OUR VIEWS

That ol' budget magic

Congressional Republicans dug themselves into a deep hole last spring by agreeing to an unrealistically strict budget blueprint that honored the spending caps in the 1997 Balanced Budget Agreement.

By conservative estimate, Congress is already $30 billion over those caps. This wouldn't be terribly significant in a $1.7 trillion budget except that the Republican tax cut is predicated on Congress sticking to those caps and both sides are pledged not to touch the $14 billion non-Social Security surplus. (As a practical matter, that surplus and more has now been committed.)

To preserve the appearance of sticking to those caps, congressional appropriators have resorted to a host of budget gimmicks: nonemergency emergencies; blue smoke and mirrors; robbing Peter to pay Paul; and the old "the check is in the mail" ruse.

Emergency spending doesn't count under the caps. To "save" $4.5 billion, the House Appropriations Committee designated the 2000 census an emergency, and then it voted — and in embarrassment quickly unvoted — to declare $3 billion in veterans' health costs an emergency. If the Democrats have their way, close to $11 billion in farm aid will be declared an emergency.

Another stunt is to take previously approved money for the states that the states haven't yet drawn on and, in effect, spend it a second time. Reportedly, Congress has its eye on $6 billion for transitional welfare programs the states haven't used yet. Repaying the states will be next year's problem.

Another savings gimmick is to delay for one month payments to the states (Medicaid, for example) that are due in September 2000. That puts one month's costs over to the following fiscal year; it doesn't really save any money but it makes the books look better.

The last and biggest spending bill Congress will tackle, in early September, is $300 billion for health, education and labor. The appropriators have taken to "borrowing" from that bill — $4 billion last week for space and veterans programs — to fund other spending. This is another gambit: To make big cuts in popular programs that haven't a prayer of surviving. When the time comes, Congress is not going to slash health programs by $17 billion. The appropriators, after they're rolled and the money restored, can say, "Hey, at least we tried."

The fiction of adhering to the 1997 spending caps is becoming increasingly untenable. How Congress will explain busting that agreement to the public is high-grade snake oil yet to come, but already we know whose fault it is: The other party's.

The impeachment epilogue

Linda Tripp.

Maryland has indicted the whistle-blower on two charges of violating state wiretapping laws that make it a crime to record and disseminate a telephone conversation without the consent of all parties to the conversation.

Maryland is one of 12 states with such a law. Most states require the permission of only one party. The law has severe penalties — five years in prison, $10,000 fine — but is rarely invoked, and when it is the punishment is usually community service.

State authorities were clearly not enthusiastic about prosecuting Tripp — the investigation dragged along for 13 months — but the publicity and pressure were overwhelming. Democratic activists have been demanding her head, and she gets little sympathy from the general public.

Tripp's lawyer spoke of his client having "the courage to document and report official misconduct." That would have more credibility if the person to whom she first reported the official misconduct had been someone other than a literary agent she was seeking to interest in a book deal.

The case is somewhat complicated because of limited immunity granted her by independent counsel Kenneth Starr. The prosecution revolves around a single recorded conversation made on Dec. 12, 1997, after she had been warned the taping was illegal but before Starr gave her immunity.

This case seems like judicial piling on, and if Tripp is found guilty, no compelling interest would be served by other than the lightest rap on the knuckles. It is not an offense she is likely to repeat, assuming anyone would trust her over the phone.

The public distaste for Tripp is punishment enough. Should Monica Lewinsky come to feel justice has not been served, she will have the option of a civil suit.

YOUR VIEWS

Drug program saves tax money

THE MAIL

If these plans are implemented, they will be counterproductive and ultimately result in greatly increased cost to the state as well exacting an enormous toll on the mentally ill who will be deprived of their medical care.

I urge interested parties to review the department plan for budget cuts, inform Gov. Don Siegelman and ask him to review the plan for budget cuts. He should also impanel a review committee of mental health professionals, advocates for the mentally ill, family members of the mentally ill and other interested persons to assist the department in determining budget cuts that will in fact save money and not cause harm to the very people the department exists to serve.

Please ask the governor to state his intentions in seeing that this grave situation is alleviated before the seriously mentally ill suffer needlessly due to inadequate decisions concerning their welfare.

Jerry Delk

1198 County Road 65

Collinsville

Diet is key

This book gives the list of minerals found in the different foods. It tells what each mineral does in the treatment of different diseases. It tells foods to avoid. This book confirmed what I had learned about taking minerals into the body from nonfood sources. For instance iron from nonfood sources is harmful.

As far as we know, this book was written by the first doctor to specialize in nutrition. He started specializing on diet in 1905. But, you can ask any dietitian who was the first doctor to specialize in dietetics and they do not know. That is like an aeronautical engineer not knowing who the Wright Brothers were.

This Dr. R. S. Clymer was the first one to mention vitamins. He called them vital elements. Some other doctor started calling them vitamins later.

Dr. Clymer lived his life in the shadows avoiding the limelight and earthly honors; for the truly great this stuff is only a distraction.

I do not know of one modern drug that will cure one degenerative disease, such as high blood pressure. They try to control them. You go to doctors and get treatments instead of cures. That is like taking your car to a shop and get it treated instead of fixed.

The biggest drug problem is not in the slums. It is modern medicine's addiction to modern drugs. It took me years to figure out why the Clymer method of treatment is not used: The medical journals are in business to make money; they get it from advertisers who make drugs. You could not expect them to make the ultimate sacrifice. Promote good nutrition, put the drug companies and themselves out of business. The medical journals are in business of pushing drugs.

You have heard of the heart bypass, but the modern drug bypass is what is most important. I have not taken any of them for 64 years. Like rattlesnakes I have a fear of them.

Why is it that a dumb kid can learn something that the bloated brains in medical schools can not understand?

O. Kendrick

100 East Eighth St.

Sylacauga

Not kidding

Whoops! Forgot about the lawyers. Let's see, $22,000,000 minus $20,000,000 leaves 2,000,000. 2,000.000 divided by 4,300 is 465.11627906985 for each property owner, carry the 0.

Think I'm kidding?

Armond "Si" Simmons

104 Wadsworth Lane

Pell City

A lottery isn't for our children

Today, citizens of Alabama have a new prophet — a governor who claims good for all if only we will bow to a new god, a god of chance — a state lottery.

The governor says this lottery is for our children. Personally I find such a statement terribly misguiding.

No lottery is for children I know, rich or poor. If prayer can move mountains, so can faith and a work ethic that encourages persistence to the end.

No a lottery isn't for children; you and I, God in heaven and his angels are the ones who are for children. A lottery promotes the very ills, weaknesses, sicknesses of mind and spirit that education is designed to overcome.

What is Don Siegelman thinking, anyway? Does he see Alabama ultimately as a state of educated fools? I ask Alabamians to invest in and change Alabama one child, one classroom, one school, one adult at a time, always beginning with ourselves. Let us have nothing to do with anything calling for less.

Mack Vann

1808 Covewood Drive Southeast

Huntsville

Morally wrong

Take Georgia's HOPE lottery for example. In households that make under $20,000 a year, $249 was spent on the Lotto, compared to $97 per household with income of $40,000 or more. Don Siegelman says an education lottery will help the economy; nothing could be further from the truth. According to a survey of 1,200 stores by the California Grocers Association, two-thirds reported a decline in food sales of 7 percent since the beginning of the California lottery. Also, the average cost of advertising for a lottery is $378 million a year, yet the projected earnings of the Alabama lottery are $150 million, leaving Alabama $228 million in the hole the first year.

Lottery experts' projections say that it will be 15 to 20 years before the lottery will show any profit. What's truly sad is that the people who will be hurt the most by this lottery are the people that play it the most. In Georgia, the average amount of income for those who receive a HOPE scholarship is over $45,000. This is because if you have an income less than $30,000, you automatically qualify for federal aid. So before you can even register to get this scholarship you must first register for federal aid programs.

There is, however, an alternative called the Taylor plan. This plan would enable any student that has a 3.00 average and scores a 21 on the ACT to receive a four-year scholarship, regardless of household income. The Taylor plan passed unanimously in Alabama's Legislature, but was unconstitutionally blocked by Don Siegelman even though this plan would cost half as much as the lottery plan would.

Siegelman abused his power in order to get elected. Please don't let him destroy Alabama's economy by voting for this lottery. The lottery will hurt Alabama economically and morally, so please vote it down.

Christopher Reid

636 Westwood Road

Dothan

Do right thing

We must all do the right thing and go vote and vote "no" for the lottery. If you are not registered to vote, do so as soon as possible. Voting day will be here before you know it.

Your vote is so important. You are a part of this state and you should participate in being at the polls. The last election proved that each vote is so important. It only takes a few minutes. If you have moved, check the board of registrars to see if your polling place has changed.

Voting is a privilege given to us by being an American, so please do this because one day we may be governed by a dictator like other countries because the people didn't do anything to prevent this from happening. Every vote counts.

Oh yes, we are having a taste of what a dictator is. Only you can prevent it from getting worse. Spread the word.

Sara Liveoak

2616 Second Place Northwest

OTHER VIEWS

Umps' unaccountability has bred irresponsibility

By George F. Will
Washington Post Writers Group

Crawford, unlike about two dozen colleagues, will keep his job, partly because it would be unseemly for Major League Baseball to accept the rescinded resignation of the union's head, but primarily because he is good. Baseball America, bible of the church of baseball, ranks him the National League's best.

Soaking up some sun with lunch before heading for the ballyard recently, Crawford practiced what unions preach — solidarity, something his union has lacked in its current debacle. Vowing not to "grease the slide" beneath any umpire, he said, essentially: There are no bad umpires, the strike zone is uniformly enforced as defined in the rule book, and because umpires are thoroughly vetted before getting to the big leagues, demotions from the big leagues would be unjust.

Crawford's first two propositions are redundantly refuted daily. His third sounds strange in the fiercely competitive 1990s, and is downright weird in the severely meritocratic world of professional athletics. His obduracy in defense of all 67 other umpires may accord with the ethics of unionism, but is symptomatic of the mentality that has produced the meltdown of relations between umpires and a game that, they are learning, can dispense with many of them.

MLB is choosing which resignations, voluntarily submitted and then futilely rescinded by most of the umpires, to accept. That MLB has this choice proves the ruinousness of the strategy devised by their union's lawyer, Richie Phillips.

He assured them that if they resigned effective Sept. 2 — their contract forbids a strike — MLB would quickly negotiate a successor to their contract, which expires Dec. 31, or they could form a corporation selling umpiring services and MLB would have to deal with it. But OPEC cannot dictate oil supplies, and umpiring certainly is not a commodity a cartel can control.

Until now the umpires' union has benefited them. Salaries, based on seniority, range from $75,000 to $225,000 (the top was $33,500 when Crawford's father retired in 1975), plus a $20,000 bonus for all, plus up to $30,000 for postseason service, plus first-class travel, plus $240 per diem and 31 days off during the season.

But today's conflict, like so many nowadays, is primarily about status, respect, recognition. As, and perhaps partly because, players have become spectacularly remunerated, some umpires have become lazy, out of condition, truculent, confrontational and arrogant. Recently, a crew refused to work both ends of a day-night doubleheader in Denver, thereby forcing MLB to bring in two minor league umpires.

The umpires' most persistent provocation is their refusal to adhere to baseball's most fundamental rule, which defines the strike zone as extending vertically from the hollow beneath the kneecap to the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants. No umpire, not one, consistently calls strikes above the belt and a few — the sort who refer to "my strike zone" — have virtually turned the strike zone on its side, calling pitches strikes that are well off the plate. The absurd result is that hitters and pitchers must adjust their games to that day's home plate umpire.

The disappearance of the upper third of the strike zone is one reason pitchers are being hammered so hard that home runs are becoming boring. It also is a reason for the tedious length of games.

In recent decades about 45 minutes have been added to games, minutes filled not with action but with hitters waiting while pitchers fall behind in the count. The average game now lasts almost three hours. In the 1930s, when the Yankees' ninth-inning explosions were called "five o'clock lightning," games started at 3 p.m.

Umpires are baseball's judiciary, and like the nation's judges they are finding that the more noticeable they are, the less respect they enjoy. As Section 9.01(a) of the Good Book (the rule book) says, austerely, "The umpires shall be responsible for the conduct of the game," a responsibility not inferior to any in this republic. Unfortunately, umpiring, like judging, has come to illustrate the irresponsibility that infects any profession insulated from accountability.

Baseball's family feud with umpires is especially unfortunate because Big League Baseball has the affections and traditions as well as the tensions characteristic of families. It is pleasing that among the replacement umpires being promoted from Triple-A ball are two more sons of former big-league umpires.
George F. Will can be reached
c/o Washington Post Writers Group
1150 15th St. Northwest
Washington, D.C. 20071-9200

Prosecution just another attempt to discredit Tripp

By Dan K. Thomasson
Scripps Howard News Service

Civil libertarians would argue Lewinsky's rights under the law are inviolate and that Tripp should face retribution no matter what. In other words, illegally obtained information about a possible illegality is still itself illegal. You cannot violate the law to get at a lawbreaker.

On the other side, Tripp's lawyers, at least one of whom is an expert in defending whistle-blowers, will argue she had a First Amendment right to document possible wrongdoing by taping Lewinsky, and that supersedes the Maryland law.

Confused? Well, as the old showman once said, "Just wait. You ain't seen nothin' yet."

The latest bizarre twist to this most bizarre of national episodes is likely to be played out for some time in a thicket of constitutional underbrush over immunity and admissibility and other confusing legal maneuvering guaranteed to test the attention span of any normal human being — that is, unless some wise jurist can bring to the matter what the overzealous Maryland prosecutor who filed the charges clearly does not have — common sense.

The attempt to discredit Tripp has been going on for months, almost from the moment she turned over the taped conversations to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.

Certainly the public is weary of this seemingly endless affair. The idea that the woman whose actions brought to light behavior that resulted in the impeachment of a president for only the second time in history may become its only real victim is ludicrous. Whatever one thinks about the morality involved in "betraying" a young friend, sending only the whistleblower to jail could hardly be called justice.

Except for history, of course, the president gets off scot-free, despite lying to a grand jury; Lewinsky gets unconditional immunity despite lying in a deposition after being encouraged by the president to do so. The president's aides, personal secretary and best friend all walk away smiling after backing up his lies.

Only Tripp, who as far as anyone can tell is about the only person connected with it so far not to make any money, is facing criminal charges that could result in 10 years in prison and large fines.

Lewinsky has written a profitable book and received other compensation for her appearances. One of the main beneficiaries of Tripp's action, a reporter, also has written a book. Lucianne Goldberg, the New York agent who encouraged Tripp to make the tapes, came into new celebrity, appearing on radio and television talk shows for months. Even Hillary Rodham Clinton's political ambitions have benefited.

No matter how Maryland Democrats protest otherwise, their pursuit of Tripp on these charges reeks of political vindictiveness. Maryland Republicans, with some apparent justification, immediately saw the fine hand of the White House in what they charged was a "let's get even" scenario.

The law Tripp is accused of violating — and there is no doubt she did so in at least one instance by not informing Lewinsky she was being taped — has rarely been cited and then generally in divorce cases. Only 12 states have laws that require both parties to be informed of a taping. Under federal law and in 38 states, only one party need know that the conversation is being recorded.

The Maryland law, which practically never results in jail time for an offender, has been made much tougher to enforce because of a state appellate court ruling that the taping party must realize he or she is violating the law to be found guilty.

The state prosecutor, Democrat Stephen Montanarelli, therefore, is expected to concentrate on one tape that was taken after Tripp allegedly was told she might be violating state law. That conversation took place on Dec. 22 and included a statement by Lewinsky that she had lied all her life.

Stephen Kohn, a Tripp attorney, is absolutely correct when he argues that this prosecution could have a chilling effect on witnesses who have the courage to document and report official misconduct.

In many ways, Linda Tripp is not terribly admirable, but then neither were any of the players in this sordid mess. It's time to end it.
Dan K. Thomasson can be reached
c/o Scripps Howard News Service
1090 Vermont Ave. Northwest, Suite 1000
Washington, D.C. 20005

LOOK BACK

50 years ago, Aug. 5, 1949

First persons arrested under Alabama's new anti-mask law are five members of Negro Clan, who organized in Ozark to frighten Negro girls who associate with white men.

25 years ago, Aug. 5, 1974

Trouble with telephone connections in lobby of Atlanta's Hyatt Regency Hotel traced to hotel's exotic birds that shriek at same frequency as telephone company's computer tone to disconnect phone lines.
From the files of the Alabama Department of Archives and History:

135 years ago, Aug. 5, 1864

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