Show 4A Ogden r Saturday April 5 1986 Opinion Standard-Examine- r Mental health trip a questionable use of taxpayer dollars Weber County's Mental Health Department has come tax dollars up with a new twist for spending Broadly defined it's called mass junketing A mental health conference was the incentive for 20 employees of the Weber County Mental Health Department — the contingent lead by director Doug Conrow — to spend several days in the Nevada spa city of Las Vegas this past week That number docs not count Weber Commission Chairman Roger Rawson who spent two extra days at board meetings Weber County Auditor Delbert Dabb said the Nevada conference was approved earlier by Commissioners Raw-so-n and William Bailey to include the expenditure of approximately $7500 This sum is in accordance with the county's travel policy of paying per diem for hotel reservation and food The amount does not cover the mileage at 20 12 cents per mile that will be paid when expense forms are submitted by the delegation While Weber County allowed the nearly two dozen employees to participate at the National Council of Community Mental Health conference neighboring Davis County permitted five mental health department workers the same privilege Larger Salt Lake County sent seven representatives Commissioner Rawson said the expenditure is justified Previous conventions have been in Washington DC and New Orleans The proximity of Las Vegas made it advantageous to send the top heavy Weber County delegation he said Any effort to defend the junket with the argument that it was more than partially financed by state funds does not wash There is no free lunch it all comes out of the taxpayers' pockets The public has come to tolerate — not accept — traveling as a standard fringe benefit to distant cities by public employees and elected officials for the learning experiences supposedly relevant to jobs or assignments The Las Vegas junket by these Weber County employees is more than an ordinary standard fringe benefit It is not as Commissioner Rawson said "a good investment" It is an unconscionable raid on the public treasury Scandalizing r Editorial From a 1936 Just before each conference in Salt Lake City anonymous attacks are made on the stewardship of those high in authority That seems to be the way of the disgruntled in the modern world Wherever there is leadership assaults are made and suspicion is cultivated NEA GRAPHIC The post-Reaga- n (EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second of columns on the Democratic Party's prospects after Ronald Reagan) two WASHINGTON — Whom would you bet on in a presidential election between an OK Republican vice president running after eight pretty good years under a very popular president and an untested young Democrat who doesn't say much more than that we can do better? Well the last time Americans faced that choice they chose a Democrat That matchup sounds something like Vice President George Bush vs Sen Gary Hart or any of a other Democrats in 1988 but what I was describing was Richard Nixon against John F Kennedy in 1960 — after eight years of Dwight Eisenhower The Kennedy-Nixoanalogy came up again and again directly and indirectly during a week of interviews about Democratic prospects in the 1986 and 1988 elections As often as not it was concerned Republicans making the comparison Newt Gingrich a bright assertive and very conservative Republican congressman from Georgia laid out three 1988 scenarios and he was afraid that two of them could produce Democratic presidents: "One is a referendum on the Reagan years We take no risks and run on Reagan's coattails We lose that fight because Americans always want "Two is an issueless something new" campaign a referendum on personalities "Three we lay That could go either way" out a new agenda a strategy to implement the vision of the Reagan years That we haven't done yet" A more neutral observer political scientist William Schneider of the American Enterprise Institute for Policy Studies put the same thought this way: "All Kennedy really did in 960 was to say it was time to get the country moving again In 1988 it could be time again" But that was John Kennedy we're not Democrats: 1988 Richard Reeves likely to see the likes of him again soon Or will we? It is well to remember that when John Kennedy was running he was no John Kennedy The young senator from Massachusetts was an untested and widely newcomer on whom a tiny majority of voters decided to take a chance We are a people of change and as Gingrich noted we don't buy last year's soap "We have a better facade oi" leadership" the Georgia congressman said of Republicans "But that only means we have more people who are better known The facade will collapse when Reagan goes and other personalities are forced to define themselves against an agenda for the future" On the other side Gary Hart said: "I expect Reagan will ride into the sunset a very popular man But that is no problem for us It can't be transferred The president might help someone get the Republican nomination but that's it" It's not that the Democrats don't have many problems along the road to 1988 They do beginning with a struggle to satisfy the party's two core groups — blacks and organized labor — without alienating a national majority that is certainly white and probably But with the possible exception of Gov Mario Cuomo of New York all of the Democrats who would be president are in Hart's phrase "new generation" They can begin the campaign with a relatively clean slate — one of the tricks of American politics is to let people think you are anything they want you to be Fill in the blanks folks It's a cynical strategy but often a winner The Republicans on the other hand have to live with (and defend) the good the bad and the ugly of the Reagan years And since There are weapons to overcome 'weaker sex' When (Premenstrual Syndrome) first getting widespread recognition as a physiologiand psychological disruption affecting millions I of women avoided writing about it I was relieved to learn that the symptoms had a physical basis and were not just "in our heads" but I still was reluctant to call added attention to anything that could be possibly misused to proclaim women's biological inferiority After all we have spent years trying to live down that "biology is destiny" argument So I rationalized far be it for me to lend credibility to linking behavior and menstruation I certainly did not want to sanction PMS as Justification for women unable to cope with their children unable to perform on the job or unable "to curb murderous acts But my thinking changed when I attended a PMS workshop led by Jan Thornburg a clinical nurse who confounded a group practice for professional nurse counselors Her emphasis was on ac- PMS be- gan cal Rusty Brown ceptance and self help and not on PMS as a reason for special treatment from family employers and the legal system The audience was made up of women seeking help Most said they fell within the 40 percent of women who in the days before their period frequently experience fatigue anxiety anger depression or irritability "I slapped my son" said one Others admitted "I nag my husband unmercifully" "I fly off the handle at work" "I cry easily" They talked of guilt after their outbursts and how their shame affected their Others complained of physical changes including bloating clumsiness and cravings for chocolate or salt Some said their symptoms began after childbirth or when they started taking birth control pills One woman had struggled with periodic depression since age 12 Ms Thornburg explained that these mental and physical changes occur when there is a temporary but predictable hormonal imbalance between body levels of progesterone and estrogen Having recorded her own moods and symptoms day by day for the past seven years she is firmly convinced that a chart is the best starting point for every woman "When you see feelings falling into a cyclical pattern you validate yourself It's concrete evidence that changes will occur at certain times and that you are not going crazy" treatment begins between ovulaThe tion and menstruation MsThornburg recommends lifestyle changes known to help many women: cutting back on red meat salt sugar alcohol and processed foods cutting out caffeine candy chocolate and ice cream increasing whole grains fruits leafy vegetables beans and peas the president himself seems to have gotten personal credit for the good and good feelings only the rest may be left for the Republican who would succeed him Beyond that any Republican has to thread his way through an obstacle course of zealots to get the nomination The GOP looks like the Democrats in the early 1970s except that instead of dealing with liberal partisans of amnesty acid and abortion the Republicans have to contend with conservatives dedicated to minority causes from to creationism Those are the Republicans that Senate majority leader Bob Dole alternately referred to as and "screwballs" during our conversation about the Republican route to the White House in 1988 At the same time President Reagan's former secretary of education Terrel Bell was calling some of the same people "radical nuts" in an article published in an education journal Call them what you will they think they have veto power over potential Republican" nominees — as activists once did over Democratic nominees Any Republican candidate is going to have to tell those conservatives things in 1986 and '87 that he will regret in October of 1988 A lot has changed in American politics since 1960 George Wallace led Southern whites (and some Northerners too) out of the Democratic Party and John Anderson led suburban liberal Republicans out of the Republican Party The Republicans gained in the exchange — Wallace got twice as many votes as Anderson — but all party loyalties were weakened in the process So neither party nor its nominee can be particularly secure nationally any more The question "What have you done for me lately?" has more and more meaning in each presidential election In 1988 as in 1960 the answer could favor young Democrats calling for change Universal Press Syndicate stereo-typ- e Dietary supplements including- a viatmin-complex and other vitamins also seem to help many women Vigorous exercise at least three times a week alleviates other PMS symptoms particularly depression If lifestyle methods fail some doctors prescribe suppositories of natural as opposed to synthetic This treatment has been widely used progesterone in England Ms Thornburg likens our understanding of PMS to recent discoveries that some types of diabetes can be managed through diet and exercise Many diabetics now have a chance to control the malady instead of letting it control them The same can be said for PMS We can moderate it and not let it interfere with our lives or our image as consistently capable contributing women Acceptance and against an ancient e Newspaper are key weapons of the "weaker" sex Enterprise Association There's more to insurance problems than big jury awards WASHINGTON — We hear a lot of horror stories There's the one about the guy who entered a race carrying a refrigerator on his back He fell and was injured and sued the producers of the race for a million dollars He won There's the one which interested the President A man was pulling the cord on his power lawn mower suffered a heart attack and sued the manufacturer for a million dollars He settled out of court for an undisclosed but substantial sum There's the one about the horse hitting the Pinto That's Green versus Ford Motor Company Green was driving at night when a horse ambled out of the field and onto the road He hit the horse which went straight into the air and came down on the roof collapsing it He sued for a million and a half and won All these stones and others arc cited as examawards which juries are ples of the tremendous mistakenly handing out to people who take the trouble to sue The result say the storytellers is Tom Braden that the insurance companies are going broke and the President has to come to their aid with proposals which would put a stop or a ceiling on the silly and expensive awards But when you look into the stories you find there is another side That man who entered a race carrying a refrigerator was a world champion bod builder He was given a written contract testifying that all the equipment had been tested for safety The trial proved that it had not been tested and that in fact the chief engineer had w arned producers of the race — televised on CBS — that he didn't think the equipment was safe The man who had a heart attack trying to start the lawn mower proved in court that the lawn mower was defective according to the manufacturer's own specifications It would not have started if he had pulled the starter rope from now until he died a natural death The story of the Green family is a sad one Mr Green was driving his wife home from the hospital where she had just been delivered of a baby She was struck on the temple when the roof collapsed under the weight of the horse and was killed Mr Green proved in court that the Pinto's roof could not withstand the 5000 pounds of pressure specified by the National Transportation Safety Board and that the company's records of vehicles which failed this test had been destroyed So it turns out that jurors weren't quite so silly as the anecdotes make them sound It turns out that if you were on the jury you might have voted for the plaintiff Most important it turns out that the plaintiff cither had a contract (in the case of the weightliftcr) or a presumption of product safe- - l" There's no doubt Americans are suing and recovering for what we used to accept as accidents There were 1579 product safety suits in 1975 and 10745 in 1984 But is this altogether a bad thing? Doesn't the threat of lawsuits exert a discipline on manufacturers forcing them to obey laws follow regulations inspect products? Might we not otherwise experience a lot more "pain and suffering" than we do now? As for the insurance problem the companies lowered premiums several years ago in a price war which turned into a disaster They counted on investing their money at high interest rates for their profits When the interest rates went down they were wounded and they are now trying to heal their wounds by raising the rates again The President's proposal to put a cap on jury awards would have been more candid if he had also proposed a cap on insurance premiums When his proposal hits the Congress we may find out to what extent huge jury awards are crippling insurance companies and to what extent they have crippled themselves Los Angeles Times Syndicate |