RUST COMMENTARY: SHORTAGE OF U.S. PERSONNEL LEADS TO RARE BAN ON AIR FORCE RETIREMENTS

U.S. bans Air Force retirements in Kosovo crisis: The Pentagon announced a rare ban on retirements of thousands of key U.S. Air Force personnel last week to ensure that combat pilots and others remain available for growing NATO bombing strikes on Serbia.

The move, covering 120,000 of the Air Force's 360,000 troops, came as Defense Secretary William Cohen warned that NATO must not bow to calls to stop two months of air raids aimed at ending "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo by Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic.

Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon said the temporary "stop loss" retirement ban, the first since the 1991 Gulf War, would apply to pilots, navigators, air traffic controllers and others, and would remain in effect as long as reservists were being called up for the conflict.

The Air Force is already suffering a general shortage of pilots, with many being lured away by higher pay from civilian airlines.

"We do not take this action lightly," acting Air Force Secretary F. Whitten Peters said in a statement. He noted that the U.S. military was an all-volunteer force and that troops were normally free to go after serving an agreed time.

About 6,000 Air Force personnel have already requested retirement between now and the end of the year, and those requests will be frozen, although the 6,000 troops will be given until mid-June to apply for a waiver of the stop order. -- Reuters

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Rejuvenating Japan: At last Japan is beginning to get its economic act together. Its parliament recently enacted Reaganesque tax cuts. As a result, Japanese equities have shown more life in recent weeks (up more than their American counterparts are this year) than in the previous decade.

Income tax rates were cut across the board by 20 percent, and the highest tax rate was lowered from 50 percent to 37 percent. The effective corporate tax rate was brought down by about 12 percent. A destructive real estate capital gains tax was cut by more than one-fourth. Appreciation rules are being liberalized, and other levies will be reduced. By easing the burden on risk-taking and success, Japan can begin experiencing genuine growth again, just as the U.S. did after the Reagan tax cuts of the early 1980s.

The potential dog-in-the-manger remains the Bank of Japan, with its penchant for deflationary monetary policies that starve the economy of sufficient credit. Fixing up a car won't get you very far if you don't have sufficient fuel.

Needless to say, these Reagan-like tax changes were not suggested by the Clinton-Gore Treasury Department. -- Steve Forbes

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The person who knows "how" will always have a job. The person who knows "why" will always be his boss. -- Diane Ravitch

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Profit and morality are a hard combination to beat. -- Hubert Humphrey

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Demerits for emphasizing merit? The Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education has been circulating draft guidelines that propose penalizing universities that use SAT scores as a leading criterion when making admissions decisions. The rationale is that the SAT is racially discriminatory simply because blacks and Hispanics regularly score lower on it than whites and Asians. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, "the guidelines would establish a high burden of proof that [SAT-weighted admissions] policies do not violate anti-bias laws." To dictate admissions policies in such a meddlesome manner is an undue federal intrusion into education. What's more, it flies in the face of state referenda and federal court decisions that have advanced the principles of merit and race-neutral university admissions. President Clinton has said he wants to emphasize policies that will raise student proficiency; this idea will undercut efforts to accomplish this goal and hurt the very groups it purports to help. -- Washington Update

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Abortion debate: Gov. Mel Carnahan says he welcomes the interjection of infanticide and partial-birth abortion into Missouri's U.S. senatorial campaign next year. We seriously doubt that, given that a majority of Carnahan's party -- and we are assuming that they are representing the views of their constituents -- voted in the House and Senate for a bill to create the crime of infanticide for killing a fetus while it is being born.

The governor has said he will veto the bill when it reaches his desk. That isn't surprising. He vetoed a partial-birth abortion bill two years ago and threatened one last year. So the fact that the Senate voted 27-6 and the House 129-32 in favor of the plan this year isn't likely to stop him.

But what it will do is further define the difference on abortion between U.S. Sen. John Ashcroft and Carnahan, the man who would replace him. Ashcroft is opposed to partial-birth abortion, a heinous, virtually indefensible medical procedure in which a partially born baby has a hole cut in his or her head and the brains sucked out.

One of the arguments being used by those opposed to the just-passed bill is that it would make a woman subject to criminal prosecution for protecting her own health. Not so. A doctor might find himself hauled into court for violating the law. But not the woman. And according to the American Medical Association, partial-birth abortions aren't necessary and other procedures could be used if a mother's life is imperiled.

Although he put on a happy face, we really can't believe the governor is smiling about having to symbolically pull out his pen and scratch "no way" across legislation putting an end to killing babies that are nearly out of the womb and would be viable.

Not even his argument that he would sign a partial-birth abortion bill if it contained a mother's "health" exception is likely to deflect criticism. The proviso that the governor wants would weaken the law by stretching the definition of health. It could include, let's say, stress, which might mean almost anything from parental disapproval of an out-of-wedlock child to financial problems or even to "I want to fit into my bikini better." The point is that the health exception would be used to maintain the status quo.

Critics of the Senate bill complained that abortion opponents were so single-minded that they let the abortion debate drag on and put important bills at risk. But it wasn't anti-abortion legislators who attempted to block the bill with a filibuster. -- Joplin Globe editorial

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Politicians are paying attention to a new breed of constituent: The fast-growing "investor class" will be gaining more influence as its numbers swell and portfolios develop into major personal assets.

About 45 percent of Americans now invest in stocks, up from just 10 percent in the '60s. Either directly or with mutual funds in IRAs and 401(k)s.

That fact hasn't escaped candidates, who will be more supportive of policies that expand saving incentives and reduce spending and taxes.

It's one reason unions fight private social security accounts, which would give even MORE Americans a stake in how much companies earn. Fat corporate profits don't seem so bad to folks who are shareholders. -- Newsletter

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Kinsley vs. Zelnick: Liberal pundits have labeled former ABC reporter Bob Zelnick's new book, "Gore: A Political Life," conservative attack journalism. Even folks who haven't read the book are willing to criticize it as such on national television. Here's an exchange from the May 7 "Crossfire" on CNN:

Michael Kinsley to Zelnick: "You wrote a right-wing biography of Al Gore. Maybe you didn't intend that, but that's what it came out."

Bob Novak: "Did you read it?"

Kinsley: "No, I did not ... ."

Zelnick: "Ted Koppel read it from cover to cover, and Ted Koppel called it a first-rate piece of evenhanded reporting, which should be required reading for everybody interested in the year 2000 election."

Kinsley: "I have not read this book ... ."

Novak: "How can you analyze the book if you haven't read it?"

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Missile defense: On to the president: The House gave final congressional approval recently, in a 345 to 71 vote, to a bill to make it the policy of the United States to deploy a national missile defense as soon as technologically possible. The House vote approved the version of the missile defense bill that the Senate passed in March, a more specific version than one the House had previously adopted. Now the measure goes to President Clinton, who earlier in the debate had threatened to veto it, just as he vetoed a similar bill in 1995. Since then, North Korea's technological progress has made the missile threat harder for Clinton to ignore. Now one White House official said Clinton "in all likelihood will sign it into law." Even if Clinton does sign the bill, he has shown his lack of commitment to missile defense by budgeting money for its development while hesitating to deploy one, out of fear of offending the Russians. -- Washington Update

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