Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 109, No. 213, Ed. 1 Sunday, March 3, 2013 Page: 12 of 40
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12A
Sunday, March 3, 2013
OPINION
Denton Record-Chronicle
Denton Record-Chronicle
Published by Denton Publishing Co.,
a subsidiary of A.H. Belo Corporation
MEDIA COMPANY
Founded from weekly newspapers,
the Denton Chronicle, established in 1882,
and the Denton Record, established 1897.
Published daily as the Denton
Record-Chronicle since Aug. 3,1903.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Bill Patterson
Publisher and CEO
Dawn Cobb
Managing Editor
Matthew Zabel
City Editor
Les Cockrell
Region Editor
Mark Finley
News Editor
PAST PUBLISHERS
William C. “Will” Edwards
1903-1927
Robert J. “Bob” Edwards
1927-1945
Riley Cross
1945-1970
Vivian Cross
1970-1986
Fred Patterson
1986-1999
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Editorial
Where’s the
disconnect?
■ t is good news that the extension of FM2499 from
I State Highway 121 North to Denton Creek is being
I funded through a partnership of the Texas Depart-
ment of Transportation, the Regional Transportation
Council and Denton County.
We’ve traversed FM2499 quite a few times ourselves
with its easy access through major shopping centers and
as a quick pathway into the Dallas/Fort Worth
International Airport.
The collaborative effort to find $90 million to ear-
mark for the project suggests a successful funding mech-
anism for getting roads built.
But we’ve noticed a bit of a disconnect with how some
projects see the light of day and other projects become
runners up in the “Mrs. Road to Be Built” competition.
For instance, FM2181 carries a lot of traffic from
Denton into Corinth and is in an area of the county
where some of the highest growth has occurred in the
past decade.
As houses and businesses have gone up, so too has the
traffic congestion. Then we added a high school, more
houses and more businesses.
We’d suggest the collaborative team take a road trip
one day soon and traverse that stretch of FM2181 in the
mornings, around 3:30 p.m. and again in the evening.
It might serve to make the team more aware of the
issues that quite a few of our residents experience on
their daily trips to and from work, home and school.
And it might remind them to think again before
bumping FM2181 or other projects in northern Denton
County down a notch to allow another road to go first.
We realize construction bids for FM2181 are antici-
pated to be let this May.
However, this project has been on the “to do” list for
quite some time.
Another example is U.S. Highway 380 — long known
as a potentially dangerous trek west. However, the Wise
County portion of the road is finished and carries traffic
smoothly through Decatur. It has made the Denton
County portion look antiquated at best. And yes, we
know that project is in the lineup as well.
Our point, in short, is that in northern Denton
County, we see a lot of roads built or rebuilt in southern
Denton County and in our neighboring counties both
east and west. Yet, somehow, we are still working on get-
ting the same roads widened more than a decade later.
Our question is simple: Where is the disconnect,
who’s responsible and how can we get that fixed?
Tehran gridlock a problem
M A #ith the United States locked in
llu confrontation with Iran, was it
W W good or bad for diplomacy that
Argo, a movie about U.S. spies getting the
best of the Iranians, won this year’s
Academy Award for best picture?
Depends on whom you ask. To Iran’s
government, Argo was nothing more than
anti-Iranian propa-
ganda — “an adver-
tisement for the
CIA,” according to
the state-run televi-
sion network — not
to mention that the
Oscar, suspiciously
enough, was award-
ed by Michelle Oba-
ma.
But to young Iran-
ians who have
watched the movie on bootleg DVDs, Argo
has been an opportunity to view the
hostage crisis of 1979 and 1980 through
American eyes for the first time.
“Argo has forced people in Iran to con-
front a very ugly episode in their past, and
that’s probably a good thing,” says John W.
Limbert, one of the 52 American hostages
who didn’t get smuggled out of the country
by the CIA and spent more than a year
imprisoned in Tehran.
That strange mix of good news and bad
news runs across the rest of the tangled
U.S.-Iranian relationship as well.
Iran, the United States and five other big
powers recently held a new round of talks
over Iran’s nuclear program.
The United States and its allies present-
ed a proposal for a modest relaxation of the
economic sanctions (which have driven
inflation in Iran above 30 percent) if
Tehran agrees to stop enriching uranium to
a high grade, ship any highly enriched
nuclear fuel out of the country and close a
once-secret uranium enrichment plant.
Iran didn’t buy it, but the mere fact that
Iranian diplomats agreed to discuss limits
on nuclear enrichment — something their
government has insisted is an untouchable
right — was a step in the right direction.
Even before the talks began, Iran made a
series of contradictory moves. It continued
to enrich uranium toward the level that
would be useful for nuclear weapons, but
then announced that it had converted
some of that uranium to reactor fuel, which
isn’t easily converted for military use.
It announced that it was installing a new
generation of centrifuges to enrich urani-
um, but it put them at a plant that it has
opened to United Nations inspections in
the past.
“I wouldn’t say it’s clear progress,” said
Limbert, who spent 22 more years as a U.S.
diplomat after he was released from
Tehran and helped direct U.S.-Iran policy
during the Obama administration’s first
term. “It’s more like walking around in cir-
cles.”
That may be as much as we can expect
right now, given the political gridlock in
Tehran and Washington, along with the
domestic pressure on politicians in both
countries to sound tough instead of weak.
Iran is in the early stage of a presidential
campaign, with an election scheduled for
June 14; nobody expects any Iranian politi-
cian to make significant concessions to the
West before then.
Iran has bureaucratic politics in its gov-
ernment as well. Leaders of the radical
Revolutionary Guard regularly denounce
the idea of negotiations with foreign pow-
ers, leaving diplomats such as Mohammad
Khazaee, Iran’s ambassador to the United
Nations, to reassure foreign olficials that
they didn’t really mean it.
And at the top of the system is Iran’s
supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a
still-young 73, bitterly anti-American,
devoted to the Islamic Revolution and, as a
clerical politician, famous for being indeci-
sive.
Not the ingredients you’d choose for a
complicated set of negotiations.
Is there a way forward?
“It’s important to start small, and use
small steps to build trust,” said Thomas
Pickering, a former top State Department
official who has engaged in unoliicial talks
with Iran.
Don’t shoot for big, splashy agreements
with Tehran — that just gives opponents on
both sides something to shoot at. Besides,
the idea of a grand bargain with the United
States appears to make Khamenei nervous.
The pattern of the last few months, in
which Iran has made encouraging moves
outside formal negotiations, may offer a
lesson. “Don’t ever insist that they make
concessions publicly,” said Limbert. “They
may take steps that we like, but they’re
never going to admit that they did it under
pressure.”
Above all, said Limbert, “don’t give up.
It’s not going to work the first time.”
The second half of 2013 may turn out to
be a promising window for diplomacy with
Iran. The Iranian presidential election will
be over. The U.S. presidential election is
already over. Iran’s action in converting
enriched uranium to nonmilitary reactor
fuel has reduced pressure from Israel for
immediate action.
At that point, the biggest danger may be
political gridlock in Tehran, abetted by
indecisive leaders who hesitate to embrace
a grand bargain in the face of pressure
from their zealous followers. Sound famil-
iar?
DOYLE MCMANUS is a columnist for
the Los Angeles Times. His column is dis-
tributed by MCT Information Services.
Doyle
McManus
Letters to the editor
This day in history: March 3
Today is Sunday, March 3,
the 62nd day of 2013. There
are 303 days left in the year.
On March 3, 1931, “The
Star-Spangled Banner” became
the national anthem of the
United States as President
Herbert Hoover signed a con-
gressional resolution.
In 1845, Florida became the
27th state.
In 1849, the U.S. Depart-
ment of the Interior was estab-
lished.
In 1863, President Abraham
Lincoln signed a measure cre-
ating the National Academy of
Sciences.
In 1894, British Prime Min-
ister William Gladstone sub-
mitted his resignation to
Queen Victoria, ending his
fourth and final premiership.
In 1913, more than 5,000
suffragists marched down
Pennsylvania Avenue in Wash-
ington, D.C., a day before the
presidential inauguration of
Woodrow Wilson.
In 1923, Time magazine,
founded by Briton Hadden and
Henry R. Luce, made its debut.
In 1943, in London’s East
End, 173 people died in a crush
of bodies at the Bethnal Green
tube station, which was being
used as a wartime air raid shel-
ter.
In 1945, the Allies fully
secured the Philippine capital
of Manila from Japanese forces
during World War II.
In 1969, Apollo 9 blasted off
from Cape Kennedy on a mis-
sion to test the lunar module.
In 1974, a Turkish Airlines
DC-10 crashed shortly after
takeolf from Orly Airport in
Paris, killing all 346 people on
board.
In 1991, motorist Rodney
King was severely beaten by
Los Angeles police olficers in a
scene captured on amateur
video. Twenty-five people were
killed when a United Airlines
Boeing 737-200 crashed while
approaching the Colorado
Springs airport.
In 1993, health pioneer
Albert Sabin, developer of the
oral polio vaccine, died in
Washington, D.C., at age 86.
— The Associated Press
Grinning apparition
Evil lurks everywhere. It is constantly
tempting all of us. We see it on the video
screen daily, but most of us are not aware
that Evil sits on everyone’s shoulder,
attempting to possess us.
And Evil trades power, or beauty, or
obscene wealth — for what Christians call a
man’s soul.
A man I know was a skeptic until the
early hours of Sept. 11, 2001.
When the second plane dumped its load
of jet fuel into the second tower and the
smoke erupted and billowed out of the tow-
ers.
While the cataclysm in New York bel-
lowed in anguish — a horrible-looking
head began emerging from the devastation.
The apparition was not unlike that illus-
trated in much art; except it was much ugli-
er and sinister, grinning in a foreboding,
evil way — as if to convey a glimpse of that
SUBMISSIONS
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to come.
What has happened to America since
that day?
Larry Jambor,
Denton
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Labor no
exception
to rules of
economics
^^^resident Barack Obama and
■^Democrats in Congress want to raise
the minimum wage to improve the
lot of the working poor. But they’ve got the
wrong idea. The problem is not that these
workers earn so little; it’s that the things
they buy cost so much. I propose instead to
outlaw high prices.
No one, after all, likes paying too much.
So let’s put a stop to
it. Gas is too expen-
sive? Make it $2 a
gallon, max. Bread
and meat take a big
bite out of the family
budget? Poor people
could eat better if
they had to pay only
$1 a loaf and $1 a
pound.
Clothing, foot-
wear, cars, you name
it — if the government held their cost
down, life would be more affordable for
low-income workers.
In his State of the Union address, the
president said, “Tonight, let’s declare that in
the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who
works full time should have to live in pover-
ty, and raise the federal minimum wage to
$9 an hour.”
He might just as well say that no one
should have to spend too much of their
income on essentials. So why not limit the
cost of those essentials?
Those acquainted with the laws of eco-
nomics will immediately spot the flaw with
my idea. When the price of something falls,
demand for it rises, but supply does not. If
you tell oil companies what they can charge
for gasoline, they will reduce the amount
they sell, creating shortages.
Likewise, if you put a price ceiling on
bread and milk, or shirts and shoes, con-
sumers will buy more of them, but stores
will stock less of them — or, if the price is
low enough, none.
We all know we’re more likely to go shop-
ping when there’s a big sale going on.
Retailers don’t try to entice customers by
announcing price increases. The more
expensive something is, the less people will
buy.
But those pushing for a higher minimum
wage pretend that labor is an exception to
the rule. The administration can point to a
few economists who claim to show that
raising the minimum wage doesn’t raise
unemployment among low-paid workers.
Dean Baker and John Schmitt of the
Center for Economic and Policy Research
in Washington insist that when employers
are forced to pay higher wages, they reap
large benefits, in the form of higher produc-
tivity and lower turnover.
This is the liberal equivalent of the con-
servative belief that tax cuts always pay for
themselves. Anything so ideologically con-
venient just has to be true.
But if businesses came out ahead by
increasing pay at the bottom, they wouldn’t
have to be forced into it. They would act on
their own, in the relentless pursuit of prof-
its. Instead, many employers have calculat-
ed — based on real-world experience meet-
ing payrolls and competing with rivals —
that higher pay for entry-level workers is
not a free lunch.
Raising the minimum wage may indeed
raise average worker productivity — not by
inducing existing workers to work harder
or smarter, but by inducing companies to
get rid of less productive workers. If you
raise the floor from $7.25 an hour to $9,
employees whose work output is less than
$9 an hour will be let go.
Saying that a higher minimum wage
would increase productivity is like saying
that banning anyone under 6-foot-10 will
make NBA players taller. It will, but not
because anyone will grow.
Even the famously liberal Nobel laureate
economist Paul Krugman has pointed out
these realities. On the blog EconLog, econ-
omist David Henderson of Stanford’s
Hoover Institution cites a 1998 article in
which Krugman ridiculed those who “very
much want to believe that the price of labor
— unlike that of gasoline, or Manhattan
apartments — can be set based on consid-
erations of justice, not supply and demand,
without unpleasant side effects.”
Obama argues for an increase by saying
no one who works full time should remain
poor. One fact he doesn’t mention is that
the great majority of people who earn the
minimum wage are not poor. More often,
they’re middle-class teenagers.
Another likelihood, which he denies, is
that while some workers will go from $7.25
an hour to $9 an hour, others will go from
$7.25 an hour to zero.
They won’t be poor despite working full
time. They’ll be poor because they’re unem-
ployed.
Maybe this won’t happen because the
laws of supply and demand will be sus-
pended. But would you want to bet your job
on it?
STEVE CHAPMANS column is
distributed by Creators Syndicate Inc.
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Cobb, Dawn. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 109, No. 213, Ed. 1 Sunday, March 3, 2013, newspaper, March 3, 2013; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1102379/m1/12/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .