OUR VIEWS

Brazil ready for a change

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took 46 percent of the vote Sunday, not enough to avoid a runoff Oct. 27 but double the 23 percent of his closest rival, Jose Serra, the candidate of the four-party coalition that has run Brazil for the last eight years.

Unless he falters badly or the colorless Serra undergoes a complete political makeover, it's likely that da Silva, the head of the socialist Workers Party, will be elected president of Brazil on his fourth try for the office.

Almost the sole issue of the campaign was — and is — the moribund Brazilian economy. The nation's financial markets are down, unemployment is rising, the country is $259 billion in debt and the value of the currency has fallen by more than a third over the year.

As in Argentina, there was a sense that the country had been betrayed by American economic prescriptions of privatization and free trade. Both candidates campaigned on a tougher line against American tariffs and farm subsidies that penalize Brazilian exports.

Da Silva is a career trade unionist who came out of a tough, impoverished background. He went to work full time in a factory at the age of 12. His Workers party had its roots in far left politics, but over the years da Silva's ideology has moderated, especially now that it seems he might actually be elected.

He has backed off the more radical positions of previous races — repudiating the foreign debt, withdrawing from the IMF and World Bank, opposing hemispheric free trade agreements that he hinted darkly were a U.S. plot to annex Latin America.

Many Brazilians are uneasy about his lack of government and executive experience. And his economic program is vague — in favor of production and exports and against greed and easy money.

Da Silva said, without elaborating, that Brazilians had voted in favor of a "new economic model" and "profound" social changes. It will be interesting to learn what those are.

Boosts case for reform

This was not just another runaway jury. It was a gallop-off-the-cliff jury. Its first mistake was to suppose the woman was not responsible for her own actions, despite decades of anti-smoking health warnings that only the comatose could have missed.

If self-accountability truly counts for nothing, then what are the objections to the much-ridiculed suit brought by obese plaintiffs against fast-food restaurants? The philosophy of such lawsuits is clear: Let's just forget people have the capacity to be responsible for themselves, and thereby, of course, undermine one of the crucial premises of a free, democratic political system.

This error was then compounded by a damages award clearly meant to be ruinous to Philip Morris. If the jurors were the least bit serious about this award ever being given, they must have been seeking to outlaw the sale of tobacco in this country, for that would be the ultimate consequence of such decisions. But that's not the role of juries. They are not meant to dictate national policy. They are meant to exercise common sense judgment about facts and the meaning of the law in particular cases.

The amount of the award will almost certainly be reduced as appeals move ahead; the Supreme Court's guideline is that punitive damages should not exceed compensatory damages by more than four times, which would bring the award to a few million dollars. But meanwhile, it will be that much clearer to thoughtful observers that lawyers, judges and juries are not to be trusted under current tort laws and that some ironclad limits need to be put in place.

Join Navy and see mall

Among the unauthorized purchases, according to the General Accounting Office, are: lap dances, tickets to Broadway shows and Yankees and Braves baseball games and Lakers basketball games, jewelry, cameras, cruises, toys, brothel visits, greens fees, home improvements, TVs, Palm Pilots and even a dog.

Do you suppose this is a scam or a recruiting tool?

OTHER VIEWS

Pataki is a test of GOP in Northeast

By GEORGE F. WILL
WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP

In his third run for governor on the Independence Party ticket — his third run against the incumbent governor, George Pataki, who is seeking a third term — polls show Golisano at 9 percent. He figures that if he gets to, say, 36 percent, he wins. He knows Jesse Ventura won in Minnesota with 37 percent.

Pataki, who has never lost a general election, is ahead with 48 percent. The Democratic nominee, Carl McCall, the state comptroller who is trying to become the second black American elected governor of a state, is at 32 percent.

Golisano, who is from Rochester, plans to get to 36 percent by spending perhaps $50 million more. He spent about $30 million — a mere crumb from the cake of his personal fortune — before defeating Pataki's attempt to win the Independence Party's primary (about $3,000 for each of his 9,572 votes) and plans to spend much more than that in the closing weeks.

Golisano says: New Yorkers are the second most heavily taxed Americans (second to the people of Maine). But they have been for years; they are gluttons for punishment.

Golisano, a Ross Perot without the weirdness, says: because I am financing myself, "special interests" will have no hold on me. But "special interests," aka most of the electorate, prefer officials they have a hold on.

And Golisano says: I will stop the creative bookkeeping by which Pataki disguises the state's budget problems. But if such bookkeeping inflamed Americans, Washington would be smoldering ruins.

Golisano, number 185 on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans, turned $3,000 into Paychex, which grosses $1 billion annually processing payrolls for more than 350,000 businesses. In 1998 he got 364,056 votes — 8 percent. If he takes, say, twice that many votes from Pataki, that might well be McCall's margin of victory. Unfortunately for Golisano and McCall, Golisano seems to be taking as many votes from McCall as from Pataki.

In 1994, when Republicans gained 52 congressional seats, Pataki, a mild-mannered state legislator, slew a political Goliath, Mario Cuomo, by campaigning as a tax-cutting skinflint. But Pataki has studied New York's election of two Democratic senators, Charles Schumer in 1998 and Hillary Clinton in 2000. These elections showed Democratic strength waxing in the suburbs, especially on Long Island, and in economically stagnant upstate, where Golisano, too, is tapping into resentments. Schumer and Clinton lost upstate by just 8 percent and 4 percent respectively, while carrying the city 74-25.

In response, Pataki has not just "moved to the center," he has sailed so far past it that McCall can hardly get to Pataki's left. Prescription drug subsides for the elderly? Done that. Spending? Pataki has increased it far faster than Cuomo did. A $1.8 billion pay increase for health care workers won Pataki the endorsement of the union, with 260,000 members and retirees.

Do Puerto Ricans object to Navy bombing practice on the island Vieques? Pataki goes there to oppose it as fervently as he favors cheaper airfares to Puerto Rico. And although Pataki has the nomination of the once-spirited but now-tamed Conservative Party, it is down to a single issue — abortion — and does not really care about that.

After displacing Massachusetts and Virginia as the political heavyweight among states, New York became the motherlode of presidents. But no New Yorker has been nominated for president in 54 years. The state has about half California's electoral weight, less than Texas, soon less than Florida. However, its gubernatorial election is of more than parochial interest.

Pataki is a congenial, intelligent graduate of Yale and Columbia Law School (where he made law review) who has mastered the art of appearing artless. He has shown an Olympic-class ideological nimbleness in moving leftward as New York's electorate does, and his campaign war chest was 10 times bigger than McCall's entering October. If Pataki nevertheless loses, that will indicate just how inhospitable the Northeast has become to Republicans, regardless of their, shall we say, ideological versatility.

George F. Will can be reached
c/o Washington Post Writers Group
1150 15th St. N.W.
Washington, DC 20071-9200

There's a place for them

By ARGUS HAMILTON
THE DAILY OKLAHOMAN

President Bush ended the West Coast lockout of dockworkers Tuesday. He also won't permit a union work slowdown. Republicans figure, if guys want to make $150,000 for standing around doing nothing, they should run for Congress like everybody else.

President Bush delivered a televised speech from Cincinnati Monday night and laid out his case for regime change in Iraq. There's no doubting his resolve. Three times during the speech, he slipped and referred to Saddam Hussein as Dr. Evil.

Sen. Robert Byrd delayed a floor vote on the White House war resolution. He's irritated. The senator says it's too much power to give a U.S. president, or as the White House resolution calls him, His Most Protestant Majesty.
— Scripps Howard News Service

Argus Hamilton can be reached
at argusjokes@aol.com

YOUR VIEWS

Attack on Iraq isn't fully supported

In fact, most people are quite conflicted and opposition is growing as the attack becomes more imminent. Indeed, it is widely reported that most congressional mail opposes the imminent assault. A part of that opposition is the Birmingham Peace Project, which has organized itself in the last three weeks, with more than 70 people joining together to stop the war on the Iraqi people.

We are men and women of different ethnicities, old and young, students, workers and professionals, religious and secular. Our reasons for opposing the administration's unilateral war plans are as varied as our backgrounds, but we are united in our opposition to those plans and Bush's chilling doctrine of preemptive attack.

There can be a fine line between leadership and bullying, between diplomacy and arrogance. For a country as powerful as the United States, that line is all too easy to cross and the consequences of doing so are dire. Leadership and diplomacy can exalt all that is good and decent about our country. Bullying and arrogance, on the other hand, may win some ephemeral victories but, in a shrinking world, even the United States cannot continue to act as the world's judge, jury and executioner without repercussions. Eventually, it will leave us following the footsteps of Ozymandias, that self-proclaimed "king of kings" in Shelley's poem, whose works ultimately crumbled in the desert sand.

No one defends Saddam's regime, but the consequences of the administration policies threaten a cure far more pestilential than the disease. Proclaiming the right to attack a sovereign country, essentially on speculation that it may at some indefinite future time attack us, sets a precedent that threatens calamitous consequences. We have a responsibility, as citizens in a country where freedom of speech remains, John Ashcroft notwithstanding, a cornerstone of our constitutional system, not to suffer the administration's aggression in silence.

David Gespass, Steering Committee chair
Birmingham Peace Project
P.O. Box 550242

Reason for pause

Armond "Si" Simmons
104 Wadsworth Lane
Pell City

Pleasant memories

Those who were there will remember names like McQuiddy, Holston, Floyd, Mohns, Kilgore, Liles, Rosenblum, Davis, Gardner — all wonderful, inspirational and caring teachers and executives. They truly had a lasting effect on that generation and even though there are few of us left, we remember those teachers with respect and admiration.

Incidentally, our parents were constantly involved in the school process, and demanded respectful behavior of their children. The challenges and the needs for better education are prevalent today, and it is unfortunate that so many students do not get this same opportunity.

Karl B. Friedman
2311 Highland Ave. S.

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