Bipartisan consensus is good start for session

Hooray! Gov. Bob Holden and Republican legislative leaders have agreed on a consensus revenue estimate for fiscal year 2005 which begins July 1.

Congratulations to all involved on this bipartisan step. This will give state officials an initial base number upon which to work through the budget process, which includes an agreement by all parties to re-evaluate the situation in April after the revenue collection from March, traditionally a big collection month.

The agreed number is over $160 million more revenue than expected for the current fiscal year.

According to reports, the Senate and House appropriations and budget chairmen had previously agreed to the figure before Holden signed on to the consensus estimate, which is higher than his earlier figure.

I know this is a political year, but I believe the best politics for both Democrats and Republicans is to show they can govern. This is no small challenge with a tight fiscal scenario.

The opening week of bipartisan rhetoric was a good start. We'll now watch to see the tone of Holden's remarks and budget message to the joint legislative session Jan. 21.

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Incidentally that will be two days after Iowa's presidential primary caucus where Dick Gephardt's tally and ranking will have major significance to the Missouri political scene. Having Gephardt at the top of the ticket in November would generally help the Democratic ticket, while Howard Dean or others would not.

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Youth is when you're allowed to stay up late on New Year's Eve. Middle age is when you're forced to. -- Bill Vaughn

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A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other. -- Anonymous

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Every year the publisher of The Wall Street Journal publishes a report to the newspaper's worldwide readers.

In this year's remarks by Karen Elliott House there were a number of comments that I generally agreed with, including the following:

"Our philosophy: In 1951, a former editor of The Wall Street Journal, William H. Grimes, wrote an editorial entitled 'A Newspaper's Philosophy.' He wrote, 'On our editorial page, we make no pretense of walking down the middle of the road. Our comments and interpretations are made from a definite point of view. We believe in the individual, his wisdom and his decency. We oppose all infringements on individual rights, whether they stem from attempts at private monopoly, labor-union monopoly or from an overgrowing government. People will say we are conservative or even reactionary. We are not much interested in labels, but if we were to choose one, we would say we are radical.

"We have stood by this philosophy not just in the U.S. but around the world. We believe, as Ronald Reagan so eloquently said in his battle to end Soviet communism, 'We must be staunch in our conviction that freedom is not the sole prerogative of a lucky few, but the inalienable and universal right of all human beings.'

"It is also important to state clearly what our opinion pages do not represent. They are not partisan. Unlike most American newspapers, we do not endorse political candidates, and from time to time we have important disagreements with all leading political figures. We view issues through the lens of our philosophy and let our readers decide which person or party best serves to protect market capitalism and self-government. For instance, we supported what became known as the Bush tax cuts before he proposed them, and we now hail the fact that they are working to stimulate the economy just as we predicted. We also opposed the president's steel tariffs before he imposed them, and once he did so we wrote a dozen critical editorials until he lifted them.

"Our pages are not easily pigeonholed or predictable. We resist the label 'conservative,' in the sense of preserving the status quo, because we think it too confining, too devoid of the optimism inherent in trusting individual wisdom and decency. There is nothing conservative, for instance, about our repeated call for the Food and Drug Administration to speed approval of experimental drugs that might help those dying of cancer or AIDS, nor in advocating more open immigration or greater rights for women in Saudi Arabia, whose government condones husbands stealing children from discarded wives.

"Perhaps most important, The Wall Street Journal strictly separates news and views. All pages of the Journal pursue accuracy, fairness and truth. But the mission of our news pages is to inform while our opinion pages have an additional purpose: to persuade. This difference is fundamental. We work hard never to let our editorial views drive our news coverage, and I believe we succeed." -- Karen Elliott House, publisher, The Wall Street Journal

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This is English: We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes, but the plural of ox became oxen not oxes. One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese, yet the plural of moose should never be meese. You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice, yet the plural of house is houses, not hice. If the plural of man is always called men, why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen? If I spoke of my foot and showed you my feet, and I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet? If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth, why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth? Then one may be that, and three would be those, yet hat in the plural would never be hose, and the plural of cat is cats, not cose. We speak of a brother and also of brethren, but though we say mother, we never say methren. Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him, but imagine the feminine, she, shis and shim. -- Iowa Press newsletter

Gary Rust is chairman of Rust Communications.