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Changing of the Guard
By Gary Tischler
No more sweaters.
No more Texanisms.
Dan Rather, CBS Anchorman, is gone.
Are we gonna miss him?
Well, maybe.
And maybe not.
Rather as anchorman is retiring a little earlier than expected through
some fault of his own, but he is over 70.
And Tom Brokaw at NBC is gone, although sometimes its hard to tell.
Peter Jennings is still here at ABC, and sometimes that’s
hard to tell, too.
Plus there’s all those substitute anchors on weekends and
extended vacation time.
Call them what they are. They are hosts, folks somewhere between
the hours of Matt Lauer and Jay Leno. They do the news.
So, mother of God, is this the end of Rather and all the rest. Is
the age of the anchor over? Is news as we know it—the network
kind—passe?
I would guess the answer is: yes, with some provisos.
It remains true that most Americans get their news from television,
else why would we be always talking about the demise of print news,
or how much newspapers are start to resemble television.
We still have local anchors, usually in pairs, but that’s
another story, and an interesting one. But the national anchor as
pre-eminent wise man, well, that’s a done deed. Brian Williams
is a nice guy with a square jaw and all that, but I haven’t
got a clue what he thinks or why I should listen to him.
Maybe we’ve always gotten a little too infatuated with these
guys, simply because they’re around all the time. I don’t
know of too many people who switch channels during the news half
hour, that is, catch Jennings, Rather and Brokaw, or whoever’s
on now. We tune in to the anchor or news of our choice out of habit,
more than anything. Which is to say that whenever Tom Brokaw would
come close to pronouncing terrorist as tourist, which was pretty
much all the time, it would rankle, but not enough to go to Jennings,
who pronounced it perfectly, or to Rather, for that matter. I don’t
like his haircut.
People have always talked about trust when it comes to anchors,
and you can blame or give credit to Walter Cronkite for that. Cronkite
is in his eighties now, and when you see him occasionally giving
a speech, it startling to see how strongly opinionated he is in
a way that he never was as an anchor. When someone put the word
avuncular in the dictionary it must have been right around the time
Cronkite became CBS anchor.
Its possible now that there is so much news out there, so many channels,
so much CNN and Fox, and CNBC, that the network anchor isn’t
important any more at all. And I think that goes for the morning
folks and the late night folks, and that means you, too, Mr. Stewart,
and, hell yes, you too Dennis Miller. I think the trouble with network
anchors and their substitutes is that they dress too well, and like
a bench-warmer on an NBA team, they get paid way too much money.
They wear better suits than the president, except for Rather, who
went through his sweater phase. When they go to the desert and the
tropics, to war and disaster, they don’t sweat. We did trust
Cronkite, of course, and Brinkley, even though he may have been
a bit cool to some, and there was always the legend of Murrow, and
Huntley and so on.
Truth to tell, I don’t think they matter any more. That doesn’t
mean you shouldn’t miss Rather. Whatever the reasons behind
his early retirement, the guy was an original.Maybe that’s
why you always got nervous watching him. He may be the only person
who was ever left with dead air, or went mano a mano with a president,
at least in recent times. Hard to imagine Brokaw talking that way
to the son of the father.
So, we say goodbye to Gunga Dan, reporting from Afghanistan.
We say hello to: I forget.
The National Debt
By Butler Derrick
When I first went to Congress, my constituents
were rasing hell. They were concerned about the national deficit.
It stood at about $60 billion dollars in 1974. This was a sum that
most people could not comprehend. As the late Everett Dirkson said,
“A billion here and a billion there, and after awhile you
are talking about real money.” From the administration of
our first President, George Washington, until 1980, the total indebtedness
of the United States was $200 billion dollars. For a moment, let’s
make sure we understand that there are two parts to this equation.
The deficit is the amount we spend over what the income of the US
government is each year. The national debt is the total amount that
the Country owes. Remember it took us 200 years that included two
world wars, the American Civil War, the Marshall Plan to rebuild
Europe, the great depression of the l930s, and a host of other national
and international involvements to create a national debt of $200
billion dollars.
In the last 25 years, our national debt has seen a tremendous increase.
The US debt now stands at $7,739,337,015,359. The estimated population
of the United State is 296,000,000 so each citizen’s share
of this debt is approximately $27,200.00. The National Debt has
continued to increase at the rate of $2.27 billion per day since
September 30, 2004. The estimated deficit for 2005 is around $521
billion dollars. The budget has been balanced only two times in
the last 50 years.
Arthur Burns was chairman of the Federal Reserve back when the national
debt was in the $60-$100 range. He warned of the danger of a large
national debt. Paul Volker was the next chairman. I well remember
his warning that if we didn’t stop deficit spending, it would
all come tumbling down one day. He would not predict the day, but
he was certain that it would arrive. Our current chairman of the
Federal Reserve in testimony this week said, deficits just can’t
continue. Most experts say the administration’s deficit-cutting
plan is implausible.
Over 50% of our national debt is held by foreigners. China holds
by far the largest share of this debt. We are the largest debtor
nation in the world. Great Britain enjoyed the honor for many years.
It has been said that one of the major reasons the British Empire
was the largest in the World, compared to, let’s say, the
French, is that the British learned how to fight wars on borrowed
money. The Brit’s were broke after World War I and on their
back financially after World War II. In the early part of the 20th
century, they developed what has come to be known as Keynesian economics.
You were to borrow during bad times and repay during better times.
We have adopted this approach, with one exception. We don’t
reduce the debt during good times.
So let’s go back to 1974 when the deficit was $60 billion
dollars and people were so upset. They do not seem to be upset today
with the deficit predicted to be $521 billion out of a $2.4 trillion
budget. How many of us know what a trillion dollars is? Not many,
I would guess. I think that we have heard about the deficit for
the last 40 years. How bad it was. What it was going to do to us,
personally. What effect it would have on our country. Because it
has not affected the average American, it seems to have been forgotten.
Campaigning Begins
All politics, the late Tip O'Neill opined, is local.
And all local politics is perpetual. Although the District's 2006
mayoral primary is some 18 months away, hopefuls and wannabees are
beginning to jockey for position. The great unknown is the intention
of the incumbent. Mayor Anthony Williams is keeping mum on whether
he will run for a third term--as well he should. If he announces
now, his every move will be criticized as "political."
In the event that he decides to step down after two terms, the last
thing the District needs at this juncture is an announced "lame
duck."
Ward 2 Councilmember Jack Evans is mulling the race. His colleagues,
Adrian Fenty (D-Ward 4) and Vincent Orange (D-Ward 5) are "exploring"
the possibility of running. Council Chair Linda Cropp (D) is keeping
her own counsel. Former D.C. Democratic State Committee Chair A.
Scott Bolden and D.C. Boxing and Wrestling Commission Vice Chair
Michael Brown are also in an "exploratory" mode. Some
might argue that this amount of pre-primary activity is too much,
too soon. We disagree. Given that the D.C. Democratic Primary is
game, set and match in this 9-to-1 Democratic town, and given our
strong Mayor and subordinate Council system, we welcome a prolonged
"tryout" for the Mayor's office by as many candidates
as possible. It's a tough job, and a unique one, where the ghost
of the Control Board is always lurking in the shadows. The last
thing the District's voters want or need is a whirlwind campaign
during the late summer of 2006, in which the candidates' strengths
and weaknesses are not fully vetted.
One of the possible hopefuls, Michael Brown, has already stumbled
badly, following disclosures that he and his partners are in debt
to the MCI Center for more than $600,000 on a luxury suite lease.
A judge has ordered Mr. Brown's wages garnished to pay off the debt.
The cardinal rule in politics, much like the cardinal rule in medicine,
is "First do no harm." Mr. Brown has some explaining to
do about why he should be trusted with District of Columbia finances
when his own fiscal affairs are in disarray. In an extended tryout
period, he will have time to try to recoup. As the months pass,
we anticipate that all of the potential mayoral hopefuls will be
subjected to searching scrutiny, as they should be. Given the stakes,
sunshine is the best electoral disinfectant.
Go Janey Go
We are encouraged by D.C. School Superintendent Clifford B. Janey's
recent decision to overhaul the school system's academic standards
and to reprogram capital expenditures to benefit more schools throughout
the system. Both decisions reflect a combination of vision and realism
that has been sorely missing from our public school leadership.
Concerned about the U.S. Department of Education's 2002 determination
that the District's learning standards and testing program do not
comply with federal regulations, Janey has proposed new standards
for every grade, new curricula, new student textbooks, and training
for teachers on how to implement the new program. Under Janey's
plan, all this is to be accomplished within the next six months,
with the new program to begin in public schools in the fall of 2005.
The District's new program is modeled on one that has been successful
in the Massachusetts public school system. It will be uniformly
instituted in all D.C. public schools in place of a patchwork of
educational standards and curricula. New standardized tests of how
well students progress under the system will be performed on a pilot
basis at three District schools in 2006, but eventually will be
administered to all D.C. public school students instead of the Stanford
9 exam, which the U.S. Department of Education claims is not an
appropriate measure of D.C. students' achievement.
Naysayers argue that Janey is trying to accomplish too much, too
quickly, and that the program will fail if the school system does
not invest enough in teacher training. Janey's academic program
is ambitious, but it is not impossible, particularly if instead
of standing on the sidelines lobbing in criticism, the Washington
Teachers Union commits to working closely with school system officials
to facilitate teacher training. Moreover, what good is it to institute
yet another five-year plan for a rising ninth-grader? By the time
the plan is fully implemented, s/he is out the door.
Janey's proposal to revise the school system's 20-year capital improvement
plan to redirect $640.8 million over the next six years from large
renovation projects at a handful of schools, to basic repairs at
most schools, also merits praise. Advocates at schools that have
been scheduled for major overhauls are disappointed in the reduced
funding for their projects under Janey's plan, but insuring that
all students enjoy minimally acceptable conditions is clearly preferable
to making major improvements in a few schools while the rest of
the students suffer leaky roofs and broken plumbing.
There are many obstacles in Janey's path, but thus far, the prospect
of tangling with the appointed/elected School Board, the Teachers
Union, and the war-hardened veterans at D.C. Public Schools Central
Administration (who have yet to meet a Superintendent they couldn't
break or run off) has not deterred him from proposing bold action.
Superintendent Janey is off to a good start. We hope he succeeds.
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