Garden City Telegram from Garden City, Kansas • Page 4

Editorial THE GARDEN CITY TELEGRAM Established 1906 Telegram People Informing People Dena Sattler. What they're saying Minot (N.D.) Daily News, on NASA's future missions: An independent panel created by the Obama administration announced last week that it (surprise!) disagrees with a plan pushed by former President George Bush to return to the moon with manned missions. Instead, the panel members said, NASA should be focusing on new, and presumably more expensive, places to explore, such as nearby asteroids or one of the moons of Mars. Whatever direction is taken, it's up to NASA officials to prove the billions of dollars being spent on the space program is worth it, especially at a time when those billions could be well-spent on a wide variety of items to help the citizens of this country We agree with at least some of the commission's report we see no urgent need to return to the moon. Been there, done that.

If Mars is the ultimate objective in the next 20 years, then let's focus on that. Planning another manned mission to the moon only wastes precious time, technology and money What will we learn from sending a manned mission to the moon, or one of the many nearby asteroids? What valuable scientific information will mankind gather from such proposed billion-dollar jaunts, and will it be worth the billions invested? The days of launching a mission to do anything simply to say we did it are over or at least they should be. There's far too much money involved. The Star-Ledger, Newark, N.J., on human trafficking: When Akouavi Kpade Afolabi lured more than 20 young women from West Africa to New Jersey with promises of a better life, she lied. Once here, the young women who ranged in age from 10 to 19 were made to work countless hours in her family's two hair-braiding salons for no pay Her attorney argued the treatment of the girls was cultural.

That's hard to believe. But it was profitable and criminal. She stole their meager tips, barred them from attending school and threatened them with violence and voodoo curses if they tried to leave. On Wednesday, Oct. 14, she was convicted on 22 counts of human trafficking and visa fraud.

She now faces her own captivity, 20 years in prison. A fitting punishment. Sadly, such abuse is the story of tens of thousands of women from around the world who are trafficked to America in hopes of escaping the poverty of their homelands. They think they'll be working in factories, as domestics and babysitters. Alone in a foreign land and in deep debt for their travel and lodging, many soon realize they're trapped in a tale of modern day slavery Most people would like to think such things don't happen in their communities, that forced servitude is a brutality of the past.

But modern day slavery is alive and well, even here in New Jersey We would all do well to educate ourselves about how human trafficking works, and what it looks like. "It's just very cold." Prosecutor Dara Cashman after three teenagers were charged is adults in the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl outside a homecoming dance in Richmond, Calif. "This signifies my return to power in the coming days, and peace for Honduras." Honduran President Manuel Zelaya after he and the interim government signed an agreement that apparently opens the way for Zelaya's reinstatement four months after he was ousted. "I leave the senators of the republic to face their responsibility in front of the nation." Haiti Prime Minister Michele Pierre-Louis, before being removed from office by the Haitian Senate in a move that could imperil efforts to attract foreign investment to the country. The Telegram vseleiiine- letter- i In- r-d or.

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Editor: 310 N. Seventh Garden City, KS 67846 By E-mail grtelegram.com Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. FRIDAY, October 30, 2009 The false dawn of ObamaCare The public option is back. Its Lazarus act is hailed as a sign of how rosy the health-care debate looks for Democrats. August is but a sepia-tinged memory.

Passage of a sweeping bill is now considered a lock by the wisest and most conventional Beltway pundits. And legislation may even include the most shining prize of all, the public option that liberals no matter what the talking points for public consumption consider a way station to the Valhalla of a government-controlled system. The flush on ObamaCare's cheeks, though, is not necessarily a sign of health. The return of the public option speaks to a key perhaps decisive substantive weakness in the legislation. It's no accident that the public option came roaring back in the immediate aftermath of an insurance-industry-commissioned study arguing that ObamaCare would increase premiums.

The study made Democrats yelp so loudly because it hit on such a sensitive spot. The Democrats must make people believe their inherently unbelievable promise of vast new public benefits for free. Since this defies common sense, the determinedly common-sensi-cal American people don't buy it. A Gallup Poll finds 49 percent of people expect their costs to get worse under ObamaCare, compared with 22 percent who say they will get better. The skeptics are right.

States like Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts and New Hampshire that have imposed ObamaCare-style regulations have seen pre- COMMENTARY JL Rich Lowry King Features Syndicate miums jump for everyone. If people can wait to get sick until they obtain insurance, fewer healthy people will carry insurance. The cost of an older and sicker insurance pool naturally increases. To prevent this spiral of "adverse selection," ObamaCare imposes a mandate requiring all adults to buy insurance. But Democrats in the Senate Finance Committee sensitive to its politically unpalatable requirements and fines watered it down.

This only stokes the cost problem. According to the National Journal, MIT health economist Jonathan Gruber says that under this looser regime, the young and healthy will drop their insurance, and premiums will go up by 10 percent. Sarah Bianchi, the chief domestic-policy adviser for the Kerry and Gore presidential campaigns, fears the same dynamic. This is exactly the point made by the much-reviled insurers. How to address this concern and placate a restive left? Revive the left-for-dead public option.

Nancy Pelosi insists that the public option will achieve "the lowest cost for America's working families," who shouldn't be left on their own "to negotiate with insurance companies." This is yet another chimera. To tamp down fears that a public option is a vehicle for a government takeover, the House bill has a relatively tepid version that will sup posedly only attract 10 million people. If so, that won't help the broader middle class much. If a more "robust" public option is designed to drastically undercut private insurance rates and pull in more people, the costs of the squeeze it puts on doctors and hospitals will be passed along to the private system. In this scenario, the public option will be like Medicare, a program beggaring the private system even as it grows out of control itself.

In short, the public option is a recycled means of pretending away ObamaCare's costs. When the Office of the Actuary at Health and Human Services said the House bill would increase systemwide costs, the Democrats had a ready response the bill is already being changed. The perfect bill that will bring greater coverage coupled with miraculously declining costs is always just over the horizon, a shimmering mirage of wishful thinking and willful dishonesty. Eventually, Democrats will have to settle on a final bill and won't be able to sweep its weaknesses under the rug of the next drafting process. Whatever its final form, it will raise taxes, cut Medicare and in all likelihood increase insurance premiums.

If the past few months of polling are any guide, it will be under 50 percent approval. Its benefits, such as they are, won't kick in until 2013, while the taxes will start immediately If this is inevitable, what's a heavy lift? E-mail Rich Lowry at com. Nothing succeeds like failure By SAUL LANDAU ace again, Cuba has sked the United Nations to help end the U.S. economic, financial and trade embargo. Havana says this blockade cost it more than $242 million last year.

The embargo also stymies Cuban access to foreign capital from other nations, because investors face possible U.S. sanctions for doing business with Cuba. Polls show that most Americans favor dropping the U.S. embargo and our ban on travel to Cuba. Instead of scrapping it, however, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are clinging to the policies they inherited.

In policy terms, it's the equivalent of scientists insisting the world is flat. Nothing succeeds like failure in imperial Washington. So while Washington's failed Cuba policy has endured for half a century, its proponents ask us to "give it time." This policy has flopped since its inception. In July 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower cut Cuba's sugar quota to punish Cuba for expropriating U.S.

companies. The Soviet Union formally entered the dispute to buy Cuban sugar. In October, Ike imposed a partial embargo that President John F. Kennedy completed in February 1962, by which time Cuba had expropriated all U.S. companies.

Early U.S. pressure on Cuba's revolutionary government wasn't just economic. Responding to Fidel Castro's disobedience in early 1959, Eisenhower authorized Cuban exiles to launch terrorist attacks on Cuba. He ordered the CIA to overthrow the regime in early 1960, but withheld the order to unleash 1,500 Cuban exiles the CIA had trained to invade the island. In April 1961, Kennedy succumbed to pressure and sent the exiles to their defeat at the Bay of Pigs, staining the young president's reputation.

Instead of trying to move on from that fiasco by coming to terms with Cuba, Kennedy sought revenge. The United States sponsored assassination attempts and thousands of armed attacks against Cuba. Ironically, before Kennedy signed his tightened embargo order, he ordered an ample supply of his favorite Cuban cigars. Fidel has handed off the reins of government to his brother, Raul Castro. They have survived the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H.W Bush, Clinton, and George W.

Bush administrations. Obama administration officials know better than to ask the obvious question: What exactly did Cuba do to the United States to merit terrorism and economic strangulation? The answer then and now: by being disobedient, refusing to abide by Washington's interpretation of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine. In August 1961, Fidel offered an olive branch in response to the armed assaults. Che Guevara met with Richard Goodwin, JFK's Latin America adviser. If Cuba cut military ties with the Soviets, stopped exporting revolution, and compensated expropriated U.S.

companies, would Kennedy cease his violence? According to Goodwin, in an account he relayed during a Bay of Pigs seminar in Havana in 2001, Kennedy puffing on a cigar from Che responded: "Weakness. Turn up the heat." One month later, Fidel went to his last deterrent. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev stationed nuclear missiles on the island. In October 1962 came the Cuban Missile Crisis. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter relaxed the embargo and travel ban.

Ronald Reagan tightened them again. Succeeding presidents (including Obama) responding to various interests but not the national interest diddled with the screws as well. Reagan privatized Cuba policy, transferring it from Washington to the Cuban American National Foundation in Miami. Cuba survived. Cubans needing certain medicine or medical equipment urgently from the United States suffered as did the Cuban economy and thus all Cubans.

In the 1990s, I tried unsuccessfully to convince then-Representative Robert Torricelli (D-NJ) to not pursue his "Torricelli Bill." I said the embargo hurt most Cubans materially. He said Cubans could buy supposedly banned equipment elsewhere, claiming Cuban propaganda promoted "the pain argument." Logically, if the embargo didn't hurt Cuba, why maintain it? To punish Fidel symbolically. Does Washington define success by gloating over decades of consistent failure? Will Obama remain stuck in this incongruous Cuba policy legacy or exhibit some spine? Saul Landau is a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Distributed by Minutemanmedia.org. Garden City Telegram Perfect fit on Halloween Tsuspect people love J.Halloween because one day out of the year they get to be somebody they're not, or live out someone's or something's life far removed from their own.

In recent years, it was the dolled-up Amy Winehouses and Jokers from "The Dark Knight" that we'd see at every Halloween party. This year, we'll probably see our share of red-jacketed Kings of Pop, Octo-moms, Kate Gosselins (I read that Kate-wigs are all the Halloween rage this year), and Bella Swans and vampires straight out of Stephanie Meyer's romance novels. Then there's your staples, too: ghosts, ghouls, bloody brides, witches, and swiss-cheese sandwiches. All amateurs, I say. Though I shouldn't be one to speak so fast.

My Halloween costumes haven't broken much mold, and I can't think of anything this year that gets me excited. In fact, I don't think I've donned a Halloween costume since my college days, way back in 2007 when no one Twittered or blogged more than once a day. That last costume was pretty clever though. With a pink, Northface fleece, Lindsey Lohan-like sun-specs, fur boots and bumped-up hair before they invented the infamous Bump-Its! I hit the campus streets of Iowa City, hoping to make a mockery of the well-to-do sorority girls who replicated the look every day. (All in good jest, of course.) My friends and I got some great laughs out of it and fooled the rest of the partiers who asked me why I wasn't dressed up.

But looking back on the events is kind of unsettling. If the psychology of Halloween costumes is all about what your choice of costume reveals about you and your personality, then was my inner desire to be a "Northface girl," complete with a pair of Eskimo boots? Too close to the truth, my friends, too close. So what to do this year? Money's always an issue, and so is time. And if you're a grown-up without kids, there isn't much reason to dress up unless you have a party to go to. (Good thing I've got somewhere to go now ...) Chances are you're a procrastinator like me, and haven't thought of anything either.

The World Wide Web isn't much help, either check out some of these ideas I ran across online (and embellished some myself), if you're as perplexed as I am: Swine Flu You could carry a blanket around with you, a box of tissues and a name tag that says: "Hello! My name is H1N1." (I say, for those who want to go the extra mile, go out and buy yourself a Snuggie, too.) Nick Nolte's infamous mug shot Hawaiian shirt, dirty hair, you get the picture. Chick magnet You can glue Barbies to your clothes. (Pretty amateur, if you ask me.) Lady Gaga: According to several sources, Lady Ga Ga is this year's hot ticket. Believe it or not, I ran across a "How to Make Lady Gaga's Bubble Dress" at www.ehow. com.

(I guess you could wear any of her outlandish outfits just make sure you completely hide your face with big sunglasses and don't wear pants, and you're set.) VIP Section So you wrap yourself in red ropes and carry a clip board around? (Choose this costume, and you're guaranteed to be kept out of several parties.) A Teabagger What you'll need: bags of tea, a funny protest sign, and a chant that either calls the president a Muslim or a Socialist. (OK, looking promising ...) The Bailout Don your fanciest suit, a bucket with which to collect money from your friends and exhibit no shame. The bailout, eh? Greed on Wall Street is definitely the scariest thing I've ever seen folks, I think we have ourselves a winner! Staff writer Shajia Ahmad can be e-mailed at gctelegram.com..