OUR VIEWS

The Kursk lessons

There was dissembling for the sake of dissembling. Russian officials said the accident happened Aug. 13 when, as the Russians and Western intelligence well knew, it had happened Aug. 12.

Once the sinking was public knowledge, there was the reflexive attempt to blame it on the West. It was a collision with another ship, Russian naval officials insisted, the clear implication being that it must have been with an American spy sub.

The Soviets would never have asked for Western help; they would have seen the sailors drown first. Russian military officials were not quite that callous but they dithered until Aug. 16 before asking for Norwegian, British and U.S. help — assistance that was freely forthcoming.

On Aug. 14 and 15, Russian naval officials said they had heard trapped crew members banging on the hull. In light of the massive damage encountered by Norwegian divers, observers have to wonder whether that was true; in any case, it cruelly raised false hopes among the families of crew members.

A Soviet leader would never have interrupted a vacation, and it seemed Russian President Vladimir Putin wouldn't either until public outcry — a problem the Soviets never had to deal with — forced him to return to Moscow late in the week.

The critical difference — and the one positive aspect of this tragedy — is that Russia is now a relatively open society. The press called the government and the military on every deceit, every evasion, forcing the facts into the open. Russian naval experts openly contradicted official versions of events. The public judgments of official conduct were scathing. Russian television broadcast footage from the Norwegian rescuers clearly showing evidence of a catastrophic internal explosion.

The Kremlin has now promised a full-scale inquiry headed by Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov. And the Russian government, putting aside its fears of espionage, has said it will seek international assistance in trying to recover the bodies of the crew and the sub's two nuclear reactors.

Old habits die hard, but the Kursk tragedy may reassure Russia's still-young democratic government that it has much to gain by being candid with its own people and forthright with nations that would be its friends.

Filling in the 'Digital Divide'

In its strident way, the Clinton administration called the Digital Divide — rich people are more likely than poor people to have computers — "one of America's leading and economic civil rights issues."

But an updated study by the Internet market research firm Media Metrix Inc. found that the number of low-income households, those earning less than $25,000, logging on to the Internet increased by 50 percent, to 7.5 million, over the last five years. While still only 10 percent of Internet users, low-income households are the fastest-growing segment. And they stay online longer, 13 hours a month compared to 10 hours for other users.

Media Metrix attributes the increase to declining computer prices and a general increase in Web access. And computer prices will continue to decline and Web access will keep growing. The analogous situation might be television in the late 1940s and early '50s; at first only the rich had TV setss — and, later, color sets — but soon televisions were everywhere, and without a government program to provide them.

The Clinton administration has a Pollyannaish view of what people do with computers — "prepare to compete in the knowledge economy of the 21st century" — but mostly they do with computers what they do with TV setss: entertain themselves.

In January, President Clinton announced a program to put 1,000 "community technology centers," whatever they are, in low-income areas. By the time the administration arrives with its pricey — $90 million-plus — federal program, there may not even be a problem left to solve.

The hard way this time

After winning the U.S. and British Open golf championships by incredible margins, Woods faced a playoff with Bob May in this past weekend's PGA Championship.

The tie score at the end of regulation shows Woods is not invulnerable. Other golfers can match him on any given day. He will continue to lose tournaments from time to time.

But not this time. Woods defeated May by one stroke in the three-hole playoff to become the first golfer since 1953 to win three of the sport's four major tournaments in a single year and the first to win consecutive PGA championships since 1937.

One of these years Woods will become the first golfer to win all four major tournaments in a single year — and he is likely to repeat the feat. But even when they are hard-fought victories like Sunday's, Tiger Woods will make it look easy.

YOUR VIEWS

School transportation policy is unfair

THE MAIL

I am writing concerning a gross unfairness in the school system's policy of refusing to provide bus transportation for students attending schools outside of their designated school zones. It is my understanding that the system's policy does provide transportation for so-called ''gifted students," but I want my child to be in a nurturing environment as much as any other parent. Therefore, I feel it is so unfair for the Birmingham school system to deny transportation for my child, only because she may not have scored at a certain level on a particular academic test.

Furthermore, I believe it to be so egregiously unfair for my child to be denied the same privileges afforded the so-called ''gifted children," even though I pay my taxes just the same as the parent of the ''gifted child."

I believe it is a reckless misuse of taxpayers money when there is a school bus transporting one, maybe two, so-called "gifted children" from my community to Huffman Middle School, yet because my child doesn't meet the school board's gifted standards, she is denied transportation on this bus.

I humbly ask Dr. Johnny Brown to correct this school system's unfair bus transportation policy so that my child and others facing a similar situation will be provided the same rights and privileges granted to the so-called "gifted children" attending Birmingham Public Schools.

Valorie Lee
1120 19th Ave. N.W.

Reparations

I think this action is extensive and the right thing to do. So much so, I believe this act could strengthen the move for black slave reparations and the illegalization of the Confederate flag by our government. What happened to the German swastika? And now Nazi slave reparations? Both backed by our government.

Furthermore, the U.S. government also sponsored reparations for Japanese Americans, for Native Americans and Alaskans. The issue of black slave reparations is not dead.

Henry L. McShan
97 Graymont Ave. West

Move over, Elmer

Move over, Elmer Gantry!

Armond "Si" Simmons
104 Wadsworth Lane
Pell City

History lesson

As a Jewish person, I was horrified and offended, and turned around to confront him. The man immediately backed down and said he was just making a stupid joke, that he didn't actually believe what he just said. But I'm not so sure — I think many Christians are so ignorant of biblical history, they believe that Jews actually crucified Jesus.

Therefore, it's time for a history lesson: the priests, elders and scribes who arrested and charged Jesus were not acting for the Jewish people, or representing Judaism in any way, shape or form. The Sanhedrin — the council that convicted Jesus — was not a Jewish court. In turn-of-the-millenium Jerusalem, only the Romans had the authority to order capital punishment. Jews had no political power. Jesus' crucifixion was ordered by a Roman governor, carried out under the supervision of Roman soldiers, and executed using a uniquely Roman form of punishment.

It's ironic — Christians have used the "Jews killed Jesus" excuse for anti-Semitism throughout history, from the Crusades to the Holocaust. And yet, Jesus was executed, at least partially, because he was Jewish. He was raised Jewish, he went to temple, he observed Saturday as the Sabbath, he learned Hebrew, he followed Jewish laws.

So, this is just a reminder to any Christians out there who actually believe that "the Jews killed Jesus." Jesus was a Jew himself, and his crucifixion may very well be the most well-known act of anti-Semitism in the history of the world!

Eric J. Rzeszut
2905 Rhodes Circle South, Apt. O

OTHER VIEWS

Next president faces tough missile shield decision

By HOLGER JENSEN
DENVER ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS

And the system — if one is built — will cost more and take longer to deploy than the original $60 billion envisioned for 20 interceptors in Alaska by 2005, growing to 100 interceptors in later years.

Although Clinton will decide whether to take the first step of building a radar station in the Aleutian Islands, probably in September, Defense Secretary William Cohen already has acknowledged that the next president will be able to stop it, modify the plan or take an altogether different approach.

Vice President Al Gore and Republican contender George W. Bush both are committed to missile defense. But Gore would like to win Russian agreement to amend the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty while Bush, promising a "foreign policy with a touch of iron," has said he will go ahead whether Moscow likes it or not.

Both candidates, however, will be governed by the same criteria that bedevil the Clinton administration: The urgency of the missile threat to the United States, the technical feasibility of building a reliable National Missile Defense system, its cost and the fallout for U.S. foreign policy.

There is little disagreement on threat. Intelligence assessments prepared in September 1999 and again last week both say we will face missile dangers from North Korea, probably Iran and possibly Iraq by 2015.

For this we have Russia and China to thank.

A CIA report presented to Congress recently said both countries continue to export missile technology and components to North Korea, Iran, Libya, Pakistan and India. North Korea in turn exports "significant" missile-related equipment and technical expertise to countries in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa.

"The Chinese have taken a very narrow interpretation of their nonproliferation commitment," the report said, while Russia is not only helping Iran's missile program but also adding to its stockpile of chemical and biological weapons.

The technical feasibility of NMD is more questionable.

Two of three U.S. attempts to shoot down missiles over the Pacific have failed. And the Pentagon's lead contractor on missile defense, Boeing Co., is a year behind schedule in developing a new booster rocket for the "kill vehicle" that is supposed to destroy incoming warheads. Its first solo flight, scheduled for April, was postponed to November and now is not likely to take place until the spring of 2001.

Cohen still believes the technology can be developed but confessed to Congress recently that "major problems have called into question the realism of the timetable."

Boeing's delays already have pushed up the cost, and delaying the target date to 2006 or 2007 would add to the expense.

Fifty Nobel laureates and the American Physical Society, which represents 42,000 physicists, have urged Clinton to delay deployment until the system has been successfully tested. In July, 61 representatives and 31 senators added their voices to the appeal, saying Clinton should leave the decision to his successor.

"We share the judgment of numerous physicists, security experts, military and government officials who have concluded that unresolved questions about the system's effectiveness and the decision's impact on the overall national security of the United States cannot be adequately answered this year," said a letter from the House.

Critics believe the backlash against missile defense would far outweigh its benefits. China and Russia, while engaging in wholesale missile proliferation, are bitterly opposed to NMD, contending that it will undercut the deterrent value of their own arsenals, violate the ABM treaty and launch a new arms race. Our European allies fear it will endanger all existing arms control agreements.

A National Intelligence Estimate prepared for the White House agrees that China will probably add to its nuclear arsenal if we deploy a missile shield and Russia, while continuing to reduce the number of missiles it can no longer afford, would accelerate development of weapons to circumvent NMD.

The reaction of our friends would be equally negative. In the words of German President Johannes Rau, the Europeans are "extremely worried that arms control and disarmament will come to a halt. What is at stake is the fate of the entire world — not the supposed interests of a country, a party or a group within a party."
— Scripps Howard News Service

Holger Jensen can be reached
at the Denver Rocky Mountain News,
P.O. Box 719,
Denver, CO 80201-0719,
or hjens@aol.com

Someone had better listen to CBO boss; the surplus is fragile

By MARTIN SCHRAM
SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE

But when Dan Crippen recently did his vision thing, nobody cheered or huzzahed. And that's too bad, because Crippen's vision is the one we most need to hear and heed.

Crippen is the director of the officially nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. And although he once worked for former Senate Republican leader Howard Baker, Dan Crippen's vision of the economic realities brings no comfort at all to the rosy tax-cutting and spending vision propounded by Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush. It seems to come closer to, but still will not please, the smaller tax cutting vision of Democratic presidential hopeful Al Gore.

The bottom line of Crippen's recent testimony to the House Budget Committee is that the federal government's apparently huge budget surplus of $4.6 trillion to $5.8 trillion (which his CBO projects through 2010) is far more fragile than the politicians want to tell us.

"Demographic and economic forces already in place are expected to erode the surpluses, renewing the federal government's fiscal imbalance of previous years," Crippen testified. If politicians make no changes, the fact that the baby boomers will come of retirement age, sending Social Security and Medicare costs skyrocketing, will deplete the surplus and bring back an era of federal deficits in three decades, he said.

And Crippen cautioned: "Deficits will reappear earlier if the government spends more or taxes less than CBO projects under current policies. Significant pressures are already building to cut taxes, increase Medicare spending, and boost discretionary spending."

Meanwhile, today's ever-promising politicians are figuring out ways of spending tomorrow's surplus today. To understand the problems that lie ahead, we need to first toss out all of the old labels.

Example: If big spending is the definition of big liberalism, then George W. and other thinkers who call themselves conservatives may indeed be the biggest liberals of all. After all, his biggest spending plan is an income tax cut that will cost $1.3 trillion. (Time out: Republicans rush to respond to that reasoning by saying a tax surplus is not the government's money anyway. Duly noted.)

Example: Al Gore would spend just $500 million on tax cuts, but would spend a whopping $2.8 trillion of the surplus to pay down a good chunk of the national debt that was $3.6 trillion as of 1999. If a company or family that pays down its debt in an effort to become debt-free is considered to be prudent and conservative, perhaps Gore and the Democrats are the new conservatives of the new millennium.

We learn our economic lessons the hard way. We learned from Lyndon Johnson — the hard way — that American indeed could not afford "guns and butter" (defense and domestic spending increases simultaneously) without running up a huge deficit. We learned from Ronald Reagan and George Bush — the hard way — that we can't have huge tax cuts and defense spending without quadrupling the national debt in just 12 years.

Now comes Crippen, the CBO director, who makes a strong point about the merits of just saying no to a big tax cut and paying down the national debt — today:

"Today's children are the taxpayers of the future, so they will be the ones called upon to pay for the increasing portion of the federal budget that will be devoted to programs for the elderly. ... The government can prefund future obligations — that is, make it easier to meet them — by taking actions that enhance economic growth. Reducing debt held by the public is one of the most effective means of increasing saving and investment. Thus, the economy is the true Ãtrust fund' because it forms the pool from which future consumption — public and private — will come."

Perhaps it is possible to wage a winning anti-GOP tax cut campaign without ever going negative and attacking young W. by name. Just plant a bumper crop of bumper strips: "Don't screw around with the economy."

Martin Schram can be reached
c/o Scripps Howard News Service,
1090 Vermont Ave. N.W., Suite 1000,
Washington, DC 20005

LOOK BACK

50 years ago, Aug. 23, 1950:

Iranian Premier Ali Razmara requests U.S. financial aid from America.

25 years ago, Aug. 23, 1975:

In measure to ease American policy toward third countries wanting to do business with Cuba, U.S. firms based overseas are permitted to trade with Cuba for first time in 12 years.

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