Rocky Mount Telegram from Rocky Mount, North Carolina • 4

OHMON Page 4A Rocky Mount Telegram Friday July 14, 1995 Rocky Mount Telegram Speak up Call us at 985-4488 Den Dlckerson Publisher Jeff Herrln Managing editor Established 1911 150 Howard Rocky Mount, NC 27804 Phone (919) 446-5161; Fax (919) 446-4057 fefojifrn, inK WHEN JE55E HELM5 i WESQ gains new owners and life Why Americans hate Castro boot From the birth of his revolution in 1953 until he ousted Fulgencio Batista in 1959, he wooed fair-minded people around the world with the promise that when he took power he would restore the 1940 constitution, which provided for free elections and universal suffrage. Instead, he erected a totalitarian state, sold his soul to the Soviet Union, murdered his enemies and imprisoned his critics. 7 For some reason entirely unfathomable to me, he became WESQ will continue to broadcast from .1,1 North Carolina Wesleyan College for just a few more weeks. 1 But when the FM radio sig- nal beams from the on-campus site for the last time, Rocky Mount won't be without local radio. Members of the community 1 have been worried about losing 1 local radio access.

But instead of just moaning and blaming Wesleyan, they did something about it Thanks to a group of local business people, the station will continue under new initials and new ownership. Friends of Down East Public Radio an outcropping of the Rocky Mount Area Cham- ber of Commerce's Community Development Foundation, is the non-profit purchaser. "We feel it's more important to preserve it and keep it in our community," said Jim Fair-child, Chamber president and member of Down East Public Radio. Programming changes aren't expected to be dramatic. But Fairchild does expect the station to incorporate more classical and jazz, more public radio and less alternative and rap music.

We hope the station keeps its eclectic balance of programming, offering music to please a variety of musical tastes. If we can lobby for one moment, the additions of "A Prairie the darling of addled left-wingers the world over, some of whom American academics and French socialists come quickly to mind still buss his butt without remorse, indeed with enthusiasm. 2) Above all things, the United States stands for freedom and democracy, We fought major wars in Europe and Asia in defense of these principles. We invaded Grenada, Panama and Haiti in defense of them. Why should we not be seeking ways to establish them in Cuba, 90 miles off the Florida shore? 3) Bill Raspberry is right about the vengeance thing.

A lot of ill feeling toward Fidel Castro, including much of my own, is stimulated by a desire for revenge. The difference is, I call it "justice," and I see 4 nothing wrong with it It is a fact that Castro is but a flea in a world of mastiffs, but he is a brutal, persistent Bible study at Englewood Englewood Baptist Church has a wide variety of home Bible study groups. Anyone interested can call Renee Barber at 443-4124 for information on the time and place of some of the groups. Let baby sleep I would like to say that I'm certainly relieved and glad that Shawn Lewis finally became a father. I hope we don't have to hear any more about that until that child is engaged to be married and you publish her engagement A bad abortion prescription Sacramento Bee There are plenty of reasons why the U.S.

Senate and if not the Senate, the president should reject the emaciated and isolationist foreign aid bill improved recemly by the House. Now the House has just given them another: an amendment that would ban all U.S. aid to any foreign nongovernmental organization involved even tangentially in abortions and abortion-related services anywhere in the world. The amendment, offered by Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, would cut Off assistance to hundreds of hospitals and family planning groups worldwide that perform abortions, refer pregnant women to safe abortion providers or counsel women about the option of abortion.

The effect would be to starve such organizations of American funds to support a much wider array of services nutrition, contraception and prenatal care, for example unless they agree to drop abortion and abortion-related services from their offerings. A similar, though not quite so restrictive, policy was in place during the Reagan and Bush administrations, but Clinton overturned it in 1992 by executive order; utility Known as the "Mexico City Policy," it blocked all U.S. funding to Planned Parent-hood's international arm, among many others. As a result of the fund cutoff. Planned Parenthood was forced to shut down 60 programs throughout the developing world that provided contraceptive services annually to 1.2 million women and men, even though those programs used no U.S.

government money for abortions. Smith, one of the staunchest anti-abortion activists in the House, says his measure will reduce abortions worldwide. But if in the process he succeeds in reducing the availability of counseling and contraceptives to women in developing countries, he is probably ensuring that there will be more unintended pregnancies, and 1 thus more, and in some instances more unsafe, abortions. He is also ensuring still more population pressure and more hunger and misery in many parte of the Third World. If the Senate doesn't reverse this idiocy, the president should.

"And turn ye not aside; for then should ye go after vain things, which cannot profit nor deliver; for they are vain." Samuel 12:21 (No one can really help us, but the true and living God. Look to Him today.) N.C. schools feel absence of Nesbitt A not-for-profit business group announces plans to buy WESQ. Rocky Mount owes a debt of gratitude to the commitment of this organization. Have a comment? Call 985-4488 Home Companion," "Car Talk," "Mountain Stage" and other public radio programs would be enthusiastically welcomed as well.

At one point, Wesleyan planned to integrate the station into its curriculum by using it as a practical arm of broadcasting classes, i But the broadcasting classes angle hasn't materialized, and the trustees say the station would have cost an estimated $85,000 to run just through the end of 1995-96. Lindy Dunn, chairman of the Wesleyan board of trustees, said the station had ceased to be a part of the school's vision. We're glad a local group cared enough to keep a vision of local radio. We salute their efforts, and hope Rocky Mount appreciates the level of commitment they've shown. It's a vision worth having for our community.

the downscaling of the Department of Public Instruction, the 'creation of charter schools, and greater budget flexibility for -local schools. This year, without Nesbitt in -the way, the Legislature has trimmed the DPI bureaucracy by a third and cut $9 million in salaries. Maybe more importantly, the moves free local schools of much of the burdensome regulation that Nesbitt considered a trade-off for the BEP funding. Charter school bills have passed both houses, and a conference committee is now searching for a compromise. Charter schools have the potential of providing competition to traditional schools without undeiTnining the institution of public education as vouchers would.

Nesbitt opposed charter schools and was instrumental in watering down a previous at- tempt to create them. School spending is strait-jacketed into budget categories. School administrators say they could stretch their funds further if allowed some flexibility. But Nesbitt always opposed mat This year, a bill that would allow greater spending flexibility, including the use of teacher assistant funds to reduce class size, is progressing. Nesbitt's departure also amounts to a huge loss for public education.

Had Nesbitt been the budget chairman this year, the House would have never passed a budget that did so little for public schools. From that point of view, the voters of Buncombe County did public education no favor by removing Martin Nesbitt. 7" Paul O'Connor is a columnist for tfie Capitol Press Association. and treacherous flea, and I for one would still like to see him squashed before he goes to his final reward. We have tried everything through the years, from assassination to embargoes to invasion, and nothing has worked.

With the nation now in the hands of Republicans, now would be the perfect time to try a little free enterprise. Why not convert the 42 square-mile U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo into a city dedicated to free market -practices? Why not build a Singapore or a Hong Kong there? I have no doubt it would be a success the entrepreneurial genius of the Cuban people would guarantee that and it would drive Castro crazy. I wish I could say this brilliant idea was my own, but I cannot Cuban intellectuals have been tossing it around for a while, and a former mayor of Miami, attorney Xavier Suarez, has touted it on the pages of USA Today and other newspapers. It is without question a romantic notion, but so was the idea of putting human beings on the moon.

I) want to see the Cuban people breathe free. I want to see Fidel Castro broken and humiliated. I want revenge. I say, go for it Joseph Spear is a columnist for the Newspaper Enterprise Association. BY GARRY TRUDEAU little aid nation's shortest statute of repose and the statutory prohibition of strict liability, we are one of the only four contributory negligence states.

Additional limitations will have severe repercussions for the health and safety of N.C consumers and workers. The founding fathers of this country wisely structured our government to protect the rights and well being of THE PEOPLE NOT special interest groups NOT business and industry. The tort reform bills now before the North Carolina Legislature were, in large part, written by lobbyists who are paid by business and special interest groups. I can guarantee this legislation is NOT in the best interest of the men, women, and children of North Carolina. Sharon Brawtoy Raleigh HAD, MAN? warn? fellow scribe William Raspberry posed a question last April that has been pinging around my cranium ever since.

"Why doesn't the United States get off Cuba's back?" he wrote. And then my widely respected colleague answered his query with two conjec Joseph Spear Syndicated-Columnist tures: "Cubans in Florida and sheer vengeance." In other words, American politicians lack the courage to challenge the large and vocal Cuban-American community; and the United States generally bates the idea that Cuban strongman Fidel Castro has successfully thumbed his nose at us for 35 years. We seem possessed, Raspberry wrote, of an "institutional rage mat Castro has withstood an international missile confrontation, the Bay of Pigs, any number of unsuccessful CIA plots against him and the demise of international communism and still sits mere as a rebuke to our hegemony," Is it true? My own observations: 1) Fidel Castro is a low-down dictator and a liar to Doonesbury Tort reform The way in which House -Bill 729: Punitive Damages in Civil Actions and House Bill 637: Products Liability Amendments are worded, responsibility is being shifted from business and industry to the people. If it is not fair to impose further regulations on commercial enterprise, there can be no logical rational for imposing more restrictions on the public. Especially when these regulations will further limit the rights of North Carolina citizens and the means through which they are" able to protect themselves.

Why not formulate legislation to give businessindustry greater incentive'to disclose problems or defects to the government and public within a reasonable length of time? People make mistakes. Accidents happen. Those are facts of life. But instead of going -through their morose calcula BySni If i was ffmkatti Ktcmmh iSSSml fSSS hr 1 TO Be a ewe pmtoRE-vxneeote THAT! NOW we vmz to Move, mo wun. POSlBABe pmop.

AHQVU. BewimwufORiHAr, too! wmiBm wmtAcr- Ri ALEIGH In November, Buncombe County voted out one of the state House's most powerful, well-informed representatives, a man who was devoted to public schools and to providing them with better funding. Those voters may have done public schools a favor when they did that 'Democrat Martin Nesbitt had immense legislative Paul O'Connor Syndicated Columnist power. During his 15-year career, he -learned the game at the feet of his former father-in-law, the -late Rep. Billy Watkins, chief lieutenant of former House Speaker Listen Ramsey.

He served several terms as a budget subcommittee chairman and several as co-chairman of the full committee. Budget watchers say he had a better grasp of the budget than any other legislator at least since Sen. Ken Royall, D-Durham, retired four years ago. Nesbitt was widely regarded as the odds-on favorite to par- lay his power and knowledge into the speakership in 1997, after Dan Blue retired. And through his entire te- nirrw Nesbitt was Imnv tireless advocate of public education and teachers.

(His mother had been a president of the N.C Association of Educators.) While this devotion helped public schools win new funding for the Basic Education Program (BEP.) it also stymied some reforms. 1 Nesbitt stubbornly blocked Mi offers public The Rocky Mount Telegram welcomes reader comments. Write us: Letters to the Editor Rocky Mount Telegram P.O. Box 1080 Rocky Mount, NC 27802 Letters must be accompanied by signature and daytime phone number. Submissions are subject to editing for length, grammar and content tions on whether it's economically prudent to disclose the "problemT businessmdustrjr- needs to know it's in their best interest as well as their customers to immediately notify the public of potentially dangerous situations.

The state of North Carolina already has the most restrictive products liability laws in the United States. In addition to the.