RUST COMMENTARY: THE LATE FRANK ADAMS GETS A TRIBUTE AS THORNGATE LDT. RECEIVES TOP INDUSTRY AWARD

It was a fitting tribute given to FRANK ADAMS by RON DIRNBERGER during his acceptance of the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce INDUSTRY OF THE YEAR award to THORNGATE LTD.

Frank was a rare man best summed up with this line stated by DON DENNY at Frank's funeral this spring: "Frank would give you the shirt off your back but would fight you if you'd try to take it."

Thorngate has been one of the major employers and a unique industry in our area. Its production of over 6,000 suits and coats daily of better quality clothes puts Cape manufactured goods on every corner of the world. A recognition much deserved ... for company and FRANK.

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The PETER KINDER ... RICHARD ALTHAUS DEBATE worked because the League of Women Voters ground rules were NOT followed in this case.

INSTEAD OF TWO MINUTES FOR AN OPENING STATEMENT, 12 MINUTES WERE PERMITTED ... AND THEN FIVE MINUTES WERE ALLOWED FOR INITIAL REBUTTALS ... SUFFICIENT TIME TO MAKE ARGUMENTS AND ANSWERS.

Hopefully the congressional debate scheduled for Oct. 13 ... with five candidates requiring shorter time allotments will be as meaningful.

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JEAN BELL MOSLEY recently celebrated her 83rd birthday and continues to spread her optimism and positive outlook through her columns and friends by noting the GOD-CREATED things around her -- and around all of us if we'd just take time to notice. She wrote in a recent column in the Southeast Missourian ... "Let me Walk Softly ...

"Let me walk softly on this earth, leaving no scars, erecting no false signposts, yet leaving a trail of little notices by way of remembered words that urge travelers to stop here and see this. Listen and hear that. Touch, taste and smell those things.

"Let me stop by a live stream and see the waters flow around, over and above objects to make its inevitable way to the sea and think how much like life that is. One keeps rolling along, around structures of hard places -- loss of home, court cases, distancing of friends; around shape unexpected curves -- sickness, accidents, disappointments; having to go along with nature's changes of course, sometimes running backwards for a while before one finds the true course again; bearing burdens of unwanted baggage -- unfriendly people, the awful knowledge of what people do to others, yet always, like the flowing waters, make you way to your sea."

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When the United States was formed it was never intended to give the federal government all of the power it has taken from the states.

And after years of observable failure by the federal government in its efforts with education, welfare, law enforcement, social programs ... the effort is being made to return power (and previously extracted tax money) back to the states. The HILLARY CLINTON health plan was overwhelmingly rejected once its centralized intent and control were made public.

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In St. Louis the new superintendent has introduced a plan which calls for the transfer of authority from the St. Louis public schools central administration offices to the school principals. If implemented the plan will dramatically change how children are educated.

The St. Louis teachers union is fighting this ... especially the elimination of principal tenure and other hiring practices that they say run counter to the union's concept of seniority.

SAY WHAT? The system hasn't been working. Let's change it. The union is expressing concern over the burdens placed on the principals, wondering how many of the district principals are ready for school board management? Let them find out. Maybe they will do what needs to be done without being hamstrung by central rules and regulations.

If the big city public education systems were a business, they'd be bankrupt. If they weren't government controlled (we don't have public education -- we have government education) the GOVERNMENT would say it had to take control. But ... the inside controls by rules, regulation and financial rewards or penalties are the problem.,

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I LOVE OUR MISSION. It's to talk about all this incredibly neat stuff that's changing the world ... profoundly. I love George Gilder. But mostly I love the fact that nobody -- not even George or William Henry Gates III -- has a sweet clue about what's going on or how it's going to come out.

What an age!

The only one who knows/knew was the last Nobel laureate in economics, Friedrich August von Hayek. That is, he knew ... for sure ... that nobody knows anything for sure.

Hayek, who died in 1992, was that rare economist who was also a first-rate historian. Hayek described fitful economic (and human) progress as a direct function of rich, volatile, unpredictable experimentation in the marketplace. (He called the global economy "the most complex structure in the universe -- inherently incomprehensible.")

Tumbling into Hayek -- yes, I started reading his work by accident, appropriate enough -- was a profoundly exhilarating experience. It made me vow anew that I would never again accede to the forces of order -- the dogmatic strategic planners, the hierarchs, the central controllers who try to convince us that order and success are handmaidens. (Oh, what a comforting illusion, as Hayek pointed out so eloquently.) To revel in disorder and the joys of accidental discovery -- that's the ticket! And the magic of Silicon Valley, Silicon Glen, Hollywood, Bollywood and the strutting Southeast Asian giants-in-the-making.

-- TOM PETERS

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Beating the traffic

"Flying is my hobby, not golf. I could never hit the ball," quipped August Busch III, chairman and chief executive of Anheuser-Busch. Every morning at 6 Busch strolls out to a helipad at his farm in rural Missouri and choppers his own Bell 206 50 miles to the company's headquarters in St. Louis. He lands on the roof, one flight above his top-floor office. This way, Informer is told, his top executives have an added incentive to get to work early: If they see the chopper parked on the roof, they know they're late.

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"Our greatest glory consists not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall. Olivia Goldsmith?

One of the great tributes to radio talk show host RUSH LIMBAUGH is his staying power. MARIO CUOMO, "the silver tongued orator" of the Democratic party, found out having a successful listened to radio show is easier said than done.

Incidentally, the Columbia business newspaper said the ZIMMER BROTHERS now own more radio stations in Missouri and Illinois than any other group. Quite a success story.

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Recently, PRESIDENT CLINTON said that churches should hire welfare people to work with funds government (tax money from the people) will provide. Whatever happened to the separation of church and state argument made against vouchers or school choice?

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Admissions of bias

"There are lots of reasons fewer people are watching network news, and one of them, I'm more convinced than ever, is that our viewers simply don't trust us. And for good reason. The old argument that the networks and other 'media elites' have a liberal bias is so blatantly true that it's hardly worth discussing anymore. No, we don't sit around in dark corners and plan strategies on how we're going to slant the news. We don't have to. It comes naturally to most reporters."

-- CBS News correspondent Bernard Goldberg, Feb. 13, 1996, Wall Street Journal op-ed

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Reporters voted overwhelmingly for Clinton, call themselves liberal and had little respect for the Contract With America:

-- 89 percent of Washington reporters voted for Bill Clinton in 1992. 7 percent voted for George Bush in 1992.

-- 61 percent called themselves "liberals" or "moderate to liberal." 9 percent "conservative" or "moderate to conservative."

-- 50 percent said they are Democrats. 4 percent are Republicans.

-- 59 percent called the Contract With America "an election year campaign ploy." 3 percent thought it was "a serious reform proposal."

-- Roper Center Poll for the Freedom Forum of 139 Washington bureau chiefs and congressional correspondents, released April 1996.

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We now have the same number of people in the U.S. over 50 as under 18, and the aging of American will continue as baby boomers get older. But aging baby boomers aren't going to act the way elderly people have historically acted, according to Michael Milken. They'll go to extraordinary lengths to retain the illusion of youth, creating a big boom in areas and products that speak to people's devices to look and feel younger.

Like hair transplants, health foods, exercise and fitness centers etc.

If you could tell the future and you could have foreseen that the leading presidential candidate would be assassinated, the former president would be in exile, his brother would be arrested as a suspect in a murder, the currency was going to be devalued, there would be social unrest -- if you could have seen all that, you would have said, "Sell! Liquidate and go home." So why is the Mexican stock market at an all-time high?

The answer, Milken believes, strikes at "the fundamental issues, that the future of Mexico and the future of the U.S. are intertwined. Fifty percent of that country is under 18 years old. If they don't have opportunity there, they are going to have it here. Their culture has moved into our culture, and this assimilation will continue." He adds, "The education gap between the two countries has closed tremendously. There are enormous opportunities there."

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