<#FROWN:A01\>
After 35 straight veto victories, intense lobbying fails president with election in offing
By Elaine S. Povich
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
WASHINGTON - Despite intense White House lobbying, Congress has voted to override the veto of a cable television regulation bill, dealing President Bush the first veto defeat of his presidency just four weeks before the election.
Monday night, the Senate overrode the veto 74-25. the same margin by which the upper house approved the bill last month and comfortably above the two-thirds majority needed.
Not one senator changed sides, a blow to Bush's prestige after he had heavily lobbied Republican senators, urging them not to embarrass him this close to the election.
Both California senators, Republican John Seymour and Democrat Alan Cranston, voted to sustain the veto.
The bill was immediately sent to the House, which voted 308-114 for the override, 26 more than needed. A cheer went up as the House vote was tallied, ending Bush's string of successful vetoes at 35.
Among those voting to override in the Senate was Democratic vice presidential nominee Al Gore, a co-author of the bill. He then left the chamber to join Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton on 'Larry King Live' on CNN.
Asked whether it was a blow to Bush for the override to fall so close to the election, Clinton said, "It won't do him any good."
Bush attributed the vote to effective lobbying by the TV broadcast networks on Capitol Hill.
"I think I was right on principle," Bush said in an interview on ABC's 'Good Morning America.'
"I think the approach I had would have kept consumer costs down. It was a battle between the networks against cable, and the networks did a very good job of convincing people that their approach would keep costs down."
Of his first veto defeat, Bush said: "We've had a good streak. We won 35 straight. Lost one. Not a bad record."
The administration, all but giving up on the House, had concentrated its efforts on the Senate. Bush lobbied eight Republican senators over the weekend, telephoning them from the campaign trail and inviting a select group to breakfast at the White House on Sunday.
But it became apparent Monday evening that the pressure had failed when, one after another, the lobbied senators voted against their president. As each of their votes was announced, an "ooooh" was heard from the packed galleries.
Some of the targeted senators had indicated they would switch and support Bush, but when it became apparent the president would lose, not one changed his vote - including Senate Minority Whip Alan Simpson of Wyoming, who had tried to sway other senators to Bush's side.
"There was no point for those who wanted to support the president to switch when he wasn't going to win anyway," said Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash.
In the House, 230 Democrats, 77 Republicans and one independent voted for the bill while 29 Democrats and 85 Republicans opposed it.
The bill was passed in the Senate by 50 Democrats and 24 Republicans and opposed by seven Democrats and 18 Republicans.
Many Republicans, especially those up for re-election, viewed the cable television re-regulation bill, which was aimed at lowering cable rates, as a boon to consumers.
But the politics of the issue were visible. As an example, Democratic leaders in the Senate allowed Republicans to control the debate for and against the bill, a highly unusual move and an apparent effort to show Bush at odds with members of his own party.
"This is an effort to embarrass President Bush 30 days before the election," Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas said before the vote. "I urge my colleagues to sustain the president's veto. He hasn't asked for much."
Bush put his reputation of governing by veto on the line in urging the Senate to sustain him one last time before the election.
Some Republican senators said they had advised Bush not to sign or veto the cable legislation but instead let it go into law without his signature, thus avoiding the high-profile veto fight.
The cable television re-regulation bill was drafted in response to consumer complaints to Congress that cable prices had risen at three times the inflation rate and that many cable companies hold monopolies.
But it soon became a high-stakes fight between the cable industry and over-the-air broadcasters, each using their own medium to press their opposing points.
In frequent ads, the cable industry argued that rates would actually rise, not decrease, if the bill became law because of a provision that requires the cable companies to reimburse broadcasters for programming the cable companies now get for free.
Broadcasters and consumer groups used their airwaves to argue for the bill, noting that it would limit rates for cable service, require cable operators to meet customer-service standards and make it easier for competing cable companies to enter the market.
Clinton follows rivals to 'talk TV'
But few callers get through to candidate
EXAMINER NEWS SERVICES
GAINESVILLE, Fla. - Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton went boldly where his presidential rivals have already gone - CNN's 'Larry King Live' - but callers to the show didn't get much of a say in the proceedings.
For a show billed as an opportunity for voters to question Clinton and running mate Al Gore, only six callers got through as King did most of the asking. One of the callers was Clinton's mother, Virginia Kelley.
President Bush appeared on the King show Sunday night - and took no viewer calls. Independent candidate Ross Perot has had several sessions with King, including one in February during which he first said he was interested in running for president.
Clinton and Gore made their foray into TV-talk politics after a daylong bus caravan across central Florida as they tried to pad a narrow lead in a state that last supported a Democrat for president in 1976.
The Democrats were wrapping up their Florida trip with a morning rally at the University of Florida before heading on to Nashville and another unorthodox campaign appearance - this time on the 'Donahue' show.
With the first of three presidential debates set for Sunday in St. Louis, Clinton said he was eager to engage Bush. And he disputed the president's assertion, made in Florida over the weekend, that Bush's military service made him more qualified to be commander-in-chief.
"That's a matter of honest disagreement, but I just disagree, and history indicates we have had a lot of good commanders-in-chief with no military service," Clinton said.
Clinton also upped the ante somewhat in his rhetorical war with Bush over the president's dealings with Saddam Hussein prior to the Persian Gulf war, saying a special prosecutor should investigate the Bush administration's favorable trade dealings with Iraq and the extent to which Bush continued helping Hussein after the U.S. administration learned Hussein was using agriculture credits for military purposes.
Asked by King whether there should be "a special prosecutor, special investigation," of the administration's pre-war trade agreements with Hussein, Clinton responded, "I think there should be."
Clinton also defended his 1970 travels, which Bush's camp has insinuated were somehow connected to his alleged organization of at least one anti-Vietnam War protest as a graduate student in England.
A statement by the Bush campaign, echoing a report in the Washington Times Monday, charged that Clinton had "turned up in the Soviet Union ... six weeks after he helped organize a massive anti-war protest in London."
"They're pretty good at starting stuff, those guys are," Clinton said of the Republicans.
He said that starting in the first week of 1970 he had toured Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland before spending a week in the Soviet Union. He said he had returned to England via Czechoslovakia during a 40-day break from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar in 1969 and 1970.
Newsweek magazine reported Sunday that the FBI had been called to investigate after State Department officials found that several pages had been ripped out of a Clinton passport file.
Newsweek suggested that the material could have been removed or destroyed by someone sympathetic to the Clinton campaign. Or, the magazine speculated, a supporter of the Bush administration might have taken the documents to give the appearance that incriminating material had been removed.
"I didn't even know I had a State Department file until this rumor came up," Clinton said.
On the campaign trail Monday, Bush attacked Clinton during campaign stops in Dover, Del. Bush concentrated his fire on Arkansas' poor standing among the 50 states in the death rate for children under 14, the number of children in poverty and the violent death rate of youngsters.
In all those categories, Bush said the national average had improved but the average in Arkansas had slipped. The president accused Clinton of "not leveling with the American people" on his dealing with the problems.
Bush also criticized Clinton for his qualified endorsement of the North American Free Trade Agreement among the United States, Canada and Mexico, saying his opponent had wavered on the pact, which will be initialed by negotiators Wednesday in Texas.
"Once upon a time he said he was for NAFTA, the free trade agreement," Bush told the crowd. "Then the labor bosses told him they were against it, so he said he wasn't sure he was for it or against it.
"Now he's looked at the polls, and he sees the American people want NAFTA, so just yesterday he said he's for it."
But the president said Clinton "saddled his support with all kinds of reservations and qualifications."
Clinton endorsed the agreement Sunday but said additional steps should be taken to ensure the protection of American jobs and the environment as the agreement was implemented.
Taunting disrupts campaign stroll
Vice president's visit to S.F. raises money, ire
By John Jacobs
EXAMINER CHIEF POLITICAL WRITER
Like a moth to flame, Vice President Dan Quayle is drawn to controversy in San Francisco.
Last May, he unleashed a national uproar here for rebuking fictional TV newscaster Murphy Brown for her decision to have a baby without a husband.
Late Monday, four weeks before the Nov.3 election, he drew crowds of angry, obscenity-spouting protesters who forced him back into his black Cadillac El Dorado limousine as he tried to walk along Grant Avenue in Chinatown.
Gay protesters chanting anti-Quayle slogans prompted the vice president's press secretary, David Beckwith, to charge that Democrat Bill Clinton "advocated affirmative action for gays."
"It is our view," he said, "they are not a protected class. The only way to determine who is in that class is to ask people, and we don't think that's anybody's business."
Even people in oats and ties were shouting "four more weeks" and "shame" as Quayle, always smiling, tried to walk from St. Mary's Chinese Catholic Center, where he toured several preschool classrooms, to Miriwa Restaurant. There, he appeared at a fund-raising dinner for Republican Senate candidate Bruce Herschensohn. Earlier in the day, Quayle appeared at a closed fund-raiser for Herschensohn in Palo Alto.
"We are going to win California - put it in the bank," Quayle told some 400 guests at the Miriwa, about half of them Asian, who paid $125 each to give the vice president a warm welcome.
Angry protesters
Across the street at the Ping Yuen Housing Center on Pacific Avenue, the local Clinton-Gore campaign sponsored an 'in-your-face' event criticizing Quayle.
"How dare you come to Chinatown and walk through her and think that's all we want from you, a photo op?" said Alicia Wong, a teacher at City College of San Francisco and a member of the Democratic National Committee. "Do you think we are so stupid we don't know what you've been doing to our community for the past 10 years? There are 7,000 children here living below the poverty line. Is that a good photo op?"
During his evening remarks, Quayle recounted his "magnificent experience" at the preschool, but he got the name wrong and called it "St. Francis."
Describing his "walk" afterward, Quayle said: "You'll probably see it on TV.
<#FROWN:A02\>
U.S. CONGRESS RUSH TOWARD ADJOURNMENT
Dilemma headed Bush's way
Senate readies to pass a tempting but tax-tainted bill
By Michael Kranish
BOSTON GLOBE
WASHINGTON - Just as President Bush is trying to assure voters that he will not raise taxes, the Senate is putting his political will power to the test by preparing to pass a bill filled with programs that Bush has sought for months - but also including items that might be interpreted as tax hikes.
The bill is politically attractive to the president because it includes many measures that Bush has called for, including enterprise zones to revive urban and rural areas, and increased tax deductibility for individual retirement accounts. Moreover, it eliminates the luxury tax on boats and airplanes, as Bush has requested.
But some critics say the bill is a giveaway to special interests such as boat manufacturers and real estate tax shelter sales people. The $27 billion bill is such a political football that Democrat Bill Clinton has decided to take no position on it because it is too complicated, his spokesman said.
If this were any other time than a month before the presidential election, Bush would probably sign the bill and declare a great victory. After all, on Saturday, after Bush threatened to veto the legislation, Senate negotiators eliminated the two major taxes in the bill, leaving only some lesser tax items, some of which Bush had supported in the first place.
The bill appears a classic example of congressional compromise, not the 'gridlock Congress' that Bush has spent the year bashing for refusing to enact his programs. With the elimination of most of the tax hikes, some Republicans said it was tilted in Bush's favor. Bush seemed aware of his dilemma Monday when he acknowledged that he was not sure whether he would veto the bill.
"I have some real reservations about part of it, but the problem is they always send me something that has some of the things I want, and then loaded up with, in this instance, taxes," Bush said on ABC-TV Monday. "So I'll have to wait and see what final form it is in, because there are some things in there I like and have been fighting for."
That might seem like a natural opening for Clinton to accuse the president of waffling on the bill. But the bill is so politically sensitive that Clinton is avoiding the issue.
It is also possible that Republicans will help Bush avoid the issue altogether by filibustering the bill, delaying a vote until after the election. But many Republicans, such as Sen. Bob Packwood of Oregon, said that Bush should sign the bill because it had so many elements that the president had backed.
Hard line on taxes
With Clinton remaining out of the fray, the focus is on whether Bush will get in political trouble if he signs a bill that could be interpreted as a tax hike.
Bush may have put himself in a bind because, in an effort to erase the memory of his broken "no new taxes" pledge, Bush has said he will not accept new tax increases. The dilemma for Bush is that the tax items in this bill are not normally considered tax increases. They are mostly technical measures, such as changing the way securities dealers calculate their inventory to bring in more tax revenues.
In this campaign, however, Bush has made an issue out of saying that anything that brings in more money to the government is a tax increase. For example, in charging that Democrat Bill Clinton has raised taxes and fees 128 times as governor, Bush has said that everything from the extension of a racing season to a fee for mineral rights is a tax or fee.
If Bush now signs a bill that has several items that would qualify as a tax or fee, it might undermine Bush's claims about Clinton's tax record.
Energy bill running out of time
Nuclear waste dump opponents stall measure in the Senate
EXAMINER NEWS SERVICES
WASHINGTON - After nearly two years and countless compromises, a long-awaited energy bill is in danger of stalling because of a dispute over a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada - and the rush by the 102nd Congress to adjourn.
The legislation, which would boost conservation through tax incentives and new efficiency standards and speed construction of nuclear power plants, cleared the House on Monday by a 363-60 vote.
But it immediately ran into problems in the Senate, where Nevada's two members vowed to delay the bill because of a provision they said would weaken health standards for a proposed nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain 100 miles northeast of Las Vegas.
The bill's supporters said they still expected Senate approval of the complex and sweeping energy package, which would mark the first major overhaul of U.S. energy policy in more than a decade.
But with most lawmakers eager to adjourn, the Nevadans hoped a delay threat might force Sen. Bennett Johnston, D-La., the bill's manager, to abandon the Yucca Mountain provision. Early Tuesday as Congress met, neither Johnston nor Nevada Democrats Richard Bryan and Harry Reid had budged.
Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, said that if necessary he was prepared to call adjournment-minded senators back on Thursday, after the Yom Kippur holiday break, to deal with the bill - something few lawmakers would relish. It then would take the approval of 60 members to bring the measure up for a vote.
The bill, more than 900 pages long, touches on virtually every area of U.S. energy policy, from requiring new efficiency standards for lights and shower heads to making it easier to build nuclear reactors.
By voice vote, both houses approved a $250 billion defense spending bill for the 12 months that began Oct. 1. It earmarks $3.8 billion for the Strategic Defense Initiative anti-missile system; Bush had asked $5.4 billion. The measure also would pay for completing a fleet of 20 B-2 Stealth bombers.
Also in the House of Representatives' bill was more than $65 million for refurbishing the Presidio over the next two years.
The bill also included language that protects San Francisco against legal damages caused by the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard's massive hazardous waste problems.
"This protects us from any lawsuit stemming from toxic wastes," said San Francisco Redevelopment Agency Executive Director Edward Helfeld, noting that the federal action - assuming it is signed by President Bush - would remove a principal barrier to conversion of the shipyard to civilian use.
The shipyard has been discussed as a possible expansion site for the UC Medical Center as well as a principal source of future jobs.
But before new uses can be developed, much public investment will be needed to improve the 540-acre site's rundown systems for water delivery, storm runoff, sanitary disposal, fire protection and transportation.
In other action:
A handful of conservative Republicans killed a bill that would have lifted the federal prohibition on using tissue from induced abortions in research on transplantation. Although 85 senators had indicated support for ending the Ban, 12 senators who oppose abortion voted against limiting debate on the measure. Their threat of a new filibuster was enough to force abandonment of the measure.
The threat of a filibuster also killed the so-called "Brady bill," requiring a five-day waiting period before a handgun sale could be completed.
The House and Senate cleared for Bush's signature a $14 billion foreign-aid bill. It guarantees $10 billion of loans that would be used to build housing and create jobs for Jewish immigrants in Israel. Israel also would get $3 billion of aid; Egypt, $2.1 billion; republics formerly in the Soviet Union would get $417 million if they meet human rights criteria.
Both houses completed a $2.3 billion bill to finance congressional operations over the next 12 months. That is a $29 million cut from last year.
Brazil's uncertain future
Democracy fragile despite orderly impeachment
By Gary Marx
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
BRASILIA, Brazil - The process of impeaching Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello for corruption was smooth, quick and efficient. There was no whitewash, no military coup.
Collor - Brazil's first freely elected president in 29 years - was suspended by the lower house of Congress after being accused of skimming millions of dollars from a bribery and kickback scheme operated by his 1989 campaign treasurer.
And though last week's action suspends him for only 180 days, until the Senate votes on whether to make impeachment final, his removal has been described as a triumph of democracy - an affirmation of change in a country and continent known for coups, assassinations, mind-boggling corruption and government ineptitude.
"It is the first time in Brazilian history that a president has been put out of power by the interplay between Congress, the Supreme Court and the population, without any threat, any military pressure at all," said Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a prominent senator who was named Brazil's new foreign minister. "The significance is that democracy is well-rooted in Brazilian society."
But is democracy secure in Brazil? And what about the rest of South America, where freely elected leaders govern the 10 largest nations?
In a continent with weak democratic traditions, where power is still wielded by individuals, Collor's removal by constitutional means demonstrates to South Americans that democracy can work.
There were massive demonstrations demanding his removal. Congress heard the voice of the people. And the president was ousted.
But Collor's removal may prove to be the exception rather than the rule: While South Americans prefer democracy, in most countries their elected leaders have not even begun to solve dire economic and social problems - unequal distribution of land, the lack of basic health care and education, a huge gap between rich and poor.
Most elected officials in South America continue to be the elite, using political power for personal gain rather than to help the impoverished masses. What South Americans are demanding is a system of government that helps them, and there is little consensus that democracy is the only answer.
"Our democracy is fragile. We need to get the population to believe that democracy is working for them... The most important need in Brazil is to achieve equality," said Jose Murilo de Carvalho, a leading political scientist.
Democracy is most secure in Chile and Colombia, two nations with long democratic traditions that have prospered in the last decade. It also seems relatively stable in Argentina, primarily because the memory is fresh of that nation's bloody and disastrous military rule in the 1970s and early 1980s.
But it's also because President Carlos Menem has brought economic stability to Argentina after decades of hyperinflation and financial insecurity. All bets are off, however, if his free-market economic program collapses. A military coup is unlikely; political instability is not.
In Venezuela, few people rallied behind President Carlos Andres Perez when he was nearly ousted in a military coup in February. Perez, who was elected to a second term as president in 1988, has carried out an ambitious free-market reform program that shows signs of reversing a steep economic decline.
Many Venezuelans believe he has lined his pockets at a time of economic crisis. Most Venezuelans think their Congress is no better: just a collection of thieves looting the treasury.
The young military officers who led the coup promised an honest and efficient government. It's a familiar chant, but many Venezuelans believed it. The nation's last military dictatorship ended in 1958, and its mercurial and strong-armed rule are a distant memory.
In Peru today, President Alberto Fujimori has a 74 percent approval rating six months after suspending the constitution and assuming near-dictatorial powers, up from 60 percent just before Shining Path guerrilla leader Abimael Guzman was captured last month.
Since democracy was restored in Peru in 1980, poverty has soared and Shining Path has spread its war across the nation. Fujimori said the nation's Congress and judiciary were frustrating his efforts to defeat the leftist guerrillas and reverse the nation's economic decline.
Fujimori, a political novice elected in 1990, is seen as an honest and hard-working leader. But Peruvians also will turn against Fujimori if the guerrilla war intensifies and the economy fails to improve.
<#FROWN:A03\>
Bush Wants to Double Size of U.S. Economy
By James Gerstenzang
Los Angeles Times
Detroit - President Bush, struggling to demonstrate a comprehensive plan to pull the nation out of its economic doldrums while hoping to boost his re-election campaign, set a goal yesterday of building a $10 trillion U.S. economy.
If achieved, the target for post-recession growth would nearly double the size of the U.S. economy - as measured by the value of the goods produced in its factories and the services workers offer - by the early years of the 21st century.
In a lengthy speech that focused on the failures of the past and the challenges of the future - and little on the most immediate and pressing problems facing American workers - the president offered no new plans or short-term solutions to ease recession-induced fears over job security.
Instead, the speech pulled together the variety of programs Bush has proposed in the past to deal with such pressing problems as job training, health care and education. He related them to their potential effect on the U.S. economy, and tried to make a case for the ever-growing links between the U.S. economy and global markets.
The speech to the Economic Club of Detroit, titled "Agenda for American Renewal," outlined a philosophical approach that calls for cutting taxes, paying for the tax cuts by reducing government spending and producing a shrunken government, in the process providing incentives to a streamlined business community so that it can reach the $10 trillion goal.
"That's the direction I want to go: Tax less, spend less, cut the deficit and redirect our current spending to serve the interests of all Americans," Bush said.
For the first time, Bush attached a specific figure to the across-the-board tax cut that he says he would seek from Congress if re-elected. But the 1 percent figure he cited was offered only as an example of what could be achieved if all the spending cuts for which he has called, valued at roughly $130 billion, were approved by Congress.
"That is an illustration because it would depend on if you could get the $130 billion," a senior administration official said, explaining that Bush's purpose in using the figure was to demonstrate the sort of break taxpayers would get in return for cuts in government spending.
And in what he called "right-sizing" government, Bush said that he would cut the operating budget of the executive office of the president, which includes his immediate staff of assistants and secretaries and hundreds of people working in the Office of Management and Budget and other executive branch agencies, by 33 percent if Congress - with a staff many times larger - agrees to a similar percentage reduction in its operating budget.
"And," he said, "I'll cut the salaries of all federal employees earning more than $75,000 by 5 percent. Taxpayers have tightened their belts. The better-paid federal workers should do the same."
Such a cut would trim his own $200,000 salary by $10,000 a year.
Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton said that the president's proposals amounted to more of the same programs that have led the nation into economic decline.
"I strongly believe we have to go beyond the failed policies of this administration, beyond trickle-down economics. We need real incentives to invest in this country, to educate our people, to control health care costs and to compete around the world," he said in a statement made by satellite from the governor's mansion in Little Rock, Ark.
Clinton contended that under Bush's plan, Americans with incomes of more than $200,000 would get a $14,000 tax cut, while those making $20,000 would get about $50.
Despite Clinton's critique and Bush's own description of a "grand canyon" between himself and the governor, Bush's speech and an address Clinton delivered to the same organization on August 21 demonstrated the degree of similarity in their approaches.
Clinton based his economic program on "job-creating investment," including job training, education reform, and improved health care; and investing money saved from reduced defense spending on new civilian technologies.
Clinton's principal difference with Bush, as outlined in the August 21 speech, is over the formation of a "national economic strategy," which the president labeled an "industrial policy" that he says would give government too great a role in directing the nation's businesses.
House OKs President's Plan
Family Leave Bill
Margin isn't enough to override a Bush veto
By Adam Clymer
New York Times
Washington - After a debate marked by emotion, sarcasm and political one-upmanship, the House yesterday passed and sent to President Bush a bill that would require employers to give workers 12 weeks of unpaid leave for family and personal medical emergencies.
Despite a threatened veto, Democrats and some Republicans said that passing the measure was essential if lawmakers believe in "family values." But the 241-to-161 vote was far short of the two-thirds majority required to override, and a White House spokeswoman, Judy Smith, said she is "confident of strength to sustain a veto."
Yesterday's action, which followed passage on a voice vote in the Senate last month, was Congress' most forceful entry into the presidential campaign, a measure that Democrats believe will help Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton.
He supports the bill and can be expected to say that electing him is the only way to enact the legislation, which polls show is very popular.
The bill, similar to a measure that Bush vetoed in 1990, would require employers of 50 or more people to allow their workers unpaid leave, with health insurance kept in force, to care for a sick child, parent, husband or wife, or for the workers' own medical needs, such as pregnancy.
It would not apply to employees who worked less than 25 hours a week, and employers could exclude the highest-paid 10 percent of their workers. About 5 percent of employers and 50 percent of all employees would be covered.
A Gallup Poll for Life magazine in the spring found that 83 percent of adults backed the measure and 16 percent opposed it.
Smith said Bush opposes the bill but does not oppose family leaves. She said the president thinks such leaves should be negotiated between employers and workers.
A White House aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the administration would prefer a system of tax credits to small employers to help them finance such leaves.
House majority leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri told of getting a leave from his law firm years ago to care for an 18-month-old son with cancer. "For the parents whose employers do not provide this benefit voluntarily, the choice between keeping one's job or caring for a new child or sick family member is a choice no American should have to make," he said.
"We believe we can honor the values of work and family," Gephardt added. "We can demonstrate our commitment to family values by our deeds, not just by our words. We can rise above the partisan differences that often justifiably divide us."
But Representative Robert Michel of Illinois, the Republican leader in the House, contended that the bill dealt with neither family values nor labor issues. "This bill is only about one thing: election-year politics, pure and simple - or at least simple."
If the Democrats really care about the measure, Michel asked, why did they wait until now to bring it to the House floor. It was passed in both houses last fall and a compromise had been reached in August.
Most Republicans contend that the bill will hurt employers and thus cost jobs.
Representative Cass Ballenger, R-N.C., called the requirement "just one more burden placed on small businesses struggling to survive."
Some Republicans disagreed. Representative Marge Roukema of New Jersey, for instance, said there was "not one shred of evidence that this will be costly to business."
And Representative Henry Hyde, R-Ill., said: "A woman should not have to choose between having a baby and keeping a job. It would be one less thing to worry about for a woman who is pregnant or a father whose child is sick. Family values require you to support this bill."
But in the end, only 37 Republicans voted for the bill, and 119 opposed it and 10 did not vote. Two hundred and three Democrats voted for it, 42 voted no and 22 did not vote.
Japan Criticized for Hard Line on Kuriles
New York Times
Tokyo
President Boris Yeltsin's sudden cancellation of his trip to Japan unleashed an unusual round of recriminations as the Japanese government was accused of pressing an embattled Russian leader so hard on its territorial claims that it lost its best chance in decades to improve relations with Moscow.
Although it remained possible for Russia and Japan to work out a cooperative relationship on some levels, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa left little doubt yesterday that he thought that a resolution of the long-standing territorial dispute with Russia is years away. The issue concerns a handful of islands in the Kurile chain north of Japan that were seized by the Soviet Union in the closing days of World War II.
"Let's wait patiently," Miyazawa told reporters yesterday morning, adding that "we won't make any approaches" to revive talks on the issue any time soon.
Japan has demanded the return of the islands, or at least recognition of Japanese sovereignty over them, as a prerequisite to improving relations with Moscow and considering large-scale economic aid and investment.
The country's elite seems to be sharply divided between those who say that a geographically small, resource-poor nation must never give up an inch and those who argue that Japan is rich enough to afford placing the issue on hold until Russia is stable.
The unusual criticism of Japan's hard-line approach came from the governor of Hokkaido, the Japanese territory closest to the disputed region, who told reporters that Japan had "aimed to gain 100 points and eventually got zero." Because of Hokkaido's proximity to Russia, popular sentiment there has favored a compromise on the territorial issue as a means to improve economic ties.
Business officials, who have been critical of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's preoccupation with the islands, said yesterday that they feared that the trip's cancellation would doom any chance for Japan to make major investments in the Russian Far East for years.
Moreover, diplomats speculated that Japan would increasingly find itself in conflict with its Western allies over Russian policy. Although the United States supports Japan's position, Germany and other nations have grown testy about Japan's continued refusal to shoulder much of the aid burden for Russia.
In a rare split on a major national foreign policy initiative, there were also widespread charges yesterday that Tokyo had unwisely allowed latent nationalistic instincts to prevail in its dealings with a longtime rival.
Critics claimed that Japan's leaders pushed the embattled Russian president too far, wildly misjudged the depth of public sentiment in Moscow and ultimately set their own cause back by years.
"This is the clearest case of the Japanese government still being trapped in its Cold War thinking," said Haruki Wada, a professor of Russian history at the University of Tokyo.
"Everyone was so intent on exploiting the moment that no one stopped to listen to the Russians," he said - or to seriously consider arguments that funneling large-scale aid to Russia should take priority over the reacquisition of a group of ice-encrusted volcanic islands.
Yeltsin Agrees to Double Subsidized Price of Crude Oil
By Fred Hiatt
Washington Post
Moscow
Russian President Boris Yeltsin, one day after scrapping a visit to Japan, approved a doubling of Russia's subsidized oil prices, indicating that he is more willing to expend political capital on unpopular economic reform than on unpopular foreign policy ventures.
The higher oil prices, which a deputy prime minister said will take effect soon, are needed to bring in dollars and encourage investment in Russia's vital but aging oil industry, officials said. But the higher prices also will deal another blow to the nation's already battered consumers, farmers and factories.
<#FROWN:A04\>
Tokyo Plays Down Yeltsin Cancellation
Diplomacy: Officials urge patience, but anger emerges. Russian press blames Japan's "hysterical" environment for trip postponement.
By TERESA WATANABE and JOHN-THOR DAHLBURG
TIMES STAFF WRITERS
TOKYO- One day after Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin abruptly canceled his impending visit to Japan, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa and other officials scrambled Thursday to put the best face on the diplomatic debacle, while public opinion was split over whom to blame.
Miyazawa urged his country to "wait patiently" for Russia to sort out its domestic problems, while Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe urged people to "keep a cool head" and not respond in an "exaggerated way."
The pleas came as the Russian press began blaming Japan's "hysterical" environment for contributing to Yeltsin's abrupt postponement. However, only about 100 people gathered outside the Japanese Embassy in Moscow for what was supposed to be a massive anti-Japanese protest- and half of those present were journalists.
Watanabe also announced that Japan would not renege on any of its international aid pledges to Russia. Tokyo has promised $100 million in humanitarian aid and cooperation for the safety of Russia's nuclear power plants, part of a $24-billion package offered by the Group of Seven (G-7) industrial nations earlier this year to help the former Soviet Union pull out of its economic crisis.
But the Japanese press reported Thursday that Russia had been seeking a whopping $50-billion package of long-term aid from Japan, a request categorically turned down by officials here as long as there is no progress in settling the dispute over four small islands seized by the Red Army at the close of World War II. The islands, at the southern end of the Kuril chain, are off Japan's northernmost main island, Hokkaido.
Yeltsin's sudden action, coming just three days before his scheduled arrival in Tokyo on Sunday, is almost without precedent in Japan's modern diplomatic history, and it included a snub of the imperial family, which had planned a welcome party.
While most officials kept to low-key utterances of "regret," public anger and frustration has also emerged over what is being dubbed here the "postponement shock."
"This is childish diplomacy," fumed one high-level Foreign Ministry official, who asked not to be identified by name. The official said that the postponement has shattered Tokyo's trust in Moscow and that any Russian pronouncements will be taken with even more skepticism in the future.
Junichi Takemi, chairman of a ceramics firm, said it is just as well that Yeltsin will not come, because investing in Russia is like "throwing money down a sewer."
The Russians were criticized here for everything from having the gall to inform South Korean President Roh Tae Woo before telling Miyazawa- Yeltsin had been scheduled to go to Seoul after visiting Japan- to damaging local merchants, to wasting the efforts that thousands of workers put into preparing for the state visit.
Members of the National Police Agency, which had completed elaborate security arrangements involving 12,000 officers, took the news in "open-mouthed" amazement, according to local press reports. They were particularly irked about having to comply with Russia's fussy demands for security at a sumo wrestling hall, which entailed building a bulletproof shield around the entire ring- only to see it go to waste.
The New Otani Hotel, where most of the Russian delegation would have stayed, suddenly found itself with about 70% of its rooms vacant for four days.
And the emperor's family had to call off plans for a welcome party of 70 guests and a menu specially planned to accommodate Yeltsin's tastes: grilled fish, cold smoked chicken, lamb roast and an ice cream dessert arranged in the shape of Mt. Fuji.
However, public criticism of Japan's hard-line diplomacy also began to surface. Hokkaido Gov. Takahiro Yokomichi, whose prefecture in northern Japan has begun building trade links with the Soviet Far East, criticized officials for pushing too hard on the issue of the Northern Territories, as the islands are referred to in Japan.
"The government aimed for 100 and ended up with zero," Yokomichi said.
Gregory Clark, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo and a former Australian diplomat, called Japan's diplomacy over the territorial issue "lousy." To cling tenaciously to all claims of territory is not in keeping with international practice, he said, citing as an example Poland's retention of its World War II territorial gains from Germany.
Others criticized Tokyo's insistence on linking large-scale economic aid to a territorial resolution. But a top Japanese official revealed Thursday that the Miyazawa administration views the linkage as crucial for its political survival.
"If I do not get economic aid separated from the territorial issue, I will not be able to remain in office," the government official quoted Yeltsin as telling Watanabe when the two men met recently in Moscow.
"[If Japan] began full-scale aid without progress on the territorial issue, the Miyazawa administration would not last," Watanabe reportedly responded.
Still, the postponement is seen as a setback in the prime minister's attempt to forge a more assertive foreign policy, which includes such unprecedented actions as the emperor's scheduled visit to China later this year and the dispatch of peacekeeping troops to Cambodia- Tokyo's first overseas military mission since World War II.
In Moscow, Sergei Skvortsov, co-chairman of the Russian Committee for the Defense of the Kurils, handed a letter to a Japanese diplomat protesting Japan's demand for the islands' return and the way the Japanese media cover the issue.
"I'm glad Boris Yeltsin has called off his visit to Japan, because I think that postwar borders must not be violated," a former hard-line member of the Soviet Parliament, Col. Viktor Alksnis, said.
Europe Holds Its Breath as France Prepares to Vote on Unity
By JOEL HAVEMANN
TIMES STAFF WRITER
BRUSSELS- The European Community's far-reaching treaty on political and economic union, which Danish voters narrowly rejected in June, is growing increasingly unpopular throughout the 12-nation EC.
France, which with Germany is one of the EC's original twin pillars, could effectively bury the treaty in a Sept. 20 referendum that, according to the polls, could go either way.
And even if French voters ratify the treaty, mounting opposition elsewhere will make its goals- including a common EC currency and mechanisms for setting joint European foreign and security policy- difficult to achieve in practice.
France is the last EC country to conduct a referendum on the treaty, which has been ratified by voters in Ireland and parliaments in Greece and Luxembourg. Elsewhere, national parliaments hold the power, and all are expected to ratify if the French vote 'yes.'
But if voters had the chance, they might well turn thumbs down in Germany and Britain.
Germans are alarmed over the prospect of abandoning the deutschemark, Europe's strongest currency and a symbol of Germany's postwar economic success, in favor of a currency that they might have to share with such economic emergency-room cases as Italy.
And the insular British worry that the treaty would give the EC's bureaucrats license, as their foreign secretary once charged, to meddle in "the nooks and crannies" of British affairs.
To Martin Bangemann, the ranking German official at the EC Commission, the growing doubts about the treaty reveal the danger of popular referendums. "People are using arguments without knowing" what the treaty would do, he told reporters recently at the EC Commission's Brussels headquarters.
Others draw the opposite conclusion. Voter skepticism, they argue, demonstrates that Europe's leaders forgot to marshal public opinion behind them when they initialed the treaty behind closed doors last December in the Dutch town of Maastricht.
"The trouble is the arrogance of our leaders in believing that the public doesn't need to know what the treaty says and couldn't understand anyway," said Stanley Crossick, chairman of the Belmont European Policy Center. "We need to be more democratic, something you Americans understand."
Throughout the EC, Europeans are sounding alarms that the Maastricht treaty, by shifting more authority from national capitals to Brussels, would erode national identities.
It is a charge the treaty supporters such as British Prime Minister John Major dismiss as a "phantom." In a speech Monday, Major said, "Whatever happens in the Community, the French will be no less French, the Germans no less German, the Danes no less Danish and, I promise you, the British no less British."
Also working against the treaty are anemic national economies. After booming since the mid-1980s, the EC predicts overall economic growth of only 1.25% this year and 1.5% next year, with unemployment rising from 9.7% now to 10%. Voters are typically less likely to endorse the sorts of changes envisaged by the Maastricht treaty when they feel their own welfare is insecure.
What's more, the EC's inability to stop the bloodshed on its doorstep in the Yugoslav crisis has made Europeans wonder whether the EC is ready for the common foreign policy-making mechanisms that the Maastricht treaty would establish.
In an EC-wide survey conducted in June, London's Market & Opinion Research International found substantial dissatisfaction with key elements of the treaty.
A majority of respondents in Britain and Germany opposed abandoning the British pound and the German mark in favor of a common European currency. The treaty establishes a common currency no later than 1999 for nations with low inflation and manageable budget deficits, although the British Parliament retains the right to reject the common currency.
Likewise, more respondents in half of the 12 EC countries- France, Germany, Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Luxembourg- said the treaty would make them personally worse off than better off. This reflects the EC policy, which would be accelerated by the Maastricht treaty, of transferring funds from the richer nations to Spain, Portugal, Greece and Ireland.
Doubts about the treaty probably matter most in Germany, the EC's biggest member and its economic powerhouse. In Germany, the future of the deutschemark is the overriding issue.
"The people are very proud of this symbol of national strength and postwar achievement," said Jochen Hansen, a researcher with Germany's Allensbach Institute. "They can't understand why they should give up their currency in the absence of an urgent need."
Hansen said he thought Germans would probably turn down the Maastricht treaty, if- as is impossible under the German constitution- they had a chance to vote on ratifying it. Recent Allensbach public opinion surveys bolster this view.
By 41% to 25%, Germans said in June that the government should have rejected the treaty's provision for a common European currency. By 34% to 26%, they expressed satisfaction that Danish voters had refused to ratify.
And last January, a month after Chancellor Helmut Kohl initialed the Maastricht treaty, fully 39% of Germans said they feared a gradual loss of German identity in a homogeneous Europe. Fifteen months earlier, in October,1990, only 21% had expressed such a concern.
Britain is the other EC powerhouse where public sentiment toward the Maastricht treaty is, at best, uncertain. A Gallup Poll in June found the public almost evenly split, with 38% saying they would vote for the treaty and 35% saying they would vote 'no.' A majority, 51%, said European integration was proceeding too quickly, against 25% who said the pace was right and 14% who called it too slow.
Prime Minister Major, who pulled the treaty back from Parliament pending the outcome of the French referendum, admitted Monday that the treaty probably faces a "bruising passage." But he rejected calls for a referendum, arguing that many voters would probably base their decisions on matters unrelated to the treaty.
Meanwhile, in tiny Denmark, where the treaty's troubles began, sentiment against it seems to be hardening. Recent polls show that the treaty's opponents- a bare 50.7% of those who voted in the June 2 referendum- have grown to as much as 57%.
That puts the Danish government on the spot. Under EC rules, the treaty cannot take effect until it is ratified by all 12 member nations.
If Denmark will not accept the treaty as negotiated last December, either the treaty will have to be changed- which would require a complicated renegotiation followed by another round of ratification votes in all EC countries- or Denmark will have to finesse its voters' opposition.
<#FROWN:A05\>
Bush proposes $10-billion in job training
The president says he would cut spending for unspecified federal programs to cover the plan's cost.
Associated Press
ANSONIA, Conn. - Plagued by high unemployment and a weak election-year economy, President Bush on Monday proposed a $2-billion-a-year package of new and retooled job-training programs and said they could be paid for without raising taxes.
"We can get everybody engaged in high-tech jobs with this retraining approach," Bush promised at a campaign stop at a vocational training school in Union, N.J.
The plan's centerpiece calls for $3,000 vouchers for adults to use for retraining at trade schools or community colleges. These would go to people who had lost their jobs, been notified their jobs were being cut or who worked in declining industries and wanted to sharpen their skills.
Bush said the plan's $10-billion cost over five years would be paid for by cutting spending for other unspecified federal programs.
At a news conference in Little Rock, Ark., Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton took issue with the cost, saying Bush had no way to finance his proposals.
"He just got through telling us at the convention we were going to have huge tax cuts paid for by huge spending cuts in amounts to be unspecified, and now he's come out with a huge spending program," Clinton said. "I think it's very difficult to take this seriously."
Clinton has proposed requiring employers to spend an amount equal to 1.5 percent of payroll for job-training and education programs for workers.
Paul Tsongas blasts Bush's economic plan
But he didn't embrace Clinton's ideas. Still, he says they're evolving in a "positive" direction.
Associated Press
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Former Democratic rival Paul Tsongas stood at Bill Clinton's side Monday and attacked President Bush's economic plan, saying it would guarantee "four more years of gridlock" in Washington.
But while Tsongas called Clinton's plan superior to Bush's, he still did not strongly embrace it.
Tsongas said that Clinton's policies "have evolved in a direction that I think is positive" and that he would "work with Gov. Clinton and press my views upon the people around him." When Tsongas was asked if that was a way of saying Clinton's program didn't go far enough, Clinton chimed in, "That's a way of saying it."
During the Democratic primary season, Tsongas was critical of Clinton's economic proposals, which included a sweeping tax cut for the middle class.
In Monday's appearance with Clinton on the lawn of the Arkansas governor's mansion, Tsongas was even more negative toward Bush's call for a broad tax cut at last week's Republican convention.
"The fact is that George Bush gave a speech Thursday night with a program that he knows will never pass," said Tsongas. "...It has no coherence, has no support."
Tsongas, who strongly advocated reduction of the federal budget deficit, said Bush delivered "a promise of four more years of gridlock."
"So if the question is who do you trust for four more years of blaming, four more years of finger pointing, it's George Bush," Tsongas said.
Israel's Rabin says 11 Palestinians won't be deported
Associated Press
JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Monday canceled deportation orders against 11 Palestinians in a further effort by his moderate government to bolster the peace talks opening in Washington.
That follows an announcement Sunday that 800 Palestinian prisoners would be freed, that Arab access from the occupied territories to Israel would be eased and that some punishments imposed for anti-Israeli violence would be lifted.
The deportation orders were issued by former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir in January before a round of peace talks. Shamir lost the June 23 election to Rabin. Rabin's reversal of the orders came with his government's debut in the talks Monday, signaling a radical change of approach.
The 11 West Bank and Gaza Strip Arabs had been ordered out for allegedly fomenting the violence that had killed four Israelis in the preceding three months. Their appeals are now before the Israeli Supreme Court.
A statement by Rabin in his capacity as defense minister said that circumstances had changed since the expulsion orders were issued.
He apparently was referring to the decline of anti-Israeli unrest in the occupied territories and the divisions between Palestinian supporters and opponents of the U.S.-brokered peace process.
Reports: No-fly zone over Iraq could be delayed
Reuters
WASHINGTON - Defense officials said Monday the U.S. military was ready to enforce a ban on Iraqi military flights over southern Iraq, but diplomats in the Persian Gulf said the plan was being held up by Arab concerns that it could dismember Iraq.
The announcement that U.S., British and French planes would begin enforcing the no-fly zone south of the 32nd parallel to protect dissident Shiite Moslems had been slated for today, "but that may not be the case now," said an administration official.
Defense officials, who asked not to be identified, said in Washington that the aircraft carrier Independence, carrying fighter and reconnaissance planes, headed north from Abu Dhabi in the Persian Gulf on Sunday. Air Force fighters were also in position in the region, they said.
The U.S.-led alliance, which drove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces from Kuwait in last year's gulf war, already is enforcing a no-fly zone north of the 36th parallel in Iraq to protect Kurds there from Iraqi attacks.
Western diplomats said more time was needed for gulf war allies to consult among themselves and for the United States, Britain and France to reassure Arab states they do not intend to divide Iraq.
So far, Kuwait is the only Arab state to openly declare its support for Western plans to protect the Shiites. Syria, Jordan, Yemen and Algeria have denounced the move.
Iraq issues warning to West
The warning comes after the U.S. and others say they will shoot down Iraqi military planes.
Associated Press
NICOSIA, Cyprus - Iraq's army newspaper on Sunday warned the West against ordering air patrols to protect Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq and said "invaders" would find a watery grave in the marshes below.
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis to be "aware of their national and patriotic responsibilities" and protect the nation against those who wish "evil for the country," said the official Iraqi News Agency, monitored in Cyprus.
The United States, Britain and France plan to notify Iraq this week that military planes flying over southern Iraq will be shot down to protect Shiite Muslims.
The White House said Sunday that President Bush may make the announcement Tuesday.
Meanwhile, a leading Shiite opposition group claimed shelling on villages near Nassirya, 190 miles south of Baghdad, had killed several women and children in the past three days, according to a statement sent to the Associated Press.
The reports from the Tehran-based Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq could not be confirmed.
The group said Iraqi warplanes recently intensified reconnaissance missions over the marshlands "apparently to test the will of the international measures to protect the Iraqi people."
Al-Qaddissiya, Iraq's defense ministry daily, described Bush as a "cursed criminal," British Prime Minister John Major as "worthless" and French President Francois Mitterrand as "the mean old man."
"The aggressors have no one but themselves to blame," the newspaper said in a front-page editorial.
"We will tear them to pieces ... and the marshes will be the graveyards to the invaders."
In Kuwait, the U.S. military announced that all 2,400 American soldiers scheduled to take part in monthlong exercises with Kuwaiti forces were now deployed. About 1,000 U.S. soldiers will move into position near the Iraqi border for the maneuvers, to begin in a week, according to U.S. military officials.
Many of Iraq's neighbors are wary of the allied plans to create a safe haven for the Shiite Muslims, saying it might partition Iraq into three sections. After the Persian Gulf war last year, the allies created a security zone for Kurds in northern Iraq.
In Egypt, Iraq's representative to the Cairo-based Arab League urged Arab countries to intervene against the allied plan.
"The Iraqi people are one people, they cannot be split along sectarian or racial lines," the Iraqi representative, Nabil Nejm, said after meeting with the league's secretary-general.
Government troops battle against Serbs
Casualties were heavy in shelling in downtown Sarajevo and on the west side of the city.
Associated Press
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - In a blaze of mortar, grenade and machine-gun fire, government troops on Sunday launched a new offensive to break the Serb siege of Sarajevo.
Casualties were heavy in shelling downtown and on the west side of the city, where government forces were trying to reach Sarajevo's airport, now under U.N. control for an international aid airlift.
U.N. peacekeepers closed the airport to aid flights after shells hit the runway.
Dr. Arif Smajkic, head of the Bosnian Ministry of Health, said 46 people were killed and 303 wounded in the previous 24 hours of fighting in Bosnia, including 22 dead and 100 wounded in Sarajevo.
Smajkic said the city's main hospital had no water or electricity. Many wounded, mostly soldiers with serious wounds, were being brought in. "It is very critical at this moment," he said. "We need water for operations, and we don't have any."
The offensive appeared to be a last-ditch attempt by Bosnian defenders to gain a military advantage before a peace conference on Yugoslavia begins Wednesday in London.
The republic's Muslim president, Alija Izetbegovic, told reporters that his forces had made headway on the west side, but government military officials gave mixed signals.
Izetbegovic said that even if the new offensive failed, his forces would fight on. "Sarajevo shall survive," he said. "We shall fight many, many months more."
Bosnia's ethnic Serbs, who want to remain part of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, rebelled after the republic's majority Croats and Muslims voted for independence on Feb. 29. Serbs now control two-thirds of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
At least 8,000 people have been killed, but recent estimates by U.S. Senate investigators put the total at up to 35,000. About 1.3-million people have become refugees, many in 'ethnic cleansing' campaigns to empty regions of unwanted ethnic groups.
Throughout Saturday night and Sunday, explosions and heavy machine-gun fire could be heard throughout Sarajevo. Shells landed near the main Kosevo hospital in the city center, around government offices and on the west side.
A mortar crashed into the second floor of a student hostel in the old city, killing at least two people and wounding several others.
One victim remained alive for several minutes after both legs were cut off by a falling wall. His screams faded into deathly quiet, perspiration covering his face, and he was dead by the time he was taken to a hospital.
One government soldier with gaping stomach and chest wounds arrived at the hospital in a U.N. armored personnel carrier manned by French soldiers, who said Serb forces allowed them to cross their lines to pick up the victim.
Clinton: GOP attacks "deeply offensive"
Associated Press
CHAUTAUQUA, N.Y. - Bill Clinton said Sunday that President Bush invoked a "deeply offensive" political ploy in questioning Democrats' commitment to God and said Republicans should be ashamed of their "off the wall" attack linking his values to Woody Allen's.
Clinton, counterattacking as he and running mate Al Gore wrapped up their Rust Belt bus tour, said Republicans were floundering because Democrats had a superior economic plan to put Americans back to work and help raise their children.
Bush, seeking to shore up Republican strength in the key Midwest battleground, told a cheering crowd at the Illinois State Fair that Clinton would be a "rubber stamp president that will rubber stamp this spendthrift Congress.
"We're not going to let that nightmare happen," Bush shouted. He told reporters that Clinton had started to "whine and complain" in the face of a stepped-up Republican campaign.
Vice President Dan Quayle, in Florida to campaign among Reagan Democrats, told his audience that voters face "a big choice between the governor of Arkansas and the president of the United States. These two individuals are miles apart on the important issues of the day."
<#FROWN:A06\>
Debates to become "blood sport"
By Judy Keen
USA TODAY
Contributing: Debbie Howlett
One year ago this weekend, Bill Clinton officially began his presidential quest.
Back then, President Bush's grip on a second term was still considered secure.
But both candidates have been buffeted by the turbulence of a political year that Bush labeled - in what turned out to be an understatement - "weird."
And now, just when the campaign was supposed to jell, it has been re-created. The accumulated rhetoric and drama of those 12 months might not count. What might matter most is what happens next.
There will be four debates in nine days, starting Sunday in St. Louis. Ross Perot is back and will probably share the stage with Clinton and Bush for three presidential face-offs, adding who knows what new variables to the equation.
"We always thought Perot getting in would throw all the cards up in the air and cause people to take a new look at the race," says Charles Black, senior adviser to Bush's campaign. "Combine that with four debates and all bets are off."
Adds Democratic consultant Duane Garrett: "This is probably going to be the potentially most volatile period since the Democratic convention" when Perot dropped out.
The campaign might be reinventing itself or the new wrinkles just might be "weird" distractions that won't halt Clinton's victory march.
The Bush campaign has ample reason to hope all that has gone before has been erased: With Clinton holding a double-digit lead, the president's last best chance may be a surge borne of political chaos.
But polls show voter dissatisfaction with Bush's stewardship - especially over the economy - and skepticism about promises he's making.
Those sentiments may not be budged - not even by unruly debates or the wild card called Perot - and therein lie the reasons for Clinton's confidence that he can stave off any Bush comeback.
"I really don't think Perot alters the landscape," says Texas Democratic Party chairman Bob Slagle.
A primer for the campaign's final four weeks:
Debates. Bush - hoping to lob firepower at Clinton without giving the Democrat enough time to recoup - wanted to shove the debates as close to Election Day as possible.
Clinton prevailed in debate negotiations, ensuring himself two weeks after the last debate Oct. 19 to recover from any gaffes and to return the campaign dialogue to the themes he thinks will win the election.
But the dizzyingly dense debate schedule - Oct. 11, Oct. 15, Oct. 19 - means each of the three candidates will have to repair wounds in the next debate, not in the news media or TV ads.
"I think it's going to truly turn debates into a blood sport," says GOP pollster Ed Goeas, "both in terms of what the candidates have to do and because there isn't going to be time in between for voters to refocus on something else."
More than 50 million people are expected to watch the prime-time duels, and if it's true a quarter of voters make up their minds the final week, the debates could sway some.
Almost every presidential debate has a crystallizing moment that either erodes support or multiplies it - the instant everybody talks about at work the next day.
This year, if it's a Perot 'moment,' the impact may be negligible.
"I think that Perot in the debates will be a spectacle to behold," says Jim Oberwetter, Bush's Texas campaign chairman. "He has nothing to lose and is going to be on a roll."
If Perot shines, "then it's a wash for both Bush and Clinton," says Ron Walters, political science chair at Washington's Howard University. "It's much harder to figure out who won a three-person debate."
Bush has the most to gain: He must create a theatrical event that either embarrasses Clinton or makes the president soar by rhetorical comparison.
But many analysts say Clinton's task is easier: He must only reassure voters who doubt his stature or trustworthiness.
Clinton needs only "to stand on the same platform with George Bush and hold his own," says Garrett.
"Bush has got to both damage Clinton and make himself an acceptable alternative. And Bush's greatest danger is that if he peels support away from Clinton it ... may be siphoned off to Perot."
Perot. OK, so he won't be sworn in as president in January, but he still could create plenty of mischief.
"There is no realistic prospect ... he'll recapture the magic of June," says Walter Dean Burnham, a University of Texas political scientist.
Perot I had evidence he could win Texas and Florida and take chunks out of Clinton's support among voters who want anybody but Bush.
Perot II can't alter the outcome in any state, analysts say, but he could make life uncomfortable in close battlegrounds such as Ohio, Michigan and Illinois. If undecided voters swing to Perot, Bush will have little chance to woo them back. If Perot talks only about the economy he could actually elevate political discourse and force the other two candidates to talk about the issue that matters most to voters.
"His emphasis on the deficit ... will work to the detriment of Bush," says Walters, but Perot's military background and POW heroism may remind voters of Clinton's draft record.
"He highlights in a very interesting way the negatives on both sides," Walters says.
Tone. This weekend, Bush flooded the airwaves with two negative TV ads, Clinton rebutted and each trotted out even sharper attacks on the campaign trail. Outlook: unremittingly negative.
"When you're frustrated and you're behind, you do anything you can," says Walters.
Bush's 1988 attacks on Michael Dukakis have taught Clinton to fight back and may have hardened the electorate to nasty ads. "People expect it," says former GOP strategist Kevin Phillips.
"The alternative," says Goeas, "is political candidates saying a bunch of positive things about themselves that we really have to question."
Few expect the campaign to slog on to a tepid conclusion.
"Voters are saying they've never seen a year like it," says Oberwetter. "It's like, 'Isn't that amazing?' and then the next thing happens and they say, 'Isn't that strange?' The surprises are not over."
Some think clerks wield excess clout
Their influence as justices' aides debated
By Tony Mauro
USA TODAY
As the Supreme Court convenes for its fall term today, a new question is in the air: Who's in charge?
The query pertains not just to the power struggles among the justices - subject of a summer's worth of speculation by court-watchers.
Also in the spotlight are the 34 clerks - fresh-scrubbed lawyers, mostly white males - who help screen cases and write opinions.
Some conservatives point to last term's law clerks in their search to explain why Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter and Sandra Day O'Connor seemed to shift from the right to the middle in the landmark Pennsylvania abortion case.
The clerks, it was said, were dispatched by left-leaning law schools - 12 were from Harvard - with the mission of turning their justices into liberals.
Adding to the debate is the fact that eight of nine justices now pool their clerks for the initial screening of cases.
The arrangement means that for those eight, most of the incoming cases are looked at by only one pair of young eyes, not by the justices themselves or their own clerks. The pool clerks write a brief memo on each case that goes to the eight justices.
Do clerks, who also write rough drafts of actual opinions for most justices, have too much power?
That's a debate that has simmered ever since Justice Horace Gray hired the first law clerk 110 years ago.
Justices now have four clerks each - except Chief Justice William Rehnquist and John Paul Stevens, who get by with three.
Rehnquist, a clerk himself 40 years ago, emerged fearful about their liberalizing influence. Most of them, he said back then, showed "extreme solicitude for the claims of communists and other criminal defendants."
Now he minimizes their role. "Individual justices still continue to do a great deal more of their own work than do their counterparts in the other branches of the federal government," Rehnquist wrote in 1987.
Still, concern is growing that too much responsibility is invested in young clerks, most of them no more than a year out of law school.
"It is really rather remarkable how little they know when they arrive ... and how fast they have to learn," says E.W. Perry Jr., a Harvard government professor who has studied the court.
Most of the clerks work for only one very intense year - dawn-to-midnight, six- or seven-day work weeks are common - at a salary currently set at $38,861. During the year, the clerks are virtually constant companions to their justices - who themselves complain they have little contact with other justices or the outside world.
Clerks are justices' lunch companions, tennis-mates, sounding boards, and, in some instances, ghostwriters.
"Most of the writing that comes out of the court is done by law clerks ... " says Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy, a former clerk for Marshall. "But clerks don't run things. The justices call the shots."
Privately some clerks boast they changed their justices' minds on decisions during their year, or that a draft they wrote emerged untouched by the justice.
"When you give the job to clerks, you get more footnotes and less original thinking," says University of Southern California law professor Susan Estrich. "Original thinking is what we pay the justices for, isn't it?"
Estrich, who managed Michael Dukakis's presidential campaign in 1988, clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens 10 years earlier.
But most clerks insist that they are helping, not steering, their justices through a staggering writing load.
"There's a lot of puffery that goes on, but really, the importance of law clerks has been exaggerated," says J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Richmond, Va., federal appeals judge who wrote a book about his clerkship 20 years ago for Lewis Powell.
The newest concerns focus not on drafting opinions but on screening cases - one of the court's most important tasks, sometimes making the difference literally between life and death.
Routinely, the justices consider fewer than 150 cases each term, rejecting more than 5,000 and leaving lower court rulings in place.
The last two justices to leave the court - William Brennan Jr. and Thurgood Marshall - had refused to join the pool arrangement during their tenure, preferring to rely on their own reading of new cases, or on assessments by their own clerks, more attuned to their legal views and interests.
Both justices, according to former clerks, occasionally discovered important cases pool clerks had passed over.
David Souter and Clarence Thomas, who replaced Brennan and Marshall, have joined the pool, leaving only Stevens outside it as a check on screening new cases. Clerks for other justices can supplement the pool memos, as an additional check.
The chief target of conservative concern last term was Michael Dorf, who clerked for Justice Kennedy - a conservative whose middle-of-the-road votes in the abortion case and a school prayer case surprised many.
Dorf co-authored a book with liberal Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe before working for Kennedy.
Dorf, now teaching law at Rutgers University Law School in Camden, N.J., says it is "insulting and ridiculous" to suggest that he pushed Kennedy toward any position he was not prepared to take. "He makes all his decisions for himself," says Dorf.
Election Day is high court's judgement day
By Tony Mauro
USA TODAY
Officially, Election Day is just like any other day at the Supreme Court - whose 1992-93 term opens today.
Justices will hear cases Nov. 3 and may hand down rulings, barely noting the momentous events occurring in other branches of government.
Yet the presidential election will have a tremendous effect on the court - more than any individual case on the court's docket this fall.
Washington, D.C., lawyer Richard Willard was discussing upcoming cases recently when he paused and said: "This is like critiquing the playing of the band on the Titanic. Something big is going to happen to the court on Election Day."
<#FROWN:A07\>
Clinton in '69: Mostly Typical, in a Most Untypical Time
By Michael Kelly and David Johnston
New York Times Service
WASHINGTON - In the fall and winter of 1969, several important things happened in the life of a bright, ambitious young man named Bill Clinton.
After months of elaborate effort, he finally beat the draft for the Vietnam War, drawing a number high enough in the new national lottery that he would never be inducted.
He became, in a small way, a figure within the anti-war movement, helping to organize one of the largest marches on Washington the movement ever produced and serving as a chief organizer of two small demonstrations in London. He took a trip through the Scandinavian countries, Russia and Czechoslovakia.
In later years, as Mr. Clinton charted the political course toward the presidency, he did not often publicly speak of the events of that year, and when he did, it was in vague and passive terms, as if he had been a sort of accidental tourist of his times.
Now, in the fall of 1992, with Mr. Clinton close to his goal, those who would stop him have turned their increasingly frightened attention to events 23 years ago, hoping to find in them something that will, in the end, convince voters that a change from President George Bush is not worth the risk of Mr. Clinton.
The story, as far as it is clear, of Mr. Clinton's anti-war activities in 1969 and what he and the Republicans alike are saying about those activities in 1992 is illustrative of several points about that time and this one.
It shows, as Democrats are saying publicly and even some Republicans are saying privately, how desperate the Republicans have become. It shows, as Republicans like to say, how Mr. Clinton has tended to shade the edges of his life.
But above all, it shows how sharp the difference remains between Mr. Bush's world and Mr. Clinton's, between the clear moral absolutes of the generation of World War II and the muddied gropings of those who came of age during the Vietnam War.
The exact nature of Mr. Clinton's anti-war activities has been confused by both Republican exaggeration and Democratic obfuscation. But a basic outline seems clear.
Although Mr. Clinton has described his participation in peace demonstrations as limited to that almost of a curious passer-by, the candidate's previous statements and those of several friends and of anti-war protesters indicate a more substantial involvement.
Mr. Clinton was an organizer of two London rallies in the fall of 1969 and also helped, to an apparently much lesser degree, organize a huge march on Washington on Oct. 15, 1969.
Yet, if Mr. Clinton appears to have minimized his activities, it also appears true that the Republicans are wrong to depict him as a major anti-war organizer or Communist sympathizer.
No evidence has surfaced indicating that Mr. Clinton took part in any violent political actions or was an important anti-war organizer.
Many of those involved with him at the time recall him as something of a milquetoast by the standards of late 1960s radicalism, a young man driven by a desire to remake his country, not to reject it.
It is also clear that the actions of Mr. Clinton at age 23 - in avoiding military induction, in demonstrating against U.S. foreign policy, even in traveling to the Soviet Union - were not unusual. Indeed, they were almost prototypical of those who, like him, were part of the intellectual elite of that generation.
But if Mr. Clinton was typical of his class and time, the actions of that class and the tenor of that time were not at all typical of American history. No other generation has ever acted in quite the fashion that Mr. Clinton's did, nor stirred more unresolved passions. Now, in the person of Mr. Clinton, American voters face the possibility that a generation that once took to the streets to publicly denounce American policy will lead it.
What is unknown - but will be known on Nov. 3 - is whether it matters much anymore.
As Mr. Clinton pointed out Thursday: "Mr. Bush in his Inaugural Address had a wonderful phrase about how the Vietnam War cleaves us still and it was time to put it behind us.
"And now, because he's behind, he's tried to raise all the challenges of that time."
The Republican campaign to paint Mr. Clinton as a man with a secretly militant history began on Sept. 18, the first night of eight in which a quartet of conservative congressmen - Robert K. Dornan, Randy Cunningham and Duncan Hunter of California, and Sam Johnson of Texas - took to the deserted floor of the House to denounce Mr. Clinton.
The speeches were extraordinary for a level of strident, hyperbolic accusations that echoed the red-baiting rhetoric of 40 years ago.
The speakers described Mr. Clinton as a "useful idiot" to the Soviet government, as a man who in other countries would have been "tried as a traitor or even shot," as a "full-time organizer for demonstrations against his country in a foreign country," as a man "directly responsible" for the deaths of American military men in Vietnam.
On Wednesday, Mr. Bush picked up the brush.
"I cannot for the life of me understand mobilizing demonstrations and demonstrating against your own country, no matter how strongly you feel, when you are in a foreign land," Mr. Bush said, in an interview on the CNN program 'Larry King Live.'
Mr. Clinton said, as he has always said, that he had been an outspoken opponent of the war, but defended his activities in 1969 as innocent and minor. He said that he "helped put together a teach-in at the University of London" and that that had been "the only thing I ever helped put together."
He acknowledged that he had "participated" in a demonstration at the U.S. Embassy.
Mr. Clinton's own words, included in a letter he wrote on Dec. 3, 1969, appear to belie the claim that he organized, or helped to organize, only one event, the teach-in.
"I have written and spoken and marched against the war," he wrote in a letter to the director of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps program at the University of Arkansas, explaining why he had decided not to join the program. "After I left Arkansas last summer, I went to Washington to work in the national headquarters of the Moratorium, then to England to organize the Americans here for demonstrations Oct. 15 and Nov. 16."
The "Moratorium" Mr. Clinton referred to was one of two enormous international anti-war protests of 1969, culminating in a huge protest march in Washington on Oct. 15.
David Mixner, a national co-chairman of the Moratorium, recalls Mr. Clinton as "not at all a major player in the anti-war movement" but as someone who helped, in a small way, in the summer of 1969 to organize the fall protests.
In the fall, Mr. Clinton returned to England for his second year as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford. On Moratorium Day, about 300 people, mostly American students, demonstrated peacefully outside the U.S. Embassy in London. It is apparently this rally that Mr. Clinton claims in his December 1969 letter to have organized.
Ira Magaziner, who was a fellow student at Oxford in 1969 and is now a senior economics adviser to the Clinton campaign, said he remembered the October rally but did not recall Mr. Clinton as an organizer. Like several of Mr. Clinton's friends of that time who were interviewed this week, he remembers the student from Arkansas as intensely interested in issues like the war and racism, but not as a radical.
"This was a very conventional group of people, not people who were burning flags or shouting 'pig' at the police," he said. "It was a very moderate group of people."
On Nov. 15, another demonstration was held in front of the American Embassy. This rally was larger than the October rally, drawing about 1,500 people, who filed silently in front of the embassy.
The marchers bore a coffin and, according to a contemporary account, carried cards with the names of servicemen who died in Vietnam. They walked to a megaphone in front of the embassy, called out the name and then dropped the card into a makeshift coffin.
Republicans have said Mr. Clinton took part in this demonstration and even helped negotiate with American Embassy officials to take the symbolic coffin inside. It is not clear if this is true.
What is clear is that Mr. Clinton played a role in organizing a related, but separate, demonstration on Nov. 16, which also took place near the embassy. That rally was peaceful, according to both witnesses and news accounts.
A second aspect of Mr. Clinton's activities that has come under heavy Republican assault is a 40-day trip in late 1969 and early 1970 to several Northern European and Eastern bloc countries, including the Soviet Union. Mr. Clinton has been vague about the details of the trip, and his New Year's Eve visit to Moscow in 1969 has been the subject of the most searing attacks by Republicans.
Mr. Bush elevated the attack on the issue Wednesday evening, when he was asked about the trip on 'Larry King Live.'
"I don't want to tell you what I really think," Mr. Bush said, adding, "To go to Moscow, one year after Russia crushed Czechoslovakia, not remember what you saw there."
Mr. Clinton said Thursday that he traveled alone as a tourist and did not attend any gatherings or meet with any Soviet officials.
Although some Republicans have made many and varied insinuations suggesting Soviet control or financing of the trip, no Republican has produced evidence or a witness to back up that notion.
China Affirms Zhao Erred in Support For Protesters, but Ends Its Inquiry
By Lena H. Sun
Washington Post Service
BEIJING - China's ruling Communist Party ended its investigation Friday of the former party leader Zhao Ziyang, upholding a hard-line decision three years ago that Mr. Zhao made serious mistakes in supporting the 1989 democracy demonstrations, Xinhua press agency said.
The three-paragraph announcement by the party's policy-making Central Committee effectively ruled out any return to political life by the former protg of the senior leader Deng Xiaoping. At the same time, the news agency appeared to indicate that no further action, such as criminal proceedings, would be taken against him.
The timing of the announcement took some analysts by surprise because it was believed that internal party differences over his case were still too great to allow a conclusion before a major party congress is to open here on Monday.
The congress is expected to promote some younger, more reformist leaders into the top echelons of the party. The fact that the party has officially closed the chapter on Mr. Zhao before the congress suggests that hard-liners opposed to even a partial clearing of his name were hoping to use that strategy to prevent any newly elected reformist leaders from reopening the case, according to some analysts.
"This just sweeps it under the rug so they don't have to argue about it during the congress," said a Western diplomat.
It is now almost certain that the party will not reconsider the issue while Mr. Deng and the other party elders who rule China are still alive.
It is not known what immediate effect the decision will have on Mr. Zhao, 74, who has not been seen in public since May 19, 1989. He has been living under virtual house arrest in central Beijing with his family. The news agency still referred to him as "comrade." It is highly unlikely that he would be expelled from the party.
His case has been under investigation for so long because it goes to the heart of the 1989 crackdown: Whether Mr. Deng and China's other ruling elders were wrong to order the Chinese Army to fire on demonstrators. Any backpedaling on Mr. Zhao's case would be interpreted to mean a reassessment of the decision to crack down.
<#FROWN:A08\>
Russia's Archives Get Their Dose of Glasnost, But Sensitive Secrets Are Still Closely Guarded
By Elisabeth Rubinfien
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
MOSCOW - Rem Usikov punches a numbered code into a lock panel, pulls open a heavy metal door, and strides into a labyrinth of carpeted corridors leading to the secret files of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party.
Past office doors where name plates still say tovarisch, or comrade, the archive's director comes to Preserve No. 9, a temperature-controlled, spotless cave of a room filled with metal cabinets stacked six high.
He randomly pulls out a binder on Central Committee discussions in 1983. The handwritten scraps and typewritten memos range from the mundane approval of a bureaucrat's business trip to the U.S. to communication from the Guyana People's Progressive Party.
The heavily guarded doors of the Russian archives have opened, wider than anyone would have expected a few years ago. Foreign journalists can walk these halls with men whose lives were once dedicated to secrecy. Almost every day, revelations appear - about U.S. prisoners of war held in the Soviet Union after World War II, or Soviet involvement in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
The court challenge to Russian President Boris Yeltsin's constitutional authority to outlaw the Communist Party has brought a flood of testimony that the party intruded into state activities, used the state budget to finance revolution abroad, and, even under former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, supported Mideast terrorists.
Conservatives Prevail
But for all the hoopla about secrets revealed, the vaults are still mostly closed. While Russia's Committee on Archival Affairs, Roskomarkhiv, may want to quickly declassify as much material as possible, more conservative thinking prevails in many subordinate agencies. Many restrictions keep scholars from research materials and individuals from their own surveillance files. When ideology doesn't stand in the way, shortages of funds, space and personnel slow the process.
Those details that have dribbled out in the Russian news media seem to be available less because of archival openness than because they are suitable weapons in the political battle raging between supporters of President Yeltsin and hard-line Communists.
"It's hard to talk about serious openness of archives today," says Konstantin Akinsha, an art historian whose archival research uncovered the fact that the Soviet Union had squirreled away millions of dollars worth of art treasures confiscated at the end of World War II from the Nazis - who had looted them in the first place. "These are only the first steps, and they're very far from total openness."
Mr. Usikov's Central Committee files are one of the treasure troves Russian and foreign scholars have long wondered about. With 40 separate archives, they include the most secret files of the Central Committee, from 1952 until the day of the failed coup against Mr. Gorbachev last year. Earlier Central Committee records are in a different archive.
Expert Review
Documents from before 1942 have been declassified and experts are working to declassify those from 1942 to 1962. But of some 200 million to 300 million Central Committee documents, Mr. Usikov estimates that only a third are open. These cover the more mundane party work such as propaganda and organization. The hotter topics of foreign policy and military and security affairs, are to be declassified after study by 'experts,' including members of the former KGB, and the foreign and defense ministries.
Ultimately, says Mr. Usikov, the archives must be fully opened. "It gives us the opportunity to understand history and to restore the true past," he says, "without the deviations, the distortions, without the ideological layers that were put on it."
While many archivists share that feeling, some institutions that have their own archives feel secrecy is safer than truth. Take the former KGB, now split into the Ministry of Security and its external intelligence counterpart. Roskomarkhiv chairman and historian Rudolf Pikhoia believes the central archival administration has jurisdiction over the KGB stores, but the security ministry disagrees.
"All KGB documents are still closed," says Mr. Pikhoia. "That is a very serious problem." Mr. Pikhoia recalls that in the heady days after the coup attempt, Roskomarkhiv "didn't press hard enough" to gain control of the KGB files. Overwhelmed with an unexpected 70 million Soviet Communist Party files, the 4.5 million KGB files seemed like small change that would be easy to pocket later. "Now I say that was a mistake because the situation turns out to be more complicated," he says.
At the former KGB headquarters in the Lubyanka building, which now houses the security ministry, some three million files on victims of repressions and on repatriated World War II prisoners are ready to be handed over to Roskomarkhiv - but it hasn't enough space to take them in.
Meanwhile, the remainder of the KGB files are untouchable. "The question of jurisdiction over the archives is still to be worked out," says Aleksandr Zubchenko, head of the security ministry's archives.
It is in these archives that the surveillance files on individual citizens are kept. Russia has no law allowing people easy access to such files, as in Czechoslovakia or the former East Germany. Here, a citizen who asks for his own file will be given a summary of the contents, carefully screened to exclude information still classified under law, such as who the informants were.
Even Boris Yeltsin himself has yet to cooperate with giving up the president's special files. These archives were created by dictator Joseph Stalin, who assiduously gathered compromising material on his opposition and colleagues. That material, which covered Politburo activities from 1919 until 1986, was commandeered by Mr. Gorbachev in 1990. Mr. Yeltsin took it over when he claimed the Kremlin at the end of last year.
Mr. Yeltsin has long promised to hand the material over to the central archives, but no transfer has taken place yet. "We have asked Boris Yeltsin during all these months, but there is still no answer," Mr. Usikov says.
Brazil Panel's Inquiry Report Criticizes Collor
Influence-Peddling Scheme Is Linked to Payments Of Personal Expenses
By Thomas Kamm
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
BRASILIA, Brazil - President Fernando Collor de Mello faces a battle to hold on to his job after a congressional panel investigating activities of his campaign treasurer alleged that Mr. Collor received "undue economic advantages" during the 29 months of his presidency.
In a report capping an 85-day investigation, the special panel contended that millions of dollars of Mr. Collor's living expenses, including the refurbishing of the presidential mansion in Brasilia and his luxury dwelling in his home town in eastern Brazil, and the acquisition of a car, were paid for by his 1989 campaign treasurer, Paulo Cesar Farias, or companies Mr. Farias controls, with funds derived from "an industry of influence-peddling" set up around the presidency.
"Extraordinary payments were made to cover the personal expenses of the president of the republic, either to maintain the Casa da Dinda [the president's Brasilia home] or in favor of his ex-wife, his mother, his sister and his wife and her secretary." the report said.
"The facts described are contrary to the principles enshrined in the constitution, as they are incompatible with the dignity, the honor and the decorum of the chief of state's function," it said.
Mr. Collor, the first freely elected Brazilian president after two decades of military rule, has previously denied any wrongdoing and had no immediate reaction to the report. His spokesman said over the weekend the president is likely to address the nation this week. Mr. Farias, in a televised telephone interview, denied wrongdoing and said he would "prove his innocence."
Impeachment Request Expected
The investigative panel stopped short of incriminating President Collor or formally requesting impeachment procedures against him, arguing that it wasn't empowered to do so. But panel members said the evidence they turned up can be used in court against Mr. Collor or serve as the basis for impeachment. The findings are being turned over to the attorney general, and several groups say they will submit impeachment requests to Congress.
If Mr. Collor decides to fight, the battle could throw Brazil into turmoil. But yesterday, the Sao Paulo stock market index rose on speculation that the report's harsh conclusions could force Mr. Collor out of office quickly and forestall a crisis.
An anti-corruption demonstration took place in Rio de Janeiro yesterday, and a similar demonstration is expected to be called by the governor of the state of Sao Paulo later this week.
Congressmen and lawyers say opposition members will step up their pressure for impeachment or for Mr. Collor's resignation, arguing that he has lost the moral standing to govern. "Collor is still there, but he has no political life anymore," says Sen. Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Mr. Collor's involvement, he says, "is total and direct. We have common crimes, uncommon crimes and extraordinary crimes."
Pro-Government Defense
Allies of the government will try to prove that Mr. Collor had no direct involvement in the scheme allegedly set up by Mr. Farias, that the panel went beyond its assigned role to investigate Mr. Farias and that it obtained evidence illegally by violating bank secrecy. "We'll contest the link with the president," says Roberto Jefferson, a pro-government federal deputy. "We'll fight it in the Chamber of Deputies and we'll fight it in the judiciary."
An impeachment process must be approved by two-thirds of Brazil's 503 federal deputies. By funding social programs supported by pro-government parties, Mr. Collor could gain enough support to ward off impeachment, though it's unclear what the economic consequences of such a policy would be.
The panel's findings provide unusual insights into corruption and influence-peddling in Brazil. In its report, the panel says Mr. Farias's personal and corporate fortune appears intimately linked with Mr. Collor's political fortunes. Companies Mr. Farias controls had "unimpressive" revenue until Mr. Collor took office in March 1990, and then became highly profitable, the report says.
This income, the panel concluded, came largely from influence-peddling. Mr. Farias, the report said, "making use of the president's friendship and prestige, obtained large sums of money by selling nonexistent services" in apparent return for help on obtaining government contracts. The report says companies controlled by Mr. Farias received about $200,000 per instance for consulting work that they were clearly unequipped to perform. The payments were made without bills and the companies couldn't prove that any effective work was done. His jet-leasing companies also billed flights that never took place, it concluded. Mr. Farias has also denied any wrongdoing.
"Tens of Millions of Dollars"
The panel said it couldn't determine how much money the alleged Farias scheme took in, but says it detected financial movements totaling "tens of millions of dollars."
Part of this money was used for Mr. Collor's expenses and was channeled to him through the account of his personal secretary, Ana Acioli Gomes de Melo, it said. Mrs. Acioli's account was funded by fictitious people, whose handwriting has been traced back to employees of Mr. Farias.
The panel said it doubts Mr. Collor's claim that his bills were paid with a $5 million loan contracted in Uruguay in 1989 and administered by his former top aide, Claudio Vieira. The panel said it found no trace of deposits by Mr. Vieira in Mrs. Acioli's account.
Bush Set to Ban Iraqi Warplanes In Shiite Area
Order Could Go Out Today, Though Florida Visit Might Prompt a Delay
By Gerald F. Seib
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON - President Bush is preparing to announce, perhaps as early as today, that the U.S. and its allies are ordering Iraq to stop flying its aircraft over the Shiite Muslim region of southern Iraq, U.S. officials said.
Most significant details of the agreement have been worked out by the U.S., Britain, France and Saudi Arabia, the nations that will be responsible for policing the ban on Iraqi flights, Bush administration aides said. Those nations are imposing the blockade to make it more difficult for Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to use his military power to attack Shiite dissidents who have been an irritation for him in the past year.
<#FROWN:A09\>
Somali clan hampers U.N. aid
Powerful militia rejects more troops
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Mogadishu, Somalia - The most powerful clan militia in Somalia said Saturday that it opposes a U.N. plan to send more troops to protect food deliveries for more than a million starving Somalis.
Aid workers worried that without support from Gen. Mohammed Farrah Aidid's United Somali Congress, the arrival of the troops would spark new fighting in the ravaged country.
Mohammed Sahnoun, the United Nations's special envoy to Somalia, said Saturday that the international body would proceed slowly and win the support of warring factions before sending any additional troops.
Meanwhile, a U.S. airlift to help save Somalis from starvation continued smoothly for a second day.
The United Nations estimates that 1.5 million Somalis are in danger of dying and that another 4.5 million require food and other emergency assistance.
The United Nations voted late Friday to send 3,000 troops to guard relief shipments, in addition to 500 troops already promised. Looting has hampered relief aid to the war-torn country.
The dangers of delivering food were underscored Friday when two unarmed U.N. military observers were shot and wounded near Mogadishu's port. Gunmen backed by three tanks attacked the port, stealing 50 trucks, tons of food and 199 barrels of fuel, U.N. officials said.
"I consider this open aggression and provocation against the United Nations," Mr. Sahnoun said.
The first 500 U.N. troops, drawn from Pakistan, are not expected for another two weeks and will be limited to Mogadishu.
"We believe the 500 are enough," Abdulkarem Ali Ahmed, secretary-general of General Aidid's United Somali Congress, told The Associated Press on Saturday. "Let's see if that works before we talk about larger numbers."
General Aidid's forces occupy the southern half of Mogadishu and much of the southwest of the country. Their main rival is Ali Mahdi Mohammed, who holds the title of interim president but controls only a small section of northern Mogadishu.
General Aidid's militia fears that a large U.N. presence would amount to an occupying force recognizing Mr. Ali Mahdi's claim to be president. It has requested that instead of troops, the United Nations send money and other resources to rebuild Somalia's police force.
Mr. Sahnoun acknowledged that the United Nations would have to win General Aidid's support before sending additional soldiers. It took months of talks before General Aidid accepted the first 500 peacekeepers.
A senior aid worker said in Nairobi, Kenya, that there probably would be problems if the fighting factions did not agree. The worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, pointed to the bloodshed and raid at the Mogadishu port.
"We support any security effort to protect our workers," said Dennis Walto of the Los Angeles-based International Medical Corps, which has worked in Somalia for the last 10 months. "But we're all kind of holding our breath."
Somalia dissolved into anarchy after rebels overthrew dictator Mohammed Siad Barre in January 1991. Some aid officials estimate as much as half of the more than 110,000 tons of food delivered since the beginning of the year has been looted. Thousands of people are dying daily from the combined effects of drought and clan warfare.
The U.S. airlift into Somalia began Friday with four planes and a total of 37 tons of food to Belet Huen, on the border with Ethiopia.
On Saturday, three U.S. C-130 Hercules cargo planes delivered about 30 tons of rice, beans and cooking oil to Belet Huen. A fourth plane was grounded by maintenance difficulties, said Army Lt. Col. Robert Donnelly, 43, of Suffern, N.Y.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which has been caring for Belet Huen's starving since early this year, estimates about 200,000 people in and around Belet Huen need help.
One ton of food will feed about 2,200 people for one day. It would take nearly 700 tons of food a day just to feed all of the Somalis in immediate danger of starvation; the Red Cross' relief effort is getting about 22,000 tons of food a month into the country.
The United States also has delivered 1,350 tons of food on 77 flights to the northeastern Kenyan town of Wajir since starting the airlift Aug. 21.
The United Nations has been criticized for responding too slowly to Somalia's crisis. On Saturday, the British aid group Save the Children charged that thousands of lives are being needlessly lost in Somalia because the United Nations has failed to provide effective leadership.
Anti-foreign riots spread in Germany
Thousands protest neo-Nazi terror
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rostock, Germany - Extremists rampaged near refugee shelters and attacked foreigners across eastern Germany on Saturday in an apparent widening of right-wing terror.
Police and media reports said clashes occurred in at least 10 cities and towns, including Rostock during a march to show solidarity with foreign asylum-seekers. Similar marches were held in Bonn and the university city of Marburg to protest the rise of neo-Nazi violence.
About 13,000 leftists, residents, foreigners and others held an anti-extremist rally outside the refugee shelter in Rostock, where the riots began last week. One banner read "Youth Against Racism in Europe" with a red fist smashing a swastika; others said "Never Again Hitler" and "Nazis Out."
About 3,000 police and border troops patrolled the city, and there were several clashes with local residents. Organizers said the demonstration was delayed by police searching cars and busses for weapons.
"Foreigners stay! Kick out the Nazis! Never again Auschwitz!" the protesters chanted as they began marching through the Lichtenhagen district. They shouted back at a man in black leather who raised his right arm in a Hitler salute and shouted "Heil!" five times from behind a wall of police with riot shields.
There were sporadic clashes between marchers and neo-Nazis in Rostock, but there were no immediate reports of injuries.
A flood of asylum-seekers
The anti-foreigner violence is evidence of the growing resentment toward the foreigners who are flooding into the country, especially in economically depressed former East Germany. German Chancellor Helmut Kohl has acknowledged that authorities will have to stem the flow of asylum-seekers to keep the discontent in check.
Before the Rostock riots began, residents had complained of unsanitary, crowded conditions at the city's refugee shelter.
Police across Germany were on alert Saturday after reporting overnight disturbances involving rightists and refugees. Germany's ZDF television said the anti-foreigner violence had spread to 10 towns and cities, many in former East Germany.
In Spremberg, police said 15 skinheads threw stones at asylum seekers and beat up a Pakistani refugee.
In Griefswald, right-wing extremists attacked a home for refugees, breaking several windows, and four extremists were arrested, police said. No injuries were reported.
In Cottbus, about 200 right-wingers tried to attack a home for refugees, but an estimated 300 police officers drove them back, authorities said.
In Oschersleben, 70 miles west of Berlin, about 40 radicals armed with clubs tried to storm a refugee shelter that had been hit by a firebomb the night before, but police thwarted the attack.
A second night of violence also was reported in Stendal, where rightists armed with baseball bats and firebombs sought to storm the local refugee shelter.
Other trouble was reported in the eastern German communities of Soemmerda, Eisenach and Luebbenau.
Police in the western German town of Bad Lauterberg in the Harz Mountains said a refugee shelter there was hit by a fire-bomb overnight. No one was injured.
Rampant anger, frustration
The extreme rightists who rampaged in Rostock appeared to include skinheads, neo-Nazis and aimless young people at the center of the anger and frustration rampant in eastern Germany.
Many of the leftists come from what is known as the 'alternative scene' that thrives in major German cities. They include students, squatters and those benefiting from Germany's generous welfare programs.
Among the marchers Saturday were hard-core leftist street fighters known as 'autonomen,' or the autonomous, who often battle with police over issues including squatters' rights and opposition to extreme rightist rallies.
"Racism is growing, and we're trying to do something against it," said one marcher from Berlin, who identified himself only as Martin. He said the leftists want a safe climate in Germany for refugees and others.
Rostock resident Fred Grosser, 28, a member of the Party for Democratic Socialism, the former Communist Party, claimed that local officials were trying to discourage the anti-racism protest.
"We decided to protest against the violent actions here in the past week," said Mr. Grosser, whose party sent several national leaders to the demonstration.
State and local officials have come under biting criticism for failing to cope with the violence.
More cuts in military expected
Pentagon plans foresee bigger hit
NEW YORK TIMES
Washington - Anticipating that steeper cuts in future military spending are inevitable, the Pentagon is quietly preparing to reduce its forces below the lowest levels the Bush administration has said would be acceptable, senior Defense Department officials say.
The cuts, which would affect fundamental military programs - including troops, weapons purchases, and military bases - could free as much as $80 billion in military spending by 1997 for use in other domestic programs.
No decisions have been made on the deeper reductions, and none are likely until after the election in November. Officially, the military services are complying with a budget-review process this summer that requires them to submit long-range plans meant to conform with the Pentagon's strategic outline for a post-Cold War world.
These classified plans, copies of which were obtained by The New York Times, assume a continuation of the Bush administration's 'base force' of 1.6 million uniformed troops through the late 1990s, as outlined by the Pentagon in the summer of 1990. Among the plans' proposals that are likely to generate debate is placing land-based Marine Corps aircraft on Navy carriers and assigning Air Force bomber pilot jobs to reservists.
But senior Defense Department officials privately acknowledge that they consider many details of these plans already out of date. Regardless of the political outcome in November, they say, the military budget is going to have to take a bigger hit than the administration has publicly proposed. The services probably will have to rewrite much of their budgets after November before submitting them early next year, these officials say.
"Most people believe that whether Bush or Clinton is elected, the cut will be the same," said one senior Pentagon official. "The only difference will be that with Clinton it'll come faster, and with Bush it'll be slower."
Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton said last week that his proposed military budget over the next five years would be only 5 percent less than President Bush's, but that he would make deeper cuts in the number of American troops based in Europe and in the Strategic Defense Initiative anti-ballistic missile system.
Last year, the Pentagon confronted similar budget pressures, and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, ordered a comprehensive review of future military needs. As a result, the Pentagon canceled several expensive weapons, such as the B-2 bomber and the Seawolf submarine, to avoid deeper troop cuts.
This time, military planners say they are reluctantly looking at shrinking the size of the overall force itself. They say projected military spending simply will not cover the costs required to equip, train and maintain the troops and accompanying ships, aircraft and ground units called for in the long-range budgets.
"Today's fiscal environment shows no sign of being cyclical in nature," said the Navy's long-range planning document. "Reversal of current projected resource reductions is not foreseen."
One senior Army official elaborated, saying, "No one believes we'll have these numbers to play with. You won't see a $280 billion defense budget in the future. It'll be more like $250 billion or $240 billion, or lower."
The Pentagon's budget for this fiscal year was $291 billion.
The administration publicly continues to resist cuts beyond those envisioned by current Pentagon plans: a 25 percent reduction in forces by 1995. Under that base-force plan, the Navy would have 12 aircraft carriers, the Air Force 15 tactical air wings and the Army 12 active-duty divisions.
<#FROWN:A10\>
BILL CLINTON
Arkansas governor's strengths also are his potential weaknesses
By John King
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Bill Clinton is a master of detail politics and retail politics, never at a loss to answer questions with a laundry list and never ready to leave a room or a rally until one last hand is touched.
But in a political year filled with strange twists and irony, it is perhaps fitting that Clinton enters the campaign's stretch run facing this irony: Many of his strenghts are also potential weaknesses.
He is a polished politician, but he is running in a year when voters are tired of politics and politicians as usual.
The details that Clinton rattles off often impress voters. But they also give ammunition to critics who cast Clinton as a politician promising all things to all people.
As he tries to persuade voters to trust him in the White House at a time of domestic distress and global change, Clinton cannot escape the contrast of a baby-boomer, small-state governor up against a man with one of the longest government resumes in American political history.
Nor can he avoid the comparison that voters will make between men who went in opposite directions during the wars of their generations.
Here's a look at Clinton's areas of strength and weakness:
STRENGTHS
The economy. Bad news is good news for Clinton, and there has been no end to reports detailing an economy stuck in a rut, with growth slower than at any time since World War II.
"Clinton is seen as caring much more about average people than George Bush, and he is seen as being much better prepared to provide leadership for economic change," Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin said.
A focus on domestic issues. Clinton has offered a long list of proposals, although some are more framework than programs. He has plans to create jobs by building roads, bridges and communications infrastucture; to povide universal access to apprenticeship programs and college for high-school graduates; to provide basic health care to all Americans; and to shift money from defense into new civilian research and jobs.
Youth. Just turned 46, Clinton projects himself as the personification of voter yearnings for change and new leadership.
Al Gore. Reaction to Clinton's choice of the Tennessee senator as his running mate has been overwhelmingly positive, with Gore seen by voters as a far superior pick than Bush's choice of Dan Quayle. Gore brings to the ticket environmental, foreign-policy and arms-control credentials that Clinton lacks, helps the ticket in the South and reinforces the Democrats' generational theme.
Political skills. Unlike Michael Dukakis four years ago, Clinton responds quickly and sharply when attacked. More importantly, he tries to play offense by constantly going after Bush.
"We're up against a tough customer here," GOP strategist Haley Barbour said.
WEAKNESSES
Inexperience. This is the flip side to the benefits of youth. Clinton's work over 20 years in Arkansas, even if viewed favorably, cannot match Bush's lengthy resume of service in national and international affairs.
"Who do you trust to make change work for you?" is a favorite Bush line aimed at exploiting Clinton's inexperience on the national stage and absence of foreign-policy credentials.
A senior Clinton strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, "His biggest weakness is that he is so new to so much of the general electorate."
The draft controversy. The debate over whether Clinton has been candid in discussing how he avoided the Vietnam draft could feed critics' portrayals of Clinton as slick and untrustworthy.
"Whether he did or did not go isn't fair game," said South Carolina GOP Gov. Carroll Campbell, a key Bush ally. "But his veracity is fair game."
Promises, promises. Clinton has promised to be a real education president, real environmental president, a true friend of veterans, of senior citizens and of middle-class families needing help with health care and college money. He is vulnerable to charges that he is promising far more than the nation can afford at a time of record deficits.
Being a Democrat. Although Clinton has led efforts to moderate his party, most voters don't know that. Republicans are quick to compare Clinton to Dukakis, Walter Mondale and Jimmy Carter.
"He has to overcome all the bad things people associate with Democrats, whether they apply to him or not," Clinton spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers said.
Arkansas. Clinton can point to some remarkable progress in his state, particularly in education and recent economic growth. Still, Arkansas has been among the nation's poorest states for decades and ranks near the bottom in many statistical analyses, giving Republicans ample ammunition as they try to paint Clinton as 'the failed governor of a small state.'
GEORGE BUSH
Foreign-affairs whiz judged back home as a man without a stand
By Terence Hunt
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - There's no mystery about Geroge Bush. He's the broccoli-hating, dog-loving, war-winning president who wants to devote the same energy to America's problems that he's applied to crises overseas.
But wait, look again.
He's the read-my-lips promise breaker, tax hiker, status quo defender and protector of the wealthy, a leader more interested in the economic distress of Russians than the misery of unemployed Americans.
One man, two distinctly different judgments. It depends, in part, on the political prism you use.
Yet, after more than a quarter of a century in politics and nearly 12 years at the White House, Bush has a record of achievements and failures, a history that can be examined and assessed.
A quick appraisal: strong on foreign policy, weak on domestic affairs. That's the verdict which repeatedly emerges from the polls. Also evident is an underlying finding that nearly 80 percent of Americans think that the nation's on the wrong track.
Here's a look at the president's record:
STRENGTHS
Bush has arguably the most impressive resume in Washington: Yale grad, war veteran, Texas oil man, congressman, ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican Party, envoy to China, chief of the CIA, vice president and president. Ready to lead from Day 1, he boasted.
In Bush's view, it comes down to a simple question: Who do you want sitting in the Oval Office? Who's got the temperament, the experience, to make the tough decisions in a crisis?
Sure, he paid a lot of attention to foreign policy in his first 3 1/2 years in office, Bush acknowledges. But children don't have to hide under their school desks anymore in drills preparing for a nuclear attack.
"I saw the chance to rid our children's dreams of the nuclear nightmare and I did," Bush says.
Bush crams a lot of history into his foreign-policy portfolio: The Berlin Wall fell on his watch, and Germany was reunited. The Soviet Union collapsed, and communism died in Eastern Europe.
"The Cold War is over, and we won," Bush says, wrapping himself in the cloak of triumph.
When Saddam Hussein's troops stormed into Kuwait, Bush rallied world leaders and forced Iraq to withdraw. Those were the glory days, when Bush's popularity ratings hit a record 90 percent. He seemed unbeatable.
When critics ask what he's done at home, Bush points to enactment of a sweeping Clean Air Act Bill, although the administration has failed to complete dozens of regulations to put the law into effect; a landmark Civil Rights Act, which Bush signed a year after vetoing a similar measure; and the 'America 2000' movement to spur fundamental changes in the nation's classrooms.
Bush's biggest strength, Republican strategist Eddie Mahe says, is that "Americans sense he really is a decent human being. People really have a sense that he is a quality person who is basically driven by pretty decent instincts and motivations. Barbara Bush is a real strength of his."
WEAKNESSES
What does Bush stand for? What does he believe in? He has flip-flopped on everything from abortion to 'voodoo economics.' In the 1960s, he was against civil-rights and open-housing legislation and then voted for the 1968 Fair Housing Act. As president, he promised that there would be no net loss of the nation's swamps, marshes and other wetlands, but then he endorsed a plan that would allow development on tens of millions of acres, including parts of the Florida Everglades.
Bush, Clinton TV spots focus on economy
President blames Congress, foe vows jobs package
By John King
The Associated Press
President Bush and Bill Clinton competed on national television Sunday for voters' trust to revive the anemic economy, the Democrat promising a jobs package as his first move and Bush blaming sluggish economic growth on "the gridlock Congress" blocking his recovery plan.
Both also were questioned about past actions that could prove a major factor in the campaign. And both said they expected debates, although Bush again shied away from a three-debate plan Clinton said he has accepted.
For Clinton, the nagging episode from his past was his avoidance of the draft during the Vietnam War. For Bush, the subject was new questions about his knowledge of the Reagan administration's alleged arms-for-hostages dealings with Iran.
But as it does on the campaign trail, the economy dominated the debate as Clinton and Bush appeared for rare, live 10-minute back-to-back interviews on an NBC election special.
"Pass a jobs program," Clinton said in listing his first priority if elected.
Controlling health-care costs would be second, he said.
"I don't pretend that it is going to be easy or quick," the Arkansas governor said. Still, "We can cut (the deficit) in half in the next four years if we have real discipline."
Bush said he believes the majority of Americans are better off now than they were four years ago, although he added, "Certainly, anyone who is out of work cannot say he is better off."
Still, Bush blamed the Democrat-controlled Congress for refusing to pass a Bush administration package he said contained the incentives businesses need to buy new equipment and hire more workers.
"What we're trying to do is turn things around and get people back to work," Bush said in Michigan. "The gridlock Congress said, 'No.' ... I have been stymied in those incentives and more by the Congress."
The Labor Department last week said there were fewer private-sector jobs in August than when Bush took office. But Bush said he is "not prepared to buy into those statistics."
"I'm not sure there are fewer people at work," he said.
Bush also sought to convey the sense that the economy, despite recent government figures, is on the upswing.
"I think things are getting better," he said. "We are poised for a strong recovery."
When anchorman Tom Brokaw said Clinton's answers about his draft status were "inconsistent", Clinton retorted that he had never changed his story, but added, "Maybe I haven't handled it as well as I should."
Clinton said he did not know until earlier this year that an uncle had lobbied to get him a spot in the Naval Reserve. Clinton never took the slot, although he did briefly commit to an ROTC program before putting his name into the draft when a lottery was implemented.
Much like Clinton on the draft, Bush brushed aside the notion that his role in the Iran-contra scandal might become a 1992 presidential-campaign issue. Recent documents submitted in court cases have suggested that Bush, Reagan's vice president, knew more about the arms-for-hostage scandal than he has indicated.
"If I had done anything wrong ... they would be all over me like you can possibly imagine," Bush said.
He called the revival of the issue "a late smoke screen ... I have nothing to explain."
As for debates, Clinton said he accepts the plan of a bipartisan panel to begin a three-debate series Sept. 22 in East Lansing, Mich. But Bush said he is leaving the details to his aides.
Also in the program, NBC released a new poll showing Clinton leading Bush 49 to 40 percent. The survey was taken Sept. 3-5 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
<#FROWN:A11\>
White House
Mourning in America
BY ANN McDANIEL
With Clara Bingham on the road with Bush
It was a gesture familiar to Bush watchers. A sudden flick of the lanky wrist, a quick glance down at the watch. George Bush knows no angle of repose; he has been restless and fidgety, a man in a hurry through his long political career. But last Thursday, when Bush obviously and impatiently checked the time half-way through the second presidential debate, some 80 million viewers could not help but read a larger meaning into a familiar habit. It said: Outta time. Outta here.
After 12 years, the Reagan-Bush revolution appears to be in its Final Days. Staffers have not exactly draped black crepe over the White House, but within the West Wing can be heard the whine of axes grinding and the churn of Xerox machines cranking out rsums. Barring the greatest performance in the history of presidential debates on Monday night, the appearance of a terrible ghost from Bill Clinton's past, or an act of God, George Bush seems fated to be a one-term president. The Republican Party may not even make it to Election Day before a period of mourning sets in.
Before acceptance, of course, must come denial, anger and depression. As he left the stage on Thursday, Bush gave a less-than-gung-ho reply when a TV reporter asked him how he'd done. "I just don't know," he muttered. In a conversation last week with an old and close friend, Bush grudgingly conceded that his days in the Oval Office may be numbered, but he refused to accept the blame for it. The timing was bad, he said. The recession lasted too long. The cold war ended too soon. Anyways, he said, there's still time. "It's been a screwy year."
That thin hope keeps Bush's inner core of top advisers whistling as they pass the political graveyard. Pulling all-nighters, they thought up snappy comeback lines for the president, none of which Bush managed to use. (When Clinton pledged to be the president of change, Bush was supposed to shoot back, "like you changed your story on avoiding the draft?") Before the second debate, when tracking polls showed a slight narrowing in the race, Bush campaign strategist Charlie Black jauntily declared a return of the Big Mo. He neglected to mention a very big But: according to the Bush campaign's own polling data, the gap between Bush and Clinton had not closed in many key states. After Thursday night's fade-out, the staffers were left grasping at an even flimsier document: a fax-smudged advance copy of the December Penthouse, in which Gennifer Flowers purports to detail her steamy love life with Clinton. Even Bob Guccione, the Penthouse publisher, refused to vouch for Flower's credibility.
The only road left to the Bush campaign was the low one. Bush advisers urged the president to shed his diffidence and come out swinging against Clinton in the final debate. Dan Quayle had scored with his harsh attacks on Clinton and Al Gore during the veep debate, although the vice president appeared manic at times. (Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales wrote that Quayle's "forced laugh was reminiscent of Richard Widmark's when he played weirdos in films noir of the '40s.") The president's last campaign-ad buys will make the unsubtle point that the president's opponent is a liar.
Lower down in the Bush-Quayle campaign ranks, the blame game has begun in earnest. "It's like living the 'Lord of the Flies'," said a staffer. "We haven't been able to eat Bill Clinton so we've begun eating each other." While staffers were not sending out their curricula vitae over the White House fax machines, they were sticking pins in the already deflated reputations of Bush's former chiefs of staff. It was all John Sununu's fault, some argued. He foolishly thought the president could surf back into office on his gulf-war surge. No, it was Sam Skinner's, said others. The former transportation secretary couldn't organize a car pool. The one person everyone could agree to trash was Richard Darman. The wily budget director had given his best friend, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, a self-serving account of the Bush administration's failure to manage the economy. The plot of the four-part series was: Darman tried to do the right thing, but low-rent pols (Jim Baker, the president) stopped him. Staffers jokingly put a Bush-Quayle sticker on Darman's Mercedes, to remind him whom he was voting for, and yukked it up over a Christopher Buckley parody in The Wall Street Journal of Darman's memoirs, entitled 'A Legend in His Own Mind.' One cabinet secretary was more blunt. The only way Bush could repay Darman, he said, was to buy 30 minutes of TV time, take Darman on stage and shoot him.
Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, only Jim Baker has escaped universal scorn from the staff. The president's best friend has obviously failed to play miracle worker in his latest role as chief of staff and campaign czar, but most aides shurg that the patient was too far gone by the time Baker arrived in late August. Baker does have bitter critics in the office of Vice President Quayle. The veep's aides accuse Baker of a lack of boldness; Baker loyalists scoff that the Quaylemen are just sore because they have been cut out of the loop.
Inside the First Family, depression has sunk in. Friends say that George W., Bush's eldest son, and the president's daughter, Doro, are particularly low over their father's apparent demise. When George Bush announced in the debate that his wife, Barbara, probably could have won the election but it was "too late," the First Lady wore an expression on her face that must have reflected her true feelings 44 years ago when her husband announced that they were moving from Connecticut to Midland, Texas.
In his public moods, the president himself alternates between the odd passivity he showed in the debates and flailing on the campaign trail. Hoarse and tired after the Thursday debate, his syntax a shambles, Bush laced into Clinton for evading the draft at a sparsely attended rally at Middlesex County College in Edison, N.J. For good measure, he also denounced a group of hecklers, most of whom were not even born during Vietnam War, as "draft dodgers."
But that is the sad and angry side of Bush. There is also a stoic and strong Bush, and he showed himself in a private conversation with a friend last week. He hadn't decided where to live if he lost the election, he said. But "if it happens, it happens. There's life after this, and a damn good life." Bush could decide to go out with dignity - and leave the last assaults to surrogates. More likely, he will follow the rough-and-tumble code of the schoolboy and play hard to the end.
Perot: Pulling the Race Out of the Mud
Eleanor Clift with Ginny Carroll in Dallas
For 48 hours last week, Ross Perot was on a roll. He won the first presidential debate. His 'infomercial' - a kind of truth-or-dare on the economy - drew high ratings. Washington pundits speculated on whether he could take off and perhaps affect the outcome of the presidential race. Then, in a condensed version of last spring and summer, the latest flirtation with Perot bumped up against reality. Perot's running mate, Adm. James B. Stockdale, faltered in the vice presidential debate, reminding voters of the improbability of their ticket. By the time Perot left the stage after the second presidential debate in Richmond, there was no pretending. Though he inched up in Newsweek's Poll, he had about as much chance of being elected the next president as Madonna.
Maybe Perot has been telling the truth all along, that he doesn't really want to be president. What counts is his reputation, which was sorely damaged after his abrupt withdrawal from the race last July. He is spending millions on TV ads so he can look into the shaving mirror and not see a quitter. Perot's one-liners on the economy are beginning to sound like a stand-up comedy routine; he needs new material. But by focusing attention on the deficit, Perot has helped elevate the last stage of a race that might otherwise have been preoccupied entirely with mudslinging.
Perot has been a reluctant warrior for his own program. He could have avoided criticism of his second debate performance if he had gone beyond one-liners to stress solutions. In his latest infomercial Perot's sober twin emerges. Grim-faced, he urges further taxing of social-security benefits, higher Medicare premiums and increased gasoline taxes. Yet with the exception of the gas tax (50 cents a gallon over five years), he glides over his proposals so quickly that they get lost in the shuffle of pie charts and bar graphs. He spends little time bracing those who will lose benefits. This is Stone Age television, yet it is oddly riveting. Perot sits at a desk with a 'voodoo stick' pointer, a play on voodoo economics, while the charts pile up along with the bad news.
Perot must be wondering what might have been had he not acted so impetuously last July. Only three weeks before he withdrew, some polls showed him leading in a three-way race. Newsweek has learned that Perot flew to Washington at that time, undetected by the press, to meet with Dr. Bernadine Healy, head of the National Institutes of Health, who he had hoped would be his running mate. (Stockdale was meant to be a stand-in.) Healy, a Republican and a Bush appointee, ultimately turned him down. But as Stockdale struggled on the stage to hold his own last week, the thought of Healy - a brilliant heart specialist and an articulate advocate for women's health issues - must have given Perot a what-if pang.
With his re-entry into the race, Perot is trying to recapture those heady early days when the faithful treated him like a rock star. But running for office takes more than revving up volunteers. "Dad is on a very steep learning curve on how to be a politician," says Ross Perot Jr. If the cold war were not over, Perot would never have been taken seriously as a candidate: his mercurial temperament would have labeled him as someone who could not be trusted with his finger on the button. Even so, Perot can still play a leadership role in the economic battles of the '90s: his warnings about the deficit may make it easier for the next president to get the country to swallow some tough economic medicine.
Welcome to 1993
Forget the struggles over Maastricht. Europe's Single Market will change the world.
By Scott Sullivan
Europe is dying, Europe is dying, Europe is practically dead. Its vaunted exchange-rate mechanism lies in tatters. The pound sterling, the lira and the peseta have dropped like stones. Britain wallows in its longest postwar recession. French economic growth is slowing, and France's president has cancer. Italy faces the worst labor disturbances in decades. Even mighty Germany is hard up for cash. The Maastricht Treaty on European political and monetary union looks like a goner. Not for years has the European scene looked so bleak. And yet, the Old Continent is on the verge of accomplishing its most spectacular feat ever - the creation of a vast 'frontierless' economic space with 360 million consumers and a combined GNP of $6.5 trillion.
On Jan. 1, 1993, the Single Market - or most of it - will come into effect. Henceforward, travelers within the 12-nation European Community and the seven-nation European Free Trade Association will travel without passports or visas throughout a vast European Economic Space. Internal customs duties will disappear. Trucks will carry no special documents. Physiotherapists, architects and students will be able to practice or study anywhere in the Single Market on the basis of degrees they earned at home. Builders and telephone suppliers will bid for public contracts on equal terms in all 19 countries. Insurance companies and banks can establish branches anywhere in the area.
<#FROWN:A12\>
BUT SERIOUSLY, FOLKS...
Dan Quayle's wacky attack on TV's Murphy Brown character obscures a serious discussion about motherhood, morality and government's responsibility
By LANCE MORROW
With reporting by Tom Curry and Georgia Harbison/ New York
AMERICANS TALKED ABOUT IT in coffee shops and check-out lines and elevators. In the Rose Garden of the White House, George Bush stood with Brian Mulroney, trying to hold a press conference about matters of state. The hounds of the press frisked and barked in excitement until their intermingled questions sounded something like Murf! Murf! Murf!
The Prime Minister of Canada turned to the President of the U.S. and asked in some puzzlement, "Who is Murphy Brown?"
The basic answer was easy: Murphy Brown does not exist. She is the TV character played by Candice Bergen. Murphy is a blond media anchor-goddess and wise-guy and now a defiantly unmarried madonna. In last week's episode she delivered a baby boy - the boy being played by a seven-week-old girl named Danica Fascella. (A perfect Murphy Brown, post-Quayle touch: Danica and her twin Cynthia were conceived in vitro and carried to term by a surrogate mother.) In triumphant autonomy, Murphy will raise the child as a single parent.
But an outpouring of emotion and opinion about Murphy Brown has proved to be unexpectedly interesting and bizarre. A Murphy Brown debate has gone layering up through a dozen levels of American life - political, moral, cultural, racial, even metaphysical. The exercise has seemed amazingly stupid, obscurely degrading and somehow important at the same time.
Vice President Dan Quayle precipitated it. He and Murphy Brown collaborated in one of those vivid, strange electronic moral pageants, like the Thomas-Hill hearings, that are becoming a new American form. This is national theater: surreal, spontaneous, mixing off-hours pop culture with high political meanings, public behavior with private conscience, making history up with tabloids and television personalities like Oprah Winfrey. The trivial gets aggrandized, the biggest themes cheapened. America degenerates into a TV comedy - and yet Americans end up thinking in new ways about some larger matters. The little television screen, the bright and flat and often moronic medium of these spectacles, works in strange disproportions of cause and effect: often, in wild disconnections of cause and effect, video Dada.
Quayle was in San Francisco, market-testing a line of traditional-values rhetoric for more elaborate use as the presidential campaign progresses. The Los Angeles riots were still flickering on the edges of everyone's mind. In a speech before the Commonwealth Club, Quayle came down hard on "lawless social anarchy" - as opposed, presumably, to lawful anarchy. He spoke of "the breakdown of family structure, personal responsibility and social order in too many areas of our society," of "a welfare ethos that impedes individual efforts to move ahead in society ..." He acknowledged the "terrible problem with race and racism," adding that "the evil of slavery has left a long legacy." But the core of the speech was law and order. It bristled with words like "indulgence and self-gratification ...glamourized casual sex and drug use."
The speech - if one deleted the Murphy Brown passage - was a reasonably persuasive and sometimes eloquent sampler: a punitive-inspirational hymn to hard work, family integrity and personal responsibility. Some people later took Quayle's words to be fatuous white-bread truisms - Norman Rockwell evocations of an America long gone. But if the ideas could be considered outside the inflammatory political and racial context of the moment, they had a ring of common sense. A number of black leaders, including Jesse Jackson, might have made the same points without controversy - and have. The family, Quayle said, is important, and "the failure of our families is hurting America deeply ...Children need love and discipline. They need mothers and fathers. A welfare check is not a husband. The state is not a father ...Bearing babies irresponsibly is, simply, wrong."
Then Quayle dropped in a paragraph that produced the spectacularly silly media effect: "It doesn't help matters when prime-time TV has Murphy Brown - a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid professional woman - mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another 'life-style choice.'"
F. Scott Fitzgerald said it is a sign of genius to be able to entertain in the mind two mutually contradictory ideas without going insane. America does not think of itself as a genius anymore. A number of Americans went crazy when they heard Quayle's line about Murphy Brown.
At the first level, Quayle's Ozzie and Harriet universe, with its freckle-faced nuclear-family suburban reassurances, collided with that of successful autonomous career women like the one portrayed in Murphy Brown. The executive producer of Murphy Brown, Diane English, had a well-machined answer for Quayle: "If the Vice President thinks it's disgraceful for an unmarried woman to bear a child, and he believes that a woman cannot adequately raise a child without a father, then he'd better make sure abortion remains safe and legal." Given that Murphy Brown was pregnant, what did Quayle expect her to do? Have an abortion? Her decision to go ahead and have the child was in harmony with the Administration's pro-life convictions. Why criticize her then? Harrumph: she should never have got pregnant in the first place. Or, more pertinently: the creators of the program should not have concocted the pregnancy dilemma for Murphy, thereby making her ultimate choice seem like a legitimizing and glamourizing of single motherhood.
At a second, less explicit layer of meaning, the Quayle line took on complex racial colorations. He suggested that Murphy Brown was a bad role model for unmarried females. In the speech's context, he was talking about single mothers in the ghetto. But like so much in last week's odd episode, there were signs of hip shooting and inadvertence.
In fact, few young black females watch Murphy Brown. The show, which in overall audience is the third most popular on network television, ranks 56th in popularity among American blacks. So the idea that Murphy's single motherhood encourages black adolescent girls to follow the same course loses its force.
The racial dimension flows naturally into the political, where the uglier side of Quayle's mission begins to become apparent. One of Quayle's amazing but unlikable feats last week was metaphorically to transform old Willie Horton into a beautiful blond fortyish wasp has-it-all knockout. (Horton was the black murderer who raped a housewife while on furlough during the time that 1988 Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis was Governor of Massachusetts; the Bush campaign used Horton to ridicule Dukakis.) So in 1992, by Quayle's interesting subliminal design, Murphy carries at least some of Willie's message: mindless liberalism allied with black anarchy (ruined families, unwed mothers, crime, drugs) leads quickly to social breakdown.
If Quayle has no malign racial-political intent, he might point out, when discussing the miseries of families, that, for example, Eastern prep schools are filled with children packed off to get them away from divorce, incest, alcoholism, child abuse, wife battering and other horrors at home. The willingness to let the racist implication stand unchallenged, unexamined, loitering on the threshold, is the ugliest aspect of all this.
Quayle in part plays the Spiro Agnew role to Bush's Richard Nixon. But when Agnew went after the 'nattering nabobs' and student protesters, he did so with a thuggish menace that Quayle lacks. Quayle smacks more of Midwestern Americana, of The Music Man's Professor Harold Hill, and Quayle's lines about unmarried mothers sounded like an echo: "We got trouble, right here in River City!" - brazen hussies strutting around town in a family way: Make your blood boil? Well, I should say!
In the Bush-Quayle synecdoche, attitude, symbolism and code words stand in for real action and accomplishment. The Bush Administration is short on both coherent programs and resources of leadership to approach the problems. An elaborate rhetorical porch, with gorgeous traditional columns, fronts an empty house. In any case, Presidents, Vice Presidents and other public officials are elected to lead and act first of all. Moral leadership and vision are vital, but somehow the right to deliver sermons has to be convincingly earned.
Quayle makes much of the theme of the absent father; America under the Bush Administration looks like a house with an absent father. A man has no right to abandon the family for years and then show up one day and go upstairs and start spanking the kids.
Television, which has all but taken over the American political process, turning the parties into the old technology, is the perfect medium for a battle of weightless, sensational symbolisms. Not that the images don't have real effect: a homemade video of a black motorist being beaten by police succeeded in burning down a sizable part of Los Angeles. The moral struggle between Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown seemed perfect and fascinating, as if all the weaknesses of both politics and television (the short attention span, the brainless evanescence, the disconnection) were leaking into one another.
If the Vice President wanted to attack television's effects on the American young, he might have hit the medium on 30 or 40 more serious matters before coming to Murphy Brown's marital status. By age 20, an American child will have watched 700,000 TV commercials. According to New York University professor and media critic Neil Postman, "There are several messages in these ads: that all problems are solvable, that the solutions are quickly available through use of some chemical, food, drug or machine." Television creates the culture of immediate gratification, not primarily through its comedy shows but through its advertising. Says Postman: "If anyone wants to relate the Los Angeles riots to TV shows, everyone in the U.S. sees television shows communicating the message that these are the things all Americans are entitled to: TV sets, cars and so on. The riots were in part driven by this sense of entitlement."
Issues of family, morals and values are important - and may ultimately be central to solving problems, especially those of the black underclass. But if they are to be discussed merely on the level of Murphy Brown, it is going to be a long and loathsome campaign.
Dial D for Democracy
In the near future, an electronic town meeting in the U.S. as envisioned by presidential hopeful Ross Perot could work. But is it a good idea?
By PHILIP ELMER-DEWITT
IMAGINE IT IS 1994. THE U.S. economy is still stagnating, Japan remains in the doldrums as well, interest rates are rising, and the deficit has reached $600 billion. Something has to be done - and quickly. President Ross Perot, making good on a campaign promise, gets on the horn to the TV networks and organizes one of his famous electronic town meetings. That night, before a television audience Murphy Brown would die for, he lays out America's precarious economic situation and the stark choices the nation confronts. Even before his presentation is over, the returns begin to pour in - by telephone, fax, computer modem, videophone and two-way interactive cable TV. By morning, the will of the American people is clear: they have decided to cut back on Social Security payments, further slash military spending and raise their own taxes.
That's how teledemocracy is supposed to work, according to Perot, the billionaire computer executive and putative presidential candidate. The concept has a certain gut-level appeal. To voters fed up with the paralysis of the U.S. Congress and the special-interest outrages that characterize politics-as-usual, the idea that the citizenry might bypass all the musty machinery of representative democracy and directly influence the government seems enormously attractive.
Perot suggests that the technology required to create an electronic town meeting is already in place - an impression reinforced by events like his satellite broadcast last Friday that linked Perot rallies in six different states. Participants in five U.S. cities could hear one another cheer Perot as he spoke to them from Orlando, Florida. To have a truly interactive town meeting, however, a number of technical barriers must still be hurdled. And even if that happens, it is not clear that the result will be any way to run a country.
<#FROWN:A13\>
Racial Riot Shows Buried Tensions At a High School
By David Holmstrom
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
BOSTON
THERE should have been 1,168 noisy students filling the halls and classrooms of Medford High School on Dec. 15. But except for a handful of tense administrators and a few students and teachers, Medford High in Medford, Mass., was virtually empty.
A racially triggered brawl had erupted in the school cafeteria on Dec. 10. Fighting between black and white students quickly spread. Dozens of state troopers and police officers clad in riot gear were called in to restore order. Fifteen students were arrested.
The superintendent of Medford schools, Philip Devaux, closed the school for several days. United States Department of Justice officials arrived on the scene as fact finders, along with experienced mediators from the Massachusetts attorney general's office.
A quiet suburban town of just under 60,000 people about 10 miles north of Boston, Medford is now being forced to ask itself two questions: How closely does an ugly racial incident at the high school reflect attitudes throughout the town? And how do educators at the high school improve racial understanding?
"The incident took me by surprise," says Medford Mayor Michael McGlynn, who also chairs the School Committee. "There had been some uneasiness at community meetings last year about kids, but not an indication of this kind of problem."
Some teachers, parents, and students - both black and white - insist that the signs of trouble were already there at the high school. Despite some efforts by administrators to resolve racial charges and countercharges involving white teachers' attitudes and allegedly excessive defensiveness by some black students, some teachers and parents say dealing with racial issues was never a priority at the school.
In fact, the high school experienced a similar racial incident in 1977. "Not much has changed," says a teacher who has taught for nine years at Medford.
"Everybody knew there was tension," says Daiena Masciarelli, president of the student council, who said that once the football season ended and the focal point of school enthusiasm faded, "a lot of friendships seemed to end."
As for the incident itself, she says, "It started out just as a fight and grew from there into a black and white battle. I think society has put this racial thing on us. To me race doesn't matter; we should judge people on their minds, not their skins, but I don't think a lot of adults believe that."
About 15 percent of the student body at Medford is black; the rest is almost all white. There are four black teachers. A black senior, who did not want to be identified, says, "There are white teachers here who make racial slurs and treat black kids differently. Everybody knows this, but how are you going to take that out of some teacher's head when it's been there for forty years?"
Miss Masciarelli criticized the school's curriculum for not having enough material on different cultures.
A black mother of a Medford junior sat in the superintendent's office last week after the incident and said she had never seen her son so upset. "He's got lots of white friends," she says, and they're on the phone now wondering if they can speak to each other in public when they go back to school."
On Dec. 14, Superintendent Devaux held a community-wide meeting to assure parents that "we are working to create a safe and controlled school environment before reopening." He said "20 actions" were being implemented, including work by a team of state mediators who are meeting with students and teachers.
"What we will be trying to do" says Alice Comack, the head of the mediation team, "is not find out who was right or wrong, but to listen to them to get an understanding of what is bothering them." The first step was separate confidential sessions with black and white student leaders, then a joint session before school reopened Dec. 18 for seniors and juniors only.
"Mediation seeks to create an environment," says Denis Gray, one of the mediators, "in which future relationships can be improved. We don't suggest solutions, or try to change the human heart. We work out what the people can live with."
In the sessions, the mediators listen as long as needed to the students and then move toward more precise definitions of terms and the meaning of words. "People want to be heard," Mr. Gray says, "and when they realize they are being heard, they are being empowered and will be more willing to find solutions."
One of the issues at Medford was the confused racial significance of the caps many students were wearing.
"Some kids just want to wear the [baseball-style caps] just because they like a team," Masciarelli says, "but if you wear a UNLV cap [University of Nevada at Las Vegas, nationally prominent in basketball and controversial because of recruiting standards], some people say it means 'us niggers love violence.'"
Devaux has now banned all of the caps from classrooms.
"In the community at large," Mayor McGlynn says, "all these racial problems aren't going to be cleared up in one week. I don't think we have talked to each other enough to build a respect for different cultures. Some of the adults have to stop making racial and ethnic slurs, and learn to respect people and work together."
Inner Cities Pose Tough Task for Clinton Team
By David Holmstrom
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
BOSTON
SIX months ago, as they walked through the smoking ruins of riot-torn Los Angeles, all of the presidential candidates had on their lips the heady promise of urban aid for inner cities. Today the delivery of urban aid is in President-elect Clinton's lap.
How quickly and effectively the new president delivers on promises hinges on three factors: his ability to keep the problems of inner cities from being crowded out by other domestic and international issues; his ability to coax bipartisan congressional action; and his ability not to add to the federal budget deficit with short-term, money-swallowing social programs.
Mr. Clinton more than once has indicated a concern for inner cities and his determination to create jobs there.
"Cities have not been treated very well over the last two decades by presidents," said Joseph Boskin, director of the urban studies public-policy program at Boston University. Yet "they are crucial to the economic and psychological viability of this nation.
"Clinton's first priority should be job creation. I'd like to see such efforts as Job Corps programs connected with universities and colleges, so that there are some long-term development of skills going on, and not just cleaning the streets."
Efforts by Republican and Democratic administrations over the last 30 years to solve a host of deepening inner-city problems read like a badly told story that never seems to end. The Great Society programs of President Johnson spent enormous amounts of money on poverty and inner cities, but came away with only two enduring legacies, Head Start and the Job Corps.
Much-heralded programs like the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act [CETA] under President Nixon and the Model Cities program under Mr. Johnson saw many funds end up in middle-income projects - or become lost in bureaucratic delays and policy shifts, some urban specialists say.
During the Carter and Reagan years, poor, unemployed blacks remained very heavily concentrated in cities, leading to more pronounced residential segregation. Whites, Asians, and Latinos are increasingly less likely to live near blacks in many inner cities; many whites have departed for the suburbs.
In Chicago, for instance, 71 percent of all blacks now live in one-race census tracts bordering other all-black census tracts, a pattern repeated in many other cities. This kind of downward spiral in social integration, when exacerbated by joblessness, has had broad social impact.
Violent crime in all major cities has increased over the last decade, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Schools have deteriorated and many businesses and banks have abandoned the inner cities. According to the National Urban League, an estimated 50 percent of all urban black children now live in poverty.
Such programs as enterprise zones in inner cities with special tax breaks for businesses were proposed under Ronald Reagan, but have hung in limbo for years.
A $27 billion urban-aid package approved by Congress this year was vetoed by President Bush six months after the Los Angeles riots. He said it included "numerous tax increases and would destroy jobs and undermine small business."
Many urban specialists agree with Clinton's promised pragmatic approach, to launch projects and programs that are prudently balanced between inner city needs and the need to cut the deficit. As yet, Clinton has provided few details about inner-city programs, whether he favors a heavy federal commitment or a combination of public and private funds.
Enterprise zones should be high on Clinton's list of priorities," said Robert Hill, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University at Baltimore.
"But," he says, "equally as important, he should target established community-based groups such as the resident-management corporations in public housing. Many of these are setting up businesses and hiring former welfare recipients. These groups should get all the reinforcement they need."
The first priority, however, many experts say, should be jobs programs. Since 1980, adult black men have had unemployment rates above 10 percent every year. In 1972, the unemployment rate for black men was 7.2 percent. And per capita income for blacks in 1990 was $9,017. For whites it was $15,265.
"There are hard choices to be made," said Billy Tidwell, director of research for the National Urban League.
"Clinton has to deal with the deficit," he said, "but the economic conditions that feed into it, such as the costs associated with the neglect of inner cities, need a high priority. There will be a good deal of pressure from reasonable people to move the Clinton administration in that direction."
If Clinton should turn to a network of public-work programs, would the effort result in inflationary federal spending?
"More money is expended to stop crime," Mr. Boskin said, "than is spent in putting people to work. When a riot occurs, like the one in L.A., rebuilding the city is much more expensive to deal with than putting people to work in the first place."
Consensus Rule Is Aim of Washington State's Governor-Elect
Observers see parallels between his plans and Bill Clinton's on taxes and economy
By Mark Trumbull
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
OLYMPIA, WASH.
THE transition team is hard at work preparing for an important 'first 100 days.' Task forces are being convened with representatives from all sides of knotty issues. The incoming chief executive is trying to make good on the image he set forth in the election campaign, which balanced Democratic Party principles with the need to revive a lagging economy.
But the man is not President-elect Clinton and the seat of power is not Washinton, D.C., but Washington State.
Governor-elect Mike Lowry (D), like Mr. Clinton, has won cautious praise from many in the business community for his efforts at 'consensus government.' This is one of several interesting parallels between these two winners of November's election.
By considering moderate Republicans for some key posts and seeking views from many task forces, Mr. Lowry is "actively operating in this transition period as he campaigned," says Bill Jacobs, executive director of the Washington Forest Protection Association, sponsored by the timber industry. Lowry plans to consult a diverse "citizen's cabinet" throughout his tenure.
"It's very difficult to get consensus," Mr. Jacobs says.
Like Lowry with his task forces, Clinton will face this challenge when he holds his 'economic summit.' Lowry, however, has an advantage: State law requires that the budget be balanced.
A former congressman and Seattle University teacher, Lowry has a particularly difficult budget in the works. Although this state weathered the recession better than most, its economy is now fragile, with thousands of jobs in aerospace and timber lost or at risk due to industry troubles and environmental concerns.
<#FROWN:A14\>
CLINTON ALREADY?
The Manufactured Candidate
By Andrew Kopkind
Manchester, New Hampshire
It was said of Belgrade after World War II that there was nothing in the shops except dead flies and pictures of Tito. So it is this winter in Manchester, minus the pictures. There are enough empty storefronts on Elm Street to serve as headquarters for a hundred candidates in the February 18 presidential primary. Once home to the biggest textile mill complex in the world, Manchester seems to have no future save as a theme park about the devolution of America. In this Decline World, factories have flown, malls are empty, condos are bankrupt, banks are failing, the service-sector boom of the Reagan 1980s has gone bust and unemployment has almost tripled since the 1988 primary. And the elms are all dead.
On a damp Sunday morning in January, Elm Street is a dead zone. Traffic lights blink on and off gratuitously to lanes devoid of cars. Torn sheets of green plastic flap idly around an abandoned construction site. Except for a posse of transient advance men, handlers and media persons gathered to start the day campaigning with Bill Clinton, only one local citizen is visible, a tall, disheveled youngish man with a graying beard, camouflage cap, tattered parka and dark aviator glasses. His hands are plunged in his pockets and his shoulders seem permanently hunched against the cold.
"Going down, isn't it?" he says suddenly as we pass, in front of a shuttered porn mart the Clinton people call "the adult book store."
"It looks that way," I agree tentatively.
"Going down," he repeats, and walks away without turning.
In many ways, Bill Clinton is the prophetic candidate of decline. The young and personable Arkansas Governor begins his basic rap - at house parties, club meetings, nursing homes and wherever else a crowd is collected - with a litany of economic deterioration. "We [candidates always assume the identity of the places they seek to represent] used to be the world's banker, now we're the world's biggest debtor," he says. "American workers used to be the best paid, now we're tenth. We used to be eighth in income equality, now we're dead last. The Fortune 500 have announced 300,000 layoffs in the last thirty days." Infrastructure is crumbling, education doesn't work, pollution is pandemic, there's no health system to speak of, manufacturing is disappearing: Clinton counts the woes.
Clinton is arguably the most articulate and certainly the best informed of the candidates chronicling decline in this recession season, when economic failure provides the context for politics. It is not unreasonable, however, to ask, "Compared to what?" Mario Cuomo might have done it with more zing, but he has assigned himself the role of kibitzer rather than player, and that vastly diminishes his impact. Jerry Brown has a strong but one-note message about a single "incumbent party" and the "corruption" of the political system, Paul Tsongas is passionless and unpresidential, Tom Harkin is bombastic and unattached to any populist movement he pretends to lead and Bob Kerrey is fixated on his own war record and sinking fast.
That leaves Clinton in front of the pack (already preshrunk by the departure of Douglas Wilder and George McGovern) and perhaps unstoppable except by an obstacle of his own erection. The experience of 1988 suggests that Democrats are eminently capable of destroying their own campaigns, both by suicidal behavior (Gary Hart's philandering, Joe Biden's plagiarism) and by sudden blackouts of imagination (Dukakis's collapse after the party's national convention). The Primary season has just begun (it doesn't end till June), and a slip of the tongue or a fall on a banana peel could derail any one of these characters.
Barring such disasters, Clinton has a clear shot at the nomination. He is now winning the all-important 'first primary' - fundraising - after pulling ahead of PAC-man Harkin in the December sweeps. It's true that mainly the money and political elites - not the masses - are giving him initial momentum, and that leaves an opening for a candidate who can rouse the common man somewhere down the line. But already the media are swooning in his wake: Joe Klein of New York and Michael Kramer of Time act as if they're part of the campaign (Klein actually 'spins' for Clinton and explains his policies to reporters on the trail; he maintains for all to hear that Clinton is "the smartest politician I've ever met"). The New York Times is employing another pro-Clinton tactic by bashing Kerrey for his personal business practices. Economics columnist Bob Kuttner of The Boston Globe detects "a genuine bandwagon" for Clinton, "a Democrat ... who is not only adroit as a candidate but who also might govern competently." He neglects to say he helped assemble said wagon. Even Times columnist William Safire, an anti-Bush Reaganite, is boosting Clinton, for his uncompromising defense of Israeli demands on the U.S. Treasury.
The enthusiastic support of political intellectuals has been the key to Clinton's success so far. While Harkin had some Big Labor, Tsongas some high-tech business, Wilder some blacks and Brown some self-identified progressives, Clinton organized the opinion-leaders and gatekeepers in the cool center of the political establishment. It didn't happen by accident. A founding member (and recent chair) of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, he directed the development of an ideology to support his campaign. As Clinton and friends begat the D.L.C., so the D.L.C. begat the P.P.I., the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington think tank that fires off neoliberal proposals like a Salad Shooter spews lettuce shreds.
Not only that, but P.P.I. heavies and adherents have converged on Op-Ed pages all over the United States in a deliberate drive to legitimize Clinton and the ideology of Clintonism that the institute has created. For example, Elaine Ciulla Kamarck, a P.P.I. senior fellow and Clinton groupie, is now a regular contributor to both the Los Angeles Times and Newsday. Her first effort posed six "killer questions" for candidates, all of which only Clinton would answer to her liking; the second was an out-and-out endorsement of Clinton's "centrist ways" as the best antidote to Bush. In a similar conceit, the op-edible Abe Rosenthal of The New York Times listed ten "errors" he said Bush made in foreign policy, virtually all of them on the 'left' side of the issues (failure to devastate Iraq fully and murder Saddam, skepticism on Israel). Clinton, among all the Democrats, is on the Rosenthal side.
What Kuttner calls "an astonishingly broad diversity of Democratic activists" have reported for duty in Camp Clinton. Harold Ickes, son of F.D.R.'s Interior Secretary of the same name and four years ago a Jesse Jackson stalwart, is shepherding Clinton around New York City and organizing local labor leaders for his cause. He has already attracted some key unionists, such as Stanley Hill and Dennis Rivera (co-chairman of Jackson's drive last time); Rivera likes Harkin but is helping Clinton too, his aides say, for the "winnability" factor. James Carville, the political consultant who scored the season's first hit by masterminding Harris Wofford's senatorial victory in Pennsylvania, is always inches away from Clinton's ear. Liberals like pollster Stanley Greenberg (out of Senator Christopher Dodd and Governor Jim Florio), media man Frank Greer (Fred Harris in '76, et seq.) and campaign manager David Wilhelm (Senator Paul Simon's ex) have moved to the right and into the Clinton center. Such swarming of the columnists, academics and political mandarins recalls the time thirtysomething years ago when the likes of Joe Kraft, the Alsop brothers, Arthur Schlesinger, Walt Rostow and the future knights of Camelot bought their tickets to ride with John Kennedy into the White House.
The more America declines, the better will Clinton's chances be to become President. If the recession is as deep and intractable as now seems the case, the candidate who can give voice to suffering citizens and provide clear plans for action at least stands a chance against the expected Bush blitzkrieg.
The only problem for Clinton at this point is Clinton himself. His policy papers have great preambles and solid introductions, but then they go blank. If there are no second acts in Americans' lives, there are no second pages in Clinton's proposals. Take health care (please!). Clinton begins with an eloquent statement of the problem: "We are the only advanced nation in the world that doesn't provide health care to all its citizens and doesn't take the lead in controlling costs. In the first year of the Clinton Administration, Congress and I will deliver quality, affordable health care for all Americans." And then? There is no then, then. He says he'll base his health system on models in Hawaii, Germany and "Europe." He promises coverage for the uncovered but doesn't say how much or what kind. He vows to control costs with vague notions of "insurance reform" and the elimination of "administrative waste" and "billing fraud." To solve the elder-care crisis, he would provide "choices" for old people who still have a lot of money. And to cap off his health plan he swears he won't increase taxes. Read his lips.
His long-term economic strategy is, if anything, even more indistinct. The devastating statistics of the decline he cites do not lead to ideas of equal weight. He does give New Hampshire audiences a taste of his short-term plans for the economy: speed up work under the new transportation bill (which Bush signed in Texas before he flew to Asia), help small businesses with capital gains and investment tax breaks, beef up federal housing loans and, tastiest of all, cut "middle class" taxes by 10 percent, giving the average family about $400 to spend "paying off credit card loans" and, perhaps, sending the kids to Yale or buying a new Buick.
The United States is the only major country in the world without an economic strategy, Clinton points out, and that's why manufacturing is dwindling, the Japanese are winning and wages are dropping. His solution is to "deliver quality, affordable health care," encourage manufacturing, reduce interest on the national debt and train young people for skilled work. Is it my imagination or is the dog chasing its own tail? Everything is dependent on a contingency. American cars, he says, have more than $700 in health insurance costs "built into them," while Japanese cars roll off the line with only 200 health care dollars in each chassis. Provide cheaper health care and Detroit will boom and spark a significant reindustrialization of America, Q.E.D. Tax revenues will rise and the debt will decrease. There will be skilled jobs at high wages for young people who go through Clinton's apprenticeship program. Cut military spending and spend the "peace dividend" on social improvements. But wait. Re-examine the premise, and the logical train is derailed before it leaves the station.
Like Michael Dukakis in 1988, Clinton refers to the marvels of his home state as models for national action. Dukakis's promise of "good jobs at good wages" had as its basis the high-tech, service-rich 'Massachusetts miracle,' fueled by the Carter-Reagan military expenditure extravaganza and by the explosion of consumption in the 1980s. Elect Dukakis, we were told, and the whole country will experience Massachusetts' Wirtschaftswunder. Unfortunately for the Duke, the Iowa caucuses had not yet been held when the Wunder started to go under. A year later, when Dukakis assured his voters he would not stand again for Governor of the state he helped run into the ground, Massachusetts was the basket case of the country, and it soon brought the rest of New England under with it.
Clinton also promises a "high-wage, high-growth, high-opportunity society" and he refers to many programs in Arkansas as models for his national plan. But even a cursory look at his state shows that his investment strategy over eleven years as Governor there has been the opposite of what he claims. Arkansas is essentially an anti-union state with a 'right-to-work' law that depresses wages and benefits for workers and inhibits the expansion of a skilled labor force.
<#FROWN:A15\>
Toronto pitching biggest concern for Oakland
By Frank Blackman
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
TORONTO - One of these years Pat Gillick is going to buy the Toronto Blue Jays a trip to the World Series.
The A's just hope it isn't this year. Gillick, the Jays' general manager, is a believer in the rent-a-pitcher approach to pennant races, hiring talent for the final push in September and October.
Mike Flanagan in 1987. John Candelaria and Bud Black in 1990. Tom Candiotti in '91. None was able to help the Jays reach the World Series.
Undeterred, Gillick went out in '92 and obtained David Cone, who many considered the best pitcher in the National League. Like his predecessors, Cone can become a free agent after the postseason, and it's anticipated he'll hang a U-turn and head back to New York and sign with the Yankees.
But what Cone does next year is of less import to the A's than what he will do in the next 10 days. He's scheduled to start twice against Oakland in the American League Championship Series that begins here Wednesday night. It will be the first time the A's hitters have seen him up close and personal this year.
"What worries me is the unknown factor of David Cone," batting coach Doug Rader said. "I think we match up OK with everyone else, but David Cone, because he's unknown, it's naturally frightening."
Cone hasn't had a chance to test himself against Mark McGwire, presumably a frightening prospect, too. And he's only watched Rickey Henderson take his hacks on TV. Pitching to the A's has to be a daunting challenge for someone who hasn't done it before, right?
"Big advantage to the pitcher," Rader said. "He throws from a different angle, so you're not comfortable with him. Another major thing is that you need reaffirmation. If you've already had success against someone, even though it might be limited, that counts for something. It's a different scenario when you haven't faced someone."
The A's respect the Jays - how could you not when a club has Joe Carter, Roberto Alomar, Dave Winfield, Jack Morris and Tom Henke? But it is also obvious they are not awed by Toronto. Dave Stewart, who will start Game 1 against Morris, has said he believes his team has the right stuff to handle the Jays and thinks the Jays believe that, too.
Toronto hasn't won a season series between the teams since 1985. This year, the Blue Jays won the first four games but then lost six of the next eight, an ego boost for the A's going into the playoffs. And the SkyDome is not an enclosed house of horrors for the A's, who have won 13 of the 19 games they've played there. Not to mention the A's beating the Jays in five games for the 1989 AL pennant.
Morris, who can start three times if necessary, finished the regular season 21-6 but with a 4.04 earned-run average. And the A's have a history of success against him. If he loses Wednesday, the Jays might crumble. Cone goes Thursday night.
Manager Cito Gaston is hedging on his third starter, either Jimmy Key or Juan Guzman. Key was very strong down the stretch, but the A's are 28-8 against left-handers this season. Guzman struggled after returning from a shoulder injury but was impressive in his final start Saturday.
On paper, the A's rotation is daunting. But ...
Stewart is a proven money pitcher. But he's pitched all year with a tender elbow that could flare up. Mike Moore has a lifetime 4-1 record in the postseason, 2-0 with an 0.69 ERA in the playoffs. But which Moore will show up, the overpowering one who led the staff with 17 wins or the guy who can occasionally look overmatched?
Ron Darling arguably was the team's most consistent pitcher this year but has little margin for error. If he isn't on, he's in the clubhouse. Bob Welch, who has been on and off the disabled list three times, does quality work. But how deep can he go into a game before being replaced?
Moose Stubing is one of California's advance scouts. Because the Angels spent much of the season following Oakland into cities on road trips, he wound up watching the A's play more than he probably wanted to and also is familiar with the Jays.
"I think they'll match up fine as far as starting pitchers," he said. "I think the difference will be in the sixth and seventh inning. Who can get to their ace relievers first. I think Jeff Russell setting up for (Dennis) Eckersley is the same as (Duane) Ward setting up for Henke.
"The fourth inning or fifth inning in their games are going to be very important. Whoever has the advantage going into the sixth or seventh inning is going to win."
Henke and Ward are obvious strengths for Toronto. Even though Eckersley was uncharacteristically shaky the final week of the regular season - blowing a save and failing to keep his team tied in another appearance - the assumption must be those were aberrations. Russell, out since Sept. 16 with an elbow injury, returned to pitch two perfect innings Sunday. The bad news for Oakland is Rick Honeycutt will miss the playoffs because of the recurrence of the injury to his right side, and that means the lefty short-relief role will be handled by rookie Vince Horsman.
With Jose Canseco in Texas, the A's have to work a little harder for their runs. That's not necessarily a disadvantage. All season this team has been remarkably resourceful, able to capitalize on a Jerry Browne double as much as a shot into the seats by McGwire.
Toronto is the equivalent of a big-play team in football. Its offense is structured around Carter or Winfield going deep. And if the big guys start flailing at pitches, the Jays might not be as resilient.
One scout, who asked to be unnamed for obvious reasons, thinks the difference in this series will be the matchup between managers Tony La Russa and Gaston. La Russa used all his people this season, while Gaston has given his reserves limited playing time. Hence they will be less prepared for the pressure of the playoffs. Also, the scout argued, Gaston has a tendency to stay with his starters longer than desirable. And finally, no one runs a game better than La Russa.
La Russa says that's nonsense. Gaston's been good enough to get his team into the playoffs three of the last four years, and anyway, "the game is not won by managers."
We'll see.
Cal taking level-headed approach
Bears to keep it simple against No. 1 Washington
By Edvins Beitiks
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
BERKELEY - Two years ago, Cal's football players went to Seattle wearing miniature roses in their lapels, so sure of themselves they challenged the Huskies before the game and in the tunnel at halftime. Washington turned the Bears upside down, 46-7, shaking all the change out of their pockets.
Last year at Berkeley, undefeated Cal took No.3 Washington to the last play of the game before losing, 24-17. The season ended with Cal beating Clemson in the Citrus Bowl and the Huskies winning half a national championship.
That was then. This is now.
As both teams prepare for Saturday afternoon's game at Husky Stadium, Cal coach Keith Gilbertson and Washington coach Don James point out that things have changed. Gilbertson said the Bears still don't know how good they are, while James argued the Huskies aren't as good as they were last season, even though they're rated No.1.
"When (USC coach) Larry Smith said we're a better team than last year, I almost wanted to throw up," James said. "I don't think we're even close. I don't think you can be when you lose 16 letter-men, 11 drafted. Three wide receivers, a tight end, a center, weakside guard ..."
In spite of being 4-0, the Huskies aren't as dominating as they were a year ago. Cal is ahead of Washington in almost every offensive and defensive category - the Huskies are in the middle of the Pac-10 offensively, last in rushing defense, eighth in total defense.
"We're a big-play defense," cracked James. "We give up big plays."
Cal receiver Sean Dawkins said, "Looking at the USC game (a 17-10 win), you saw them make a lot of mistakes defensively. They're not as good as last year, but they're still good."
James expects the Bears to be as solid as they were last season, when "they played us better than any team on our schedule." Asked if Gilbertson has an advantage because he was Washington's offensive coordinator a year ago, James said, "I would think the advantage would be the same. We would know as much about him as he knows about us."
Gilbertson agreed, saying it'll come down to how the game is played, not how well he knows Washington.
He's going to keep his game plan simple, explained Gilbertson. "Everyone who has gone in with a real elaborate, 'sophisticated' plan has come out with a black eye. They're too fast, too talented, to get cute with 'em."
Two years ago Cal tried to play a get-tough, get-cute game with Washington and it didn't work, said Dawkins. "We talked a lot of bullcrap that week. This time we're going in there level-headed, not saying anything that's going to get them stirred up."
On the plane to Seattle in 1990, an alumnus passed miniature roses around and the Bears pinned them to their lapels. A couple of players pasted roses on their jerseys during warmups at Husky Stadium, said Dawkins, "and there was a bunch of pushing and shoving going on. Our guys were just kind of barking at Washington."
Offensive lineman Todd Steussie said Cal was trying to compensate for its underdog status. "This year it won't be so much a big dog going against a smaller dog as two good teams playing 60 minutes of football," he said. "This is a different team than it was last time. We're more concerned about how we play than how they play."
Defensive lineman Scott Roseman said, "This year we're going to be a lot more humble. Last time we went in there with too much of an attitude. Little roses on our suits coming off the plane ... people saw that and figured we were cocky."
Roseman remembered that at halftime of the game, with Washington leading, 24-0, Cal started fighting in the tunnel with the Huskies. "It was behind me," he said. "I heard this yelling in the back. It's an unwise thing to do - you don't need to get in a conflict at halftime."
Those roses, said Roseman, shaking his head. "When you think back, that didn't work too well with our attitudes."
Dawkins smiled at the memory of it. "I don't know whose idea that was, but I'd like to kick their butts," he said. "That was the backbreaker right there."
But that was then. This is now.
Pats not likely to surprise 49ers
New England will have a hard time exploiting S.F.'s coverage weakness
By John Crumpacker
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
SANTA CLARA - Is there a false bottom to the 49ers' fast start this season? Is some evil little gnome waiting to pull the lever on the trap door?
If so, it probably will not happen this week, when the 49ers travel to the mythical kingdom of New England to play the 0-4 Patriots.
New England rallied for three touchdowns in its loss to the Jets on Sunday, but its offense is still ranked 24th in the NFL.
However, in the first five weeks of a 4-1 season, the 49ers have shown a pronounced inability to defend the forward pass, particularly quick, short passes in the middle of the field. San Francisco's pass defense is ranked 26th, down there in the Land of Not Good.
Coach George Seifert admitted Monday that the 49ers played a soft zone defense against the Rams.
<#FROWN:A16\>
Delmatoff continues Hart's air domination
By Ron B. Stapp
Special to the Daily News
Throwing under pressure took on a new meaning for Hart quarterback Davis Delmatoff during a 43-6 victory over Pasadena Friday at College of the Canyons.
Delmatoff had plenty of time to throw in the season-opener. His pressure was self-induced.
The thought of taking over quarterbacking duties at a school that had produced four straight All-Southern Section performers at the position made him feel nauseous earlier in the day.
But once the game started, he put aside those fears and threw for six touchdown passes and 380 yards on 23 of 34 passes. He tied Jimmy Bonds' school-record for scoring passes.
"I was a bit nervous before the game, I thought I was going to get sick a couple of times," Delmatoff said. "But things worked out all right."
He led the Indians 63 yards to a touchdown on their first possession. His 34-yard touchdown pass to Soren Halladay capped the drive.
"It took me until the second or third series before I got into the flow," Delmatoff said. "Everything was working well. The receivers were running good routes."
Delmatoff led the Indians to scores on each of their first three drives. He hooked up with Halladay again, this time for 36 yards to build the lead to 15-0 with 1:22 left in the opening period.
The Bulldogs' lone score came thanks to star running back Treyvone Towns, who broke through Hart's secondary for a 56-yard touchdown early in the second quarter.
In addition to Halladay, who finished with 92 yards on 3 receptions, Delmatoff hooked up with four other receivers. Jared Halverson had 8 catches for 132 yards and 2 touchdowns, including a 5-yard pass from Delmatoff which gave Hart a 36-6 lead with 3:24 left in the third quarter.
The Bulldogs were held to just three first downs in the first half, all three coming from Towns and his cousin, quarterback Lester Towns. The two combined for 149 yards on the ground, 120 by Treyvone.
Canyon wins with comeback
By Kevin Scattareggia
Special to the Daily News
For nearly one half Friday night, the Canyon High football team looked anything but the power-house program that head coach Harry Welch has assembled in his 10 years at the school.
But over a 15-minute stretch, covering the end of the first half through the early stages of the fourth quarter, the Cowboys woke up to score 35 unanswered points en route to a season-opening 35-21 win over host San Clemente.
"We started the game with a team that didn't have too much varsity experience," said Welch. "But we finally began to feel more confident as the game wore on."
The Cowboys, held to just 100 yards total offense in the first half, came out with a vengeance following intermission.
After taking the kickoff, Canyon scored on its second play - a 92-yard screen pass from Sean Connelly to fullback Sean McDermott. The play began innocently enough, but McDermott turned a short gain into a play that would begin a scoring frenzy.
On San Clemente's next possession, Triton running back Cyril Foster fumbled at the Canyon 46, with the Cowboys recovering. It took Canyon just five plays to score, as Ed Williams went in on a 10-yard run.
With 8:13 left in the quarter, the Cowboys had tied the score, 21-21, and the momentum was clearly on their side.
"Once we got it going, it was really tough to stop us," said Williams, the game's leading rusher with 181 yards on 26 carries, with 3 touch-downs.
It took just three plays for Canyon's defense to come up with yet another timely turnover. This time, it was Ken Moody's interception that he returned to the San Clemente 42.
Canyon kept the ball on the ground six straight plays, with McDermott going up the middle from the 14 to give the Cowboys a 28-21 lead at the 3:34 mark of the third quarter.
"It was tough containing them once they got going," San Clemente coach Mark McElroy said.
Highland gets dose of reality in 38-0 loss to Foothill
By Bob Condotta
Daily News Staff Writer
Thud.
That sound you just heard was the Highland High football team coming down to earth.
Highland, in its first year with seniors on its roster after opening its doors in 1989, was talking Golden League title entering its opener Friday.
But they might settle for merely winning game after taking a 38-0 pounding Friday night by visiting Foothill High of Bakersfield at Quartz Hill High School. The loss was the worst in Highland's four-year history.
The Bulldogs committed four turnovers and were thoroughly manhandled after a scoreless first quarter by a Foothill team rated No. 1 in Kern County.
"I tried to let people know that we were overrated in the polls," Highland head coach Lin Parker said. "Tonight we just couldn't get our defense off the field."
Foothill led 14-0 at halftime after scoring on the final play of the second quarter, then dominated the second half.
Highland committed all four of its turnovers in the second half, and got only one first down in the final two quarters.
After being held to only 2 yards in the first quarter, Foothill took command in the second quarter.
The Trojans scored first with 3:39 left in the first half when quarterback Victor Diaz hit Jason Brown with a 3-yard touchdown pass concluding a seven-play, 49-yard drive.
The Trojans got the ball back with 2:20 left in the half and drove 55 yards, scoring on a Diaz pass to Aaron Straw with no time left on the clock. Rashaan Shehee's conversion run made it 14-0 Foothill at the half.
The score could have been worse at halftime, but a 41-yard touch-down run by Shehee in the second quarter was nullified by a holding penalty.
Diaz completed only seven of 19 passes in the first half, but they went for 112 yards. He finished completing nine of 24 for 141 yards.
Highland gained only 67 yards in the first half, 49 by senior running back Cleveland Williams on 12 carries.
But Williams suffered a calf bruise midway through the first half and missed the rest of the game. Highland had only 41 yards in the second half.
Foothill scored on its first possession of the second half on a John Thomas 39-yard field goal. Highland then fumbled on three of its next four possessions.
"Our goal is still to use these games to prepare us for the league," Parker said. "These kids are resilient. They will bounce back."
Turnovers seal 14-7 victory for Notre Dame
By Dave Shelburne
Daily News Staff Writer
The way those Notre Dame running backs were cranking out yardage early, it looked like it might be a long night for Alemany.
It turned out differently, however, and Alemany first-year head coach Pat Degnan and his Indians can take some satisfaction in that - even though they lost a 14-7 season opener to the 10th-ranked Knights on Friday at Alemany.
Notre Dame fullback Lei Malietuina rushed for a game-high 104 yards, halfback Jabbar Craigwell ran for another 83, and reserve Jon Velasquez bolted 35 yards on his first carry.
But the visiting Knights ultimately needed as much from their defense on a night Alemany kept finding ways to stay within striking distance and had all of Notre Dame's attention at the finish.
It came down to turnovers on the Indians' final two drives - a fumble recovery by Knights linebacker David Dupetit at the Notre Dame 39 with 2:50 remaining, then a game-sealing interception by Joey Orlando with nine seconds left.
"They were pretty tough - better than I thought," Orlando said of the Indians. "Thank God, we hung tough."
In the process, Notre Dame backed up its strong running game with some accurate passing by quarterback Kelly Moran, who completed five of seven passes - including a 23-yard TD pitch to Orlando.
That score, coming in the closing minutes of the first half, produced a 14-0 lead for the Knights, who had scored on a 29-yard run by Craigwell on their opening drive of the game.
It just got tougher after that, starting immediately. Alemany responded with an 80-yard touch-down drive to pull within 14-7 on a one-handed TD catch by Chris Engler with nine seconds left in the half.
From there, it was surge and counter-surge, as Malietuina and Craigwell ran impressively - only to be matched by the passing accuracy of Alemany quarterback Chris Tashima.
Tashima started slowly, missing his first six attempts, then went on a 10-for-11 run to ring up 98 yards before Orlando's late interceptions.
Tailback David Eastham, held out most of the week with an injury, got into the game early for Alemany and contributed a team-high 79 yards rushing.
"I learned a few things tonight," said Degnan after his high-school coaching debut. "I'm disappointed that we didn't win but I'm not disappointed the eayway we played."
Notre Dame went 53 yards in five plays for its first touchdown, Craigwell running the final 29 one play after Malietuina rumbled 19 on a third-and-six call from near midfield.
Alemany, held to 63 yards until the final three minutes of the first half, fell behind 14-0, just before halftime on Moran's 23-yard TD pass to Orlando.
That seemed to put the Knights in excellent shape, but Alemany put together its best drive of the night - going 80 yards to score on Engler's one-handed TD catch 11 seconds before halftime.
That put the Indians back in the game but as it turned out, they never got closer.
Rooney made that sound like a "Whew!" after Orlando's victory sealing interception.
"They were real tough," he said of the Indians. "I'm happy we held them to seven points."
Three turnovers help Lynwood beat Granada Hills
By P.C. Shaw
Special to the Daily News
The team that controls the line of scrimmage usually wins the football game and that was the case as Lynwood overpowered the host Granada Hills Highlanders enroute to a 28-7 season-opening victory.
Granada Hills committed three turnovers with the Knights capitalizing on each one. Two plays after Granada Hills punter Jimmy Landress fumbled the snap, Lynwood junior quarterback Joe Austin scored from 1 yard out to give the Knights a 7-0 lead.
On its next possession, Lynwood drove 78 yards on 5 plays, culminating in a 33-yard touchdown run down the left sideline by Jeff Ridgeway.
Granada Hills was held to 68 yards of total offense in the first half, 43 of them coming on a pass from Matt Livingston to Raheem Kyle. Livingston, who only played in the first half finished with two completions in 11 attempts for 51 yards and two interceptions.
Just before halftime Lynwood increased its lead to 21-0 on an 18-yard touchdown run by Ridgeway. Ridgeway finished with a game-high 108 yards on 14 carries.
With 7:48 remaining in the third quarter Austin sprinted 35 yards for the Knights' final score.
Landress scored on Granada Hills lone touchdown on a 2-yard run with 2:22 left in the game.
Taft lets lead get away
Canoga Park rallies, 20-19
By Rick Marquardt
Special to the Daily News
Tailback Rashaud Vaughn scored the winning touchdown on a 7-yard sweep with 1:42 left in the game as host Canoga Park edged Taft, 20-19, Friday night.
The Hunters' comeback win spoiled the debuts of Taft head coach Troy Starr and sophomore tailback Jerry Brown.
Brown, half-brother of ex-USC star Charles White and uncle of ex-Crespi standout Russell White, rushed for 166 yards on 19 carries and two touchdowns in his varsity debut. He was up to 174 yards at one point in the fourth quarter but lost yardage on each of his last three attempts.
Vaughn led Canoga Park back from a 16-point deficit despite a painful ankle sprain suffered in the third quarter. He finished with 118 yards on 24 carries.
With the Hunters trailing, 19-3, late in the third quarter, Vaughn made up for an earlier fumble on the Taft 5-yard line by smashing in from the 1 after Canoga Park blocked a Mike Ferguson punt.
<#FROWN:A17\>
Shinn Feels Confident He Can Keep Giants in San Francisco
The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO - Charlotte Hornets owner George Shinn said he is working with local investors to come up with an offer to keep the San Francisco Giants from a possible move to Florida.
Shinn met with Mayor Frank M. Jordan, developer Walter Shorenstein and potential investors on Monday. Shinn and Jordan later took in a Giants game at Candlestick Park.
Jordan said the group hoped to have an offer ready within seven days to present to baseball owners. The eight local investors weren't identified, except for Shorenstein, and the amount of any potential offer wasn't disclosed.
Shinn said he was satisfied with the progress made Monday.
"Baseball has been an ultimate dream of mine. Since I was a kid, I wanted to play the game and realized somehow along the way that I didn't have the talent to do that," Shinn said. "Then as I became successful in my business career I realized the next step that maybe I could own a team some day, and that's the reason I'm here."
The NBA owner is said to be prepared to put up $30 million and borrow an additional $30 million for the team. Local investors would contribute another $50 million. Shinn wouldn't comment Monday on any dollar figure about his commitment to the Giants.
"Our goal is very simple. Our goal is to put together a presentation next week to deliver to major league baseball to keep the San Francisco Giants where they belong - in San Francisco," Shinn said.
Giants' owner Bob Lurie announced on Aug. 7 his intention to sell the team in principle to a group of Tampa Bay area investors for $111 million. The investors plan to move the Giants to the Suncoast Dome in St. Petersburg.
"The ownership group has an exclusive agreement with Mr. Lurie which we are working to bring to a successful conclusion in September," said Rick Dodge, St. Petersburg's assistant city manager. "Any interference with that agreement by any third party creates serious legal issues that we are prepared to pursue."
Lurie has tried for years to move the team from its current home at windswept Candlestick Park, which he considers unsuitable for baseball. Area voters have turned down four separate ballot measures to build a new stadium for the Giants.
The Florida sale must be approved by 10 of 14 National League owners and eight of 14 American League owners. Lurie has said he will not consider any other offers for the team until the owners vote on the sale.
Shinn, who also owns two minor league baseball clubs, reportedly would keep the team at Candlestick until a new stadium could be built.
At Candlestick later Monday, an airplane flew overhead during the Giants game against the New York Mets with a sign reading "George - Save Our Giants." When Shinn and Jordan appeared at the ballpark, shouts of "George!" were so resounding that play was temporarily halted.
Shorenstein said the meetings Monday were designed to "get acquainted" with Shinn and determine the extent of his commitment to the Giants.
"We're prepared to take it to the next step with him, to discuss the business arrangement. We hope to be able to penetrate all the difficulties that exist in putting a transaction of this nature together and we're hopeful we can carry through to the next step. We're very optimistic," Shorenstein said.
The developer also would not comment on a specific dollar amount. He would only say that Shinn's offer was "within our working range."
"We obviously could not buy the team if we weren't able to take a competitive offer to the owners," Shorenstein said.
Jordan said the project was on the right track and that additional meetings with Shinn would be held today.
Walsh Excited About Return to College Game
The Associated Press
Sitting in front of Cinderella's castle in Anaheim, Calif., flanked by Mickey, Minnie and the Three Little Pigs, Bill Walsh was back in the college spirit again Monday.
No way would some pro coach, except maybe Jerry Glanville, willingly come to Disneyland and clown with Mickey in front of a pack of reporters and television cameras. But Walsh handled the prelude to his return to college coaching with poise.
"This is the happiest and most excited I've been in my career," said Walsh, who returned to Stanford after 10 years in the pros and a stint as an analyst for NBC. "The National Football League is really a tough arena to spend a lot of time in because the pressures are immense.
"I can't say I was excited (as a pro coach). I was just trying to survive in the NFL."
As for Wednesday's Pigskin Classic between his 17th-ranked Cardinal and No. 7 Texas A&M, the man who coached the San Francisco 49ers to three Super Bowl titles is a little edgy.
"We're faced with playing our first game with a completely new coaching staff," Walsh said. "That is a challenge in itself. Just the mechanics of managing a game has us concerned. We don't quite know how all of us will react as a unit and a coaching team."
While it will be the first test of how Walsh's coaches work together, Stanford returns 16 starters from last season's squad that went 8-4 under Dennis Green.
The Cardinal, which brings a seven-game regular-season winning streak into the game, will be facing one of the nation's toughest defenses after having practiced only two weeks.
The Aggies, the 1991 Southwest Conference champions who went 10-2, have had three weeks to prepare for their earliest game ever and also return 16 starters. But the big question is at quarterback, a job won by Jeff Granger despite having missed spring football while playing baseball.
R.C. Slocum of the Aggies, entering his fourth year as a college head coach, said going against someone of Walsh's stature is an honor.
"He's done as much as anyone who's ever coached a team," Slocum said. "I probably even appreciate him more after all the tapes I watched this summer, especially the execution of his teams. It may not be as fun to watch it up close."
MISSISSIPPI: The Rebels began to wind down two-a-day practices, working on passing drills and kickoff-punt coverage. In addition, the Rebels scrimmaged inside the 20 yardline. The last two-a-day practices will be held today, as classes at Ole Miss start Wednesday. The team will then revert to a regular practice schedule.
CLEMSON: Clemson tail-back Ronald Williams may miss the 1992 season as a result of a knee injury suffered midway through last year, coach Ken Hatfield says.
"If he gets well and is able to play, it would be a big plus for us this year," Hatfield said. "When his leg gets stronger, we'll test it in the training room to determine if we can take the pounding.
"But I think that's a long way off. He's not even close now. I think you can put a P.S. on him and see you later."
Williams, the 1990 Atlantic Coast Conference rookie of the year after he rushed for 941 yards that season, injured his knee in pregame warmups before the North Carolina State game Oct. 26. He had rushed for 585 yards before the injury.
Williams, a junior, underwent knee surgery Dec. 16. The type of surgery Williams had generally requires a full year to rehabilitate.
KENTUCKY: Sophomore Pookie Jones is prepared for his second year as Kentucky's starting quarterback while senior Ryan Hockman is confident he can lead the Wildcats in his final season.
Jones spent the summer fine tuning his game after missing much of spring practice playing baseball for the Wildcats. He hit .283 with eight home runs and 24 RBI.
"I feel real good," Jones said. "I had a good summer. Basically, I felt last year helped me because I got to learn the offense. I felt this summer I had to catch up and I feel I accomplished that."
He was sharp in Kentucky's first major scrimmage last Saturday, completing nine of 15 passes for 102 yards and four touchdowns.
Jones is an avid supporter of Kentucky's switch from a Pro-I offense to a triple option this season.
"I think we can score on anybody with our offense," he said. "And it's a little bit easier on the offensive line because they don't have to hold the line as long."
Jones started in seven of nine games last season, connecting on 81 of 138 passes for three touch-downs. He was intercepted four times.
His best effort came against Southeastern Conference champion Florida, when he rushed for 77 yards and three touchdowns and passed for 216 yards in a 35-26 loss. Florida hosts Kentucky Sept. 12 in its 1992 opener.
If Jones falters, Hockman will be ready to take control of the offense.
Hockman, who has been hampered in preseason camp with lower back problems, has been a steady reliever the past two years.
TENNESSEE: Heath Shuler says Tennessee coach Johnny Majors is going to have to make up his mind this week and pick one quarterback.
"We can't have two quarter-backs in during one game," Shuler said.
"It will make one of the quarterbacks try to force the issue and make big plays instead of being conservative when it's necessary."
The decision between Shuler and Jerry Colquitt must be made this week since Tennessee opens the 1992 season at home Sept. 5 against Southwestern Louisiana. Majors has never operated a two-quarterback platoon system in his 15 years with the Volunteers.
"If we switched out on every other series it would be a disaster. You can't play the defense and play against your own quarter-back, too," Shuler said.
Majors said Saturday he is looking for "a reaction under pressure, poise under blitzing ... quickness and reaction under pressure situations" from his quarterback.
That's because Tennessee returns only six of its offensive starters from last season, and the heart of the offensive line is gone.
"The (offensive) line isn't really struggling. Our (defensive) team knows what plays we run out of what formations, what checkoffs we use. They know exactly where the ball's going, and they're cheating in that direction," Shuler said.
Hill, Newton Among Buc Cuts
By DOUG FERNANDES
Staff Writer
TAMPA - The ink on Tim Newton's contract had barely dried when the Tampa Bay Bucs decided Monday the whole idea wouldn't wash.
So rather than pay someone $600,000 a year to possibly ride the bench, Tampa Bay waived Newton, its starting nose tackle last season, along with cornerback <O_>illegible_word<O/> Carter and 11 other players, several of whom may resurface on the Bucs' practice squad.
Others cut loose were wide receiver John Garrett; center Todd McGuire; tight end Kirk Kirkpatrick; running back Willie McClendon; defensive lineman Curtis Maxey; linebackers James Malone and Ken Swilling; defensive backs Sammy Lilly, Marcus Hopkins and Herbert James; and punter-/place-kicker Klaus Wilmsmeyer.
The Bucs also unconditionally released holdout wide receiver Bruce Hill and reached a contract agreement with linebacker Kevin Murphy. The cuts leave the Bucs with 61 players on the active roster. They must cut one more by 4 p.m. today.
Newton's release came as a surprise. The veteran nose tackle signed a two-year deal last Wednesday, then played briefly in Saturday night's game against Miami.
Defensive coordinator Floyd Peters, who coached Newton when both were at Minnesota, said it was Newton's inability to play more than one position that caused his release.
"We need to have guys who can play more than one spot," Peters said. "It's better to let him go this week so he can latch on with another team rather than hold onto him until the final week."
Newton (6-foot, 275 pounds) started all 16 games last season. He came to the Bucs in 1990 as a free agent. Peters said he will look for a starting nose tackle among Reuben Davis, Mark Duckens and rookie Mark Wheeler.
"In the case of Newton, I feel bad about that one," said head coach Sam Wyche.
<#FROWN:A18\>
Several owners say fighting doesn't make cents
PRO HOCKEY
By ROY CUMMINGS
Tribune Staff Writer
ST. PETERSBURG BEACH - When the National Hockey League's board of governors sits down to determine the future of fighting in their game today, they will be talking as much about dollars and cents as hooks and jabs.
Among the anti-fighting sect, a growing number of owners fear the NHL's economic growth will be stifled if fighting is retained. So with fiscal survival as their theme, the abolitionists will use the fear of economic disaster as the basis for their pitch to have fighting banned from the game.
"We have to create new resources through television, expansion and additional licensing, and to do that, one of the things we've got to do is eliminate fighting," said Minnesota North Stars owner Norman Green, who is among a group of at least seven anti-fighting proponents who will push for a ban on fighting during meetings today at the Don CeSar Resort. "We cannot expect to grow either economically or otherwise unless we take a firm stand on this issue and send out the message that we do not condone these bare-fisted battles."
In particular, the abolitionists fear that retaining fighting will hinder or even destroy the NHL's chances of securing a national network TV contract, which is something the league desperately needs to combat increasing costs and ensure economic survival in the 90s.
"We cannot get a network TV contract as long as we have fighting in the game," Los Angeles Kings owner Bruce McNall said. "Believe me, I know, because I've tried. I've talked with the TV executives."
Acting NHL President Gil Stein, who remains neutral on the fighting issue, has talked - and is still talking - with network TV executives about a TV deal for the upcoming season, and he said the NHL still can land a network package with fighting as a part of the game.
"The thing we have to do is take a stand on this one way or the other and stand behind our decision," he said. "The only way we lose is if we run from the debate."
There seems little chance of that. Although a few other issues are on today's agenda, Stein is adamant about debating and eventually taking a vote on fighting.
He has ordered sub-committees on each side of the debate to produce position papers explaining their side, and those will be presented today when the governors meet.
The papers show that what the pro-fighting forces fear most is that a ban on fighting will lead to an increase in illegal stick-work.
"The issue comes down to what kind of confrontation is desirable," the pro-fighting paper says. "Hockey players carry weapons. Is the player who is frustrated by illegal tactics to respond with an accepted, safe and natural release of emotions through fisticuffs or is he to resort to stick-work."
The pro-fighting paper also counters the abolitionists claim that retaining fighting will hurt the growth of the game and NHL's chances of securing a network TV deal.
"There is a common misconception that the NHL cannot attract a national network TV deal as a result of fisticuffs," it says. "[Yet] the NHL plays to 92 percent capacity. This indicates that season-ticket holders, the casual fans, and sports fans in general like the game as it is."
On the issue of excessive stickwork, both sides agree that penalties need to be increased in an effort to cut down on the amount of hooking, slashing and high-sticking that takes place.
"You will certainly see something done there that will be a step in the right direction," Stein said.
Stein said he also expects to get a reading on the Dream Team concept and to discuss the league's pending TV deals. He said proposals have been submitted to Sports-Channel America/NBC and ESPN/ABC and that both call for a specific number of games to be carried via the national networks.
On the fighting issue, though, Stein says it's still too close to call.
"It's a real toss-up," he said. "That's the only way to describe it."
Three more starters from 1991 were released while linebacker Kevin Murphy agreed to contract terms.
By NICK PUGLIESE
Tribune Staff Writer
TAMPA - The Bucs continued their purge of starters by lopping three more off their roster Monday, including unsigned wide receiver Bruce Hill.
While Hill was given his unconditional release to no one's surprise, unsigned outside linebacker Kevin Murphy agreed to terms on a new contract amid speculation that the seven-year veteran will be traded.
On the waiver front, two more defensive starters, nose tackle Tim Newton and right cornerback Carl Carter, were a couple of notable cuts.
Three draft choices bit the dust: linebacker James Malone (sixth round), linebacker/safety Ken Swilling (seventh) and kicking specialist Klaus Wilmsmeyer (12th).
Others who were told to turn in their playbooks were tight end Kirk Kirkpatrick, fullback Willie McClendon, wide receiver John Garrett, center Todd McGuire, defensive tackle Curtis Maxey and defensive backs Sammy Lilly, Marcus Hopkins and Herbert James.
With the roster at 61, the Bucs still must waive one player to get down to the limit by 4 p.m. today.
First-year coach Sam Wyche has dropped four starters from last year's 3-13 team, including Hill, Newton, Carter and middle linebacker Jesse Solomon, who was given his unconditional release last Friday.
Also, guard Tom McHale, defensive tackle Reuben Davis and Murphy might not be on the roster when the season starts. Interestingly, all seven of those players were hold-outs.
"We had a lot of tough cuts, but next week, it's like digging out part of your guts," Wyche said, referring to the final cutdown to 47. "You got to keep improving. Every year sees turnovers. Even Super Bowl teams come back looking differently<&|sic!>.
"I wasn't trying to send any kind of message. A lot of it goes back to the agents. There's an implicit feeling that management's still trying to screw you one way or the other. You got to be here. Every day you're not here, you're giving us a chance to fall in love with somebody else."
Hill, a six-year veteran who started the first six games last season before having knee surgery Oct. 14 and finishing the year on injured reserve, skipped three of the four minicamps and asked the team to trade or release him a month ago. He worked out for Cleveland last Thursday, but the Browns did not make an offer for him.
Newton, who had 56 tackles and 5 1/2 sacks last year despite playing with a broken hand late in the season, was released in favor of third-round pick Mark Wheeler, who apparently has won the job.
However, Newton's agent, Jeff Durand, said Newton's exit had more to do with a personality clash between himself and Wyche and Vice President Rich McKay, the team's contract negotiator.
"I'm not surprised; I'm disappointed," Durand said. "I tried to hold them to their promise to reward Tim Newton and I took personal offense at the slander against my character. I called Sam this morning and told him he was a coward and a bully."
Wyche said he felt bad about releasing Newton, but a 27-day hold-out and the inability to play more than one position on the line hurt the former Florida Gator.
"This was a football decision," Wyche said. "I liked Tim and he worked hard in the off-season. Floyd spoke to him and I spoke to him and we didn't beg him, but we said as strongly as we could, 'Please be in camp. You're going to have tough competition. We drafted a kid [Wheeler] who's going to be a whale of a player.'
"It wasn't Tim. It was the agent. I can't say this strongly enough because I don't want Tim to be damaged in this in any way. He felt he was getting an edge on things by holding Tim out, but he left this guy with not enough time to make his team."
Durand said the negotiations, which concluded last Wednesday when Newton signed a two-year, $1.2 million contract, were degrading and unprofessional. Newton earned $275,000 in 1991 and Durand wanted to push him to the average income for a starting defensive lineman of $687,000. But Durand said McKay's first offer was $1,000 above what Newton made last season.
Davis, who agreed to terms last Thursday and did not play in Saturday's 22-7 loss at Miami, hopes he does not share Newton's fate. He said it will be different not to line up next to Newton, but that change is constant in the NFL.
"It's been like that for me the last three or four years," Davis said. "I came in with a bunch of guys I made friends with and they started going off one by one. I made friends with John Cannon and I ended up taking his position. That's what the NFL is about - no job security."
The Bucs currently have roster exemptions for Davis and McHale. Both are expected to be activated for Friday's preseason finale against Cleveland at Tampa Stadium.
"I got a lot on my mind right now and there are things I can't carry to the field," Davis said. "I have to let nature take its course."
Carter, who started 10 of the last 11 games, had been burned repeatedly in the exhibitions after signing 12 days into training camp. His days were numbered when the Bucs signed several cornerbacks off Plan B, including Milton Mack, and drafted Rogerick Green in the fifth round.
Of the rookies, Swilling might be the most disappointing. Two years ago, the Georgia Tech product was projected as a first-round pick. But injuries and a switch of positions dropped his stock so far that he fell to the second day of the draft.
Defensive coordinator Floyd Peters said attitude played a role in Swilling's cut.
"The guy has intelligence and speed and you can see why everybody likes his talent," Peters said. "But he just doesn't have that fire and competitive spirit. He's not a mean, tough kid, and this is a tough business. I would say he no longer wants to punish people and throw his body around."
Ex-Vikings safety Joey Browner passes physical with Bucs and may sign today.
By NICK PUGLIESE
Tribune Staff Writer
TAMPA - The reunion between former Minnesota strong safety Joey Browner and Bucs defensive co-ordinator Floyd Peters could happen as soon as today.
Browner, who was waived on the eve of training camp after the Vikings said he failed his physical, spent Monday holed up in a local hotel waiting for his agent, T.J. Pantaleo, to work out a deal with Bucs Vice President Rich McKay.
Browner, who worked out and passed a physical for the Bucs on Sunday, was scheduled to earn $1 million this season with the Vikings. The two sides were trying to hammer out a new pact that would pay him somewhat less and probably be based on incentives.
"If it all works out and we think he can help us, then he enters the picture," Coach Sam Wyche said. "If he looks like one of the best 47, then he makes the team.
"Floyd knows this guy. We feel we have some inside information on him as a player."
Peters talked on Monday as if Browner already was wearing a Bucs uniform.
"If there's a good football player out there, I'm going to bring him in every time," Peters said. "We've got to get better."
If the six-time Pro Bowl performer joins the team, he would not be the first Browner to wear a Tampa Bay uniform. His brother, Keith, who plays for Arena Football's Tampa Bay Storm, played for the Bucs from 1984-86.
Joey Browner, a 10-year veteran, could push eight-year veteran Mark Robinson out the door. Robinson, who spent 1991 on injured reserve with a shoulder injury, was expected to regain his starting spot but has been bothered by a foot injury during the preseason. Second-year pro Marty Carter has started all three games at strong safety and has seven tackles and one interception.
<#FROWN:A19\>
Evans, Biondi Qualify For Swimming Finals
By BETH HARRIS
AP Sports Writer
BARCELONA, Spain - Janet Evans and Matt Biondi, the golden swimmers for the United States four years ago at Seoul, qualified for finals today in vastly different fashions.
Evans easily qualified for the women's 400-meter freestyle, an event she won as she claimed three individual golds in Seoul. Biondi, who won seven medals in Seoul, reached the final of the 100 freestyle but only finished fourth.
In the women's 100 backstroke, Kristina Egerszegi of Hungary set an Olympic record of 1 minute, 00.85 seconds to shave one-hundredth of a second off the mark set by Rica Reinisch of Germany in the 1980 Moscow Olympics.
Egerszegi, who holds the world record of 1:00.31 in the 100 backstroke, already has one gold medal at these Olympics. She won the 400 individual medley Sunday.
Lea Loveless of Crestwood, N.Y., qualified second behind Egerszegi in 1:01.19. The top U.S. backstroker, Janie Wagstaff of Mission Hills, Kan., finished fifth in 1:02.29 to make the final.
Loveless, 21, was second to Wagstaff at the U.S. trials with a personal best of 1:01.14.
Monday's gold medal went to Pablo Morales in the 100 butterfly. Eric Namesnik won a silver in the 400 individual medley and the 800 freestyle relay team earned bronze.
In the men's 200 backstroke, American record-holder Royce Sharp of Houston failed to qualify, but Tripp Schwenk of Sarasota, Fla., did.
Sharp, who has the best time in the world this year in 1:58.66, finished 11th in 2:00.97. Only the top eight times advance to finals. At the U.S. trials, Schwenk became the third American ever to better 1:59. He qualified sixth today in 1:59.92.
World record-holder and crowd favorite Martin Zubero of Spain led all qualifiers in 1:59.22.
In the same event, Raymond Papa of the Philippines caused a stir when judges ruled he deliberately false started. Thousands of fans booed Papa's disqualification, which delayed the start.
The team of Angel Martino of Americus Ga., Ashley Tappin of Metairie, La., Crissy Ahmann-Leighton of Tucson, Ariz., and Dara Torres of Gainesville, Fla., finished first in the 400 freestyle relay preliminary with a time of 3:41.57. The German women were second in 3:43.58.
The race marked Martino's debut in the Olympics after the 25-year-old was banned from the 1988 U.S. team. Martino, then Angel Meyers, qualified in three events, but was kicked off the team after testing positive for a banned substance.
Jenny Thompson of Dover, N.H., and Nicole Haislett of St. Petersburg, Fla., were expected to replace two of the preliminary swimmers in tonight's final. They were rested during the heats.
Thompson is going for gold again after a disappointing start in the Olympics. She finished second in the 100 free and failed to qualify for the 200 free final, which Haislett won.
Evans, 20, from Placentia, Calif., has not lost in the 400 freestyle in six years. She led the entire way in her heat to win in 4:09.38, well off the world and Olympic records of 4:03.85 she set in her gold-medal performance four years ago in Seoul.
American Erika Hansen also made the final. Hansen, who failed to qualify for the 400 individual medley final, was third fastest in the morning preliminary with a time of 4:12.08.
Hansen, from King of Prussia, Pa., trailed German Dagmar Hase, who stayed close to Evans and finished in 4:10.92.
Biondi qualified for the 100 freestyle final in 49.75 seconds, but his time was only the fourth-best and not as fast as teammate Jon Olsen, who was third in 49.63.
Alexandre Popov of the Unified Team led the way in 49.29 seconds, followed by Brazilian Gustavo Borges in 49.49. Borges, who swims for the University of Michigan, is the NCAA champion in the event.
Biondi's finish cost him a prime center lane. By finishing first and second, Popov and Borges will swim in lanes four and five. Biondi will start in lane six and Olsen is in lane three.
Biondi is the world record-holder in the 100 free with a time of 48.42.
Thompson, Haislett, Anita Nall and Summer Sanders - swimming's 'New Kids on the Block' - weren't supposed to need Evans to help the U.S. team win Olympic gold medals.
Now they need her more than ever.
Nerves have gotten the best of the youngsters, especially Thompson and Nall - two world record-holders who missed gold in their signature events.
So far, the women have won only one gold, one silver and two bronzes. That's about two gold medals short of what was expected.
The medal count was expected to rise today, since Evans was the heavy favorite in the 400 freestyle. She also is favored in the 800 freestyle on Thursday.
In 1988, Evans and Biondi took turns winning the only Olympic gold medals captured by U.S. swimmers. Evans won three in the distance races; Biondi won two in the sprints.
Evans hasn't lost a 400 freestyle race since the U.S. Long Course Nationals in 1986.
"I want to do well for myself just to prove to myself that I can do it," she said.
Her performance in the grueling 400 should steady the shaky U.S. women, unnerved by Thompson's failures.
"We had a lot of pressure on us coming into this meet. We didn't swim poorly, we just didn't swim as well as we had hoped," said Haislett, who narrowly hung on for gold in the 200 freestyle Monday.
Evans said her second Olympics is different than Seoul, where as a 16-year-old sprite she fearlessly took on and beat the East Germans.
"I've been through all this before and it's not as much of a novelty," she said. "I think it's helped me because I can relax and kind of take it all in stride."
Nall, 16, of Towson, Md., faded in the stretch of the 200 breaststroke to finish behind 14-year-old Kyoko Iwasaki of Japan, who set an Olympic record of 2:26.65, and Lin Li of China, who was clocked in 2:26.85.
Magic's Injury Isn't Considered Serious
By BILL BARNARD
AP Basketball Writer
BARCELONA, Spain - Point guards Magic Johnson and John Stockton are hurt and Charles Barkley is still making mischief.
So what happens?
The U.S. Olympic basketball team beats medal favorite Croatia 103-70 Monday night, the closest victory the Americans have had in nine games, but still a blowout.
They did it without Johnson for more than three-quarters of the game because of a strained muscle in his right knee. Stockton has been out with a cracked bone in his right leg since June 29.
"I stepped away and felt it pull," said Johnson, who stood up for interviews after the game.
An MRI showed nothing serious, and Johnson was listed as day-to-day. He'll have full rest Tuesday, with no game or practice scheduled.
Johnson, the only player who has started every game for Team USA, was unconcerned that one injury would stop the parade of blowouts.
"If I have to miss, I will," Johnson said. "This team could play without a lot of people."
For the Dream Team, whose previous closest game was 38 points over Puerto Rico in the Olympic qualifying tournament, the game against Croatia was an opportunity to measure the size of its dominance.
"It was good for our team to be focused on a challenge," Michael Jordan said. "Our focus on this game was a lot better. In our minds it was a tough game, even though we overwhelmed them with our manpower. We knew this was a team that would challenge us."
"We wanted to gauge our team with this game," Johnson said. "I'd say we still have a passing grade."
Croatia, with six players from Yugoslavia's 1988 Olympic silver medalist team, figured to be one of the American's toughest tests.
Drazen Petrovic of the New Jersey Nets scored 19 points and Stojko Vrankovic of the Boston Celtics had 11 points and four blocked shots. Dino Radja, a Celtics draftee, scored 14 points on 6-of-10 shooting.
But the man Team USA concentrated on was Toni Kukoc, considered by many to be the most talented player in Europe.
The absence of Johnson and Stockton left the U.S. team without a true point guard on the roster. But Chicago Bulls Jordan and Scottie Pippen did the job anyway.
Pippen blanketed Kukoc for most of the game and then said the Croat superstar, who scored just four points, is overrated.
"He's OK, not as great as people said and I anticipated," Pippen said. "I don't know he's even the best European player here. That's probably Drazen Petrovic."
Petrovic hit three 3-pointers in a one-minute span late in the first half to lead a Croatia rally, but he had foul trouble and scored just two of his 19 points in the second half.
Kukoc, courted intensely by the Bulls last year, was defensed superbly by Pippen, who made just his third start for Team USA. Pippen and Jordan both resented the attention given Kukoc by Bulls general manager Jerry Krause.
Barkley, whose intentional elbow foul against Angola in the U.S. opener on Sunday turned the fans against him, heard more derisive whistles in the first half against Croatia.
Spikers Shave Heads To Support Teammate
By NESHA STARCEVIC
Associated Press Writer
BARCELONA, Spain - Bob Samuelson promises to play hard. That's what the U.S. teamsteam needs. Just turn down the volume a bit.
With its opening-game victory against Japan taken away because Samuelson yelled at officials, the Americans will have to be on their best behavior against Canada today.
Their feelings will be apparent - they cut off their hair Monday night to show support for Samuelson.
The Americans, hoping to become the first to win three straight volleyball gold medals, saw their five-set, comeback victory against Japan overturned into a four-set defeat Monday by the International Volleyball Federation.
"We've got our backs to the wall, but we have faced and handled adversity before, and we are prepared to handle it again," coach Fred Sturm said. "Our goal of winning the gold medal has not changed."
The trouble began when Samuelson, a firebrand of Playa del Rey, Calif., got a second yellow card for yelling at officials at match point for Japan in the fourth set. The rules clearly call for a red card to be issued at that point and the awarding of a technical point to Japan.
Leading 2-1 in games and 14-13 on its serve when the Samuelson incident occurred, Japan would have won the match if the rules had been applied, but referee Ramis Samedow of Azerbaijan didn't want to end it that way and allowed play to continue.
But the FIBV officials, acting on a Japanese protest, decided that the rules were clearly broken and declared Japan the winner in four sets.
The ruling did not take away U.S. chances of defending the gold medal, but it reduced the safety cushion.
Four nations from the six-team pool will advance to the quarterfinals and the Americans should still make it. Samuelson was praised by Sturm after the Japan game for "making so many things happen" and "lifting the team in so many areas."
But that was before the impact of Samuelson's outburst became known.
Samuelson came into the game only as a replacement for Bryan Ivie, the middle blocker from Manhattan Beach, Calif., who went out with a right knee injury and is doubtful for today's game.
"This is a very disappointing situation, but I am prepared to come back versus Canada on Tuesday and play as hard as I have ever played," Samuelson said. "I think the decision will be used to fire our team for the rest of the Olympics.
"I did not realize that they assessed me a second yellow card, but it is something that I will have to deal with. There is nothing that we can do about the decision except play hard the remainder of the Olympics."
Anthony, Astros Slam Braves
By BILL ZACK
Atlanta Sports Wire
ATLANTA - Questioned about his lack of work this month, Atlanta Braves reliever Mike Stanton shrugged Monday afternoon and offered, "Throwing on the side every day keeps me pretty sharp and the rest of it is state of mind."
<#FROWN:A20\>
ARE THEY KIDDING?
The Dream Team is everyone else's nightmare. It should be no contest, unless...
By PAUL A. WITTEMAN
Reported by Brian Cazeneuve / Portland
THE PLAYERS ON THE BENCH SAW IT coming, edging forward on their seats in anticipation. Michael Jordan was about to take the defender from Argentina on a quick and not-so-flattering trip to the hoop. Two-hundred-kilo sneakers: that's what it appeared the Argentine was wearing as Jordan effortlessly rose as from a trampoline for one of his trademark, gravity-defying pirouettes above the rim. The Argentine seemed to shrink to the size of a circus midget. As Jordan dunked the ball, the players on the bench leaped up and cheered the best basketball player the world has ever seen. In Spanish.
That's right. The players cheering Jordan so wildly were the very Argentines whom he was reducing to the level of kids playing pickup on the playground. No matter. "I played with great happiness against the monsters," Argentine center Hernan Montenegro said later. Added guard Marcelo Milanesio: "When we met at the center of the court, I was very excited that it was Magic Johnson shaking my hand."
So it went at the Tournament of the Americas in Portland, Oregon, last month, where the Argentines and everyone else came to pose for pictures with Michael, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and their merry band of National Basketball Association All-Star troubadours. In between, they played a little basketball. Very little. Take Cuba: with 3 1/2 min. remaining in the game, the team was behind by 70 points, and only the final horn saved it from losing by 100 or more. Panama dropped a cliff-hanger by a mere 60.
When the tournament ended, with the Americans barely breaking a sweat except on the golf course, where they seemed to spend most of their time, everyone was ready to concede the gold medal in Barcelona to the assemblage now and forever more to be known simply as the Dream Team. Nevada bookmakers, who never miss an opportunity to make a dollar, have fastidiously refused to post odds or take a bet. The only surer wager than the Dream Team may be that George Foreman will not try to make it next as a featherweight.
U.S. coach Chuck Daly has at his disposal the greatest arsenal of offensive and defensive weapons ever gathered on a basketball court. There are passers with 360<*_>degree<*/> vision like Bird (despite his creaky back), John Stockton and Magic. Chris Mullin and Jordan are excellent three-point shooters. No one in possession of his faculties and desirous of retaining them would dare drive down the lane into territory defended by Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing and Karl Malone. Jordan and his Chicago Bulls teammate Scottie Pippen are tenacious open-court defenders. Then too there are Clyde Drexler and the Admiral, David Robinson. Twelfth man Christian Laettner will probably get a great view of all this talent mostly from the bench.
And what of the Olympic opposition? The dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia has eviscerated the teams that won the gold and silver medals in Seoul in 1988. The best former Soviet players now wear the uniform of Lithuania. Drazen Petrovic and Vlade Divac led Yugoslavia to the silver medal at Seoul. This time, however, Yugoslavia as such has been banned from Barcelona. Petrovic, a New Jersey Net, will play for Croatia. Divac, a Los Angeles Laker and a Serb, will not be allowed to play. The Germans will be competitive; N.B.A. star Detlef Schrempf will make them so. And in Oscar Schmidt, the Brazilians have one of the game's best three-point shooters. But even if you put all these players on one squad, it would make no difference. The remaining 11 teams in the Olympic tournament will be scuffling for silver.
Still, American coach Daly is not known as the 'prince of pessimism' for nothing. He is publicly worried that since games in the Olympics are eight minutes shorter than those in the N.B.A., his juggernaut might dawdle, fall behind and wait until it is too late to mount a rally. Hey, chill out, replies Jordan. "We have too much talent, and we'll turn it on whenever we have to." Daly frets that the three-point shooting line in international basketball is closer to the basket than in the N.B.A. and that the lane is wider, both tending to nullify the Americans' height advantage. However, after seeing how little difference these factors made in his team's 136-57 loss to the Yanks, Cuban coach Miguel Gomez seemed transported to a Zen mode. "One finger cannot cover the sun," he said.
But the dream that must give Daly the worst night sweats features a player like Butch Lee. Back in 1976, Lee was not invited to the U.S. Olympic basketball trials. Instead, he played for the team from his native Puerto Rico. Spurred by a desire for revenge over the slight he felt he had suffered at the hands of the U.S. selection committee, Lee whipsawed the Americans with the performance of his life. He scored 35 points and almost single-handedly took the highly favored U.S. team to within seconds of a humiliating loss.
In Daly's updated nightmare, the Butch Lee role is played by Lithuanian Sarunas Marciulionis, an N.B.A. star who plays for the Golden State Warriors. Daly sees Marciulionis sinking three-pointers like an automaton from nine meters, with Lithuanian center Arvidas Sarbonis playing for one night like Bill Russell in his prime.
Maybe. All sporting contests before they are played contain an element that Princeton basketball coach Pete Carril calls "glorious uncertainty." Anything can happen, as Carril's teams have proved season after remarkable season against superior opposition. But not this superior. "This is not a great team," says Carril. "This is the greatest team ever." Don Nelson, the shrewd and artful coach of the Golden State Warriors, whose son Donn is helping to coach Marciulionis and the Lithuanians, agrees. "The once-in-a-lifetime game is not going to happen," he says. "The Dream Team will not allow any second shots. Even if the Americans play poorly, there shouldn't be a close game. They haven't even tried yet."
When they do, is a shutout conceivable? Now there's a fantasy for the Dream Team to ponder. Sleep on it, Michael. Just don't forget to set your alarm clock.
BENVINGUTS TO THE CATALAN GAMES!
Barcelona flashes its many stylish differences as the arc of the opening arrow begins the dazzling five-ring show
By PICO IYER BARCELONA
IMAGINE A PROUD, SERIOUS OLD man, not without some gruffness. Imagine that he is a prosperous merchant, having made enough money, on his own terms, to indulge himself in moments of whimsy, flashes of dandy vanity. Imagine further that he has seen empires and invaders come and go. Now, having dusted the furniture and repainted the house, he throws open the doors to his elegant old home to reveal ... a dazzle of tropi-colored tricks.
That was a little how it felt as Barcelona, the often unshaven but designer-crazy capital of Catalonia, set flame to the Games of the 25th Olympiad. The occasion was a golden opportunity for presenting the city as a shiny new capital of a postnational world. It was also a quadrilingual glimpse into a multicultural future. Music at the celebrations that opened the Games came from an atlas of names - Ryuichi Sakamoto, Angelo Badalamenti (of Twin Peaks fame), Andrew Lloyd Webber; Pl<*_>a-acute<*/>cido Domingo was followed by a sea of 'living sculptures' designed by a man from the West Indies. And some of the grandest cheers of all came as the unfamiliar Lithuanian flag hung over costumes fashioned by Issey Miyake.
As soon as the opening ceremonies began, moreover, records began falling like tenpins: the most nations competing (172), the most athletes in attendance (almost 11,000, or five times as many as in the Winter Games), the highest number of television viewers (a projected 3.5 billion). But numbers did scant justice to emotions: to the sense of quiet pleasure as one of the first teams to enter was South Africa, here after a 32-year absence; to the shiver of unease as Iran alone paraded behind a man, not a woman, bearing its name; to the bewilderment that met the Unified Team, amid its cacophony of 12 republics' flags. And when Bosnia-Herzegovina appeared, after an eleventh-hour entry, people rose spontaneously around the stands to cheer.
The most prominent country in the early going, however, had been one that did not march but made its presence felt at every turn: independent-minded Catalonia, which is determined to cast these as the Catalan, not the Spanish, Games. A longtime enemy of Castile, delighting in a language that Franco had banned, Barcelona was eager not just to show off its faster, higher, stronger self - reconstruction is almost as trendy as deconstruction here - but to emphasize its distance from the Spain of myth, and of Madrid. FREEDOM FOR CATALONIA signs (in English) were draped from balconies and shoulders, and buttons and stickers proclaiming Catalonian independence were handed out even to kids from California. The Catalan flag, four bloodred fingers on a field of yellow, seemed to be fluttering from every window - 28 of them on a single building! - and not one Spanish banner was in sight. As the opening arrow approached, every other shop seemed to be saying benvinguts - 'welcome' in the new Olympic language of Catalan - to what was locally known as the Jocs Olimpics.
In a deeper sense, though, the weathered, down-to-earth city seemed too rooted and too various to be greatly transformed by pervasive Cobi (as the Olympic mascot is called). Barcelona appeared ready to take over the world, and not the other way round. In Seville, when the Olympic torch arrived on its way to the opening ceremonies, crowds flocked into the Plaza de San Francisco to snap up Cobi dolls, key rings and T shirts, and catch a flash of history. In Barcelona, by contrast, life continued as usual. It flows and crests from dawn to dawn here: sunny Sunday mornings watching the albino gorilla in the zoo; early evenings in the stained-glass quiet of Santa Mar<*_>i-acute<*/>a del Mar; late, late evenings with thrashing guitars at the penumbral nightclub KGB. Old women dance stately sardanes in front of the cathedral, and men in silk ties ride scooters to the office. Smiling pickpockets filch bank notes from the wallets of sightseers while placing roses in their hair.
In the balmy beach-front Olympic Village, as the teams began arriving, 50 or more Iranians could be seen sitting in rows in dull beige uniforms, like nothing so much as condemned POWS, fending off questions about why their team consisted of 40 men and zero women ("Their records are not strong." "Women are not interested in sports"). On the other side of the room, Enos Mafokate, the lone black member of South Africa's equestrian contingent, was red-eyed with exhaustion and excitement. "For 30 years," he said, "I have dreamed of this. When they told me I was going to the Games, I could not open my mouth for three hours. I could not even move my jaw. This is something I will never forget!"
Around him, other athletes were pounding away at a Super Monaco GP video game, driving through a simulated Monte Carlo, even as the stars of the U.S. basketball team were in the real Monaco, driving the lane. Their performances were eagerly anticipated. Along the main promenade of town, the tree-lined Ramblas, sidewalk artists had already added Magic Johnson's face to the standard repertoire of Marilyn Monroe and Emperor Hirohito, and copies of Magic's biography were piling up next to canine pianists, peep shows and Ecuadorian panpipers.
Meanwhile, more and more newcomers could be seen trying to figure out a city where pijamas are desserts and streets have periods in the middle of their names (Paral.Lel). Journalists were struggling to work out why three different coins were worth a peseta (less than a cent) and whether the regal Pla<*_>c-cedille<*/>a de Catalunya really was enhanced by an enormous inflatable M&M.
<#FROWN:A21\>
Cubs Face Challenge With Gross
Dodgers Pitcher Coming Off No-Hit Performance
By Joe Goddard
Staff Writer
LOS ANGELES - The Cubs knew all about Kevin Gross before they faced him Saturday night.
They knew him as the man who struck out 12 of them in just seven innings last May 18, and read all about him last week when he no-hit the Giants.
"Our game was the first time I saw him," Cubs manager Jim Lefebvre said of the Dodgers veteran. "He had great stuff. I mean, great. He had his hook [curve] going. He was really breaking 'em off. We were lucky to catch up to him."
Mark Grace wasn't surprised at Gross' achievement.
"He got me twice in that [12-strikeout] game," the .308 hitter said. "Fortunately, we beat him. Otherwise, he'd have made us all look silly."
It was a somewhat silly game for Grace personally. He had two triples, but also made his last two errors of the season.
"I know Kevin doesn't have a winning record, but that doesn't always mean you're not a good pitcher," Grace said. "He's played for some bad teams."
Gross has had four days to think about the gem he achieved. He threw only 99 pitches, 71 for strikes.
He felt the odds are heavily stacked against duplicating Johnny Vander Meer's consecutive no-hitters in 1938 for Cincinnati.
"It's such a longshot to do two of them in a row," said Gross, who has a 3.37 ERA, but only a 6-12 record.
"The time has gone by so fast between starts that I really haven't had time to think about it.
"I threw on the sidelines Thursday and had fantastic stuff. I've actually had good stuff all season, but that doesn't always mean anything.
"I started off sharp before the no-hitter, too. The Reds didn't get a hit until the fifth inning.
"I'll go out there and give it my best shot and see what happens."
The only Giant close to getting a hit off Gross was Robby Thompson.
His line drive in the eighth inning was speared by shortstop Jose Offerman, who had to leap.
Gross draws a blank on what happened after Willie McGee flied to left field for the final out. "It was a blur," he said.
It has been the only no-hitter of the season. There were seven last year and eight in 1990, but none the previous two years.
Gross' only claim to fame before the no-hitter was embarrassing. He was caught using sandpaper to scuff baseballs in a 1987 game with the Phillies and was suspended 10 games.
Holder of a 96-113 record, Gross has not had a winning season since 1985, when he was 15-13 with the Phillies.
He did, however, make the All-Star team in 1988, finish second to Mark Langston in league strikeouts in 1989 with 158 and stop Lenny Dykstra's 23-game hit streak in 1990.
Both teams came into the game a little tired from a 12-inning Friday night game the Cubs won 3-2.
Steve Buechele drove in the first and last runs of the game, but had a throwing error at third that allowed the Dodgers to get back in the game off Greg Maddux.
"Strange night," he said.
Bob Scanlan earned his eighth save in 10 opportunities to take over the club lead from Paul Assenmacher and Jim Bullinger.
The Dodgers had tied the game in the ninth off Maddux on a double by Offerman that sent pinch-runner Eric Young home from first base.
Young tripped rounding second, but was able to beat Buechele's throw home when center fielder Doug Dascenzo overthrew the cut-off man, Jose Vizcaino.
Buechele mad up for it with his game-winning, loop single in the 12th.
"I'll take 'em any way I can get 'em," he said.
It's Testing Time for Fernandez
By Toni Ginnetti
Staff Writer

The only thing old about young Alex Fernandez is the refrain he gets tired of hearing.
That he's still just a kid.
That his climb to the majors was too quick.
That he has much to learn about pitching in the major leagues.
"That gets real old," Fernandez admitted: "Yeah, I'm young. I just turned 23. But I'm here for a reason - and it's that I can pitch in the big leagues."
Only this year, though, that has been a test for the tender-aged White Sox pitcher who reached the big leagues two years ago after a meteoric two-month ascent through the minors.
Even for one of baseball's most heralded rookie phenoms, his was an almost unheard-of climb:
Fernandez, then but 20, drafted as the first-round pick of the Sox in June, 1990 out of Miami Dade South Community College after having collected National Junior College Player of the Year honors, the Golden Spikes Award as amateur baseball's top player and the Dick Howser Award.
Fernandez, winning six of seven decisions for the Class A Sarasota and Class AA Birmingham affiliates with a 1.83 over-all ERA, and 1.08 at Birmingham.
Fernandez, arriving Aug. 2 at Milwaukee County Stadium for his first major league start and making it memorable, throwing seven innings of five-hit ball before leaving with a 2-1 lead, though not getting the Sox' eventual victory.
Fernandez posting a 5-5 mark and 3.80 ERA for the remainder of the big league season.
"When I came up it was an unbelievably great feeling," he said. "But it dies. And it becomes a job.
"I was talking to my father the other night and he said 'Gee, you get to the park at 3 p.m. and you leave at midnight.' I said, 'Yeah, Dad, it's like an eight-hour job.'"
But in June Fernandez was handed his first pink slip - a ticket to Class AAA Vancouver.
"I've learned a lot of things about the game as a business," he said. "I'll leave it at that. But there's no question you grow up and mature and learn how to deal with things - with adversity, with success."
Until this season, Fernandez considered adversity the likes of the a losing 9-13 season in 1991. Even after struggling through a 3-7 first half of 1992 with 4.23 ERA, the demotion June 22 to Class AAA was unexpected - and resented.
"It was a total surprise," he said. "I was shocked. And it's still something I say I didn't need to do, something that was uncalled for.
"But I'm not going to second guess their opinions because that's why they're my bosses. As long as I'm here, I have to do what they say.
"So instead of making it worse, I did what I had to do to come right back up."
In some ways, Fernandez' three-week stay at Vancouver was an exercise in both futility and success. He dominated with a 2-1 record and 0.94 ERA in four games. Yet he remains defiant that the move was wrong.
The two aren't necessarily counter-productive forces in the opinions of his manger and pitching coach.
"I know he was shocked," Gene Lamont said of Fernandez' demotion. "But I thought he took it all right.
"I'm sure when you get to the big leagues, you think you're here forever. I think usually it's best when you get experience in the minors, but it really all depends on how good you are and what the needs of your team are. Alex showed he could pitch in the big leagues.
"But it's hard to learn at the big league level. He went down and I think it helped him."
If it reinforced Fernandez' fierce self-confidence, that, too, could be a plus, pitching coach Jackie Brown believes.
"You want that strong will, but it's tougher sometimes because it does make it difficult in the learning stage. But I think he's figuring out who he is.
"Alex is still trying to figure out what kind of pitcher he is. Is he a power pitcher or a finesse pitcher? I think his last game [a 3-2 comeback victory Thursday over Texas in which he worked eight innings and allowed two runs on four hits and a walk] is what he is - a fastball pitcher who needs to use his other three pitches."
Fernandez is the first to agree that learning is part of the game, but his best lessons have come from big league teammates and coaches, he says, especially catcher Carlton Fisk and pitcher Charlie Hough.
"They've been in the big leagues for 20 years," he said.
"Some things they'll tell me I don't agree with, but most I do. You take in what you want to take in and learn from that.
"Jackie Brown's been a big help to me, too," he said in acknowledging another lesson learned in spring when for the first time he was faced with playing for a new manager and coaching staff.
"The only manager I had known in my major league career was Jeff [Torborg] and his staff, but in this profession you have to get used to that. You never know who's going to be your coach the next year."
For coaches, Fernandez is his own challenge, a pitcher wealthy in both potential and impatience.
"He might be a little hard-headed, but all good pitchers are that way," Lamont said. "And I've never heard Alex say 'I'm young' as an excuse if things don't go well."
"I like his attitude and I like young kids because I like the part of coaching that is teaching," Brown said. "Alex has four average to above average pitches and all he needs is to learn how to use them.
"And any time you have someone with four average to above average pitches, they have the chance to be dominating in the game."
In some ways Fernandez' potential might have been a hindrance this season, one that began with many pointing to him as a key to the Sox' hopes.
"I heard that, but they singled out a lot of people, not just me," he said. "It didn't make me feel all the pressure was on me."
Fernandez' focus always has been on his ability to succeed, even when victories have eluded him.
"He believes in himself," said catcher Ron Karkovice, one of Fernandez' closer friends. "The only thing you have to tell him is to slow down. If someone gets a hit, he'll tend to try to blow away the next hitter.
"I didn't think he needed to go down. He was getting some bad breaks and they were trying to get him to avoid big innings. But I thought he was throwing well and now he hasn't given up the big inning.
"I think he could be a 15- to 20-game winner, and in years to come he could be a dominating pitcher in the league."
That so many years are yet to come fuels Fernandez' desire to win.
"Sometimes you say to yourself, 'You've bee in the big leagues almost three years and you're only 23.' I'm young and glad to be young because all that tells me is I'll have a lot more years in the big leagues."
Air War Likely For Minnesota
Wacker Planning To Throw More
By Terry Boers
Staff Writer
On the cover of the Minnesota media guide, new coach Jim Wacker is pictured leaning out the side window of an airplane with his right fist raised.
Does this mean the dawning of Air Wacker?
After the Great Golden Gopher Offensive Crash of 1991, Minnesota fans are hoping that Wacker can put the program back in an upright position.
As the befuddled regime of former coach John Gutekunst came to an unsatisfactory (2-9) conclusion, it became clear that even if the other team had left the field on third down, Minnesota would have been forced to punt.
In 11 games last season, the Gophers scored a grand total of 12 touchdowns and 104 points.
And the defense wasn't all that hot, either.
They were outscored by an average margin of 27.5-9.5 and were outgained by more than 800 yards during the year.
<#FROWN:A22\>
Catholic leaders reeling from Sinead stunt
EXAMINER NEWS SERVICES
NEW YORK - Catholic leaders expressed shock at singer Sinead O'Connor's having ripped a picture of Pope John Paul II to pieces on 'Saturday Night Live.'
"I have no idea why she would do that," said Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for Cardinal John O'-Connor of New York. "The pope is an advocate for peace. It sounds like she is spreading hatred and intolerance."
Frank DeRosa, a spokesman for Bishop Thomas Daily of Brooklyn, said: "It's a pity she embarrassed herself that way. I'm sure the Holy Father would be the first to say a prayer for her so that she could come to grips with whatever is angering her."
O'Connor shocked the 'Saturday Night Live' studio audience, the show's producers and millions of viewers when she tore the picture on live television.
"Fight the real enemy," the smooth-scalped Irish singer shouted as she held up the 8-by-12 photo of the pontiff and methodically shredded it during her appearance toward the show's end.
From the show's conclusion through Monday, NBC received more than 900 calls from people who didn't like the show - and seven who did. That was among the highest number generated in the history of the often-controversial 17-year-old show.
"A lot of people were as offended as we were," said NBC spokesman Curt Block, who was in the control room when O'Connor pulled the surprise stunt.
The Dublin-born singer, wearing a long white gown, tore up the photo after performing 'War' - an a cappella song about racism, war and child abuse.
After the song, she blew out candles on the stage and walked off; the studio audience was silent.
Block said that during dress rehearsal, O'Connor performed the song and ripped up a picture of an unidentified baby at its conclusion.
The segment was aired nation-wide, including on the West Coast, where the show is tape delayed. "There were discussions after the show on what to do," Block said. "One of the thoughts was that in editing it out, it could even draw more attention to it. In hindsight, seeing what the reaction has been, we might have managed it differently."
Block said it was undecided whether O'Connor, 26, would ever be invited back to the show. He added that she returned to her dressing room after the song, reappeared for the 'goodnight' segment, then quickly left the studio.
O'Connor has criticized the church's stand against abortion and earlier this year led an abortion-rights march through Dublin.
O'Connor drew the ire of many in 1990 when she refused to allow the national anthem to be played before a performance in New Jersey. And she canceled an 'SNL' appearance after she learned that foul-mouthed comic Andrew 'Dice' Clay would be the host.
The real Reagan, according to Lyn Nofziger
Aide's memoirs not just presidential pap
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SACRAMENTO - Lyn Nofziger is one of Ronald Reagan's oldest and most loyal political confidants, but Nofziger's memoirs don't gloss over the former president's weaknesses or failures.
"It's not a book about how Ronald Reagan saved the world," Nofziger says of his candid and entertaining book, titled simply, 'Nofziger,' published last week by Regnery Gateway Inc.
Nofziger's admiration of Reagan, both as an individual and political leader, is evident throughout his book, but it doesn't blunt either his insight or humor.
"Reagan has a great 'in' button, but his 'out' button sometimes gets stuck on open," Nofziger writes, describing Reagan's ability to quickly absorb and understand a great deal of information and sometimes blurt out politically embarrassing jokes or observations such as trees causing pollution.
Nofziger, whose association with Reagan goes back to 1966, when he was press secretary in the actor-turned-politician's campaign for governor, also confirms that Reagan often embellished on true stories to make a point or that he denied embarrassing gaffes.
But Reagan did it honestly, Nofziger said, genuinely convincing himself that he was telling the truth.
For example, Nofziger wrote, Reagan "got away with denying that ... he ever said, 'A tree is a tree. How many do you have to see?'
"My secretary, Judith Kernoff, had it on tape, but that was something we didn't tell him or anyone else, so he was free to do one of the things he has always done best - convince himself that the truth was what he wanted it to be," Nofziger writes.
Nofziger also confirms in his memoirs that Reagan first discussed running for president in a meeting at his Pacific Palisades home with key advisers in December 1966, a month before he became governor of California and 14 years before he finally was elected to the White House.
But, Nofziger says, it was political supporters like himself who were pushing the idea of a presidential campaign in 1968. Reagan took part in the discussion, but he was skeptical then and still didn't have his heart in it when he formally launched his first, short-lived, campaign for president two years later, Nofziger says.
"He was a very, very reluctant candidate in 1968," Nofziger says. "He was doing basically what (political advisers) Cliff White, Tom Reed and I pressured him into doing. He seriously at that time thought it was wrong for him. He didn't think he was ready for it."
In general, Nofziger is critical of Reagan's top White House staff, saying they limited Reagan's presidential news conferences because they didn't have confidence in him.
That was a mistake, Nofziger says, because more frequent news conferences, such as he had as governor, "would have forced Reagan to stay on top of things better, and the media would have discovered that he's not dumb."
A new atonement
Contemporary Judaism accounts for modern sins during Yom Kippur
By Al Morch
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
YOM KIPPUR, the most important Jewish holy day, begins at sunset Tuesday in the new Hebrew year of 5753, and lasts until sunset Wednesday. It is a day of atonement and fasting, during which devout Jews think of their sins, repent and ask forgiveness from God and others.
(The idea of a collective confession stems from an ancient belief that the gods became infuriated with a whole tribe when one of its members transgressed. Hence, in those times collective crops, live-stock and wells suffered the wrath of the gods.)
"But it goes beyond tribal feelings," says Rabbi Mark Schiftan of Temple Emanu-el, a reform congregation located at Arguello Boulevard and Lake Street.
"None of us as Jews can ignore what's happening in the entire American community. We are very concerned when we hear of more people out of work, more students who cannot learn, more people without adequate social service. Such bad news strikes a strong note in the Jewish heart. Because of our unique past, something in our very being resonates toward the powerless and the oppressed," says Schiftan.
Within the liberal tradition, he says, there is an attempt to combine both the ancient admission of human frailty and shortcomings along with the contemporary area of human neglect and abuse.
However, he believes, now that Jews have made a comfortable place for themselves in American life, there is a need to return to rituals that tie them in a very public fashion to their faith and to their people.
"There has been a return to more use of the Hebrew language in services, and the prayer books we've used for the past 15 years are much more traditional than one used for 50 years before that," he says.
On the other hand, Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, a 6-year-old liberal bimonthly Jewish magazine formerly based in Oakland but now published in New York, says the liturgy of the prayer book, while a balance of source material, is not inclusive enough to cover instantaneous events that need response at the time.
"So I've written a supplement (appearing in the September issue of Tikkun) to Al Cheyt, the traditional confessional prayer recited on Yom Kippur," says Lerner. Tikkun is a Hebrew word meaning 'to heal, to repair, to transform the world.'
"The idea is that you either use my supplement or create your own, then discuss in small groups what particular aspects make the most sense, what they are going to do differently in the coming year, what support they need from others to help make changes in their lives and what they are going to do to secure that support."
Lerner believes that contemporary society has such a self-centered consciousness that "it's time we had a serious engagement with prayers not said by rote. In doing so I think we can validate a lot of peoples' sense of what is important and what is not, and allow for simple acts of caring and kindness.
"I take repentance seriously," Lerner says. "The contemporary mode is to dismiss all guilt as a bad thing because guilt was used so much to impose rigid standards in a patriarchal society. I've taken that into account, but want to show there is still room for some guilt."
Lerner's prayer asks for a multitude of forgiveness, at the same time imprinting and reinforcing the listener/reader with what should be done. He lists 54 sins. Among them, "the sins of feeling so worn out when we hear about oppression we finally close our ears ... for the sins of even pretending that the (racist) problem had gone away until others began to burn down cities in their despair ... for the sins of turning our back on - or participating in - the oppression of gays and lesbians ... for the sins of making social change leaders, teachers and activists feel they are foolish to be giving their lives to the community and their highest ideals ...
For the sins of not recognizing the humanity and suffering of the Palestinian people and the injustice they face living under the unwanted occupation ... for the sins of allowing conservative or insensitive leaders to speak on behalf of all American Jews ... for the sins of being critical of Jewish life from a distance rather than from personal involvement and commitment ... for the sins of being insensitive or insulting to non-Jews ... for the sins of insisting that everything we do have a payoff ... for the sins of not helping single people to meet potential partners."
Rabbi Schiftan's personal atonement wish this year would be to give more time to his family, and have more patience with his children.
Lerner declined to disclose his atonement wishes ("that's between me and God").
Husband OK'd her affair with millionaire
Mistress says she was promised house
By Linda Deutsch
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES - The ex-husband of one of Henry Mudd's seven mistresses testified Monday that she had returned to the millionaire industrialist after breaking off their relationship because she missed his money.
Vincent Oliver, whose former wife, Lorraine, is suing the estate of the late founder of Harvey Mudd College for $5 million, has said he knew of his wife's affair with Mudd and approved of it.
The case has sent details of Mudd's private life spilling forth in elaborate detail. Witnesses have said the business high-flier kept a different mistress for each day of the week and lavished gifts and money on them.
Eleanor Oliver is suing Mudd's estate for control of a $600,000 house in Los Angeles, among other things. She claims Mudd promised she could have the house rent-free until she died. Oliver says Mudd reneged on the contract after marrying one of his mistresses shortly before his death in 1990 at age 77. Oliver was later evicted.
In his testimony Monday, Vincent Oliver said that after they married in 1976, he and his wife had had "an open marriage" in which both of them had extramarital lovers.
Vincent Oliver said he had joined his wife in borrowing $10,000 from Mudd to start a business before she became Mudd's mistress in 1977. At least one witness has suggested that Eleanor Oliver began having sex with Mudd to pay off the loan. She denies this.
<#FROWN:A23\>
He'll prosecute baby Kerri case
Deputy district attorney says her parents got more help than most do
By Erin McCormick
SPECIAL TO THE EXAMINER
OAKLAND - Most of the 2,000 or so children who have come into Bob Hutchins' life over the last 12 years have had one thing in common: They've been missing.
As one of Alameda County's top experts in child abductions, the deputy district attorney has handled 1,031 cases of children who have been snatched from nurseries, abducted by estranged parents or simply disappeared.
Now, as Hutchins takes on the role of prosecutor in the high profile kidnapping case of the 2-day-old baby Kerri Mammini, he cannot forget that not all kidnapping victims are nearly so lucky.
While Kerri, who was kidnapped from her mother's hospital room in June, was recovered after an exhaustive three-month police investigation, Hutchins says many parents reporting stolen children have trouble even getting help from police authorities, much less recovering their children.
These are the victims of the most common, yet most neglected, type of kidnapping: parental abductions.
"In the baby Kerri case, the public automatically sees the horror of it," Hutchins said. "But when someone's child is taken by the other parent, everybody says, 'Oh, it's just a parent.'
"But any parent who has a child secreted away from them for three or four years feels the same way baby Kerri's mother did," he said. "I don't think there's much difference."
In upcoming court proceedings against Karen Lea Hughes, who was arrested Sept. 15 for allegedly abducting baby Kerri from her mother's hospital room, Hutchins will act as a traditional prosecutor - digging up witnesses and presenting evidence to get a conviction. The next court appearance for Hughes is Oct. 13 for pretrial motions.
In other cases, Hutchins has played a much wider role. The deputy DA has become almost a one-stop resource center for parents who feel they have nowhere to turn.
"Historically these (parental abduction) cases were just hated by police and law enforcement officers," he said. Even now, "the police often tell parents there is nothing they can do."
Georgia Hilgeman found out the hard way.
In October 1976, the Santa Clara County mother let her 13-month-old daughter come to Alameda County for a weekend visit with the baby's father, whom she had recently divorced.
Before the weekend was over, the ex-husband, college instructor Juan Rios, reported that the infant had mysteriously disappeared at an event at Oakland's Civic Center.
A massive police search of the area turned up nothing. Soon Rios became the prime suspect.
As soon as police authorities realized that the case was probably a parental abduction, their interest waned, Hilgeman said.
"I was basically left to my own resources," she said. "I was ripped off numerous times by unscrupulous bounty hunters, private eyes, psychics and whatnot."
Hilgeman did not see her daughter until more than four years later, when she went to Mexico with a posse of lawyers and found the little girl living with the former husband's impoverished relatives near Mexico City.
With Hutchins acting as prosecutor, the district attorney's office took Rios to trial on charges of child imprisonment. The father received a three-year prison sentence.
"You have to see how frustrated these people get, calling all these agencies and not finding help," Hutchins said.
His goal is to make the criminal justice system available to anyone who has had a child stolen, whether it was by a parent or not.
He has gone far beyond the prosecution duties of an everyday district attorney. He has spearh-eaded investigations and worked to train police on handling these matters.
"I use the criminal system to force children out of the wood-work," he said. This can mean issuing a warrant against a parent abductor, extraditing them from another state or even taking the children into custody.
While more than 90 percent of his cases involve parent abductions, Hutchins said he's had at least one that was markedly similar to the baby Kerri case.
About three years ago, he said a woman disguised herself in a nurse's outfit and a wig and took a newborn baby from a room in Oakland's Highland Hospital.
The big difference in the case was that the abductor never got out of the hospital. The baby's mother realized what was happening and the woman was caught before she left the premises.
"They arrested her on the spot," Hutchins said. "But otherwise, the case was very similar to baby Kerri. That woman was prepared to keep that baby too."
'Ladies lunch' for Hillary
Hundreds gather in Bay restaurants to support Demo contender for first lady
By Mandy Behbehani
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
In a powerful display of unity, more than 700 women paid from $20 to $50 to eat lunch Monday at 12 Bay Area restaurants owned or operated by women, to show their support for Hillary Clinton and to raise money for the California Democratic Party Nominees' Fund.
"I believe in intelligent women who have careers and can be family oriented, and I think the treatment of Hillary has been unjust and unfair," said Joyce Goldstein, owner of Square One restaurant, where one of the lunches was held. "I don't usually do politics in my business, but I thought it was a wonderful idea and that I should support it."
'Ladies Who Lunch' was the brainchild of writer Alice Adams, arts administrator Diana Fuller, literary agent Bonnie Nadell, activist Marjorie Traub, Oakland Tribune book editor Diana Ketcham and former Dance Coalition director Suki Lilienthal, who wanted, as Nadell puts it, to talk back to the "spin doctors who tell us women fear and dislike Hillary Clinton."
Invitations were sent out by people such as writers Amy Tan and Susan Faludi. Neither was at the lunch, but they lent their names to the event.
Guest speakers slated to appear at the restaurants included ACT Artistic Director Carey Perloff; her mother, Marjorie Perloff, a professor at Stanford; writers Kathy Acker and Deirdre English; restaurateur Alice Waters; Project Open Hand founder Ruth Brinker, city attorney Louise Renne; screen-writer Diane Johnson; former Mayor Dianne Feinstein (who was unable to attend the event); and Clinton campaign co-director for Northern California and Professor at UC's Boalt Hall, Willy Fletcher.
Before the speeches, guests were treated to an impersonation of Hillary Clinton by local stage actress Lorri Holt, who, dressed to look like Clinton - complete with red suit and headband - went from location to location giving a rousing speech set in the year 1996.
"Who would have thought that Bill Clinton would have been as wonderful as to turn over his second term to me and become my chief of staff?" Holt asked the Cypress Club audience to laughter. "Let's go out and win this election because we can't afford to put the leadership of this country into the hands of Marilyn Quayle."
At the Cypress Club, 40 women, most of them wearing their 'Bye! George' and 'Blow Bill Blow' buttons (the latter feature Bill Clinton playing his sax) gathered to hear the two Perloffs and attorney David Robertson speak.
The crowd was mostly over 40 with a couple of exceptions.
"I used to raise money for Mr. Bush, but I really disagree with his stand on abortion and the environment and those are really important issues to me," said Barbara Ann Caulfield, 26, an attorney with the San Francisco law firm of Hough & Moss.
Marjorie Perloff, author of the article in the Oct. 5 issue of New Republic about how Barbara Bush's image as a super stay-at-home mother is fabrication, said, "Hillary is very accomplished. She has a real political interest. We've had first lady after first lady who has to have a project. And it's so demeaning. Hillary doesn't need a project because she has projects. She will prove that all women really can be equal to men and don't have to be assigned projects like beautifying the White House or fighting drugs."
Daughter Carey agreed.
"She's an extraordinarily important role model for women. Hillary's life is much like the average woman's day-to-day struggle, for those women in this country who have to work, and do work, and who have a primary responsibility to their family."
Robertson, a partner at Morrison and Foerster, knew the Clintons at Yale Law School and calls them "extraordinarily impressive and nice."
Over at Square One, about 80 women, including Anne Halstead of the Port Commission, gathered to hear Willy Fletcher and retired investment banker and former Republican fund-raiser Martha Fray speak.
Fletcher, who was a Rhodes Scholar with Bill Clinton at Oxford and was at Yale Law School with both the Clintons, said he believes the Clintons will pay attention to issues that have long gone untended.
"Issues like choice," said Fletcher, "like the Family Leave bill that Bush just vetoed, the NIH bill for ovarian and breast cancer research that he vetoed in the spring, the Head Start program that he has refused to fund fully, his voucher system, the economy. I have to say we have enormous problems before us, it's not going to be easy. But they will make an honest attempt to deal with our problems."
Fray said, "I asked myself, what would it take to make it possible for me to continue to align myself with a party that limits my life? A lobotomy, winning the lottery or magically transforming my husband into something reactionary - like the prince of Wales? ...It was clearly more sensible for me to support instead the Women for Hillary ladies lunch."
Leno responds to imbroglio
Takes "full responsibility" in answer to reporters
By Louis Chunovic
SPECIAL TO THE EXAMINER
LOS ANGELES - 'Tonight Show' host Jay Leno took it on his ample chin repeatedly but without complaint Monday, answering show business reporters' pointed questions about the 'Tonight'/'Arsenio' booking wars and the recent summary dismissal of his longtime manager Helen Kushnick from her post as 'Tonight's' executive producer.
The comedian did not duck responsibility for the show's recent controversies, and he gave as good as he got, challenging reporters to look into the existence and influence of the "old boy network" of which Kushnick said she had run afoul.
The occasion was the Academy of Television Arts & Science's (ATAS) forum luncheon, and Leno was the guest speaker.
After a brief monologue ("It's every comedian's dream," he quipped, "to perform in front of industry people who are eating"), Leno took questions.
"Am I bitter?" he said of the controversies in general. "I'm in show business, which means you make a lot of money."
Leno added that he hates "whiny show business people that are bitter. I think the show is going great, but if for some reason I was out of here, and I lost the show, 'Hey, I'm back on the road again.' OK, it's my fault. Everything that happens on the show is my fault. ... And that's the way it's going to be from now on. I'm not blaming anyone else."
To a question about Kushnick's treatment, Leno, who reportedly stirred NBC's ire by publicly disagreeing with the decision to dismiss her, replied: "Yes, she's gotten a bad rap."
Of the 'Tonight'/'Arsenio' booking wars and the highly publicized feud with Arsenio Hall, Leno said, "I take full responsibility for all those things. ... There were probably excesses on both sides."
"Arsenio's fine," Leno said before the luncheon. "I saw Arsenio the other night. Arsenio and I speak once in a while. I called him about a month ago and we talked and he made me laugh, and I made him laugh, and I think that it reminded us, we used to be friends. As far as the situation now, I think it's been mended. I saw him the other night at (a charity event) and said, 'Look, if some things went down, it's changed. Between you and me, no more of that stuff.' And that's it. I'll probably talk to him in the next day or so."
Of the Kushnick imbroglio, Leno said at another point, "I take total responsibility for everything that happened."
<#FROWN:A24\>
Star-Studded Sex Scandals
By BOB ROSS
Tribune Staff Writer
TAMPA - Americans love sex scandals. We enjoy seeing the rich, the famous and the powerful squirm and explain, charge and countercharge.
Let's face it: Nothing makes our own troubles seem so bearable as the knowledge that someone in the stellar stratosphere has it even worse. Besides, it gives us all something to talk about.
The latest such gratifying eye-popper comes from Manhattan and, indirectly, from 'Manhattan,' the 1979 movie in which writer-director-star Woody Allen plays a 42-year-old man who falls in love with a 17-year-old schoolgirl.
That poignant fiction turned to tawdry tabloid fare with last week's revelations and accusations about Allen and his longtime companion/co-star Mia Farrow.
Allen's infatuation with Farrow's 21-year-old adopted daughter has led to a lurid chain of claims and denials. The whole story has yet to unfold, and the interim is being filled with tales that may or may not be true.
The important part is not who slept where and when, but how uncomfortably we can keep the spotlight on those involved.
And although we can always count on politicians, athletes and evangelists to contribute their share of moral outrages, we leave it to the professionals - those whose livelihoods require acting out fantasies - to distract us most often from the humdrum melodramas of our own existence.
The 'Golden Age'
There have been movie-star sex scandals almost as long as there have been movies.
In the early silent era, movie actors were more or less anonymous. The only 'scandals' that bluenoses could get huffy about involved the film plots themselves.
But by 1920, an ingenue named Mary Pickford had become a certified star, recognized by millions.
That was also the year she suffered her first scandal. Pickford apparently divorced her first husband under such unusual circumstances that the attorney general of Nevada began proceedings against her for fraud, collusion and untruthful testimony.
The divorce was upheld two years later - which was lucky for the movie star, because she and Douglas Fairbanks had gotten married right after she got her Nevada quickie. Both stars' popularity survived.
The little tramp
Less lucky - and apparently more promiscuous - was silent comedy genius Charlie Chaplin.
Chaplin raised eyebrows with his marriage to 16-year-old actor Mildred Harris in 1918 and his marriage to actor Lita Grey, also 16, in 1924. His bitter divorce from Grey three years later produced sensational headlines and accusations of sexual impropriety.
But worse was to come for Chaplin in the early 1940s, when a brief romance with an aspiring starlet, Joan Barry, resulted in both a prosecution on a federal morals charge and a paternity lawsuit.
Chaplin was acquitted in the federal trial, but a different jury ruled against him in the paternity case even though tests showed he was not the father of Barry's daughter, born in October 1943. That same year, he married playwright Eugene O'Neill's daughter Oona over O'Neill's strong objections. She was 18; he was 54.
Because of the Barry scandal, Chaplin's left-leaning political views and his decision not to become a U.S. citizen, the federal government in 1952 revoked his entry permit while he was abroad, saying he would have to submit to an inquiry on his fitness to be in the country.
He chose exile in Switzerland instead, and made only two films after that before his death in 1977.
Fatty's follies
Screen buffoon Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle - the 266-pound 'Prince of Whales' and $5,000-a-week Paramount comedy star - had one narrow escape in 1917.
On March 6, at a Boston roadhouse, someone peeped over a transom, saw Arbuckle and a dozen hired 'party girls' stripping, and called police. Kenneth Anger's 'Hollywood Babylon,' a reference for scandal-lovers, says the magnates on the guest list paid city officials $100,000 to keep it quiet.
But Arbuckle's wild ways finally crashed his career. To celebrate his new $3 million Paramount contract, Arbuckle threw a party in San Francisco over Labor Day weekend, 1921.
On Monday afternoon, Arbuckle withdrew to a bedroom with a dark-haired starlet named Virginia Rappe. Before long, screams, moans and pounding noises were heard. Arbuckle came out grinning, but Rappe had to be taken to a hospital, where she sank into a coma and died days later. She was 25.
A coroner found that Rappe died of peritonitis caused by a ruptured bladder. After a police investigation, Arbuckle was charged with rape and murder.
The charge was reduced to man-slaughter and after two hung-jury mistrials, Arbuckle was acquitted in April 1922.
But his career was over. His contract was canceled, his unreleased films were scrapped and he never acted on screen again. He died, broke and alcoholic, in 1933. He was 46.
Murder and madness
The '20s really roared in Hollywood. High-ranking studio executive William Desmond Taylor was found murdered in his bungalow on Feb. 1, 1922.
Before police were summoned, silent star Mabel Normand searched the place for letters she had written to him. She didn't find them, but the cops did. They also found love notes from a young Paramount star named Mary Miles Minter, age 22. Taylor was 50.
Later it came out that he had been carrying on simultaneous affairs with Normand, Minter and Charlotte Shelby - Mary Minter's mother. The murder remains officially unsolved.
Seventy years later, another mother-daughter mix-up hits the headlines, and we gasp as if it were a scandalous first.
Other movie scandals of the '20s included the hush-hush liaison between multimillionaire William Randolph Hearst and would-be star Marion Davies. That one stayed out of the papers because Hearst owned so many of them.
Now, our most familiar version of that romance is the heavily fictionalized one in Orson Welles' classic, 'Citizen Kane.'
Handsome leading man Rudolph Valentino, who died tragically young in 1926, was married twice in his 31-year life - both times to lesbians. And he managed to marry the second one before his first divorce was final, leading to an arrest for bigamy.
But his popularity remained undiminished by his death, which was officially listed as caused by peritonitis following an appendix operation. His funeral was a near riot, and at least three suicides by distraught fans were reported. Two of them were women.
In like Flynn
In 1942, swashbuckling movie star Errol Flynn was brought up on charges of statutory rape in an incident involving two underage teenage girls. His acquittal was followed shortly thereafter by the release of 'Gentleman Jim,' a hit with the critics and the crowds. His career continued undiminished.
In 1948, Carole Landis killed herself after the breakup of an affair with Rex Harrison. As a result, 20th Century Fox delayed release of Preston Sturges' comedy 'Unfaithfully Yours' for several months. The film is about an orchestra conductor, played by Harrison, who suspects his wife of adultery.
Ingrid Bergman, the gorgeous star of 'Casablanca' and 'The Bells of St. Mary's,' ran afoul of moralists in 1950 when she bore a son to Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini while she was still married to her first husband. Her popularity plummeted, and she didn't return to Hollywood until 1956, when she won an Oscar for 'Anastasia.'
In 1977, director Roman Polanski fled the United States after he was charged with drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl in a hot tub at Jack Nicholson's home.
Prior to his arraignment, Polanski was about to start work on 'The First Deadly Sin,' a film for Columbia Pictures. After the hearing, he had a change of heart and went to work on a film shooting in Tahiti and never returned to face trial.
Polanski now lives in Paris, where he continues making movies.
Playboy centerfold
Director Peter Bogdanovich's 'They All Laughed' also had a dark aura about it: One of the principals in the comedy, made in 1980 but not released until late the next year, was Playboy centerfold Dorothy Stratten - a 20-year-old former Dairy Queen employee from Vancouver with whom Bogdanovich had a nine-month affair.
The aspiring star was sodomized and murdered by her estranged husband (who then killed himself) shortly after she finished work on 'Laughed.'
Bogdanovich, more than 20 years her senior, was hopelessly in love with Stratten and wrote a highly personal account of the tragic affair, 'The Killing of the Unicorn: Dorothy Stratten 1960-1980.'
In 1989, Bogdanovich, then 49, married Stratten's younger sister, Louise Hoogstratten, who was 20.
Will the Allen-Farrow scandal hurt their respective (and now, presumably, quite separate) careers?
We should get a clue soon. Allen's latest movie, portentously titled 'Husbands and Wives,' is scheduled to open in eight cities on Sept. 23 and in the rest of the country, including the Tampa Bay area, on Oct. 9.
The picture, described in studio publicity materials as "an insightful comedy exploring contemporary relationships," is about two couples who face change and have to re-evaluate "trust and love."
And last week, New York gossip columnist Liz Smith reported that Allen is already at work on his next project: 'Manhattan Murder Mystery,' in which he has reportedly cast Diane Keaton in the role he'd originally intended for Farrow. Keaton, of course, was his paramour before he met Mia.
Music may rock 'n' roll young voters to the polls
By STEVE KNOPPER
of Knight-Ridder Newspapers
Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton plays Fleetwood Mac songs after his speeches. George Bush invokes the "Nitty Ditty Great Bird" - most likely referring to a Colorado-based country group, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, but it's hard to say - in his stump speeches. Who's next for Bush? Garth Brooks?
Pop music has emerged as a strange political sideshow this election year. Consider these issues:
Rock 'n' roll may, in fact, get more young people to vote.
Away from the stage at the traveling Lollapalooza festival - which features seven youth-oriented rock 'n' roll bands - fans can try their skills at "Wake Up George Bush - $1 a swing" strength tests. Like last year's show, mostly liberal political groups such as Refuse and Resist and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals set up camp during the tour, which stopped in Orlando Sunday.
Then there's MTV, which sent correspondent Dave Mustaine, the slightly twisted, long-haired member of heavy-metal stalwarts Megadeth, to cover the Democratic National Convention. He stumbled through an interview with one-time presidential candidate Bob Kerrey and later asked a young conventioneer, "How does a guy with long hair and an earring through his nose get to be a delegate?" MTV's 'Choose or Lose' coverage, with its emphasis on young voters, ought to encourage the Video Generation to hit the ballots.
Some rap music has become a political issue.
Because non-rap fans are actually beginning to pay attention, some rap musicians and their feisty lyrics have become sort of a political sound bite. Ice-T's speed-metal song 'Cop Killer' (which he unveiled during Lollapalooza last year) has won scorn from police lobbying groups, Charlton Heston, Bush and Dan Quayle.
Sister Souljah, a some-time member of the rap group Public Enemy, got a verbal hand-slap from Clinton after she'd proposed a week of killing white people. Both rappers' publicity and album sales sky-rocketed.
Rock bands have been rebelling against the Democratic vice presidential candidate's wife for seven years.
When Tipper Gore, wife of Sen. Al Gore Jr., pushed for 'Parental Advisory - Explicit Lyrics' stickers on nasty-talking pop albums, she sparked a tizzy in the rock world. At the time, Frank Zappa called her campaign "fundamentalist frog-wash." Musicians from John Denver to Randy Newman to John Fogerty ripped Gore in print.
Though Gore has said she's currently satisfied with the industry's self-sticker methods, high-profile executives like Giant Records' Irving Azoff have expressed reservations in print. Still, Clinton probably realizes most rock fans are liberal and likely won't take this as an excuse to jump to Bush's camp. For that matter, maybe her presence will give rock 'n' roll something concrete to attack.
Women have league of their own to play bocce
By ANGELA CARELLA
of The Stamford Advocate
STAMFORD, Conn. - At the Thursday night bocce games in Scalzi Park here, only quiet men are welcome.
That's the night the women of the Stamford Bocce League take to the courts, and they do not want a bunch of men telling them how to play.
<#FROWN:A25\>
S.F. supervisors crack down on use of city cars
Irate board reacts to reports of abuse by top-level staff
By Jane Ganahl
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors, irate over the discovery that department heads were driving "fully loaded, top of the line luxury cars at taxpayer expense," unanimously passed legislation Monday to restrict officials' future use and purchase of city-owned cars.
"Enough is enough," said Supervisor Terence Hallinan, who drafted the three-piece package of legislation. "This has been a clear violation of the law and the public trust."
Hallinan introduced the legislation following an Examiner story that revealed that some city bureaucrats were commuting in style at taxpayer expense despite a severe budget crunch that has required reduction of some vital health services. Many city officials, it was reported, take city seals off their new cars when they commute, in violation of the law.
"I had been looking at the situation for several months, but the Examiner article turned up the heat," said Hallinan.
The City maintains a fleet of more than 400 cars for department heads and managers at an annual cost of about $1.5 million, some of which Hallinan hopes to recoup by implementing his three-pronged legislation. The package calls for:
Urging Mayor Jordan to instruct city departments to reduce the use and purchase of city cars.
Ending purchases of luxury automobiles and ensuring that all cars purchased are economical and affordable, without luxury features such as leather seats and sunroofs. The ordinance also lobbies for employees to use public transportation, or use their own cars and receive mileage reimbursement.
Proposing to penalize city employees who have driven their city-owned cars to and from their residences. They would be required to pay back The City at three times the normal mileage reimbursement rate. The amount would be docked from their pay.
Among those singled out in The Examiner for their extravagant tastes were Muni General Manager Johnny Stein, who traded in his 2-year-old Ford Crown Victoria with less than 20,000 miles for a new model at a cost of $14,000 to The City.
Stein, feeling the heat, has decided to sell the new car and will get by with his old 1990 model.
Others who were noted by Hallinan were Ken Butori, a Muni official who drives his top-of-the-line $16,000 GMC Silverado home to Concord each night; Housing Authority Director David Gilmore, who got a loaded 1992 Explorer, at a cost of $16,000 to The City; and Kirk Lawson, chief assistant to PUC General Manager Tom Elzey, who got a new Ford Taurus, one of 41 such cars being delivered to the PUC and Muni.
"I mean, we depend on department heads to keep their employees honest, and then we find out they are being less than honest themselves," said Hallinan. "Something's got to be done."
Hallinan has asked for a report in 30 days from the mayor's office on how Jordan plans to deal with the problem, from the city purchaser on procurement policies for cars and from the chief administrator's office on how the fining process can be implemented.
Jordan has already sent out a memo canvassing department heads on automobile use. In it, he asks officials to list how many city-owned cars are currently in use, who is using them and for what purpose.
Korean church's sale authorized
Congregation OKs resolutions to put site on market
By Donna Birch
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
Chinatown's Korean Methodist Church - the oldest in the continental United States - is one step closer to being put up for sale.
Church members approved two resolutions Sunday that would put the church's current 1123 Powell St. site up for sale and allow a committee to look into purchasing a larger site in the Sunset District.
"We hadn't put the church on the market because a resolution hadn't been passed by the congregation," said the Rev. Suk-Chong Yu, the church's minister.
Sunday's votes were the latest actions in a bitter battle between members who want to sell the Powell Street property and those who want to preserve it as a historical legacy.
Yu and the church's new building committee want to sell the Chinatown site and buy the Christian Science Church at 3030 Judah St. Yu said the congregation had out-grown the Powell Street building and needed a bigger building.
"We value the history of our church, and we want to keep it wherever we are," Yu said, "but we also want to make a new legacy for future Korean generations. That's the rationale for the relocation."
But Steve Hong, longtime member of the Korean Methodist Church and leader of the effort to preserve the church as a historical site, called the proposal to sell the building short-sighted.
"They're acting like politicians," Hong said. "They think there is no historical value in the church. They are obligated to preserve the church's history, but they haven't even tried."
Officials in the United Methodist Church California-Nevada conference voted to approve the church's sale last month. Hong blasted their decision.
"They don't know the background of our Korean history," Hong said. "They don't know the traditions; they're not qualified to judge."
The white stucco, Spanish tile-roof building on Powell Street is venerated by Koreans as the "mother church" in America and home of the Korean independence movement early in this century.
The preservationist group petitioned City Planning Sept. 11 to have the church declared a historical landmark. A hearing date before the department's Landmarks Board has not been set.
Meanwhile, Yu said that anyone wanting to buy the church should "make an offer and come to the negotiating table."
Hong said he and other activists had tried to do just that, but that Yu and the new building committee had refused to confer with the group. He said they hadn't had the property appraised yet, but were asking varying prices that ranged from $1.5 million to $2.5 million.
He said the Korean Center Inc., a multiservice agency on Post Street, wanted to buy the building and had recently held a fund-raiser, hoping to be able to offer the church's trustees $10,000 as a deposit.
Yu disputed Hong, saying he welcomed offers from groups trying to preserve the church. "Now they can come to us with a plan to buy it," Yu said. "I don't know why they haven't waited patiently."
State to hire 27 more workers' comp probers
New law makes possible more fraud investigations
By Steven A. Capps
EXAMINER SACRAMENTO BUREAU
SACRAMENTO - State insurance czar John Garamendi says he now will be able to hire 27 additional investigators to look into workers' compensation insurance fraud, a crime he believes is costing the state more than $1 billion a year.
Garamendi's announcement Monday came as the Legislature prepared to convene a special session on California's troubled workers' compensation system. California employers pay among the highest rates in the nation, yet injured California workers collect some of the lowest benefits.
Out of every dollar spent on workers' compensation insurance, doctors and lawyers get 42.3 cents, insurance companies get 28.2 cents, and injured workers get only 29.5 cents, according to the Association of California Insurance Companies.
Republican Gov. Wilson called the special session for Thursday, less than a month before the Nov. 6 election in which all 80 Assembly seats and half of the Senate's 40 seats are on the ballot. Wilson said he hoped election-year pressure would lead to enactment of his proposals.
Democratic legislative leaders have said they expect that the session will last only a day or two, and that the issue will then be assigned to further study by committees. Wilson said last week that if the legislators did not act quickly, he might summon them back into a second special session.
But Garamendi said Monday he already had some of what he needs to curb fraud in the system. Wilson signed a bill - AB3660 by Assemblyman Burt Margolin, D-Los Angeles - authorizing $7 million for investigation and prosecution of workers' compensation insurance fraud.
About half of the money will go to local district attorneys for prosecution of such cases, while the other half will be used by Garamendi's Department of Insurance for investigations.
Garamendi said the money would allow him to hire 27 new investigators - tripling the number he now has assigned to workers' compensation insurance fraud cases - and predicted it would eventually "put hundreds of scam artists behind bars and save tens of millions of dollars in premiums."
Garamendi contended that his department's anti-fraud efforts resulted in $7 in savings for every $1 spent. He said last year his department's investigators had arrested 247 suspects in conjunction with $53.4 million in fraudulent insurance claims of all types. He estimated that the department would investigate 15,000 cases of suspected workers' compensation insurance fraud alone this year.
Last week, Wilson said he hoped the pressure of the upcoming election year would force law-makers to act on his reforms. The issue of workers' compensation pits some of the state's most powerful special interests - doctors, lawyers, insurance companies and businesses - against one another.
"Do I apologize for using this election to pressure for change?" Wilson said. "Absolutely not."
Wilson's plan would require that workers prove their injuries were caused predominantly by work-place conditions before they would be entitled to workers' compensation benefits. It also would limit the number of medical evaluations workers could receive and would encourage use of health maintenance organizations to treat injured workers.
If lawmakers agree to his reform measures, Wilson said, he is willing to repeal the controversial 'minimum rate' state law that guarantees insurance companies 32.8 per-cent profit on their workers' compensation business.
While many view Wilson's proposals as similar to ones adopted by the Legislature - and vetoed by the governor - there is at least one significant difference. Wilson's proposal would not increase benefits paid to injured workers until businesses have saved at least $1 billion of the $10.5 billion in workers' compensation insurance premiums they now pay annually.
S.F. investors say they're nearing a bid for the Giants
"We will make an offer within the next few days," vows Shorenstein
By Andrew Ross
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
Local investors have apparently tentatively agreed on a bid for the San Francisco Giants, but details of the offer were not immediately made public.
"We're making progress, we're moving forward, and we will make an offer within the next few days," downtown real estate developer Walter Shorenstein said Monday after a meeting between local investors and North Carolina sports promoter George Shinn ended at 6:30 p.m. Shorenstein, who is leading the effort, declined further comment.
However, a source close to the negotiations said investors had reached an accord to present to Major League Baseball by week's end.
"It will be competitive," said the source, in reference to a purchase offer of from $105 million to $115 million by Florida investors who want to move the team to the Tampa Bay area.
Sources had predicted earlier the local bid would be from $90 million to $95 million, or possibly more if they offered Giants owner Bob Lurie a share of the franchise.
Although no firm deadline has been set, league officials have indicated they want an offer by the end of the week.
Monday's meeting was the first time in several weeks that most of the key participants had gotten together in one room to try to hash out an agreement to keep the Giants in San Francisco.
It capped a day of intense lobbying by Mayor Jordan, who has been working to keep everyone at the table since he returned late Saturday from his week-long honeymoon in Hawaii.
Larry Baer, a CBS executive who has been helping to negotiate the deal, said the participants had reached a general consensus where we should be.
"Everyone is moving towards an offer at the end of the week," Baer said. "We're moving forward with the league and its guidelines."
However, no formal meetings were planned for Tuesday, and Shinn, the expected lead investor and general partner, flew home late Monday without comment.
<#FROWN:A26\>
Pioneer statue faces monumental decision
Official quandary over pointing it toward City Hall
By Gerald D. Adams
EXAMINER URBAN PLANNING WRITER
Most details of a controversial proposal to move the 47-foot-high Pioneer Monument from where it has rested for almost a century to another Civic Center spot were approved unanimously Monday by the Arts Commission.
The City's art mavens, however, could not decide which way the wedding cake-like pillar of bronze and cement should face - toward City Hall or Market Street. The monument has been on the corner of Hyde and Grove streets since 1894.
Commissioners hesitated to commit themselves after one of the monument's chief admirers raised objections to the Western orientation.
Noted preservationist Winchell Hayward pointed out that, historically, the spear-carrying female bronze figure representing California has gazed from the pre-1906 City Hall southward toward Market Street.
Now, plans by the Bureau of Architecture would turn it 180 degrees to face the existing City Hall, he complained.
Commissioners agreed to withhold a final decision on direction pending a study by their Civic Design Committee.
As a result of Monday's vote, the 850-ton monument is slated to be moved sometime in spring 1993, according to City Architect Russ Abel. The cost to move the monument, estimated at $750,000, would be paid by the Department of Public Works, he said.
The Pioneer Monument's final resting place would be in the middle of Fulton Street, halfway between Hyde and Larkin streets and midway between the new and old library buildings. In the meantime, Abel said, the representation of California and the pioneers who huddle at her feet will be temporarily moored at the east end of Fulton Street for about two years, pending completion of the new library building.
For the past two years, the notion of moving the Pioneer Monument at all was so controversial that it threatened to torpedo plans for the new $105 million Main Library, slated for the area on which the statue currently stands. That issue was resolved in April when the Arts Commission agreed that it should be shifted to make way for the oncoming structure.
Air disaster toll may hit 250
Crews seek bodies, stabilize building in Amsterdam cut in two by big jet
By Robert J. Wielaard
ASSOCIATED PRESS
AMSTERDAM - Search crews started a full-scale hunt for bodies Tuesday after stabilizing a 11-story apartment building that was sliced in two by an Israeli jumbo jet.
Officials feared the death toll from the Sunday evening crash of an El Al cargo plane could exceed 250, most of them residents of the low-income housing project. That would make it the worst plane crash in terms of casualties on the ground.
By Tuesday morning, only 12 bodies had been recovered from the mountain of rubble.
Workers had been digging by hand because of fears the building might collapse. Cranes were used to pull down tottering slabs of concrete and other rubble, and experts said the danger of collapse has now been reduced.
Authorities also were looking for the Boeing 747's flight data recorder (the 'black box'), which could explain why two engines fell from the plane after it took off from Schiphol Airport. It crashed as the pilot tried vainly to return for a landing.
Late Monday, Seattle-based Boeing issued a service bulletin asking all airlines to inspect fuse pins that help connect engines to the wings of 747-200s, -100s and -300s.
The pins are designed to break off and allow an engine to fall if the engine malfunctions.
Boeing cited similarities between Sunday's crash and one last December in which a China Air 747-200 freighter dropped two engines from its right wing shortly after takeoff in Taipei. The crash killed five crew.
"We have not found any evidence linking these fuse pins to either accident," said Boeing spokesman Christopher Villiers. "This is just a precaution at this point."
Search teams filled stretchers with bits of charred human remains that were barely recognizable as fingers, legs and other body parts. The stench of burnt flesh hung in the cold, damp air at the site in the suburb of Bijlmermeer.
Workers began digging deep into the wreckage to search apartments that were sealed off by falling concrete.
Mayor Ed van Thijn said the crash and the ensuing fire were so ferocious that a full identification of all victims could prove impossible.
"We may never know who they are," he said at a dawn news conference at City Hall.
Huub Windhagen, a city spokesman, said the recovery operation was now going ahead at full speed but stressed that searchers had to be wary of the building's precarious state.
Windhagen declined to predict how long the operation would take, but officials said earlier it would last several days.
The first 12 bodies recovered were those of three men, three women, one child and five whose sex could not be immediately determined.
The corpses were taken to a makeshift morgue in an airport hangar for identification by dentists and other specialists.
The task of identifying victims was expected to be difficult, because many are believed to be illegal aliens. The apartment complex is home to many immigrants from SurinameSurinam, Ghana, the Dutch Antilles, Cape Verde and Pakistan.
Officials said they wouldn't act against victims' relatives who might be illegal aliens, if they help identify the bodies.
The disaster could prove to be the worst plane crash involving casualties on the ground.
Hutton Archer, spokesman for the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal, said the crash of a Boeing 707 cargo plane in 1976 killed 77 people on the ground and seriously injured 78 in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
On Sunday, the El Al 747-200 slammed into the angle of the V-shaped building 14 minutes after takeoff. Its pilot had reported one starboard engine on fire six minutes after takeoff and the other starboard engine ablaze six minutes later.
The engines fell into a lake as the pilot dumped fuel and tried to control the plane for an emergency landing. The pilot, the two other crew members and the plane's one passenger all died.
Investigators said it was too early to say why the two engines caught fire. "Our first impression is that it was technical malfunction," said Transportation Minister Hanja Maij-Weggen.
El Al spokesman Nachman Klieman said the plane was in excellent mechanical condition. He said the airline wouldn't comment on possible causes until the investigation was finished.
The plane was 13 1/2 years old. Officials said it underwent routine maintenance last week. Fire department crews were draining ponds and ditches near the crash site in their search for the plane's flight recorder and bodies. Windhagen said 424 police, 74 fire-fighters and three dozen identification experts were searching the apartment building.
Officials said 80 apartments were ripped away altogether and 150 others were heavily damaged. More than 150 families were left homeless.
Judge tells flight attendants to work
They had voted to honor USAir mechanics strike
By Jim Urban
ASSOCIATED PRESS
IMPERIAL, Pa. - A federal judge ordered USAir flight attendants back to work Monday night after they voted to honor a strike by ground crew workers.
Ground crews for USAir, the nation's sixth-largest airline, walked off the job Monday in a dispute over job security, canceling flights for thousands of people.
Monday night, U.S. District Judge Timothy Lewis issued a ruling ordering flight attendants back to work. The Association of Flight Attendants - which represents 9,000 USAir employees, voted to honor the strike by the International Association of Machinists.
"It should be plain that the public interest is best served by issuing the requested order, in order to avoid passenger disruption," Lewis said in his ruling.
Flight attendants will be advised to obey the order and report for work until another hearing before Lewis Thursday afternoon, said David Melancon, a union spokes-man.
The airline's pilots said they would continue to work.
The striking union represents about 8,300 employees, and many of them said the main issue was job security - not wages or benefits.
Union and airline negotiators were unable to agree on a new contract after lengthy weekend talks that lasted into Monday morning. National Mediation Board spokes-man Lew Townsend said early Monday no other talks were scheduled. He couldn't immediately be reached late Monday.
USAir is asking all employees for wage, benefit and work rule concessions, so it can cut costs by about $400 million this year. Pilots agreed to salary concessions in June.
After talks with the machinists broke off, picket lines sprouted at airports around the country, including San Francisco. The airline runs 18 USAir Shuttle flights from SFO to Los Angeles each day.
Ten flights out of SFO were canceled Monday, said USAir spokeswoman Agnes Huff. "We operated 37 out of 47 scheduled flights. We will try to maintain that number of flights, and hopefully build onto that number in the days ahead," she said.
Huff suggested that passengers call a day before their scheduled flight to check its status.
USAir said 75 percent of its 2,600 daily departures were taking off and other carriers were accepting stranded passengers.
The airline said its overseas flights - three departures daily to London, two to Frankfurt and one to Paris - were not affected, nor were the USAir Express and USAir Shuttle services.
New UC president asked to simplify executive pay
System faces crisis in public confidence over compensation to top administrators
By Katherine Seligman
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
LOS ANGELES - In his first tumultuous week on the job, University of California President Jack Peltason has been asked to solve the public relations crisis stemming from how the university pays its top administrators.
University regents at a special meeting Monday requested that Peltason devise a way of simplifying executive compensation. The new method could eliminate some or all of the generous and controversial perks given to high-ranking administrators.
Regents praised a report by former legislative analyst A. Alan Post that called for dropping all such "ill-advised" benefits, but they did not recommend that Peltason embrace all of Post's suggestions. Peltason stressed that he would not consider a plan that cut executive pay.
"The consensus today is that we need to simplify," said Peltason. "We need to not only pay adequate wages but those that people understand."
Peltason will make his recommendations to regents in November. Monday's meeting was an attempt to assuage to public anger over a host of complicated benefits given to top administrators that boosted their salaries more than 20 percent.
Post reiterated to regents a major theme of his report: that public confidence in UC has been at an all-time low since news leaked out about a retirement deal given to former President David Gardner.
Gardner, who was not at the meeting but has called Post's report a "series of assertions" not rooted in fact, is scheduled to get a one-time payment of about $900,000 plus a yearly pension of a $126,000.
Post criticized the secretive manner in which regents had given Gardner the benefits as well as the motivation for using a system of deferred compensation that awarded money at the end of a set period of service instead of in a regular paycheck.
Post said regents were unwilling to take the political heat by raising salaries outright. He urged regents to review all special forms of compensation, including deferred income, special supplemental retirement pay, special severance pay for spouses and housing allowances.
Pay raises instead of perks?
If Peltason recommends dropping some of the perks, regents will still have to face the thorny issue of raising executive pay to make up for the lost benefits. Legislators, faculty and students have expressed outrage over Gardner's and other top administrators' compensation when faculty salaries have been frozen for two years and student fees have jumped 85 percent in the past three years.
Terminating the deferred compensation plan would mean that UC's nine chancellors would make an average of 21 percent less than chancellors at a comparable group of universities researched by the California Postsecondary Commission. With perks, UC chancellors make an average of $190,000, about 5 percent less than the comparison group, whose average pay is $200,200.
<#FROWN:A27\>
LA&S dean addresses critics, problems
By Eric Krol and Sean McClellan
Staff Reporters
Answering critics and improving undergraduate advising were among the topics brought forth Friday at an annual meeting of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
LA&S Dean James Norris gave his annual state of the college address to a nearly-packed Collins Auditorium at Cole Hall on Friday afternoon.
LA&S faculty gathered to hear Norris review the past year and highlight the upcoming one.
Norris addressed the media's summertime attacks on higher education, calling them a bundle of "errors, ignorance, and truth." Norris was referring to articles which stated that professors were unconcerned with educating undergraduates and that universities are inefficient on the whole.
"We need to be more aware in answering our critics," he said.
Norris also had praise for the appointment of J. Carroll Moody as Acting Provost. Moody replaced the North Dakota-bound Kendall Baker during the summer.
He also discussed the recommendations of last semester's Academic Resources Advisory Committee. ARAC was charged with the task of identifying 3 percent of each college's budget for reallocation; however, Norris said the committee's report is already dated. The Illinois Board of Higher Education has now shifted its policy towards productivity, quality and demand, he added.
The IBHE will be meeting to discuss these issues Sept. 3 and also have started releasing 'hit lists' of unproductive programs to state universities.
Norris expressed concern that paring down universities will become a trend. "This is not a one-time sacrifice of the virgin to the volcano," Norris said. "This will be every year."
Norris offered many methods of battling attacks on higher education and state funding cuts.
Departments should eliminate bottlenecks, he said, which are required classes offered once every few semesters. Professors should look at courses and ask themselves, "Are they designed for undergraduates or my research topic?" he added.
Norris also recommended looking at faculty work-loads and target credit-hour production, but admitted that different disciplines have different methods. "I don't have a magic formula," he said.
Norris said Associate Dean Donald Cress examined the situation and found that if every faculty member was forced to teach one more class, there would not be enough space for all of the added classes.
A question-and-answer session followed the speech, where the subjects of advising undergraduates and consolidating departments were discussed.
Norris suggested rewarding faculty for doing student advising work. This would counter the public perception that professors are consumed with research and don't care about undergraduates.
IBHE approves Lincoln Hall renovation
By Rob Heselbarth
Business Affairs Reporter
One of NIU's aging residence halls will be receiving a facelift next summer.
The Board of Higher Education has given the nod for the renovation of two Lincoln Residence Hall wings to be completed by fall 1993.
Student Housing Services Director Carl Jardine said the renovation will turn the wings into "suite-type arrangements.
"We distributed written surveys to the residents last spring to get their input regarding the renovation," he said.
Suites will consist of three rooms - a living area and two sleeping areas.
"We have not decided which two wings to do, but that is all part of the process," Jardine said. The type of furniture also has not been determined, he added.
Any vacancies in Lincoln Hall this fall will be turned into demo-rooms displaying different types of furniture under consideration, he said.
Because Lincoln Hall was built in the 1960s, Jardine said now is the appropriate time to make significant changes.
Business and Operations Vice President James Harder said the project money will come from revenue bond funds, which support the residence hall system.
The initial estimated cost for the project was $600,000 to $700,000, but plans are not far enough along to come up with any definite figures, he said.
Patricia Hewitt, associate vice president of business and operations, said the final price will be determined by room options students choose before they move in and the number of floors renovated.
However, Jardine said the project's cost will be kept at a minimum to keep the cost of residential rooms at the same level next year.
Acting chair named to HFR
By Alex Gary
Staff Reporter
NIU has a new chair of the human and family resources department.
Mary Pritchard, who has been at NIU for nine years, was named acting chair for the 1992-93 academic year.
Pritchard is succeeding Earl Goodman, who retired after 20 years at NIU. Goodman had been chair of the HFR department for the past five years.
One of Pritchard's objectives will be to improve alumni relations, she said. "My goal is to get at least one newsletter out," Pritchard said.
Pritchard has a long list of accomplishments in her years at NIU. She has been coordinator of the family and child studies program since 1990. Also, Pritchard helped develop the university's new student mentoring project. She chaired NIU's Undergraduate Coordinating Council for one year.
As acting chair, Pritchard, who is a faculty member, said her role in the university will be very different. "I will be a full-time administrator. I will not be teaching classes this year," she said.
Pritchard, an expert on family economics, has a master's degree from Iowa State and a doctorate in consumer economics from Purdue University. In addition to her work at NIU, Pritchard is a former president of the Illinois Consumer Education Association and has presented papers to the American Council on Family Relations and the National Health and Nutrition Survey.
NIU student takes over board position
By Philip Dalton
Student Association Reporter
One of NIU's very own has been chosen to replace Tim Bagby on the DeKalb County Board for the seventh district.
NIU student Eric Carter was chosen by a Republican caucus to replace Bagby, who stepped down earlier this year. Carter was chosen from a number of candidates in the district. He will be running for the position in the Nov. 3 election.
Carter is a senior pursuing a degree in political science. He is also an active member of the NIU College Republicans Club.
He said he hopes to represent student issues on the county board and also would like to see the board work more closely with the growing cities of Sycamore and DeKalb.
Carter also plans to be involved with the county budget, an issue he said he considers to be one of the major ones.
The board soon will begin a $25,000 study to research user fees. He said the study might result in the lowering of certain fees. Other issues he said he regards as important include the funding issue at the DeKalb County Nursing Home, 2331 Sycamore Road, and the treatment of the area forest preserves.
In order to keep in touch with city issues as well as student concerns, Carter invited students and all residents of the district to come to the county board meetings, which always are open to the public.
Carter said he is open for student suggestions or questions, and so is Margaret Phillips, area coordinator for Neptune and Gilbert Halls, who is also a member of the DeKalb County Board.
Presidential election inspires student activity
By Philip Dalton
Student Association Reporter
The heat of this year's presidential election is sparking activity on NIU's campus this fall.
NIU's College Republicans and Young Democrats kicked off their fall election year activities at Friday Fest in the MLK Commons.
Both groups distributed literature and answered questions pertaining to their party candidates in upcoming elections.
Kevin Hir, president of the College Republicans, said he would like to get people involved in order to help erase labels of apathy he believes are attached to younger Americans.
Young Democrats' President Bradley Strauss said he has "lots of enthusiasm about the election," and he would like to register every student on NIU's campus to vote.
Student Regent John Butler said the Student Association hopes to begin a campaign of registering student voters for local, state and national elections.
"Paralleling that will be efforts at exposing students to issues of the 1992 campaign with the help of the Young Democrats, College Republicans and other organizations interested in helping," he said.
"We hope to have forums and if possible, visiting speakers," he added.
Hir said the Republicans are enthusiastic about debating the Democrats. Strauss also expressed an interest in a public forum.
Butler encouraged any other group interested in participating to contact the SA office at 753-0482.
The Young Democrats will be holding an open meeting Wednesday at 9 p.m. Anyone interested in attending should call Strauss at 758-2712.
The College Republicans also will be holding an organizational meeting Wednesday at 9 p.m. in DuSable Hall 220. Both meetings are open to all students.
Grant to fund workshops for blind, deaf
By Heather Pingel
Staff Reporter
Recently NIU received a rather large three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education's Rehabilitation Services Administration.
NIU's Institute on Deafness will benefit in more ways than one from a $250,458 grant, which officials already have plans for.
Project Coordinator Greg Mosher said the money will be used to fund workshops for specialists who want to work with those blind and/or deaf. People are currently being recruited from Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Minnesota.
He said training for specialists will include a ten-week long intensive workshop for a total of 180 people. Ninety of these professionals will be working with the blind, and the other half will be working with the deaf.
The first week-long workshop will run from Sept. 29 into the first week of November. Those who attend workshops will be charged a small registration fee, which has yet to be decided.
Mosher said there is a great need for workshops for the blind and deaf in the Illinois area.
"Illinois, the only state that has conducted research units for the deaf and blind population, has identified 1,868 residents who are both blind and deaf," he said.
But NIU has been on top of such programs from way back. The Northern Institute on Deafness has a 15-year reputation of maintaining both pre- and in-service training in deafness rehabilitation and training in visual impairment.
Mosher also said that it is difficult to find workers who are able to deal with the problems of a person who has one disability, let alone handle the problems of people with two disabilities.
He said he is looking for rehabilitational professionals who have knowledge of psychosocial, medical, educational and vocational aspects of the disabilities. Also, persons who are familiar with sign language, mobility and helping devices.
"Few rehabilitation professionals possess all these skills, so qualified workers are scarce," he said.
Mosher added that the grant will also aid the salary of hiring professionals to come in and train all willing applicants.
Anyone interested in a possible position with the Institute on Deafness can contact Mosher at 753-6545.
Golden Key offers 'College Connection'
By Kevin Lyons
Staff Reporter
The NIU chapter of the Golden Key National Honor Society presented its newest program, College Connection, at a national Golden Key Honor Society convention in Scottsdale, Ariz. this summer.
In addition, for the third year in a row, the NIU chapter was one of 28 to receive the Key Chapter Award from the national society.
College Connection is a program geared at encouraging high school students to continue their education, Cory Flanagan, faculty adviser, said.
Flanagan said the program is worked in three phases and the chapter is currently in the third phase of its first year of College Connection.
The first phase involves speaking at local high schools on furthering education. Last year, Golden Key members spoke at DeKalb and Sycamore High Schools.
Flanagan said the talks can be geared to a certain student group or students in general. She said the talks do not necessarily promote four-year universities, but also junior colleges, technical schools and military opportunities.
"We want to provide as much information as possible for viable educational opportunities," she said.
"If we influence anyone to continue his education, we've met our goal," Flanagan said.
In the second phase, high school students are brought to NIU and allowed to go to classes, social events and sporting events, Flanagan said.
<#FROWN:A28\>
Lure of circus persists
By Jan Hicks
Staff Writer
"I'm in my second childhood," said Len Zajicek, 63, formerly of Waukesha, Wis. "I ran off and joined the circus. When I found out I had cancer, I said 'Hell with it, I'm going to go out and have fun.'"
Zajicek, a retired plant manager, travels with the Culpepper and Merriweather Circus which gave two shows in Sycamore Saturday, sponsored by Sycamore's Fraternal Order of Police. Zajicek estimated that over 1,000 people attended the two performances.
Zajizek is the father of elephant trainer Jim Zajicek, who joined the circus at 16. One of Zajicek's three sons became a history teacher, one a surgeon's assistant. Jim knew early on that he was cut out for the circus. He became a high wire acrobat and fire-eater, and later the trainer of a 4,000 pound African elephant named Barb.
"I'm glad he's off the high wire," Zajicek said. "He fell and cracked his ankle and next season, he was up again - they just don't quit."
Other performers explained how they got into circus performing. "I was born into it, I had no choice. I'm a third generation circus performer," said Heidi, who's performed various acts for 31 years and now juggles flaming pins while riding horseback. "I started at three. My family were hand-balancers."
Acrobat Jens Larson, 33, says he got into the circus "by mistake."
"I was a gymnast in school and one coincidence led to another," he said. "Everybody's got a different story."
"They treat me like a king around here," Len said of the 28 circus employees who travel the midwest during summer months. Most employees are working hard after the show to tear down the big top, and load equipment into the brightly painted trucks on the lot.
Circus owner Robert 'Red' Johnson is out of his sequined emcee tuxedo and, dressed in a White Sox shirt, he's tugging at the canvas corners of the tent sides, tearing down the big top with the rest of the crew. Johnson also performs with the cast. Many employees do more than one thing - they perform, run concessions, sell tickets, put up the tent.
"We lost a fire-eater a couple weeks ago, so Red does it now," Len said of the circus owner.
Circuses were Hitler's model for efficiency in moving large numbers of people and equipment, Zajicek said.
"When he was planning how to move his army, Hitler came over to America to see how circuses moved. He wanted to know how the hell they did it," Zajicek said.
"Ho!" the crew yells, as they tug the blue and white canvas, fold it and roll it around a spool on a 'spool truck,' like filling a bobbin.
"We leave a nice clean lot. The only thing you're going to see when we're gone is the ring on the grass under the ponies," Zajicek said.
After the show Saturday, some performers went to see the Clint Eastwood movie, he said.
"Some go eat, some just take a shower and sack out," he said.
Some people in the audience were "circus fans," he said.
"Circus fans are all over. You get to know them. They come out to the lot every year," he said.
District to treat landfill leachate
By Kathy Guyer
Staff writer
The DeKalb County Landfill is expected to soon begin bringing its leachate, the naturally occurring liquids that are created when garbage decomposes, to the DeKalb Sanitary District for treatment.
Mike Zima, sanitary district manager, said the treatment of leachate at sanitary districts is allowed by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA).
The IEPA requires that leachate be removed from landfills and treated before it is returned to the environment, Zima said. The DeKalb Sanitary District returns its water to the Kishwaukee River after treatment.
Dale Hoekstra, general manager of Waste Management, Inc., the company that owns DeKalb County Landfill, said they must obtain two permits from the IEPA before they can start bringing their leachate to the sanitary district.
They have already received one of the permits from the IEPA division of land and they are waiting for the second permit from the IEPA division of water, Hoekstra said.
Treatment of leachate at sanitary districts is common, Hoekstra said. He noted that currently DeKalb County Landfill leachate is transported to Calumet City to Waste Management's own treatment facility or to Elgin's sanitary district.
Under the agreement, Waste Management will pay 2 cents per gallon for all leachate brought to the sanitary district, Zima said. No more than 20,000 gallons per day of leachate can be brought to the district, he added.
Zima said that 2 cents per gallon was cheap and other treatment facilities charge up to 10 cents per gallon. He added that people use an average of 100 gallons of water that ends up being treated at the sanitary district each day and 20,000 gallons was the equivalent of the amount of sewage water created each day by 200 people.
"It will certainly help us keep our costs down," Hoekstra added, noting the low per-gallon price and savings in transportation.
Hoekstra said the leachate is not hazardous.
Waste presents dilemma
By Kathy Guyer
Staff Writer
A 55-gallon drum filled with an unidentified substance sits on the DeKalb parkway at Greg Protano's auto parts yard on Industrial Drive.
For a week the drum has sat there, roped off by the DeKalb Fire Department, awaiting a representative from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) to show up, test the liquid inside and determine if it is a hazardous material.
DeKalb Police Lt. Richard Moudy said his department received the report from Protano on Aug. 19. Protano had arrived at the scrap yard about 7 a.m. and found the abandoned barrel on the parkway in front of his business.
DeKalb Assistant Fire Chief Reuben Nelson said the fire department went out and checked the barrel and found it contained about five or six gallons of liquid.
'Mineral spirits' was written on the barrel, Nelson said.
"We're pretty certain that it's mostly water and paint thinner," Nelson said. Firefighters attempted to ignite some of the liquid and it wouldn't catch fire, he added.
Although the liquid has not been tested, Nelson said he doesn't believe it is hazardous material. Firefighters put the barrel in a reinforced steel containment cannister and the IEPA was contacted, he said.
However, the city officials won't move the barrel because if they do it becomes their responsibility, Nelson said.
"It's an abandoned material, nobody has possession of it now," Nelson said.
If the city took possession of it and the material turns out to be hazardous, it would then be the city's responsibility to dispose of it, he said.
Nelson said the fire department has not been notified that any IEPA worker has been to the site. He added that if no one shows up in another week, he will contact the IEPA.
Knight gets no satisfaction
Fish kill results linger on
By Jan Hicks
Staff writer
Hartmann Farms will be required to pay for the loss of 15,284 fish killed by a hog manure spill from their property, but a Sycamore resident who lives near the river thinks they should do more than that.
Thousands of fish died after 30,000 gallons of manure spilled into the east branch of the Kishwaukee River on Tuesday, Aug. 11. Sycamore residents began discovering the dead fish on Friday, Aug. 14, and Peggy Knight was one of them.
Knight thinks the $3,676.80 fine, the Department of Conservation's estimated value of the fish, is not enough. She'd like someone to remove the piles of dead fish that have collected in the creek bed behind her home.
"I can't understand why the company responsible for the fish kill didn't have to clean it up," Knight said Monday.
"Right after the fish count, they should have picked them up, not just let them decay," Knight said. "I really think the EPA should have forced the hog farmer to clean up the residential areas. It's OK where it's out in the middle of a field."
Knight's trailer home sits beside the river in Evergreen Park. Behind her neatly clipped back lawn, about 70 large carp lay rotting in the shallow water. At 7:20 p.m. Monday, the stench overwhelmed the smoke from a barbecue grill nearby.
"They're half decayed and full of maggots," she said. "These things are attracting tons of flies. I can't imagine it's not some sort of health hazard."
The river behind her trailer is only 4 inches deep, she said, adding the creek is only 50 feet from her bedroom. Since her trailer doesn't have central air conditioning, she said she has had to leave the windows open.
"There's not enough water at this part of the river to wash them away," Knight said.
Knight said she called both the DeKalb County Health Department and the Environmental Protection Agency and both said they couldn't help.
"The health department told me if it bothered me, I could clean it up," Knight said, adding the EPA told her she could submit a bill for clean-up to the Hartmann Farms but that if the company didn't pay it, she might end up having to file a civil suit.
"We have never picked up fish. It's not possible for us to go out and collect 15,000 fish," said Gene Forster, of the Rockford EPA field office. "The first rain we get and the first rise in the river will take that all away."
The EPA's legal division in Springfield has not determined whether to charge penalties to Hartmanns, over and above the value of the fish and the expense of counting the fish, Forster said.
Knight said parents try to keep children away since the fish kill.
Suffers attack on job
Department action saves firefighter
By Mike Crase
Staff writer
Sycamore firefighter Ben Henderson is living proof that one of the Sycamore Fire Department's latest pieces of life-saving equipment, a heart defibrillator, works.
Henderson, 44, a 16-year veteran of the Sycamore Fire Department, is recovering from a near fatal arrhythmia of his heart that he suffered while on duty on July 18. Quick action by his fellow firefighters saved his life. Arrhythmia is when a person's heart starts beating irregularly.
"This is what the doctors call an instant death episode," Henderson said Monday. "In other words had I not been around a defibrillator, I probably would have died instantly."
"He was at the right place at the right time," said Sycamore Fire Chief Larry Haffner.
Henderson said he doesn't recall much of what happened.
"We were sitting around the kitchen table, smoking and joking and I started feeling bad and before I knew it the only thing I could do was put my head on the table," Henderson said. "I couldn't holler for help, I couldn't do anything. It started about five minutes after eight and lasted until about 10 or 15 minutes after eight. I really can't say, I was blacking out at the time. What I thought was blacking out, I was actually dying on duty."
Todd Turner, a fellow firefighter, was working the same shift Henderson was when the incident took place, about an hour after they had started their shift. He said firemen started the necessary procedures on Henderson.
Henderson said he was hooked up to a heart monitor which determined that his heart beat could be brought back to a regular beat with the defibrillator.
A defibrillator, Henderson said, uses an electrical charge to establish a normal heart beat.
Firemen defibrillated Henderson and his heart returned to a regular beat. He was taken to Kishwaukee Community Hospital, stabilized and flown by helicopter to SwedishAmerican Hospital in Rockford where he spent three days in intensive care. He was then transferred to Sinai-Samaritan hospital in Milwaukee where he remained for another five days.
Henderson said while in Milwaukee, doctors implanted a small defibrillator in his chest which would automatically apply an electrical charge if an irregular heart beat is detected.
<#FROWN:A29\>
Owners say topless clubs facing increased scrutiny
City denies it wants to crimp growing business
By Michael Utley and Martin Zimmerman
Staff Writers of The Dallas Morning News
Bob Bishop lost his shirt in the topless club business.
The owner of Sugars Dallas on Greenville Avenue lost his operating license in January when local officials said he violated the city's 6-year-old topless bar ordinance.
"I can't tell you what this has done to me," Mr. Bishop said during a recent interview. "I put my entire savings into that place. Then all of a sudden, the city says I have to shut down, and what am I supposed to do for a living?"
Mr. Bishop is just one of several club owners who believe that the city is out to put a major dent in Dallas' booming topless club industry. City officials deny that they are, but seven club owners have lost their licenses already this year.
A rash of regulatory actions has once again focused attention on Dallas' bevy of topless clubs. The clubs have become a huge business, both in Dallas and around the country.
Based on gross liquor sales, five of the top 10 non-hotel bars in Dallas are topless clubs. Alcohol sales in all Dallas topless clubs have grown 37 percent since 1988.
During the past 12 months, the city's 20 topless clubs rang up $25.7 million in alcoholic beverage sales alone. Cabaret Royale, on Restaurant Row, grossed $3.3 million from drink sales - six times more than a nearby T.G.I. Friday's, according to state records.
On a typical Friday night, nearly 700 women are dancing topless in Dallas clubs. About 1,200 women work as topless dancers in Dallas - some earning $500 and more a night, all in tips.
The clubs' popularity doesn't stop at the city limits. Arlington officials are alarmed by the growing number of topless bars in their city and are considering tough new laws to control them. Several topless clubs are operating in Arlington, and two more are in the works.
$3 billion business
In the United States, the trade magazine Gentleman's Club estimates, there are now more than 1,300 topless clubs, where 10 million customers - almost all men - spend $3 billion a year. And the growth is at the high end of the spectrum, where upscale clubs such as Dallas' Cabaret Royale and The Men's Club are transforming the industry.
"The topless industry is an American phenomenon," said Kevin King, publisher of Gentleman's Club. And Dallas, to aficionados such as Mr. King, is the Mecca of the topless industry.
"The clubs in Dallas are leaders in casting aside the seamy image of topless clubs and dressing them up to cater to the tastes of a free-spending, white-collar clientele," Mr. King wrote in a recent issue.
Some consider that a dubious distinction at best. Upscale or down, they say, topless clubs make lousy neighbors.
"People see (topless clubs) around, and they don't want to live anywhere near them," said Coffer Realty president Gerry Coffer, who fought the license renewal for Sheer D'Lite, an East Dallas topless bar that is appealing its recent license revocation.
Also, women's advocates argue that clubs degrade women and exploit them economically.
"It's definitely exploitation. Women can't get a job that pays them a decent salary, so they work in a topless bar," said Karen Ashmore, co-founder of a local chapter of the National Organization for Women. "It's a backlash to women being more a part of mainstream society."
Says El Arnold of the Dallas Association for Decency: "(Topless clubs) take young girls and put them in very degrading situations. It's not the kind of thing you'd want your daughter to undergo."
Still, a recent city licensing hearing for the Million Dollar Saloon, another Greenville Avenue topless club, drew no protesters despite ample advance publicity. In fact, several nearby business owners attended the meeting to express support for the club.
Convention clients
Dallas' emergence as a top market for topless entertainment stems in part from its ability to attract conventions, which supply a steady stream of topless-club patrons.
"You do have a call for that type of business at conventions," said Michelle Bogard of Ticket To The City, whose convention-going clients have snapped up more than 10,000 passes to the Million Dollar Saloon in less than a year. "It's a fact of life."
One local businessman says: "When I have a client come in town from Des Moines, he wants to go to a topless club. Dallas is famous for that."
Club owners go to great pains to distinguish between the new-style topless clubs and old-line strip joints. Salah Izzedin, the main principal in Cabaret Royale, argues that such clubs have cleaned up a sleazy business and given it sophistication and cachet.
"We are very proud to have set new standards for this business across the country," said Mr. Izzedin, a former Houston-based topless-club impresario who plans to open Cabaret Royales in several U.S. cities.
On the surface, at least, it would be hard to confuse The Men's Club in North Dallas, the newest of the city's upscale topless clubs, with more traditional clubs such as Baby Dolls on Northwest Highway or Showtime on Lover's Lane.
The upscale clubs target well-heeled business executives and they charge prices to match. At Cabaret Royale, for instance, the evening cover charge is $10, parking costs $3, and beers are $4.95 apiece. At the Men's Club, the cover is $7. By contrast, Showtime charges $3.
Not surprising, net profit margins in the topless business can be 50 percent higher than the 20 to 25 percent margin regular nightclubs can achieve, said John Kirkendoll, chairman of the company that owns Gold Club topless clubs.
Competition heats up
Mr. King foresees a shakeout in the topless business as cities such as Dallas begin to crack down on the clubs. Older, under-capitalized clubs at the seedy end of the scale will be closed, he says. Upscale clubs, with millions invested and plenty in reserve to finance court battles with regulators, will flourish, he predicts.
Even the high-dollar clubs may get squeezed as competition heats up. Mr. Kirkendoll said the opening of The Men's Club in July may have signaled the saturation point for Dallas. Future clubs probably will draw from the existing customer base.
But as long as the city allows the existing clubs to stay open, money will continue to be made, says Mr. Kirkendoll, who hopes to sell stock in his Dallas-based Entertainment Corp. of America to the public later this year to raise money for expansion.
"I don't see anybody going under economically," he said, "because the demand is so high."
When Mr. Kirkendoll talks about demand, he's got men like Carl and John in mind.
The men, who didn't want to give their last names, were sitting in the Million Dollar Saloon on a recent weekday afternoon, jackets off, ties loosened - a couple of 40-something white-collar types out for a good time. To them, there's no big mystery about the allure of topless clubs.
"We come here to see all these gorgeous girls, what else?" Carl said. "The women are just beautiful, unbelievably beautiful."
Says John, "It's every guy's fantasy to have a bunch of great-looking women falling all over him, and that's what you get here."
According to industry experts, topless club patrons routinely spend as much as $100 on each visit to a topless club. About a third of that buys drinks. The rest finances the entertainment - the dancers.
"Some girls walk out with $500 for a night, some with $50," said Nikki, a fresh-faced 23-year-old from Minneapolis who dances at Cabaret Royale. "It all depends how hard they work."
The money is a powerful lure for attractive women in their late teens and early 20s, especially if the employment alternative is a low-paying service job.
Recalls Nikki: "I was working as a waitress in a topless bar, and one night a guy bought a $4.95 drink and gave me a $5 bill. At the same time, he tipped a dancer $100. Three days later, I was dancing."
Mr. Kirkendoll said some dancers make six-figure incomes. But the norm is probably less than half that, given that most dancers'dancers rarely work five days a week.
The dancers are independent contractors with no paychecks and no regular schedule. The managers trust the dancers' money-making instincts to know when the clubs are crowded and more dancers are needed.
Dancers' pay comes in cash. Patrons either tip a dancer while she is on stage, slipping a bill beneath her G-string, or they buy a dance at their tables, which costs about $20 a song.
A dancer at Showtime, who asked to remain unidentified, said she and her colleagues often prey on a customer's loneliness or sexual frustration to siphon as many dollars as possible.
"That's the bottom line," she said. "Dancers aren't here to find a boyfriend. They're here to pay the rent."
Not surprisingly, as Nikki notes, the dancers "get propositioned all the time." Often enough, in fact, that Cabaret Royale provides business cards for dancers to give to aggressive customers reading: "What you are suggesting is illegal. ... If you persist, a manager will ask you to leave immediately."
Alert for vice
Vice officers and club owners say prostitution is rare. Dancers make enough money legally, they say. And the club owners have an economic interest in keeping illegal activity, both prostitution and drug use, out of their clubs.
Most topless clubs have strict no-drugs policies. Places such as the Gold Club randomly test employees for drug use, Mr. Kirkendoll said.
But dancers and others familiar with the business say drug use remains a problem, especially among dancers at the mid- to lower-level clubs.
Earlier this year, the city suspended the operating license of Caligula XXI on Northwest Highway for 15 days after employees were arrested for allegedly selling cocaine in the club. And drug arrests played a role in the city's decision to close down Sugars altogether. However, the owner, Mr. Bishop, said the arrests didn't lead to any convictions.
Club owners said they try to keep drugs out of their clubs. But the topless club lifestyle - attractive women making a lot of money mixing with high rollers - creates an environment that can lead to drug use.
"It was a constant battle," recalls Steve Albeck, who owned several Dallas topless clubs in the 1980s. "I'd talk to the dancers about it over and over and over again, but it was hard to make it sink in."
The strain of dealing with the dancers' lifestyles eventually helped drive Mr. Albeck from the business. He sold out and with partner Mike Murphy opened Cowboys, the popular country-Western dance hall in Lakewood.
He doesn't regret the change. "Cowboys is 10 times the size of Showtime," he said, "but it's 10 times easier to run."
Legal restrictions
One reason may be Chapter 41A of the Dallas City Code.
The law was one of the first in the nation to regulate both the locations of sexually oriented businesses and the character of their owners. It bans such businesses from locating within 1,000 feet of a residential zone, school, church, park or other sexually oriented businesses. It also attempts to keep convicted sexual offenders out of the business.
The city keeps track of topless clubs by requiring them to obtain a cabaret license that is reviewed annually by the Dallas Police Department's special investigations bureau.
If a club is in violation of the ordinance - as many are - Dallas police automatically revoke the license. The club owner then must seek an exemption from the city's Permit and License Appeal Board, which can grant exemptions from some city ordinances. The board is made up of 15 citizens appointed by the City Council.
In the past year, 17 topless clubs have asked for exemptions; four have received them, seven have been denied, four are pending, and two requests were dropped.
Of the seven licenses denied this year, at least two have challenged the decision through lawsuits. Sheer D'Lite is suing the city in state district court and El Jardin Club, a Love Field-area dance hall, has filed suit in federal court.
<#FROWN:A30\>
City attorney: No notice needed for meeting
Public or private?: At least one alderman who did not know about the meeting with the police department is "miffed."
By NEAL JUSTIN
The Register Star
BYRON - More than half of the City Council attended a Police Department meeting last week that was not announced to the public or media.
City Clerk Judy Gentry said she was not notified of the Tuesday-night meeting and a notice was not posted on the door, which is the method the community uses to inform the public.
City attorney Dennis Riley said the meeting did not have to be made public because the conversation was expected to be about interdepartmental gripes and police department policies.
"That doesn't fall under the auspice of a public meeting," said Riley, who did not attend the meeting. "My understanding beforehand was that city policy and procedure were not going to be discussed."
Beth Bennett, the government affairs manager for the Illinois Press Association, disagreed.
She said police morale and the running of a police department was city business and should be discussed in open meetings.
"If the City Council is ultimately responsible, that's public business," she said.
Byron Sgt. Jim Wilcox said the meeting included questions about raises and, in part, was intended to help train new officers.
Ald. Herb Johnson, who attended the meeting, said the group discussed the possibility of a retirement plan for police officers.
When asked if discussion about a retirement plan would constitute city business, Riley said he would not respond to a "hypothetical question."
In addition to Johnson, Ald. Mary Paquet, Ald. Sam Finnochio and Mayor Kathy Hamas attended the meeting. Hamas remains a council member because she took over as mayor in the middle of a term.
Ald. John McGhee, who did not know about the meeting, said he was told by Riley that it was a "parliamentary meeting" and did not have to be public.
McGhee said he did not know what that meant and that he was upset he could not be there.
"I was a little miffed about it," he said.
Ogle County States Attorney Dennis Schumacher said he would not address the issue unless a formal complaint was submitted to his office.
Former jailer, 37, faces charge of impersonating police officer
Mugshots found at home: The man is accused of stopping a teen-age girl's car and searching it while wearing what looked like a police uniform.
By NEAL JUSTIN
The Register Star
A Winnebago County jailer has resigned from his position after being accused in Ogle County of impersonating a police officer.
Gregory J. Stobart, 37, 1624 Prairie Ave., who was a jailer for more than three years, is scheduled to appear in Ogle County Court on Sept. 11 on the charges of unlawful restraint.
On April 13, a 17-year-old Davis Junction woman was stopped by a man wearing what appeared to be a police uniform. He searched her car and let her go, Ogle County Sheriff Mel Messer said.
When police believed Stobart to be a suspect and searched his home in early August, they discovered 11 mugshots taken at the county jail, Winnebago County Sheriff Donald J. Gasparini said.
Gasparini said they charged Stobart with official misconduct based on the mugshots found in his home and would have dismissed him if he hadn't resigned.
Stobart was expected to return to jail duty in mid-August, coming off a 90-day leave of absence he took to care for a sick uncle.
Messer and Gasparini said the suspect may have been trying to live out a fantasy of being a police officer.
"They have that uniform and they want to believe they're a cop," Gasparini said.
Victory Lane residents getting free ride, Elm Ave. residents say
Court challenge promised: Fourteen property owners are paying for last year's improvements on Elm, while Victory's nine won't be assessed.
By BRIAN LEAF
The Register Star
MACHESNEY PARK - Victory Lane's million-dollar facelift won approval from the Village Board yesterday. Now it may need approval from a judge.
Jeffrey Heid, who resigned last year as the village's public works director, said he would seek a restraining order against the project because it did not include a special assessment for owners of nine properties on Victory Lane.
"For years, people have been told the only way a street will be reconstructed is if they share the cost," Heid said. "Hopefully, they'll go back and set it up as a special assessment or special services area."
Heid said the village rebuilt Elm Avenue last year, and 14 residents are paying a portion of the project's cost. Heid said his assessment was $4,200.
The assessment was levied after a majority of Elm Avenue residents asked the village to improve the street. Mayor Frank Bauer said Victory Lane residents did not petition for improvements, and, therefore, wouldn't have to pay for the reconstruction.
Since 1983, Heid said 1,000 homes had been given special assessments for street improvements, including the one owned by retiree Betty Bauscher, 64.
Bauscher said her special assessment for Elm Avenue was $10,000 and she couldn't understand why Victory Lane residents should get a free ride.
"I really can't understand why they should get it for nothing when we didn't," Bauscher said.
An ordinance to award the project to Schlichting & Sons Excavating Co. for $1.02 million passed when Bauer broke a 3-3 tie on the Village Board. The village will borrow the money to pay for the project.
Bauer said Marquette Elementary School children were at risk because of Victory Lane's poor condition, particularly during the winter when they must walk on the street.
The village contends that traffic on Victory Lane will increase when the Harlem Road-Elmwood Road bridge opens next year and northwest Rockford residents begin using it to get to the Machesney Park Mall.
But to set up a special assessment district, five of the nine property owners would have to petition the village and agree to pay a share of the project. Bauer said that getting a majority wasn't likely.
"I know we could never get them to petition us," he said. "Are we going to wait for those people to get 51 percent, or are we going to build the road?"
Shooting suspect gets his wish: A trial
Plea bargain thrown out: The man, 20, says his public defenders pressured him into the plea involving the death of a 17-year-old boy.
By TRACY DELL'ANGELA
The Register Star
A man who said his public defenders coerced him into pleading guilty to killing another teen-ager last summer will get a new day in court.
Edmond Lilly, 20, goes on trial this week for the murder of 17-year-old Tyree Little, who was shot July 27, 1991, after a melee on Blaisdell Street.
This trial comes six months after Lilly pleaded guilty to attempted murder in a plea bargain negotiated on the opening day of his first trial.
The plea bargain angered Little's family, who said they didn't understand how Lilly could get a first-degree murder charge reduced to attempted murder.
Assistant State's Attorney Robert Miller said he agreed to the plea because the testimony about the fight was confusing and attempted murder carried a stiffer sentence than second-degree murder.
According to court documents, an argument between two teen-age girls over a boy they liked grew into a street fight that involved up to 40 youths. Lilly was standing behind a tree when he allegedly fired three shots from a rifle, hitting Little in the chest and another man, Robert Johnson, in the leg.
Two weeks after the plea, Lilly wrote a letter to Judge David Smith blaming his public defenders - Edward Light and Gary Pumilia - for pressuring him into the plea by bringing his parents in to convince him.
"They started telling me I was going to get 90 years, saying that Judge Smith might not like you so he's going to give you a stiff sentence. They were too interested in getting the case over with," Lilly wrote in the letter, asking for a new lawyer and a new chance at a trial.
"They persuaded me into taking a plea for something I didn't do," he wrote. "I was so upset. I wanted to tell you, but I didn't want you to get angry with me."
At the Feb. 27 plea hearing, Lilly never indicated that he was upset with the agreement. When the judge asked Lilly if he understood his rights and if he was satisfied with his lawyer, Lilly said "yes." Lilly also said no threats or force were used to get him to plead guilty.
Both Light and Pumilia testified later that they did not pressure Lilly or make threats about a stiff sentence.
After a hearing in June, Smith allowed Lilly to withdraw his plea and scheduled a new trial date. The case was re-assigned to Judge David Englund's courtroom, where opening arguments are expected today.
Schools talks yet to produce deal
Strikes loom: Talks continue at Harlem today and at Belvidere on Thursday.
By CATHY WARD
The Register Star
Teacher talks resume in Harlem today as leaders meet to head off a strike, while in Belvidere, teachers yesterday threatened to strike if the next round of talks don't produce a settlement.
In Belvidere, the School Board and teachers met about nine hours with a federal mediator yesterday, but failed to reach an agreement. The teachers' union also filed an intent-to-strike notice. The notice doesn't mean a strike will happen, only that it could.
State law requires that teachers wait five days after filing a notice before they strike. That means classes in Belvidere will start on schedule Thursday, but could be halted later. The next talks will begin at 4 p.m. Friday.
In a joint news release, Belvidere teachers and board members said "progress was made on several issues," but did not outline the stumbling blocks.
At Harlem, where talks resume at 9 a.m. today, teachers there could strike Thursday, the day classes are scheduled to start. Teachers there filed an intent-to-strike notice last week and said they would strike without an agreement. The teachers are scheduled to meet at 4 p.m. today to review the latest contract offer.
Harlem Superintendent Don Parker said school leaders there are working hard to reach an agreement.
"If it's up to me, there will not be a strike," Parker said yesterday. "My intention is to keep meeting Tuesday (today) until an agreement is reached."
Parker declined to release details of the dispute, but said the major holdup is money.
"Our district does not have a lot of discretionary money to negotiate with," Parker said, "and I know our board is intent on a balanced budget and keeping the financial integrity of the district in tact. The board is pretty certain the public is not apt to increase its tax rate for higher teacher salaries."
Both districts have been negotiating with federal mediators after early sessions of contract talks failed to produce deals.
Harlem, which last had a teacher strike in 1989, has about 5,000 students. Belvidere, which hasn't had a teacher strike since 1975, has about 4,850 students.
But while the threat of strikes hovers over Belvidere and Harlem, three other Rockford-area schools, DeKalb, Hononegah and Rockton, are scheduled to start on schedule, even without contract agreements.
David Martin, superintendent of the Rockton district, said teachers will be there in force on schedule.
"We have good people on both sides, still talking, and both have the best interests of the community in mind," he said. "We'll keep talking while school starts."
'KKK' spray-painted on sidewalk
The Register Star
Three letters have June Grant concerned for her safety: KKK.
Someone spray-painted the letters - which stand for the Ku Klux Klan - on the sidewalk in front of her home yesterday.
"I'm frightened. Of course I'm frightened," said Grant, who is black. "I don't know what's going to happen through the night. I don't know what's going to be on my house in the morning.
<#FROWN:A31\>
1-million flee as Florida braces for worst hurricane
Staff writer David Barstow compiled this story with reports from staffers Bill Adair, Chris Lavin, Charlotte Sutton, David Olinger, Susan Benesch and correspondent Randy Cremer.
Hurricane Andrew bore down on Miami this morning, its 145-mph winds and 20-foot seas certain to deliver a vicious uppercut to the most densely populated region in the state.
"The hurricane of our nightmares," the Miami Herald called it in a Sunday extra edition headlined "The Big One."
Disaster planners could only hope that years of preparation would save lives and property as the awesome magnitude of Andrew became clear: Winds strong enough to lift a bus. Waves tall enough to swallow buildings. A storm surge that, coming with high tide, promised to lay waste to some of the priciest real estate on Earth. The most powerful hurricane ever to hit South Florida.
Near midnight, Metro-Dade police completed a final sweep of the city, urging residents through loudspeakers to seek out emergency shelters.
"We'll help them as long as we can, but when we have to get off the streets, they're on their own," said Fred Taylor, director of the Metro-Dade police.
All day and all night, the people of South Florida braced for the worst.
They fled in cars and planes and ships. They pounded plywood over doors and windows. They filled sandbags, and then more sandbags. Some panicked. Some prayed. A few got drunk.
Panic buying hit grocery stores and home-supply stores, money machines were emptied, and everywhere residents in their cars lined up for gas and then headed north along the few major thorough-fares out.
Virtually all employers throughout the region closed down for at least today while school officials quickly delayed the start of classes.
By mid-afternoon, Gov. Lawton Chiles declared a state of emergency, calling for a mandatory evacuation of more than 1-million people from coastal areas of Broward, Dade and the northern Florida Keys.
"This is right now the strongest storm that has hit Florida since 1935," Chiles said. "It is stronger at this stage than Hugo. The outlook for this is we can have major, major property damage in South Florida.
"Anybody that's thinking about riding this one out in an area in which they've been told to evacuate is making a tragic mistake," he said.
Officials expected 127,000 permanent residents and tourists to flee the Keys, 350,000 to evacuate Dade County and 200,000 to leave Broward County. Chiles said there was enough space in the local shelters for Southeast Florida's evacuees, though there was some misinformation about where to go. Many people went to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami only to find out it was not a shelter. And many shelters were filled by Sunday evening with people being re-routed to others.
By 12:30 a.m. today, 50,000 people were in Dade County shelters, with room for another 20,000. In all, 179 shelters in 19 counties had been activated.
Kate Hale, director of emergency management for Dade County, said early today that the massive evacuation went smoothly, although there was one glitch involving elderly and disabled residents who needed special transportation to shelters.
Plans called for the transportation to be provided by 50 school buses. But only 19 buses were available Sunday because Dade County officials couldn't find enough qualified drivers, Hale said.
More than 2,000 people who had signed up in advance were bused to shelters. But 50 to 100 elderly or disabled people who called for rides after 7 p.m. Sunday were told no buses were available. It's unclear how many of those people made it to safety.
"I'm concerned that there were people out there who needed help that we couldn't get to," Hale said.
Broward Sheriff's officials complained through most of the day that not enough people were going to the shelters. They feared that too many people in evacuation zones were trying to ride out the storm.
At the Sheraton on the beach at Fort Lauderdale, representatives from the Broward County Transit Authority pleaded with guests to get on buses and go to emergency shelters. Refusal was a second-degree misdemeanor.
"Get an inflatable raft so you'll have something to sleep on," bus driver Dennis Malone shouted to the guests. "There's no more water in the stores, so get some sodas. And get some food, but nothing with mayonnaise. Maybe get some peanuts. You'll need the protein."
Malone's supervisor, Tom Schillo, said few guests heeded the advice. "We've only moved out 50 people, and we've been here all day. We're trying to give helpful information to get people out.
"But we can't stay all night. If you're crazy enough to want to stay here, I don't see why somebody should risk his life to get you out."
In Richmond Heights, more than 1,300 people crammed into an evacuation center designed to hold 1,000. Food and medicine were scarce, though there was a sudden turn for the better when Fred Young, a local caterer, arrived at 10 p.m. with enough fried chicken, baked chicken, chicken wings, yellow rice and corn to feed 500 people. It was all he had in the freezers, he said, after a weekend of weddings. During the night, Young said, he and his staff would make 1,000 sandwiches to bring to the shelter in the morning.
It was all a bit dizzying to two German tourists who wandered in at about 11 p.m. Christa Behner and Gisela Hilgers of Cologne had not heard the hurricane would be serious, so they went off Sunday morning to Parrot Jungle, a tourist attraction near Homestead. As they left Parrot Jungle, an attendant there sent them to the emergency shelter. There, they said they wanted to go back to their hotel on Miami Beach to get their passports. They were gently told that Miami Beach had been completely off limits for hours.
The governor's executive order suspended all highway tolls south of Orange County. Even so, traffic jams stretched for miles while thousands of other fleeing residents headed for airports, even as they were being closed.
At the United Airlines ticket counter at Miami International Airport, passengers were willing to pay virtually anything to get out.
"It was just a panic situation," said United ticket agent James Pierce. "You would ask them where they wanted to go and they would say, 'Anywhere.' You could book them to Hong Kong, Germany - anywhere."
Travelers at other airlines reported waits of more than three hours just so they could be told that no seats were available. Some people rented cars and drove to Orlando or Tampa, while others used their suitcases as makeshift cots on the terminal floor.
By 11 p.m., Miami International was closed, with some 2,500 people stranded there for the night.
At Fort Lauderdale International Airport, people were clamoring to get on Continental Airlines' last flight of the day to Newark, N.J.
"We've seen hurricanes in New York, so we didn't want to see one down here," said Ross Balkin, who with his wife, Jodie, was headed home to Long Island.
The airport was shutting down about 6 p.m. Sunday, said airport spokesman Jim Reynolds. No stranded travelers would be allowed to linger.
"The highest place at the air-port is 12 feet above sea level, and we're right next to Port Everglades, which is a deep-water port," he said. "The airport is not a safe place to be in a hurricane."
Across the region, major institutions scrambled to prepare.
Military and U.S. Customs air-craft based at Homestead Air Force Base were being put in secure hangars or flown to safer bases out of the storm area.
State officials moved 1,120 prisoners out of facilities in Dade, Collier and Monroe counties to points north.
At Miami Metrozoo, keepers gathered up flamingos and put them in the public restrooms.
A Southern Bell spokesman said the phone company had 2,600 workers in South Florida and another 1,000 workers out of state standing ready to repair phone lines.
The Miami Herald delivered 50,000 free papers to the evacuation shelters Sunday night. The paper did not plan to publish a paper this morning.
"We couldn't even get our papers out there if we wanted to," said Arden Dickey, vice president for circulation.
About 250 Herald employees and family members were camped out overnight in the paper's water-front building, designed in 1963 to withstand 200-mph winds.
Florida Power & Light's two nuclear reactors at Turkey Point began going into a "hot shutdown" about 6 p.m. Sunday, said spokesman Ray Golden. A hot shutdown lowers the reactor temperature from 560 degrees to between 200 and 350 degrees. This is done to guard against the sudden loss of cooling water and the resulting risk of meltdown from overheated uranium.
The plant, designed to withstand a 22-foot storm surge, did not go to complete shutdown because that would delay restoration of power after the storm by at least 36 hours, Golden said.
The state's largest hospital, the aforementioned Jackson Memorial in Miami, canceled all non-emergency surgery Sunday.
Officials at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Miami Beach were looking for "alternative facilities" for some of their 370 patients, but had no major evacuation plans.
Some local hospitals were opening empty rooms to pregnant women within three weeks of delivery. Officials warned on radio broadcasts that the drastic change in barometric pressure has been known to stimulate labor.
Meanwhile, the National Guard sent a C-130 medical aircraft to evacuate 24 patients from Fisherman's Hospital in Marathon in the middle Florida Keys.
Everywhere in South Florida on Sunday, life seemed an odd mix of fear and excitement. This was, all were constantly reminded by newscasters, "the big one" that has been talked about for decades. But for many in this transient region, it was also the first real hurricane they would face and there was curiousity mixed in with the fear.
Ramon Rosario, a cook at Wendy's and a would-be rap music star, strolled along deserted Miami Beach listening to the latest hurricane reports on a Walkman.
"It ain't going to be what everybody is expecting," he said. "I'm sticking around."
As a rapper, Rosario goes by the name Mo Chill. And that's how he feels about Andrew: "I just chill. Why worry about it?"
A few minutes earlier, the Miami Beach police had shooed him away from the water and told him to leave the area. But Rosario, a 25-year-old New Yorker who has lived in Florida only one year, planned to stay in his fifth-floor apartment a few blocks from the ocean and ride it out.
"I want to see this Andrew thing," he said.
Rosario was the exception. It appeared that most Miami Beach residents had evacuated in plenty of time. At 5 p.m., the streets were practically empty. At 7 p.m., police closed the bridges to the beach.
On Ocean Drive, facing the Atlantic Ocean, trendy night spots and restaurants were boarded up, while homeless people wandered the sidewalks panhandling the few people remaining on the deserted streets. Others pushed shopping carts containing their few belongings, or clung to plastic bags.
"I can't imagine being here when the waves start rolling in," Miami Beach firefighter Bob Sistik said as he organized a group of seniors at a beachfront evacuation point. "This whole place will be under at least 10 feet of water. Everybody on the Beach must go."
Two tourists from Holland found themselves stranded on South Beach, wondering how dangerous their situation was and what their options were.
"Where are we to go?," said Irma Kreike. "We have no place to go, do we? So we are just going to stay here."
They planned to stay in a $23-a-night first-floor room in an old Art Deco-style hotel.
"It won't come up to our door will it?" said Johan Mendes. "How high could the water get?"
Residents arriving at the luxurious Fountainbleau Hotel, expecting to spend the night in a $175-suite, were herded back onto chartered buses and taken to inland hotels.
Just down the beach, Chris Woods and two friends weren't worrying about the approaching storm.
<#FROWN:A32\>
Volunteers Winning War to Save Prairies
By K.O. Dawes
Nature Writer
"The buckthorn stops here," is the slogan adopted by the North Branch Prairie Project to celebrate its 15th anniversary next month.
Buckthorn, an invasive, European weed that kills native plants with its shade, is one of the banes of prairie restoration, but North Branch volunteers have battled it and other take-over plants for years with matches and machetes.
Now purple blazing stars, lavender monarda and legions of goldenrods light up the nine prairie patches managed by the group along the North Branch of the Chicago River.
And in their seasons, according to their sites, pink shooting stars, vibrant orange butterfly weeds, purple prairie clover, columbines, pink-lavender Joe-Pye weeds and asters, white lady's slippers and ladies' tresses orchids, gentians, false indigos, golden hoary puccoons and purple milkweeds bloom in abundance.
"We've learned you don't need a fancy degree to play an important role in ecological restoration," said Steve Packard, a founding member of the project and director of science and stewardship for the Nature Conservancy of Illinois.
"We have carpenters, nurses, computer programmers, pharmacists, architects, lawyers and all kinds of people" volunteering, he said. Last year 1,200 individuals logged 3,700 hours working on the North Branch prairies.
"They know more stuff now than most trained biologists," he added.
It began 15 years ago when a few bicyclists using the bike paths in Morton Grove asked, "Gosh, what are those plants?" said Karen Holland, a volunteer and editor of the group's newsletter.
On the cyclists' next outing, the plants - probably something showy like blazing stars or cone flowers - had been mowed down. The cyclists contacted the Cook County Forest Preserve District with the idea of saving remnants of Illinois prairie with volunteer labor.
The idea took.
From the first project at Wayside Woods Prairie the effort has expanded to nine natural areas, the largest being the 200-acre Somes Prairie and Groves in Northbrook, the smallest, Morton Grove Prairie, a 1.2-acre virgin tract.
Within Chicago city limits are Sauganash Prairie Grove, 25 acres, and Edgebrook Flatwoods/Bunker Hill Prairie, 86 acres.
But a funny thing happened on the way to restoring the prairie - the volunteers realized that the grasslands studded with oak trees that they encountered were not prairies, but their own ecosystems - savannas.
Prairies are now defined as grass-lands with forbs (wildflowers) in full sun with no trees. Savannas are grass-lands with oak canopies of up to 50 percent and woodlands have more than 50 percent canopy cover, said Laurel Ross, Northern Illinois field representative for the Nature Conservancy.
The wild prairie seeds that the volunteers had labored to collect (51 garbage bags full last year alone) would not take when thrown in the partial shade of the savannas. But some other plants - thistles, cream gentians, yellow pimpernels, bottle-grass and mullein foxglove - popped up when the land was cleared of foreign brush.
By consulting old settlers records Packard gradually realized that the upstart plants were the natives of the "Illinois barrens," the name settlers gave to the savannas.
"I guess the most important thing we learned was what happened when you got to the edge of the trees," said Packard. "We used to burn the prairies but not the woods, because people have this Smokey Bear sense of protecting the woods from fire.
"But in the Midwest, burning was as much a part of the woods as the prairie." Thick, corky bark protected the burr oaks and other trees from the prairie fires that scoured the landscape of woody brush and fertilized it with ashes.
These fires were originally set by lightning or Indians. Now, controlled burns are the restorers' primary tool, but they have other tricks. More than 100 amateurs grow prairie plants in home gardens and donate the seeds.
People were always a part of the prairie as predators or cultivators, Packard said.
"Nature needs people to care for it. Most Indian [tribe] names mean the 'true people of this place.' The volunteer stewards are becoming the true people of the nature preserves," said Packard.
Robinson Defiant at Sentencing
By Rosalind Rossi
Federal Building Reporter
Even in defeat, he was defiant.
Chicago businessman Noah Robinson raised a clenched fist in a sign of power Friday, after he was ordered to spend the rest of his life in prison and assessed a $6 million fine on racketeering charges.
U.S. District Judge Marvin E. Aspen also ordered maximum sentences for Robinson on five other counts - one of them a second life sentence.
After three prosecutions since 1989, Friday's sentence ensures that Robinson "will never get out of prison," said Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hogan Jr. The mandatory term of life without parole came on charges that Robinson used El Rukn gang members as hit men and partners in the heroin trade.
Robinson, 48 and the father of eight, was among 65 El Rukns and their associates to be indicted in 1989 and among the three most dangerous defendants, Hogan said. Robinson kept a poster of 'The Godfather' in his Chicago office and dreamed of becoming the moblike "don" of his own Rukn "army of killers," Hogan said.
"He could have been the greatest example," Hogan said of Robinson, who has a master's degree from the Wharton School. "The tragedy is that he's the worst possible."
Hogan and co-prosecutors Ross Silverman and John Hartmann said Robinson was responsible for the gang's "turning point" in 1983, when he directed it to high-volume heroin and cocaine dealers to raise bond money for jailed leader Jeff Fort. The connections catapulted Robinson into a multi-million-dollar partnership with Fort, Hogan said.
Fort's former brother-in-law, "General" Henry Harris, described at the trial how Robinson jumped up from his chair and squealed with delight when his $333,000 cut of a $1 million heroin deal was dumped on his office desk in 1985.
Robinson also encouraged the gang to "let down their braids" and venture into legitimate businesses as avenues of drug laundering, "General" Eugene Hunter testified. Hunter said Fort chose him to become the first El Rukn millionaire, and ordered him to learn the fine points of business from Robinson.
There also was a violent side to Robinson, Hogan said.
He used El Rukn hit men to kill a troublesome former employee and to try to kill a former business partner, the prosecution said.
In addition, evidence indicated, he hired a longtime friend to slit the throat of a South Carolina grand jury witness against him. The witness, a woman, was stabbed six times but not killed.
Robinson is serving a six-year prison term for skimming $650,000 from six South Side Wendy's restaurants and a consecutive 10-year sentence for his role in the plot to kill the grand jury witness.
Friday's $6 million fine, imposed in case Robinson has a secret cache of drug profits, is in addition to a $600,000 fine in the Wendy's case and a $43,000 fine imposed for violating a court order by writing 43 of his own motions in his racketeering case.
Robinson resorted to writing even Friday. Rather than addressing Aspen, he filed a 13-page typed statement, complete with legal citations, exclamation marks and numerous passages underlined for emphasis.
Previously, the Robinson likened himself in writing to South African leader Nelson Mandela and said he was the victim of a political and racist conspiracy.
"Mr. Robinson is not a victim of the political apparatus," Aspen said in ordering a sentence that will not be imposed until a post-trial motion on a companion El Rukn case is resolved. "He is a victim of himself."
Hurt Drunken Drivers Rarely Ticketed: Panel
By Gary Wisby
Staff Writer
Drunken but injured drivers rarely are ticketed for drunken driving, panelists said Saturday at a meeting of the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists.
Dr. Richard J. Fantus, director of trauma services at Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago, said a study showed that only 7 percent of intoxicated drivers treated there were charged.
"We are tired of seeing these people coming in after killing other people, without being able to do anything about it," Fantus said.
Even more dramatic data were noted in preliminary results of a study being done by Northwestern University's Traffic Institute.
Researcher Roy E. Lucke said medical records of 660 injured drivers treated at two suburban trauma centers were compared with police crash reports. As in the Illinois Masonic study, nearly half were drunk but only 2 percent were ticketed for driving under the influence, he said.
The panelists spoke at a meeting in a Schaumburg hotel marking AAIM's 10th anniversary. They blamed:
Lack of cooperation by hospitals. One reason is that emergency rooms often are too crowded for police officers "to get anywhere near the patient," Fantus said. He said staffers are more concerned about treating patients than collecting evidence.
Time constraints. Police frequently don't reach a crash scene until the driver already has been taken to a hospital, Lucke said. They gather information by phone without ever seeing the offender, he said. A former volunteer paramedic, the NU researcher said he had heard many drunken drivers plead, "I'm injured. Get me to the hospital before the cops get here."
Sympathy. "Especially with single-vehicle crashes ... the officer says, 'This one has got enough troubles. I've got other things to do, and I'm going to go do them,'" Lucke said.
Fantus called for legislation requiring medical personnel to report DUI cases, just as they must notify authorities of child abuse. The law also could mandate alcohol testing of all injured drivers.
Reached after the meeting, Skokic attorney Larry A. Davis said a 1988 law already specifies that hospital blood tests, the most accurate indicator, may be used in DUI prosecutions.
And legislation effective last year says DUI testing can be required of people who are hurt in crashes.
Singles Swap Shoes, Pickup Lines At Zazz's Get-together for Charity
By Philip Franchine
Staff Writer
Jennifer Jurges knows how to pick a single man: by his shoes.
The 26-year-old Tinley Park woman Friday night threw her left sandal (from a Greenwich Village shop) into a pile of shoes on the floor of the China Club, 616 W. Fulton, drew out a shiny-black man's shoe, then held it aloft waiting for the owner to claim it.
Jurges' approach?
"It looked like a businessman's shoe - well polished, black, kind of like a wingtip" but not as busy, Jurges said.
The shoe-matching game was one of many ways in which singles could meet at the fourth annual All That Zazz Bash for singles sponsored by Sun-Times advice columnist Jeffrey Zaslow.
Jurges guessed right: The black shoe belonged to Dana Marzillo, 30, of Palatine, whom she described as "cute and well dressed" and with whom she carried on an animated conversation for some time.
With a big smile, Marzillo said, "We're eloping tonight," then decided he wanted to know more about Jurges. "Let me see your notes," he said to a reporter.
The party was a benefit for the Chicago Sun-Times Charity Trust.
"It's a congenial crowd," said North Sider Diana, 41. "There are a lot of nice people here." Earlier, she said friends "dragged" her to the party because it was "time to get out" after breaking up a relationship.
Other events included a dance contest and a competition seeking the best flirting methods.
"Faint. It's very effective," advised John Panozzo, 44, of Tinley Park, who won a compact disc for his answer.
"The men who come here are here to meet women, and they are ready for a relationship, marriage, kids," said Jodi, 36, of the North Side.
Activities continue today at Zazz's Singles Symposium, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, 151 E. Wacker, which will include talks titled "Sexual Etiquette in the '90s," "Cold Feet - Why Men Won't Commit" and "Letting Go and Moving On."
Cabbies Threaten Big Tie-up
The leader of a group of Chicago cabdrivers upset over violence against cabbies said Saturday they will shut down a major city highway or drive unless the City Council requires cab companies to put bulletproof shields in taxis.
<#FROWN:A33\>
Upping the Pressure On Serbian Aggression
The U.N., the E.C. and the Orthodox Church condemn Belgrade's war
FINALLY, IMPELLED BY SCENES OF CIVILIAN slaughter in Sarajevo, the U.S. and its European allies went to work last week to impose economic sanctions on Serbia. The Serbs, who fill the ranks of both regular and irregular forces, are now seen as the main aggressors in the war in the ruins of Yugoslavia.
Though the Serbs make up only a third of the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina, they are, says U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia Warren Zimmermann, "trying to take over two-thirds of the country." In their campaign to carve out a Greater Serbia and expel Croats and Slavic Muslims, the Serbs have created hundreds of thousands of refugees; Serbs have been pushed out by Croats and Muslims in response. U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali said, in a report to the Security Council, it was the largest uprooting of population "in Europe since the Second World War."
In Brussels, the European Community imposed economic sanctions at midweek. The Serbian Orthodox Church said it was "openly distancing itself" from the government. Then came the revolting images of death in Sarajevo's marketplace, and the U.S., Britain and France pressed the U.N. Security Council to impose full, mandatory sanctions. "Diplomacy and persuasion have been used for some time and they now need the reinforcement of sanctions," said British Prime Minister John Major.
Russia and China, who are permanent members of the Council, and among Yugoslavia's main suppliers of oil, had been reluctant to go along with the sanctions plan. Its measures range from a complete trade embargo, including oil shipments, to cutting air links and freezing Serbian assets abroad. After quiet negotiations, the Security Council passed the resolution Saturday. Even so, no one was predicting that Serbia and its hard-nosed President Slobodan Milosevic would quickly move to end the bloodshed.
Fresh Faces,
Fresh Starts?
Austria and Italy choose leaders to restore prestige at home and abroad
STUCK IN POLITICAL QUAGMIRES, TWO EUROPEAN neighbors hope their new Presidents will not stand on ceremony but pull them out of trouble. Thomas Klestil, 59, of the conservative Austrian People's Party, upset the ruling Social Democratic Party's candidate in a runoff election last weekend. Klestil won the presidency by the largest margin in 40 years. Key to that victory was support from far-right voters whose own candidate had been eliminated. Klestil, a former envoy to Washington, played down the swing vote, mindful of the task ahead: repairing Austria's international standing after the stigma of Kurt Waldheim's presidency.
In Italy a death was needed to produce a President, nearly two months after inconclusive general eclections. The funeral for top Mafia fighter Giovanni Falcone, assassinated by a bomb blast, became a protest over the delay in forming a government when mourners chanted insults at visiting party bosses. Shaken, the bosses picked Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, 73, the Christian Democratic Speaker of the lower house of Parliament, to succeed Francesco Cossiga. Scalfaro must now tackle the same Mafia terror to which he owes his election.
The Most Amazing Show Trial Ever
In an explosive court case, Russia will put the communist Party in the dock
THE APOTHEOSIS OF TOTALITARIANISM; THE Communist Party of the Soviet Union, will be remembered by Russians for replacing czarist repression with wholesale slaughter by the Commissars: tens of millions perished in a welter of purges, deportations and terror. So it comes as a delicious irony reminiscent of the regime's infamous show trials that communist orthodoxy has itself become the target of an inquisition. To complete the party's fall, the Russian government announced it will argue before the nation's highest court that the C.P.S.U. was not actually a political entity but a criminal organization. The aim, says Sergei Shakhrai, leader of Boris Yeltsin's legal team, is to turn the hearing into "the second Nuremberg trial of this century."
While the proceedings are more morality play than criminal inquest, the evidence could prove incendiary. The government has promised to release a "special dossier" dating back to 1917 that contains some of the C.P.S.U.'s most closely guarded secrets. One tantalizing sample unveiled by Shakhrai: a 1975 KGB directive to provide arms to a Palestinian terrorist organization for "operations against American and Israeli personnel in third countries."
Whether the trial can exorcise the demons of the past and forever bar communists from power, as the government seems to hope, the hearing will be of little help in enabling Yeltsin to extract his nation from its present economic tailspin. A trip through Siberia offered a glimpse of the toll this struggle has taken on the President: barely a year into his tenure, Yeltsin announced to a group of cheering workers that he would not be seeking re-election for a second term. It was unclear whether the crowd's enthusiasm had more to do with the President's plans or with the cargo plane that accompanied him: it carried 500 million rubles for unpaid wages.
The Generals Continue To Hold On
Thailand's military loses a battle but is not ready to retreat
THE THOUSANDS OF THAIS WHO TOOK TO THE streets in the name of democracy last month had two objectives: to force the resignation of an unelected army officer as Prime Minister and, more broadly, to end the military's dominance of politics. After great bloodshed, the demonstrators won on the first score when Suchinda Kraprayoon stepped down from the premiership. The official count of those killed when troops opened fire on protesters stands at 53, but an Interior Ministry spokesman said last week that more than 500 people are still unaccounted for.
Parliament met the day after Suchinda went into hiding, and it quickly approved a constitutional amendment requiring future Prime Ministers to be elected members of the national legislature. Another provision would limit the powers of the military-controlled Senate. Final action on the constitutional reforms will be taken next week. Still, the goal of breaking the military's grip on political life is not yet within reach. The leading candidate to succeed Suchinda as Prime Minister is Somboon Rahong, a member of parliament but also a former air force officer and therefore unacceptable to the opposition. They warned that his appointment would set off more street demonstrations, and offered New Aspiration Party leader Chavalit Yongchaiyudh as an alternative. Another potential flash point is the last-minute amnesty Suchinda handed himself and his military cronies, a step many Thais believe is illegal.
Sibling Warfare Before The Rio Summit
Brazil's President is accused by his brother of involvement in corruption
ASK ANY OLDER CHILD: A YOUNGER SIBLING JUST loves to mess up a big event. As President Fernando Collor de Mello was preparing to welcome 100 heads of state to the Earth Summit in Rio, charges erupted in Brazil's press that he was involved with cocaine and corruption. The source of the mudslinging was none other than his younger brother Pedro, 39, who accused the President of using Paulo Csar Farias, the treasurer of his 1989 election campaign, as a front man for various illicit activities.
Farias, said Pedro, has built a multimillion-dollar empire through kickbacks for government contracts that were arranged with help from the Chief Executive. One of the President's rewards, his sibling said, was a $2.7 million apartment in Paris. Pedro Mello (he uses his father's surname, while Fernando uses that of his mother) also claimed that his older brother had 'induced' him to use cocaine back in the 1960s. The President, 42, told Brazilians on national television that the charges were false, that he had ordered a police investigation, and that he would sue his brother for libel. The Congress appointed a commission of inquiry - but only to look into charges of wrongdoing against Farias.
Even before the allegations against Collor were published, his mother Leda had dismissed Pedro, her youngest son, as head of the family business, a media group based in the northeastern state of Alagoas. She claimed that he was suffering from emotional problems. Mello took psychiatric tests to prove that he was sane. Later he admitted that he had no direct proof of his brother's corruption and backed away from his original accusations - at his mother's behest, he said. "Mama put it this way: Family is family."
Rebels on the Run
More than 50 die in a Colombian push against leftist insurgents
ARMY COMMANDER GENERAL LUIS EDUARDO ROCA had had enough. Colombia's leftist guerrillas, angry because the government had cut off peace talks in Mexico, were on a terror spree, overrunning nine villages across the country, adding 12 people to the 250 they already held hostage and dynamiting the country's most important oil pipeline four times. In response, Roca launched the most comprehensive effort yet to win a military victory in Colombia's 36-year-old war against a variety of insurgents. At week's end, more than 50 people, including 19 soldiers, had died in rural battles between 1,400 U.S.-trained government troops and fighters of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (E.L.N). By one report, FARC's longtime leader, Manuel Marulanda, 58, had fled to Peru.
The Republicans Battle over Abortion
The party platform will not find room for pro-lifers
SEPARATED BY A BROAD AVENUE AND A SCORE OF cops, two knots of demonstrators in Salt Lake City, Utah, debated the abortion issue with chants and placards. THE TIME TO CHOOSE IS BEFORE BEDTIME, advised a pro-lifer sign. PARTY PLATFORM: OUT OF BOARD-ROOMS, INTO WOMEN'S WOMBS took the originality prize among the pro-choicers. Ann Stone, a conservative who usually supports the President, elicited smiles on both sides of West Temple Street when she cracked, "George Bush knows there are pro-choice Republicans; he's married to one!"
There was no good humour indoors at the official proceedings last week, as the Republican Platform Committee staged its hearing on social questions. Since 1980 the platform has taken a hard line against abortion. Now, with the U.S. Supreme Court poised to undermine or demolish a woman's right to an abortion, many Republicans want the party to moderate its stance. Stone, a direct-mail entrepreneur who has raised millions for conservative causes, is collecting money for pro-choice candidates.
She told the platform drafters that a party opposed to government intrusion into other sectors of society has no business promoting antiabortion legislation. "Are you all Republicans?" she demanded rhetorically. "I'm not clear on that." Mary Dent Crisp, a moderate who once served as the party's co-chair, warned of wholesale defections at the polls: "A woman's fundamental right to choose is far more important than party loyalty."
While the rebellion by Stone, Crisp and others captured media attention, their opponents held the high cards. Phyllis Schlafly, head of the Republican National Coalition for Life, insisted that neither Bush as a candidate nor the party as an institution could afford to waffle "on a high moral principle." The Bush campaign's representatives at the session quietly agreed. Campaign officials, who control the platform, will permit no compromise language and will probably be able to quash efforts to debate the issue at the Houston convention. A representative of the National Abortion Rights Action League murmured, "This is an exercise in futility."
But from Bush's viewpoint, the exercise is also painful. While his stance mollifies the moral conservatives whose support he must have in the November election, it offends moderates whose votes he would love to claim too. The House of Representatives gave him another headache by voting, 260 to 148, to overturn the Administration's ban on the use of fetal tissue obtained from planned abortions for medical research. The restriction had been imposed in response to pro-lifers' contention that use of such tissue increases the number of abortions. Bush promises a veto, which will amost certinly stick. His bona fides with his party's far-right wing will be strengthened, but so will the argument that he is a prisoner of a minority faction.
Closed-Door Policy
Bush switches signal on the Haitian boat people
PRESIDENT BUSH MAY HAVE UNWITTINGLY COINED himself a new campaign slogan: "Read my lips. No new Haitians."
<#FROWN:A34\>
Bank bailout called near certainty
Taxpayers' tab may top $100 billion
FROM EXAMINER STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
Despite record profits this year, the banking system is still in trouble and almost certainly will require a taxpayer bailout that could exceed $100 billion, according to a new study.
"America now has two banking industries. One is strong, profitable and internationally competitive. The other is dying," wrote economists Roger J. Vaughan, a Santa Fe, N.M., consultant, and Edward W. Hill, a professor at Cleveland State University.
In 'Banking on the Brink: The Troubled Future of American Finance,' the economists estimate that out of 12,000 U.S. banks with $3.4 trillion in assets, 1,500 banks with $1 trillion in assets "are in deep trouble."
Among the lenders it labeled "Crippled Giants" were Wells Fargo & Co. and Security Pacific Corp. Both, according to the study, began the year with "severe shortages of capital" and could have a difficult time meeting tougher equity standards, given the weak California real estate market. (Los Angeles-based Security Pacific was merged into BankAmerica Corp. earlier this year.)
At Wells, officials took issue with the report's findings and methods. "This is the kind of superficial analysis that people have been doing for years," said Wells' investor relations director, Leslie Altick. "They're giving a broad-brush analysis of the market that we think is wrong."
She said because the study was based on 1991 year-end figures, it was out of date and misleading. "We have been adding substantially to our capital ratios and are well-capitalized" by regulatory standards.
The authors of the "briefing book" went on to say that of the 1,500 "troubled" banks, 1,150 were "now insolvent - and would be shuttered if their books revealed the true value of their assets."
Although extremely low interest rates - probably a temporary phenomenon - have boosted industry profits this year, the underlying deterioration in banks' commercial real estate loans remains, they said.
If regulators immediately close weak banks, the cost to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. would range from $45 billion to $59 billion, they said. But if, as they expect, the closure of weak banks is delayed, the cost to the FDIC will range from $75 billion to $95 billion, according to the study.
That would swamp the banking industry's ability to repay the FDIC's federally backed borrowing and "means some form of taxpayer bailout for the bank insurance system is virtually certain," the authors said.
Vaughan and Hill's estimate of FDIC losses is the highest yet. Several private economists have put the losses in the $50 billion range. The FDIC projects costs of $39 billion to $48 billion, while the White House Office of Management and Budget predicts a $72 billion cost.
Bankers, who have been fighting higher FDIC insurance premiums, have much lower estimates. Analyst Bert Ely of Alexandria, Va., a consultant to the Association of Bank Holding Companies, projects FDIC costs at $15 billion to $20 billion.
At the crux of the disagreement is whether loans should be on the banks' books at current market value or at their original value. In California, for instance, where real estate values have tumbled, a loan originally worth $500,000 might only be worth $400,000 now.
Banks such as Wells do write down the value of loans but only when the lender doubts the borrower's ability to repay, not based on general real estate market conditions.
Bargain hunters on the prowl
Investors hungry for good stock buys
By Kathleen Sullivan
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
In the public lobby of Charles Schwab & Co.'s office on Montgomery Street, investors waited patiently in line for a chance to use a Quotron machine to check stock prices and get the latest Wall Street news. Others watched the parade of prices march across a neon green electronic ticker tape from a row of built-in seats.
Some came hunting for bargains on Monday, searching for good buys after the Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 105 points in the first two hours of trading. The index of 30 key stocks - a barometer of the stock market's health - gained steadily throughout the afternoon to close at 3,179, down 21.61 points.
Tom Taggart, a spokesman for discount broker Charles Schwab, said the market rallied in the afternoon as individuals and institutions bought up undervalued stocks.
The crowd at Charles Schwab was a little larger than normal for a Monday morning, said Ray Brann, who comes to "visit his money" every day.
Brann took the stock market's current gyrations in stride. He compared the stock market to the new movie 'Mr. Saturday Night,' a portrait of the life and times of a Jewish comedian from his youth until age 72. In the stock market - as in life - things change, Brann said.
"The market can't keep going up and up," he said. "It has to have its peaks and valleys, otherwise there would just be robots here buying stocks and that would be no fun."
Brann said the current stock market presents more opportunities to make money than to lose it. But Brann said he's too old to take risks with his money, which is invested in railroad, utility and oil stocks. "At my age, I don't even buy green bananas," he said with a smile.
Another stock market aficionado in the Charles Schwab lobby said investors are concerned, but not panicking about the stock market. However, he warned that if the market takes a precipitous fall, that would be the last straw for the nation, which has been battered by layoffs, corporate cutbacks and high unemployment rates, and it would signal the end of George Bush's presidency.
"George Bush's chances of getting re-elected now are poor," he said. "If the stock market continues to fall, his chances will be zero."
Ed Cole, who is vacationing in The City and stopped by Charles Schwab's office to check out the latest stock market news, said he hopes the market will continue to fall this week, so that overpriced stocks will reach a "reasonable level."
Cole said he owns some stocks, and is waiting for the right moment to invest in more. "There will come a point when stocks become so unpopular that people don't even want to talk about them," he said. "That's when I'll start looking at stocks."
Pressure on Fed to drop rates
Market news adds to grim outlook
By Martin Crutsinger
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON - A sharp drop in U.S. stock prices on Monday underscored the economy's bleak prospects and added renewed pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, analysts said.
Many economists forecast that further rate cuts could come at the end of a key meeting of Fed policy makers Tuesday.
If the Fed does move, analysts said that a variety of consumer and business interest rates, already at levels not seen in more than two decades, will fall as well.
But they were not at all certain that a new round of rate cuts would have any more impact than 24 previous reductions in curing what ails a sick economy.
Rate-cut speculation gained urgency Monday after the Dow Jones industrial average plunged by more than 100 points in early trading. It later recovered, when traders, believing it had hit bottom, began buying. Nonetheless, the index still closed down 21.61, at 3,179, the lowest finish since the first day of trading this year, Jan. 2, when it ended the day at 3,172.41.
Some analysts blamed Monday's sell-off, which followed a 54-point drop on Friday, on investor disappointment that the Fed did not immediately act to lower interest rates following release of the unemployment report Friday.
That report, the last before the November election, showed that while the overall unemployment rate dipped to 7.5 percent in September, 57,000 Americans were laid off as the job market remained extremely weak.
"The big sell-off is what the Fed gets for not easing on Friday," said Michael Evans, head of a Washington economic consulting firm. "The only thing that has been supporting stock prices all year long is that every time it looked like the economy was failing, the Fed would come along and ease again."
Other economists noted that the Wall Street tailspin followed declines Monday in stock prices in Tokyo and Europe.
Analysts cited various factors such as the continued turmoil on European currency exchanges and widespread economic weakness not only in the United States but also in Europe and Japan as major contributing factors to the market jitters.
"A worldwide recession is a distinct possibility and stock markets are selling off on that concern," said Allen Sinai, chief economist of the Boston Co.
"The U.S. economy is in deep, deep difficulty. Germany continues to run a very dangerous high-interest rate policy that could bring down all of Europe and Japan is going nowhere," Sinai said.
Economists said that while the overall U.S. economy has been growing since the spring of 1991, the recovery has been the weakest on record despite the Fed's repeated moves to push interest rates down over the last three years.
"I am not nervous about another recession. I am worried about how we are going to get out of this one," said David Wyss, an economist at DRI-McGraw Hill Inc.
Many analysts said they believe the Fed will have no choice but to lower interest rates again given the fact that high federal budget deficits have eliminated the possibility of boosting government spending or cutting taxes to stimulate a weak economy.
Some economists said they were looking for the Fed to cut its discount rate, the interest that it charges banks, from 3 percent down to 2.5 percent, which would put this bellwether rate at its lowest point in 33 years.
Analysts said that any reduction in the discount rate would be accompanied by another cut in the Fed's target for the federal funds rate, the interest that banks charge each other on overnight loans. This rate, currently at 3 percent, was last reduced by the Fed on Sept. 4. The last discount rate cut occurred on July 2.
If their expectations on Fed moves are correct, analysts said they believed that various consumer and business loan rates would promptly decline. They forecast that banks' prime lending rate, to which many business and consumer loans are tied, would drop from the current 6 percent to 5.5 percent. That would be the lowest level for the prime rate in two decades.
Analysts did not expect as dramatic a change in long-term mortgage rates, which in recent weeks have fallen to levels not seen since 1973. The national average for fixed-rate loans stood at 7.93 percent last week, according to a survey done by the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp.
Economists said that long-term interest rates, which are more tied to movements in financial markets, may not fall further given investors' concerns that a victory by Bill Clinton might spell higher budget deficits if the Democrat decides to boost federal spending to get the economy going again regardless of what it might do to the deficit.
"If Clinton gets in, he will turn to fiscal stimulus and that will mean higher deficits," Evans said. "The markets are concerned about who will buy that extra debt."
Market pessimism may jeopardize area economy
High-tech, biotech firms endangered
By Sally Lehrman
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
The stock market's gyrations could hurt the technology and biotechnology companies leading the Bay Area economy - and consumers may stash their cash under a mattress instead of spending in local stores, economists and market watchers said.
If the market pessimism continues, local technology and biotechnology companies could feel some pain, said Michael Murphy, editor of the California Technology Stock Letter in Half Moon Bay. These companies have relied on the public markets to raise money for research and development as bank loans have become more difficult to obtain. And they count on strong share prices to keep their employees feeling wealthy and motivated.
Fortunately, many biotech companies have already tapped into public offerings for financing this year and the older technology companies can support their research with sales.
<#FROWN:A35\>
Investors May Seek Vote on Executive Pay Consultants
BY GILBERT FUCHSBERG
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The controversy over executive pay is escalating again.
Some of the nation's biggest investors and shareholder groups are considering pushing a new plan: Let shareholders vote each year on a company's choice of pay consultant, much as they already do on a company's auditor.
The groups also intend to target companies that are reported to be threatening compensation consultants who discuss pay plans with government regulators and media organizations.
Supporters of these moves, including some of the nation's biggest pension plans, say they consider the steps essential to curb what they see as excesses in the compensation of many top executives.
The most striking element of their plans is the proposal for shareholder votes on compensation consultants, who have gained increasing visibility and influence in corporate boardrooms as the pay debate has developed. Proponents believe that if they can wrest control of the consultants away from management, they can better control the pay packages the consultants recommend.
The proposal faces an uphill fight. It hasn't been formalized yet and would require approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission, where it would probably face stiff opposition from companies.
But the Council of Institutional Investors in Washington, D.C., the principal trade group for pension funds, says it will discuss seeking SEC approval of the plan when it convenes next month.
"We've let management have control of the consultants for a long time, but the world needn't be that way," said Carol O'Cleireacain, who heads the council's executive committee. "The independence of the consultants must be guaranteed." Ms. O'Cleireacain is also New York City's commissioner of finance and helps direct five pension funds with some $49 billion in assets.
In interviews, several other members of the council, including those who help direct big pension funds in California and New Jersey, expressed support for the plan. They said they hoped that the SEC would approve the plan, citing the commission's recent move to allow shareholder votes on pay policies and its proposals to improve disclosures about executive pay in company proxy statements.
If approved, shareholder voting on compensation consultants would be a blow to corporate executives and directors, who have held the power to hire and fire consultants and other advisers. Shareholder groups contend that compensation consultants are so beholden to management that they can't help but endorse generous executive pay practices.
The SEC declined to comment on the matter. A spokesman for the Business Roundtable, a New York-based group of corporate executives that has opposed efforts to increase regulation of executive pay, called the plan "completely unnecessary."
The spokesman added: "By the same token, you can have shareholders review every consultant you have, from design consultants to management consultants to pollution consultants."
Thomas E. Jones, executive vice president of Citicorp, said it was "somewhat strange that of all the services rendered to a corporation, someone would focus on compensation consultants." While companies are required to undergo an annual audit, he noted, not all companies hire consultants on pay issues.
Mr. Jones said, "It strikes me as being somewhat of a sledgehammer to an issue that is already fully vented."
Several compensation consultants also reacted negatively to the idea, rejecting any comparison with auditors and suggesting that shareholders aren't qualified to judge their work.
"Auditors certify, but we don't certify anything. We provide information and advice," said Geoffrey A. Wiegman, director of compensation consulting for Buck Consultants, New York. "The concept of having shareholders approve the hiring of advisers, which is what we are, would be a mistake."
Jude Rich, chairman of consultants Sibson & Co., Princeton, N.J., termed the idea "window dressing, just like the auditor's choice is," and asked: "When's the last time anyone voted down an auditor?"
Dallas M. Kersey, a principal with consultants Towers Perrin, New York, said his firm believes that "the issue of an executive's pay and how that pay relates to performance issues is an extremely complicated one that is extremely difficult for an outsider to pass good quality judgment on."
Institutional investors are targeting corporate ties to compensation consultants partly in reaction to reports that some companies are pressuring consultants to avoid cooperating with requests for executive pay information from news organizations and regulators. These consultants said the pressure, reported this week in the New York Times, has included letters and calls from clients suggesting that the clients may pull business if the cooperation doesn't stop.
Several big shareholders, saying they find the pressure tactics offensive, have vowed to increase their vigilance on pay issues. They said they will target for scrutiny some high-paying companies that unduly pressure consultants.
"This will double and triple our efforts to see that the pay issue is pursued," said Richard Koppes, general counsel of the California Public Employees' Retirement System, which at $68 billion is the nation's largest public pension fund. After a year of working quietly in a "kinder" way to press companies for change, Calpers will return to "a more aggressive route" in pressing for corporate governance changes, including holder resolutions, Mr. Koppes said.
Ms. O'Cleireacain of New York City said that she intends to "make our position very clear to corporate executives that we won't tolerate threats to the information investors get." She also said that she plans to meet with consultants "about ways that make it easier to do their business independently." And, echoing the view of several institutional investors, Ms. O'Cleireacain said that she would press for more companies to give primary responsibility for setting executive compensation to committees of independent directors.
As institutional investors plotted their strategies, one of the more visible shareholder activist groups, United Shareholders Association, Washington, D.C., tentatively added Citicorp and General Mills Inc. to the list of companies it considers unfair to shareholders. Ralph Whitworth, president of the group, said the action stemmed from reports that the chairmen of the two companies, John S. Reed of Citicorp and H. Brewster Atwater Jr. of General Mills, had helped spearhead a campaign against a proposed accounting rule that would deduct from corporate earnings the estimated value of stock options granted to executives and other employees.
That campaign has included letters of protest by companies to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which is mulling the rule and which is the chief rule-making body for accountants.
Some companies also contacted compensation consultants about their concerns. Last month, for example, the chairman of Towers Perrin received a letter from Richard J. Mahoney, chairman of Monsanto Co., a Towers Perrin client, expressing concern about "the recent political and media attention devoted" to stock-option accounting. The letter urged the firm's "active and timely communication" with FASB to retain the current rules, which don't account for stock options. (Stock options give holders the right to buy stock in the future at a predetermined price, a potential bonanza if the stock price rises well above the issue price.) Towers Perrin is part of an FASB task force weighing the stock-option proposal.
"The main problem here is they are using shareholder money to fight against shareholder interests," Mr. Whitworth said. "That has to change." He said that his group won't make a final decision about listing the companies for several weeks, pending meetings with executives of the two companies. Mr. Atwater of General Mills has already agreed to a meeting.
Mr. Whitworth said that his group urges shareholders to vote against the director slates proposed by companies on its target list. The group also presses for change in meetings with top executives, and it has produced results: It reached settlements with more than a dozen of the 50 companies on its 1991 list. Among them: ITT Corp., which agreed to tie the pay of its executives more closely to performance, and UAL Corp., which said that it would more clearly disclose in its proxy statement certain elements of its pay plans.
Mr. Atwater, who called Mr. Whitworth to discuss the group's action, denied in an interview that General Mills "has been lobbying consultants." Further, he defended efforts to fight the new accounting rule, saying that deducting the value of options from earnings "is not an appropriate way to account for them" because that would "hit earnings twice" - once when the options are issued and again when they're exercised. As a result, he contended that the adoption of such a rule would "kill" most stock option plans. At General Mills, Mr. Atwater said, stock options have been "truly motivating" to managers and represent a key method of linking pay to corporate performance.
At the same time, Mr. Atwater said that General Mills supported the SEC's proposals to increase disclosure of executive compensation data in proxy statements. He said that the company had adopted many of the proposed changes in its latest proxy statement.
Mr. Reed couldn't be reached. But Mr. Jones of Citicorp, who has worked with Mr. Reed on behalf of the Business Roundtable in opposing the accounting rule, denied that Citicorp had ever pressured or threatened compensation consultants. He further disputed Citicorp's tentative inclusion on the United Shareholders list, saying that "how you account for employee stock options is a legitimate topic for open discussion."
Leader in Videoconferencing Faces Expanding Field
PictureTel's Stock Price Has Fallen; It Calls Problems Overblown
BY JOSEPH PEREIRA
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Earlier this year, a school district in northern Alaska went shopping for a videoconferencing system to link teachers with classes in scattered communities.
But it didn't buy from market leader PictureTel Corp. Instead, it chose a system made by VideoTelecom Corp., an upstart that offered to install equipment and train staff at eight sites for $700,000 - well under PictureTel's $800,000 bid.
"It wasn't a hard decision to make," says Martin Cary, coordinator of information and technology at Northslope Borrough School District in Barrow. "We went with the checkbook."
VideoTelecom isn't the only rival that industry pioneer PictureTel in Danvers, Mass., has to worry about. "Very soon consumers will have 36 products in the videoconferencing market to choose from," says Elliot Gold, publisher of Tele-Span, a telecommunications newsletter. "By the end of the quarter, there'll be several competitors with comparable systems and lower prices." Among the rivals are corporate giants with deep pockets, such as Hitachi Ltd.'s Hitachi America unit, Northern Telecom Ltd. and American Telephone & Telegraph Co.
The increasingly crowded market has slowed the growth of high-flying PictureTel and caused its stock to plummet 79% from a peak of $53 a share earlier this year. The stock closed yesterday at $11 a share, down 25 cents, in trading on the national over-the-counter market. While analysts still expect the company's revenue to grow sharply from $78 million last year, they now estimate 1992 revenue of $130 million - down from $150 million predicted earlier. And the company, which started making money in 1991 after years of losses, says it will only break-even in the third quarter.
PictureTel insists that its problems are overblown and have been compounded by the sluggish economy. Many new products announced by rivals haven't been introduced. "There will be some confusion for quite a bit of time with new announcements," says Joan Nevin, vice president for finance. But, she adds, "Those products compared to ours is like a two-wheel bicycle versus a Mercedes."
And some agree short-term problems shouldn't overshadow the company's long-term potential. "The past has been very bright and I think the future can also be very bright, too, if PictureTel decides now what practical steps it needs to take to get to that yellow brick road," says John Rohal, an analyst at Alex. Brown & Sons.
But others are more skeptical. "PictureTel was just sailing along so smoothly their recent developments come as a shock to many of us and I think PictureTel may be headed for some tough times," said Sarah Dickinson, an analyst at Personal Technology Research.
PictureTel isn't the only company feeling the effects of new competition. Long-time rival Compression Labs Inc., No. 2 in the market, recently cited lower margins and increased competition for its first-half loss of $1.4 million despite an increase in revenue to $48 million from $30.9 million.
<#FROWN:A36\>
Buying binge continues on Wall Street
By Tom Walker
STAFF WRITER
A buying frenzy continued in the stock market for the second straight day Wednesday, pushing one broad-based stock index to a record in the heaviest trading since mid-January.
The buying was reminiscent of the record-setting trading early in the year, when drastic interest rate cuts sent a flood of money out of low-yielding certificates of deposit and into stocks.
Low interest rates are also responsible for the latest stock buying rally, analysts say.
But this time the buying is driven by falling long-term Treasury bond yields instead of cuts in the Federal Reserve's discount rate, which triggered the earlier rally.
Investors looking for better yields - and afraid to miss a rising market - pushed the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index to a record 422.23 on Wednesday, surpassing the old mark set in January.
The Dow Jones average of 30 blue chip stocks surged 45.12 points to 3,379.19, on top of Tuesday's 51.87-point gain.
The Dow's two-day increase of almost 3 percent brought the index within 34.02 points of its record, set June 1.
Analysts said the S&P 500 record was significant, because that index measures a broader array of industrial and other New York Stock Exchange issues than the Dow average.
Equally significant was the trading volume on the New York Stock Exchange, which hit levels not seen since Jan. 17.
T-bond yields down
Yields on 30-year Treasury bonds are declining for the same reason that stock prices are rising: There is great demand among investors for bonds, reflecting the bond market's conviction that inflation will not be a problem for some time.
While falling yields make stock market returns more attractive by comparison, analysts say long-term bond yields are still attractively high for investors who prefer the security of fixed-income securities, and the prospect of low inflation is good for both stocks and bonds.
Economy slows down again
2nd-quarter report sparks recession talk
By Bill Hendrick
STAFF WRITER
If you can visualize the economy as a roller coaster, then picture it now as careening downward for the third time since 1989.
And some experts fear it's derailing into a new recession.
"This recovery is so extremely weak, there's a real danger there could be another recession," Georgia Tech economist Thomas D. Boston said Thursday after the Commerce Department reported that economic growth had slowed to a crawl.
The report put the second quarter's growth rate at only 1.4 percent, less than half the first quarter's 2.9 percent rate and considerably less than the 2 percent needed to keep unemployment from rising.
The slowdown marked the third time since 1989 that the economy has gotten sicker after appearing to be on the road to better health.
Declining gross domestic product
The news was a blow to President Bush, who has presided over the most prolonged period of economic lethargy since the Great Depression.
The value of goods and services produced within U.S. borders, known as the gross domestic product, expanded 2.5 percent in 1989, his first year in office, and 0.8 percent in 1990, but declined in value by 1.2 percent last year.
The economy's growth rate picked up strongly in the first three months of 1992 from a near-recessionary 0.6 percent pace in the final quarter of 1991. Many economists attributed the growth spurt to unilateral steps announced by Mr. Bush in his State of the Union speech that pumped new money into consumers' pockets and a little life into businesses.
He ordered corporations to withhold less tax from employees' paychecks and federal department heads to speed up $10 billion in discretionary spending.
But S. Jay Levy, a respected New York economist, said the temporary magic has dissipated and the economy may be lumbering toward a new slump. Consumers who had more to spend because less tax was withheld will get no refunds, or smaller refunds, next tax season, and may even have to borrow money to pay Uncle Sam, he said.
"We are nearer recession," said Kurt Karl of the WEFA Group, a Philadelphia-based consulting firm. "There's no indication at this time we can look for strength."
Recession worse than thought
The Commerce Department also said its revised figures show the recession of 1990-91 was worse than previously thought. Economic growth actually declined for three quarters instead of just two - in the third and fourth quarters of 1990 and 1991's first quarter.
'Recession' is a technical term, and most economists say the slump that began in mid-1990 ended in the spring of 1991. But most people don't feel the recession is over because jobs are scarce, 10 million people are unemployed and buying power is inching up slower than consumer prices.
The report also said:
Real disposable income is growing at an annual rate of only 0.7 percent.
Consumer spending, the lifeblood of the economy, actually declined in the second quarter by 0.3 percent, down from a 5.1 percent gain in the first quarter.
The personal savings rate fell from over 5 percent to 4.9 percent, low compared with the historical average of 7 percent.
Consumers aren't spending on new items, but "they are saving very little" because it's taking most of what they make to pay bills, Dr. Levy said.
Given such news, it's no wonder the Conference Board's consumer confidence index suffered one of its worst monthly declines ever in July, said Albert W. Niemi Jr., dean of business at the University of Georgia.
Public perception
"The average person looks on recession as whether jobs are being created, and the situation has clearly gotten worse," he said. "People don't believe it's over."
Worse, the unemployment rate is likely to rise from 7.8 percent to 8 percent, he said.
"This expansion is so weak, it's not able to create more than enough jobs to offset the demographics of new people who want to work," Dr. Niemi said. "I don't think we're going to crash into a new recession, but it's like a plane taking off, just bouncing along the runway, and barely inching up."
Though not all the news is bad - the government said new claims for unemployment compensation fell by 21,000 to 400,000 this week - it should be enough to worry the president, Dr. Niemi said.
With economic growth this slow, there's no way the unemployment rate can fall much if at all before Election Day. And that's the one economic measure everybody understands.
Industrial recovery in metro area outpacing state, survey indicates
By Tom Walker
STAFF WRITER
Metro Atlanta's economy regained much of its industrial momentum at the beginning of the third quarter, ahead of the state, a survey of purchasing managers showed Thursday.
The index of purchasing managers in metro Atlanta moved up in July to 62.7 from 58.7 in June, according to Kennesaw State Ekonometrics of Kennesaw State College, which compiles the survey.
Statewide, the index of Georgia purchasing managers dropped to 60.1 in July from 60.8 in June.
"Both readings are well above the benchmark for recovery, suggesting continued economic strength for the state and metro Atlanta," said Kennsaw's Don Sabbarese.
The readings were also consistent with forecasts of other economists that Atlanta, which led the state into recession, is leading it out.
The monthly state and local indexes, compiled from surveys of the Purchasing Managers Association of Georgia, provide a trend line of industrial activity based on new orders, production, employment, suppliers' delivery speed and inventories.
Factory production increased at both local and state levels in July. Employment, however, increased only in metro Atlanta while remaining flat statewide.
According to Dr. Sabbarese, the failure of employment to increase was a sign that firms "continue their cautious use of temporary workers and/or longer workweeks to boost production."
Ford reports $502 million profit in 2nd quarter
Bulk is from financial, not auto, units
FROM OUR NEWS SERVICES
Detroit - Ford Motor Co. reported second-quarter earnings of $502 million Wednesday, its best in two years, but more than half came from a record performance by the automaker's financial services business.
Ford's automotive operations in the United States and Europe were profitable, contributing $213 million. But Ford Motor Credit and The Associates, a banking subsidiary, accounted for $289 million.
On a per-share basis, Ford earned 93 cents in this year's second quarter, compared with a loss of $324 million, or 68 cents a share, a year ago during the depths of an industry recession.
The No. 2 U.S. automaker's earnings were the best since the $771 million profit reported in the second quarter of 1990. Company officials were cautious about predicting continued gains, however.
"The U.S. economy, while improving, is still fragile, as are the economies in many of Ford's key overseas markets," Ford Chairman Harold Poling said.
David McCammon, vice president for finance, predicted that third-quarter results, normally the weakest of the year, would be down from the second quarter.
That caution was reflected among investors, as Ford stock fell $1.50 to $44.25 in New York Stock Exchange trading.
Lower credit losses and higher net interest margins - the difference between what was paid on deposits and the interest rate charged on loans - were credited for the financial services improvement.
Good long-term outlook
"Long term, I think Ford's in real good shape," said Chris Cedergren, an auto industry analyst with AutoPacific Group in Thousand Oaks, Calif. "The only question in the near term is what's going to happen in the current market for cars and trucks."
Although more people are buying vehicles, there is growing concern about how long that will last because of new signs that the economy is weakening.
Ford's pretax earnings were higher than analysts had expected, and even after taxes they were within the range of forecasts. The earnings came a day after Chrysler Corp. reported surprisingly strong profits for the period. General Motors Corp. will report earnings next Thursday.
For the first six months of the year, Ford earned $840.3 million, or $1.53 a share, compared with a loss of $1.2 billion, or $2.56 a share, in the first half of 1991.
SouthTrust Branches Out
Buyout pact would boost presence here
Prime Bancshares deal called beneficial
By Nancy Nethery
STAFF WRITER
SouthTrust Corp. is negotiating another deal that would extend its reach into the Atlanta banking market.
If an agreement with Decatur-based Prime Bancshares succeeds, Birmingham, Ala.-based SouthTrust would bolster its network here with $686 million in assets and 14 more branches.
The letter of intent announced Thursday is the second buyout pact between a Decatur-based thrift and an out-of-state bank this summer. In June, First Union Corp. agreed to buy DFSoutheastern Inc., parent of Decatur Federal.
Prime Bancshares operates Prime Bank.
Under the proposed deal, each share of Prime Bancshares would be exchanged for 50 cents per share plus 0.89 share of SouthTrust stock, the companies said.
Based on Thursday's closing price for SouthTrust - $24.62 1/2 in over-the-counter trading - the deal is worth a little more than $22.41 a share for Prime Bancshares stockholders. Prime Bancshares closed up $3.75 to $19 in American Stock Exchange trading.
"Stronger toehold"
The deal gives SouthTrust "a much stronger toehold in Atlanta," said John J. Mason Jr., senior vice president of Interstate/Johnson Lane.
Thomas H. Coley, chairman, president and chief executive officer of SouthTrust Bank of Georgia, said the purchase lets SouthTrust "continue our commitment to the Atlanta market."
"It's our intent to continue most of their lines of business," he said. "We do not see much overlap in the branch system."
Mr. Coley added that the acquisition would give SouthTrust about 95 branches in metro Atlanta.
Analysts said the deal would benefit both parties.
"The deal is another example of a company that stubs its toe - but has a decent franchise - selling out at what appears to be a reasonable price," Mr. Mason said, referring to changes Prime Bancshares made at the request of regulators.
Prime Bancshares was forced to restate its results this year, after regulators told the company to reduce the value of its portfolio of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. Last week, the thrift voted to discontinue its quarterly dividend.
<#FROWN:A37\>
Let's Make a Deal
America's diplomats are learning a new credo: Sell! Sell! Sell!
For two years American International Group had played by the rules. Eager to sell travel insurance at Tokyo's teeming Narita airport, AIG had courted Japanese officials over sake and sushi, worked the maze of government agencies and filed mountains of forms. But when the company learned last March that the concession would go to a Japanese rival, it traded in that old strategy for a new one: intervention by U.S. Ambassador Michael Armacost. After Armacost and his staff made some unpublicized phone calls, including one to the prime minister's office, the Ministry of Transportation suggested that the Japanese company share one of its new booths at Narita with AIG. "They had their old-boy network. We had ours," says Evan Greenberg, who runs AIG's business in Japan.
George Kennan, meet Willy Loman. While weighty matters of war and peace, negotiation and intelligence gathering still hold top priority in U.S. embassies, the diplomatic corps has new marching orders: sell. For ambassadors and consuls from Bonn to Bombay, brokering business deals has become a basic part of the job. Says Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, "The world has changed. Today, activity to improve America's economic interests is as important as anything we do."
The French, Germans and Japanese have long been known for rolling out the big diplomatic guns to advance their commercial interests, and they are freer with financing and foreign aid when it helps to clinch a deal. But until the late 1980s the local U.S. Embassy was about the last place an American exporter would look for assistance. Consular officers were famously uninterested in dealing with visiting executives, and they were often inept: when U.S. diplomats threw a party in Sao Paulo in 1984 to promote American printing equipment, they offered their Portuguese-speaking guests a sales pitch in Spanish. Many officers were only too glad to lose responsibility for aiding business in 1982, when Congress established the U.S. & Foreign Commercial Service at the Department of Commerce. But economics is king of the new world order, so old diplomats have been forced to learn new tricks. Says Donald Gregg, U.S. ambassador to South Korea, "The fruits of the cold war lie in our ability to trade."
Eagleburger has pushed exports hard since he became deputy secretary of state in 1989. All new Foreign Service officers, chiefs of mission and ambassadors now get a class on commerce as part of their basic training. Last year, for the first time, USFCS chief Susan Schwab was invited to meetings of U.S. ambassadors to Europe and Asia. "This is a tremendous difference from 10 or 20 years ago. It's not easy for any of us to recycle ourselves for this purpose," says Thomas Simons, U.S. ambassador to Poland. Simons should know: the 30-year Foreign Service veteran spends almost a quarter of his time helping U.S. companies.
That kind of high-level involvement is what drew Terry Martin to Singapore. Martin, sales manager for Raynor Garage Doors in Dixon, Ill., attended a Chicago briefing by five U.S. ambassadors last March on how to do business in Asia. That persuaded him to visit a trade show in Singapore in May. Last week he was back in the island nation to sign up local agents. "It's not every day you can get all these ambassadors and commercial counselors in one room and just go up and talk to everybody," Martin says. "We were going to come out here anyway, but they certainly made it a heck of a lot easier."
Drumming up business, of course, is Martin's problem. But increasingly, diplomats are getting involved in specific transactions, particularly when a foreign government has a role in the buying decision. U.S. officials have successfully pressed China to allow a larger presence for U.S. carmakers like Chrysler, which assembles Jeeps in Beijing. Last week Hong Kong awarded a consortium led by Sea-Land Servicing a half share - worth $2.6 billion - in the construction and operation of a new container terminal, after Consul General Richard Williams spent months emphasizing how the American-led group could infuse competition into cargo handling. When German officials appeared to favor a French proposal to build the $700 million Friedrichstadt-Passage office and shopping complex in the former East Berlin, New York developer Tischman-Speyer asked the embassy in Bonn to write a letter on its behalf. "They were very effective," says chairman Jerry Speyer. "They knew exactly where they had to go." Tischman-Speyer won a 45 percent stake in the project, which got underway last month.
Trade diplomacy isn't new, of course; U.S. diplomats have been battering away at foreign import barriers for years. But lobbying on behalf of particular companies is a very different sort of work. Discretion is everything, and press attention is unwelcome. "The transactions generally take place quietly in a meeting, and there's no publicity, so government officials are not embarrassed," explains one official in Washington. Nonetheless, using diplomats as salespeople has its dangers. Gregg has helped persuade the South Korean government to hire U.S. architects to design a new airport terminal, but some in Seoul consider his hard sell excessive. In China, U.S. commercial interest ran headlong into other diplomatic concerns. Using contacts in the local government, the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou helped Boeing Co. plan a pitch to China Southern Airlines last spring. Then, in September, the Bush administration angered China by agreeing to sell fighter planes to Taiwan. The Boeing deal is on hold - and French diplomats are aggressively trying to persuade China Southern to buy Airbuses instead.
Helping whom? Diplomatic salesmanship has less obvious complexities, too. The governments of rival companies can take offense; when Eagleburger recently wrote the Czech Energy Commission in support of American bidders, a German official called to complain. And then there's the question of whom to help. "The biggest problem we have is defining what is a U.S. company," one ranking official confesses. Officially, the State Department lets diplomats work on behalf of U.S.-owned companies that want to sell products with at least 51 percent U.S. content. In practice, however, there's no neat line. When Canada's Northern Telecom Ltd. bids for a sale against AT&T, the Americans can count on the local embassy's aid, but when the Canadian company's U.S. subsidiary is doing the bidding, the diplomats must remain neutral.
How real is the Foreign Service's transformation? Arthur Kobler, who recently left for the private sector after 25 years as a diplomat, says that while it pays lip service to its new commercial role, State's heart is still in traditional diplomacy. "There remains a clear bias in favor of political officers," he says. "The apparatus still is not geared to the post-cold-war reality." Eagleburger admits the difficulty of reorienting the bureaucracy, but he says that success in promoting trade is now part of every diplomat's personnel file. With exports certain to be a front-burner issue in Washington for years to come, the most vital of the diplomatic arts may soon be the art of the deal.
Marriages Made in Air
Are foreign airline deals good for America?
Rich Thomas
Last week Continental Airlines announced that it would tie the knot. There will be no dowry; Continental is already under bankruptcy protection. But the new suitor, Air Canada, has deep pockets, bringing $450 million to the marriage. Continental CEO Robert Ferguson III said he's now looking for partners across the Atlantic and Pacific to "establish a global presence."
On the surface, the transaction is just another example of a troubled airline looking for a savior. But the deal comes at a time when everyone from politicians to air-freight-carriers is questioning whether mergers between U.S. and foreign airlines are good for America. In the short run, such deals seem to benefit consumers. If, for example USAir and British Airways are permitted to merge their routes as planned, an American traveler can soon check her bags in Champaign, Ill., and fly a single air system through to, say, Rome, or even Lilongwe in Malawi, in southern Africa. Some 12,000 such city-to-city combinations would be made possible by the merger. Wonderful, right? Maybe so, concedes American Airlines CEO Robert Crandall. "But in the long run," Crandall says, "the BA-USAir merger will shaft all Americans ... We'll be forced to cut back and lay off employees. American choices and incomes will shrink." That's the sort of thing you'd expect a rival to say. But Ross Perot and Bill Clinton also attacked the British Airways-USAir hookup during their campaigns. The stand proved a touchy one: some of Clinton's own people even contend that the 7,000 USAir jobs in North Carolina were a big factor in Clinton's loss there - the only state he targeted but did not win.
It's no mystery why America's ailing airlines are looking for affluent partners abroad: the industry has been in a deep recession for five years. Passenger boardings and mileage earnings per passenger, adjusted for inflation, have been almost flat since 1987. The foreign connections and capital could save several U.S. lines. Some might fail anyway. But as Alfred Kahn, who launched airline deregulation as Civil Aeronautics Board chairman under Jimmy Carter, puts it: "If we had only three or four domestic airlines, I'd be nervous. But I'd feel perfectly safe being supplied by seven or eight world-class companies. These foreign deals are great insurance for America's fliers."
While the deals could bail out struggling airlines, they certainly won't help the stronger American carriers like American and Delta. For one thing, U.S. airlines do not have equivalent access to foreign markets. Most other nations bar foreign airlines from domestic operations. Further, Britain has no airline that an American line could buy and operate in local competition with British Airways. No other large foreign country has a buyable big airline either; almost all are government owned. (U.S.-Canadian air relations have been more open, and American Airlines is seeking a stake in Canada's second largest carrier.) In addition: Britain and most other big countries severely limit "beyond rights," which would let carriers like United compete internationally against, say, BA by picking up passengers in London and flying them to cities in other countries. Crandall argues that letting BA buy into the largest air market on earth without giving U.S. carriers the same opportunity abroad is "the equivalent of unilateral economic disarmament." And foreign airlines are leery of such concessions: a report in The Journal of Commerce last week said British Airways would rather scrap the USAir deal than have the British government grant U.S. carriers broader access to London's Heathrow airport.
Little wonder, then, that Perot and Clinton opposed the BA-USAir deal. Aware of their objections, Transportation Secretary Andrew Card is negotiating furiously with the British this week to open the British market. Delta, United and Federal Express are poised to join American in suing to block the BA-USAir merger unless more rights for them are forthcoming. The deal could also encounter President Clinton's opposition after Jan. 20. But despite Washington's wishes, the future holds fewer - and fewer U.S.-owned - airlines. And that's a trend no politician can legislate away.
Billows of Smoke
East Europe is desperate for cigarettes, and the West is happy to oblige
A muddy field on the outskirts of Warsaw is not the obvious place to search for a camel. But wait a while. By late 1993 the small town of Piaseczno will possess one of the world's most modern cigarette factories: a 9,500-square-meter plant owned by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco International, part of America's second largest cigarette empire. Once it is running at full capacity, the Piaseczno factory will annually churn out 8 billion Camels, Monte Carlos and other smokes in the Reynolds pack for Poland and its neighbors. A gamble on the future? Not to company executives. "The market over here is so absorbent that even five factories will not be enough," says Piotr Piwkowski, RJR's Polish general manager.
Anyone who has ever ducked into a smoke-clogged cafe in Warsaw, Prague, Budapest or Moscow already knows that Eastern Europeans are among the world's most enthusiastic puffers.
<#FROWN:A38\>
Temptations member Eddie Kendricks dies
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Eddie Kendricks, a founding member of the Temptations who was the lead singer for such hits as 'The Way You Do the Things You Do,' died Monday night of lung cancer. He was 52.
Mr. Kendricks died at Baptist Medical Center-Princeton, said spokeswoman Betty Ingram. He had been hospitalized since Sept. 25.
Singer Stevie Wonder had visited Mr. Kendricks on Saturday.
When the Temptations were formed in Detroit in 1961, the group consisted of Kendricks, Otis Williams, Melvin Franklin, Paul Williams and Elbridge Bryant. David Ruffin replaced Bryant in 1964 and the group signed with the Motown label.
The group had its first No. 1 hit with 'My Girl' in 1965, followed by 'It's Growing' and 'Since I Lost My Baby' that same year.
"Eddie just had that great, great tenor voice that just was so captivating," Esther Edwards, the Temptations' first manager and the sister of Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr., said recently. "He had such admirers, men and women. But the ladies really loved Eddie and his style. ... He just had a sweet melodious captivating tender sound."
The Temptations went on to become Motown's most successful male group, with more than a dozen hit singles. They trailed only the Supremes for supremacy on the charts.
"While the Four Tops covered the frenetic side of the Motown sound and the Miracles monopolized its romantic side, the Temptations quite simply stood as the finest vocal group in '60s soul," Joe McEwen and Jim Miller wrote in the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll. "They could out-dress, out-dance and out-sing any competition in sight."
Mr. Kendricks began a solo career in 1971, but rejoined the group in 1982 for a "Reunion" tour. He was reunited with the band again in 1989 as it was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Mr. Kendricks and Ruffin began working together after their 1985 album, 'Live at the Apollo,' with the singing duo Hall and Oates.
Williams killed himself in 1973, two years after he was asked to leave the group because of alcoholism and related health problems. Ruffin died last year from a drug overdose.
Mr. Kendricks underwent surgery in Atlanta last year to have a lung removed. He later said the disease was caused by 30 years of smoking and he urged children not to smoke.
A strange vision all his own
N.Y.'s Met adds new twist on surrealist Magritte
By David Bonetti
EXAMINER ART CRITIC
NEW YORK - Ren Magritte (1898-1967) remains, a generation after his death, one of the most lively of the modern masters who revolutionized art and the way we look at things.
His representations are part of the modern lexicon of visual images. Giant apples and roses expanding to fill entire rooms. Tubas in flame. Pipes that are not pipes. Kissing lovers with sheets wrapped around their heads. Night-darkened streets under blue skies. Storms of raining men wearing bowler hats. Gigantic boulders floating weightless in the sky. Thanks to advertising, people who never heard of him recognize his disquieting work with pleasure.
The traveling retrospective, tersely titled 'Magritte,' shows us the complete artist in 150 works in various mediums. (Organized by the Hayward Gallery in London, it is at the Metropolitan Museum through Nov. 22). Included are his seldom-seen and highly twisted essays in impressionism and the crude jokester works he called his vache (cow) paintings done during the late '40s in occupied Brussels.
Every responsible retrospective of a complex artist tries to re-present him or her in a manner that makes sense to a contemporary audience. The last great Magritte retrospective in the United States took place in 1965-66. (It was the first major art exhibition I saw, and I remember standing in front of the famous painting of a pipe labeled "This Is Not a Pipe" fascinated, but uneasily unsure of what it meant.)
That exhibition aimed to show Magritte as a surrealist. That might not seem so ambitious - after all, if Magritte wasn't a surrealist, who was? But even as late as 1965 people had a hard time seeing how he fit - he had had his differences with Andr Breton, surrealism's dictator. Most people saw him at best - or at worst - as a surrealist fellow traveler, a Belgian provincial slightly out of step with Parisian cosmopolites.
The 1965 retrospective showed that being slightly out of step was his virtue. Magritte had his own visions, and he remained true to them. The dreams he depicted so laboriously in paint were curiously apposite metaphors for 20th century experience. As the shock of several of the Parisians faded, Magritte at his best continued to tweak expectations.
The current retrospective, curated by David Sylvester and Sarah Whitfield, accepts Magritte's surrealism, and includes plenty of paintings and objects where the surrealist goal to make strange the everyday is clearly evident.
What could be more surreal than 'Time Transfixed' (1938), a painting with an image of a locomotive steaming out of a fireplace? A thoroughly normal living room is utterly changed by the invasion of a train, miniature in scale, but real. What makes the incongruous juxtaposition surreally logical is that the opening of the fireplace resembles the mouth of a railroad tunnel.
All the elements of the pared-down picture contribute to its theme. On the mantel is a clock with its time stopped at 12:43 - has the train arrived on time? On either side of it are two candlesticks empty of candles, traditional symbol in still lifes of the irredeemable passage of time. Magritte is saying he doesn't need to fall back on such hackneyed symbols to make his point. Behind the clock is a mirror that reflects the clock's back and one of the candlesticks, but which otherwise reflects only the gray nothingness of the room, the existential void that is always the real subject of Magritte's paintings.
The current retrospective aims to make Magritte relevant by showing him to be an early practitioner of conceptual art. Gathered together are paintings that reveal his interest in linguistics and appropriation of previously existing imagery, two popular contemporary practices linked to conceptual art.
Magritte's conceptualism is most evident in a group of paintings from the late '20s that incorporate images and words.
The most famous of these is 'The Treason of Images' (1929), the painting of the pipe with the inscription "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This Is Not a Pipe"). Of course it is not a pipe - it is a representation of a pipe, a painting realized on a flat canvas surface with oil paint. Magritte is able to fool the eye. This representation looks like a pipe - although it's so big, only a giant could smoke it.
The other word paintings are as interesting. 'The Palace of Curtains' represents two identically shaped framed panels leaning against the dado of a paneled room. One is a painted representation of the sky; the other is the word "ciel" (sky). The word is sufficient to conjure the image; the image is sufficient to conjure the word. Which came first? Are they equal?
IN 'THE LITERAL Meaning,' two oddly shaped panels, one large, one small, lean against the wall. The small one carries the word "for<*_>e-circ<*/>t" (forest); the large one "salon." Is painting the name of the image enough to create the picture in the viewer's mind? (From the scale of the words, the forest must be seen through a window in the salon.) In another painting with the same title, the rounded framed panel on the floor has the words "femme triste" (sad woman). Is it too much to ask to see her heaped on the floor in tears?
Sometimes the images and words don't line up. In 'The Interpretation of Dreams' (1935), the canvas is divided into quadrants. An image of a horse is labeled "the door"; a clock, "the wind"; a pitcher, "the bird"; a valise, "the valise." Words are free-floating signs that alight according to agreed-upon convention, but what if they land on the wrong place? What if they land on the right place?
Is it any wonder that both philosopher Michel Foucault and semiotician Jacques Derrida have written books about Magritte?
(Interestingly, Jasper Johns owns 'The Interpretation of Dreams.' During the '60s, he painted a series of pictures in which color panels were labeled, but wrongly. He would stencil "Yellow" over a rectangle of blue.)
In a 1928 precursor to the series 'The Use of Speech,' Magritte painted two splotches of brown on a gray ground. One blob is labeled "corps de femme" (body of a woman) and the other, "miroir" (mirror). Both paint blobs are in this singular case not representations - they are blobs of paint, and out of them Magritte suggests he can paint both a beautiful nude and her mirror reflection.
Representation and the void behind it are Magritte's themes. In other works from the late '20s and early '30s he codifies his images as signs that recombine according to linguistic models to make different visual meanings. In his formulation, paintings correspond to sentences.
IN 'THE SIX Elements' (1929), Magritte paints a six-paneled freestanding object, each panel of which contains a different image from his repertoire - a wall of fire, a nude female torso, a deep forest, a window wall, a cloudy sky, a lead sheet fastened with bells.
In 'The Threshold of Liberty' (1930), the same elements - with a panel of wood graining and a panel of paper cutouts added - form the walls of a room. A cannon is aimed into the corner. Ready to blast away his images, to which he has become enslaved, Magritte announces himself to be on the threshold of liberty.
As the rest of the exhibition shows, however, it was not so easy to break the patterns of convention - even for a surrealist. With the break of the six years during which he painted his hideous impressionist pastiches and his 'vache' paintings (which show his disdain for a world that has gone out of its mind), Magritte would continue to recirculate his ever-more-complex images to achieve the sublime simplicity of his final works.
ACT hoping to find payoff in 'Creditors'
Will first season under new director infuse passion, a new aesthetic?
By Nancy Scott
OF THE EXAMINER STAFF
TRADITION HOLDS that the 19th century Swedish playwright August Strindberg was a dour Nietzschean nut who overdosed on misogyny.
Tradition could do itself a favor and go talk to Carey Perloff.
Perloff, who took over as artistic director for the American Conservatory Theater in June, makes her directorial debut Wednesday with Strindberg's 'Creditors,' the story of one woman and two men - and a perfect shipwreck of a marriage.
No matter that 'Creditors' is a dark horse, and Strindberg, too, so far as most audiences are concerned. Perloff is practically incandescent with enthusiasm. She knows the play well, has directed it before (at New York's Classic Stage Company), believes that it has infinite levels of meaning. "I think," she says, "that it's an absolutely remarkable piece of literature." Strindberg, for her, is also absolutely remarkable, and profoundly underrated in this country, and she will, by God, help us to discover him.
Discovery appears to be Perloff's middle name (thus inspiring this year's ACT slogan: "A Season of Discovery"). By implication we shall find treasure. Could be bits of old rubbish here and there, too. Time will tell.
As the opener for ACT's 1992-93 season, 'Creditors' marks a shift in the wind for a company that has lived through a couple of serious storms this past decade. First, in 1986, came the departure of ACT founder William Ball, who left under what may be charitably called a cloud. Then came the 1989 earthquake, which ravaged the Geary Theatre, ACT's home since 1967.
Under the guidance of Edward Hastings, who took over following Ball's departure, ACT survived with honor, expanding its roster of actors and its repertory to include plays and performers of color, and this was worth cheering, but there was also something missing.
<#FROWN:A39\>
Kirov kicks in for 'Nutcracker' centennial
By MAGGIE HALL
Special to the Tribune
ST. PETERSBURG - This year will mark the 100th birthday of 'The Nutcracker', the only ballet that has wide appeal in the United States. Since the 1950s, it has become an important part of our Christmas traditions.
The holidays wouldn't glitter as brightly without the Sugar Plum Fairy, dancing candy canes and the Nutcracker's battle with the wicked Mouse King.
For much of this century, Peter Illych Tchaikovsky's classic ballet about a doll who comes to life and transports a little girl to a wonderland of dance wasn't the hit it is now. Thanks to an opulent production by George Balanchine in 1954, the New York City Ballet's version set the standard for future 'Nutcrackers.'
This year, St. Petersburg will be the host for another 'Nutcracker' milestone. To celebrate the ballet's centennial year, the Dance Theatre of Florida and the Kirov Ballet will collaborate for 10 performances at the Mahaffey Theater Dec. 11-13 and Dec. 17-20.
Dancers from the Kirov - keepers of the flame of classical ballet and one of the more respected companies in the world - and the St. Petersburg dance ensemble will perform a 'Nutcracker' as Russian audiences might have seen it a century ago.
"Many companies have done the ballet and some of them have given their unique interpretation," said M.A. Musselman, the Dance Theatre of Florida's president. "This version is going to be true to the original. It won't be a futuristic one. It will be an old-fashioned 'Nutcracker.'"
"Chance of a lifetime"
The joint production will see 12 to 15 Kirov dancers in the divertissements of the second act, except for 'Waltz of the Flowers' and the Snow pas de deux. Dance Theatre children and dancers from its group will fill those roles. Kirov dancers will join them in the first act to play toys in the party scenes.
"This is basically the chance of a lifetime, a once-in-a-century thing," said M.A. Musselman's husband Sean, who is artistic director of the Dance Theatre of Florida.
Sean Musselman and Oleg Vinogradov, artistic director of the Kirov Ballet, presented plans for their joint production of 'The Nutcracker' at a recent news conference in St. Petersburg.
Tickets for the centennial performances are on sale at the Bayfront Center and through TicketMaster. Prices are $30, $24, $19 and $14 plus a service charge. For more information, call the Bayfront Center box office at (813) 892-5767 or TicketMaster at (813) 287-8844.
Vinogradov has been the Kirov's artistic director since 1977. Then only 40, he had made his mark as a choreographer for the Kirov and Bolshoi and as a ballet director.
Following in the footsteps of 19th-century genius Marius Petipa didn't faze Vinogradov. He opened up the Kirov's repertory to include works by foreigners such as Maurice Bejart and Roland Petit, a first for the tightly structured Russian ballet establishment.
Last year, the Kirov let in more fresh air with works by British choreographer Antony Tudor and George Balanchine, a master who learned his craft at the Kirov early in the century.
Before Vinogradov's staging of pieces such as 'Scotch Symphony' during Kirov's most recent tour, Balanchine's work had never been presented by a Russian company.
Vinogradov solidified plans for the St. Petersburg run with the Musselmans when he invited them to see his company perform 'Swan Lake' in New York this summer. The Tampa Bay area girls sharing the role of Clara, the character who is given the Nutcracker doll in the ballet, will travel with the Musselmans and chaperones to Russia this fall.
At Vinogradov's invitation, they will see the premiere of the Kirov's own centennial production of 'The Nutcracker' on Oct. 25.
The recent visit to the Tampa Bay area was Vinogradov's first chance to look over the Mahaffey Theater's facilities before staging begins on the centennial 'Nutcracker.'
Back to his roots
The collaboration with the Kirov is a return to roots for Sean Musselman. He formed the Dance Theatre of Florida in 1986 after dancing with the Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Chicago City Ballet, Milwaukee Ballet and other companies, but his training is pure Balanchine.
Musselman studied at the school of American Ballet (SAB), New York City ballet's training ground. While at the school that Balanchine founded, Musselman was in the last SAB generation to work under the great choreographer before illness forced him to retire.
Even though he is the choreographer and artistic director of the Dance Theatre of Florida, Sean Musselman is still dancing at 32 and teaching at the company's ballet school. He danced the role of the Cavalier in last year's Dance Theatre production of 'The Nutcracker.'
In the centennial show, he will dance the Snow pas de deux with a dancer from the Kirov.
"I think that some of the best ones from the Kirov are coming because Oleg is very excited about doing this," said Musselman.
The fanfare surrounding the centennial of 'The Nutcracker' would have surprised Tchaikovsky; the composer considered his own score inferior. It was never a big hit in Russia, but Balanchine had a fondness for it after playing small parts in it and then graduating to dancing the role of the Nutcracker Prince in his youth.
Because of Balanchine's production, Americans are the world's only 'Nutcracker' fanatics.
Americans were obsessed by phrenology
By JOHN BARRAT
of the Smithsonian News Service
His bald head is as white and shiny as a porcelain bathtub, tattooed with a curious diagram of lines and letters. Many once believed this prophet, who claimed to have solved the age-old mysteries of the human mind.
Today, antique and forgotten, he stares blankly into space from a storage shelf inside the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
Meet the Phrenological Man, a life-size bust from one of the oddest social movements in American history. Fashioned in the mid-1800s by a New Yorker named Lorenzo Fowler, this porcelain head was once used to teach the wonders of phrenology - "the science of the mind" - to the American public.
For centuries people have struggled to understand the relationship between human actions and the processes of the brain.
Today, a procedure known as Positron Emissions Tomography - which measures levels of neuron activity in the brain - is one high-tech method neuroscientists use to learn which areas of the brain relate to human activities and emotions. Scientists have confirmed much of the PET-scan work with Magnetic Resonance Imaging, a faster technology. Still, exactly what is goinggoing onin those areas of the brain remains a deep mystery.
Skull topography
Not to phrenologists. From 1832 into the 1900s, itinerant phrenologists traveled from town to town in America, solemnly handling people's heads before large crowds and preaching that human character could be learned from the topography of the skull.
"Phrenologists believed the strength of each faculty determined the physical size of the specific part of the brain in which it was located, and that the shape of the brain determined the shape of the skull that surrounded it," Michael Sokal, a historian at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass., explained at a recent lecture at the National Museum of American History.
An individual's combative organ, for example, was supposedly located "an inch and a half behind the tops of the ears." If a person's skull bulged at this spot, his or her combative tendencies were high.
By combining all of an individual's faculties, phrenologists believed that they could draw an accurate reading of his or her character. By exercising certain organs with specific thoughts, phrenologists believed a person could willfully change the shape of his or her skull.
Although today phrenology is widely regarded as fraud and fakery, "an understanding of any past science requires careful analysis of the context in which it developed," Sokal says. "It's all totoo easy to dismiss what isn't fully understood."
Phrenology originated in Vienna, Austria, in the late-18th and early-19th centuries when physician and brain-research pioneer Franz Joseph Gall observed that students with good memories also had striking eyes. From this, he inferred that human memory was located in the part of the brain directly behind the eye. Gall went on to assign more than 30 other human faculties to specific brain regions.
Austrian scientist
Phrenology made its American debut in New England in 1832, when a visiting Gall protege, Austrian scientist Johann Spurzheim, gave a series of popular lectures and occasionally demonstrated a brain dissection. Spurzheim died in the United States and was followed in 1838 by another reputable phrenologist, Englishman George Combe.
America's highways during this time were frequented by "salesmen of all kinds - peddlers with knapsacks, people selling patent medicines, lecturers, religious people, musical performers, circuses and carnivals," explains Roger Sherman, a historian at the Museum of American History.
Men (and a few women) of all ages studied phrenology's easily learned principles, bought a few books, charts and busts, and set out on the lecture circuit. Phrenology was transformed from a scientific theory into a sort of pseudoscientific character analysis akin to palm reading. It was great entertainment.
Before the Civil War, itinerant phrenologists blanketed the countryside 'reading' thousands of heads and doling out advice on everything from marriage to child rearing, careers, health, religion, personal happiness and even sex.
"They'd typically hire a town hall or a large church and open their visit with a free lecture at which they'd sell books and charts," Sokal says. Lecturers demonstrated their skill by randomly examining heads from the audience - sometimes while blindfolded.
"Private readings"
The phrenologist's bread and butter, Sokal explains, came from "a series of private readings conducted on a fee basis, often at hotels, on mornings and afternoons before each lecture."
Among American phrenologists, none achieved greater recognition than Orson and Lorenzo Fowler, two brothers who, in 1835, opened a 'Phrenological Cabinet,' or museum, in New York City, which eventually contained hundreds of busts, including busts of Michelangelo, pirates, thieves and a Bengal tiger.
The Fowlers lectured widely, employed a number of traveling phrenologists and published many books with copious titles such as 'Marriage: Its History and Ceremonies; with a Phrenological and Physiological Exposition of the Functions and Qualifications for Happy Marriages.'
Most major U.S. cities had their own libraries, club rooms and collections of plaster busts. Employers asked for written phrenological examinations from job applicants, and women wore their hair in ways that showed their best phrenological qualities. A number of famous citizens had readings done, including President James Garfield, abolitionist John Brown and poet Walt Whitman.
Many people didn't buy into the phrenology craze, and it was criticized widely. The Fowlers embraced the criticism, however, and used it as a springboard for publicity. They fervently believed in and defended their 'science.'
Modern scientists can find no rational basis for the principles and techniques of phrenology. According to Sokal, phrenology owed much of its success to practitioners who gave character readings "so vague and general that they could apply to almost anybody."
Like a mix between Sherlock Holmes and P.T. Barnum, phrenologists became expert showmen who used small details of a subject's clothing, mannerisms, hands, reactions and even their smell to draw up convincing character profiles.
After the Civil War, a more skeptical nation lost faith in phrenology. By the early 1900s, phrenology was a closed chapter in the history of American science.
TNT drama offers 'adult' programming
By FRAZIER MOORE
of The Associated Press
NEW YORK - Even if it went unspoken, the last word on television - well, the last six - always used to be "and they lived happily ever after."
Then, happily, TV got a little more serious.
Witness - please! - 'The Water Engine,' which premieres on cable's TNT channel tonight at 8, followed immediately by two repeat showings.
Kicking off a series of original films called TNT Screenworks, 'The Water Engine' is a deadly serious look at the American Dream, written by the celebrated dramatist David Mamet.
Its impressive cast includes Joe Mantegna, John Mahoney, Patti LuPone, Charles Durning and Treat Williams. It is engrossing and disturbing. It's even entertaining.
<#FROWN:A40\>
The mature rocker - a hard sell
<*_>square<*/>Demographically, it makes sense for pop music to court the over-30 crowd. But that has been slow to happen.
By Bruce Britt
LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS
Is the pop-music industry committing financial suicide by alienating the music's older fans? In an industry so blinded by youth, it appears that the smaller players are the ones creating a ground-swell of support for music by and for people in the 30-to-50 age range.
Rock 'n' rollers in their 30s and 40s with lingering dreams of making it in pop music have only a slight chance of getting signed to major, rock-oriented labels. Rock 'n' roll is traditionally a young person's industry, and aging signs such as a receding hairline or a paunch take a performer out of the rock 'n' roll sweepstakes.
But recent trends indicate that adult pop and rock is a gold mine waiting to be explored. Though the record industry is still youth-oriented, it seems that yuppie musicians and consumers are quietly waging a revolution that is putting a dent in rock record and concert sales.
Country music sales and radio ratings are soaring - an intriguing turn of events in light of the fact that 30-ish 'new country' pioneers such as Garth Brooks, Billy Ray Cyrus, Travis Tritt and the Kentucky HeadHunters specialize in a distilled brand of Southern rock 'n' roll. Older established rockers are getting into country as well. For example, Don Henley has collaborated with singer Trisha Yearwood and recorded in Nashville.
Henley isn't the only one flirting with the country business. Ken Kragen used to manage such rock and pop heavyweights as the Bee Gees, Lionel Richie and the J. Geils Band. Now Kragen deals almost exclusively with country acts such as Tritt. Kragen and other insiders believe Nashville could supplant Los Angeles as the nation's music capital.
"Though the country business is becoming more complicated all the time, it is still easier to deal with than pop," Kragen said. "Country music is probably the most exciting trend in music right now. You hear radio stations touting their 'new country' or 'hot country' sound."
"Maybe that's the lesson our country cousins are teaching us," said Phil Walden, president of Capricorn Records. "Music - not age or anything else - is the most important thing."
Capricorn's hottest acts are involved in the burgeoning 'neo-hippie' movement, which is gaining record- and concert-sales steam every day. Blues Traveler, Spin Doctors and Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit - older and thoroughly unglamorous bands that play countrified rock, blues and jazz - are such popular concert attractions that a theme tour recently was organized to satisfy the demand for these performing warhorses.
Other trends indicate that adults are begging to be courted by the music industry. Ratings at adult contemporary radio stations are on the upswing, and older acts such as Steve Miller, Jimmy Buffett and the Grateful Dead have continued to draw sellout crowds, while rock-oriented packages continue to struggle to draw fans.
Some of the biggest sleeper successes in recent years have been major-label baby-boomer acts, with Bonnie Raitt, Michael Bolton and Natalie Cole creating the peak. All these acts struggled to win creative control and break out of the rigid, youth-oriented visions the music industry had dictated to them.
In contrast to all this adult-oriented activity, rock record sales slowly have been declining since the mid-1980s, while country and other music forms have been enjoying steady gains, according to Recording Industry Association of America's Statistical Overview for 1991.
Some theorize that Nashville is enjoying renewed popularity because of the country music industry's more inclusive nature. Walden's Capricorn Records put Southern rock on the map in the 1970s with such acts as the Allman Brothers Band and the Marshall Tucker Band. Walden attributed country music's resurgence on the country industry's more inclusive nature.
"I think country is more willing to take in refugees from rock n' roll and allow them the space to redefine themselves in some country context," Walden said. "Country is expanding rather than restricting, where rock is quite the opposite."
Inclusiveness is a buzzword used by Walden and other independent label heads, who are courting older rock and pop consumers. Walden, who recently reactivated his company after a decadelong absence, said the secret of his success is simple.
"I really think, in terms of the new hippie movement, the emphasis is primarily on the music," Walden said.
Walden's comment must resonate with well-known former teen idols such as Ringo Starr and David Cassidy - acts with built-in cult followings who have had to sign deals with independent labels. Older rock acts able or fortunate enough to finagle a major label deal claim they are often persuaded to sing about adolescent concerns rather than from a more mature perspective.
"It frustrates me that [record industry] people can't see a way forward for a band like the Who," said former Who singer Roger Daltrey. "It frustrates me that some of the best musicians in rock 'n' roll are our age and don't seem to be able to put their emotions into music."
Daltrey is lucky - at least he has a legacy that makes him more appealing to record company talent scouts. But there are many older rock 'n' roll lovers who will probably never get the chance.
Sterling Haug is founder of the Musicians Contact Service, a Hollywood-based referral service. He said at least half of his clientele consists of musicians in their 30s still struggling to break into the big time.
"You have to consider that everybody lies about their age by about five years, so there are a lot of guys around 40 still playing original material and trying to break through," Haug said.
Though trends would suggest an adult pop phenomenon would be well-received by consumers, some experts say mature music is a very hard sell. Ron Goldstein is president and chief executive officer of Private Records, a Los Angeles-based company with a largely adult-oriented pop roster that includes Starr, guitarist Leo Kottke and Andy Summers, formerly of the Police. He said it is difficult winning exposure for older acts.
"Some guy in the industry might think, 'Hey, Carole King is still around, and she's still in good voice. I'd like to sign her'," Goldstein said. "But then he's got to consider how he's going to get her on radio or how he's going to get any exposure for her. That's just part of the battle record companies face."
Goldstein believes that for the music industry to reach 30- to 50-year-old consumers, existing promotional methods such as radio must invent a format specifically geared toward baby boomers. Adult contemporary radio, Goldstein claims, is almost as rigid as the Top 40.
In addition, he suggested that other avenues, such as direct mail marketing, should be explored. That would allow record companies to bypass radio, television and MTV altogether and take it straight to the consumers.
Fox's 'young' shows are old and tired
By Greg Dawson
SENTINEL TELEVISION CRITIC
The Fox network has publicly tabbed 18 to 34 as its prime demographic target. The producers of Martin and The Heights must have thought they were talking about IQs, not ages.
Martin, a hyperactive sitcom about a brash, young radio talk-show host, assaults the senses with decibels and dumbbells. If this were the Olympics, you might want to have Martin tested for steroid use.
The Heights, another Aaron Spelling fashion statement masquerading as a drama, is Spelling's attempt to get a third cup of tea from the same soggy bag that yielded Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place, and it's a mighty thin brew, indeed.
Together, these series demonstrate how shows can scream "young!" in every way and still seem achingly old and tired.
It's possible to feel some regret over Martin as a lost opportunity. The star, stand-up comic Martin Lawrence has loads of natural charm and operates smoothly in the sitcom format. But he's undermined by relentlessly horrid writing.
His character, a Detroit talk-show host, is a grating hybrid that combines the snickering macho arrogance of Eddie Murphy and the cloying, puppy-dog cuteness of Bill Cosby in his bedroom scenes with Phylicia Rashad on The Cosby Show.
One minute Martin is strutting an obnoxious under-my-thumb brand of chauvinism to impress his Neanderthal buddies, the next he's on his knees whimpering for forgiveness from his girlfriend (Tisha Campbell). It might be laughable if it weren't so pathetic.
Martin, known for his comedy work on HBO, arrives with a reputation as a gifted mimic. Besides the title character, Martin plays his nosy mother and a busty love machine across the hall named Sheneneh. But they just seem like Lawrence in bad wigs. He never goes beyond dress-up to create a distinct character, the way Flip Wilson did with Geraldine.
Nor do Lawrence and his producers do anything interesting with the talk-show format. The studio is just another set for the delivery of bad lines. Adrift in this debacle is Garret Morris (Saturday Night Live), playing the manager of Martin's radio station.
Let us travel now from the depths of comedy to The Heights of commercial exploitation.
It's not uncommon for TV producers to copy themselves, but two times in less than two years? Spelling's 90210 begat Melrose Place, which created a market for The Heights - same song, different verse.
The Heights looks less like a drama than it does a product tie-in, the product being all the accouterments of youth culture, from jeans to music videos.
In a nutshell - which is plenty large enough to hold the originality that went into it - The Heights is about young people who couldn't afford the rent at Melrose Place, an upscale West Hollywood address.
Whereas the residents of Melrose Place are aspiring actors and artists and doctors, the denizens of The Heights hold down classic blue-collar jobs such as auto mechanic, beer truck dispatcher, produce clerk and plumber's assistant - all portrayed as purgatories to be escaped from at the earliest opportunity.
In their off-hours (when they aren't striding six abreast down the street, the better to model their 'look') these sons and daughters of the working class play in a rock band - their ticket out of the unspeakable agony of real jobs.
Pretension and phoniness greet you on every corner in The Heights. This is the sort of show in which a drop-dead beautiful character (Cheryl Pollak) says to a pursuing guy (James Walters), "I don't get it. All this romance. Why me?"
It isn't exactly clear where The Heights is. What is clear is that if these fresh-faced youth without a callous among them are blue-collar, I'm Ron Rice the suntan lotion king.
Trying to follow the interchangeable cast parts of these Spelling brands reminds me of the sign above airport luggage carousels: "Many bags look alike."
I would suggest Aaron Spelling heed the comment of a character in The Heights who says of their sound-alike band, "We need to do an original."
A fresh TV idea set in the 1300s
By Greg Dawson
SENTINEL TELEVISION CRITIC
Everyone's Irish on St. Patrick's Day, and when the new fall TV season rolls around (in late summer now), everyone's from Missouri: Viewers are in a show-me state of mind as in, 'Show me something new.'
So the networks give us a couple dozen comedies and dramas with all the freshness of discount bread. There are exceptions, of course, and tonight the new fall season lives up to its billing as ABC premieres Covington Cross, the boldest deviator from the norm among the 33 new series.
The schedule is jammed with family sitcoms and dramas, but Covington Cross is the only one set in 14th-century England and filmed on location in and around a real castle, with a mostly British cast.
It's a hoot - a high-spirited, handsomely mounted, tongue-in-cheek romp that blithely mixes swordplay and slapstick, feudalism and feminism, in a whimsical meeting of the 1390s and the 1990s.
This is the story of a widowed dad, Sir Thomas Gray (Nigel Terry), who could be Fred MacMurray in My Three Sons, except that he has a beautiful daughter (Ione Skye) in addition to three rambunctious sons, and he carries a broadsword instead of a briefcase to work.
<#FROWN:A41\>
Fairy Tale
by Karen Bair
Features Writer
Once upon a time, a determined, dark-eyed ballerina traveled to a dangerous city called New York. She danced principal roles with famous people from the United States and Russia in one of the best ballet companies in the world, and they traveled the globe.
A tall, dark, handsome man also journeyed to New York to learn to dance with beautiful ballerinas. Because he was tall, he played the princely roles.
At about the same time, a dainty little ballerina ventured to New York. She was so naive, she did not know enough to be frightened. She danced elegantly with one of the world's most respected danseurs.
They danced to the edge of their world.
Many of their dreams came true. Some did not. It was not easy, but they knew when the time had come to pursue new dreams.
It happened that their new paths wound to a magical Southern city with grand oak trees and gracefully swaying Spanish moss.
The dark-eyed ballerina and the tall, princely danseur danced there together for the first time. They fell in love and married.
Before she had left New York, the tiny ballerina was hurt and decided she would never dance again. But when she came to the Southern city, a friend convinced her to put on her toe shoes. She danced, and danced, and soon was dancing with the dark-eyed ballerina and the princely danseur. Then she fell in love, too, and married a handsome local television newsman.
And so ...
The room - with its barre, mirrors and American Ballet Theatre posters from around the globe - is alive with dancers' energy. They pose with an innate sense of performance, and both the photographer and the camera love them.
"You don't need me in this picture. I'm a third wheel."
"No, no. Come back over here. We need you in this picture."
"How does this look?"
"Great. Perfect."
"Move your head this way."
"Like this?"
"Great. Perfect. You guys are wonderful. Hold it."
"Are you sure you need me in this picture?"
Thus cavorted Karena Brock-Carlyle, her husband John Carlyle and Gaye Baxley Manhatton, who last month officially became artistic directors of Savannah's Ballet South community dance troupe. The trio had temporarily stepped into the role after the mid-season resignation of Gayla Davis Lehotay in January. Last month new contracts continued their tenure through August 1993.
Their official titles vary according to the source, but from their viewpoint, they are a team. They refer to one another as co-artistic directors.
"We all work together so we don't overpower one another," Brock-Carlyle said in an interview after the photo session. "None of us wants power.
"Although, they usually let me have my way. I don't know why."
<*_>three-black-squares<*/>
For 14 years, she danced as Karena Brock with American Ballet Theatre (ABT), performing as a principal for five of those years. Famous Russian ballerina Natalia Makarova offered her some of her first principal opportunities. She later partnered with Mikhail Baryshnikov after he defected from Russia and joined ABT.
The walls of the Carlyles' Hilton Head Dance Theatre offer an introduction to the past: each dancing with other partners, Brock in costume at the White House with the Shah of Iran and former President Lyndon Johnson; and, a framed letter of appreciation to her from former President Richard Nixon.
Brock-Carlyle leads Ballet South's senior company dance classes, also attended by her husband and Manhatton. She believes a few of the dancers could be destined for such premiere companies as ABT.
"It's only 50 percent talent," she advised. "The rest is perseverance."
She has persevered since she was in elementary school and her parents bought tickets to a Sadler's Wells' performance of 'Sleeping Beauty,' starring Margot Fonteyn.
"I think we sat in the very last seat in the balcony," she recalled. "Margot Fonteyn came out, and she just bounced all the way up to the balcony to me, and I said that's what I want to do. That was my vision from that point on."
She began taking classes at 9. At 14, she danced with a professional company in San Francisco. The last two years of high school were devoted to learning technique and physical therapy to realign muscles.
"I never dated," she said. "I never went to my high school prom. It didn't matter to me."
She studied in Los Angeles with David Lichine and then spent a year with the National Ballet of Holland, but ABT was her goal. A friend snared a closed audition for her with former ABT director Lucia Chase. She spent four years in the corps and five years as soloist before becoming an ABT principal.
For 13 years, she was married to ABT principal Ted Kivett.
"We were maturing as artists - not necessarily as people," she remembers. "We worked on our dance, and our marriage was crumbling. Ted was in line to become the golden boy, then Baryshnikov arrived. Ted gave up and left."
Somewhere in the interim, she recalls, they were divorced.
She has fond memories of Makarova. Brock-Carlyle tosses her black hair and imitates Makarova gently prodding the ballerinas with a "dahlink."
"She was beautiful," she said. "I love her."
Her recollections of Baryshnikov are not as fond. She partnered with him in the ballets 'Petrouchka' and 'Les Patineurs.'
"He's a very serious artist," she said. "He demanded perfection. That's good.
"He's very quiet. Very introverted. No one will ever know him.
"He's not very tall."
Brock and Baryshnikov are the same height, making her taller than he on pointe. When Baryshnikov took the ABT helm, he began promoting inexperienced dancers.
"Ballet is turned down from dancer to dancer," interjected Karena's husband John. "He broke that line. He made young dancers stars. They weren't grown."
"Artistry isn't developed over-night," Karena added softly. "It develops with time."
She was offered a sixth year as an ABT principal, but turned it down. She speaks little about that turning point in her career.
"I was having personal problems," she said. "I stayed in New York for a year after I left ABT.
"It was difficult. I would walk past the theater and start crying."
She freelanced and eventually traveled to Savannah to direct the Savannah Ballet. Carlyle, whose parents lived in Savannah, came as a guest artist. She convinced him to stay.
<*_>three-black-squares<*/>
Unlike Brock, Carlyle did not begin dancing until after high school. He studied graphic design and wanted to create comic books until an artist's model convinced the 6-foot-1-inch former high school football player to take a ballet class. He waited tables in New York and studied on scholarship for two years at the acclaimed Harkness Ballet. Then dancer Melissa Hayden took him under her tutelage.
"We did New York Times cross-word puzzles after class," he said. "One day the puzzle said, 'Name a famous Canadian ballerina.' To my surprise, it was her."
He soloed with the Tampa Ballet, then detoured permanently to partner Brock. When Brock left Savannah Ballet, they formed the Hilton Head Ballet Theatre.
Seven years ago, they married. In September their son Timothy will be 5.
Karena discovered new priorities.
"I gave up performing for Tim, " she said. "I wanted more time with him.
"To feel the body move beyond its limits and to move expressively, it's wonderful. It's addicting. But I will never dance again. I would have to give up my mornings with Tim."
<*_>three-black-squares<*/>
Manhatton knows what it is to withdraw from addiction to dance. She abandoned ballet after partnering in New York with Edward Villella, considered by some the greatest classical danseur ever born in the United States.
A feminine, blond-haired, brilliant blue-eyed Savannah native, Manhatton knew she wanted to be a ballerina at 13. Her mother took her to a ballet at Savannah High School.
"I leaned over to my mother," she said in her honey Southern drawl, "and I said, 'I think I've made a decision.'"
She studied locally and joined the Savannah Ballet. The directors - Bojan and Stephanie Spassoff, formerly of ABT and friends of Karena's - arranged for her to 'sit' the New York apartment of traveling ballet friends one summer. Every inch the Southern belle, she was befriended by upstairs neighbor Stanley Williams, a New York City Ballet school instructor revered by dancers. She was invited to observe a class.
"Here I was in my little flowered Savannah dress," she remembers. "It was a huge studio. Nureyev was standing there and he winked at me. I thought I would faint."
She studied at the Harkness and the famed Joffrey Ballet. Villella was a protege of the New York City Ballet's legendary George Balanchine, and when Villella suffered a recurring hip injury, he assumed directorship of the Eglevsky Ballet and formed a touring company. Villella knew Manhatton and asked her to tour. Eventually they became dance partners.
Tiny and compact, she became adept at the furious pace of the Balanchine style. Then Villella's company began to fold.
"It was such a learning experience for me," Manhatton said. "You can be a star one day, and you have an injury and you're out and somebody's taking your place.
"I just woke up one day. I'm not sure why I didn't want to go on. I guess I had New York burnout."
She tells the story with a pensive smile. Smiling is her custom.
"I think Gaye was raised in the Southern tradition," Karena surmised. "You always hold up and go on, no matter what. She is always bubbly, no matter what she might be feeling inside."
Manhatton returned to Savannah and became an interior designer for five years. Then Madeleine Walker, one of the community ballet troupe's founders, asked her to teach.
"I really owe Madeleine," Manhatton said. "She asked me one day, 'Why aren't you dancing?' She asked if I would perform in a student performance. I thought it would be interesting to put on a pair of pointe shoes again. Not in five years had I had pointe shoes on.
"It felt good."
She began dancing with Carlyle and studying with Karena. During this period of renewal, she fell in love with WTOC television newsman Mike Manhatton, and they were married.
"Dancing for me is not the same as when I was younger," she explained. "It's like reading a good book and going back and reading it again. I understand more now. I always danced so emotionally. I want to keep that this go round, but I want to think about the technical aspects. It's like a fresh start.
"Teaching makes you analyze."
<*_>three-black-squares<*/>
Manhatton's responsibilities include teaching the junior company - a step she considers vital in their progression toward the senior ranks.
"I'm very strict with them," she said with delicate force. "It's very difficult for a 9-year-old to be serious about anything. I ask them to extend themselves beyond casual involvement."
"Gaye is wonderful with the kids," said Karena. "She does it in a very gentle and sweet way. But firm."
In addition to technique and artistry, Karena said her goal for the senior corps is "dedication, discipline and commitment." Stage presence evident even in the studio, she commands the teen-agers' respect.
"John gets closer to the kids," she said. "I never had a teacher with a sense of humor. I stay aloof."
John - the wily jester of the trio - relieves class tension by imitating improper technique. Eliciting giggles, he then demonstrates the correct approach.
"I teach them through laughter," he said. "Then if I get stern, it's very effective."
The trio is conscious their lessons came from sweat equity and the school of life, not the relative security of a liberal arts college. John's favorite studio poster is one emblazoned with the word "Read." Under it is a photo of a dancer reading a Russian novel as he leaps across the room.
"Teach kids to read," he said. "It makes better dancers. Kids don't use their imaginations anymore. They watch television. When I get angry is when they're not using their minds. When they just go through the motions. Life's more interesting than that."
<#FROWN:A42\>
Concerned producer prescribes remedies for networks' doldrums
By Steven Bochco
Los Angeles Times
Hollywood - Here's a little quiz, multiple choice:
Complete the following sentence: Network television stinks because of: A. Producers. B. Advertisers. C. Networks. D. Dan Quayle. E. All of the above.
You could make a case for any of these choices, but my pick would be: C. Networks. Let's face it, if you've spent more than 20 minutes in the television business, you know you can run a network better than "those guys."
I mean, c'mon, let's be honest about it. If television was a dog, that dog wouldn't hunt. It's not very smart. It's not very funny. It's not very truthful, or very real. It's not very enlightening, and only occasionally thoughtful. In short, it's just not very good. No wonder viewers are deserting the ship. The ship is going down, folks.
Listen, I feel bad for the networks. Really. They're scared to death, notwithstanding their annual frenzy of optimism about their new seasons, and with good reason. The economy is lousy. Viewership is down. Advertising is down. Revenue is down. Costs are up. Pressure groups are up. No one's having fun anymore. And it shows.
The television business, like it or not - and I don't - has become politicized. Networks have become increasingly skittish about any program content that is perceived by pressure groups as objectionable. Does this mean that television shows have, by and large, become more conservative? You tell me. The airwaves are filled with law-and-order shows, both fictional and quasi-fictional, which cannot by any stretch of the imagination be identified as espousing liberal sentiments. And, Dan Quayle's remarks about Murphy Brown notwithstanding, half-hour TV sitcoms generally remain a bastion of traditional and overly simplistic moral preachment.
Gutting of program content
The net result is that pressure groups have succeeded in bullying advertisers and networks into gutting program content as never before. Networks don't want controversy. They don't want bad language. They don't want sex. They particularly don't want sex between individuals of the same gender. What they do want is big ratings and lots of advertising revenue, yet they're not willing to take the risks necessary to achieve those goals.
So, how do you change things around? How do you revitalize the television business in an environment gripped by fear? If I were king of the forest - i.e., a network president - here are some of the things I'd try:
I'd eliminate network censors. Let viewership determine what's appropriate and what isn't.
I'd eliminate jobs. Lots of them. Sorry, but how many network executives does it really take to screw in - or screw up - a light bulb?
I'd stop relying on research as a network tool. It doesn't work. If it did, TV wouldn't have a failure rate in excess of 90 percent. I think I can manage to fail nine out of 10 times on my own, thank you, without some big fat research department's help.
I'd eliminate pilots. Which, by definition, would eliminate pilot season. If you believe in something, order it. Put your money where your mouth is. And never order less than a full season of episodes of any new show. Not six. Not 13. But 22. In a cluttered viewing landscape, 13 episodes just aren't enough to gain the viewer's attention, let alone loyalty.
Acknowledge that you can no longer operate in old ways in a new environment. Buy only what you need. The extensive stockpiling of backup shows is a waste of talent, time and money.
Mess with traditional program lengths. If there's a really great 45-minute show you want to put on, do it.
Watching the fall season is like watching the start of the New York Marathon. Eliminate it. Once you've bought something, give its chefs the time to cook it. When it's ready - only when it's ready - put it on and leave it on.
Reduce commercials
How's this for a plan? Everybody's screaming - rightfully so - about screen clutter. Too many credits. Too many logos. Main titles are too long. Not enough program time. Well, how about reducing the number of commercials you put on the air and charging more for them? Less advertising time means less glut, which in turn means more attention to the advertising that's there. I bet they'll pay.
Finally, and most importantly, I'd acknowledge television as an art form and challenge those working in the medium to redefine their standards of excellence accordingly. I'm weary of feeling embarrassed about using the "a" word in connection with television. At our best, we are artists.
The problem, however, is that art isn't always politically correct. Which means we'd have to tell the pressure groups - all of them - to take a hike. We're going to give our talented writers and producers the chance to make shows they're passionate about. How many shows do you really see on TV where you just know the men and women making them are truly passionate about their work? Not many, I'll bet. But the ones that are informed by someone's passion are usually the ones you make an appointment to see.
These are only a few of the things I'd do if I were running a network. Maybe they wouldn't work. But what the four major networks are doing now doesn't work. So what the hell? What have we got to lose that we aren't already losing?
Art Detour goes monthly
'Afterhours' to open studios, galleries, more
RICHARD NILSEN
The Arizona Republic
An Art Detour once a year isn't enough anymore, so an enterprising group of Phoenix artists and galleries has conspired to create an informal "detour" once a month through the cooler season.
Called Phoenix Arts Afterhours, it will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. on the second Wednesday of each month from September through June. It begins Wednesday.
Twenty-two art spaces, including the Phoenix Art Museum and the Heard Museum, will take part in the self-guided tour of downtown studios, galleries, bookstores and museums.
Modeled on Philadelphia's First Friday program, with its 31 galleries and 10 restaurants, and Tucson's popular Downtown Saturday Night, the program is planned to benefit area artists, restaurants and businesses.
"The idea surfaced a couple of weeks after the Art Detour in April," said Catherine Spencer, director of Radix Gallery.
"It was the intention of the group to have special performances, demonstrations and individual studio tours. The variety of works is so tremendous. I think that's what makes it unique.
"In one evening, you can see a museum show, a gallery installation and then a completely alternative performance piece within two miles and four hours of each other."
This variety is the strength of the downtown Phoenix arts community, Spencer said.
"There isn't a regional history, found in other parts of the metro area," she said diplomatically, meaning "This isn't Scottsdale."
That can surely be said for Tony Zahn's Volksgemeinschafthalle at 208 S. Fifth Ave.
"It's a display area where people can look at an exhibit for fun, without being burdened by the label 'art,'" Zahn said. "It is just like art, but it's not."
He calls it a "metaesthetic theme park."
"But I don't want to give away what people will see," he said.
Will there be a roller coaster?
"Not this time, but I'm working on that."
Metropophobobia will host readings in experimental and "obscure areas of endeavor," according to owner Peter Ragan. And there will be coffee and espresso.
For the less adventurous, the Phoenix Art Museum is free on Wednesdays and is open until 9 p.m., and the Heard Museum will be free from 5 to 9 p.m.
The current show at the art museum, 'Transcending Turmoil: Painting at the Close of China's Empire, 1796-1911,' contains more than 100 fine Chinese paintings.
The Heard is showing 'Eclectica: Recent Acquisitions,' and '<*_>initial-exclamation-mark<*/>Chispas! Cultural Warriors of New Mexico.'
The Afterhours will give people a chance to visit studios, too, to see what artists do.
"I'm going to be here working," said sculptor Kevin Irvin, who shares a studio with painter Marta Boutel at an old trolley depot at 10th and Sheridan streets. "When people stop by, I'll take them around and show them what we do and talk to them. There will be a little food and drink.
"And up at this end of the tour, we have a cluster of studios, including those of Ed Mell, John Kleber and Nick de Matties, making a very convenient grouping."
Not officially part of the tour is CityArts, the city of Phoenix's Visual Arts Gallery at 214 E. Moreland St., which is open from 6 to 9 p.m.
Currently showing are mixed-media paintings of Jeff Falk.
Note: CRASHarts and Gallery X will not take part until the second Phoenix Arts Afterhours on Oct.14.
'Sneakers' has Oscar winners galore
By James Ryan
Entertainment News Wire
LOS ANGELES - With ground-breaking performances, Sydney Poitier and Robert Redford have earned their places among the icons of American cinema.
Poitier, 68, made a name for himself in the late 1950s and '60s, starring in such film dramas as Blackboard Jungle, Lilies of the Field, In the Heat of the Night, To Sir With Love and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. His films challenged the conventions of the time and helped lead to a new era in race relations.
Redford, 55, was Hollywood's favorite leading man in the '70s with such films as The Candidate, The Sting, The Way We Were and All the President's Men - films that exploited his cool gaze, square jaw and all-American smile.
Thus it was strange to see both men before the microphone at a recent news conference discussing their participation in the movie Sneakers, a lightweight romp through the world of computer hackers and high-tech espionage. Sneakers opens Friday.
The movie stars Redford as a former '60s radical and dedicated hacker who heads a ragtag team of computer nerds and ex-criminals hired to penetrate sophisticated security systems and point out their flaws.Playing the team members are Poitier, Dan Aykroyd, River Phoenix and Mary McDonnell. Ben Kingsley plays Redford's one-time college chum-turned-archnemesis Cosmo, and James Earl Jones makes a brief appearance as a National Security Agency honcho. As the production notes proudly boast, there are eight Oscars and 38 Oscar nominations among the bunch.
But why this movie?
"I got involved with the project through a phone call basically (from director Phil Alden Robinson)," Poitier said. "By the time I got off the phone, I was had."
Poitier, who has carried many movies with his performances, says it was a relief to share some of the load this time.
"I had never done an ensemble piece before," he says. "This was a new and very satisfying experience.... And it was a learning experience every day. It's nice to work without the pressure of carrying the whole thing."
Redford said he'd been interested in working with Robinson, who previously wrote and directed Field of Dreams and had been trying to get Sneakers made for a decade.
"I can't say I got into it because of the cast - the cast materialized around me," Redford said. "But the cast certainly made the experience pleasurable, one of the best I ever had.... It was a piece of entertainment touching on an important issue, and it was smart."
One problem both actors have in choosing new material is the knowledge that filmgoers hold them to a higher standard because of their previous accomplishments. Poitier is very aware of this burden.
"I have a responsibility if I am perceived that way to prove that I am worthy of that," he said. "Because this film is ... without great weight, doesn't mean I just come in and wing it."
Contrary to some of his statements in the past, Redford insists Sneakers was not part of a bargain he has struck to enable him to do other more personal projects.
Besides, he says, the bottom line for any movie, be it Sneakers, Incident at Oglala or All the President's Men, is that it is entertaining.
<#FROWN:A43\>
Moribund MGM Lion Shows a Few Signs of Life
By Bob Strauss
LOS ANGELES - There's little talk these days about the Lion roaring. People just seem grateful that old Leo is, at least, still breathing.
The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer trademark, recently spruced up and relieved of a debilitating tie to Pathe Communications, once again symbolizes a going filmmaking concern. Certainly, today's MGM is not the Hollywood powerhouse that Louis B. Mayer operated from 1925 through the mid-'50s.
But neither is MGM the industry deadbeat that it had become by 1991. Unlike many independent and mini-majors that have recently succumbed to recessionary pressure, the onetime Tiffany studio has been slowly stripped of itits former glory for nearly a quarter century. After two decades of dividing and parceling out the company's assets - the film library to Ted Turner, the legendary Culver City lot to Lorimar, Warner Bros. and now Sony Pictures Entertainment - the aviation and casino kingpin Kirk Kerkorian finally sold MGM's film entertainment division to Pathe boss Giancarlo Parretti in November, 1990.
Within six months, the Italian financier was reneging on deals with major Hollywood talent, unpaid service suppliers were trying to force MGM into bankruptcy, and cash could not be found to release such films as 'Thelma and Louise' and 'Delirious.'
Soon after, a very different lion - Credit Lyonnais Nederland, the French nationalized bank that backed the highly leveraged, $1.3 billion buyout - made moves to oust Parretti. Late last year, after an agonizing court battle, a Delaware chancery court removed Parretti from MGM's board. New owners Credit Lyonnais handed the studio over to veteran Hollywood executive Alan Ladd Jr., who, though hired by Parretti, sided with the bank during the custody fight.
Sterling reputation
And with good reason. Perhaps the only studio executive widely beloved by Hollywood's creative community and respected by his peers, the shy, 54-year-old 'Laddie' (yes, he's the cowboy star's son) hated having his name linked to the notorious Parretti's. And Ladd's reputation, the Euro-bankers know, is one of MGM's best remaining assets; the very fact that it's intact is testimony to how highly Ladd is regarded.
He's also got an impressive track record, which includes perhaps the smartest decision in movie history: Ladd gave the green light to a goofy little science-fiction film called 'Star Wars' when he was running 20th Century Fox. Even Ladd's earlier stint as production chief at the Kerkorian-owned MGM was one of the brighter plateaus in the studio's long decline, marked by such hits as 'Moonstruck' and 'A Fish Called Wanda.'
Now, Ladd hopes that MGM's upcoming slate of fall films will erase the bad taste of 1991, when only 'Thelma & Louise' turned a profit.
"It's nice to be able to go to rushes of a picture or a rough cut and be very thrilled with what you're seeing," Ladd said. "As opposed to going to see something like 'Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man' and thinking, 'My God! What a disaster.'"
Among MGM's upcoming releases is Gary Sinise's acclaimed remake of John Steinbeck's 'Of Mice and Men,' with John Malkovich; Jean-Jacques Annaud's adaptation of Marguerite Duras's memoir 'The Lover,' a big European hit that has run into commercially exploitable censorship difficulties here; 'Rich in Love,' which re-teams the Oscar-winning 'Driving Miss Daisy' team of writer Alfred Uhry, director Bruce Beresford and producers Richard and Lili Fini Zanuck, and the erotic thriller 'Body of Evidence,' starring Madonna.
Also on tap are another Beresford-Zanucks collaboration about blues legend Bessie Smith; 'The Baboon Heart,' a restaurant romance with Christian Slater and Marisa ('My Cousin Vinny') Tomei; the comedy thriller 'Cloak and Diaper' with Kathleen Turner; new films directed by Robert Townsend, John Schlesinger and Wes Craven, and 'Son of the Pink Panther,' in which Blake Edwards revives his old comedy franchise, with Italian comic Roberto Benigni in place of the late Peter Sellers.
This slate of films bears a great responsibility; most of them have to, at the very least, perform as well as MGM's mildly profitable skating romance 'The Cutting Edge' did earlier this year. Estimates of how much money Credit Lyonnais currently has invested in MGM range from $800 million to more than $1 billion.
If the bank ever hopes to recoup, or even to find a buyer for MGM, the upcoming features have to do better than the recent run of such under-achievers as 'Crisscross,', 'Rush,' 'Shattered,' 'The Indian Runner,' 'Life Stinks' and 'Diggstown,' which opened in 12th place last weekend.
Looking for hits
"Who knows?" said Steven E. Hill, an entertainment industry analyst for Hancock Institutional Equity Services in San Francisco, when asked about the commercial viability of upcoming MGM films. "The list doesn't particularly excite or worry me, one way or another. There's nothing that makes me feel like they have some sure hits. Then again, they have a list of films that may be solid. It's hard to say.
"But the key to successfully reviving the company will be having hit movies. They have to have hit films, or at least profitable films one after the other, and a substantial release schedule."
"First and foremost, we need to build up our production program in feature films," acknowledged Dennis Stanfill, Ladd's former boss at Fox who was brought in as MGM's co-chairman and chief executive officer earlier this year. Stanfill oversees the company's financial end, outstanding legal entanglements and corporate restructuring, freeing up Ladd to concentrate on creative, production and marketing tasks.
Stanfill admits that, considering the hangover from Parretti's regime, rebuilding MGM is a daunting assignment. "How big of a problem?" he asked rhetorically. "Let me put it this way: This is a major challenge. It was left by Parretti with a very heavy debt load and ongoing obligations. As well, it went through a period of misdirection, if not mismanagement.
"We have now set on a course, the purpose of which is to make MGM, again, a great movie company in its finest tradition. That's going to take a considerable amount of time. It's not a quick task, but we are building, I believe, solidly and well - in close co-operation with Credit Lyonnais, which is committed to the long term."
Blue-Collar Slant Is Gold for Fox
Programs Recognize Class Differences
By David Zurawik
Baltimore Sun
Fox Broadcasting is doing it again. Most American viewers had their channel scanners locked on NBC in July and early August because of the Olympics, but this is the summer of Fox.
Once again, Fox went against the old rules of showing reruns in summer and last month debuted a new series called 'Melrose Place.' It's a brand-new hit show, a series that is all the buzz.
Thanks in large part to 'Melrose Place,' Fox finished ahead of one of the big three networks, NBC, in over-all household ratings for the week of July 13-19. That marked a first for Fox Network. And some industry analysts are predicting that Fox will finish ahead of NBC for the entire 1992-93 season.
And driven by all that, plus its hammerlock on young viewers (whom advertisers most want to reach), it looks as if Fox will start the fall season with more advertising time sold for more money than any network except CBS, which finished first last year.
Not bad. And Fox is doing all this growing and money-making when audiences for other broadcast networks are eroding.
What is Fox doing that NBC, ABC, CBS or PBS aren't? Or, as one English journalist put it as he was leaving a Fox presentation on the fall preview press conference in Los Angeles recently: "What makes these Fox people - with all their shows about garbage men and shoe salesman - so bloody smart, anyway?"
The shoe salesman and garbage man are, of course, Al Bundy of 'Married ...With Children' and Roc Emerson of 'Roc,' respectively. And they are very much part of the answer to the question of what makes Fox such a success. They are part of a blue-collar sensibility driving some of the most popular Fox shows, such as 'Married,' 'Roc' and 'The Simpsons.'
'Blue collar' is an adjective that isn't used much lately when talking about prime-time television. The only other important blue-collar family in prime time is the Conners of 'Roseanne' on ABC.
In fact, prime-time television rarely admits that there are class differences in this country and that life looks very different, depending on which side of the working-class boundary you happen to live on. Almost everyone on prime-time television lives in a shiny, suburban world like that of the Taylors on 'Home Improvement' or a shiny, yupscale world like that of 'Murphy Brown' - except on Fox.
'Roc' lives in a row-house in Baltimore. In last year's premiere episode, he delivered his comic, working-class version of Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech. His dream, he said, was to own a semi-detached home at the end of the row. Roc furnishes his rowhouse with repaired or restored furniture collected on his garbage route. What shines in 'Roc' are the dreams.
Two new Fox shows with that same sensibility will debut soon: 'The Heights' (on Thursday) and 'Class of '96' (in late September or early October). They look like winners.
'The Heights' is about a rock 'n' roll band of working-class adults in their 20s. The band members - who live in the smokestack-and-factory landscape of Bruce Springsteen's New Jersey - work during the day as mechanics, truck dispatchers and grocery store clerks. And, like Roc, they dream. Their dreams are expressed in their music.
'Class of '96' takes place in what might seem like the unlikely setting of an Ivy League college. But the series is told in part through the narration of David Copperfield Morrissey, a working-class kid from New Jersey on a scholarship. Most of the two-hour pilot is about class differences and Morrissey's dreams. It's smart stuff - like the answers that Fox president Peter Chernin gave during a recent interview in California when he was asked about that working-class sensibility at Fox.
Chernin started his explanation with the 'Marxist-Leninist' quote, but added quickly that he was only kidding.
"I think that we have strived to do a number of things - one of which is to make television a little less sort of saccharine or standard or predictable," he said. "We do live in a world in which there are class differences."
And class differences mean different audiences, in the words of media scholar John Fiske, of the University of Wisconsin, who insists you can't talk about TV viewers as a single audience.
"Pluralizing the term into audiences at least recognizes that there are differences between viewers that must be taken into account," he writes in Television Culture. "We are not a homogenous society ...Our social system is criss-crossed by axes of class, gender, race, age, nationality, region, politics, and so on, all of which produce strongly marked differences."
Unlike CBS, for example, which still primarily thinks of the TV audience as one huge homogeneous mass, Fox acknowledges such differences and develops programs based on them, Chernin said.
"We have always tried very hard to think about audiences that are underserved," he said. "If you look at some of our biggest hits - 'In Living Color' and 'Beverly Hills 90210' - they came from audiences that had been traditionally underserved by television. In the case of 'In Living Color,' it was sort of a contemporary, hip-hop minority culture. And in the case of '90210,' there hadn't been a realistic teenage show."
Working-class viewers make up one very large and underrepresented audience, Chernin said. And Fox has tried to serve them. It's as simple as that, he said.
The success of the fourth network is not by any means due only to this blue-collar sensibility. Two other major reasons for the success of Fox are surely the network's youth appeal and a certain derring-do in programming - like the decision to broadcast 'Roc' live this season.
And, while much is starting to be made of the youth appeal of 'The Heights' and 'Class of '96', the two shows do have a working-class sensibility.
<#FROWN:A44\>
The Opera of 'The Scarlet Letter'
Alfred Kazin
Why is there no opera of The Scarlet Letter? The novel opens on a scene, "The Prison-Door," that is so dramatic in its starkness that one half-expects to hear an audience burst into applause. "A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes."
The cruel public spectacle that follows is contained in the fact that although this is a primitive Boston, only some fifteen or twenty years old, "the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave yet a darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the new world." To a 'new world' the Puritans have transferred intact from the old everything rigid, intolerant, aged, and cramped in spirit.
The contrast between old world and new, between the dour old Roger Chillingworth and his estranged and lively young wife Hester Prynne, is fundamental to a novel so overwhelming in its images and driving in its symbols that Henry James said that Hawthorne's method amounted to "importunity."
Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.
No opera could begin with a scene of more violent contrasts of costume, color, and personality than in what follows. A young woman, tall, "with a figure of perfect elegance," stands on a scaffold before the whole town clasping a three-month-old baby.
On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore.
Hester Prynne, a married woman with a missing husband, could have been sentenced to death for adultery. Condemned always to wear the letter A as a badge of shame, this gifted seamstress has turned it into a resplendent work of art. To make the contrast between Hester's condemnation and the splendor of the scarlet letter, between her dignity on the scaffold and the deadly crowd of gray, bitter old, women watching her, even more operatic and instantly thrilling, she is beautiful, with "dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam," and "deep black eyes."
As she stands there, about to be castigated for her sins by two leading clergymen of Boston who demand the name of her lover, Hester is horrified to see in the crowd her shriveled, twisted husband, Roger Chillingworth, who has been a captive of Indians in the wilderness. Talk about opera! While the town chorus is murmuring against her, her silently fanatical husband staring at her, the ethereal-looking young clergyman, Arthur Dimmesdale, frightened and trembling, is also compelled to demand the name of her partner in crime. Since there seems to be no one else in this crude settlement likely to interest Hester Prynne, it is obvious from his double-edged aria that he is her lover.
The extraordinary narrowness of Puritan life and thought is vividly brought out by the little space Boston occupies between the wilderness and the ocean. Theatrically, almost all the action takes place between any two of the four main characters. Hester's only companion is her mischievous, provocative daughter Pearl - an emblem of the "lawlessness" in her mother's suppressed nature. Because Roger has mysterious medical knowledge he is called in to treat the hysterical Hester after her public humiliation, then Arthur, who is deteriorating under his inability to confess his guilt. Roger soon manages to take up residence with Arthur in order to investigate to the full and eventually expose the man he has spotted as his wife's lover.
With Hester trying to control her flamboyant daughter, with Roger secretly preying on Arthur, and Arthur helplessly trying to resist his supposed benefactor who is his "fiend-like" enemy, the concentration of repressed thought and emotion on the part of all the characters becomes more and more explosive, and breaks out only in the grand denouement, the most operatic imaginable. The formal procession of the townspeople in celebration of Arthur's overcharged Election Day sermon ends in Arthur's public confession on the scaffold, embracing Hester and Pearl, before he triumphantly dies. Repression at the heart of this Puritan civilization, a necessary way of life, induces such a consistency of tone that Hawthorne said the novel "is positively a hell-fired story, into which I found it almost impossible to throw any cheering light." He recalled years later "my emotions when I read the last scene of the Scarlet Letter to my wife, just after writing it - tried to read it, rather, for my voice swelled and heaved, as if I were tossed up and down on an ocean, as it subsides after a storm."
Why was he more disturbed by this book than by anything else he ever wrote? He was invading the country of his ancestors, but he had done this in story after story in the collections so wearily named Twice-Told Tales and Mosses From an Old Manse. In The Scarlet Letter, however, he was not just beautifully (and often defensively) invoking the old Puritan world in bits and pieces. Now there surfaced the long interior conflict between natural respect for the past and his equal abhorrence of its theological cruelty. (And Hawthorne was not a church-goer, not even a liberal one.) Only a work of art, of the intensest emotions, could even begin to answer to his struggle with himself over a past in which, dreamlike, he often felt he was living. There was no rejecting the past in the transcendentalist style, which he despised. So there was no great comfort for him in writing this "hell-fired" book. The only relief this bitter man gave himself was in creating his heroine. The only fully admirable character in The Scarlet Letter is Hester. Quite apart from her "elegant figure" and "dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam," Hester is the only character in the book big enough to sustain a conflict with the harsh Puritan world equal to Hawthorne's own. In a book without heroes, Hester has to carry the love story all by herself.
The Scarlet Letter was immediately recognized on its publication in 1850 as the masterpiece a young and self-conscious country was waiting for. It was assimilable in a way that works by two New Yorkers, Melvilles Moby-Dick (1851) and Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1855), were not. New England still seemed the source and center of an Americn civilization founded on Protestant tradition. It is impossible to imagine Melville and Whitman sounding as institutional as Hawthorne. They were engaged, like true American originals, in the prodigious language experiment necessary to their 'primitive' understanding of life, meaning life at the bottom.
Hawthorne was a true son of clerical New England in his formal and even stately style. It had great tonality of sound and enormous suggestiveness - irony was Hawthorne's favorite maneuver in telling a story. The dark and solemn music of his unrelenting commentary on the story he is presenting intervenes in the way an orchestra does at the opera - setting the emotional background and reinforcing it at crucial points. The Scarlet Letter is an elaborately stylized and formal performance in every sense. It never bursts out from the depths of our hidden animal nature as Melville and Whitman do. Just as the novel's climax is a sermon, so the long tradition of reading sermons to an audience that always knew what to expect is also behind Hawthorne's novel. He is constantly beckoning to the reader to join him in sighing over the "positively hell-fired story" he feels compelled to tell. There is a literary domesticity in Hawthorne's many gestures to the reader that is very New England, based as they are on the sermon, the chief medium of Protestantism, and on a congregation to hear it.
In The Scarlet Letter, for once in his anxious literary career, Hawthorne and his immediate New England audience were not at home with each other. An aggressive religious conservative, Orestes A. Brownson, thought the book grossly immoral. "There is an unsound state of public morals," he complained, "when the novelist is permitted, without a scorching rebuke, to select such crimes, and to invest them with all the fascination of genius, and all the charms of a hightly polished style." An article in the Church Review asked, "Is the French era actually begun in our literature?" No, it was just the revisionist era, the literary emancipation of New England from its old clerical tyranny. But this rear guard guessed a vital fact behind the book that admirers did not. Hawthorne was a deeply sexual man. Hester was the creation of someone who loved women, saw them, as Verdi did, as necessarily tragic and alone, but emotionally sacred in a diminished world.
In revisiting the old Puritan tyranny, Hawthorne was lucky, for once, in his opportunity. The Scarlet Letter was his first and only great literary success in a peculiarly hard and solitary career as a writer. He was forty-five when he set out to write the book. He was passionately married to Sophia Peabody, but except with a few college friends, a bitter, usually silent, man hard to know and to like. He scorned the uplift philosophy of the transcendentalists in Concord. Emerson, a prig for all his genius, could not read fiction intelligently. Hawthorne was unique in the literary New England of his day - a grimly honest storyteller fascinated by the perversity in human affairs central to his hereditary Calvinism.
Always worried about money, Hawthorne made an uneasy living writing for magazine editors who paid him a pittance for some of his greatest stories without recognizing their uniqueness. There was a lot of hack work behind him. Like so many other American authors in the nineteenth century, Hawthorne aspired to political appointments. He was a solid adherent of the Democratic Party, which as the party of Andrew Jackson officially represented the masses but so dominated the South that it rejected criticism of slavery. This suited Hawthorne's lack of political idealism. He claimed that New England was as large a lump of earth as his heart could hold. He was fortunate in having as his closest friends Bowdoin classmates who were influential in the Democratic Party. One of them was Franklin Pierce, who in 1852 became the fourteenth president of the United States. In 1846 Hawthorne's party friends secured him appointment as Surveyor of Salem, his native town. He needed to show himself in the Custom House for only a few morning hours before getting back to his writing. In 1848, however, the Mexican War hero Zachary Taylor, running as a Whig, was elected President, and when he assumed office in 1849 Hawthorne was replaced.
This was devastating. Friends - including Longfellow and James Russell Lowell - had to raise a subscription for his support. Hawthorne took his being fired as a summons to begin The Scarlet Letter, long in his mind.