Show - momMillinknommallode oer114MWMISSIOOMIErr COMMENT Ry A Editorial Desk: 237-201- TUESDAY August 11 1992 9 11r13 htalt fa kt Zri bun t 'Ipi i 11 09 i Ls i 14 op-- ik Bake consecutive summer of drought Utahns should keep those wise words in mind when they turn the tap or sprinkler key to water lawns and gardens Thanks to the extraordinary foresight and sacrifice of earlier generations of Utahns most Wasatch Front communities have escaped severe restrictions on water use this summer Salt Lake City's Deer Creek Reservoir built in the 1930s has cushioned the drought's blow for Salt Lake County residents While large users of water for lawns and gardens — parks churches and schools — have been asked to cut consumption by 20 percent homeowners so far have been spared restrictions Outside Salt Lake County watering is restricted during certain hours for pressure irrigation customers of the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District and upstream irrigators now are being required to do without Though water officials in the state's most populous county haven't had to tighten the supplies to households by imposing mandatory restrictions residential customers should be conserving voluntarily Water saved now will be available for use later if the drought continues Salt Lake City water officials are attempting to hold over 16000 acre feet of water in Deer Creek Reservoir for use next year So that plan is on track and voluntary conservation will help achieve the goal gence about j foreign business competition with American corporations It's an intriguing but problematic idea The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the Senate Intelligence Committee has met with business leaders and spy masters to consider the benefits and pitfalls of economic intelligence The Journal story said that no one suggests sending moles to steal trade secrets from Toyota or Siemens but what's wrong with the CIA passing on to American businesses the economic information the agency gathers and digests from public sources? Nothing In fact the intelligence community should develop information on foreign nations' industrial policies and pass it along to the Commerce and Treasury departments for use in trade negotiations US agents also should be active in protecting American businesses from industrial espionage There should be no debate about that particularly when nations like the former Soviet Union have a long history of engagement in this area The questions get tricky however when government agencies must consider whether to pass information directly to a private company Suppose an American business is bidding for a contract Someone in the CIA finds out that a foreign competitor is bribing some Apparently people in Salt Lake County already are conserving voluntarily Water use in July was down about 20 percent However unlike most years the valley's hottest tem- peratures have occurred in August rather than July Nevertheless if people continue to be careful the conservation pattern should continue Lawns and gardens consume just ' over 50 percent of the treated potable water that customers in Salt Lake County use each year so conservation outdoors has a dramatic impact on overall supplies Homeowners should not water every day and they shouldn't water during the hottest hours gener- ally between 10 am and 6 pm Many water utilities also provide guidelines for summer watering As they watch current supplies local water officials also are developing plans for future conservation Some of those proposals will be affected by federal legislation that is providing funds to complete the massive Central Utah Project which carries water from the Colorado River drainage to the Wasatch Front Congress will require better conservation as a condition of con- tinued federal spending on the project Further Utah water officials are restricdeveloping plans for short-ter- tions should they become necessary Utahns need not wait for emergency measures to be imposed If they will do what they can now to save every precious drop they may forestall a crisis and avoid the frightening possibly devastating impact of widespread water shortages one to get the deal Should the CIA pass the information directly to the US firm? Probably But suppose the information an intelligence agency comes across doesn't involve anything illegal Suppose it merely discloses the foreign competitor's negotiating position Now should the information be passed? Directors of US intelligence agencies are leery of starting down any path that could lead eventually to the government stepping over the line into industrial espionage That involvement would mean that the US government and by extension the American public has no respect for intellectual or technological property The ethical niceties never have been observed where matters of national security are concerned The question that now must be faced is whether the rules should be bent for economic security as well Former CIA director Stansfield Turner told the Journal he doesn't see much difference between spying for national security and spying for economic security He may be right Ethical lines aren't the only things that get blurred either In a world increasingly dominated by businesses what constitutes a US firm anyway? In any case there's no doubting that in business as well as in defense information is power and the US government must find a way for its information gatherers to share their harvest directly with business To do otherwise would simply be naive multi-nation- Bush Finally Speaks Up About War in Bosnia Another Viewpoint From the Chicago Tribune President Bush finds himself between a rock and a hard place on Bosnia torn between wise caution and clamorous calls for action But at least and at last Bush has come out from under the rock abandoning the cocoon of passivity and inattention within which his administration seemed to be hiding from the painful questions posed by the war in The change manifested in the president's vigorous professions of US concern last week is certainly welcome Now American leadership can be brought to bear more effectively in international councils like the UN Security Council For Bush is right that assistance for Bosnia must be multilateral Like many who have studied or received expert advice on the situation the president has a healthy respect for the complexities of the conflict in Bosnia He also appreciates the difficulties that would attend beefed-uinternational involvement At the same time he shares the widespread revulsion at the allegations of humanitarian abuses particularly the possible torture and killings of civilians in detention centers Bosnia-Herzegovin- p a On Thursday responding to the advocates of action with admirable forcefulness and a clarity of purpose too long absent the president announced that the US would push for quick passage of a UN Security Council resolution approving the use of force if necessary to deliver food and medicine to Bosnia's war victims And at a press conference Friday Bush pledged that "we will not rest until the international community has gained access to any and all detention camps" Reports that people are being starved concentrabeaten and killed in Serb-ruouttion camps have stirred rage and given rise to ever more urgent demands to intervene n near-univers- al Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain has urged arming Bosnian forces to improve their chances against the Serbs who have seized a large part of Bosnia and laid siege to the capital of Sarajevo The US has wisely rejected that advice for now Action in Bosnia by an international military force should it come to that ought not be in support of one side or another It should be limited strictly to ensuring the success of UN humanitarian missions objective That may seem a Yet it probably is the only one an intervening force could expect to achieve too-mode- st Olti Rtil colvytm-g- g 2 tl 'I aRs A r " 4 iAy - e - si 00 le'I j' - ' '4'''dlE-- i 'It 1 4- - :i - e (01J( IRca1 L1L KoROON 7 "'IP - -- --- NI N a Ak- f l'INN Dt I e OA NO 1I 14-- i1 : - a 1: 11 — efro 41 ttRVal taNINS The CIA Meets GM What should Uncle Sam do with all those spies who came in from the Cold War? Some people in business and government think the CIA should be working harder to develop and share intelli- 1 CR UR- - Utah Should Cut Lawn Garden Watering As I State During Drought Even before "Wayne's World" Americans subscribed to the adage "Waste not want not" As the state swelters through the dog days of a sixth -- - - at 4" " t ri ' wo 'fi it fr 4041 A rs II s ii --- -- y i 41162111 - 3(1-- ---) : 7 fie — rid It 1 Governors Raise Expectations for Education But What Are They Doing for Preschoolers? CHICAGO TRIBUNE SERVICE CHICAGO — OK governors you've made some upbeat news at your annual meeting about your commitment to preschool education That kind of talk plays well in an election year You've emphasized your commitment to the goal your National Governors' Association and President Bush announced two years ago of having every child ready for school by the year 2000 That's good for more upbeat press You have agreed on three objectives for state efforts on behalf of preschool children: better health and nutrition programs more social services for parents in readying children for school and more programs for poor and disabled youngsters You won't lose support by taking stands like that But governors where is the money to turn your fine promises into reality? Talk is cheap Political promises are as free as hot air in August The children you say should be ready to succeed in school in the year 2000 will be born just three years from now How are you going to pay for the new programs you say they need? And what are you doing to marshal efthe public opinion such a fort requires? You are right of course about the incredible payoff for helping children learn before they start to school Enough research has already been done to say with certainty that preschool education reduces school failure cuts the need for special education and helps prevent dropouts unemployment welfare dependency and other problems It also increases academic achievement and is linked to increased college attendance and jobs You are also right to point out that states will save at least four times as much money in the costs of special education welfare crime unemployment and other problems as they will spend on preschool education Why aren't you pushing harder for such investments in your large-scal- e I Joan Beck 1 11 ‘ own states? learn in useful ways that make children happy — to provide as it were optimal mental nourishment and to prevent mental malnutrition So governors what specific proposals do you intend to push to give all children the benefit of optimal mental nourishment during these critical years of brain development? Head Start programs offer children too little too late to help much They reach only some of the poor and high-risyoungsters who are eligible And they often get so bogged down in health and other problems of the children that they have little or no time to spend on cognitive development When money for existing schools is already painfully tight in most states governors how will you find enough tax dollars for a major expansion of early learning programs? Will you concentrate on the poor and those most likely to be at risk of mental malnutrition? Or will you plan programs to help all kinds of parents nourish their children's brains optimally the better to build political support? (A major study in Missouri showed that regardless of family status youngsters benefited from school-baseoutreach efforts to show parents how to enrich the learning opportunities in their k There are even more benefits you could emphasize A rich learning environment during the first years of life actually affects the way the brain itself develops how the connections between the neurons grow and in a real sense how intelligent the brain becomes for the rest of life Some advocates of early learning estimate that a mentally stimulating environment during the first few years of life can increase lifelong intelligence by as much as 20 or 30 points of IQ (however rough such a measure of mental ability is) But the opportunity to influence brain development diminishes as a child grows and the brain becomes less "plastic" Enriching a youngster's learning environment is far more effective during the preschool years than the same amount of learning opportunity later on Evidences of the remarkable ability of young children to learn are easy to see by anyone who bothers to look Babies are born with an innate drive to learn They enjoy learning deliberately choose fresh stimulation and new experiences whenever they can They have an insatiable need to explore to touch to handle to manipulate to experiment — even to the exasperation and exhaustion of their parents Young children also have a unique and irreplaceable ability to learn whatever language — or languages — is used in their environment Never again can an individual learn language with the ease and fluency of a preschool child Early learning efforts should be essentially ways to feed this insatiable drive to - d home) What kinds of programs will you pro- vide to reach the children who need them most — those who live in the toughest parts of the inner cities and those in the poorest and most isolated rural areas? Severe family dysfunction and very real urban dangers have cut into the effectiveness of prototype efforts The year 2000 may seem conveniently far enough away so you can safely talk about your commitment to preschool children without doing much about it governors But the idea is so good the promise of early learning is so great and the need for such efforts is so enormous that voters should hold you to your promises whether they are just political hot air or not I I July August Compete Equally for Vacation Time CHICAGO TRIBUNE SERVICE NEW YORK — Last weekend I was talking to a woman whose son has been out of work for eight months I asked where he was and she told me he'd gone away on vacation I guess I'm lucky It's been so long since I was unemployed that I didn't even know you take a vacation when you aren't working Vacations are getting longer little by little It hasn't been many years since most people got two weeks Now almost everyone gets three and a lot take four weeks It's surprising to me that the French the Germans and the British all get more vacation time than Americans A lot of them take six weeks although they split it between summer and winter I don't know about the Japanese For all I know they don't take any I've just finished my month's vacation and I liked it a lot but I'm ready to go back to work full time For one thing I need the rest A summer vacation is one of mankind's happiest traditions although people disagree on several matters regarding vacations One of the major arguments is whether it's better to take a summer vacation in July or August Some of the arguments pro and con: JULY: The Fourth is a great way to start your vacation off with a bang AUGUST: You get two or three days off for July 4th anyway Why waste vaca ---- (0 0 i! Andy Rooney tion time? JULY: Mornings are great because the sun rises before six and the day lasts almost as long as you want it to before you go to bed AUGUST: The sun comes up too early in July You can't sleep You might as well get up and go to work JULY: Even when it's hot things aren't usually parched the way they get in August AUGUST: The grass doesn't grow as fast in August so if you go away the place doesn't look so bad when you can't mow the lawn JULY: It's the beginning of summer Everything is fresh and new after spring AUGUST: August is the prettiest name for any month When you say you're taking off August it sounds good JULY: Rich people take August (Sometimes they take both months of course) The boss probably takes his vacation in August If you take yours in July you have more time without him around AUGUST: It's better to be there when the boss is there and better to be away when the boss is away That way you don't miss anything And also it's harder for him to fire you if he has to look you in the eye JULY: Everything gets going for fall in August If you're away you miss out on the start of everything AUGUST: If it's been a cool spring the water's too cold to swim in during the first couple of weeks in July JULY: All the vacation places are too crowded in August AUGUST: All those little gnats and black flies in July JULY: If you go to a resort town it's more fun to shop because all the merchandise in the stores is new AUGUST: Everything's cheaper in August Stores are afraid they're going to get stuck with everything so they sell it for half off JULY: It begins to feel like the end of everything in August Towards the end of the month you begin to get a cold chill feeling and the rustle in the trees tells you the leaves are going to die and fall to the ground very soon AUGUST: You save the best until last If you take your vacation in August you get to look forward to it all during July and then in August it's all over for the people who took it in July They don't have anything to look forward to I - - |