Show "I nit inkt §f ibtuu li Wednesday Morning June 20 1990 Page 8 Section A Supreme Court Pension Ruling Closes Troublesome Loophole The federal agency backing up private company retirement programs can impose its authority on national bankruptcy laws the US Supreme Court ruled Monday That's a reassuring decision for the country's taxpayers - In reversing lower court findings an 81 high court conclusion in a steel industry case should protect the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp against excessive claims Which could help forestall another emergency too comparable with the nation's scandalous thrift in- dustry "bail-out- " If LTV Corp could have made the earlier decisions stick its method of getting PBGC assistance might have inspired other large industrial employers along equivalent lines heaping a load on the federal government's pension insurance reserves That prospect is reduced for now since the Supreme Court found that bankruptcy not necessarily being fatal retirement plan obligations can be reimposed on a "recovered" company In 1987 LTV Corp having filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1986 turned its steelworker pension plans over to the PBGC But the same year its steel business having improved the company negotiated a contract with its steelworker unions agreeing to cover the difference between PBGC pension payments and what the full retirement benefit would be had the LTV Corp retirement fund not been transferred to the PBGC The PBGC immediately spotted the back-breakin- g - frightening implications Declaring bankruptcy transferring its pension costs to the PBGC a company could climb out of financial difficulties and its marketplace free of retirement expenses But those expenses would have become a public responsibility Considering the PBGC has identified re-ent- er some 50 major US companies including General Motors Chrysler Pan-Aand United Airlines as having underfunded retirement programs to the tune of $14 billion and since the PBGC even now is in a $1 billion deficit situation likelihood of an LTV Corp contagion e projected another savings and taxpayer bailout the S&L "rescue" currently estimated at $100 billion At the lower court level judges concluded that the PBGC could not on its own overrule bankruptcy laws decreeing when a company was solvent enough to resume pension plan responsibilities Fortunately the Supreme Court said otherwise siding with the PBGC argument that denied that authority there was no way it could protect PBGC funds from companies who used the PBGC law to escape financial difficulties leaving other companies and the federal treasury with a larger pension-payinm loan-typ- g burden Moreover other steel companies contended that if the LTV Corp argument prevailed they would be put at an artificial competitive disadvantage fully funding their pension plans while LTV Corp remained only partially lia- ble for its Those companies assessed by the PBGC for funding federal backup could feel equally put upon Their contribution has risen steadily from $1 per employee to $19 because of bankruptbusicies and other recession-induceness failure More than prevent pending disaster for retirement plans nationwide the decision closed a loophole which if left open could have complicated and stressed PBGC purposes But even at that the decision was timely helpful and prudent One federally financed rescue the size of the S&L bailout is more than enough d Overdoing Required Courses A Wilderness Society official's call for mandatory environmental education ii the nation's schools may be laudable b)ut it reflects how little thought is given t$ the "carrying capacity" of taxpayer-fundepublic education The stark practical fact is no matter how noble a new subject or how appropriate its inclusion in public school instruction might be there are only so many hours in a school day and so many days in a school year and the schools already are inundated with so many mandates that they don't have time to teach any of them or even "the b&sics" very well ' The latest call for new curriculum was delivered by Gaylord Nelson a former governor and US senator from Wisconsin who is now counselor for the Wilderness Society He proposes mandatory inclusion of environmental instruction in public education course d cur-ricul- ar material At first blush this seems a reasonable idea If not taught by social ideolo- gists pushing a narrow agenda it would be helpful for the nation's youth to learn about the environment and how they can best interact with and live within it without unduly causing it — and themselves — damage What Mr Nelson and other advocates of curricular specialties fail to point out is just what they would dump i to accommodate their advocated subject Should the schools eliminate mathematics? It might be a good idea American youngsters score more poorly than counterparts around the world on mathematics tests If math wasn't taught - oQV f there would be no need to test students on it No tests no unfavorable compari- sons with others Maybe English classes could be reduced After all the United States doesn't score especially well in this subject either Maybe history and geography So little of these subjects is taught now in US schools both could be dropped to accommodate environmental education Advocates of environmental education AIDS education free enterprise education sex education education driver education and the plethora of other specialty subjects don't accompany their announcements with political campaigns to boost taxes to add 40 or 50 additional school days to the school year so teachers can better tackle the additional tasks without neglecting other subjects Most of these and other subjects are worthwhile and to varying degrees can be justified as put"': school tasks But until and unless there is a corresponding public willingness to significantly expand the educational enterprise with major financial infusions schools are obliged to resist curriculum additions One can only put so many logs on a wagon before its axles break One can only put so much pollution in a stream before the stream's ecosystem goes bonkers So it is with curriculum additions Until taxpayers are willing to pay more to extend school days or can decide what subject to drop in making room for a new one the notion that added standalone environmental studies should be mandated for public school classrooms is an idea not yet ready for full enrollment self-estee- J A1£AHT m To CIGARETTES fit! m ii ca m m in 1111 o O 1 i ' o c Gunslingers Bring Frontier Justice to NY Chicago Tribune Service CHICAGO — Americans have no word to match Schadenfreude the German term for the glee one feels over the misfortune of others It might be necessary to invent one What else describes the delicious glee one feels over seeing Zsa Zsa Gabor Leona Helmsley Donald Trump Ivan Boesky or Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker get what's coming to them? And what else describes the emotions many New Yorkers express about the boy who was shot on a subway platform in New York's Grand Central Station last week after the gang of which he was a part accosted a teen-ag- e girl and tried to snatch her gold necklace before the girl's companion pulled a handgun out of his knapsack Ah justice Too bad the kid got shot we think but what the hey he should have known the risks of his little venture before he went into it shouldn't he? And maybe his misfortune will make others think twice Won't it? Then again maybe not It appears that a lot of New Yorkers are taking the law into their own hands these days even though it is having little measurable impact on crime a weapon razor-wieldin- Clarence Page knife-wieldin- rates A few recent examples: Rodney Sumter an unemployed Harlem son was plumber traveling with his punched and spat upon by a homeless man in a Manhattan subway station in January Sumter slammed the man's head against the concrete pavement killing him A grand jury refused to indict Sumter On April 4 Kenny Mendoza responding to screams from a neighboring apartment used a revolver handed him by another neighbor to fatally shoot Ron?ld Ford a convicted robber who had invaded the apartment of pregnant Nydia Albaladejo Despite being hailed as a hero Mendoza was charged with intentional murder and criminal possession of Conservatives Using Flag Issue To Tinker With Constitution Newhouse News Service WASHINGTON — After waiting for more than 30 years conservatives may now see a golden political opening to reverse some key Supreme Court decisions by amending the Bill of Rights — starting with flag burning and going on to pornography and confessions by criminal suspects The opportunity arises from the Supreme Court's recent decision voiding a federal anti-fla- g burning law as a violation of the First Amendment protection for freedom of political expression A proposed constitutional amendment prohibiting flag burning has attracted strong support from Congress the public and President Bush The Bill of Rights the first 10 amendments to the Constitution hasn't been changed since its passage in 1791 Critics of the idea of changing it now include the American Bar Association and Sen Edward M Kennedy Statements in favor of the Supreme Court's decision are viewed by most members of Congress as a political poison pill But the current amendment move is only the occasion — not the reason — for the strong conservative push The real motive goes much deeper than flags It is a mistaken though sincere belief among many conservative and moderate citizens that several major problems of contemporary society can be traced to the Supreme Court's decisions on individual rights over the past three decades Under the Constitution's system of governmental checks and balances the Supreme Court cannot directly attack social problems man was Eight days later a middle-age- d g being robbed and beaten by several assailants on a subway train when he pulled a gun out of his waistband and killed a whom police described as a career criminal The gunman disappeared into the night and has ignored calls for him to surrender Similarly a man dubbed the "Subway Sag maritan" stopped two muggers by stabbing one of them in the chest on a Harlem train in December He too has refused to surrender in spite of a Page 1 offer by the New York Post to pay his legal costs Who can blame them? Anyone who takes the law into his or her own hands risks being victimized twice first by the criminal attacker and again by the legal system though juries have shown themselves to be remarkably compassionate even to Bernhard Goetz who shot four black youths on a subway car in 1984 after one demanded $5 In the end Goetz was convicted only of a minor gun charge Besides the widespread Schadenfreude New Yorkers over expressed by crime-wearGoetz's actions would have held up better had he not disclosed how he stood over one of the youths Darrell Cabey who was sprawled on a subway seat said "You don't look so bad here's another" and shot Cabey in the back Less ambiguous incidents of jiffy justice in the Big Apple have become so common that they seldom make national news anymore unless of course the victims and their assailants cross racial lines as they did in Goetz's case By comparison a more recent case — dubbed "Lady Goetz" by the New York tabloids — raised barely a ripple of public attention perhaps because both the victim and her assailant were black d New Yorkers are makYet ing heroes of crime victims who successfully fight back a sign that ordinary citizens are losing faith in the legal system especially in the nation's largest city a place battered by a rise in crime fueled by crack greed and the recent rise of youth gangs dedicated to robbery Last Tuesday's robbery at submachine-gunpoin- t of Georgette Mosbacher cosmetics magnate and socialite wife of the secretary of commerce in her New York hotel room shows even the rich are no longer safe contrary to the portrait of insulated Manhattan wealth painted by Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities" The Big Apple is a laboratory for what can go wrong with policies about criminals and the conditions that encourage them StrugNew Yorkgling back from ers don't want to pay for the police needed to patrol the streets adequately the courts to give speedy justice or the jails necessary to lock criminals up Instead various individuals are embracing a new security blanket one that is small made of heavy steel and measured in calibers If all of this is beginning to sound like a return to the Wild West you're right The problem is that frontier justice did not work too well once the frontier was tamed We have no reason to believe it will work any better now even as the wild frontier invades our most "civilized" cities tp?9! VSikJ Jack Landau It can however point the way and aid or impede the efforts of the legislative and executive branches For many disaffected citizens the court is a symbolic target Some of its decisions on such issues as crime obscenity and religion have few supporters Critics sometimes rally to the call "Nice people have rights too" Under the court's current test for pornography for example acres of erotically displayed genitalia are freely available for adults in magazines books films and videotapes — to the moral outrage of a number of groups After the decisions on flags and pornography Public Enemy No 1 among conservatives is still the Miranda opinion requiring police to stop questioning a criminal suspect when he or she asks for an attorney and voiding any confession — no matter how voluntary — given when a suspect hasn't been advised of the right to a lawyer before being questioned After ratification of a flag amendment broader amendments on pornography and street crime might be a realistic goal for conservatives It is this specter of major changes in the Bill of Rights that is at the core of the flag decision controversy y crime-plague- Romania Dispels Myth of Brave New World Universal Press Syndicate FRANKFURT West Germany — "Romania you are a pest! Just as we in the New World are reveling in the 'freeing' of Eastern Europe you persist in reminding us that Utopia is not after all at hand "Why can't you behave as good are supposed to behave: Elect a democratic composer of old Romanian ballads to the presidency and march around reading Adam Smith? Why must you have this clown Ion Iliescu pulling the old Bolshevik strings from his grotesque palace in Bucharest while his fascist miners beat your most idealistic young people into mangled heaps? "Oh Romania you are ruining this spring of our most soaring hopes!" Maybe I am too cynical but it seems to me that many Americans had those petulant foolish thoughts as they helplessly watched the insane cruelties inflicted in Romania last week Maybe I am digging too deep — below the happy and comforting surface of this last joyous year — but it seems to me that these Romanian events are giving us due warning that Eastern Europe and this new "springtime of peoples" just isn't going be as easy as we thought — False American Assumption No 1: We had assumed as the totalitarian East broke down with such staggering speed in the last two years that the new freedom would assure a neat immediate transformation of peoples The communists were out democracy was in and we were all on the way to the new Utopia — ours this time — False Assumption No 3: There is little important difference from Georgie Anne Geyer "History had ended" as one lunatic theory that Washington (always restive for amusement) grasped onto last winter and all we needed to do was lock the door securely behind us To the contrary democracy is in tnith far from an end for any country It is merely a neutral mechanism a practical means for at best assuring the governing by the majority Far from filling spiritual or moral vacuums democracy only frees often empty people to flail about trying to fill those vacuums — False American Assumption No 2: This one reads: People are not bad governments are bad It then follows as night the day that people are not really communists or fascists but that only governments and leaders are communists and fascists That is why the pictures of last week with the Romanian miners terrorizing the people were so disturbing The truth is that people groups and even periods of national history are indeed fascist or totalitarian — or simply murderous in power — as the blood flowing down the streets of Bucharest reminded us so rudely pseudo-intellectu- one society's "freeing" itself to another's Change the economic system this one insists and everything else will fall immediately into place Once again however recalcitrant Romania stands up and makes a crude gesture to our convictions For Romania is different in many respects These last few weeks not only were her profound fascist remnants from World War II reasserting themselves but the special spirit of her Orthodox Church was helping them along For in contrast to the of the Protestant churches and the and unifying "universal church" of Roman Catholicism the Orthodox churches are national and nationalistic Most of them in Eastern Europe went along with the communists and thus stand utterly discredited today This means there is a terrifying spiritual vacuum in a country such as Romania The Romanians have come out of their long dark tunnel and found only more emptiness in the flickering lights of their new demimonde Ail of this does not mean that we should! not celebrate this watershed period of history It does mean we should realize soberly that democracy is not in fact "the answer" Even the best off of these Eastern countries face years of searching or mourning of coming to terms with tho guilt and the tragedy of the last 45 to 80 years and then (and only then) trying to fill the moral and spiritual emptiness That is why you are a problem Romania That is why you are worse than a pest you are a reminder to us New World positivists of that tragedy that is potentially all of mankind's a tragedy that we Americans in our blessed isolation have never endured |