The Capital Times from Madison, Wisconsin • 10

raM 'Let the people have the truth and the freedom to discuss it and all will go well. William T. Evjue, founding editor and publisher 10A The Capital Times Qj Wednesday, July 10, 2002 Our readers Sound Off! POOLS Tle city of Madison has four high school swimming' pools. There is no need to build any. more.

We have existing pools. Use them! ANNEXATION I wish Tim Bruer, the Madi-, son mayor and a few others would keeR, their noses out of the town of Madison. Take that annexation proposal and stick, it where the sun dont shine. We like what we have here, and we want to keep, it. Jim Campbell, you get in there and fight.

Were behind you. KEN KOPPS LOT 2 Ken Kopps store lot is making a very, nice parking lot in downtown dont think that was his intent when he, got out of the business. THEf SAID I COULD WfcrER MY LAWN AM DAY AS U0NG AS I USED A SINGLE GARDEN W0SE TWEY DIDNT SAY MOW BIG IT HAD TD BE VOUCHERS JOAN RYAN Bush agenda hurts women Public schools must service students with special needs. If private schools are going to accept public monies, they should also be required to serve these students. If not, they are skimming the cream off the top." RUDGETContraiy yur article UULUib Monday, no Senate Republicans voted for the budget repair bill.

In fact, one Senate Democrat voted against it also. The budget stinks. It began on Bushs first day in office. He reinstated the so-called global gag rule, which disqualifies foreign groups from receiving U.S. funds if they provide counseling and referrals for legal abortions, if they lobby to change abortion laws or if they perform legal abortions, even if they use their own money to do so.

In December, Bush struck again. This spring, the Bush administration continued its campaign at the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. It successfully fought against including the term reproductive health services in the conventions final document, saying it connoted abortion. The Bush folks also fought to ban abortion for teenagers and make abstinence the centerpiece of sex education.

We witnessed the stunning alliance among the Vatican, fundamentalist Islamic states including so-called axis of evil members Iran and Iraq and the U.S. administration refusing adolescents the right to reproductive health services, said Kavita Ramdas, executive director of the Global Fund for Women. Since President Bush first imposed the global gag rule in January 2001, there has been a steady erosion of the United States commitment to reproductive rights worldwide. The Wisconsin state Legislature budget repair bill was crafted by a few powerful people, most guilty of the same crimes charged to Sen. Burke.

The legislation reflects money extorted from the lobbyists rather than paying our bills. It robs us of the tobacco money, ignores the campaign reform and directs $550 million in employee trust money to political gain. Shows the lack of integrity of the felons who wrote it. BUSH usn it amazing that Presi- jjgHj gush js now saying that something should be done about the greedy CEOs and boards that are destroying their companies? Ah, but I feel it is just talk on his part. Does anyone really believe he will do anything about the very people who are filling his campaign coffers? ALCOHOL "1 see the student union nbvviiwii is raking in big bucks selling alcoholic beverages, and now the.

Tavern League is complaining, and rightly so. All those poor bar owners downtown, my Libertarian heart bleeds. for them. But, like cigarettes and wild women, whiskey makes you crazy, dumbs you down and then will do you in. Beware, youngsters! Stay away from demon rum.

It will get you. Women and girls in Nepal have a higher rate of death from pregnancy and childbirth than almost anywhere else on Earth. About half of these deaths are from botched abortions. Women in Nepal seeking an abortion risk not only death, they risk life in prison if they are caught. It doesnt matter if a girl has been raped or is a victim of incest.

She is locked up for life with every other woman who tries to end her pregnancy. What does this have to do with us? Our government is making the situation worse. And not just in Nepal. Since the beginning of the Bush administration, the U.S. government has steadfastly undermined the rights of women and families in the poorest countries of the world.

It began on Bushs first day in office. He reinstated the so-called global gag rule, which disqualifies foreign groups from receiving U.S. funds if they provide counseling and referrals for legal abortions, if they lobby to change abortion laws or if they perform legal abortions, even if they use their own money to do so. This means that reproductive health providers, notwithstanding the laws of their own countries, must comply with the Bush administrations antiabortion policies. So in Nepal and elsewhere, some of the staunchest advocates for victims of unsafe abortions must be silent lest they lose crucial resources for family planning, safer childbirths and HIV-AIDS prevention.

In Uganda alone, 17 family-planning centers have closed since the global gag rule. In December, Bush struck Views of The Capital Times Cleaning up corporations Suddenly concerned about the failure of the federal government to govern corporate behavior, Democrats and some Republicans are calling for the removal of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Harvey Pitt. No doubt, Pitt should be removed. But no one should be fooled into believing that changing the name on the door will usher in an era of wise oversight, necessary regulation and corporate responsibility. A one-time securities industry lawyer, Pitt is so bound to his former clients that he had to recuse himself from 29 SEC votes in his first 10 months as its chair.

While Mr. Pitt may be a fine man, notes U.S. Sen. John McCain, he has appeared slow and tepid in addressing accounting abuses, and concerns remain that he has not distanced himself enough from former clients. Joining a chorus of criticism of Pitt from Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, and others, McCain called for the SEC chairs resignation, saying, Governments demands for corporate accountability are only credible if government executives are held accountable as well.

But what will governments demands be? President Bush, who pocketed close to $1 million in a 1990 stock sale that raised questions about insider scheming, senses that he is extremely vulnerable on this issue. The man, whose father lost the presidency in large part because of his laconic management of the economy of the early 1990s, knows he must address the corporate accountability scandals that are shaking the stock market and undermining faith in the current economy. So Bush is pushing for reforms that only a few months ago Republicans condemned. For instance, Bush said Tuesday he wants to step up enforcement of existing laws and make it easier to jail corporate executives who engage in fraud. Thats a start.

But the Bush administration, which is filled with former corporate executives for whom the statute of limitations has not run out, still appears to be clinging to what Daschle describes as a cozy, permissive relationship with corporations. Real reform requires enactment of laws that hold corporations to dramatically higher standards of accountability. The notion that a few bad corporate apples are spoiling the business barrel is absurd. Many of the abuses by Enron, Arthur Andersen and Global Crossing appear to have played out in the gray areas of regulatory oversight. Congress should move quickly on legislation sponsored by U.S.

Sen. Paul Sarbanes, to tighten accounting standards, reduce conflicts of interest in the accounting and securities industries and to generally shine light on the corporate kitchens where accountants, analysts and executives cook the books. A reform agenda must: 0 Expand and codify the definition of corporate fraud to remove any uncertainty about what accounting practices and corporate behaviors are illegal. E3 Broaden protections for corporate whistleblowers. No employee should ever fear turning in a boss who is breaking the law.

0 Revise rules governing pension plans for workers in order to guarantee that they are not raided by corporate boards looking for fast money. 0 Strictly regulate stock option programs for corporate executives and board members so that all decisions regarding stock options are made in public. Stockholders should always have the power to approve or reject these plans. 0 Require that corporate boards of directors be independent and impartial. Audit, compensation and governance committees should, by law, be free of compromising management and political ties.

0 Address the tax code in a manner that eliminates incentives for executive excess and corporate scheming. Instead of rewarding wrongdoing, the tax code should require that corporations pay their fair share. Make no mistake, the Securities and Exchange Commission needs new leadership. But it also needs new marching orders. again.

He froze the $34 million Congress had appropriated for the United Nations Population Fund, claiming it promoted forced abortions in China. But this issue had already been resolved three years earlier. When Congress raised the same concerns in 1998, the U.N. group assured Congress its work in China was limited to counties where the one-child policy is no longer enforced. To appease doubters, the group agreed not to spend any U.S.

money in China. Then, along came Republican Rep. Christopher Smith, an outspoken abortion opponent from New Jersey. He wrote to Bush in December with renewed charges against the U.N. group.

The accusation, it turns out, came from a single source: the Population Research Institute, which is funded by an anti-abortion group. Now, the U.N. Population Fund is forced to cut staff and shelve contraception and family-planning programs that, indeed, reduce the abortion rate among poor women. The aim of Bushs global doctrine, laid out clearly in his first 17 months in office, is to thwart free speech and to undermine in other countries a right that is protected in our own. It values conservative politics over the health of the worlds poorest girls and women.

It tramples our most cherished principles to serve a personal ideology. How can a person love this country and yet export to the rest of the world such a twisted, fraudulent picture of America? Joan Ryan is a columnist for the San Francisco Whats next for Bud Selig? He cost us the. World Series in 94 and also a game last night. Is the next World Series Not bad for a used car salesman. If you want to comment about a current issue, just call Sound Off at 252-6434 and tell us what you think." Please speak clearly and slowly when leaving your message.

Comments must be brief and kept to a single topic. DAVE ZWEIFEL Plain Talk All-Star Game has Wisconsin roots The All-Stars beat the Indians 5-3 in that game, played in Cleveland, but, more important, it raised nearly $13,000 for the Joss family. A Cleveland Plain Dealer sports columnist wrote, It is safe to say that never before in the history of the national game, have so many real ballplayers appeared on one lot for a single game of the league day off for travel), with all proceeds from that exhibition game going to the family. The players quickly responded. Such luminaries as Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Ed Walsh, Tris Speaker, Napoleaon Nap Lajoie, Eddie Collins, Frank Home Run Baker, and even Cy Young himself agreed to play.

Schultz quotes an account of the game: Baseball had never seen such a collection of stars. Seven of the leagues top 10 hitters and top pitchers, and no fewer than nine who attain baseballs highest honor being elected to the Hall of Fame played that day. Those nine Hall of Famers, incidentally, included Joss, who even though he was one year short of the required 10 years of eligibility, was nevertheless elected in 1978, taking into consideration the death-shortened As Milwaukee played host to the 2002 Major League All-Star Game this week, we were reminded that this mid-summer classic all began in 1933 as the brain- child of the Chicago Tribunes late sports editor, Arch Ward. The legendary editor convinced the powers that be in the American and National Leagues at the time to assemble the best players in each league to play each other in an exhibition game at the Chicago Worlds Fair being held on the Wmdy Citys lakefront that year. The rest is history, as they say.

Not so, according to my friend and colleague, Tom Schultz, the managing editor of the Watertown Daily Times. In a column last Saturday, Schultz tells the tale of what he calls the real first All- Star game, and it happened a full 22 years before Ward came up with the idea. Further, it was all inspired by an outstanding Dodge County, Wisconsin, baseball player by the name of Addie Joss. Joss, who was bom in the little town of Woodland, just north of Hustisford, was the star pitcher for the Cleveland Indians in the early 1900s. He was at his peak he had a nine-year career record of 160 wins and 97 losses when he contracted tubercular meningitis and died suddenly in April 1911.

Baseball players, unlike today, werent well compensated back in those early days of Major League baseball, and Joss left a family without any means of support. The Indians vice president, E.S. Barnard, came up with a proposal to raise money for the Joss family: The Indians would take on an all-star team from the rest of the league on Monday, July 24 (a Some 22 years later, the Major Leagues made it an annual affair (for a brief time, twice a year) and last night in Milwaukee todays best players assembled within a stones throw' of the hometown of the player whose death may have sparked the whole idea. Dave Zweifel is editor of The' Capital Times. His e-mail ad dress is dzweifelmadison.com.'" The Capital Times Company Frederick W.

Miller Chairman of the Board TheCBpItalTImss Clayton Frink, Publisher Dave Zweifel, Editor Editorial Board: The editorial positions of The Capital Times are shaped by Dave Zweifel, Phil Haslanger, John Nichols, Judie Kleinmaier, Linda Brazill, Jacob Stockinger and Samara Kalk. TO WRITE TO US Voice of the People The Capital Times PO Box 8060 Madison, Wl 53708 E-MAIL tctvoicemadison.com THE CAPITAL TIMES WEB SITE www.captimes.com EDITORIAL SECTION PHONES Dave Zweifel, editor 252-6410 Linda Brazill, editorial page editor 252-6424 John Nichols, associate editor 252-6482 FAX 252-6445 Dave Zweifel Vice President, Editorial Nancy B. Gage Director Clayton Frink President and CEO John H. Lussier Secretary and Treasurer i Jt.