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Show Q Sun Advocate Thursday, August BO, 1987 Rising economic tide Contrary to popular misconception, rate among Americans the .poverty including blacks and Hispanics has been falling steadily during the past four years. This fact refutes the widely repeated charge that the Reagan administrations cutbacks in domestic spending have spurred poverty, particularly among minorities. The reason for the declining poverty rate is quite obvious. The uninterrupted economic expansion that began at the end of 1982 and now is approaching a peacetime record in this century has created millions of new jobs and fanned other opportunities for real growth in personal income. Little wonder that Ronald Reagan claims credit for the improved poverty figures contained in the Census Bureaus latest report. The numbers demonstrate, that sustained, growth is the governments single best tool for fighting poverty and building a better life for our says Reagan, ry nations families. Indeed, since 1982, median family income among blacks rose by 14 percent, compared with an increase of only 10.2 percent among whites, after adjusting for inflation. During the same period, Hispanic families realized 8.5 percent growth. real-inco- A strong economy in 1986, with inflation below 2 percent, produced one the of largest gains in median family income in 15 years, up 4.2 percent after sub- tracting for inflation. The proportion of all Americans living in poverty fell to 13.6 percent last year, nearly two points lower than in 1983 when the effects of the last recession still were being felt. This translates into nearly 1 million fewer persons living below the governments inflation-adjusted poverty line. The improvement chiefly is a reflection of lower unemployment, which stands at 6.1 percent, compared with 10.7 percent in 1982. Joblessness now is at its lowest ebb since the onslaught of high inflation and high interest rates in the late 1970s. d families of all While poverty among on been the decline, there has been a races has in disturbing increase one sector of the population households headed by women. In 1986, the number of impoverished married couples with children dropped by 300,000 to 3.4 million; but the number of imfamilies rose by 139,000 to poverished female-heade- d 3.6 million. That a family headed by a single woman is more likely to experience poverty should surprise no one. Taken as a group, women earn only 64 percent as much as men. Add to this the cost of child care, which often is borne more heavily by poor women than poor men, and it is clear that the breakup of the American family is a major contributor to poverty. In fact, for the first time, households headed by women now account for the majority of poor families. The realization that job opportunities, rather than increased government assistance, are the answer to poverty should provide impetus to the welfare-refordrive now moving through Congress. The thrust of this effort is to require job training and work, without penalizing a father for staying in the household. Such an approach refies on the common-sens- e notion that, without undue government interference, a rising economic tide lifts all boats. chucks waggin male-heade- m The tragic figure of a speech-impaireMuhammad Ali is as horrible as the unproven brain transplant surgery that has caught scalpel-wieldin- g neurosurgeons by storm. Ali, who has a syndrome related to Parkinsons disease, has taken too many blows to the brain, although he showed the good sense recently not to allow a Mexican surgeon to operate on him. Perhaps Ali can once again be a role model this time to the more than one million Americans with Parkinsons who are vulnerable to surgery ballyhooed by hospitals and neurosurgeons. slow-movi- and is deficient in people with Parkinsons. So far, so good. But the Mexican neurosurgeon who pioneered the technique worked on three patients and then published results in the New England Journal of Medicine. Three cases are far too few to make reliable predictions on a treatment, but nonetheless the fad caught on with neurosurgeons jumping into the brain transplant business overnight. Whats wrong with all of this? Well, for starters, a drug cannot be marketed in the United States without years of testing and FDA approval. But surgery is not regulated at all. Thus, about 3,000 neurosurgeons can try their hand at brain transplants. Whats worse is that about 1,000 other surgeons, who are not certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery, perform neurosurgery. Questionable fads in neurosurgery have long cropped up. The worst of the lot were lobotomies. Transplanting adrenal gland tissue into the brains of those who have Parkinsons disease may be a viable treatment some day. But today, it is certainly a risky, unproven procedure. Fortunately, Ali away from this radical treatment. We hope that his example is one that other sufferers of Parkinsons disease follow until such time as the surgery is proven more ed The lame excuses are in, the dust has settled and there can be no doubt there will be no prison in Carbon County because we , are Carbon County. Reported in the Salt Lake Tribune in January 1903, a state senator, W.D. Livingston, made a comment specifically about Carbon County and its residents. The Carbon County people he spoke of as the generation. Lets all forget licking our wounds and take Louies advice and get looking, calling, writing and asking. After all, Carbon County is the best place in Utah and the intermountain west to live and we wont have some lousy prison cluttering up the landscape and influencing industry to look scum of the world. Just so you dont forget that attitude still exists in Utah and specifically in our Legislature, the prison will go to a Republican county instead of one filled with scummy Democrats. Criteria for selection of a site are that it have a good hospital facility, medical staff and a railroad. All Sanpete County has are Republicans and Bangerter family mem- somewhere else. Ive already had some people asking about secession from Utah and forming our own state and they were serious. Thats been talked about before and never come all the way. Maybe the rest of the state would support us at this time and we could try again. But then Utah wouldnt get all that energy money from us that they collect in severance taxes and the like which they then give out to other counties in the form of community block grants. They might fight secession. We just need to realize that Carbon County was, is and always will be the bastard child of Utah. But we have taken pride in that in the past. By the way, those tax protest proposals are still lying here on my desk. If you want to get back at them up on Capitol Hill, come in and sign them if you havent already done so. The best way to slap them is with tax cuts and the people will have to do it because our Legislature doesnt listen to the voters. These tax protest petitions are fresh ones the old ones have already been turned in. In Green River you can sign them over at Larry and Nadine Hawkinsons home at 227 before Farrer. Give them a call at going over. Last I heard, people in Helper can sign them at Mike Ferciks home at 164 In Price there are some Duchesne, 564-32- 472-578- 1. at Diana McBrides at 238 S. 600 W., Mel Coxs at 745N. 200 E., Joyce Hutchinsons at 180 N. 200 E., and Darcy Vances at 851 N. 500 E., Give them a call before you go over to make sure they still have some room left on their petitions. 637-657- 7; 637-568- 6; 637-54- 637-111- 2. ng Heres how brain transplant surgery works: the surgeon takes tissue from the adrenal glands just above the kidney and injects it into the brain to replace a substance that helps transmit information back-pedal- our money. I saw a bumper sticker on a vehicle in Price this past week. It was a commercial van from Salt Lake City and the sticker said Pump Norm to the West Desert. Thats a pleasant thought, isnt it? Ah, well. Lou Colosimo said it last week in the paper when ho was quoted as saying, We need to, find another project and try again... We need all the industry we can get to secure the future for our younger By CHUCK ZEHNDER Managing editor bers. A little aside, if I may. I know now that the prison idea was a good one because the state a county for being so rewarded Republican. If they had given it to us, I would have wondered if it was really in our best interests since the boys upstate never seem to do anything for us here except take Muhammad Ali's brainy decision d, Lest we forget mike royko Doing slow bum over wimpy crooks It can get very depressing, listening to the experts give pessimistic reports on this countrys decline. They point to countries like Iran, taunting us militarily. Or Japan, outhustling us economically. There are the preachers who say that as a society we have become too sinful, lascivious and greedy. Then, as if to prove their point, the preachers themselves become spectacularly sinful, lascivious and greedy. Sports experts brood because our tennis players and golfers are being trounced by foreigners and the commies win more Olympic gold medals. Then there are our young always a source of people concern. We went through a decade of worrying because clean young suburbanites decided to become hippies and said they didnt care about success or money, but just wanted to have long hair, wear dirty underwear, make love and keep their brains addled. Then many of the clean young suburbanites decided to become revolutionaries and build bombs and overthrow the government. worried about that until we discovered that they usually blew themselves up while making their bombs. Now we have a generation or two that are called yuppies, and they wear clean underwear, short hair, engage in safe sex, build muscles instead of bombs, and are obsessed with success and money. And that worries us, too. Then we have the chronically poor, the deteriorating old cities, the FBI catching hordes of corrupt politicians in big towns and small, and the vicious, ugly suspicion that this years baseball has been juiced up. With so much evidence of the decline of our society, you would We think there wouldnt be anything more to worry about. But Ive found it. Or at least a cop friend of mine has. As . the cop explained it: There is a definite decline in the quality of our criminals. More and more of them have become spineless whiners. As evidence of this, he pointed out the increasing number of lawsuits filed by convicted criminals. There was a time when a criminal took his chances. If he was caught, he went to court, lied, was found guilty and then went off to prison and kept his mouth shut and took his punishment like a man. Now they go to prison and they file lawsuits because they didnt like the way they were arrested. Hes right. In recent years there have been many such suits. A kidnapper in Utah tried to shoot it out with the cops. When they shot back at him, he sued on the grounds that they were excessively violent. A thief in California fell the skylight of a he was burglarizing, building then sued the landlord for through negligence. But this latest case takes the cake, my cop friend said. What a pathetic mope. He was talking about a young bank robber named Daniel Candelario, who is doing time in a California prison. Last year, Candelario robbed a bank in Oakland. When he grabbed the money, he didnt know that the teller had slipped a tiny smoke bomb into the wad. The idea, of course, is for the smoke bomb to detonate so the cops can spot the thief on a crowded street. Thats exactly what happened. Candelario put the money in his trouser pocket and dashed out of the bank. Then the smoke bomb went off in his pocket. Unfortunately for candelario, the device did more than smoke. It became very hot. And it caused bums to that part of the body sometimes referred to as private parts. When the police caught him, Candelario was clutching his groin and saying ow, ow, or words to that effect. The wounds healed, but from his cell Candelario has recently filed a suit against the city of Oakland and the police. 'Ie said the cops made fun of his injury and his sexual preference, which is gay, and that caused him permanent emotional He also sued the damage. company that makes the smoke bomb, charging that their product caused pain and suffering, both to his emotions and his male appendage. An absolute lack of professional pride, my cop friend said. When you think of the tradition of bank robbery in ( Continued on Page 9) |
