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Show Sunday, May 12, 1996 THE DAILY HERALD,Prove, Utah — Page DS Minimum wage hike would not adversely affect U.S. economy Chalk up victory for lawyers By KIM L. JOHNSON Inflation is an economic reality that affects all of us. Nobody in By ADAM D. THIERER It’s tough being a trial lawyer these days. The public loathes our Congress just passed iegistation limiting those million-dollar damage awards that have made you fabulously rich. Where do you turn forrelief? retirees. merely limits them to $250,000 or twice the amount of compensatory damages. And if judges decide $250,000 isn't enough to teach a lesson to the offending company, they can waive the cap and impose penalties as big as before All in all, pretty tame “reform.” So why hasthe president vetoedit? In a word: money Lawyers have been among President Clinton’s most generous campaign contributors, ponying up $3 million in 1992 and an additional $2.5 million during thefirst nine monthsoflast year. A politician, the president knows he’il need all the support he can get from the trial lawyers this fail. Thus the payback. Even some members of the president's own party are wise to his strategy, and disapprove. Listen to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, DW.Va., easily one of the most li eral members of Congress, upo hearing of the impending vet: “Unfortunately, special interests and raw political considerations in the White House have overrid den soundpolicy judgment.” Most Americans, fed up with stories of lawyers raking in undeserved millions, would agree. But even the outrageous headlines (“Man stumbles, wins $100 billion from maker of defective could be called “The Lawyer But don’t blame the lawyers too much — they’resimply looking out for themselves. using the same methods employed by every other special interest AdamD. Thierer is the Alex ( Roosevelt Johnson seem to care nothing that in pursuit of power, they are driving their country into ruin Weeks of brutal fighting in the capital, Monrovia, has destroyed the best hope Liberia has had in six years to restore responsible gov- ernment The failure of the peace agreement of 1995 is no big surprise. It put the three rival faction leaders on the same governing council With hordes of restless, armed and battle-seasoned teen-agers congregated in Monrovia, the warring leaders could disregard both the terms of the agreement and the regional coalition that brokered it The tragedy of the mess in Liberia is that the faction leaders know they can disregard any out- side pressure with impunity They know, for instance, that the United States will not get involved. The Clinton administra- 50 cents in each ¢ Walker fellow in economic poli at The Heritage Foundation, a researchinstitute Observations tion has madethat only tooclear. It has provided Marines to evacuate U. citizens and protect its embassy. Beyond that. the U.S. influence has been confined to transporting rebel leader Roosevelt Johnson to Accra, Ghana, where a peace negotiation conference is being heldthis week. Taylorandhis rivals know, also, that an organization such as the Organization of African Unity lacks thecredibility or the desire to intervene. If proof was needed that the OAU is moribund, its inertia on Liberia would be sufficient They know that a coalition of West African states, whose forces have been on peacekeeping duty in Liberia for five years, has the will but neither the means nor the capacity to force a resolution Many of these states have significant populations of Liberian refugees. Humanitarian concern and self-interest motivate them to act, as continued fighting means a growing refugee burden on their economies While the efforts of the regional Economic Community of West African States, including Nigeria and Ghana,havebeenvaliant, they have been largely fruitless and inept At best, the ECOWAS troops have helped contain the war. At worst, some of them, without adequate finances, training and equipment, have contributed to the anarchy. Some units have retreated instead of facing attacking factions, and sometimes, they have Indians know consequences of electing fundamentalists By GWYNNE DYER What's extraordinary is how calm everybody was. This week, India was in the midst of an election that could have wrecked the country’s economic miracle, threatened its unity and even dragged the subcontinent back to war after a quarter-century of peace. Yet everybody acted as though it was just a normal election, Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao warmed that if his Congress Party is replaced in power by the Bharat Janata Party (BJP), “India could gothe wayof the for- mer Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.” And it could happen. if the nationalists and Hindu chauVinists of the BJP attack the 120. inillion-strong Muslim minority at home, and perhaps blunder into a {ar with Pakistan in the process. Didthe Indians panic when Rao made his warning? No, They foundly denounced him for larmism — and the Bombay tock Exchange, already up 3 percent this year, went right onrising | Terrorist bombs have been Wreaking havoc in both India and Pakistan lately — the ones in India probably the work of Kashmiri separatists, those in Pakistan most likely connected with the virtual civil war raging in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, But Indian right-wingers blame Pakistan for the bombs, and after the most recent blast in Pakistan killed SO villagers in a rural bus, Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto blamed India. Butthe Indians didn’t panic, of course. They just patiently waited their tum as the election caravan moved around the country Police and paramilitary forces were shuffled around to ensure te security at the 800,000 May 2, May 7. and then votecounting began onthe Sth It is a very impressive exercise Guest Opinion in democracy, but it is also a puzzle. Don’t these people understand that if the BJP comes to power, their old India ts gone and their new one will be an intolerant nationalist state lockedinto permanent confrontation with Muslim neighbours abroad and Mustimcitizens at home? There would certainly be endless confrontations. The new pattern of fast economic growth unleashed by Rao’s dismantling of the old centrally controlled Indian economy could be crippled or derailed by the internal strife that wouldbe certain under a BJP government. And there might be war So why are ordinary Indian voters so plainly not panicked? What do they know (or think they know) that we don’t? They know, for a start, that this election is not about the BJP winning. It is about Congress, which has dominated the Indian political scene since independence, losing its central position in Indian pohues. Like the Christian Democratic Party inItaly or the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, Congress has had alntost four decades in office with only a brief two-year inter- ruption in its reign, Well, the Christian Democrats are now gone completely, destroyed by corruption probes, and the Liberal Democrats are faitenng badly. Why should Congress be any ”’ di" What is emerging as Congress's bleeding votes away from Congress at both edges. Many others defend the interests of a single Teginn, caste, or religious group — andthey will bethe real powerbrokers in the new parliament The decline of the Congress monolith is basically a very good thing for India. It managed, under Rao, to destroy the Fabian socialist system it had created itself many years before (and maybeit was the only force that could). But that was the iast service the Congress Party could perform for the nation, and lacking a charismatic leader from the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty, it was boundtofall at the next hurdle. India’s complex, essentially federal politics (six major teligions, 18 official languages) ysed to happen undemocratically inside the broad front of the Congress Party. Now this competition is moving out into the open, which is bound to upset people unused to Indian political leaders actually stating what they want. But this is democratisation, like it or not It is happening now because people have outgrown the Congress Party's desperate attempts to be all things to all people. Most Indian voters welcome this change, and are not fnghtened by it at all. They are probably right Whatever the balance in the new parliament, there will have to be a coalition government. And the BJP is unlikely to dominate the coalition evenif it wins more votes than any other party: Few of its tivals share its fundamentalist outlook on the world. India is mature enough to democratise fully with- outdisaster. 1 think If Lam wrong, of course, then there will be anti-Muslim pogroms, nuclear weapons tests, grasp on power erodes is not a confrontation and maybe even war monolithic Hindu fundamentalist with Pakistan. But don’t panic yet party ready twtakeits place, but.a Gwyane Dyer is a London polling.si but it meant that wholearray of competing political based independent journalist and only about one-third of the popula- interests. Some Tine up along the historian whose columns appear in tion got to vote at a time: Aj ul 27, familiar old lefvrigh divide, 30countries. affects minimum restore integrity in the minin ith this slippers”) don’t tell half the sto- Washington-based public policy ry It even increase, Congress can once There's a lessonclear: Never underestimate the political power of wealthy special interests President Clinton’s veto, which Words alone won’t end violence in Liberia Charles Taylor, Alhaji Kromah and immune ton As expected, the president has come to the lawyers’ rescue, From THE AKRON (OHIO) BEACON JOURNAL Leaders such as Liberia’s is Enrichment Act of 1996,” is a classic example of how one special interest was able to buy a favorable outcome in Washi wavered: President Bill Clinton. bility Reform Act the momentit hit his desk. It would be one thing if the president honestly believed the bill he vetoed would hurt consumers. But he knows, as does the rest of Washington, that the reform measure is a relatively mild effort Consider: The dil! doesn’t apply to all lawsuits, only to product-liability lawsuits. It doesn’t affect compensatory damagesfor the payment of medical costs, lost wages, and “pain and suffering,” only damages designedto “punish” a company And it doesn’t even eliminate those punitive damages — it sysiem wage workers Because of theeffect inflation has on our personal budgets, we are forced to either increase our incomes or reduce our standardof living. Fortunately,) most of us have been able to compens: inflation by obtaining an in in our inc rT But for the mini mum wage workers, the only choice has been to accept a 20 percent reduction in their standard of living. After falling from 53 perceat of the average U.S. wage in 1967. Congress actedto restore the minge in 1981 to 48 percent 2 wage. Today the minimumwage has declined to only 36 percent of the average US. wage responsibly and yot of the proposed To the one man whose support for trial lawyers has never vetoing the Common Sense Lia- economic from the effects of inflation, not businessmen, or workers or you. Businesses fear you. And joined in the looting and plunder ing Liberia's tragedy is an absence ofauthority, internal or external, to enforce order. In the vacuum, power-hungry factions are fighting it out. Under such circumstances, the conference in Accra to discuss election plans offers little hope of lasting peace. Taylor declined to attend. Stronger international support of the regional effort. in the form of proper training, funding and equipment for the troops, would have provided that neededauthority. It is unfortunate Liberia has not commanded that attention fromthe world Haaga's t years, the minimum wage will once again be restored to a more equitab! je 45 percent of our current averag Wage With Congress pushing legislation reforming welfare andcutting billions in federal assistance programs such as Medicaid, school lunch, food stamps and the Earned Income Credit for low-wage earneen better e Holding down the minimum wageis not only morally wrong, but it does very little to hold down inflation. The proposed change in the minimum wage will increase inflation by only .3 percent over a period of twoyears. With our cur rent average rate of inflation at 4 percent, it will barely be noticeable Contrary to what the special interest groups have been claiming in Washington, most minimum wage eamers are not high school kids or dropouts. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 37 percent of the minimum wage earners are children under the age of 20; 59 percent are women, and 57 percent of the minimum wage eamers are aduits who finished high school Whilethe overall U.S. econotny BUY FACTORYDIRECT BeeNaisss WHOLESALE! a mattress set at one When you of our com rs you getjust a matiress and box springs, but at items FREE! corporations have down-sized and CEOsalaries have doubled from $2 million to $3.7 million per year, the unemploymentrate has continued to drop has boomed, income inequity has continued to increase. As many as 12 million workers are now earning only the minimum wage Today in the United States, the gap between the rich and poor is greater than in any other western country tor requirin, an increase in the Low wages not only conminimum wag tribute to the destruction of famMany economists, including ilies. but are also responsible for some who are Nobel Prize win- the increase in our child poverty ners, feel th n increase in the rate. Reportedly, an estimated minimum w from $4.24 to 23,000 American children and $5.25 over a two-year period will teen rs die each year due to have very little. if any. effect on our economic inequity. Unless inflation or the overall economy Congress acts to increase the Someeconomists have even gone minimumwage, we will continue SO far as to s. that the economic to see an increase in income benefits wouldout the possi inequity ble negativeeffects Clearly the benefits to increasWhile our economy is stll ing minimum wage outweigh any growing at a rate of 2.8 percent a of the negative effects. In the year, we havethe perfect time to words of President Clinton, “If we increase the minimumwage. Inall value work, if we value families, areas of the nation, minimum we oughtto raise the value of the wage jobs are expanding faster minimum wage.” Kim L. Johnsonis a residentof than employees canbe foundtofill them. Undoubtedly, our economy Provo. MATTRESS FACTORY Haagas can easily absorb the few jobs that may be lost American businesses are expefiencing good times and corporate, profits are up. 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