KINDER'S COMMENTARY: NEWT TO THE NRA: GUN CONTROL -- NOT!

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- Speaker Newt Gingrich has written the National Rifle Association promising that `no gun control legislation' will pass the House as long as he is speaker.

"... `As long as I am speaker of the House, no gun control legislation will move in committee or on the floor of the House,' Speaker Gingrich wrote in a January 27 letter to Tanya Metaska, the NRA's chief lobbyist."

Good.

This unremarkable revelation was breathlessly reported by the Washington Post Tuesday morning and carried as a major story on news wires. Americans who cherish all the Bill of Rights, and who value the Second Amendment as much as any of our other fundamental freedoms, will cheer on the speaker.

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The best forecaster

A national prize for accuracy in economic forecasting is known as the Crystal Owl award. Except for Malcolm S. "Steve" Forbes, no other forecaster has won the prestigious award more than once. Forbes, editor-in-chief of the magazine that bears his name, has won it four times. Here's what Forbes says in the Aug. 14 issue about the importance of the Republican effort to slash taxes, especially levies on capital gains:

"The state of the stock market is now in the hands of Washington. If a tax cut, particularly for capital gains, becomes law, the impressive gain in equity values this year won't be wiped away. The economy will benefit, too. If the bill fails, get ready for the storm shelters.

"President Clinton may well veto a lowering of the capital gains levy as a way to bash Republicans for being overly friendly to the `rich'. He will hurt himself more than he will hurt the GOP. A shaky economy is the last thing he needs before an election.

"Republicans and conservative Democrats don't have the strength in this Congress to override a veto, as a similar coalition did in 1948. President Truman had used all of his might to block two earlier Republican-sponsored reductions in income taxes in 1947. But by April of the next year, Congress overrode a third veto. The resulting economic buoyancy was no small factor in Truman's upset victory later that year."

It is a curious world we live in. Clinton's re-election prospects would be improved if the Congress he is fighting could somehow succeed in passing an economy-boosting tax cut over his opposition.

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Americorps cost update

One of President Clinton's proudest boasts is his passage and implementation of Americorps, which was billed as a sort of domestic Peace Corps through which young volunteers could earn their way through higher education by performing various forms of community service.

A new study from the General Accounting Office has received little notice in the mainstream news media, but it merits more publicity. Proponents of Americorps told us the last two years that its cost per volunteer would be approximately $6.43 an hour. The GAO says the actual cost per volunteer hour has come in at $15.65. Annual costs for each volunteer would be $15,000 to $16,000, or so its backers told us. The GAO says the actual cost is more like $27,000 annually.

Sounds like pretty expensive volunteers to me.

Last year, I sat through a committee hearing in which Lt. Gov. Roger Wilson and a state representative from Kansas City were pushing their state-level version of implementing legislation for Americorps here in Missouri. To every suspicion and objection I raised, whether of cost or practicality or basic philosophy, they were dismissive, even contemptuous. Naturally, over my strenuous objections, our Democratic majority legislature whooped the bill through both houses. Gov. Mel Carnahan proudly signed the bill into law. The liberal state representative got herself elected to Congress last year, where she can support further Clinton boondoggles as a member of the House minority.

And now, courtesy of a little-known study by the independent GAO, we learn of the bills rolling our way.

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Mel's revenue gusher

The Associated Press reports that Missouri's general revenue collections in July increased by a strong 7.6 percent over the same month last year. "The largest single source for revenue was individual income tax collections, ... a 10 percent increase over ... a year ago. ... Corporate income tax revenues increased 21.7 percent."

Not included in these numbers would be the higher local property taxes Gov. Mel Carnahan mandated in half the 538 local school districts in our state.

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.