RUST COMMENTARY: TRIAL LAWYERS LIKELY TO BE TARGETS IN 1998 ELECTION YEAR

TRIAL LAWYERS to receive deserved attention: The Association of Trial Lawyers of America's political action committee has contributed $4.5 million to congressional candidates since 1995. Ninety percent of those funds have gone to Democrats. In addition, the ATL urges its members to contribute as individuals to candidates, usually liberals.

This clear partisanship may now be coming home to roost. Going into next year's elections, GOP strategists are talking about launching a major attack on trial lawyers. Republican members of Congress are irate about the lawyer and union money that has been used against them and are looking at hearings to embarrass the lawyers. In addition, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce plans on soon unveiling a major, multimillion-dollar advertising campaign aimed at countering the influence of some trial lawyers. Some sources say it will be the largest ad campaign ever. The early indications are that the 1998 election campaign will be one of the nastiest ever.

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Bradley's Prospects: All the speculation on the 2000 presidential race in the Democratic party revolves around Al Gore and Dick Gephardt. Meanwhile, former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley is quietly positioning himself for a campaign. He has set up a small headquarters in California and sends out a daily fax called "Bill Bradley News." He has been lining up big financial supporters and has a regular commentary on CBS television which is giving him major visibility. After Clinton, Democrats may find themselves with a real battle for the nomination. Bradley is thought of as a moderate, but on most values issues he is firmly a liberal. And another Missourian (Bradley is from Crystal City) U.S. Sen. JOHN ASHCROFT is also exploring his chances. -- Washington Update

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Hospitals and doctors are sometimes judged by the mortality rates of their patients. Commonsensical as this may sound, it violates one of the most elementary requirements for valid statistics: There is no comparable group of patients with whom these mortality rates can be compared.

Some of the best hospitals and some of the best doctors get the toughest cases. If they can save three-quarters of the cases on which others have given up, this is a major achievement, even if that leaves them with a 25 percent mortality rate.

The lack of what statisticians call a control group to compare is just one of the reasons for meaningless and misleading statistics.

For years, Keynesian economists talked about the trade-off between inflation and unemployment and how government should fine tune the economy to pick the best combination. In practice, it turned out that the government was lucky to get the right channel.

The source of this Keynesian optimism was a set of statistics known as the Phillips Curve, which showed how inflation and unemployment were related to one another in the early postwar years. Alas for the Keynesians, statistics for later years showed no such correlation. We learned the hard way that we could end up with both high inflation and high unemployment -- stagflation -- and now we are having low rates of both.

Unfortunately, when numbers seem to support an existing belief, they are quick to be accepted, whether they involve spanking or unemployment.

Some people grasp at statistics the way a drowning man grasps at straws. Since you can always add numbers together and get a total, regardless of what the numbers are about, all sorts of statistical rankings are eagerly watched -- when in fact what should be watched are the ways these numbers are put together.

For years, parents and students, as well as colleges and universities, have been watching the academic rankings published annually by U.S. News & World Report. Indeed, more than a few cases of fudging the facts have been discovered among academic administrators seeking to boost their rankings because of the importance attached to them.

Even if the statistics themselves were perfectly honest, however, they would prove practically nothing. When professors' salaries go into the statistical witches' brew, for example, this represents something that has very little to do with the actual teaching of students. In a survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education, only 13 percent of professors said that teaching is rewarded. Research, and especially research grants, are what affect the paycheck.

Recently, some academic institutions-including some ranked number one-have belatedly begun to challenge these rankings. Let's hope that this is the beginning of a trend. -- Excerpts from a Thomas Sowell column in Forbes magazine

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If you're only making ends meet, you're running in circles. -- Art Buck

The best way I know of to win an argument is to start by being right. -- Lord Hailsham

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Attendance trends: Who's watching what?

Major League Baseball

1997: 63,196,222

1987: 52,011,506

National Basketball Association

1996/97: 20,304,629

1986/87: 12,065,351

National Hockey League

1996/97: 17,640,529

1986/87: 11,855,880

National Football League

1996: 14,612,417

1986: 13,588,551

Nascar Winston Cup Series

1996: 5,588,069

1986: 2,213,000

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For 16 years as a member of Congress, Al Gore along with countless colleagues trudged down the street to sit in sterile cubicles in political party offices to make their fund-raising calls. Attorney General Janet Reno has now given effective dispensation for all elected officials to pick up the nearest phone. Senate and House rules will still discourage members from using their offices as political boiler rooms, but thanks to Ms. Reno's decision, there are now no effective penalties. Mark Buse, an aide to Sen. John McCain, predicts that members "can drive a Mack truck through" the Reno loophole and ignore the law. Maybe that's the point.

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They don't want vouchers: "D.C. parents and ministers and local leaders have made it clear they do not want vouchers." So spake Sen. Ted Kennedy on the floor of the Senate last September. In the intervening months, D.C. families have proved the senator wrong -- 4,725 times wrong. That 4,725 figure represents the number of children who have applied for 1,000 private-school scholarships offered to poor and working class District families in mid-October. The Washington Scholarship Fund, the charity that runs this voucher-style program, reports that an astounding 11 percent of the population eligible for its scholarships jumped at this chance to flee the public schools. Why hold them down, Senator?

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Were you aware? Americans were allowed to buy only three gallons of gasoline a week when gasoline rationing for nonessential vehicles went into effect during World War II.

The following successful people never graduated from college: John D. Rockefeller, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Ray Kroc (founder of McDonald's), J.P. Morgan, Harry Truman, Ernest Hemingway and Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft).

Almost one-fourth of all the people in the nation of South Korea have the same last name: Kim.

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Iraq review: The dust has settled now, and it is worth reviewing what happened in the recent showdown with Saddam Hussein. We lost. Six weeks ago there was a strong embargo in place, and our inspectors were on the ground closing in on outlawed weapons of mass destruction. Saddam kicked out the inspectors, moved his weapons and insisted the inspection teams have fewer Americans. We spent tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions to move military assets to the region -- and then agreed to his conditions! To top it off, we eased the trade embargo to reward Hussein for his violations. A few weeks ago I suggested, tongue in cheek, that our policy toward Iraq, to be consistent with our policy toward China, should involve more trade to make Saddam Hussein a "good boy." I had no idea that the Clinton administration would actually adopt this position and that key Republican leaders in the House and Senate would go along.

Our foreign policy is in shambles, and our military is cut to the bone and stretched thin. We need a national debate on this issue soon, but to force a debate the GOP will first have to show signs of life. -- Gary Bauer

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