Marshfield News-Herald from Marshfield, Wisconsin • 4

Tuesday, July 13, 1993 Marshfield News-Herald JMarshfleld IKTews-H James V. Eykyn, Publisher William R. Heath, Editor Karen S. Olson, Advertising Manager Richard J. Thomer, Production Manager Bernlce M.

Bradley, Circulation Manager Founded 1927 w-Pago 4 A erald History fife DO H0l mw I (Use salary, (not per diem WAT'S SPRAYED ME THINGS? Leaders aren't in between $2,500 and $4,000 per year that takes into account the average meeting time commitments? SUCH A PROCEDURE, we contend, might reduce the number of meetings. And it probably would shorten the meeting times, too. And it would even out the pay schedule for all supervisors. Some supervisors are more active in the committee structure and their per diem reflects that fact There are, as a rule, too many government committees anyhow. Too many issues bounce back and forth between committees before the recommendation eventually makes its way to the full Board.

There is no incentive to reduce the number of meetings. And everytime a meeting is held, counties or rather the taxpayers deal with mileage and per diem. SOME MIGHT argue that a flat salary schedule would put boards on the path of full-time duties, which we've seen happen in the Wisconsin Legislature. We doubt it. Department heads or appointed county executives arc the ones who run the day-to-day operations and answer to the boards.

A salary schedule would be under as much scrutiny as per diem when increases were recommended. We suggest that it also should lead to a streamlined committee structure with fewer meetings. That's the direction county boards should be taking. By The Associated Press Today is Tuesday, July 13, the 194th day of 1993. There are 171 days left in the year.

On this date: In 1863, rioting against the Civil War military draft erupted in New York City. The violence resulted in the deaths of about 1,000 people over three days. In 1943, 50 years ago, the American League defeated the National League 5-3 in baseball's All-Star Came, played in Philadelphia. In 1960, Massachusetts Sen. John F.

Kennedy won the Democratic presidential nomination at his party's convention in Los Angeles. In 1977, a 25-hour blackout hit the New York City area after lightning struck upstate power lines. In 1978, Lee Iacocca was fired as president of Ford Motor Company by chairman Henry Ford II. kstep Actually, passage of the bill would not have saved Hattori, because it would not have prevented the sale of the weapon that killed him. The bill is named for former presidential press secretary James Brady, disabled in the 1981 Ronald Reagan assassination attempt CURBING MONDALE Former Vice President Walter F.

Mondale has had his ups and downs as designated ambassador to Japan before serving a single minute on the job or even being confirmed by the Senate. His selection created a wave of buoyancy in Japan, which reveres elder statesmen. Mondale was imagined to be the reincarnation of former Sen. Mike Mansfield, beloved here during 12 years as ambassador. Mansfield was followed by Michael Armacost a no-nonsense foreign service officer viewed as considerably less than sympathetic by the Japanese public.

But incipient Mondalemania was curbed when politicians and government officials began to read speeches Mondale delivered in 1984 when he was the Democratic nominee for president He took a strong protectionist line early in the campaign, with rhetoric bordering on Japan bashing. hi By Robert Novak Creators Syndicate IS PER DIEM pay for elected county officials one of those sacred cows in this area? Isn't there a better way? We raise this question in light Xof the Clark County Board's recent vote to reject a pay hike J'for its members as well as some full-time elected officials. It was a nice move, yet the vote was 15-12 "in favor" of the pay hike, which would have boosted annual costs for this service by 1 about $9,000. A two-thirds majority vote was needed for passage. Had it passed, supervisors would have earned $40 for half-day meetings and $60 for sessions that last longer than four hours.

They currently earn $35 per day, regardless of the length of the meeting. THE INTERESTING thing is that there hasn't been a per diem hike for supervisors since 1987. But because of the close vote, one can expect this measure to resurface soon maybe as early as next year. We doubt that pay is the issue here. Unless a person is sclf-Z; employed or retired.

Board duty is no place to get rich quick. In other words, keep the day job. Public service, political dabbl-2; ing, recognition and other i issues probably take precedence. 2 We wonder, however, if Clark and neighboring counties might not be wise to abandon this per diem method of payment altoccthcr. Wouldn't it be easier and better to set up a flat salary schedule something probably Put plan off JUST AS THE Bush White House futily maintained there were no economic policy problems lurking within that couldn't be cured with a little better P.R., so the new administration insists skepticism about Bill Clinton's tax-and-spend plan can be cured by David Gergen.

Yet, as Donald Lambro reports in the Washington Times, the problem is policy: Numerous reputable, non-partisan economic forecasters say Clinton's tax plan will kill jobs and quash economic growth. HERE ARE SOME of their predictions, if the Clinton plan becomes law: DRIMcGraw Hill: 1.1 million jobs lost by 1996. National Center for Policy Analysis (which accurately predicted the Bush recession): 1.4 million jobs lost over the next five years, $1.8 trillion in job-creating investment vaporized. Wharton Econometrics: 1.1 when his turn came. But the president made up for that imposed silence by chatting almost constantly with summit partners, often delaying the start of formal sessions, and orating at length when he got the floor.

His remarks on environmental policy at the Thursday afternoon session were particularly extended. TALKATIVE FRANCOIS France's President Francois Mitterrand, despite political misfortune, kept up his reputation as the G-7's most verbose speaker over the years at least before President Clinton joined the club. Mitterrand's long, intellectual discourses drove Ronald Reagan to distraction during the '80s. It was expected that Mitterrand, a president without a government, might be subdued at the Tokyo summit by the electoral disaster of his Socialist Party and the conservative takeover of power in Paris. yes natlwe: By George Will Washington Post Group TOKYO President Clinton found out quickly at the G-7 summit that Japan, is not what it once was when politicians and bureaucrats moved together in lockstcp.

Lame-duck Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa's last-ditch offer to reach agreement on a U.S.-Japancse trade framework did not represent the views of the powerful bureaucracy which really runs Japan. Government officials immediately began leaking complaints that Miyazawa was giving away the store to the Americans. U.S. negotiators found that their Japanese counterparts were not reflecting the prime minister's willingness to compromise. Miyazawa, the recent loser in a parliamentary vote of confidence, is expected to leave office soon.

TALKATIVE BILL Bill Clinton, who makes no secret of how much he loves to talk, ran into frustration at his first G-7 session Wednesday afternoon. Presiding over the summit as host Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa set a procedure whereby each summitcer could say his piece without interruption. President Clinton went eighth and last after his six fellow heads of government and the European Community representative. That meant Clinton had to be quiet from 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m., WASHINGTON These are salad days for those conservatives whose philosophy is confirmed by, and whose agenda is advanced by, bad behavior of government Recently, for example, the House of Representatives, home of the most entrenched portion of the political class, voted to continue spending taxpayers' dollars to subsidize, for large corporations and wealthy trade associations, the overseas marketing of fruit juice and candy bars, whisky and prunes, and many other profitable commodities.

And the House did this after voting to terminate a less expensive program that helps export democracy. The Agriculture Department's Market Promotion Program, begun in 1985, will, like the honey subsidy and the wool subsidy and much else, live forever. But the political class is currendy insisting that the budget "crisis" requires the taxpayers to turn over more money to the political class. So that class is grudgingly making cosmetic cuts in some particularly egregious programs. So the House did trim the MPP from $147 million to $127 million.

That is government A 13.6 percent cut in a program that is 100 percent indefensible. The MPP's survival says much about the ersatz "crisis" currently being used to justify tax increases. The MPP funds both generic and brand name advertising abroad for American agricultural products. This is yet another example of the government's solicitiousness on behalf of the strong. Of the 200 U.S.

corporations with the largest advertising budgets, 13 last year got a total of $9 million from the MPP, an average of $700,000 each. But the advertising budgets of those corporations range from $45 million to $538 million, so the taxpayers contributions can hardly be said to represent the difference between competitive success and failure. Actions He confirmed that expectation by arriving a day later than his colleagues. But Mitterrand was his old self at the Wednesday night dinner, inveighing against the watery language on Bosnia ready to be released in the name of the sum-miteers. Accordingly, a statement tougher in rhetoric, if not in reality, was written the next day.

BRADY BILL IN TOKYO The Brady bill to regulate U.S. gun purchases was so much on President Clinton's mind that he brought it up twice in Tokyo. On Wednesday, he telephoned the parents of Yoshi Hattori, the Japanese student shot to death in Louisiana when he was mistaken for a prowler, and told them the Brady bill is about to passed. On Thursday, he was overheard telling Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell: "My crime bill's coming up We've got the Brady bill back in there where it belongs." other forms of socialism: When defenders argue that the subsidy dollars are profitably invested, they must also argue that for some reason private investors would not make these remunerative investments. So, government is wiser than the private market? Please.

On June 29 the House voted to pour this $127 million (with hundreds of millions more to come as the years roll by) into the private coffers of people who, thus subsidized, will have more resources freed up to use as campaign contributions. But seven days earlier, the House had a moment of parsimony. It did not just make a 13.6 percent nick in the National Endowment for Democracy, it voted to kill it If the NED helped the export of prunes instead of democracy, it too, could be immortal. mm Berry's World onse rrc track million jobs lost BTHE BANK OF Boston's Allen Sinai says Clinton's plan will shrink economic growth by 0.4 percent Could all of these respected analysts be wrong? Maybe. But not likely.

There is no example in history of a nation taxing itself into prosperity. It is not too late to stop the Bill Clinton job-destruction machine. HIS TAX-AND-spcnd plan only squeaked through the House and Senate, and there are big differences to be resolved between the House and Senate versions. It still must clear a conference committee and be voted upon once more. Let us hope that enough members of Congress got a sufficient dose of reality from the folks back home during the Fourth of July recess to defeat the tax plan when it next comes for a vote.

In Marshfield covered 102 miles on a bicycle trip recently. David Keel, 16, Larry Wundrow, 15, and Andy Schloesser, 15, left Marshfield at 4:30 a.m. on a Sunday and traveled via county trunk roads to Wun-drow's cottage on Musser Flowage, located 10 miles east of Phillips. They arrived there at 5:30 p.m.... Eight young men, all missionaries of the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) presented an outstanding program Thursday evening at the meeting of the Clark County Historical Society in Loyal High School.

10 YEARS AGO TODAY An open house will be held at the Colby Public Library following Saturday's Centennial parade. Winners in the summer library program poem contest have been announced. In the third and fourth grades division, Le Luchterhand, Unity was first and Stacy Clark was second. Mary Loos was first Eliza Luchterhand, second, and Stephanie Cook, third, in the fifth and sixth grade division. The NED helps democracy by means of small but life-giving grants for trade unions, student groups, publications, legal assistance for the persecuted, and other measures.

It has a record of success in helping democracy put down roots in stony social soil. By voting to stop this cost-effective work, the House voted to save $50 million, less than half what it is eager to spend on handouts to corporations through the MPP. Those two votes illustrate what most congressmen most care about What is the salient difference between the MPP and the NED? The former can, and the latter cannot serve the dominant desire of most House members. That desire is to protect their incumbency by enlarging the ranks of grateful recipients of government money. The political class, confronted with a rising tide of public contempt comforts itself with condescension.

The public, says the political class, just does not understand what we do. Actually, that class is fortunate that the public is too busy to read the Congressional Record. As understanding of contemporary government increases, so does disdain for it Defenders of these welfare payments to corporations say: Other nations do it for their companies. (Translation: We have a duty to be as foolish as foreigners are.) And defenders rely on the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy (the rooster crows and the sun rises, therefore the crowing causes the sunrise). That is, defenders argue actually, they just assert that any increase in the exports of any commodity that is the subject of subsidized advertising must be caused by that advertising.

Never mind the effects of many other variables, such as the export-assisting fall in the value of the dollar since 1985. Defenders of the MPP declare that it "creates" 38,000 American jobs. Amazing, is it not the precision of the political class? It knows simply knows that without subsidized advertising (such as the $394,000 recentiy given to the National Association of Animal Breeders to market bull semen), demand for American products would sag and drag down 38,000 not 27,000, not 43,000 jobs. But let us assume that the $450,000 given to the Campbell Soup Co. to entice Japanese, Koreans, Argentineans and Taiwanese to drink V-8 juice "worked." And that the $6.2 million given to the Blue Diamond company stimulated foreign desires for American almonds.

But when making such assumptions, defenders of the subsidies face the unanswerable challenge that always confounds "industrial policy" and 50 YEARS AGO TODAY Central Wisconsin farmers will prepare to strike another blow against the Axis on July 27 when they gather at the Marshfield Branch Experiment Station here to study the results of the latest experiments in the boosting of Wisconsin's feed production. The annual Farm Field Day will be a streamlined event this year to conserve as much of the busy farmer's time as possible. Professors A. R. Albert, George Briggs, E.

J. Delwiche and C. J. Chapman will be among those taking part in the The Agricultural Committee of the Neillsville Kiwanis Club, at Monday evening's meeting, asked all members of the Gub who can spare the time to go out and help the farmers, who are very short of manpower and need all the help they can get Sgt Ted Viergutz, who has just returned from Iceland, spoke to the Club about Iceland. (Marshfield News-Herald July 13, 1943) 25 YEARS AGO TODAY Three young Marshfield residents gj not 1993 by NEA, Inc..