The Battalion
OPINION
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Monday, October 23, 1989
Opinion Page Editor Juliette Rizzo
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In the shorthand of government, the
whole business is called, quite simply,
“catastrophic.” That turned out to be a
good choice of word.
Walter R.
Mears
Associated Press
Mail Call
Learn about your neighbor
EDITOR:
Female Guard Room escorts?
EDITOR:
For about 30 seconds, I was imagining everyone living on
a large piece of land where people are asking each other,
“Who am I?”...“Who are you?”
Believe it or not, this is exactly what’s going on in the
world today.
I just started realizing this predicament after reading
Curtis Franks’ article Oct. 17, “Culture has place in history.”
The world is made of many different races. Each race has
differnet cultures. The problem is we all live together, but we
really don’t know each other. The devastating part is that
some of us lack knowledge in our own culture. What is there
to do about this? There is only one answer to this. Find out
more about yourself and find out more about your neighbor.
As a black individual, I invite all races to enroll in Black
History or Sociology of Black Americans. There are several
different cultural organizations on this campus also. Once we
are more familiar with our history, more than likely we will
understand our culture.
To each individual: Learn more about yourself, your
neighbor and mankind. All praises to Curtis Franks for
writing this very fine article.
Raquel L. Jarrett ’93
Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The editorial staff reserves
the right to edit letters for style and length, but will make every effort to maintain the
author’s intent. Each letter must be signed and must include the classification, address
and telephone number of the writer.
Recently, two girls on their way home late one Saturday
night felt uneasy about walking alone and decided to call the
Guard Room in hopes of obtaining an escort back to their
residence hall. They were shocked to find out that there were
only females in the Guard Room who were not only unwilling
to provide an escort, but also quite rude when asked why not.
The woman who spoke to them on the phone, said they were
basically “out of luck” since there were no men there that
evening.
This letter was not written to suggest that women should
not be in the Guard Room, but only to suggest that an
alternate plan be taken. First, it should be said, that we are in
no way opposed to women being a part of the Corps. We do
believe they are perfectly within their rights to be there.
However, if they are unable, or unwilling to provide escorts,
then maybe an alternative plan of action should be taken.
Our suggestion is that the women possibly serve their
time during the day when escorts are not as pertinent, or
serve their time along with the men. We, as those who ask for
escorts, do not understand why women would be there in the
first place if not to provide escorts since that is the main
purpose in having the Guard Room.
As people who depend on the Guard Room for safety
reasons, we do feel this issue is quite important and does
deserve some attention rather quickly.
Gretchen Thompson ’93
accompanied by two signatures
The Medicare Catastrophic Cover
age Act of 1988 has itself proven to be
a political catastrophe. The program is
a problem for 'the members of Con
gress who approved it and now are in
the process of undoing their unpopu
lar handiwork; for the administration
that first supported it and then fell si
lent; even for senior citizens’ lobbyists
who endorsed the plan without antic
ipating the backlash.
itude and support, reaped outr-i
from the people paying the tax, u
of them already paying for theiroi
catastrophic health insurance. &;
people who were paying little or
surtax came to believe that they’d lie:
sessed, and joined the opposition,
protection would have beenmosts
able to lower-income retired peo
the least organized and least voca
the nation’s seniors.
Now Congress is trying to figure out
how and what to try to salvage out of
catastrophic, the insurance program el
derly Americans — at least those who
know how to get a message to Washing
ton — apparently did not want and
clearly did not want to finance.
President Reagan proposed the pi
gram in the first place, butwhathers
ommended in 1987 was a relatin
modest plan to protect the elde
against huge medical bills, with ana
mated price tag of $2 billion a year
While the White House at one point
said the program should be preserved,
President Bush is offering no further
advice. “We are letting the congressio
nal process hash this out,” Bush said
Friday.
Congress added benefits, and
When the final measure was enact
16 months ago, the five-year cosh
estimated at $32 billion. The
now is up to $48 billion.
The president said if Congress pro
duced something he deemed unsatis
factory, he would not hesitate to step
in. The administration isn’t saying
what might prompt it to take action, or
even a position, on a program Bush en
dorsed as a candidate.
The Reagan plan was supposedic
financed with a flat, $4 monthlyp:
mium charge. To pay for the
panded program, Congress devk
the 15 percent income tax surchai;
that stirred the senior rebellion.
After the House voted outright re
peal, Secretary of Health and Human
Services Louis Sullivan endorsed a Sen
ate measure that would have preserved
major features of the law and reduced
the controversial surtax on elder
Americans that was to have financed it.
Unnecessary laws restrict freedoms
I support the National Rifle Associa
tion and the American Civil Liberties
Union, which on its face sounds pretty
oxymoronic. The N.R.A. is the su
preme bastion of conservatism, situ
ated ideologically just left of Attila the
Hun, while the A.C.L.U. is the nation’s
greatest champion of every bleeding
heart liberal cause that comes to mind.
Scot
Walker
Editor
But although their methods are dif
ferent, the goals of the two groups are
not so diametrically opposed as it ap
pears; both groups, in their different
ways, are trying to protect the Ameri
can people from the American govern
ment.
allow a law, for instance, that says Con
gress has the power to stop people
from criticizing it, but we almost had
(and still might end up with) a law pre
venting people from burning the flag.
We would impeach a president who
tried to tell us how or with whom we
can or cannot have sex, yet we tolerate
laws in various states that prohibit ho
mosexual intercourse or even, in some
cases, heterosexual oral sex.
He did so in a letter to the Senate Fi
nance Committee, but the administra
tion quickly and curiously declax ed that
Sullivan was speaking only for himself.
Even the most powerful of the
nior lobbies, the American Assoc®;
of Retired Persons, got tangled in
issue after agreeing to go along w
the financing system. The AARPm
says, somewhat defensively,
strongly supports the benefitsl.
never advocated" the surtax systc
The associat ion wants broader fins
ing, including an increase in the
bacco tax. That’s not likely.
Budget Director Richard G. Darman
sent up a letter of his own. “Nothing in
this letter should be construed as an ex
pression for or opposition to’one cata
strophic illness substantive amendment
as opposed to another,” Darman de
creed.
What is likely is that Congresswi
far more wary of such programs,ai
especially of such financing systems,
the future. And what’s certain is it
costs the program would have covet
will be paid in other ways —
pocket, in higher premiums for prisi
health insurance, and in taxes, 1«
state and federal.
The N.R.A. exists primarily to pro
tect what it sees as Americans’ right to
keep and bear arms, based on its inter
pretation of the Second Amendment to
the Constitution. The N.R.A. keeps a
high profile, has a massive advertising
budget and contributes millions of dol
lars to try to swing elections in favor of
candidates who agree with its views on
why gun control is a bad thing. The
N.R.A. fears all forms of gun control,
because it sees it as the first step in a
chain of events that could lead to a pro
hibition on any gun ownership by pri
vate citizens.
the goals of the A.C.L.U., like the Ku
Klux Klan or the American Nazis. As
the A.C.L.U. sees it, if we start taking
away the right of any group (no matter
how repulsive), to assemble, speak,
worship, etc., then we start the process
that leads to the loss of those rights for
everyone.
We would revolt if the government,
in order to improve our health, forced
us to do 100 sit-ups every day, yet we
ask for laws to stop people from smok
ing or drinking ordriving without seat-
belts, in order to protect our health.
That’s where the N.R.A. and the
A.C.L.U. meet. The Constitution, in its
entirety, with all the good parts and
bad parts, is the foundation of our
country, and it’s mighty dangerous to
start mucking around with it. We have
to guard our freedoms carefully, be
cause no matter how stable and secure
and free our country seems right now,
we are always only one or two steps
away from living in a police state.
That’s why I support the N.R.A. and
the A.C.L.U., because they work to
stop the “little laws” that are so insid
ious. And that’s why we need to get out
of the mentality that all of our ills can
be solved by passing laws. Every time
we pass another law, we are putting
new restrictions on ourselves, remov
ing little bits of our personal liberty,
which in the long run undermines the
freedoms upon which our country was
founded.
The catastrophic coverage act was
supposed to provide insurance to pay
for costly hospital and doctor care, to
put a cap on out-of-pocket medical
costs. It also offered new benefits for
prescription drug costs. The benefits
were to be phased in gradually.
In signing the bill he counted at
jor domestic achievement, Reagi
nonetheless offered a warning, and!
proved too true. He said that with*
diligent cost controls, the progff
could be too expensive to afford.
The A.C.L.U. focuses its efforts on
the courts, where they come to the res
cue of any person or group whose Con
stitutional rights are being violated.
That often means defending groups
whose ideas are in direct opposition to
The danger never comes in the form
of one horrible law that is designed to
take away all our freedoms at once; in
stead, the problem is with laws that
take away our liberties in tiny, little
chunks.
Scot Walker is a junior journalism
major and editor of The Battalion.
But the tax to pay for those benefits,
which already is in place, produced the
backlash. It is a surtax of $22.50 for ev
ery $150 in federal income taxes paid
by the elderly. That spared low-income
retirees, imposing the surtax on about
40 percent of the people eligible for
the insurance. The maximum tax is
$800 a person, and about six percent of
the elderly faced that top levy.
“This could be more than a
problem,” Reagan said. “Itcouldk
tragedy. The program, after all, is to''
paid for by the elderly themselves.)
we must control the costs of thesene
benefits or we’ll harm the very
we are trying to help.”
Congress, which had expected grat-
Walter R. Mears is vice presit
and columnist for The Associate
Press and has reported on Waste
ton and national politics for 0
than 25 years.
The American people would never
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