Journal Gazette from Mattoon, Illinois • Page 4

A4 Monday, November! 1, 1996 Mattoon (111.) Journal Gazette Pinions why should Republicans We salute our veterans! oe nice aooui medicare Readers Write I REACHING A CONCLUSION WITHOUT THE USE OF POLL IN II I I a.M ft Charles Krauthammer Krauthammer writes a nationally syndicated column for the Washington Post Writers Group RESULTS MHS Marching Band put its best foot forward Editor, Journal Gazette: The Mattoon High School Marching Band competed at the Arthur Band Festival on Oct. 12. The band received a second place in the parade competition. Congratulations! I spent the day with the students and teachers as a band guide. I must commend the director, Mr.

Todd Black, on the conduct of his students. Each one was courteous and respectful to each person he encountered. It was obvious that the students are learning an appreciation of music. Band is like sports. It teaches a student how to work with a group, take pride in their work, and many other skills that will stay with them for a lifetime.

I wish your music department the very best and look forward seeing them at future competitions around the area. Sincerely; NANCY GUTHRIDGE Lovington Habitat cookout got great support Editor, Journal Gazette: On Sept. 28, a cookout was held by Coles County Habitat for Humanity; the event was sponsored by local realtors and construction companies. What a wonderful opportunity it was for Habitat! Not only did we share in the success of raising over $1,000, a diverse group of people joined together to demonstrate what Habitat is all about: partnership. Scott Menard and Ron Kreonlin helped tremendously with their valuable expertise and culinary abilities.

Volunteers to whom we owe thanks include: Robert and LeAnn Ballard, Bud and Gail Bower, Andy and Noreen Connolly, Virginia Davis, Paul and Carolyn Rolling, Libby Murray, and Dom and Shannon Youakim. Special thanks to the area businesses, Realtors and con- WASHINGTON Bob Dole had barely finished his concession speech when the nation's airwaves experienced an eruption of sweet-natured bipartisanship. With Dole freshly buried, from coast to coast pols and pundits called on the newly re-elected president and the newly re-elected Congress to work together to solve the country's problems. It was all harmless fluff until one high-'minded enthusiasm swept the pundit class with particular ferocity: a bipartisan commission to reform Medicare, headed by Bob Dole. Clinton would be very smart to adopt the idea; Dole, a fool to accept it.

One has to admire the sheer audacity of the proposal. The bipartisan commission on Medicare was, after all, Dole's idea. He spent the entire campaign proposing it, while Clinton and the Democrats spent the entire campaign accusing Dole and the Republicans of wanting to destroy Medicare and throw old folks into the snow. With Dole desperately offering to take the politics out of Medicare, Clinton refused, preferring to use it as a battering ram. It would be typically brazen of Clinton, having exploited Medicare for all it was worth, to now turn around and piously adopt Dole's proposal as his own.

The Democrats were merciless in their exploitation of Medicare and it worked. There are only two states in the union that George Bush had won in 1992 jfUkt Dole could not hang on to: Florida and Arizona. What links them is more 'than spring training. It is their attraction as havens for retirees. Clinton didn't just carry Florida and Arizona on the backs of seniors convinced that Dole would rob them of their Medicare.

He also managed to stop Republican congressional gains with the same technique. Republicans saved their House majority by picking up open seats throughout the South. Not in Florida, however. There were three open House seats in Florida. Republicans lost them all.

Nor was there any secret about the dishonesty of the Democratic campaign on Medicare. As John Merline pointed out in a careful examination of Clinton's struction companies, who realize how fortunate they and their clients are to afford housing on their own. Habitat thanks all of you. PAULA HARRISON, Coles County Habitat for Humanity Special park Halloween activities appreciated Editor, Journal Gazette: I wish to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for the special Halloween activities at Peterson Park. I was in attendance Wednesday evening (10-30-96) and was very impressed with the fireworks as well as the lights, the costume parade, and the treats.

Mattoon citizens owe a special thanks to the tourism committee, city hall, and to the park department. They also owe it to themselves to attend next year's Halloween activities along with the other activities offered in Mattoon. I would also like to thank Kurt Stretch and everyone in his department for putting so much effort and work into to the parks and activities held in the parks. The parks look great! SALLY LETNER Mattoon paign proved that there is a price to be paid for the courage Republicans showed in proposing real entitlement reform. It is important to show that there is also a price to be paid for opposing real entitlement reform.

If there must be a price for courage, there should be one for cowardice too. Republicans obviously have partisan reasons for such a demonstration. But it is important for the nation, too, that the kind of Medicare cynicism the Democrats engaged in this year not go unpunished. After all, Medicare is only the first of many entitlements that must be reformed if the country is to be saved from insolvency. The problem now is to prevent the imminent bankruptcy of Medicare very early in the next decade.

Even more fateful, however, will be the need to fundamentally reform the Medicare and Social Security systems before the boomers begin retiring a decade later. Giving Democrats a free pass this time will both encourage future demagoguery on entitlements and correspondingly discourage any sane politician from ever proposing real cuts again. Republicans should tell the president: You called our Medicare plans heartless, mean and extreme. You said you had a better plan. Fine.

Show us. Bring it before Congress with the written support of, say, two-thirds of House and Senate Democrats, and we will examine it with interest. If we must invent some elder statesman role for Dole, let it be to chair a commission on campaign finance reform. This is truly an issue in which both parties have such self-interest that neither Clinton wouldn't have had a chance Mike Royko woman's views on abortion rights, which to many is a far more important measure of his character. One of the biggest flops of the Republican campaign was trying to make an issue of the Clinton administration's indifference to waging a war on drugs.

That was about as realistic as expecting them to wage a war on rock 'n' roll. Inhale or not, the people in the Clinton crowd came out of the 1960s drug culture. And millions of their fellow 1960ers consider zealous drug pursuit as nothing is capable of proposing evenhanded re Roykois distributed by Tribune Media Services. form. A bipartisan commission might own September 1993 health care reform help.

plan (Slate magazine, 24), Clinton. I had proposed greater cuts in MediiMjBtlicare is not in the same mistress and statements from some of more than political showboating that his former Arkansas state trooper body- only increases the cost and difficulty of than even those proposed by his hybrid fne answers nere are easy ana odvious, opponent, DoleGingrich. albeit politically risky. Republicans have That did not, of course, prevent Clin- shown that such proposals can be made. guards that he had been an incorrigible tomcat, prowling after anything in skirts ton from shamelessly playing the Democrats now have to show that they can make them too.

Medicare card. Now that the campaign is In the last few weeks, Dole ran hard and nobly to save this party from total electoral defeat. His marathon helped save the House and the Senate. As the last act of his political career, he ought not become the man who made the world safe for the very demagoguery that toyed with Medicare and helped bring him down. over and Clinton must govern again, he is being urged to get himself out of the Medicare mess the hospital insurance fund will be broke by 2002 with a commission that would spread the blame for the cuts that everyone knows are necessary.

The Republicans should politely turn him down. This miserable election cam- scoring on some marijuana or cocaine. And since most of them have quit smoking cigarettes or never developed that habit, they are far more impressed by assaults on the domestic tobacco industry than on those who provide the mind muddlers of their choice. Those tobacco companies, remember, are American corporations. Which, to many 1960ers, means they are far more evil profiteers than any Latin American drug cartel.

So let's forget about character, once and for all. And we might get even further evidence of this big change in our national outlook if O.J. Simpson loses his civil suit and becomes flat broke. The rumor in California political circles is that if that happens, he will move into a black community, run for Congress, and be ovemhelmingly elected to a job thatrwill give him a big paycheck, a pension, and further fame. Remember: you read it here.

It wasn't just a bad dream. that caught his eye. But if that and a later sexual harassment lawsuit from a woman he crudely hit on was a character flaw, what was the point of the sexual revolution of the 1960s? How could he be criticized for having merely practiced the sexual standards of his Baby Boomer generation? Take your pick: If it feels good, do it; do your own thing; make love, not war; your place or mine. Those who tried to make Clinton's sexual friskiness a character issue weren't paying attention. To millions of women including the more militant feminist organizations spousal abuse is a far greater sin than a bit of playing around, which both 1960s genders could and did enthusiastically engage in.

But there was no evidence that Bill ever punched Hillary in the jaw. And he is sensitive to the modern Glancing Back When historians try to figure out what this election was all about, this might be remembered as the year when the 1960s finally caught up with the 1990s. That's because the voters tromped all over the so-called "character issue" in their eagerness to vote for the hip, with-it Bill Clinton and against the creaking Bob Dole. The weakness of "character" as an issue was that it was framed in standards that no longer mean a thing to the majority of voters who are under the geezer age. 1 By character measures of the 1950s or earlier, Clinton could not have been elected.

Not just this year, but not four years ago either. Poll after poll showed that the majority of Americans didn't believe that Clinton was truthful. But the same polls showed that they didn't care. What mattered was that he said things they wanted to hearAlthough they didn't necessarily believe what he was telling them, the polls told us, they still liked what he said. Should that be a surprise with several generations having grown up with their eyes glued to the tube and a steady diet of advertising bull bleep? Going back four years, we can recall Clinton's first big whopper: His convoluted denials that he had been a draft dodger during the Vietnam war.

There was a time when that would have been politically fatal. But the slur "draft dodger" didn't mean nearly the same thing in 1992 or this year that it meant in the 1940s and early 1950s. Back then it meant a coward, a shirker, almost a traitor. But in the 1960s, it came to mean someone who was smart enough to use any possible means to avoid getting his butt shot off in a war that we shouldn't have been fighting. And now, after some of the former White House muckety-mucks who enthusiastically escalated that war have admitted that they knew it was a waste of lives and resources, the term draft dodger has become almost a badge of honor.

Especially considering that we now know that so many of today's conservative Republican political leaders did exactly what Clinton did using college deferments, National Guard membership, inner-city teaching jobs, faked physical ailments, and other devices to keep themselves from harm's way. Then there was Clinton's other original whopper that he had been a faithful spouse. This despite the broadcast of taped conversations with his alleged Mattoon Journal Gazette William B. Hamel Jr. Publisher Harry J.

Reynolds Editor 50 Years Ago Today (1 946) WASHINGTON Nation Honors Memory of War Heroes President Leads Ob-: servance of Armistice Day in Capital President Truman led the nation today in solemn observance of Armistice Day and declared that America seeks only "peace and tdonal Cemetery before the tomb of the Unknown Soldier ofWorld War I. "The welfare of the United States and the world are wrapped up in one package peace. "We must create a peace that will prevent the necessity of our grandchildren fighting a third world war for the principles for which we fought the first and second world wars. Mattoon observes Armistice Day. Stelle speaks at downtown ceremonies Urges dedication of Americans to cause of World Peace John Stelle, a former Illinois governor andimmediate past national commanderoftheAmerican Legion was thechief speaker at Armistice Day services conducted today by the Mattoon Legion post.

Mr. Stelle called upon "Americans at home to dedicate this 29th Armistice Day to the cause of world peace by declaring an armistice on the home front to keep peace on the world front." "In this way we will be reckoning with that one force on earth which never has defied the aggressor or the tyrant-the spirit of mankind and the spirit of freedom," Mr. Stelle stated. Mr. Stelle pointed out that when America fought the first World War, from which the Armistice Day observance originated, it was a "fight for freedom which has been the central theme of this nation since its beginning." "The spirit of freedom, the spirit of mankind is the only force great enough to prevent, a third world waj, for it is the only force which is greater than any destructive agency man can devise," he said.

25 Years Ago Today (1 971 SAIGON The number of American wounded in combat last week dropped to 13, a I fifth of what they were the week before and the lowest total in more than 6 Vi years, the U.S. Command announced today. South Vietnamese and enemy casualties also were the lowest in months, reflecting a general lull on the battlefields. Today In History Today is Monday, Nov. 11, the 316th day of 1996.

There are 50 days left in the year. This is Veterans Day in the United States, Remembrance Day in Canada. Today's Highlight in History: 30nNov. 11, between the Allies and Germany. Mallard Fillmore Robert Yamamoto Howard Drake Tony Moreno Advertising Director Business Manager Circulation Manager Telephone: Home delivery rates: 52 weeks, 26 weeks, 13 weeks, per week, $2.20.

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