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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 2, 1996)
) Page 12 >er 2, 1991 Opinioin Page IB Monday • September 2, 1996 c you’re a func Terrorist looks ; arrakhan vith cash ometimes I wish Louis D Farrakhan would tone down his rhetoric. But most of the ne, I just wish he’d shut up. Never have 1 en a human Columnist ting spilling ter with such itred for hers. We’ve all tard irrakhan’s goted ades tnouncing ws as “dev- 'and the diite man.” it the fiery minister redirected sname-calling to another group Americans in a recent speech. In his latest address to the ational Association of Black lurnalists, Farrakhan showcased tother one of the abrasive litanies lathas become his trademark. Over and over again, the leader the Nation of Islam challenged le 800 journalists to admit they uly accept his anti-Semitic and paratist teachings. The audience mained largely silent. And over and over again, rrakhan accused the journalists failing to print the “truth.” But the climax of the minister’s leech was his declaration that the tdience of black journalists was Michael Heinroth Senior political science major osition and ability to com- clearly. Pay mpress people fthing more than “house slaves.” Yes, you read correctly. He lied an 800-member, black audi- |ice “house slaves.” It was low. It was degrading. It bias classic Farrakhan. of the classics, and you ith. e dozens of sulf ks for, hysics becaustjl Such a comment by any other of interesting that great four lies within us self this semeste ould label him racist. But Farrakhan’s summer wasn’t 'er. So he decided to take a little ip to Libya. Remember the country alleged have sponsored the bombing of jin Am 103? Well, it seems ol’ Louis enjoys lending time with terrorists — i’s already made one trip rough the Middle East and to bya earlier this year. Farrakhan wasn’t there for the in, though. This time, he was there to ceive a $250,000 “humanitarian vard” from none other than our editerranean nemesis, the self- oclaimed dictator-colonel, oammar Gadhafi. Now it’s one thing to have irrakhan running around the tited States in pastel suits giving rmons of hate; it’s another thing see him flashing a smile next to e dictator who has had so many nocent Americans killed. It’s damn near treasonous. But the award wasn’t to include tli rrakhan ’ s onl y reason for getting bed with Gadhafi. trials Board ael Landauer lit or in Chief my Collier ecutive Editor :hen Perrenot zcutive Editor ather Pace oinion Editor JT ' more to inserts tform, saying b with the insert! her way can It the high pro! re inserts pro ^ de, trying to (* vay with them ot a reasonabl hy The Battai ikes its irectly to ea« mder. owever, it nportant t he Battalion s part. he Battalic d v e r t i s i n “partment lit iidate advertise o a single day e day for inset 1 /ertising is help problem, o keep the inseit 1 are constant i. At times bo# ivided for tho< mething withtl han throw t But for now, nly ask for help aders should Is clean. Studea 1 i and recycle^ ey read them of t to read them- The colonel had already provid- a $5 million loan to the Nation Islam before such transactions th Libya were banned. Now, the yan leader was baiting rrakhan with a $1 billion “gift.” And Farrakhan almost hooked. oproach. Thatl F ° rtunatel y’ last Wednesday, hv The Ratr,'ili(iI eTreasur y Department nounced Farrakhan would not i allowed to bring either sum of pney into the United States. In response, Farrakhan politely ked Gadhafi to hang on to the sh until a U.S. court heard the atter. Then, he threatened to arch on our nation’s capital again. Go ahead and march, Louis. But it government cannot allow by making evef rra ^ an or rac i st organization id a tf» aHvprtisfi funded by a terrorist state. Now I’ll be the first to admit fr history is not always glorious especially in the chapters Med to race relations. But cooperation, not contempt, the answer, Minister Farrakhan. Nowhere does the God of raham sanction such hatred for ur country or your fellow citi- Jns. Not in the Torah. Not in the •['I, ble. And not in the Koran. This “man of the cloth” continues [preach it, though — always from d help keep t& [ safet y P rovided by his intimidat- ig, bow-tied body guards. And if he gets his way, maybe th the help of a terrorist. Liberal ideas don’t overshadow identity Editor-in-Chief Michael Landauer Senior journalism major U ntil recent ly, I was a liberal Republican in search of a sup port group. Knowing of some of my more liberal ideas, a friend asked me why I called myself a Republican. Before this year’s Republican Convention, I wasn’t sure how to handle that. But now I realize that it is possible to be a liberal Republican. For as long as I can remember, I have known I was a Republican. Gerald Ford, despite a lack of balance, helped heal the nation by granting presidential pardons to Richard Nixon and Vietnam draft dodgers. Jimmy Carter, in his noble efforts to please everyone, pleased no one. And Ronald Reagan pretty much kicked ass all over the globe, making us feel safe and proud. In high school, I was Alex P. Keaton himself. I still have my “Nixon in ’92” pins from the Republican Convention in Houston. But when George Bush came along, I was old enough that I could actually think about casting a vote, so I paid close atten tion to the issues and started thinking about where I stood. With all the talk about family values (whatever the hell that means) some of my over-zealousness started to wear off. Now I’ve altered some of my views. I have become a self-contained collection of paradoxes. I’m pro-life and pro-choice because there are two issues involved — one moral and one political. I am against the death penalty because I don’t think the government has the right to take away anything it has not provided — life. I’m for affirmative action, but I sup port the Hopwood decision because it is forcing us to move away from the race issue to the root of the problem — poverty and the lack of opportunity it causes. But I also believe in a multicul tural requirement at A&M because too many people pass through this universi ty who never understand the impor tance of learning about other cultures. So would I be Pat Buchanan’s first choice as a delegate to the platform committee at the Republican Convention? Probably not. I concede all future Mail Call argu ments right now. I am not consistent with all my ideology. I don’t subscribe fully to the beliefs of either side. Few people do. But the reality is that people vote their pocketbooks. In elections where one candidate promises tax cuts and the other doesn’t, the lower-tax guy almost always wins. Ask Walter Mondale, who promised a tax increase in 1984, what it’s like to swim up stream against such a political truth. You might win Minnesota if you’re from there. Right now my pocketbook is telling me that I’m a Republican. Sure, there are tons of issues I have a problem with within the party. Prayer in schools, the anti-abortion movement, anti-immigra tion sentiment and all that talk about family values does nothing to make me more Republican. But it shouldn’t drive anyone away, either. We should look to the basic philosophy of each party before deciding where we stand. Republicans have historically believed that smaller government and more pri vate control of the society is the way to go. Democrats believe individuals will not take care of all the nation’s problems on their own and they need a large govern ment to help. Republicans want to spend their own money, and Democrats want the govern ment to pool our money and channel it into worthwhile causes that meet our most pressing needs. Neither side is right, and neither side is wrong. And our government was designed so that neither side could make too much progress without the pendulum swinging in the other party’s direction. But right now government is too big and unresponsive. As a journalist, I’m about to join a job market where I’ll make diddley-squat, and the govern ment will take the squat. That squat will go to support some program (or at least the people employed by that program). Then Republicans will talk about cutting the amount that program gets. Democrats will say we need that pro gram, media will do stories about what will happen if that program is cut, and the program will continue to make its contribution to the national debt. We want a smaller government, but damn you if you cut the funding to a pro gram in my town. So when President Clinton talks about building a bridge to the future, I don’t look for a program he’s offering to make me come aboard — I look at how high the toll is, and I opt to stay with the Republican Party for this go-around. Even if it means I continually have to convince people it is possible to be a liberal Republican. Consumers face difficulties buying with their consciences Editorial Roundup Columnist Shannon Halbrook Junior English major W hen it comes to the corpo rate world, igno rance really is bliss. As consumers, we can make a state ment with where we choose to spend our money. Back in high school economics class, we called it “purchasing power.” But in our fast- paced life, it’s not so much a power as it is a robotic act of commerce, something we do all the time without thinking. This makes it a lot harder nowadays to be a conscientious consumer. Being a conscientious consumer simply means that you think seriously about the company you’re giving your money to, and you don’t buy a company’s products if you object to any of its practices — moral, environmental or commercial. The trouble is, it’s hard to know what you’re buying. Companies can be connected in lots of strange ways that you will probably never know about. Recently I decided to buy a nice fountain pen. I bought one once from Wal-Mart and it tend ed to leak all over my hands and and my clothes and just make a big inky mess. It was terrible. But I still liked it. I just wanted my new one to be higher-quality. A few weeks before, I had got ten this catalog in the mail, and there was a Parker pen in it that I liked a lot. But it was too expen sive. So I searched the Internet to see if I could find any cheaper pens by the same company. Among the places I found “Parker,” there was a suspicious little entry — the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (PETA) web site. I was curious, so I took a look and found out two things I didn’t know. First, Parker is owned by Gillette, the folks who make shaving cream and razors and other such hygiene tools for mil lions of people, includ ing me. Second, Gillette is on PETA’s list for the exten sive animal testing it carries out. That came completely out of the blue. And it presented me with a dilemma — two, actual ly. Did I still want to buy a Parker pen after what I had just found out? And did I want to give up shaving? I’ve given up on the Parker pen; they’re all too expensive for me. But I still have to shave (once a week). This was when I adopted the “ignorance is bliss” idea — I decided there was nothing I It's just odd that we’re so suspi cious of what the government does with our tax dol lars while we ignore what businesses do ... could really do about it. So I did nothing. I didn’t alter my buying habits one bit. I’ve decided that we know so little about the com panies we shell out our money to, it’s very possible they all do offensive things. Take the hundreds of compa nies that make their products in China, for instance. Chinese labor is cheap because compa nies' don’t have to pay their work ers $4.75 an hour. The working conditions there are terrible. The pay is worse. Child labor is ram pant. Crusaders for workers’ rights are few, and those that try to stand up for the workers often get thrown in jail. It’s sobering and frustrating because we, the consumers, are the ones paying for it by buying the products produced there. The situation is similar with the cheap Mexican labor made available to American compa nies by NAFTA. The trade agree ment brings a big boost to eco nomic development, but it also makes it easier for rich American companies to exploit cheap labor just south of the border. I guess that’s why it brings such a big boost to economic development. Finally, many people make their purchasing decisions based on price. If a product made by children in China is cheap, it’ll sell regardless of where or how it was made. All these factors — animal testing, exploitation, cheap prices — are unavoidable facets of the emerging global economy, the mammoth size and power of many corpora tions, and the extreme poverty of half the world. Plus, it’s almost impossible to find out the truth about a partic ular company. If I wrote to Gillette and asked them about their animal testing, they probably wouldn’t tell me a doggone thing. And if I kindly asked them to stop it, they prob ably wouldn’t. It’s just odd that we’re so sus picious of what the government does with our tax dollars while we ignore what businesses do with the money we give them. And about the pen? I’ve decided to spring for a $5.99 one at Wal-Mart. Hey, it’s cheap. But at least it’s made in America. Wal-Mart never does anything bad — it’s a good clean patriotic company with blue-collar com mercials and a catchy tune. The heirs of good old Uncle Sam Walton play by the rules. Right? (AP)—Here are excerpts from editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad. The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle on Ross Perot: Ross Perot, that jug-eared hawker of homespun hokum, isn’t reaching into his own deep pockets this time around as he makes another pointless run for the presidency. Instead, Perot is digging into your pockets for campaign cash, accepting $29 million in federal matching funds. Running in 1992, the Texan carped that the Democrat and Republican candidates were “spending your money, taxpayer money” on their campaigns. That was supposed to answer the charge that the little dictator was trying to buy the presidency with his multi-billion-dollar fortune. Perot has had a change of heart about spending taxpayers’ money, or perhaps he’s just a savvy investor who knows a bad deal when he sees it. Either way, Libertarian presidential candi date Harry Browne, who is refus ing federal funds for his cam paign, skewers Perot as a “politi cal welfare queen.” Star Tribune, Minneapolis, on welfare reform: Now that President Clinton has signed a landmark bill requir ing welfare recipients to find work, it’s worth posing a little- asked question: are there really enough jobs out there to accom plish the task?... At the signing ceremony, Clinton admitted that the welfare bill is imperfect and allowed that “we can fix what is wrong.” Among the many things wrong with this bill is that it furnishes far too little money to employ welfare recipients who cannot find private jobs and far too small a safety net for those who find no work at all. Clinton and the Congress that sent him this bill owe the nation, and its needy, no less than a readiness to fix its flaws when the realities of the job market begin to take hold. Valley Daily News, Kent, Wash., on presidential cam paigning: Voters who think the country has entered the phase of publicly financed elections have only to look at two recent events to dis abuse themselves of that notion. * On Aug. 17, President Clinton turned 50 with a star-studded party that is expected to net Democrats $10 million. A few days before that, Republicans who chair various ’ committees had lobbyists and major corporations lining up in San Diego to host fancy recep tions in their honor. In both cases, the public can legitimately ask, whose country is this, anyway? ... We know campaigning is expensive and we're not suggest ing individuals or corporations be denied the right to support the candidate of their choice. No right is more basic to our democracy than freedom of speech. But appearances still count. The continual wining and din ing of our elected officials can’t help but leave a bad taste in the public’s mouth. Ashland (Ore.) Daily Tidings on the minimum wage: You can call it election-year poll-watching, but kudos still should go to Republicans and Democrats in Congress who voted to buck a federal minimum wage that is near a 40-year low after adjusting for inflation. Looking a little closer at the figures, however, it’s clear the raise in minimum wage is, well, minimal. ... Next year, when employers will be required to pay $5.15 per hour, a worker still will be taking home just $670 a month, or about $8,000 a year — if he or she works full time. Many employers hire several part-time employees to avoid paying health or other benefits. ... our national reasoning has n’t caught up with the country’s social and economic transitions. JL