| Show X 1 2A Thursday December 28 1 995 Standard-Examine- I r Opinion u Standard-Examine- r Our View V Why not consider tolls for Utah’s highways? accelerated on the urgent to rehabilitate improve Utah’s highway system perhaps it is time to seriously consider toll roads turned out to be a wise decision The charge has not deterred travel to the island and the improved causeway is being paid for Currently a private contractor -tired of waiting for the state to act First toll roads speed traffic by - is finalizing arrangements to relieving pressure on existing highopen a major thoroughfare along comAdams Avenue on the south end of ways Second toll roads reach Weber County He pletion sooner than is paying out of his traditional highThe possibilities for revebecause own ways pocket to fitoll wads d nue does not flow successful nance the until the road is construction It is cutting costs and scheduled to concompleted Third toll roads the with Interstate nect partialfy resolving are a more palat84 in Davis County states growing traffic at South Weber able way of taxing - you only pay if problems are real They When completed it will provide access you use are accepted by Toll roads are a to housing develomolife for of in way the pments motorists elsewhere With state-plann- ed toll-roa- torists in Eastern states and some Why not Utah? West Coast areas In most instances toll roads parallel existing highways and must have enough travel distance and driver convenience to make it worthwhile but be short enough to generate sufficient revenue to pay for themselves Just this week a toll booth began operating in Riverside County on a stretch of California’s Highway 91 A small toll allows motorists to travel in a fast lane Surprisingly Utah’s early settlers d embraced the concept One example is the corridor through Ogden Canyon It was first built as a toll road The toll was imposed until removed by the state in the Completion of the Davis County access road to Antelope Island was made possible when the Legislature agreed to finance construction with estimated revenues from tolls It toll-roa- mid-193- 0s southern part of Weber County and the businesses located in that area particularly Ogden Regional Medical Center It also will make US 89 southbound in Davis County more accessible to Weber County drivers Gov Mike Leavitt has estimated that more than $3 billion is needed over the long term to modernize and overhaul the state’s transportation system The possibilities for successful toll roads cutting costs and partially resolving the state's growing traffic problems are real They are accept- ed by motorists elsewhere Why not Utah? Planners should shun skepticism and seriously look at creating toll roads and help offset the enormous price tag that taxpayers face in bringing Utah highways up to an acceptable standard Newt man of the year this congressman Georgia who to hate he’s strident brusque he's bright he talks too much His goal is to cut the size of government He's controversial he's the target of an ethics violation he crafted a program entitled "Contract With America” and he has been ramrod-din- g legislation through the Congress at a pretty good clip There's He has a cadre of Republican House members who believe in what he is doing With their help he is making a difference He's a strategist He doesn’t hold back his political jabs He has resolved to give the nation a balanced budget in 2002 He’ll persevere and eventually he’ll likely get his way He is Newt Gingrich He is speaker of the House and his firebrand politics is leading the revolution in Washington He’s Time Magazine's man of the year so chosen because of his leadership in remaking the federal government 20 years ago DECEMBER 28 1975 WEATHER: Variable clouds 0 Lows 5 Highs ROSCOE O DALE ANDERSON son of Mr and Mrs Roscoe J Anderson of Ogden has been accorded the highest honor given by the secretary of defense the Meritorious Civilian Service Medal for his dedication and service as a federal worker 35-4- 25-3- GARY E WOODHOUSE of Og- - den the is a Air has been appointed president of Ogden Jaycees Mr Woodhouse local radio announcer and former Force captain BLAINE ANDERSON mathematics teacher from Ogden High School who has been named mathematics “teacher of the year” for Utah has also been honored by the Ogden City Board of Education 50 years ago DECEMBER 28 1945 LEATHER: Cloudy with intermittent rain Highs 43 lows 36 CORP CLYDE W TURPIN returned Christmas Day from Okinawa where he had served for more than two years with the Army attached to the First Marine Corps IRA A HUGGINS attorney and state senator became the 27th presi dent of the Ogden Kiwanis Club at installation ceremonies at the Hotel Ben Lomond He succeeds William P Miller LT ROLFE PETERSON son of Mr and Mrs Charles Peterson is on terminal leave and will receive his discharge soon He is now in the east with Brigham Young University’s basketball team CENTENNIAL New Hampshire doesn’t like B Ross K Baker The Los Angeles Times In his collection of poems entitled “North of Boston” Robert Frost wrote “Something there is that doesn't love a wall” He might have added that there is something north of Boston that doesn’t love a presidential It is a place that loves to humble those presidential aspirants who style themselves as the “inevitable” nominees It is a state where those who finish a close second are proclaimed winners and those who prematurely declare victory are doused by the cold water of political reality Bob Dole now seems poised to follow in the footsteps of others who imprudently planned their coronations but ultimately failed to gain entry to the throne room front-runn- er The strategy pursued by Dole is the same one pursued by such luckless Democrats as Lyndon Johnson in 960 and Edmund Muskie in 1972 It is a strategy that has failed much more often than it has succeeded It involves enlisting in your campaign an impressive number of party bigw igs The theory is that voters take politicians’ recommendations seriously a questionable assumption these days Pursuant to this dubious game plan Dole has swept back and forth across the country gathering endorsements like some great political reaping machine Governors seem especially prized A week ago it was New Jersey's Christine Whitman A few weeks ago it was Michigan’s John Engler All 1 the while Dole continues to work his Washington job dividing his time between the war of attrition over the budget and a position on the US deployment in Bosnia that would be both statesmanlike and politically prudent What emerges is the picture of a man trying to simultaneously master the fine g arts of g all while neand gotiating a tightrope Even before that weekend ago the strain had begun to show Dole's campaign had accepted and then rejected the contribution of a group of gay GOP activists who call themselves the Log Cabin Republicans Dole’s response was to declare himself totally free of homophobia leaving no one satisfied as to where he stands on sensitive cultural issues But it was on NBC's “Meet the Press” a Sunday ago that the Dole hole began to get ominously deeper Dole repudiated his party's absolutist antiabortion plank an important prop of the GOP platform since 1980 He went fure ther He abjured his support for a constitutional amendment banning abortion announced that he might seek out Colin Powell as a running mate and then for good measure said that it was no better than even money that the Bosnia operation would succeed even though he had just spent the previous week gamering support for it Offering up this loopy smorgasbord of ruminations policy reversals and soufile-makin- sword-swallowin- g flower-arrangin- one-tim- racetrack oddsmaking underscores some serious problems with the Dole campaign First off there is the question of front-runne- rs whether the predisposition to ing writh which all congressional leaders seem to be genetically encoded is compatible with the need for presidential hopefuls to lay things out in a hard- - ’ edged and unequivocal manner Dole tends his stall at a prime location in the Capitol Hill bazaar and has done so with Byzantine flair but this mercantil- ist approach carries with it real perils ’ for someone seeking an office that is' associated in the minds of Americans more with heroism than hucksterism'" The most effective attack on Dole in 1988 by the Bush campaign was to characterize him as “Sen Straddle” a ‘ candidate more changeable than April weather in New England and more ea- - ’ ger to barter than a Yankee peddler Swapping and bargaining to achieve' a legislative majority is what congres- sional leaders must do but they must take care not to go proclaiming a com sensus where none exists Having pre2 maturely had himself anointed as the GOP nominee by a glittering proces- sion of party notables he has now moved to claim the political center This is normally done only after you have amassed enough votes in the pri- maries and been ceremonially ordained at the party convention not when you have yet to claim a single delegate There is nothing that New Hamp- shire voters like better than to take the sails The wind out of a problem that then befalls the overconfident candidate is not a temporary becalming but rather an inexorable and uncontrollable drift onto the shoals Ross K Baker is a professor of political science at Rutgers University deal-mak- -- ’ ' -- -- f ‘ front-runner- ’s League urges Southern independence GEORGE F WILL £2 Washington Post COLUMBIA SC - A chapter of America's intellectual history came to a quiet close two weeks ago with the death at age 92 of Andrew Lytle at his cabin in Monteagle Tenn He was the last survivor of the 12 Southern writers - Robert Penn Warren John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate w’ere the best known - who in 1930 contributed essays to the book “I’ll Take My Stand” It was the manifesto of the Agrarian movement a small but luminous band of intellectuals who initially were energized in part by resentment of Northern condescension toward the South after the 1925 Scopes trial in Tennessee concerning the teaching of evolution However their larger theme was a Jeffersonian defense of the distinctiveness and dignity of the Southern culture of rural yeomanry against urbanization and industrialization A “New South”? They wanted none of it A new chapter or a postscript to the old one is now being written by people such as Professor Clyde Wilson Talk about your angry white male: Wilson is angry at John Quincy Adams among many other people and things A historian here at the University of South Carolina and editor of the papers of the state's most famous son John C Calhoun Wilson actually is too amiable to be characterized as constantly angry' but he is comprehensively disapproving of most of the modem world which is why he is active m the t Southern League If you believe America is becoming too homogenized that regional differences are being blurred and ancient passions are growing cold the League should assuage your regrets Founded two years ago the Southern League’s more than 1000 members seek “the cultural social economic and political independence g and of the Southern people” Yes independence You may think all that was settled 130 years ago in the living room of a McLean farmhouse at Appomattox Try to tell that to the sort of League members who refer to the Revolutionary War as “the first war for independence” The second one was unavailing but some members are sharpening their swords spoiling for a third Others content themselves with delivering learned papers to League meetings arguing in Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric of peoples” the of right of secession They insist that the North won the secession dispute because it had better factories not better arguments The papers and symposia at League meetings show that most League members subscribe not only to regional chauvinism but also to variants of conservatism However they deeply dislike capitalism’s ethos of rationalism and what its dynamism does in dissolving organic communities based on local sentiments and traditional senses of place Furthermore some League members give aid and comfort to leftist “multiculturalists” when they say “America is only a geographical expression” Actually the logic of most League members including Wilson is that the “Northemizauon” of the South by eco well-bein- on : nomic and cultural forces has alaC made America one nation Wilson who speaks with defiant disdain of “the Deep North” probably wishes New England states had acted on secessionist threats voiced at their Hartford Convention in 1814 They would have taken with them the whole Adams family which to Wilson symbolizes the North's cultural condescension and political imperialism toward the South The League's bimonthly newsletter Southern Patriot bristles with quirky agitation against “Yankee hegemony” The term “Copperhead” survives in its pages as a term of endearment for Northern sympathizers Readers are urged to loudly say “divisible” instead of “indivisible” when they “absolutely must reate the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’ to the flag of our Yankee conquerors” The disintegrations of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and the near disintegration of Canada are celebrated Although there is in all this a certain sophomoric delight in shocking polite society there also is an admira ble seriousness about the intellectual pedigree of a particular cultural critique of American modernity However if you want to know just how lost the Lost Cause is and how much the League needs a leavening sense of irony note the newsletter’s unembarrassed announcement that the League is on the Internet and that League information can be obtained by at “NBForrest aaolcom” Andrew Lytle who in his 80s still praaiced what he preached - simpliaty and subsistence agriculture - would have had none oft that George Will writes a umn for the Washington Group tMue-week- Jy col- Post Writers |
