European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - June 9, 1992, Darmstadt, Hesse Tuesday. June 9, 1992 the stars and stripes Page 13 commentary Ellen Goodman children forgotten victims at Earth Summit the children Are missing from the streets of Rio de Janeiro. The Street urchins the homeless kids who roam the City by the thousands were apparently removed like so much debris when the brazilian government cleaned up for the Earth Summit. What a shame. Instead of taking them out of the City the officials should have brought them right to the Center of the pomp and circumstances. They should have left them where they belong smack in the Middle of this pin striped meeting of world leaders. After All this Earth Summit is about children. No matter How you Couch the concerns of this gathering in Long words and simultaneously translated speeches its about children generations of them. Population poverty pollution. A changing climate and disappearing species. Some say the conflict in Rio pits one hemisphere against another. A Southern hemisphere damaging the last of the worlds natural resources against a Northern hemisphere spewing spoilage from its Over consumption machines. Some say its Between the Economy and the ecology growth and preservation. The standoff Between spotted owls and loggers jobs multiplied by millions of species and billions of people. But the deeper conflict is Between a Long term and a Short term perspective. Its about How people think about the year 2030 and How we done to think about it. From my Post in the Northern hemisphere it seems to me that in my lifetime we have not Only darkened the natural horizons we have shortened the human horizons. Our own country Rich by any Standard has somehow stopped paying attention to the future. How else can we explain the casual neglect and impoverishment of our own children one of every five children in America is poor. We spend $11,000 for every senior and $1,000 for every child. We borrow a billion dollars every Day to pay for the National debt which will add to our children a debt. How else can we explain a business world that thinks Only As far ahead As the next quarterly estimate if that a year ago one corporation promised and paid its executives huge bonuses to pump the Stock up to $100 a share for just 10 Days. And How else to explain a president who Only thinks As far As november or an electorate that has yet to push the future to the top of the Agenda. Nearsightedness is hardly a new or uniquely american condition. Throughout history people living hand to Mouth have never had much time to look ahead. If the children of Rio were invited to the conference surely they would ask first of All for lunch. But today the comfortable and Middle class the leaders As Well As followers have also had their vision crimped. As a1 Gore the tennessean heading the Senate delegation to Rio worries a we have had the idea Owoc Awni the Earth sum it Ozone of that we can exploit the Earth for our own Short term desires and Gore a thoughtful Leader in environmental polities says that our attitude to the future has been crippled first by denial and now by despair. A denial is a Barrier to recognition a he says. A despair is a Barrier to grief and All the related feelings that people have to experience in order to understand the necessity for significant Quot during the cold War it was the nuclear bomb a my the doomsday scenario that made people doubt a future. The bomb shifted the equation Between today and tomorrow. Now we enter the Post cold War world and the threat is less from a falling bomb than from a rising thermostat. Its from too Many cars and too Many babies. The threat grows with each cleared acre of rain Forest at a time. We May suffer less from future Shock than future phobia. Go into any schoolroom says Gore who has done it dozens of times. Ask the kids the most important Issue and they will say the global environment. Ask them if they care More than their parents and they will say yes. Ask them Why and say its because kids will be around longer and because they know More. A but they really do not understand How we could be so paralysed a says Gore. More adults Are also finding it hard to understand. So in the midst of All the posturing and wrangling in Rio there Are signs of movement even if they Are Only Small stretches careful warm up exercises. A Good antidote to despair. The children Are not to be seen on the streets of Rio these Days. Nor Are they to be heard in the conference Hall. But sooner or later they re the ones we have to answer to. C 7mo Boston Globo William f. Buckley courageous about Weicker s tax hike Well did the mice Ever play when the cat left town to spend 10 productive Days in the far East yes the whole Kennedy clan convened May 28 in order to award Lowell Weicker the governor of Connecticut its annual profile in courage award. The award came with a speech from sen. Edward Kennedy who ventured that a perhaps no Public figure of our time has been so vilified for a stand on what principle Lowell Weicker was elected governor in a very tight race during which he pledged not to support an income tax in a state that had always resisted an income tax. That was a principle. Soon after his election he broke that pledge. The people who a a vilified him for breaking that pledge were principled it reads Here. So Why do we Call it vilification Weicker insisted on an income tax of 4.5 percent and time and again vetoed efforts by the legislature to diminish or to remove that tax. Question Why is that a sign of courage by conventional standards to be courageous is to do that which is Correct against the demagogic tide. Why is it Correct 1 to run on a platform promising no income tax 2 to turn around and ask for an income tax and 3 to stick to your new found position on income taxes through the use of the veto does the John f. Kennedy Library foundation which scans the political horizons in search of courage detect it As a matter of course when the veto is stubbornly exercised Are we invited to believe that the legislators in Connecticut who opposed the tax Are to be compared with the Jacobi Nical mobs that led their sovereigns to the Guillotine or were the mobs the principled parties Bent As they were on consummating their revolution you see the income tax for Connecticut was in the nature of a revolution the state having withstood the temptation for so Many years to Institute an income tax. For a generation Connecticut was the state people pointed to As exemplary in its handling of government. The worst thing that then happened to the state was the Long tenure of William of Neill the democratic governor who preceded Weicker. He spent like a madman and the state marched toward the indigence in which Weicker fount it. A courageous governor would have insisted on lowering government overhead. Columnist Don Pesci writing in the journal inquirer in Manchester conn., tells the Story a according to a recent Survey by the National governors association government spending in the new England states is expected to increase by 1.9 percent during fiscal 1993, compared to a 3.6 percent increase nationwide. Rhode Island is seeking a 18.2 Cut in spending. Connecticut under the administration of Lowell Weicker is proposing an increase in spending of 5 percent or More which along with new Hampshire is the largest increase in new the figure of 5 percent by the Way is wrong. It is closer to 6 percent Weicker has done nothing substantial to diminish the Powers of those binding arbitrators who find almost As a routine for the unions. The two devices by which the Weicker administration has accomplished any apparent economies on prospective expenditures have been Mickey mouse postponing payments to pension funds a which Aren t reductions m spending As the state is bound to make up these payments and Rej eggering at the expense of villages and towns some of the expenses regularly handled by the state government. Linder the dispensation of Weicker Hartford now has an extra $2 billion taken from Connecticut citizens by a Brand new tax but Hartford decreases the distribution of taxes that flowed Back to the towns and villages that sent that Money to Hartford. A states see Connecticut business As Ripe for picking was a recent headline in the new Yore times. Indeed. A Little More courage from Connecticut a governor and the state will he As devastated As Massachusetts which harbours the John f. Kennedy Library foundation. The foundation needed to look no farther than across the River to Boston to find authentic courage in gov. William Weld who might just Rescue Massachusetts from the Fate of gov. Michael Dukakis whose courage got him the democratic nomination for president of the party of Teddy Kennedy champions which has been vilified by the overwhelming majority of the voters of America ewer since 1980. Junu Owal prs Risi a a
