The Galveston Daily News from Galveston, Texas • Page 11

GALVESTON COUNTY, TEXAS COMMENTARY SUNDAY, JULY 10, 1994 THEDAJLYNEWS Let's hear it for ignorance and shortsightedness hether it's go or no go on health-care reform may now come down to the issue of employer mandates, and that impasse is the work of one lobby. The New York Times recently detailed the strategies used by the "small" business lobby to stifle employer mandates (that is, the notion that employers should pay for their workers' health insurance). What's amazing about the lobbying coup by the small-bidness folks is that we know for a fact that every assertion they have made about the supposedly devastating effect of employer mandates on small business is just not true. The reason we know this is because employer mandates have been in effect in Hawaii for years now, and none of the catastrophic consequences predicted by the lobby has come to pass. In fact, Hawaii is doing extremely well in the various categories used to rate health care, especially prenatal and infant care.

And small bidnesses in Hawaii are doing just fine, thanks. It's bizarre enough that we have ignored the evidence before our eyes to be found in Canada that the single- payer system works and works well. How absolutely extraordinary that we should ignore the evidence from one of our own states on employer mandates. This is beyond provincialism and well on the way to Molly Ivins moronville. Why would Congress listen to lobbyists spread tales of fear about how employer mandates might work when we can see how they work, we know how they work and we know the effects they have? Because the answer to that question calls for yet another round of bashing Washington and dumping on Congress and I'm seriously bored with both pastimes (more overdone than the O.J.

Simpson coverage) let us consider instead Washington's new answer to the gridlock of special interests: legislating for the future. I like this. Unable as they are to get anything done for the present, congresspersons have now taken to making laws that will go into effect in 2000 or 2002 or 2006. Because they will continue to be unable to get anything done for the present until they change the way campaigns are financed, legislating for the future is the perfect answer. In the future, incumbents are not up for re-election.

In the future, their careers do not depend on PAC money. In the future, special-interest lobbyists don't have their jobs on the line unless they kill this or pass that. Congress can legislate the ideal for the future, damn the special interests, full speed ahead. You may be wondering why putting off the effective date of a law does any good; don't the same special-interest players descend on Congress, all demanding that their piece of turf be taken care of in the future? Ah, you have reckoned without one of the most significant traits of contemporary capitalism: American corporations are incapable of thinking long term! Isn't that wonderful? I know, all over the country, professors at business schools deplore this very fact; they worry, fret and mourn because our corporate leaders cannot focus their attention past the burning question of next quarter's profits. Some even say that it is destroying our economy, that it will lead to ruin.

Well, it may, but it does leave our future less profit-and-greed driven than our present. Let's hear it for shortsightedness! Now, should you be suffering from a midsummer shortage of good stuff to worry about, let me suggest that the concentration of media ownership (CBS recently bought QVC) in preparation for the mother of all ownership battles is a delightful little subject for spare-time worrying. The big question, of course, is who will own the information superhighway, and on this front, our giant media corporations are indeed awake to the future. The problem is, the rest of us aren't. If I were forced to choose the single biggest mistake the United States has made domestically this century (so many choices, so little time), I might pick selling off the public ail-waves to for-profit corporations (although on alternate days, I favor the misbegotten Supreme Court decision that made corporations "persons" with rights under the law).

William F. Buckley recently conducted one of those fruitless panels about whether sex or violence on television is doing more harm to our culture (the conservatives said sex, and the liberals said violence, naturally). And I say it all has the same root cause: money. We've made this mistake once, let's not do it again with the next form of information technology. Bone up on the growing debate about how the new pie is to be sliced, and get in there and fight, fight, fight.

After we get health-care reform, of course. Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 1994 Creators Syndicate Inc. Quotable "The overwhelming proportion of the jobs that are being added to the economy are low-wage jobs in the service sector." Mark Roberts, an economist with the AFL-CIO, commenting on June employment figures released by the government. "Thank God.

Everything is perfect. We are one nation." Khaled Mahmoud, resident of Aden, Yemen, as the government proclaimed an end to two months of civil war. "Any time a member (of Congress) wanted anything, I mean just jump to it, you know, especially if it might have been a powerful member, you know, like Dan Inga Lawson, a U.S. House Post Office mail clerk, to in-house investigators who found the office was disorganized and slow except when doing special favors for members of Congress. If Panetta is allowed, he can make change for better understand the significance of the recent changeover at the White House decreed by President Clinton, turn the clock back 14 months to April 26, 1993.

On that day, Leon Panetta, director of the Office of Management and Budget, sat down to lunch with a group of reporters and proceeded to do that rarest of things in Washington. He told the truth. Clinton had been in office only three months and Senate Republicans, in a unanimous show of muscle, had humiliated him by forcing him to abandon his short-term economic stimulus plan. Panetta as how that was just the beginning of the troubles lying in wait for the new president's legislative agenda. The remaining pieces of the budget, including the soon-to-be-ditched energy tax, were in dire straits, he said.

So was aid to Russia. Ditto, the North American Free Trade Agreement. To salvage his agenda, Panetta said, Clinton would have to "define his priorities" more narrowly and do a better job of enlisting public support. Health care reform, then due to be introduced just a month later, should be put on the back burner until these other measures had been passed. Panetta's candor hit the White House like a missile.

Briefly, there was speculation that he might be fired, but Clinton decided to treat it as a case of momentary depression, saying, "I want to buck him up. I don't want to take him to the woodshed." David Broder As it turned out, Panetta was not depressed; he was correct. The Clinton budget and economic plan squeaked through Congress months later with not a vote to spare in the House or Senate. Passing NAFTA took a huge expenditure of presidential energy and a massive public-relations campaign. Health care was put off until the end of the year, because the congressional system was staggering under the load of even a pared- down cargo of Clinton priorities.

And now, 14 months later, with another full load of legislation hanging in the congressional balance and a perilous midterm election looming, Clinton has turned to Panetta to organize a more effective White House. The decision to make Panetta the new chief of staff is timely and wise. Whether it will be effective depends largely on Clinton's willingness to allow anyone to discipline the freeform governing process he seems to like. The president's 1992 impulse to name his boyhood friend Thomas F. "Mack" McLarty as his first chief of staff was like many of the other first-round White House personnel decisions a sign that he had not thought seriously about managing the presidency.

McLarty, one of the most agreeable people the new administration brought to town, had only one asset a lifetime of palling around with Clinton. He did not know government, he did not know Washington and he had little confidence in his own political instincts. With the president inclined to dabble in everything and resolve few issues quickly, the White House became a swirling mess of endless meetings, of factions and of folks just trying to figure out what the hell wa.s going on. Panetta knows government, he knows Washington and his confidence in his own political instincts could not be higher. This is a guy who left the Nixon administration when he got a good whiff of the authoritarianism wafting down from the White House into the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, where he was trying honorably to enforce civil rights laws.

Having served previously as an aide to a Republican senator, he went home to California, became a Democrat and won election to the House in 1976. Ho was chosen by his colleagues as chairman of the Budget Committee a merit appointment, not controlled by seniority and was recommended to Clinton (who previously did not know him well) as the right man to run the administration's budget. He got high marks from everyone in that job. What Panetta does not have is the bond of personal loyalty Clinton forged with other White House staffers and advisers who went through the fires of the 1992 campaign at his side. That lack proved debilitating to David Gergen when Clinton added him to the top staff last year and he is now on his way out.

Panetta also has little reputation as an administrator. But he does have the qualities possessed by the man he says is his role model as chief of staff James A. Baker III. Panetta is intellectually tough, politically savvy (especially about Capitol Hill) and trusted by politicians of both parties and the press. But unlike Ronald Reagan, who was happy to delegate strategic decision-making to Baker and other aides, Clinton likes to do it himself.

So does Hillary Rodham Clinton. And so does Vice President Gore. Panetta says he sought and received "full authority" from Clinton and acquiescence from the first lady and the vice president to manage both personnel and policy in the White House. Clinton has a talent for telling people what they want to hear. We will see if Panetta really has running room to become another Jim Baker.

If he does, this White House will change and change for the better. Anthony Griffin Guest columnist Baby step toward community pride ince the publication of my downtown revitalization plans, I have spent a little time both smiling and frowning at the public reaction to any such attempt to inject capital into neighborhoods that traditionally have been ignored, feared or avoided. It is amazing to be both brilliant and insane in the same breath but so be it. For the naysayers, there is no need to continue reading. For those interested, I write to introduce you to one of the first baby steps to accomplish the goals mentioned.

The Eco Place board plans to create a corridor of commerce centered around the Beissner House at 2818 Ball Ave. The Beissner House is a graceful, historic home that bespeaks Galveston but "she" is ill at this time. One of the stated goals of the board is to begin a litter program designed to clean and monitor the area. This is sort of like "clean Galveston in the 'hood." Eco Place will sponsor a Save R' Hood project from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Aug. 6 at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Street and Ball Avenue. There will be a barrel-painting contest in which local kids will organize in teams of three and paint 21 trash barrels. The barrels will be placed in the neighborhood, monitored by Eco Place and emptied by the city of Galveston on Wednesdays.

The winning team will be awarded tickets to Astroworld and a small amount of spending money. Malloy Sons Funeral Home already has donated a tent. The city of Galveston has been wonderful in finding sources of barrels, with respect to information, and agreeing to collect the trash weekly. Other unsung participants have worked daily during the last month and will work up until the day of the event to make the baby step a successful event. Why the initial concentration on litter? One, it is discouraging to walk among broken bottles, paper and trash.

Two, the sense of neighborhood need not be preached by sociologists or psychologists to understand the importance of beginning to break the vicious cycles of poverty, drugs, alcoholism, etc. I guess I'm preaching. Most importantly, it just makes sense. Please, mark your calendar. If you are not doing anything, drive by and even stop.

A little music, a sense of community and kids being kids again may make sense. Anthony P. Griffin a lawyer in Galveston. David Broder is a nationally syndicated columnist. 199.) Washington Post Writers Group Newsmakers Today's birthdays: ABC News correspondent David Brinkley is 74.

Former boxer Jake LaMotta is 73. Former New York City Mayor David N. Dinkins is 67. Broadway composer Jerry Herman is 61. Tennis player Virginia Wade is 49.

Folk singer Arlo Outline is 47. In remembrance: Mel Blanc, the "man of a thousand voices," including such cartoon characters as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig, died on this date in 1989 in Los Angeles at age 81..