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Show GheSaltLakeTribune OPINIO @ PUBLIC FORUM, AA-2 READER ADVOCATE, AA-2 EOTIOy, SmMBAY BB RUSSIAN VIEW, AA-3 JANUARY 34, 1999 OUR VIEW TheSalt Lake Tribune’s Editorial Position Truth About Social Security God bless Alan Greenspan, apparently one of the few sane humans left in Washington and the only one with enough moxey to say the emperoris walking around nude. Greenspan, chairman ofthe Federal Reserve, said what politicians such as President Clinton and members of Congress fear uttering: The only permanentfix for Social Security will involve increasing taxes or cutting benefits. Testifying before the Senate Budget Committee (yes, there are things going onin the Senate besides the Clinton saga), Greenspan notonly talked about hikes in taxes and shaving benefits to the retired and the infirm, he criticized Clinton’s call to have the government invest about $700 billion of Social Security money in the stock market. “Even with Herculean efforts,” Greenspan said, he did not believe investmentdecisions could be made sans political pressures. He’s right. And on morethan just the investmentof Social Security money in the stock market. There are a number of permanent fixes for Social Security that the president and Congress do not wantto face, because they would be politically unpopular. Theseinclude:raising the retirement age, increasing taxes collected for Social Security, collecting Social Security taxes on every dollar earned — even among high-wage earners — instead of having a wage ceiling above which the tax is not collected and implementing a means tes{ to preclude the wealthy from collecting Social Security checks. The past few years, including the public dialogue about the future of Social Security, have forced some Baby Boomers — andother from the generations that follow — to start socking money away in real estate, stocks, bondsandotherfinancial instruments. But the Congress hasyet to stand up to the challenges that have been used by this president to win popular favor. Stop delaying and establish a public panel, including business people, average citizens and other representatives, to bring a steady eye and a non-political view to this issue. License to Protest The state’s Division of Motor Vehicles did the right thing when the agency reverseditself and decidedto allow Bill Velmer to buy license plates knocking the 2002 Winter Games. When the Holladay area resident sought plates with the slogan, “2002NOT,”the agency refusedhis request on grounds that the message Velmer sought was a political statement. State regulation prohibits personalized license plates from being a forum for public debate. Owing to interest in the Olympic bribery scandal, Velmer'’scaseelicited international news mediaattention. Perhaps this exposure was partly responsible for the DMV’s about-face. This, along with the suspicion that Velmer would appealhis case, prompted the DMV's J.D. Heaton to do some research. He found that the agency had issued license plates with pro-Olympic messages on them. Moreover,he found it had issued some with negative messageslike the one Velmerwanted, too. Among these were ‘““LDSNOT,” “BYUNOT,” and “UOFUNOT.” In view ofthe fact that the agency already had issued license plates with messages similar to the one Velmer to religionitself. “Rather than the arts being a part of worship, they are worip in and of themselves,” he told The ne in an interview five years ago. “Creativity is man serving whatever the‘divine’orthe‘invisible’ or the ‘unknowable’ is.”” The singers who sang for Robert Shaw often described it as a spiritual experience, and audiencesoften reactto his performances in the same way. So when Shawdied last week of a stroke at 82, it was natural that many lovers of great music took the news as a spiritualloss. Salt Lake City is a choral music town, so the passing of Shaw wasfelt acutely here, That was doubly true since he was scheduled to conduct the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Utah Symphony in a performance of Brahms’ “A German Requiem’ next month as part of the Tanner Gift of Music series in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, But, that was notto be. As result, it will be a different Requiem, the one by Berlioz, that will be most closely associated with Shaw in the memories of Salt Lake audiences, He conducted that work twice here, once with the Utah Symphony and Utah Chorale in 1981 and a with the Utah Symphony and the Tabernacle Choirin 1994 on WASHINGTON — Ann Azari, the mayorof Fort Collins, Colo., has been watching thepolitics of the Census unfold from front-row seatfor eight years — and she has seen enough. Appointed to the Census 2000 advisory committee of the Department of Commerceby for- sought, it decided to go ahead andlet merPresident Bush and elevated to the Velmerget his plates. It was the right decision. By granting previous requests for pro-Olympic messages, the DMV could not very well deny the same consideration to Olympic opponents without appearing partisan. Moreover,the Olympics are no moresacrosanct than the University of Utah, Brigham Young University or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. If people have boughtvanity license plates critical of these institutions, there is no reason why the Olympics should be exempt. The DMVshould be applauded for reaching this decision without the proddingofa lawsuit. chairmanship by President Clinton, she Robert Shaw Robert Shaw, the most celebrated American choral conductorof the last half of the 20th century, was the son and grandson of Christian ministers. Hehad intendedto enter the ministry himself, but instead foundhis vocation as a high priest of music. So perhapsit is not surprising that Shaw proclaimed music to be a moral force, a spiritual experience very near Mayor Right to Be Alarmed About 2000 Census ‘Don’t wait. Mobilize your community.’”” The reason for Azari’s alarm, she told me during last week’s meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, is her dismay that partisan battling continues to plague planning for the national count scheduled for April of 2000 — a count that will, amongother things, determine how $180billion a year of federalaid is distributed. Another showdown is com- ing in June, with no resolution in sight. As the moderator of a panel on the Census at the mayors’ meeting, Azari kepthercool for 90 minutes. Butas time ran out, she turned to the two Republi- you folks going to argue?” The argumenthas been going on ever Craig Jessop, associate conductor of the Tabernacle Choir, whoalso sang in the Robert Shaw Festival Singers, recalls the conductoras a fusion of philosophy, history, theology, musicianship and, above all, overwhelming humanity. In addition, he was one ofthe last living links to American music-making in two-thirds of this century. His collaborators were many and diverse, from Waring, Szell and Toscanini to Ozawa. In 1948, he founded the Robert Shaw Chorale. For the next 17 years, the chorale, an ensemble of 30 voices, toured the world and set a new standard of choral music excellence. In 1967, after disbanding the Robert Shaw Chorale, he Seppe into a new role as musicdirectorof the Atlanta Symphony. Much as Maurice Abravanelhad done with the Utah Symphony, Shaw raised the Atlanta Symphony and its choruses to lofty status during his 21 years there. But Shaw's legend rests on his creating and inspiring a renaissance of choral music in this country. Now his many disciples are left to carry on his musical and spiritual work, TheSalt Lake Tribune UTAH’S INDEPENDENTVOICE SINCE 1871 PAST PUBLISHERS PUBLISHER John F, Fitapatrick (1924-1960) Dominic Welch John W. Gallivan (1960-1983) EDITOR Jerry O'Brien (1983-1994) James EB. Shelledy KEARNS-TRIBUNE CORPORATION,143 §, MAIN ST. SALT LAKE CITY, M4111 stitution, but on statutory language. On her reading, Congress, in two separate provisions written 12 years apart in 1964 upthe country,” she toid me. ‘I’m going to be like Paul Revere andtell people, since 1994, when the Clinton administration decided it was goingto usestatistical sampling to cure the undercount of minorities, immigrants and children — most of them poor — that had marred the 1990 Census. Underthe plan, a sample survey would be taken of households that do not return the Census forms and do not answerthe doorbell whenthefol- low-up interviewers come around. The survey results would be used to project the numbers and characteristics of the Americans who would otherwise be sed. ‘That method hadthe endorsementof a a point. But any hope thatthe close-call ruling would end thebattle disappeared overnight. Only four justices said sampling was unconstitutional, while an equal numberdisagreed. O'Connor, the swing vote, based her decision not on the Con- wants out. “I want to do whateverI can to wake can and two Democratic officials on the panel and asked acidly, ‘How long are the Tannerseries. In 1997, he returned as conductor and guest host of the Tabernacle Choir’s weekly radio and television broadcast, “Music and the Spoken Word,” for which he prepared an allBrahms program. He also wrote and delivered the homily, the only nonMormoneverinvited to do so. That same year, he conducted the Utah Symphony and Utah Chorale in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. DAVID BRODER ‘THE WASHINGTONPOST WRITERS GROUP National Academyof Sciences panel designated by Congress to find a solution to the undercount and of Barbara Bryant, the Republican whoran the 1990 Census. But House Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich and by Dennis Hastert, the new speaker, said: No way. They charged that sampling could be used by the Clinton administrationto create‘virtual Americans” wherenoneexist. They also heeded warnings from their political consultants that these newly found, Democratic-inclined folks could tilt the balance in the House — andin several legislatures —_from Republicans to Democrats. Repeatedly Republicans tried to use appropriations bills to deny the Census Bureau funds for developing plans that included sampling. And repeatedly, President Clinton vetoed or threatened vetoes to force them to back down. The result has been a two-track planning process — one for a Census with sampling and one without — anda seriesof short- and 1976, barred the use of sampling for apportionmentof House seats among the states but directed it to be used “where feasible” for collecting data for every other purpose. O'Connor's ruling clearly implies a two-track Census. ButRep. Dan Miller of Florida, chairman of the House Census subcommittee, told the mayors that Republicans wouldinsist on a one-number Census. He promised to seek extra funds — perhaps as muchas $1 billion — to reduce the undercountof minorities, but only by intensifying the use of the tradi- tional house-by-house methods most experts say are ¢értain to comeup short. If the administration tries to use sampling to producealternative Census numbers’ foreverything but apportionment, Miller warned, the- Bepanian majority in Congress will fight. And Rep. Carolyn Maloney of New York,the senior Democrat on that Census subcommittee, was equally blunt. If Republicans try to ban sampling bylegislation, ““President Clinton has lot of ink in his veto pen,and he'lluseit.”” Thecities and the mayors have a huge stake in this. A test-run last summer in But Republicans have had moresuc- Sacramento found sampling added more than 6.3 percentto the city’s population — 26,000 people. That wouldtranslate legality of the Clinton plans in court. Last week, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, agreed with the GOP — up to whenthe interim funding for the Census again expires. You can see why Mayor Azari — and many others — are worried. term funding bills that left the policy question undecided. cess on a second front, challenging the to millions of dollars of extra federalaid. Theissue will cometo a headin June, WhenDid This ‘Culture War’ We’re Losing Start? AUSTIN, Texas — You must admit, this is the most curiouspolitical phenomenonofourlifetimes: After five years of MOLLYIVINS response to all this is: “More! More!" Kind of hard to know what to say to ‘The latest wrinkle in right-wing spin is to claim that this is not a political phenomat all but rather thefinal battle in some culture war that I didn't know was going on. | have my doubts about this culture war — can you be in one and not knowit? Did our side actually vote for Flynt as our standard bearer? What is our side? Mylast effort to grasp whatthe right wingis on about here was reading Robert Bork’s latest book — an experience so horrifying that I have not yet recovered and cannot bear to read any morein the genre, If Bork was the beginning of the political-culture war, as is sometimes claimed (‘‘payback for Bork” being an occasionally heard battle ery), all 1 can say is: I didn't know it was war at the time, but I'm sure glad I was on the right side. An alternative theory is that the culture wardates back to the 1960s, and this is whereI get totally lost reading rightwing cultural interpretations. The old Jokeis that if you can remember the '60s, you weren't there. | was there, and I can programs, that somehow white people werethe key players in thecivilAmericans; those few whites who took year of media frenzy and three months of impeachment proceedings, President Clinton's job approval rating is 72 percent, and Republicans now rank below Larry Flynt in public esteem. Andtheir them, And here am I in concert with Pat Robertson: Please, stop! cial rights movement. It was a movement of, by and for black investigation by Kenneth Starr, one solid FORT WORTHSTAR-TELEGRAM part — and there were mighty few of us in the South — werejust bit players. As Taylor Branch's wonderful King biography and many other books make clear, the whites in power, whether they reacted for goodor ill at the time, were just reacting — reacting to one of the most astonishing, beautiful and spontaneous uprisings for justice the world has ever seen. rememberit. I remember the decade as being about the Peace Corps, the civil-rights move- ment and the anti-war movement. As Margo Adlerwrites in her memoirof the period, it was quite possible to be an activist in the '60s and miss sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll in their entirety. “We Shall Overcome” remains the song of the decade for many. ‘Thatis, until 1968, the year of assassinations, when it all turned very, very dark. I could be wrong, but I still think the berserker element of the 1960s was largely the consequence of Vietnam — the drugs, the craziness, the sense that The movement split in '64, when Stokely Carmichael's “Burn, baby, burn” stood in contrast to “We shall overcome someday,” But to blame that on anything that white liberals did is ludicrous. ‘Thesesilly books blaming the '60s for various socialevils are pathetically truncated in their viewpoint, Were there symptoms of decline in black family structure? According to anthropologists, the black family is one of the most durable social structures in history; it survived both slavery and Jim Crow and fi- nally was visibly damaged only by the Depression, which of course fell more harshly on blacks. Incidentally, the De- the world made no sense because that warcertainly made no sense, And that pression had the same effect on white families —those who yearn for hard war was not the fault of those whofought itor opposed it. Your famous World War times to bring us together might keep II generation presented that little gift to us: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, Long time passing. Another right-wing interpretation of the '60s is the bizarre notion that black rage was fomented by white liberal so- \ that in mind, Don't get me started. But perhaps what I object to most is the use of war as a metaphor for political differences, ‘That's how you get murdered abortion doctors and bombed buildings in Oklaho-ma. ( ' |