Lincoln Journal Star from Lincoln, Nebraska • 4

4A Lincoln Journal Star Tuesday, August 13, 1996 OPINION Publisher Bit Roesgen Editor Tom White Editorial Page Editor Nancy Hicks Assistant Editorial Page Editor ArtHovey TT LINCOLN Joermal Star 1W WERE OttlENanCR UNSIGNED EDITORIALS ARE THE OPINION Of THE LINCOLN JOURNAL STAR 1 1 1 Gongi ess shouldn't spike Amtrak's rail passenger role Our View: More mass transit is in the American future. Amtrak should be kept alive so it can be part of it. The pounding of a golden spike at Promontory, Utah, in 1869 marked the high point in excitement for passenger rail service in the United States. Members of Congress may be waving big hammers again in 1996, but the modern mood has changed. The objective this time is to drive a wooden stake right through the subsidy-hungry heart of Amtrak.

Especially in the House, the masses are mad about the failure of this arm of mass transit to reach self-sufficiency. Its management hasn't been able to do it in 25 years of presiding over virtually the entire rail passenger network. Since they can't find the votes to kill it by full privatization, hostile forces in the House are trying the slow-strangulation technique. Frustration is understandable, but Nebraskans the last vestiges of passenger rail service in the Midwest Passenger service is important, it will get more important, and the private sector can't be counted on to provide it. Long ago, railroads chose to concentrate on more reliable and more lucrative freight business.

Without a public presence, it's very likely that this transportation option will soon be limited to highly populated commuter routes along the east and west coast. In Europe and Japan, so-called "bullet trains" ca Letters to the editor should urge their congressional delegation to save Amtrak. They should regard passenger rail service in the same way they regard mail delivery in rural areas. A minimal core of east-west passenger rail service is an essential service in rural America, and pable of speeds up to 200 miles per hour whiz down Nebraska and Amtrak are already at the niinimum, the tracks 30(1 rail transportation is a vital part of the Playing with tax fire overall transportation network. Amtrak is working toward that same sort of high-speed capability on The August 6 issue of the Journal Star headlined: "Dole promises to 'finish job' Reagan began." Perhaps Dole has forgotten that when Reagan came to the White House, we had a trillion dollar debt and when he left it was $3 trillion.

Is this what Dole is planning for the deficit with his plan to cut taxes without knowing where he is going to make up this loss? We are playing with fire when we get the deficit up and it takes part of its East Coast commuter business. The day when Nebraska might expect trains to rocket across the horizon between Lincoln and distant points at 200 miles per hour may be a long way off. But trains already make sense in terms of energy consumption, easing of traffic congestion and as a cushion against vastly diminished bus service in rural areas. There is ample reason to spend tax dollars one train in eacn direction each day. When the National Railroad Passenger Corporation sent the first Amtrak train down the track in 1971, the expectation was that a $40 million funding grant would be the only financial bridge needed to reach profitable financial territory.

Twenty-five years later, the House is proposing to spend $462 million in the next fiscal year, and the Senate wants to spend $592 million. Even if the Senate wins, passenger service may be in for another round of cutbacks in routes. Amtrak should certainly absorb its share of the cost of cutting the deficit, but the cost should not be to keep the rudiments of a national network in place long enough to connect with a high-speed, high-tech 24 percent of our taxes just to pay the future. interest. Marie Woerner Lincoln a posted speed limit of 25 mph, yet cars race down our street at 30, 45, even faster.

Regularly! It is very dangerous, not to mention illegal. Many neighbors, concerned about their children, pets, friends and general safety, regularly yell "slow down" as cars zoom past A frustrated attempt to do what we believe the city should be doing controlling the speed. We recently posted "Burma Shave" style signs that read: "Thank You For Driving 25 mph or less." They helped until they were stolen. We watched as many drivers slowed down, obviously just unaware of how fast they were going. Others just flipped us off as they gunned their engines.

Many of my neighbors and I would like to see the city take two steps. Increase enforcement and install four-way stop signs at 20th and Calvert streets. I encourage Lincolnites to contact city elected leaders and staff, as speeding and traffic safety are not only concerns on Calvert Street, but around our city. Elizabeth Nelson Lincoln The Journal Star welcomes readers' comments. Letters to the editor must include the writer's name, address and home and work telephone numbers.

Please sign letters that are mailed, faxed or hand-delivered. The editors may edit and condense letters. Send letters to Letter to Editor, Lincoln Journal Star, P.O. Box 81689, Lincoln, NE 68501. Fax: 473-7291.

E-mail: Dole's pocketbook strategy This is in resoonse to the This is in response to the tion of two-parent families and discourage unwed parenthood. Convicted felons lose many of their civil rights. While on parole, they are subject to many rules that do not apply to persons not in prison, or not on parole. If the state of Nebraska, as an institution, acting through its Parole Board, is not willing to tell even convicted felons who are on parole not to live in an illicit relationship with a girlfriend, then the state is certainly not in the position to suggest to anyone else not to do the same. When activities between individuals increase the likelihood of criminal activity and poverty, then the state clearly has an interest in discouraging that activity.

Encouraging the formation of two-parent families will do more to reduce crime and prevent poverty than new and expanded government social welfare programs. Don Stenberg Attorney General Slow down, drivers On behalf of many concerned residents on Calvert Street (between 20th and 27th), I am writing to tell you that speeding is out of control on Calvert Street and around town in general. The recent Van Dorn Street closure has doubled, maybe tripled, the traffic on Calvert between 17th and 27th streets. We realize we have to put up with the additional traffic, but why do we have to put up with the speeding? Calvert is a residential street with Aug. 6 ffS William Safire 3bJ Journal Star editorial lament that research by the University of Nebraska provides academic support for conservative positions.

More specifically, that it is unwise public policy to parole convicted felons to live with their girlfriends because, statistically, those living with girlfriends are more likely to commit crimes. Most liberals and conservatives now agree that children born to unmarried mothers are statistically more likely to become criminals and more likely to live in poverty than the children of two-parent families. It therefore seems obvious that as a society, we should encourage the forma Result: tax relief and deficit reduction by a time certain, with a rise in the average family's buying power. The argument (minus the IRS-bashing) is sound. The Dole plan is infinitely more realistic than the Clinton plan, which is to promise lesser tax cuts at election time, and to pretend that recession will never come to drive up deficits.

A cyclical downturn will come no matter who is elected the way to break the addiction to debilitating debt is to slow down federal spending increases, not to slow down the nation's natural growth. That's why the San Diego central message deserves It's about health, not abortion or choice Set aside the grab bag of grous- BY KELLY GROUX SAN DIEGO Introducing Jack Kemp on his way to the Republican convention, Bob Dole unabashedly adopted John F. Kennedy's "1960 campaign theme: "Let's get America moving again." Dole revealed to reporters that this pocketbook-first approach has been in his head for six weeks. It explains his decision to base his campaign on tax cuts and productivity, and to choose as running mate the architect of Reagan-era stimulus. But isn't America moving briskly already? Not for most; as Kemp tirelessly points out, middle-class "family income, which grew at an average annual rate of 1.7 percent during the Reagan expansion years, has not grown at all during Clinton's tenure as president." That's the nub of it: rising taxes and stagnant wages make claims of prosperity ring hollow for most of the middle class.

That central fact was befogged recently by preliminary estimates of an upward blip of economic growth. But early figures are usually inflated and soon come down with a thud. And wage-earners know when they are on what Kemp calls "a treadmill economy," running hard to stay in place. Not for nothing did Dole label his plan "restoring the American Dream." That dream is a steadily rising standard of living for all, with each generation better off than the last. It happened in the Reagan '80s; it's not happening now.

Clinton's initial response has been to point to the deficits of the Reagan prosperity and claim they were caused by tax reduction. As the Washington Post's David Broder points out, this "running against Reagan" is the same blunder Clinton ing that preoccupied exclusionary ideologues: "I'm not bound by the platform," Dole asserted Sunday, gladdening libertarian hearts in what we will be reminded is the party of Lincoln. Mona Charen's column on the abortion procedure, "Clinton and pro-choice people aren't bothered by facts," (JS, Aug. 1) is the perfect example why patients and their physicians, not politicians and newspaper columnists, must make Eschew the world-weariness of commentary that denigrates 1996's political message even as we pro- decisions about a patient's medical committed in 1994, pooh-poohing the GOP's Contract With America. The Reagan era of permeating prosperity is not seen by most people as a nightmare, but rightly as the time of the Dream.

The deficits that burden us now did not come from Reagan tax cuts revenues rose with growth but mainly from a Democratic Congress' refusal to slow the growth of spending. Now the poll-driven Clinton is posing as a deficit-cutter, a deathbed conservative demanding to know where Dole will "cut" to offset his tax relief. Dole would be a sucker to specify what everybody knows is needed a modest reduction in the rate of growth of entitlements because the demagogue in Clinton has shown in his budget vetoes he would go "aha!" and mislabel such necessary restraint as heartless "cuts" turning the elderly out into the snow. Instead of giving Democrats that opportunity, and instead of buying the liberal notion that real tax relief is merely pandering to the greed of the voters, Dole and Kemp will press the strength of the rest of their plan: to lift the dead hand of overre-gulation from job-creating businesses, and to save the consumers billions now going to the trial-lawyer lobby that bought control of Clinton policy. test tne speecn-samtizing discipline viciuumicss is siar-of a party overcompensating for the thng.

Her claims are promoted with 1992 convention's laxity. thing went horribly Faced with their worst nightmare, families must make very painful and difficult decisions. These families need support and compassion, not condemnation. Charen cynically claims that women terminate late-term pregnancies for reasons such as depression or because the fetus has a cleft lip. Charen would be well served to sit down with people like Vicki Stella of Chicago, whose fetus had no brain.

Because Vicki is diabetic, she doesn't heal well. Her physician determined that the procedure was the most appropriate for her. Perhaps Charen would learn something by talking with Catherine, a 37-year-old obstetrical nurse who is Catholic and opposed to abortion. Happily pregnant with her sixth child, her world came crashing down at 18 weeks of her pregnancy. She was diagnosed with a rapidly spreading breast cancer.

She and her husband agonized over the decision. Ultimately, they decided that Catherine should ter minate her pregnancy in the safest way possible, so she could undergo life-saving cancer treatment This family decided that it was important that Catherine survive to raise her family. Charen is among the anti-choice extremists who use tragic circumstances for political gain. They reveal a heartlessness toward real people, real families. And they deliberately mislead people by their failure to acknowledge that current law already prohibits abortion late in pregnancy, except in dire circumstances.

No additional laws are needed. Mary-Dorothy Line and her husband know the truth. Their prayers could not change the fact that their fetus had no brain or stomach. Mary-Dorothy correctly stated: "This was not our choice, this was God's will Many people do not understand the real issues. It is women's health, not abortion and certainly not choice." Kelly Groux Is the president of the Pro-Choice Coalition of Nebraska.

misintormation and misrepresentation. And she reveals a chilling lack of compassion toward those unfortunate families who face tragic and devastating circumstances. President Clinton is to be commended for having the moral courage and wisdom to veto a bill that would have' banned the abortion procedure. A ban on this rarely used method would deny a medically necessary procedure to families facing catastrophic pregnancies. In reported cases, the pregnancy was very much wanted, but some- Pass up the gotcha game of finding policy differences between former rivals Dole and Kemp when the philosophical dispute between Dole-Kemp and Clinton-Gore is fundamental.

We can tune in to a candidate who has found his theme and share the wonder of scientists who discovered life in a down-to-Earth political party. William Safire writes commentary for The New York Times. Caring conservatism giving way to harsh Republican ideology SAN DIEGO The Republican Anthony Lewis 6 The delegates to the San Diego convention are mostly new-model Republicans. They don't share Jack Kemp's compassionQ i I ii I I). IISPIWWWIWWMMIMWWMMW IIHIIIII'I'll'I'HIIIIII'IIIHIIl as his running mate was generally seen as designed to underline his conversion to the economics of cutting taxes and wishing the deficit away.

But it was something more: an attempt to soften the image of the Republican Party. Kemp is a compassionate politician. He has spent much of his political life trying to find ways of helping the poor and uplifting urban ghettos. He favors affirmative action. He opposed California's anti-illegal immigrant Proposition 187 in 1994.

He is for banning assault weapons. There are plenty of Republican politicians who show that there is such a thing as caring conservatism. Conservatism with a human face, you might say. Sen. John McCain of Arizona is an outstanding example, a model of integrity and human concern who de Party has a problem.

Too many Americans see it as uncaring, intol- The early doings here in San Diego have highlighted the danger of that image. In the platform run-up to the convention Republicans have projected all the compassion of Al-mira Gulch, who took Toto away from Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz" and later turned up as the Wicked Witch of the West "We've carried this "Give me your tired, your poor' to an extreme under Democrat leadership," Betty Fine Collins, a delegate from Ala- bama, told the platform committee. The committee wrote into the platform calls for stern new immigration restrictions, including exclusion of illegal immigrants' children from public schools and summary procedures when someone like ziya Kasinga, the 19-year-old woman who fled Togo to escape genital mu-tilation, seeks asylum in this rights laws to protect racial minorities from job discrimination were no longer necessary. A majority opposed the present legal ban on assault weapons, although a survey of registered Republicans nationally showed 56 percent in favor of it. In the national poll, Republicans favored banning illegal immigrants children from public schools by just 48 to 46 percent; In the poll of delegates the margin was 58 to 26.

What Bob Dole can do about the image of heartlessness is limited. His party does not really believe in government responsibility for the weak and the unlucky. And his own tax plan would require enormous cuts in government spending none of them in defense or middle-class entitlements. That leaves the already frayed safety net as the inevitable target Almira Gulch would be smiling. Anthony Lewis writes commentary for The New York Times.

Another plank demands repeal of the 14th Amendment's guarantee that every person born in the United States shall be a citizen. Rep. Bill McCoIlum of Florida, who sponsored that proposal, said women were "coming across the border just to have babies." The anti-abortion plank would require women to complete pregnancies even when their lives were at risk; it calls for the appointment of judges who would overrule the decision in Roe v. Wade. Bob Dole's choice of Jack Kemp religious influence, has made the party more harshly ideological It is imbued with an unrelenting Social Darwinism, the belief that the poor get what they deserve and government must not interfere in the struggle for survival of the fittest Republicans of that ilk attached drastic cuts in food stamps to the welfare bill that has just passed.

The delegates to the San Diego convention are mostly new-model Republicans. They do not share Jack Kemp's compassion. In a New York Times survey of 1,310 delegates, 60 percent said civil have a mean or resentful bone in his body. He was another vice-presidential possibility; he may have lost out because, unlike Kemp, he is pro-choice. Senator Dole himself, despite his lapses into bitterness and anger, is a man who understands human distress and the need for government to help.

He voted for civil rights legislation years ago, and he was a leading supporter of food stamps. The trouble is that the sharp rightward movement of recent years, and the rise of conservative spite years of torment as a prisoner in North Vietnam does not seem to I 1 1.