THE PUBLIC MIND: MR. CHENEY SHOULD LOOK IN HIS OWN BACKYARD FIRST BEFORE COMPLAINING ABOUT OTHERS

To the Editor:

While reading your article concerning Dick ~Cheney's visit to Cape Girardeau, a statement he made ca~ught my eye. Mr. Cheney described President Clinton'~s budget as a "massive redistribution of wealth." This statement is indeed interesting, but somewhat hypocritical. After all, while Mr. Cheney's party was at the helm, the greatest redistribution of wealth took place during the 1980s.

Over the decade of the '80s, the increase in total salaries of middle class people in the $20~,000 to $50,000 range rose some 44 percent or an average of 4~ percent a year. According to findings by Bartlett and Steele in their book "America: What Went Wrong?" those people whose salaries totaled $200~,000 to $1 million saw an increase of 697 percent of their wages by the end of the decade. Those whose total salaries that were more than $1 million saw an increase of 2,184 percent of their wages by the end of the decade. One can also look at this phenomenon another way.

In 1959, t~he top 4 percent of wage earners (2.1 million individuals and families) earned some $~~31 billion. This amount earned by the top 4 percent equaled the amount of wages and salaries of the bottom 35 ~percent of wage earners or 18~~.3 million individuals and families. In 1989, the top 4 percent (3.~8 million individuals and families earned $452 billion in wages and salaries. This amount earned by the top 4 percent equaled the wages of the bottom 51 pe~rcent or 49.2 million individuals and families. Quite a redistribution of wea~lth, I would say. Maybe Mr. ~Cheney should look in his ~own backyard first before complaining about others.

Alex Harris

Jackson

WHAT IS IT ABOUT FLOODING IN THE YEARS ENDING IN THREES?

HeaWHAT IS IT ABOUT FLOODING IN THE YEARS ENDING IN THREES?dline:

I'm emphatically not a "numerologist" (whatever that is), but just what is it about years ending in "3", anyway? Strange, but true: An uncanny number of these years see bad flooding, either in the Upper Mississippi River Basin, the Lower Mississippi River Valley, or, as this year, in both.

Southeast Missourian archives tell us 1903 was a bad flood year, as was 1933. And as we read in this week's 50 Year Ago column, 1943 was a bad flood year, with one of the alltime high crests still marked on the river wall down along Water Street. We got passes from river flooding in '53 and '63, but one of the alltime whooper floods came in '73, when all spring it seemed the rain would never quit, nor the high waters recede. '83 saw more significant flooding. And now, '93. In my lifetime I don't recall the flood wall gates ever being closed during the month of July, with an exceptionally high flood crest (43 feet) forecast for this Friday. That's the highest crest in 10 years since '83.

Maybe it's a good thing this is the last "3" year of the century.

Recall that just five years ago this month, in 1988, we were suffering through one of the great droughts of the century, and water was so scarce that the river was closed to barge traffic for weeks.

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Speaking of the river, and traffic on it, it was great to see Downtown Cape teeming with visitors, sightseers, shoppers and restaurant goers Saturday. The arrival of the northbound Delta Queen and Mississippi Queen livened up our downtown area for several hours, from late morning to mid-afternoon. Their tourist passengers seemed genuinely delighted in what they saw, and merchants certainly were delighted to see them.

Sort of a reminder of the excitement of days gone by, when river traffic by passenger boat, now a quaint throwback, was the principal means of travel up and down the Mississippi Valley.

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Last weekend I made a quick trip to Chicago to visit family, attend a one-day meeting convened by Bill Buckley's National Review magazine and enjoy the delights of that city. One of the meeting speakers was Wisconsin State Rep. Polly Williams, a black Milwaukee Democrat and former state chairman of the presidential campaign of the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Placed on a panel with former Tennessee governor and Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander (a likely GOP presidential candidate in '96), Rep. Williams easily outshone him. She is one of the most dynamic and compelling speakers in America today.

I mention this because of something Polly Williams said regarding education, of which I am reminded by reading the Tom Eagleton column alongside here today. Polly Williams is a former welfare mother who successfully enacted Wisconsin's sweeping parental school choice measure over the fierce opposition of the state education bureaucracy, the teachers' unions and much of the news media.

Her comment, in the midst of a long tirade denouncing busing and other social engineering schemes, was simply: "I don't care a thing about integration. I want education!"

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President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore are both members of Southern Baptist congregations, the nation's largest Protestant denomination. Curiously, though, they are the first President and Vice President in recent history to not be invited to address the annual convention of Southern Baptists when that group met last month in Houston.

That meeting saw President Clinton denounced by his own church, when members attending the national Southern Baptist convention voted overwhelmingly to separate the denomination's views on abortion and homosexuality from those of the President, who favors lifting all federal restrictions on abortion and removing the military's ban on homosexuals. The resolution urged Clinton "to affirm Biblical morality in exercising his public office."

Arkansas pastor Ronnie Floyd introduced the resolution, saying it was needed to "separate ourselves as a body from Clinton's policies on critical issues that are contradictory to the word of God and what is best for America."

While hoping Clinton will change his views on both issues and saying at a news conference, "We love President Clinton; I pray for him" Southern Baptist Resolutions Committee chairman James Merritt said that the President's positions on homosexuality and abortion represent "... the most severe shift in moral perspective and policy formation of any President in history. ... We are like the father waiting for the prodigal son to come home and ready to meet him half way, and I hope that might be the case.