DON'T SPEND TAX DOLLARS ON AL SHARPTON

Supporting bigotry is misuse of funds: If Missouri taxpayers were asked to pay the speaking fee for former KKK leader David Duke, the state would be in an uproar. Then why are we paying for Al Sharpton to speak at the Black Expo in St. Louis? That's right, the University of Missouri-Columbia is forking over $4,000 to bring Big Al to St. Louis so he can speak on how agitation can be used to spark economic development.

Al Sharpton is everything wrong with the racial issue in this nation. He goes by the title of Reverend, but I question strongly if this is a man of God. Al Sharpton is a bigot and a dissident whose sole purpose is division, not unity. He was called in to St. Louis last month to lead a highway protest over minority contractors after organizers were having difficulty drawing a crowd. Poor Al's reputation wasn't quite strong enough since only 300 of the predicted 100,000 showed that day.

Remember Sharpton from the Brawley case in New York a few years back? Tina Brawley was a young black girl who claimed police raped her and drew racial slurs on her body. Sharpton was the first to her side -- just in time for the television cameras to roll. Sharpton told the media he had proof that Brawley was telling the truth and he would defend her to the death.

Well, when Ms. Brawley later told officials she made up the story to avoid punishment for staying out late, good ol' Al would have nothing of that. He refused to alter his stance in court and was fined for his outright lies.

Sharpton is a product of the New York media. He is a professional agitator who displays public contempt for all things white. He is nothing short of the black equivalent of David Duke, but in our double-standard society, he is courted by the liberals.

I personally don't want a darned penny of my tax dollars paying any fee for Al Sharpton. Nor David Duke. If the Black Expo wants Sharpton, they can find another way to pay his paltry fee. Maybe they can use blackmail against the highway contractors to generate his fee, similar to what our state government did to end the non-blockade.

Sharpton can go home and stay home. His attempt to divide American society is tired and stale. His '60s rhetoric is a throwback to an era of racial conflict that will return if we allow his brand of politics to gain validity. Go home, Al! -- Michael Jensen, Standard Democrat, Sikeston

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Wages of sin: U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright recently ordered President Clinton to pay a fine of $90,686 for his false and misleading answers about Monica Lewinsky in his deposition for the Paula Jones case. The fine is an unprecedented penalty against a president. In April, when she held Clinton in contempt, Judge Wright said she would order him to pay for depositions and other costs that resulted from his false testimony.

Wright's order says, "Sanctions are being imposed, not only to deter others who might consider emulating the president's misconduct, but to compensate the plaintiff by requiring that the president pay her any reasonable fees and expenses caused by his willful failure to obey this court's discovery orders." Clinton's lawyers had argued that he should pay no more than $44,737 to lawyers who represented Jones. Those attorneys asked for nearly $500,000. As part of the fine, Judge Wright ordered Clinton to pay the court $1,202 for her trip to Washington at his request to oversee the deposition. The fine can be paid by Clinton's legal defense fund.

Taking Sudan seriously: Sens. Brownback (R-Kan.), Lieberman (D-Conn.), and Frist (R-Tenn.) have introduced the Sudan Peace Act. The bill would condemn gross violations of human rights in Sudan. It also supports keeping the president's sanctions on Sudan until the factions there make substantial progress toward peace. To that end, it gives the secretary of state clear authority to work for renewed peace negotiations.

A war of ethnic cleansing has been going on in Sudan for 16 years, displacing over four million people and killing nearly two million-more dead than from the wars in Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia and Chechnya combined. Christians face brutal persecution from the Sudanese government. The government has been forcing women and children into slavery and bombing civilian hospitals, schools, and religious centers. Last year the government created a famine, and 100,000 people died.

Politics captivates justice: A memo dated June 4 that the Department of Justice inadvertently released shows how politicized things there have become, according to columnist Bob Novak. In the memo, the department's task force on campaign finance lists some long-dormant cases that could embarrass President Clinton as "ongoing" while classifying the probe of an inquiry into a major fixer of illegal Chinese campaign contributions as "inactive." When an investigation is listed as "ongoing", congressional investigators like House Government Reform Committee chairman Dan Burton (R-Ind.) cannot question those targeted by it. "Ongoing" cases include an investigation of charges that former Democratic national chairman Don Fowler falsely denied getting White House access for businessman Roger Tamraz in exchange for campaign contributions. Nothing has been heard about this case for nearly two years. Another "ongoing" case is an investigation into the Lippo Group, the Asian conglomerate that poured big money into the 1996 Clinton campaign. That investigation has been forestalled by a Justice proceding that shows no progress. After Chairman Burton saw a copy of the memo, he said, "The attorney general was blocking for the president, to keep us from holding hearings."

Meanwhile, under pending inactive investigations" the memo lists the case of Liu Chao Ying, the daughter of a highly influential Chinese general. She was the top aerospace official who brought Clinton fund-raiser Johnny Chung into high-level official circles in Bejing, just as she was involved in trying to fix up China's missile technology. The House and Senate Judiciary Committees need to get to the bottom of these strange actions at Justice. -- Washington Update

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Inheriting headaches: Those likely to pay the hightest estate tax rates are those with medium-sized inheritances. These are passed down from owners of small businesses and family farms who amass wealth during their lifetimes through hard work and thrift. Because such wealth is often unexpected, these people may not be aware of or take full advantage of ways to reduce taxes. Incontrast, the very rich who have inherited their wealth plan ways to mitigate the death tax through careful estate planning.

We have estimated that if the federal estate tax were eliminated in 1999, then by the year 2010:

* Annual GDP would be $117.3 billion, or 0.9 percent above what it would be with the tax.

* The stock of U.S. capital would be higher by almost $1.5 trillion, or 4.1 percent above the baseline.

* Between 1999 and 2008, the economy would have produced $700 billion more in GDP than otherwise. -- Gary and Aldona Robbins, Institute for Policy Innovation

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$8.61 -- Average monthly rate for basic cable subscription in 1983.

$27.43 -- Average monthly rate for basic cable subscription in 1998.

70 -- The percentage of local television-news stories that are one minute or less in length

43 -- The percentage of local television-news stories that are 30 seconds or less in length

~Gary Rust is president of Rust Communications, which owns the Southeast Missourian and other newspapers.