European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - May 05, 1989, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 10 the stars and stripes columns Leon Daniel Wright s plug for wife s employer clearly wrong the Wall Street journal caught speaker Jim Wright Selling up his Medicine show on the floor of the House of representatives and using the con Gressional record to Pilch his Snake Oil. The Texas Democrat inserted in the published record of legislative proceed Ings in 1985 a statement touting a Home video program sold by & Seattle company that was paying his wife Betty. $36.000 a year. In what amounted to an advertise ment paid for by the taxpayers Wright s sweeping endorsement called the Pacific Institute s videotape incisive and remarkably among lawmakers such Cava Lier use of the congressional record is not generally a hanging offence. But it had been previously reported that Wright had provided Louis tick founder of the firm that markets motivational programs for enhancing employee productivity Access to other members of Congress. And Betty Wright s employment is Central to the inquiry of the House ethic committee which has accused the speaker of financial abuses. Wright s use of his position to pro Mote the firm that employed his wife is a Clear conflict of interest. The speaker has staunchly defended his wife s right to seek outside employ ment. Fair enough. But it was wrong for him to use the congressional record to promote the firm that paid her. The House ethics manual has Little to say on the matter except that material for insertion into the congressional re Cord should be drafted so that it docs not lend itself to misinterpretation As an official endorsement from an official with the Pacific Institute told reporter David Rogers of the Wall Street journal that Wright s endorse George f. Will mint had been used in marketing video tapes. Members of Congress insert things like this into the congressional record every Day for constituents and organizations said Mark Johnson a press spokesman for Wright. I Don t think it s but Steve Gers Tel chief congressional correspondent for United press International said Johnson is right that Mem Bers use the record to help their constituents but they Don t use it to promote companies that hire their Gerstel who has covered Congress for 29 years said he could not recall a similar Case. It is acceptable for lawmakers to insert into the record laudatory statements dealing with birthdays and anniversaries. High school football victories and Beauty contest winners also get considerable space. Lawmakers can speak for one minute during the morning hour and then use the revise and cd tend privilege to submit voluminous material to official reporters for insertion into the record. Then they Send copies to constituents who often believe their congressman stood before the entire House to Praise the Home s just politics. Nobody minds much. The lawmakers Don t even have to pay for the Stamps to Send out the blather they put in the record which has be come a veritable garbage can for flowery rhetoric. But when Wright used the record to promote the firm that paid his wife s salary he was too Clever by half. He also was wrong. Daniel ii a up senior editor Kohl has been Given Oil the help he deserves the Century will end As it began and As it was in much of its Middle part wary about Germany. Sud Denly Das land Der mine is Back in the Middle of Western worries. The government of Helmut Kohl its political sup port evaporating has panicked and pandered to anti nuclear and pro Gorbachev sentiment by falling away from a nato decision to modernize Short Range nuclear forces. But much More is at stake than those weapons. The supposed Utility of those weapons is threefold. By being there those weapons would prevent the soviet Union from concentrating conventional forces for the Blitzkrieg nato fears most. Because any ban on Short Range weapons would be utterly nato must assume the soviet Union will retain such weapons so nato weapons Are needed to deter soviet use of them. And in an extreme situation nato could use such weapons the lowest rung on the escalation ladder to alter the nature of a conflict. Small nuclear weapons arc linked to larger ones. Iio Wever All arguments establishing the Utility of Battlefield nuclear weapons May be refuted by this question could an Alliance that is paralysed and Sun dered by the Prospect of modernizing those weapons Ever agree to use them in March a nato military exercise was aborted when West German and turkish participants objected to a . Proposal for hypothetical use of Battlefield nuclear weapons against aggressor forces on West German and turkish soil. Nuclear weapons systems decay so the alternative to modernization is obsolescence unilateral disarmament in this category of weapons by the mid-1990s. If modernisation is deemed inconsistent with the latest detente then solicitude for Gorbachev Means giving him a veto Over any changes other than unilateral reductions in nato s military dispositions. But if he really wants to lighten soviet defense Bur Dens so that there can be a great leap Forward in living standards Forward to the standards of say Portugal in 1930he can reduce the Burden on his own. If he feels menaced by Battlefield weapons that would reach Only battlefields West of the soviet Union and primarily in Das land Der mine his policy is not defensive. Us. Policy has already conceded Loo much to Kohl by agreeing to delay modernization until after West German elections next year. Kohl s additional demand for immediate negotiations with the soviets about such weapons raises this question for . Policymakers Why sustain Kohl with concessions so that he can implement policies not substantially different from those of the West German opposition parties . Policy is to delay negotiations on nuclear forces in Europe until there arc negotiated reductions of the enormous soviet conventional Force advantages that made deployment of nato s nuclear forces necessary. Strategic nuclear negotiations also arc relevant and it is . Policy that even with conventional Force reductions nuclear weapons must be components of deterrence in Europe for the foreseeable future. Kohl says he Only seeks equal ceilings on Short Range nuclear systems not elimination of them. But there arc Only 88 Short Range Lance missiles the focus of modernization in Europe. There is no military logic to any particular level Between 88 and Zero. Aside from the lances there is a Large nato inventory of nuclear artillery and other nuclear weapons. The political pull of Zero not just Zero lances but also the Long standing soviet goal of a de nuclear Zed Europe might be irresistible. There is in Europe a crystallizing conviction that nuclear deterrence is now incompatible with detente. . Policy has fed anti nuclear thinking. At the Reykjavik Summit Only Gorbachev s Over reaching rescued us from our improvident agreement to get rid of nuclear weapons. Ronald Reagan defined ski As a program for getting rid of nuclear weapons. Reagan and candidate George Bush celebrated the inf treaty with triumphal rhetoric implying that any elimination of an entire category " of nuclear weapons is wonderful. One rationale for the inf treaty was that it was homeopathic Medicine treating a disease arms control fever caused by the anti nuclear virus with Small doses of the disease. It May have worked briefly but intervals Between bouts of the fever arc becoming Shorter. The germans said one of the greatest of them Goethe make everything difficult both for them selves and for everyone history s worst calamity began in August 1914, when Germany went to War. It has been truly said that if in july 1914 the Kaiser Hud been Given a Blank Page on which to describe the world As he wanted it he would have been hard put to list significant changes. Germany wanted to be important but had no Clear idea of what that meant. Today West Germany is acquiring new importance As the agent of disintegration of the Security system that has kept the peace. Washington Posl writers group the opinions expressed in the column and cartoons on this Page represent those of the authors and Are to no Way to be considered As representing the views of the stars and stripes or the United Stales government
