Sapulpa Daily Herald (Sapulpa, Okla.), Vol. 82, No. 230, Ed. 1 Wednesday, June 11, 1997 Page: 4 of 10
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PAGE FOUR - Sapulpu (OUa.) Daily Herald, Wednesday, June 11,1W7
Editorial Roundup;
Oklahoma's editorial writers expressed their opinions on a variety of topics
Iasi week, including the bombing trial verdict and the stale highway plan. Here
is a sampling:
McVeigh’s life
Jurors face another daunting task in deciding Timothy
McVeigh s fate. Can there be any other course but to demand his
life? We think not, but part company with those who postulate all
manner of creative torture for McVeigh as prerequisites for his exe-
cution.
To take these flights of vengeful fantasy is to surrender to the
very spirit of evil that captured McVeigh. He deserves to die, but
we can only hope he confesses his crime before his victims and his
God. It is pointless to wish upon McVeigh the same suffering he
inflicted. It would not be possible anyway. He cannot die 168
times.
The trial shattered some assumptions. Many assumed it would
be a circus. It was not. Many assumed the government would be on
trial. It was not. Many assumed the judge could not corral the wild
horses in the media. He did.
Now some assume the jury will not deliver a second victory and
instead sentence McVeigh to life in prison. Even if it does, justice
is not done with Timothy McVeigh. There will likely be a second
trial in Oklahoma. While this may seem moot, given the outcome
in Denver, it is important to the survivors of 160 victims that
McVeigh be charged and tried for those murders.
The Oklahoman, however, remains unconvinced that a local
grand jury probe into the bombing is warranted. It is a wasteful
sideshow disliked by most victims and survivors of those killed ...
Monday was a day of triumph that brought a much needed sense
of relief to this community. Let us go from here seeking truth and
justice, not vengeance and scapegoats.
- The Daily Oklahoman
Road legislation
One of the biggest things to come out of the just-ended Okla-
homa Legislative sessions is an impressive road-building plan.
Highways are something Oklahomans love, but hate to pay for.
The state needs a jump start to catch up, and to maintain what we
already have.
It appears the new road plan will do some of that.
Just as the session came to a close Friday, the House and Senate
both raced to pass the bill and Gov. Keating signed it before the ink
had dried.
The program should benefit the entire state — both rural and
urban area.
It shows what all sides — Democrats and Republicans, urban
and rural legislators — can accomplish by working together.
- The Duncan Banner
Cooperative spirit
Credit state legislators and the governor with putting aside hard
feelings from last year’s campaign and working together to get a
lot accomplished. They deserve a pat on the back and set a great
example for other legislative bodies.
...While there were cries that much business would remain
undone because of shorter session mandated several years ago by
voters, this Legislature — led by Speaker Loyd Benson, D-Freder-
ick, and Sen. President Pro Tempore Stratton Taylor, D-Claremore
— has proved the critics wrong.
Even the Republican minority in the House, which was ignored
until four years ago when it captured enough seats to sustain a
gubernatorial veto, played a major role this session, often giving
the House a unified voice under Benson’s leadership. GOP efforts
that helped bring a compromise to the highway construction bill
which the governor signed into law.
Some of the credit has to go to a growing economy and to the
vetoes of last year which gave the Legislature about $238 million
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NATIONAL NEWSPAPER
ASSOCIATION
Opinion
Ya gotta love George Bush
There was an article in The New
Republic of June 9 about the George
Bush Revival, a movement that has
gained momentum ever since our
41st president jumped out of an air-
plane last March. I don’t see how
skydiving brings you dignity, but
apparently it worked for him.
The article informed me that there
is a First Church of George Herbert
Walker Bush, "run by a handful of
evangelicals who hold that Bush is
the reincarnation of Christ.” They
apparently believe that the Gulf War
was Armageddon, and Saddam Hus-
sein was Satan.
The First Church’s head priest,
Tom Ratold, told TNR that... “people
are beginning to fall in love with
George. They are beginning to under-
stand his power.”
This is the sort of thing that caus-
es me to mutter, "Whatever,” and turn
the page. But there was even stranger
information to be found in this arti-
cle. It seems there is another, more
secular group called CFFPI, The
Committee for the Former Presi-
dent’s Integrity. “Every Bush birth-
day,” the article claims, they bring a
“party, complete with cake, on the
steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and
every Election Day, a funeral cere-
mony outside the White House.”
The group meets irregularly to
read aloud the works of George Bush,
and “the text of legislation that Bush
supported.” They also gather to sneer
at journalists who criticize Bush. The
group’s leader, a Mary Ung, calls The
Washington Post “the rag of blasphe-
my.”
Well, history is supposed to judge
how good a president a president has
Duck’s Breath
By
Ian
Shoales
Newspaper
Enterprise
n /t
Association
mrh-
have no opinion one way or another
about President Bush. But I never
would have expected him to become
a cult figure. Kurt Cobain, yes;
Coltrane, certainly; David Duchovny,
maybe. But George Bush?
it gives me a strange sort of hope.
If a pronoun-impaired former presi-
dent can inspire such devotion, well,
maybe there’s hope for me. Heck,
near as I can tell, George Bush’s rep-
utation didn’t even need rehabilitat-
ing. Mine could use all the help it can
get.
But how do I kick things off? I
don’t think I can handle skydiving.
The very idea of plummeting through
space — the only assurance that I
won’t make a greasy spot on the
ground being a flimsy bundle of
nylon and ropes on my back —
makes my stomach flop. Even if I had
secret service agents to jump with
me, 1 just don’t think 1 could do it.
And I won’t bungee jump. Forget
it.
I can’t roller blade, and the wheels
of my bike are flat. 1 could ride a
roller coaster, 1 suppose, if it’s not
one of the wilder ones. Maybe some-
body could just videotape me running
for a bus. That might do it.
A bigger problem, however,
remains. President Bush combined
American and allied forces to whup
Iraq in Operation Desert Storm. What
have I done? I returned some overdue
library books, and paid the fine with-
out complaining. OK. What else?
When a cashier gave me change for a
twenty, and I’d only given her a ten, I
pointed out the mistake. Not bad.
Oh, I know! Last summer, I was
vacationing by a mountain creek. A
local boy miscalculated a jump and
broke his leg on a submerged log. I
dragged him out of the water, and
waited with him until an ambulance
showed up. If that doesn’t make me
the Lassie for the ‘90s, I don’t know
what does!
Unfortunately, I don’t have a
coterie of admirers who’d put togeth-
er an organization like CII, The Com-
mittee for Ian’s Integrity. And even if
I did, what would it be preserving?
Even when I saved the boy last sum-
mer, it wasn’t exactly a shining
moment of virtue. The water was
only four feet deep for one thing. For
another, I tried to get a park ranger to
put up a plaque in my honor at my
picnic site, and she wound up giving
me a citation for littering.
So there you go. If there’s going to
be an Ian Shoales Revival, the ball’s
in your court. And “Ian Shoales on
Ice!” remains a great idea just wait-
ing to happen. Once people under-
stand my power, it’s probably
inevitable.
(To receive a complimentary Ian
Shoales newsletter, call 1-800-989-
DUCK or write Duck’s Breath, 408
Broad St., Nevada City, CA 95959.)
Nunn, Rudman team up
“If I felt any better, it would hurt,"
former Sen. Warren Rudman, R-N.H.,
said about his “retirement” the other
day. Now, Rudman and ex-Sen. Sam
Nunn, D-Ga., are taking on a huge
new task: reforming the Pentagon.
Already co-chairmen of the Con-
cord Coalition, the budget-balancing
lobby, the two are about to become the
joint heads of a high-powered panel
assembled by Business Executives for
National Security to show the Defense
Department how to save up to $20 bil-
lion a year by eliminating administra-
tive inefficiencies.
BENS’s executive director, retired
Air Force Gen. Thomas Mclnemey,
says that the goal of the Nunn-Rud-
man “tooth-to-tail commission” is to
reverse the current Pentagon spending
ratio of 70 percent support to 30 per-
cent war-fighting.
The importance of the task is pro-
found. Saving $200 billion over a
decade on overhead, services, and
support personnel would enable the
Pentagon to buy the modern plants
and ships it wants without raising the
overall defense budget, a politically
radioactive undertaking, or cutting
war-fighting readiness, a strategic
danger.
The task is also extraordinarily dif-
ficult. Rudman has tried it before. “In
the 1980s, as a senior member of the
defense appropriations subcommit-
tee,” Rudman recalls, “I did an analy-
sis of the support-to-combat ratios of
the major armed forces of the world
and found ours way out of whack.”
“I introduced legislation to elimi-
nate non-combat spending and shift it
to combat, but it never passed.
The Pentagon was against it. I
don’t know if we can get to 70-30
favoring combat. Fifty-fifty would be
a huge achievement, but I won’t pre-
judge it.”
Rudman is not the only one who
has tried to institute large-scale
reform. Vice President Al Gore’s
“reinventing government" initiative
tackled the defense procurement sys-
tem under which, Gore says, it used to
cost $50 in paperwork to buy a $4 sta-
pler.
Gore claims that his procurement
Capitol Roll Call
By
Morton
Kondrake
■KPNt; w
Newspaper
/
Enterprise
Association
reforms will save $12 billion over five
years, but Mclnemey, who formerly
served as director of Gore’s Pentagon
task force, says that many of Gore’s
reforms remain unimplemented and
that 95 percent of the overall reform
effort remains to be accomplished.
Reform has the full support of
Defense Secretary and former Sen.
William Cohen, R-Maine, who told a
BENS audience recently that 75 per-
cent of military purchases under
$2,500 still are negotiated in written
form — to the point where it recently
cost a military day-care center in
Europe $1,200 to order $1,200 in sup-
plies for a birthday party.
Cohen recently appointed a task
force on defense reform to begin fig-
uring out how to streamline the huge
Office of the Secretary of Defense and
move on to the rest of the Defense
Department.
That task force will be headed by
Arnold Punaro, who served as Nunn’s
staff director on the Senate Armed
Services Committee and now is a
senior vice president at SAIC Corp., a
defense contractor.
Nunn, Rudman, Cohen and Punaro
make for a powerful coalition operat-
ing against Pentagon waste.
The BENS panel also includes for-
mer Defense Secretary William Perry
as an adviser. Former Rep. Vin Weber,
R-Minn., is on it, along with Josh
Weston, chairman of ADP Corp., the
payroll processing giant, and Bernard
Marcus, CEO of Home Depot.
One of the BENS project's chief
strategists is Larry Smith, once a top
aide to the late Les Aspin, D-Wis.,
who was both chairman of the House
Armed Services Committee and Sec-
retary of Defense.
As Smith wrote in a memo launch-
ing the BENS project, “Since the end
of the Cold War, the U.S. has taken
historic steps to downsize and reshape
its fighting forces, but DoD’s support
businesses are still mostly impervious
to change. Even though we have
mostly post-Cold War fighting forces
— or military teeth’ — we still have
an oversized Cold War defense tail.’”
The BENS panel is addressing six
specific reform areas: outsourcing and
privatization of services like payroll,
non-combat travel, satellites and stor-
age; base-closing; implementing
Gore’s acquisition reforms; inducing
the four military services to operate
and equip themselves more jointly;
updating the 1960s-era program-bud-
geting system; and reducing head-
quarters personnel.
Unlike other Washington task
forces, the BENS gang plans not only
to issue recommendations — the first
one, on outsourcing, will be done in
90 days — but also to work directly
with reformist Pentagon officials to
demonstrate what can actually be
accomplished.
Rudman and Nunn bring to bear
knowledge of how the Pentagon and
Congress work, and, perhaps as
important, the possibility of bringing
public pressure to bear on the task.
Since retiring from the Senate,
Rudman has written one book and is
working on another (touting GOP
moderation), is helping Cohen review
the Pentagon’s handling of Gulf War
Syndrome, and is vice chairman of the
President’s Foreign Intelligence Advi-
sory Board, besides practicing law
and serving on corporate boards.
Nunn, who like Rudman is affiliat-
ed with a big law firm, is co-chair of
the National Commission on Civic
Renewal and the Aspen Strategy
Group and a board member at Emory
University, the Carter Center and
Georgia Tech.
These heavyweight retirees face,
however, a formidable opponent.
They weren’t able to tame the Penta-
gon when they had Senate votes and
committee gavels. Can they do it
now?
Budget deal
whets appetite
for pay raise
OK, we’re on our way to balanc-
ing the budget. Must be time for a
congressional pay raise.
Right. Nice try. But probably no
jackpot.
Like mushrooms, hints of congres-
sional salary increases sprout each
year in the dark — only to be
stomped back down by an outgoing
stampede when there’s a sudden glare
of publicity.
House and Senate members, who
earn $133,600 annually, privately
grumble they're paid far less than top
managers in the private sector — and
have the added burden of having to
Washington
Today
By Tom Raum
Associated Press
maintain two residences. And they
haven't had a raise in four years.
Thus, it was hardly a surprise that
talk about a pay raise would surface
with lawmakers feeling good about
themselves for passing a blueprint for
achieving a balanced budget in five
years.
Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska,
began the charge — but soon found
himself without any apparent follow-
ers.
In an interview published last
week in the Capitol Hill newspaper
Roll Call, Stevens said he would push
for a cost-of-living increase for law-
makers.
He suggested stagnant wages were
turning the Senate into a club for the
already-wealthy. “What it has led to
is the fact that there’s probably 70
millionaires here and 30 of us who
aren’t millionaires," he said.
Stevens has long advocated higher
congressional salaries. The differ-
ence: this year he’s chairman of the
Senate Appropriations Committee
with greater clout to do something
about it.
Pay-raise fever was fueled by ini-
tial remarks suggesting acquiescence
from the House Appropriations Com-
mittee chairman, Rep. Bob Liv-
ingston, R-La.
But denunciations were rapid —
and predictable.
"Now is the last time Congress
should be considering a pay raise,”
said Peter Sepp of the National Tax-
payers Union. "What CEO would
have the nerve to go to his board of
directors and say I’ll balance the bud-
get in five years but give me my raise
now.”
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader
and the leaders of seven other interest
groups told House and Senate leaders
in an open letter: “Members of Con-
gress are paid too much and receive
too many emoluments from the tax-
payers. ... One small step towards
restoring humility and moral authori-
ty to our Congress would be to for-
sake this inappropriate pay raise.”
With attention multiplying, the
congressional leadership did a quick
two-step and issued assurances that
no such plan for a pay raise this year
exists.
“It’s an annual debate. It’s not one
of the things on the leadership table,”
said Michelle Davis, spokeswoman
for House Majority Leader Dick
Armey, R-Texas.
John Raffetto, spokesman for the
Senate Appropriations Committee,
said Stevens had no specific proposal
in mind for a pay increase. “We don’t
have a bill. We don’t have a ‘Dear
Colleague’ letter,” he said.
“He has been a supporter of raises
in the past,” Raffetto added. “It’s a
politically difficult thing to do. Sena-
tor Stevens is not exempt. But he also
has a reputation for standing up and
taking tough stands.”
Many members thought they’d
come up with the solution to the
annual agony with the Ethics Reform
Act of 1989, which featured an annu-
al cost-of-living clause to keep their
salaries rising automatically with
inflation, along with the rest of the
federal work force.
It worked until early 1993. But
since then, members for three straight
years have voted to block the increas-
es. The stampede.
Last July, the House voted 352-67
to renounce the pay raise, adopting a
no-raise amendment by Rep. Jack
Metcalf, R-Wash, then a freshman.
Metcalf and similar-minded law-
makers are lining up with raise-
blocking measures this year.
Freshman Sen. Sam Brownback,
R-Kan., plans to introduce a bill to
both repeal the automatic cost-of-liv-
ing allowance and reduce member
pay by 10 percent. Since January,
Brownback has been returning 10
percent of his own pay to the Trea-
sury, said spokesman Bob Murray.
"He knows the climate isn’t right
for a pay raise,” Murray said.
Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., chair-
man of the subcommittee with juris-
diction over congressional pay-
checks, indicated last week that he
would do nothing this year to block
the pay raise.
However, a top Kolbe aide, who
insisted upon anonymity, later
emphasized that Kolbe wasn’t active-
ly pushing for a pay raise. In fact, she
said, he fully expects an amendment
to be offered to block it.
Raum covers politics and national affairs
for The Associated Press.
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Diehl, Don. Sapulpa Daily Herald (Sapulpa, Okla.), Vol. 82, No. 230, Ed. 1 Wednesday, June 11, 1997, newspaper, June 11, 1997; Sapulpa, Oklahoma. (https://gateway.okhistory.org/ark:/67531/metadc1498065/m1/4/: accessed May 2, 2024), The Gateway to Oklahoma History, https://gateway.okhistory.org; crediting Oklahoma Historical Society.