The Post-Crescent from Appleton, Wisconsin • 4

Thompson-Cullen merger is a victory for Wisconsin By James Bartelt Post-Crescent Madison bureau MADISON Sen. Tim Cullen says it is impossible to predict the future, and that certainly applies tAnnlitit- But politics does make strange bedfellows. And now we have Cullen, the Senate majority leader and expected Democratic candidate for governor in 1990, as the secretary of health and social maker of compromises. He will now use them for Thompson in dealing with the Democratic majorities in both houses of the Legislature. That will apply to the immediate Thompson goals of holding down spending, changing welfare to workfare and getting agreement for putting a new prison in Waupun instead of southeastern Wisconsin.

What's in it for Cullen? He will make about $50,000 more than the $30,000 Senate salary. But Cullen said that if he was after money, he could become a lobbyist and make more than either a senator or a Cabinet secretary. One has to takeCullenat his word that he took the job and ended or at least set aside his ambition to be governor because he saw a chance to help solve people problems by welding a Republican administration to a Legislaturecontrolled by his party. "I concluded I was a citizen of Wisconsin first and a Democrat second," Cullen said. Cullen is a people person.

It was reported that Thorn pson wanted to demonstrate bi partisanship by naming Cullen as secretary of transportation but that Cullen regarded directing engineers and planning highway priorities as a dull prospect. In addition to saying those in need will have a friend as head of Health and Social Services, Cullen said there would be flexibility and an "absence of arrogance." That flexibility and working with the Democratic legislative majorities could come first in the Thompson workfare plan. He campaigned with a proposal to cut services for Republican Tommy Thompson. It seems to be a coup for Thompson for these reasons: First, Cullen is removed as a candidate for governor with a platform as head of the Senate majority. Cullen could hardly be part of the Thompson Cabinet and prepare to run against his boss at thesametime.

Second, Thompson's legislative career and his campaign for governor left him a welfare basher in the eyes of some. Cullen's appointment will end that. The new Health and Social Services secretary said at Thompson's appointment news conference that those on welfare, the elderly, thesick and those in nursing homes should know they will have a friend as head of the department. Third, and the most important reason for Thompson, Cullen has proved skills as a legislative leader and with the Legislature from which they came. Assembly Speaker Thomas Lof tus now is the odds-on favorite as the next Democratic candidate for governor.

But Cullen's decision shows that is not yet predictable. For now, Wisconsin seems to be the winner in the Thompson-Cullen merger. welfare benefits by 5 and to use that money for training people for jobs and putting them to work. Democratic leaders say that is too rigid and simplistic. They passed a pilot program for five counties in the last session and they want to build on that.

That will test theskill of both Thompson and Cullen in dealing Saturday, December 20, 1986 A-4 The Post-Crescent Donald Kampfer, Publisher Michael C. Walter, Editor William C. Knulson, Muiupnp Editor Cliff Miller, Maiimm tiureau Appleton-Neenah-Menasha, Wis. pniniDOini South African news: XX-rated corporate dealings By Russell Baker (c) New York Times news service quaked in thei presence, wasted no time on low-profitability Essclaus. After squeezing out all its cash to help pay lawyers and investment bankers their fees for aiding Gorge's consumption of Tronpoxx, they sold Essclaus as junk to Mammoth, the giant multinational that specializes in buying up corporations that have been ruined in takeover fights.

With its immense influence in Washington, Mammoth was able to obtain scores of large Dear Sir: We regret to inform you that the person you address no longer does business at this location. His establishment failed some years ago due to unsound business practices JUL Pentagon contracts for Essclaus, and the company 1 it KM and sucn total managerial lm i' indifference to the bottom ifeStft line that the operation more is again thriving under its new name, Uauxx. it now produces custom-designed toy-like military equipment for use in airplanes, ships and tanks. Its products include the controversial $35,000 Efficiency experts concluded that Essclaus could effect significant savings by cutting mail openers and letter readers from the payroll and leasing a computer to send an economical bulk-mail form letter to each return address on each incoming envelope. This letter said: "Essclaus declines to send the free gift you request.

The aim of this decision is to benefit you. You must not grow up thinking you can get through life by cadging handouts from softhearted sentimentalists. Essclaus sincerely wishes you to realize that there is no free lunch. Merry Christmas, etc." Despite payroll cuts, reduced Asian labor costs and cessation of all philanthropy that offered no tax payoff, Essclaus continued to register low margins of profitability. Tronpoxx responded by retaining a blue-ribbon committee of Harvard Business School graduates to recommend methods of maximizing profits.

They offered two options: 1 Bankrupt Essclaus so that it might violate its labor contracts and cut costs even more deeply, or 2) Change the company's name to something more dynamic. It recommended either "Essclauxx," to capitalize on the economic power of having x's in corporate names, to stay abreast of the new trend toward renaming companies to make them sound like rather nasty social diseases. Telesis," "Unisys," etc.) Before Tronpoxx could choose its option, it succumbed to a takeover attack by Gorge Industries and was quickly swallowed, with fantastic profits going to everybody involved. The Gorge management, dominated by geniuses sodecisive, brilliant and ruthless that strong men nearly approximated a philanthropy than a growth enterprise. To avoid catastrophe, the owner filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11.

His business, at that time confined largely to the manufacture and delivery of toys, was acquired by Boozu Playthings of North America and reorganized as a division of Boozu, doing business asS. ClausCo. Inc. Boozu was acquired two years ago in a hostile takeover by Tronpoxx, which changed the name of S. Claus Co.

to Essclaus and transferred its operations from Nome to Taiwan, thereby taking advantage of favorable wage differentials available in the Asian labor market. Tronpoxx's review of S. Claus performance showed major losses being sustained because it had continued the previous owner's policy of reading all incoming mail. Analysis of this mail, conducted by the most advanced computer technology, indicated that it consisted almost entirely of pleas from children, most of whom had no substantial financial assets. hobby horse for VIP air-transport vehicles, which so amused congressional investigators when they learned each hobby horse must be built strong enough to survive airplane crashes fatal to humans.

As all who followed the investigation must know, the purpose was to deceive the enemy on whose territory a planeload of VIPs might crash. Finding the hobby horse in the wreckage, it was reasoned, the enemy would instantly conclude that the VIPs had merely been up on a pleasure flight. I trust all this will help you understand why you must not expect that the plaything you request (free) will turn up under your tree on Christmas morning if you simply behave well and refuse to cry until that time. i We trust you will appreciate the company's public-spirited decision to have mail like yours shipped a 11 the way down here to the Sun Bel and to retain people like me to answer it so that at this beautiful season, you may be reminded that there is no free lunch. 1 Variations on 'who shot By William Satire c) New York Times news service Nobody really cares who shot John.

That's because who shot John is inherently dismissive, always used in the sense of a question that the speaker is not about to answer because it involves loathsome finger-pointing, unworthy of the fair-minded. When Marlin Fitzwater, press spokesman for Vice around playing 'who shot The Army phrase 'play who shot John might suggest its origin in a children's game, but there is simply not enough evidence." "John" was a slang term for a student at the British military schools, which might account for theorigin, but this mystery never received the attention given that of an unrelated crime, "Who killed Cock Robin?" (to which the sparrow confessed). Those interested in the sRooter of John are likely to run up against the stone wall of disdain at finger-pointing and contempt for thebandying-about of recriminations as if those searching for he cu I pri were themsel ves bla meworthy for being cruelly houndlike. If we must deal with this expression slanted in favor of the concealer, let's adopt a style: I prefer hyphenating (who-shot-John) to putting quotation marks around the noun clause or trying to set it off with the capitalization of Who. Thus, instead of getting intoa "who shot John" or descending to a Who shot John, I would rather not be drawn intoa who-shot-John.

That derogation concerning blame-fixing has been steadily gaining currency. A 1977 recording by Nathan Page used those words as its title, and the expression must have been helped along by the "Who Shot J. promotion of the television drama "Dallas." "For the first three months of his campaign," wrote The Washington Post's T.R. Reid about Sen. Edward M.

Kennedy's quest for the presidency in 1980, "Kennedy flailed around on a sprawling spectrum of issues ranging from who-shot-John-in-Tehran to the wiretap provisions of the criminal code bill." Richard Nixon always liked the locution. In 1977, he told a reporter, Austin Scott, about the terrible personal pressures on former Atty. Gen. John Mitchell, and concluded, "And so, that's the human side of the story, which. I know that you and the press, you can't be interested in that.

You can only be interested in 'Who shot Well, go ahead. Stuart Berg Flexner finds in his file of old slang citations that "the earliest ones are British. Around 1860, there's a reference in the file to British Royal Military Academies where men sat President George Bush, was asked about Bush's support of the president's policy toshiparmsto Iran, he said, according to The Washington Post, "that Bush does not want to discuss the process of 'who shot John in making the Iran decisions." The reporter, David Hoffman, quoted the spokes man directly, adding, "This is a classic example of the kind of thing for six years that George Bush has never commented on, in good times or bad." -Peopled forunn- From the Wisconsin Stale Journal Because of new censorship rules imposed by South African President P.W. Botha, what you see above is likely to be what you will be reading from now on about the struggle of black South Africans for their freedom. In the spirit of "if you don't know about it, it didn't happen," South Africa is trying to hide its shame from its own people and the world.

The white minority rulers will learn that, just as they cannot oppress the will of the people forever, they cannot suppress the truth for long. Tell Tavern League to get lost From The Milwaukee Journal Has the Tavern League of Wisconsin no shame? Only 4y2 months after the state's drinking age went from 19 to 21, the league is gearing up to turn back the clock. Lawmakers ought to tell the group to get lost and give the law a chance to work. It's easy to see why the league doesn't like 21. The loss of 19- and 20-year-old customers means lower profits for bar owners.

That's too bad, but when public need in this case, reducing carnage on the highways collides with private greed, lawmakers should not have to be reminded which interest they were elected to serve. Tavern owners could serve their own interests better by expanding food service and undertaking savvy promotional efforts to make up for lost drinking revenue. The 21-law poses problems, such as underground drinking and a flourishing traffic in illegal IDs, particularly on college campuses. But those problems can best be countered by public education against the easy tolerance of alcohol. Returning to a 19-year drinking age when 21 is still in its infancy would literally be a bloody shame.

Fiedler has tough act to follow From The Capital Times Tommy Thompson's appointment of Ronald Fiedler to succeed Lowell Jackson as the secretary of the Department of Transportation does raise some questions that only Fiedler himself can answer. Jackson, a Republican who served under Democratic Gov. Anthony Earl, brought about a refreshing change from the old DOT philosophy that the path to humanity's salvation needed to be paved with more and more concrete. One of Jackson's attributes was that he had no previous connections with the highway construction business. Fiedler, on the other hand, has a bit of baggage to unload as he succeeds Jackson.

First of all, environmentalists remember that Fiedler, who was then DOT'S Madison-area transportation director, was heavily involved on the side of the roadbuilders during the beginnings of the Beltline controversy. Then he left DOT for a private job in Sheboygan with Donohue and Associates, one of the biggest roadbuild-ing consultants in the state. He also has been a director of the Wisconsin Transportation Development Association, a group that promotes building more roads. We point this out not to say that Fiedler won't be a good secretary of transportation. But he definitely does have a background that he needs to be open about as he makes major highway decisions during the next four years.

We hope that, like Lowell Jackson, he'll be open to all sides. accept whatever he does because this is your patriotic duty. And I wonder how it is that not questioning or criticizing our elected leaders came to be our patriotic duty. Didn't people come to America in order to escape countries where one could be imprisoned for seditious libel (meaning criticizing king or government)? Have we forgotten that America is a government "of the people," and that those governing are doing so with the consent of the governed? Or so says the Declaration of Independence. It would be a dangerous delusion if our confidence in the men of our choice should silence our fears for the safety of our rights.

Confidence is everywhere the parent of In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." Or so says Thomas Jefferson. What we are talking about is the worst kind of mischief. The president of the United States has gotten caught selling arms to Iran. Iran is no mere thorn in our side; this is the country that humiliated us in 1979, or so says Ronald Reagan, and we now learn that Iran paid for the bombing of ou embassy andourMarine barracks in Lebanon. If this is standing tall, perhaps it's time we sat down.

Many have said they support the president's initiative in seeking to further our interest in the Middle East. I question their wisdom. If sending weapons to our enemies is the way to further our interests, then perhaps there are moderates in Cuba or Libya whom we should contact. She sees local wise men' in sculpture Editor, The Post-Crescent How about a positive thought on the Hadzi sculpture. It is too bad the negative always surfaces loudest.

I pass the sculpture several times a week and have seen it from all directions. The lights that have recently been installed have added a new dimension by clearly showing the various textures. What I can see are the three wise men coming to Appleton, bearing gifts. But instead of Gaspar, Melchior and Baithasar in their kingly crowns, there are Mr. Boldt, Mr.

Barlow and Mr. Bergstrom. These people have all brought their tremendous talents to downtown Appleton. And instead of frankincense, gold and myrrh, they brought the Paper Valley Hotel, the Appleton Center and the Avenue Mall. Take another look.

Do you see "what I see? Barbara Him Appleton It is citizen's duty to keep eye on leaders Editor, The Post-Crescent: In recent past, we heard an often-repeated phrase (in fact, Pat Buchanan said it on Monday Night Football), "Don't criticize the president." And lately we have been hearing another "don't weaken the presidency." What these phrases are suggesting is: love Mr. Reagan and Many people sincerely feel uncomfortable with public criticism of the president, and fear weakening the presidency st rengthens the democracy. Weak participation in our democracy (which is really irresponsibility) has led to a weak democracy, which has led to a strong presidency, which has led us to a potential ly treasonous arms sale, 24 1 dead Marines in Lebanon, the distrust of our allies over foreign policy, chronic 7 unemployment, a budget deficit so large that my grandchildren will be paying on it, a trillion-dollar fantasy (Star Wars) guaranteed not to work, the largest trade deficit in history. The list goes on, and Pat Buchanan has the nerve to advise me not to criticize the president. John Robin Hill Appleton Handicapped man's bicycle was stolen Editor, The Post-Crescent: To the person who stole my son-in-law's bicycle from the garage at 1201 W.

Bell Appleton: You should be very pleased with yourself to know that it was owned by a handicapped man, who got polio when he was 1 year old and has never been able to walk normally during his lifetime. His wife had worked for a week to buy that new bike. It was the only thing that his doctor would allow him to do, the only thing he could do with his 8-year-old son. You with your two good legs and nothing better to do at night than sneak onto someone's property and take something that belonged to another. How you can live with I yourself is beyond my comprehension.

It's hard for my family to believe in all that is good I during this season, but we also know that someday we will all have to answer for our deeds. I wonder this person will say. Appleton Stolen tree makes it hard to enjoy holiday Editor, The Post-Crescent: At i mes we wonder what has happened to the true Christmas I spirit. With all the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season, sometimes the meaning of brotherly love and respect for others is forgotten. Last ight, someone came into our yard and cut down our beautiful, perfectly shaped, six-foot-high Colorado blue spruce.

It was 15 years ago that we planted that tree. We planted it, cared for it, watched it grow and admired its extraordinary color and beauty each day of those 15 years. It is going to be very difficult for us to enjoy our Christmas tree which was purchased off a tree lot, knowing that someone has our lovely blue spruce in their living room. We wonder how anyone can truly enjoy a Christmas tree obtained in such a thoughtless, stealthy and contemptible manner. I Dave and Donna Vanden Brook Appleton.