The Morning Herald from Hagerstown, Maryland • Page 9

Opinion Santa Fe, N.M., Wednesday, December 24, 1986 THE NEW MEXICAN A-5 A Gannett Ni i The New Mexican, Inc. Founded 1849 Wayne C. Vann, President and General Manager Robert M. McKinney, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher Dionicio Flores, Editor George J. Wetzel, Advertising Director Ellis Knowles, Circulation Director Charles Lang, Controller Julie Padilla, Promotions Manager Austin Ryan, Production Director Other tbo tkf alitorial, tkt opiniooj afrtsxd by writcn on this (age are not necessarily those of the newspaper.

Editorial Combining money, policy beneficial to NM schools After Jan. 1, New Mexico will have a school funding agency and an educational policy-making agency controlled by the same office. Finance and Administration Secretary-designate Willard Lewis and Education Superintendant Alan Morgan have signed an agreement to carry out a constitutional change in structure, approved by the voters in the November general election. The Office of Education, which allocates more than $700 million of public school appropriations to the state's 88 school districts, will be shifted from the control of the governor's office to the state Department of Education. The Department of Education sets standards and policies for public education.

This change was adopted to take the politics of the governor's office out of education. The department is overseen by 10 elected school board members, to be increased to 15 members after Jan. 1. The governor will appoint five new members. For years educators, legislators and the public have argued meaningful educational reform was impossible because the agency that controls the money is not the agency that plans and sets policies and standards.

This no longer will be true. The reorganized department of education faces a tremendous responsibility because the public has high expectations. With no more excuses about control, the agency must now chart New Mexico's public education future. Would-be writers must learn to spell A thick manuscript came to my desk the other day from a gentleman in Wyoming. He had written a novel laid in ancient Egypt, and it was evident from the most cursory glance that he had labored like a tomb builder on his book.

Even so, he had garnered nothing but rejection slips from publishing houses. Would I take a look and tell him what might be wrong? Ordinarily I bounce manuscripts back by return mail, not because I lack feeling for would- be writers but because my working hours are too crowded. This was a slow day. I took a look. On his first page three words were misspelled, on his second page two more.

Riffling through the rest I spotted 20 or 30 others. He had confused "it's" and "its" over and over. As gently as possible, I responded that until he cleaned up his spelling, no editor would look very long at his work. Many of you who read this column want eagerly to become published writers. May I suggest, from the bottom of this aging heart, that correct spelling is an essential part of the writer's craft? This is a threshold requirement.

Everything else all the little dog tricks of the trade comes later. An occasional error in spelling may be forgiven. None of us is perfect. Pervasive misspelling is a certain route to reprimand or rejection. The mail brings some Horrid Examples.

Time magazine in November quoted a jubilant Paul Kirk, national Democratic chairman. "The voters," he said, "have written a forward to a new book tonight." Fiddlesticks! The word is foreword, not forward. The Kankakee (111.) Journal carried an obituary on "a retired stationery engineer." Maybe he designed letterheads? The word is stationary. The Suffolk (Va.) News-Herald, in an editorial blasting a proposed ordinance on yard sales, complained that the measure would require "each of the permit holders to troupe to the commissioner of revenue's office each week to obtain their permits." Never mind the confusion of each holder obtaining their permits. The word isn't troupe (a group of theatrical performers).

The verb is troop (to move in large numbers). Grain's Cleveland Business carried an ad for the Mid-Day Club: "Join the hussle and bussle festivities of the holiday spirit!" Where did the ad writer get those interesting words? A feature writer in the Bellevue (Wash.) Journal-American had real problems. He interviewed a local food columnist who appears to have become a celebrity. He wrote of the d'art that grace the Stew- James Kilpatrick Syndicated columnist art home." He wrote of "mull- berry trees" and "mullberry bark." He dwelled upon Mrs. Stewart's "literary personna." She believes that life is meant to be enjoyed, and "she hopes to preach that mistle to her biggest audience ever with a television special." Aargh! He wanted objets d'art, mulberries and persona.

Heaven and the author alone know what was meant by preaching a mistle. If he meant "missal," he had the wrong word entirely. Gospel, maybe? Who knows? Another threshold requirement is that we put the elements of a sentence in sensible order. The Associated Press recently reported from Elizabeth, N.J., about a man who was released after spending eight years in prison after being convicted of rape. "The case against Walker was dropped based on the results of a sperm sample taken from the victim's body, which had sat untested in the Elizabeth Police Department since the crime 12 years ago." That body sat an awful long time.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer covered drug tests at the University of Washington: "Annual tests will be given to all 800 students who play in 19 intercollegiate sports during their preseason physical exams." How's that again? The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that Common Pleas Judge Fred J. Guzzo sentenced a two-time killer "to die in the electric chair a second time." Maybe cruel, certainly unusual. On Station KOIN-TV in Oregon, a newscaster provided a delicate insight into teen-age behavior: "Teen-agers don't talk about sex with their parents." I incest we can do better. The Parkersburg (W.Va.) News carried an ominous headline: "Clue Found to Mysterious Children's Illness." The disease, Kawasaki syndrome, may indeed be mysterious; the afflicted children are innocent as lambs. On a lighter note, lest I grumble too much, let me applaud a splendid coinage in Time magazine.

Two actors in TV sitcoms ran for Congress in November. Said Mark D. Uehling: "In a hard-to-read trendlet that confounded Washington analysis, one actor lost and the other won." Trendlet! I love it. Washington reporters are great ones for spotting trends. Spotting trendlets is a job for experts only.

Iran issue bad for economy From Wall Street to Congress, uncertainty is taking hold Jack Anderson Syndicated columnist WASHINGTON There is deepening concern in the back rooms of Washington that the hullabaloo over Iran could end up disrupting the economy. Worried officials point out that the American system is built on public confidence. If the Iran furor shakes public confidence in the nation's leadership, the tremors could jolt the economy and cause a downsiide. For the economy, officials fear, is vulnerable. This assessment comes from sources who had been optimistic.

Now they are taking a sober second look at the future. They fear that the Iran tempest may cause people to lose faith in their leaders and hunker down. This could cause the economy, already wobbly, to founder. Here are the danger signs that trouble the experts: The fall of Wall Street speculator Ivan Boesky has already jolted the stock market. But the Securities and Exchange Commission is just beginning its investigation; it is digging into a compost pile of corporate takeovers, junk-bond financing and insider trading.

The investigators have their sights on two speculators even bigger than Boesky. Members of Congress will add their voices to the howl against the "parasites" who prey on healthy companies. The roar will grow louder with each new indictment against wheeler-dealers. The continuing exposure of Wall Street ethics could scare off small investors. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker has warned privately that junk bonds are dangerously volatile and could set off a Wall Street explosion.

The public is. largely unaware, for example, that the savings and loan industry holds a whopping $6 billion worth of junk bonds. If the bonds fall in value, it could bring down sev- CHAR6ES GOrTOftlt AMERICA W1TW BEIN6 RISKS AND INHfTlGHNT. THE NEWS NOT UKEN eral savings and loan companies. Volcker is also worried about the big commercial banks that have helped to finance corporate takeovers.

The crackdown on insider-trading abuses could stick these banks with some huge bad loans. The nation's banking system rests on quicksand. If one of the big banks should sink, it could pull down the whole system. The collapse of a mega- bank would lead to failures of interconnected banks. The supply of credit to companies would evaporate; the banks that were left would be unable to buy the bonds that major corporations need to finance their operations and expansion; loans would be called in as desperate bankers tried to stave off collapse; defaults and bankruptcies would multiply as loans were called; interest rates would soar, and the desperation of would-be borrowers would escalate.

The new tax reforms could cause major dislocations in the economy. Some of the same congressmen who took credit during the election campaign for lowering the tax rate are now looking for ways to in- crease taxes. Other congressmen, who boasted about how they helped plug up tax loopholes, will try to unplug them next year. The special interests, which lost their tax breaks under the new law, are crying for relief. The Federal Reserve Board's experts are running out of ways to stimulate economic growth artificially.

They are nervous that the old medicines aren't working. Lowering the interest rates and devaluing the dollar simply haven't revived the economy as the medicine men had hoped. Tax reform will raise corporate taxes and hamper investments, at least in the short run. The manufacturing sector, mired in recession, is still a drag on the economy. And world commodity prices are also deflated.

But most worrisome of all is the skyrocketing U.S. trade deficit. Washington's big thinkers never dreamed that the trade deficit would swell at the same time that the value of the dollar shrank. At the Fed and Treasury, computers were used to project the future. These computers showed the trade deficit declining in lock step with the falling dollar.

Unhappily, this is not what has happened. On top of all this, the economy is now being battered by the Iran revelations. Officials accept that the press has not only the right but. the duty to seek out the jigsaw pieces and put the Iran picture together. But they fear an over-aggressive press could cause the economy irreparable damage.

FUDDLE FACTORY: We hate to play Grinch, but you should know that just because a meat or poultry processor volunteers to recall its product, there's no guarantee that tainted food will be removed from supermarkets. According to an unsettling Agriculture Department inspector general's report, companies that voluntarily recalled food that could have led to serious illness didn't always notify their retail outlets. And four out of the eight processors surveyed in 1985 didn't issue press releases, either. This "contributed to the likelihood that recalled products remained in retail channels," the inspector general said. Bon appetit! Churches concept of faith has a place in strengthening world democracies By DAVID BRODER Syndicated columnist WASHINGTON Three days before Christmas, President Reagan proclaimed a National Day of Prayer for early next year and sent greetings to the celebrants of the Jewish holiday of Chanukah.

That same morning, the Joint Economic Committee of Congress held a hearing on the recent pastoral letter on "economic justice" issued by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. The lead witness was the archbishop of Milwaukee, Rembert Weakland. While clergymen testify often before congressional committees, I cannot recall another hearing devoted to a policy statement by a religious body. The liberal chairman of the committee, Rep. David R.

Obey said in defense of the unusual proceeding that, "The Bishops deserve an opportunity to defend and discuss their view that present levels of unemployment and poverty are morally Whether ceremonial or substantive, the occasions on which religion enters into our political and governmental life are becoming more and more frequent. Nor is this likely to change. Next year, two highly publicized clergymen, Marion G. (Pat) Robertson and Jesse L. Jackson, are expected to declare their candidacies for the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations.

The whole issue of "religion and politics" is drawing more attention than understanding these days, in part because so few of us in the press have the backgrounds to appreciate the sensitive balance between faith and reason that has sustained our Republic for two centuries. A number of sociological studies have demonstrated that journalism is among the most secularized of occupations. Far fewer of us are regular churchgoers or religious adherents than our fellow citizens. It was no accident that the two presidential contenders who encountered the deepest skepticism from reporters in recent decades were the two for whom religious faith was perhaps most central in their lives Republican George Romney and Democrat Jimmy Carter. Nor is it an accident that political reporters tend to write about the current controversies in areas where religion and politics overlap with little appreciation for their historical and cultural roots.

Luckily, other students of politics are less handicapped, and four of them have just published sensible essays on the impact of religious issues in PS, an informal journal of the American Political Science Assn. A. James Reichley of the Brookings Institution and William A. Galston of the Roosevelt Center, two scholars who also happen to be veterans of past presidential campaign organizations (Republican for Reichley; Democratic for Galston), reexamined recent Supreme Court decisions and political controversies. They plead for religious tolerance, not because of some sappy sentimentality, but because of their hardheaded and historically rooted understanding of the vital contribution religion has made to this Republic and the unique protection this nation has offered to all varieties of religious expression.

"Religion and democracy," Reichley writes, "will always be to some degree in tension; religion claims to reveal universal moral truths, binding in some sense on every human will; while democracy requires compromise, serving partial interests and accommodating differences of opinion that may appear logically irreconcilable. The two, nevertheless, have crucial complementary needs. Religion, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed long ago, is nurtured by the atmosphere of social freedom promoted by republican government. De- mocracy, for its part, depends, now and for the foreseeable future, on values that have no reliable source outside religion." Galston argues that the current "religious wars" probably had their origins in the civil-rights movement, which launched an era disruptive to "the longstanding balance between juridical liberal principles and a complex of traditional moral beliefs, many of which rested on religious From the unquestionable fact that many traditional practices, chief among them racial discrimination, violated liberal principles, was inferred the dubious conclusion that traditionalism as a whole" was unworthy of respect. Abortion, school prayer, pornography, homosexuality and a dozen other "religious issues" agitate our politics, and will continue to do so.

The issues, and the people who are spurred to political action by them, call for the tact and restraint of the Founders, not the bellowing belligerence of today's talk shows. Galston quotes de Tocqueville's enduring observation: "Despotism may be able to do without faith, but freedom cannot." And because that faith is fundamental, tolerance is no less vital to our democracy. Doonesbury BY GARRY TRUDEAU WUORKUPA NORTHS OPEN-COLLAR LOOK FOR. "STYLE. MALT, STAY WITH THB 6EHEVA -TEL, AW LEG OF THE 12-24 HOUI HELP PAVIP CHECK OUT ABOUT WHYONKJCHARP SE COW.

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