RUST COMMENTARY: GOOD-TIME ECONOMY GROWING BY LEAPS, BOUNDS

Just look at how much money people spend on their leisure time ... $640 billion ... one-eighth of consumer spending. All on movies, travel, music, eating out, TV sets, gambling, golf, pets, hobbies, sports etc.

The growth is being driven by retirees with both time and money looking for things to do. Tuition is history. Mortgage nearly paid off.

Also baby boomers, who don't have a lot of time but will splurge on short vacations. They bought a house and car, now can spend on fun.

And increasingly, foreigners ... $80 billion a year on U.S. travel.

It's ironic ... an economy depending on people out for a good time.

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State legislators will be turned out in droves in the next few years, not by the voters but by term-limit laws that will begin in 18 states, including Missouri. In recent elections, three of the four legislative bodies changed hands in California and Maine, where the term-limit laws are in effect already. But renewed efforts to term-limit members of Congress will stall.

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An on-target forecast

Joint Strike Fighter plane: Contract bid is roiling aerospace.

Pentagon won't let McDonnell Douglas wither, despite losing to Boeing and Lockheed Martin, finalists for the $200-billion project. Plenty of other contracts are likely to be fed its way next few years. And look for Boeing to add McDonnell Douglas to its fighter-plane team.

Merger is a strong possibility. McDonnell Douglas is OK for now due to backlog of F18 and C17 orders. But loss of Joint Strike Fighter could slow down the firm's technology know-how, a big long-term problem. -- Kiplinger Washington Letter (last week).

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Gore Nixes Powell

Media speculation that Gen. Colin Powell would serve in a second Clinton administration may have been just that, speculation. It's long been obvious that Gen. Powell is the media's favorite candidate for just about anything. But Vice President Al Gore reportedly weighed in against giving Powell a high-profile role in the Cabinet. The thought is that Gore wants to give Powell no chance to shine his stars in a foreign policy role as secretary of state or secretary of defense. Gore is looking to the year 2000 and a likely run for the White House. Of course, he might have been more shrewd if he had welcomed the general. That would have virtually assured that Powell could not be nominated by a conservative Republican convention. -- Washington Update.

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Doing right by our veterans

There was heartbreaking testimony on Capital Hill ... by American veterans of the Gulf War who are suffering from undiagnosed illnesses they believe were caused by chemical war agents used by Iraq. Some witnesses testified that they reported to their commanders that they were detecting battlefield evidence of exposure to chemical agents, but that those officers ignored data. The Pentagon admits to losing vital documents that could prove the charges to be true.

Enough is enough! The men and women who went to the Gulf were heroes when they put their lives on the line. Now they are being treated like hypochondriacs by their own government. A nation that rewards a draft dodger with the presidency while giving its soldiers the run-around will wake up one morning and discover that no one wants to be a hero anymore. -- Washington Update.

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More resignations

There has been widespread press coverage of the Cabinet officials who have bailed out of the Clinton administration in recent weeks. But there has been little attention paid to people leaving the White House itself. Last week, White House counsel Jack Quinn abruptly quit. Quinn, along with white House aides Jane Sherburne and Mark Fabiani, formed the Clinton "crisis control team" that handled the long list of scandals and ethics controversies besetting the president. Sherburne and Fabiani also resigned in recent weeks. -- Washington Update.

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Miracles

You probably saw the astonishing medical news about the 4-month-old "fetus" who had an impaired immune system. He was cured by a bone marrow transplant given while he was still in the womb. Such stories of pre-birth surgery to save the lives of unborn children are more and more frequent as medical science continues to make breakthroughs. The contradiction between these miracles and our abortion-on-demand culture is large and growing. How can the 4-month-old fetus be only a lump of tissue when the mother decides to abort? How can it be considered an unborn child when doctors are operating to save its life? The unborn baby is either a child of God or not. I cannot be that its worth is solely determined by the whims of our society or the limits of science. I don't know when it will end, but I believe the abortion culture is going to collapse from the weight of its own inconsistencies. -- Washington Update.

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The cost of earthquake insurance rose about 7.4 percent, just slightly more than inflation, in two years for homeowners across the eastern Missouri fault zone, according to the Missouri Insurance Department.

The steepest increase came for 6,000 owners of older houses in St. Louis City, who saw their rates nearly triple over the same period, the department said. They are covered by "HO-8" homeowners policies, which are often sold in poorer neighborhoods and offer limited coverage.

Insurance department officials couldn't explain the sharp rise in St. Louis. Those rates were well above the average of 82 cents per $1,000 in coverage paid in the six Southeast Missouri counties that sit astride the New Madrid fault and would suffer most in a quake.

Rates rose an average of 16 per cent in those southeastern counties ... and in my opinion are still a good value.

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Gov. Mel Carnahan says he's hoping a special commission will come up with some alternatives to the state's failure to implement its ambitious 15-year highway improvement plan.

"The 15-year plan, while admirable in its ambition, was plainly unrealistic form the start," Carnahan said, calling it "fundamentally flawed and clearly based one erroneous assumptions."

"Now, we must seek an acceptable solution that will serve the people of Missouri while providing for the state's continues economic growth," the governor added.

More on this later. I spend some time discussing this and some other relevant statewide issues at the Associated Press Publishers and Editors meeting in Kansas City over the weekend.

Our editor, JOE SULLIVAN, and my wife, WENDY, and I made the trip. Joe made a presentation on the new Missouri AP test site on the Internet that Joe and our company have spearheaded. Just got back Tuesday noon.

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