate the stress due to income loss, it has been proposed that an insurance policy provide monthly income during mobilization.

The proposal suggests that the reservists pay a small premium out of their monthly reserve-duty pay. Our country wants a citizen fighting force ready to drop civilian status practically on a moment's notice to provide for the common defense. It is the reservists who stand to lose the most. Many reservists find that their civilian position has far outstripped their military position in both pay and position. They continue to serve in a low-pay, low-ranking reserve position for many reasons.

Most never considered a mobilization of the magnitude experienced in the Persian Gulf War to be a possibility. Now future mobilization has become a reality in the minds of many reservists. They are now considering their families' financial status in their decision to remain in the reserves. We must retain the successful reservists. We should set up a financial package that will allow military pay to closer match civilian pay.

Lt Col. Neola F.Fritz, reservist; 3236 S.E. 20th, Des Moines, Des Moines is truly blessed with what is, in my opinion, one of the nicest and most advanced Science Centers around for a city of our size. For patrons who take the time to read the instructions that are thoughtfully included with most of the displays, they will find themselves challenged in a variety of ways. The Science Center has one of the few displays in the country and will soon be opening the Challenger learning Center, a hands-on facility where kids and adults can work in teams to solve all types of problems presented in a simulated space flight.

The environmental exhibit is a place where the kids can see and feel up close the wondrous variety of wildlife that is all around them. It is clear from the times that I have watched that the animals are not only cared for but, more important, loved as well. Mark B. Davis, 3221 Des Moines. The Bowl Bowl nee there were the Orange Bowl, the Rose Bowl, the Sugar, Cotton, Sun and a couple of others.

Then came Sanger should be remembered press bowl, the Thrifty Rental Car bowl, the John Hancock bowl, and we are not making this up the Poulon Weed-Eater bowl, played on Astroturf. What's next? Why not commercial sponsors whose products are more closely associated with the game? For 1993, why not target the sedentary types who sit endlessly and watch with the Preparation Bowl? For their spouses, the Excedrin Headache Bowl? And somewhere, surely, there's a Carefree Crutch Co. and an Ouch-less Shoulder-Separation Slings Ltd. just waiting for bowls of their own. True story Since true-to-life horror stories are doing so well as movies, how about making one titled Reaganomics? R.B.Jones, Route 1, Box 157, Richland, an outcry over the over-commercialization of college football, and what happened? Now we have at least 20 post-season bowl games, some of which you never heard of, some involving colleges you never heard of.

Quick, now for what is North Carolina A best known? Aside from losing bowl games in front of crowds of Proliferation, however, is only half the problem. As commercial sponsors bid for exposure, names change to accommodate them. Last week we had the Federal Ex In response to Mary Ann Lickteig's Nov. 23 article, "Planned Parenthood Clinic from the In addition to the bust of Elizabeth Bates Cowles, founder of Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa, a bust of Margaret Sanger, the national founder of Planned Parenthood, should be present. In 1922, in her book, "The Pivot of Civilization," she chides or scolds social workers, philanthropists and churchmen for perpetuating the cruelty of charity.

She stated that organized attempts to help the poor were the "surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and is perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delin quents and dependents." She also said that the most "insidiously injurious philanthropy" was maternity care given to poor women. She criticized anyone who could not see the necessity of severely regulating the fertility of the working classes' "benign imbeciles," who encouraged the defective and diseased elements of humanity in their reckless and irresponsible swarming and spawning. Margaret Sanger stated in "The Birth Control Review," an article titled "Birth Control," that "more children from the fit and less from the unfit, that is the chief issue of birth Bert and Dolores lannone, 1 400 Casady Drive, Des Moines. WE'D LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU Mail your letter to Letters, The Des Moines Register, Box 957, Des Moines, Iowa 50304, or submit it by FAX at 515-Z86-2504. Please include your complete name, address and a daytime telephone number.

Because of space limitations, letters may be shortened. REGISTER EDITORIALS represent the institutional view of the newspaper. They reflect the newspaper's editorial traditions and the current opinions of Publisher Charles C. Edwards Editor Geneva Overholser, and the editorial page staff that writes and edits the editorials. The latter group includes Dennis R.

Ryerson, editor of the editorial pages, Richard Doak, deputy editor of the editorial pages, and Rekha Basu, Rox Laird, Linda Lantor, Bill Leonard and Suzanne Nelson, editorial writers..