The Capital Times from Madison, Wisconsin • 19

II I A i -4--. nuw Today's Talker TfcsCcpItd Madison responds to Thanksgiving SOS DANE COUNTY MADISON enough food to make more than 1,100 baskets filled with turkey, stuffing mix, Jell-O, pumpkin pie mix and other items. A big, heartfelt thanks to our wonderful community! said a news release from assistant director Linda Jacob. The east side Atwood Community Center put out an llth-hour call for help late last week to help assemble 1,000 food baskets to donate for Thanksgiving, and Madisonians came through with food donations. As of Saturday, there was E-mall: citydeskOmadison.com Ron McCrea, city editor 252-6419 Chris Murphy deputy city editor 252-6420 Mary Yeater Rathbun assistant city editor 252-6484 Weather IOC Monday, Nov.

21, 2005 Obituaries 3C Classified 4C i I I 1 Lyman Andersons grandson Andrew Byrne sits in the late Dane County Board members favorite chair with Andersons dog, Spike, during a memorial service Sunday at Oregon High School. TAs to pay for health coverage Contract would end 3 years of talks By Aaron Nathans The Capital Times Teaching assistants at the University of Wisconsin-Madison would pay for health insurance for the first time under a tentative agreement between the Teaching Assistants Association and the state. The details were provided to The Capital Times by a teaching assistant who had a copy of the tentative contract details. Another teaching assistant closely familiar with the details confirmed the numbers. The Teaching Assistants Association has not publicly released the numbers.

They said: The teaching assistants will not get a retroactive raise, but will receive a $163 lump-sum payment at the time the governor signs the contract. They will not have to pay retroactive health insurance. The assistants will receive a 1.7 percent pay increase for the rest of the year. Single teaching assistants will pay $11 per month, and $27.50 for families, for tier one health insurance. Tier one is the most common form of health insurance in this area.

Starting next year, they will receive a pay increase of 8.24 percent, and pay $13.50 for single and $34 for families for tier one health insurance. The insurance costs will last through the end of 2007. The Teaching Assistants Association had no comment on the details. The association has sent ratification ballots to its members by electronic mail. That process is expected to be finished by Dec.

2. If ratified, it must be approved by the Joint ComI mittee on Economic Relations, both houses of the Legislature, and the governor before it can take effect. The assistants believe this is the first offer from the state since 2003 in which all of its members will be better off than they are now. They rejected the last offer from the state, which included a 4.6 percent average pay increase at the end of the 2003-05 contract period, as well as monthly health care costs of $11 for singles and $27.50 for families. The tentative agreement has the potential to end nearly three years of on-again, off-again talks between the teaching assistants and the state.

The impasse included a two-day walkout by 1,200 teaching assistants in spring 2004. Early in the process, the teaching assistants had taken a hard line against paying for health insurance, saying it would set a bad precedent. But the state took its own hard line on requiring all state employees to pay something for their health insurance. E-mail: anathansmadison com Local political giant hailed as team player By Bill Novak The Capital Tima OREGON Lyman Anderson is safe at home. Mark Hazelbakers simple statement about his longtime friend and surrogate father Lyman Anderson brought the memorial service for the grand old man of Dane County politics full circle Sunday afternoon, as 350 people came together to honor the egg farmer called Lucky, who served his community in town, county and state government for more than four decades.

Hazelbaker eulogized Anderson, 79, as a man who never forgot who he was or where he came from, weaving Andersons love of baseball into the fabric of his life. Anderson died Oct. 25 at St. Marys Hospital after being in poor health for several years. He was the best team player Ive ever seen in politics, said Hazel-baker, who worked with Anderson as the attorney for the Dane County Towns Association.

Sometimes he stood alone, but he knew he was part of a team. The warm words of praise for the town of Oregon farmer flowed freely and sweetly Sunday in the Oregon High Schools performing arts cen secretary of health and human services during his first term. He was the only individual I knew who could bring Republicans and Democrats together, Thompson said. Every chance you had to be with him, your life was better. In the Assembly, Thompson served alongside Anderson, who represented southern Dane County as a Republican from 1975 to 1977.

Anderson was a member of the County Board from 1972 to 1976, and again from 1980 until 2004. Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk had her run-ins with Anderson, being on opposite sides of the political fence, but she took great pride in their squabbles. He once labeled me the queen of cram, and I loved that, Falk said. He was the paramount of politics, knowing when to hold em and when to fold em, brilliant yet blessed with the common touch. Town of Bristol Chairman Jerry Derr, who was at Andersons bedside, holding his hand when he died, said his old friend and card playing buddy would have groused about all the speechmaking Sunday afternoon.

If hed seen this he would say whats all the fuss about, Derr said. Lyman did what he could to make this a better place for all of us. Derr also thanked Andersons wife, Pat, and their children for allowing him to be gone from home so many times, serving on all the See ANDERSON, Page 2C i 1 It i i 4 I I I I i Pat Anderson, Lymans wife, greets well-wishers at the service. One of his old friends who served in the state Legislature with him spoke of local Republican candidates having to get Andersons blessing to run for office under the GOP banner in Dane County. He was a politician who would passionately argue his point of view, and make everyone feel good about the results," said Tommy Thompson, governor of the state for 14 years before heading to Washington to serve as President George W.

Bushs ter. On stage, a simple setting of Andersons favorite easy chair and table was next to a large picture of the man, with grandson Andrew Byrne and Andersons dog, Spike, sitting on the chair. Andersons daughter, Lynette Anderson, said the chair was his center of power. Hed sit there and hold court, answering phone calls, trying to help people," she said. Prof: Iraq war tragic low point for U.S.

reputation Rob Zaleski in his opinion Iraq was now a lost cause. The insurgents have grown so powerful, he said, the United States has little choice but to set a timetable for the withdrawal of our troops and get out as soon as we can. That got me to wondering: Does Karpat share that view? Or had he perhaps modified his position since our interview two years ago? After all, he had admitted voting for Bush in 2000 and even had donated money to the Bush campaign. Karpat, who is now in his 80s but is still as articulate and brutally candid as he was when we first met 15 years ago, sighed deeply when I posed that question to him last week. No, his views have not changed, he says.

On the contrary, he considers the Iraq war one of the great tragedies of modem times. It is, he says, a terrible loss for all humanity and particularly for poor developing nations In January 2003, two months before U.S. forces invaded Iraq, Kemal Karpat was so incensed over the Bush administrations bullheaded rush to war that he could hardly contain himself. The president and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were intoxicated with power, the esteemed professor of Middle East history at UW-Madison told me during an interview in his office in the Humanities Building. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a despicable tyrant and the United States should continue to work behind the scenes to force his ouster, he said.

But to invade Iraq without any real proof that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and risk killing thousands of innocent people was morally indefensible. It would, he predicted, inflame the entire region and do irreparable damage to the because theres never been a superpower with the sense of ethics and the sense of helping the underdogs of the world like the United States." Iraq, he says, has undermined all that. Because its a war without a reason and has been conducted in the worst possible manner, with total disregard for the welfare of the local people." Space limitations dont allow me to list all the reasons Karpat believes this war will be remembered as one of the low points if not the low point in the history of U.S. foreign affairs. But two years after U.S.

troops stormed into Baghdad, a few t.hingg -are now clear, he suggests. Incomprehensible as it may seem, the U.S. never had much of a long-range plan. The decision to disband the Iraqi Army shortly after the invasion which put 400,000 armed, unemployed men on the streets was arrogant and stupid, and compromised the safety of U.S. troops from the beginning.

If part of the U.S. strategy was to develop a presence in the Mideast and exert pressure on Iran as Karpat speculated in our 2003 interview the war has accomplished exactly the opposite. Over time, the Shiite-led Iraqi government very likely will develop close ties to the religious extremists controlling Iran, he says. Which See ZALESKI, Back Page United States reputation. It is sheer madness, he said.

I found myself thinking of Karpat earlier this month after Id interviewed Mohammed Ameen, a Kurdish Iraqi whos lived in Madison since 2000 and has spent considerable time in Iraq the last two years assisting in the rebuilding effort. Ameen, who had celebrated the day Saddam was overthrown, told me that i Of j. 31,4.