Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 100, Ed. 1 Monday, April 27, 1992 Page: 2 of 10
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1
2—THE NEWS-TELEGRAM, Sulphur Springs, Taras, Monday, April 27.1 >92
Taxes shouldn't pay
for the Chicago flood
Perhaps had something like it happened in Sulphur
Springs, the viewpoint would be different. But it doesn’t
seem right some how that federal tax dollars are being
requested — and likely will be given — to the city of
Chicago to help the recovery from the recent flooding of the
central business district.
There was, of course, a breach in a wall that separated the
Chicago River from an antique network of utility tunnels*
and basements. In some cases there was as much as 40 feet
of water in basements and sub-basements under downtown
Chicago. It pretty much shut the city down for a time. The
area was without electricity and telephone service. The sub-
ways couldn’t operate. Businesses were closed^*
This was no act of nature. There wasn’t an earthquake, nor
a tornado, nor did high winds push monster waves off lake
Michigan and into those basements. This first involved a
contractor working in the Chicago River. Then it came out
that city officials had been advised several weeks earlier
about a crack in the underground tunnel wall that eventually
gave way. A repair tlfat would have cost the city maybe
$10,000 a couple of weeks agoirow will cost millions of
dollars in repairs and recovery costs.
It has already been described as the worst tragedy for
Chicago since the great fire.
Yes, the money has to come from somewhere. If insurance
claims are approved, it could wipe out some companies.
There no doubt will be years of court actions. But is it the
responsibility of the entire nation to help pay for some very
expensive mistakes by a few individuals?
Will the federal government pay for some of our mistakes
on a smaller scale? Somehow, we doubt it. But there are a
lot more votes in Chicago than in most towns and cities of
the nation. So you can bet the help will be sent there.
You wondered...
We went looking
On April the 19th there was a fire
alarm that went off at Tapp's
Furniture. The fire department found
out that all it was was the roof was
leaking from all the rain. What I’m
wanting to know is why they called
out volunteer firemen and had paid
firemen, that we the taxpayers pay,
down there getting water from some-
body’s building because the roof was
leaking. I don't think that the roof on
my house was leaking that I could
call the fire department and they’d
come down here and get it out. And
also I’ve noticed when they do have
a fire in this town that the paid fire-
men drive die trucks and pretty much
just watch as the volunteers do all the
work.
No initials
("If someone has an emergency,
the fire department will help in any
way it can," according to City
Manager Olen Petty. Jerry Bolding,
the fire marshal, adds, "We are an
emergency service. We go and do
what we can. That was a judgment
call. We left some of our equipment
down there - tarps - to cover the
furniture. We did not have the capa-
bility to prevent further damage."
Bolding added, "This happens
maybe once a year, it is not a big
issue. We are here to protect proper-
ty. If there was damage going on, we
would come out and help (anyone) in
the best way we can."
Fire protection in Sulphur Springs
is provided by a trained volunteer
fire department. Paid firemen are
assigned primarily as drivers and
equipment operators. Ed.)
You sure messed up on the Public
Speaks, April 21st. Either I didn’t
speak very plain or someone wasn’t
paying any attention. The piece did
not make any sense whatsoever. I
will hang up and try again. Would
you please print it as I spoke it and
not leave any out? Thanks.
Your original comment did prove
unusually difficult to hear clearly.
However, with the exception of one
word, we find your observation was
accurately expressed. Most com-
ments are edited Ed.)
In response to the interview with
the taxidermist in Wednesday’s
News-Telegram, I think it is idiotic
that something like that can make the
front page.
C.C., Sulphur Springs
I am more than a little weary of
hearing how a Hopkins County jury
found Ricky Dale Thomas guilty of a
crime he obviously did not commit.
Don’t blame the jury, for I doubt they
ever heard the evidence from
California.
J.C., Sulphur Springs
Tllfei/Opinion Page •••• Ours, Yours, Theirs
Bush talks, but doesn't act
The Public Speaks
We would like to thank J. Sanders
of the police department and the
wonderful people/who assisted us
when we were in a collison Thursday
at the intersection of North Davis and
Houston. Your helpfulness was great-
ly appreciated.
Donna and children
• i V nMliU*', C C'< ..
I agree with John Heilman's
response. If renters paid taxes to the
school district, maybe all the rest of
us could pay our taxes and wouldn't
be so heavily burdened. It's hard
when you have to pay for all the oth-
er district's kids to be educated. I
believe we should spread out the bur-
den of taxing on every one, not just a
few homeowners and landowners
and businessowners. Maybe if we did
that our illustrious school district
would not have to feel the need to
publish a page-full ad in the paper,
further wasting our tax dollars, on
who hasn't paid their tax dollars. We
know who hasn't paid them, it's all
the renters in the county. Let's change
this law.
TJ., Sulphur Springs
(Aside to "very disappointed in the
newspaper": We have been unable to
trace your references. Perhaps you'd
like to call Mike in the news depart-
ment. We'd need your name, but
you're not afraid to give that, are
you? Ed.)
To add your comment,
idea or observation, call
The Public Speaks
at 885-8578
■ If George Bush really
cared about solving the
domestic problems he’s
now finally talking about,
there are a whole range of
things he could be doing
— right now!
The Oval Office seems empty
these days, which leaves us with a
nagging question: Is our president in
there?
Every now and then, we hear one
of President Bush’s speeches,
promising us leadership on a problem
du jour — health care, jobs, educa-
tion. These speeches tend to happen
right after he gets a bad poll.
Then we sit and wait for sorfle-
thing to happen — and eventually
something does. We get another
speech about how nothing is happen-
ing. and it’s all Congress’ fault.
That, of course, is pure bushtalk —
inspired by motives that are political,
not presidential. And that's too bad
for us all.
If George Bush really cared about
solving the domestic problems he’s
now finally talking about, there are a
whole range of things he could be
doing — right now! — to accomplish
his staled goals in ways true to his
stated policies and principles. They
are ideas that are being pushed by
some of the smartest thinkers inside
and outside the Beltway. Some of
them are conservative ideologues,
such as the thinkers at the Heritage
Foundation, others are centrist prag-
matists. But they have this much in
common — they are serious about
solving our domestic problems with
leadership and action. That is what
sets them apart from our president.
For example: health care. For three
years, Bush said and did nothing to
solve our health-care crisis, as he
heeded the advice of his former
White House chief-of-cynicism. John
Sununu convinced him that the only
way to avoid criticism was to take no
actio'n. Bush saw the truth, the light
and the way only when his former
Attorney General Dick Thornburgh’s
own say-nothing, do-nothing
approach to health care cost him a
Martin
Schram
Pennsylvania Senate election that
had seemed a cinch. Bush’s pollster
warned it could happen to a presi-
dent, too.
All the while, 35 million people
without health insurance continued to
be at risk — many saw illnesses
wipe out their life’s savings. Many of
these uninsured were working folks
whose misfortune was that their jobs
were in very small businesses that
'just didn’t have the leverage or
wherewithal to negotiate the sort of
reasonably priced health policies
larger companies can arrange.
Two months ago, Bush decided to
solve his problem on health care, so
If.
he gave a speech proposing a modest
plan. He urged the creation of local
pools to purchase health insurance
for the self-employed or small-busi-
ness-employed at reasonable rates.
But then he did nothing to follow up.
Consider what he cquld have done
— on his own, without waiting for
Congress. He could have convened a
series of regional summits — attend-
ed by mayors, chamber of commerce
reps and small business employers
— and simply established local
health-care purchasing organizations.
He could have told his Cabinet sec-
retaries and their assistants to provide
the advice and expertise — this
would cost us nothing; we’re paying
their salaries now and all they do is
advise each other. Millions who are
today uninsured could have health
insurance.
For school children, a large portion
of the uninsured, Bush could have
implemented a school-based, health-
coverage effort, setting up insurance
purchasing pools to bring coverage
to kids.
These are ways that a conserva-
tive-but-caring president could have
used his big stick and bully pulpit to
mobilize the private sector for prob-
lem-solving action — in health care,
education, housing, even crime con-
trol in inner cities.
Conservative think-tankers regu-
larly call for such bold initiatives to
solve our problems. So does Jack
Kemp, the under-used Secretary of
Housing and Urban Development,
who could have made things happen
as supercabinet domestic-policy czar,
which is what congressional
Republicans urged months ago.
A few years ago, a promising new
leader had another term for such pri-
vate-sector acts of public policy. He
called it “1,000 points of light.”
But that requires a pilot light — a
flicker of leadership inside the Oval
Office.
(Q1992 NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN
WHAT 00 WU
THINK?... AFTBt AU.
THE RECENT SCANCHIS,
SHOULP WE AKV
THIS YEAR?...
FDR
RE-ELECTION,
OR FDR
joeas??'.
K
in
Welcome to the notorious 'Beltway*
■ Highway 495 is a 64-
mile highway, it is eight
lanes wide, it connects 38
intersections, and it serves
a regional population of
3.5 million.
WASHINGTON (NEA) — If they
say it once before November, they
will say it 100 gadzillion times. The
candidates who are running against
the nation’s capital this election year
will refer to the U.S. seat of govern-
ment as being “inside the Beltway,”
at “the Beltway Republic,” where the
“Beltway sovereignty” rules.
Most people will probably under-
stand the disparaging drift. But many
will be confounded about the
specifics of the geographic reference.
What is the cursed Beltway anyhow?
Politicians, as usual, will be talking
past those who are not in the know,
confirming that they suffer them-
selves from the “Beltway mentality.”
The Beltway is Interstate Highway
495, which circumscribes
Washington and its immediate sub-
urbs. The artery runs in a rough cir-
cle through Maryland and Virginia,
and envelops most of the area’s fed-
Tom
Tiede
eral apparatus. Thesuggestion is that
the people and the ideas within the
line are isolated from the rest of
America.
The confusion here is that the
word “beltway” is a local invention.
The interstates that girdle other cities
are known by other names. The high-
way around Atlanta is called the
“Perimeter,” the road around
Houston is the “Loop”; the only oth-
er major so-called “Beltway" in the
nation is the one that circles
Baltimore.
And yes, it’s a silly name. It’s also
a fatuously-embroidered political
pejorative. There are 2.2 million peo-
ple residing inside the Capital
Beltway, of which about 650,000 live
in Washington itself; the majority of
them have nothing to do with gov-
ernment. and it’s safe to assume they
don’t like the bureaucracy either.
Ron Kirby is a transportation spe-
cialist with the Washington,
Maryland and Virginia Council of
Governments. He keeps the
Beltway’s history and statistics. He
says the route was originally pro-
posed in the 1920s, back when the
capital was little more than a sleepy
southern village, and the interstate
highway system was not yet a real
notion.
Naturally, it took some years of
debate to get the construction started.
Thirty, or thereabouts. Some said
there should be a series of “ring
roads” radiating out from the White
House. That was dismissed in favor
of a single “cross-county loop."
Finally, a $190 million circumferen-
tial “bypass" got underway in 1955.
Alas, the early going was bumpy.
The first portion of the “Intercounty
Belt Freeway” was completed in
1957, and then subsequently tom up
for not complying with the interstate
standards. The name was changed to
the “Capitol Beltway” in 1959; and
then changed again in 1960, one final
time, to the “Capital Beltway.”
The four-lane road was completed
in 1964. It was determined then to be
too narrow, and it took 25 more years
to double the width. Today, the 64-
mile highway is eight-lanes wide, it
connects 38 intersections, it serves a
A look at the other side of pro-life ads
I don’t see anything wrong with a
convict getting a 4-bow furlough to
visit his mother. He did not kill any-
body while he was gone.
B.B.
■ To counter TV com-
mercials favoring adop-
tion rather than abortion,
some Madison Avenue
wunderkind could create
an equally compelling ad.
There’s a commercial running on
several cable TV networks, and it
always puts a batch in my throat
when I see it It’s a moving portray-
al of a young couple going to a hos-
pital to pick up the infant they're
adopting. As the nugse puts the
baby into the mother’s arms, the
look the actress gives the actor
playing her husband is exquisite, a
joy almost beyond her belief.
The ad’s narrator congratulates all
the mothers who, “decided, instead
of abortion, to tough it out and
bring their babies into the world”
He adds: “To all these mothers,
families who adopted these children
want to My thanks." As the narrator
users his last line, the text also
appears in a graphic on the screen:
“LaSt. What a beautiful choice.”
A companion ad features little
Sarah
Overstreet
children in Halloween costumes and
school uniforms, and describes
them as “unplanned pregnancies
that could have ended in abortion ”
Both are sponsored by the Arthur S.
De Moss Foundation, which was
founded in 1955 by an evangelical
Christian insurance executive. The
De Moss Foundation refuses to give
interviews, but Adweek magazine
estimates the cost of the campaign
at $20 million, according to The
New York Times.
After initially running the ads.
cable companies CNBC and
Lifetime decided to stop running
them. CNBC, a news and informa-
tion network, said it later decided it
would only run the ads if they car-
ried visual and audio disclaimers
stating the spots were sponsored
information. Lifetime, a network
featuring programs aimed at wom-
en, told the Times only that the deci-
sion to stop airing the commercials
was “a business issue.”
The ad is very effective, a great
example of the advertiser’s craft If
an organization wanted to portray
an unplanned-pregnancy scenario
that didn't end as perfectly as the
De Moss ads. I'm sure some
Madison Avenue wunderkind could
create an equally compelling ad:
A teen-age girl frdm an abusive
family becomes pregnant by a boy
who doesn’t want her or the child.
She is terrified and confused and
abortion isn’t an option. As the
pregnancy progresses, counselors
urge her to choose adoption, but not
only does she begin to feel she can’t
part with her baby, she starts to see
the child as something that makes
her important, finally, if only for a
short while.
We cut to scores of the mother
and her 2-vear-old. who then
becomes a 7-year-old. and then a
young teen. The cycle.of poverty
and abuse continue through this
generation, and as yean go by the
mother becomes no more equipped
lo care for her child than she was as
a frightened teenager The new teen
mother is shown nurturing her child
as she was nurtured: screaming, hit-
ting, belittling and degrading him.
If the'ad writers get really cre-
ative, they might borrow from the
real-life case chronicled in HBO’s
documentary “Child of Rage.”
Here, a little girl was starved, beat-
en and raped before she was adopt-
ed at the age of 19 months. By the
time she was 6. she had to be
locked in her room to prevent her
from harming her family. She tor-
tured animals, molested her brother
and thought of killing her adoptive
parents.
Every time I see the De Moss ads
I expect my throat to catch. There’s
no way I can watch that mother
hold that baby and look up at the
father without being moved. But
those rosy ads won’t stop me from
seeing the other scenario as just as
real.
Unless we can force women to
give up babies they aren’t equipped
to care for, we can’t guarantee hap-
py endings for unplanned babies
Without that guarantee, there is no *
way I could tell another woman
what to do about her pregnancy.
(01992 NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN
regional population of 3.5 million,
and it is one of the most traveled
roadways in the country.
Kirby says a total of 700,000 vehi-
cles are on the Beltway each day.
That figures out to 8 million vehicle
miles every 24 hours. Heavily-used
sections of the road have absorbed up
to 230,000 motor Carriers a day. The
national record in this glum regard is
300,000 per day on the 12-lane Santa
Monica Freeway in Los Angeles.
THE CROWDS, of course, have
affected vehicular speed. When it
gets down to where the rubber meets
the road, the Beltway is often a very
slow go. Kirby says the average
speed fell from 53 mph to 46 mph in
the 1980s, and, during the inter-
minable rush hours, the pace on the
slowest segments is from 10 to 35
mph.
Sometimes there is no speed at all
on one of the segments. That is the
5,900-foot Woodirow Wilson Bridge.
It is a drawspan that joins Maryland
and Virginia across the Potomac
River, and it’s said to be the worst
highway bottleneck from Maine td
Florida. As many as 180,000 cars
cross it daily, if they cross it at all. ’
The federal authorities have com-
plained for years about the jams at
the bridge. But, happily, they can’t do
a lot about it. The Beltway and the
bridge belong to the state govern-
ments alone, where the feeling is that
if the members of Congress had any
oversight authority in this case, they
would rope off a lane for themselves.
The jurisdictional limitation has
not stopped the federals altogether,
however. They have at least adopted
the Beltway for political purpose.
Ronald Reagan once said the deal-
ings inside the boundary were “un-
American,” and all of the presidential
candidates this, year have railed
against “Beltwayblundering”
It’s interesting that many of those
who are making the complaints live
here themselves. And all of them
want to. Patrick Buchanan was bom
“inside” the Beltway, before there
was a Bdtway; and George Bush has
spent most of iis life either residing
alongside or t king marching orders
from the Beltway beau monde
At any rate, hie complainants may
eventually ha s to think up another
denigration for the city. The days of
Beltway rhetor ic are numbered. Ron
Kirby says the region is planning a
second bypass around Washington,
some distance from the present loop,
and so those who live outside the old
Beltway will then live inside the new,
and. well, it may be easier to dump
the whole business.
•(01992 NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN
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Keys, Clarke. Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 100, Ed. 1 Monday, April 27, 1992, newspaper, April 27, 1992; Sulphur Springs, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth817372/m1/2/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Hopkins County Genealogical Society.