rf The Coshocton Tribune, Coshocton. Ohio Saturday, June 22. 1996 A4 Whitewater Lindsey lasted victim of hearing harassment Garry Nat HENTOFF WILI KVk Scripps Howard Newt Service The Clinton White House may be excused if it becomes superstitious. Just when Whitewater seems dead and buried, it comes alive again, more voracious than ever. On Tuesday, the Senate Whitewater committee wrapped up 13 months of hearings with its final report, a highly partisan dud.
The Republicans had taken their best shot at the Clintons and misfired. The joy was shortlived in Clin-tonville, which in any case was wrestling with another scandal, the seeming misuse of FBI files, because on Wednesday, from out of Little Rock, attorneys said deputy White House counsel Their view Bruce Lindsey would be named an unindicted co-conspirator by the Whitewater special prosecutor. Previously, Whitewater has been confined to a roguish cast of characters back in Arkansas. But Lindsey is a friend of almost 30 years standing and said to be the president's closest adviser after the first lady. And Lindsey could be considered the latest victim of a curse afflicting the circle of advisers the Clintons brought with them from Little Rock: Vince Foster, a suicide; Webster Hubbell, in jail; David Watkins, resigned in embarrassment; Joycelyn Elders, fired; William Kennedy, forced out for failing to wrestle Whitewater to the ground.
Lindsey, of course, hasn't been charged with anything, and the special prosecutor did let the statute of limitations expire on possible charges, which involved bank transactions when Lindsey was Clinton's campaign treasurer. Lindsey's supporters suggest the co-conspirator rap was politically motivated. The trial itself should settle that question. If the president and first lady are seen furtively flipping salt over their shoulders at a state dinner, well understand why. FIELD OF DREAMS Does p*rn really inform? VENICE It is often said that America is a puritan nation, that other countries do not get so upset about sex.
Yet I arrived in Italy to the sounds of an explosion about sex and violence on the government TV station, RAI. Italian President Scalfaro denounced the station for showing a program with a satanic "black mass" of sexual and necrophilic p*rnography. RAI defended itself on the grounds of freedom of speech and information. Italians are quite tolerant of nudity in magazines and on TV. But deviance toward devil worship is another thing.
Where do you draw the line? That is obviously a question of international significance, given the development of numerous channels for distributing disturbing images. Where DO you draw the line? Most people would agree that real violence should not be shown Csnuff movies" that might show real murder); but TV coverage of air crashes, volcanoes and house fires also show real violence. "Kiddie exploiting children, is also condemned by even moderate and liberal critics. But Brooke Shields and Jodie Foster starred in sexually explicit roles when they were minors. Everywhere one looks, lines blur and categories dissolve.
People get upset at gay p*rnography who do not object to the same kind of material when it is heterosexual. The best approach to this problem is to use freedom of information to provide the widest individual responsibility. "Tipper" Gore was vehemently rebuked by so-called civil libertarians when she proposed labels identifying material for parental choice to be exercised. What can be wrong with that? Liberals who champion consumer knowledge in other areas think we should be muzzled when providing information to what one is dealing with. Ms.
Gore's labeling is not censorship. It does not ban or outlaw the material it discusses. Perhaps the guidance is defective. Is that a reason to ban it? Freedom of expression belongs to Tipper Gore as well as to Frank Zappa (the late musician who tried to silence Tipper). Ms.
Gore's husband is a special champion of the information superhighway." This effort at maximum access to all kinds of knowledge is appropriately accompanied Jby President Clinton's approval of technology to let parents control their children's use of the image-providers. "Choice" is a word liberals hke to use about abortion. They should learn to like it when parents are being given the means to exercise choice when raising children in a world that has become a buzzard of images, some welcome, some not Freedom to know must include the freedom to decide what one wants to know. p*rn is information, but so is the list of Venetian imports information. I can choose not to be interested in the imports.
I should be able to choose, as well, what p*rnographic information I can do without. That is not a denial of freedom. It is an exercise of freedom. Letters Return of Harry Louise While much of the credit for the demolition of the Clintons' health-care reform in 1994 was due to the first lady and her spectacularly over-organized aide-de-camp, Ira Magaziner much of the discontent among the citizenry at large was intensified by Harry Louise. This fictitious but mordantly persuasive husband-and-wife team broadcast commercials sponsored by the Health Insurance Association of America.
In discussing the devastations to be visited on the populace by the Clintons' plan, Harry Louise scared Democrats as well as Republicans. Harry Louise were the creations of Goddard-ClaussenFirst Tuesday, a public relations and consulting firm. Now Harry Louise have been hired out by their creators to do battle against a California ballot initiative the Patient Protection Act which intends to set a standard for the nation by making HMOs and other managed-care operations fully accountable to their patients. HMO abuses have been reported in newspaper series throughout the country. The core indictment is that the priority of many managed-care organizations is to cut costs with medical care being secondary.
For example, patients have not been referred to specialists because of the added cost to the HMO until it was too late. Spearheading the drive in California to put patients at the center of managed care is a union, the California Nurses Association. The CNA and its allies among consumer organizations have gathered over 800,000 signatures to qualify its Patient Protection Act for the November ballot. (Four hundred thousand valid signatures were needed.) More than 40 percent of the total was collected by nurse volun-; teers. Nurses, on the front line of health spend much more actual time; with patients than doctors do.
Among the elements of the Patient Protection Act, which Harry Louise will wittily try to undermine, are: An end to gag orders that prevent physicians from telling patients all the; preferable treatment, options that are open to them including expensive ones. Bonuses would no longer be given to doctors for withholding care by limiting referrals to specialists or limiting hospi-. talization or prescriptions thereby saving money for the HMO. The creation of a non-profit consumer organization "with the power to advocate on behalf of patients and publish reports on the quality of services provided by HMOs, hospitals and nursing homes." The most prominent campaigner for the Patient Protection Act is Ralph Nader, a formidable debater whose passion for consumer safety has not diminished since the publication in 1965 of his "Unsafe at Any Speed: The De-signed-In Dangers of the American Automobile." In addition to his campaigning for the Patient Protection Act, Nader himself will be on the California ballot as the presidential candidate of the Green Party. In recent years, corporate critics have been claiming that Nader is be- coming obsolete.
They say that his combative approach to big business, emphasizing its insatiable greed, has diminishing support among the public. But the rise in job insecurity, along with the resurgence of organized labor, indicate that Nader is hardly ready to retire. And in California, even with Harry Louise as his opponents, the by now legendary paladin of the consumer is eager to do battle for patients' due process rights in health care. Meanwhile, the California Nurses Association has fired an opening salvo at Harry Louise: "By contrast with 1994, when they first surfaced, if Louise has a lump in her breast today, she may not find out for two years because some HMOs won't cover the cost of a mammogram every year and she may have to fight to get her HMO to refer her to a cancer specialist for urgent action. "If Harry Louise needed access to care from their HMO today, they would be 40 percent more likely to report problems in getting needed treatment, diagnostic tests, and referral to specialists." The managed-care operations putting Harry Louise back on the air will be investing a lot more money on those and other commercials than the California Nurses Association.
But the CNA will be helped a lot by not having "reformers" Hillary Rodham Clinton and Ira Magaziner on their side. Letters policy: The Coshocton Tribune welcomes and encourages letters to the editor, and will print all signed, appropriate letters on a first-come, first-published basis. All letters must contain the signature, street address and telephone number of the writer, although the street address and telephone number will not appear in print. No unsigned letters will be printed. Letter writers may discuss any topic they feel needs addressed.
However, no letter shall contain material deemed offensive or libelous by the Editorial Board of the Coshocton Tribune. All letters are subject to editing, condensation or rejection, as the Editorial Board sees fit. Letters of excess length will be edited or returned to the writer for condensation. Letters become the property of the Coshocton Tribune and will not be returned. No more than one letter from an individual writer will be published more frequently than every 14 days.
Mail letters to: R. Michael Johnson, Managing Editor, 550 Main Coshocton, Ohio 43812. Dear Editor: Your account of dealing with the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, written a few weeks ago, while maybe written in jest, is nothing compared to what our local Clerk of Courts and two of the three County Commissioners are planning for our local taxpayers. For starters, they are spending $50,000 of taxpayer's money, probably closer to $75,000 before they're done, on an elevator to the basem*nt of the Title Department in Justice Building on Seventh Street that is a storage area. Why such an expense to a basem*nt storage? After the elevator, (they already tore off the new roof on the east side to make it add another of taxpayer's money to remodel the storage area.
They plan, as stated in a Jan. 24 story of the Tribune, to get the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to locate the License Bureau, now on Otsego Avenue, into this basem*nt. This is such a ridiculous waste of taxpayer's money, they should be stopped. As the Tribune article pointed out, the previous clerk, Judy Reed, and commissioners had set a branch title office in with the License Bureau located on Otsego Avenue, and this worked out to the public's benefit for three years. The County and Clerk's expense during this time was $100 a month as share of rent and expenses.
As you said in your Editorial, "try to stay with me here." The present Clerk of Courts, Irene Miller, and two of the Commissioners, Turner and Wyse, "decided the county shouldn't be paying rent for a separate facility." Remember this was 100 a month. Let's see what these three did to save $100 a month. 1) Paid $15,000 for a 50x50 foot lot. 2) Paid $195,000 for a one-story building (with half roof off). 3) Raised each title fee $5.
That amounts to more than $210,000 to save $1,200 a year. At that rate it would take 175 years to break even. Besides this monumental Boon Doggie, the worst part was not asking the taxpayers if they wanted or approved of moving the license bureau into an area already lacking sufficient parking. This shows a complete disregard of the public's interest. Most people I talk to say leave the things the way they are.
Commissioner Kenneth Scheetz has opposed this takeover from the start, and Deputy Registrar Kenneth Crier's opposition to this move probably cost him his job. Can you remember this during election time? Diana M. Mathews Coshocton Two strong women in election spotlight Ann McFEATTERS WASHINGTON It's hard to imagine a little girl today dreaming about growing up to be first lady. Her horrified teachers and parents undoubtedly would tell her to aim higher. Or lower, depending on your outlook.
But, they would say, if she's interested in politics, she should try to be president herself. Since our country has not yet had its first woman president, however, Elizabeth Hanford Dole and Hillary Rodham Clinton are, in effect, running to be first lady. It's ironic that Mrs. Dole's friends and colleagues have long said she should be president and that Mrs. Clinton's friends and colleagues say the same about her.
There are striking similarities between them and vast differences. Both are strong, intelligent, take-charge lawyers. Elizabeth Dole is from North Carolina, got her law degree from Harvard and moved north to further her political career, waiting until she was 39 to marry. Hillary Clinton is from Chicago, got her law degree from Yale and moved south to marry her husband and practice law. The fact that both the Clintons and the Doles are rich (the Doles are richer) is due to the wives more than the husbands.
in 1992 telling voters they'd be getting him and his equally smart wife at the same time. "Buy one. Get one free," he quipped. Even though Elizabeth Dole has had one top government job after another (she's been secretary of labor and secretary of transportation in addition to a number of jobs at various agencies and the White House), she has mastered the art of looking adoringly at her husband as he speaks and leading the applause. Hillary Clinton, in contrast, came to the White House as health czar, worked very hard at it and bombed badly in that job.
Although her polls have changed almost as many times as her hairdos, she has consistently been less popular than her husband, who has had his own ups and downs with voters. Yet on the face of it, one might expect Hillary Clinton, 48, to be more popular than Elizabeth Dole. She's a mother and now says children are her special issue. Elizabeth Dole, who turns 60 this July, did not have children, and her specialty is natural disasters. Despite ups and downs, Hillary Clinton has stayed married to the same man.
Elizabeth Dole married a divorced man. Hillary Clinton arrived three years ago as a Washington outsider. Elizabeth Dole is the consum mate Washington insider. But Elizabeth Dole consistently rates high in public opinion polls. Both women are excellent campaigners and speakers, able to involve the audience, talented at speaking crisply and elegantly without notes.
And each is deeply committed to her husband's political philosophy. Republicans are clearly going to make Hillary Clinton an issue in the fall campaign. Although the Senate Whitewater Committee did not find evidence that she's guilty of criminal wrongdoing in the Whitewater real estate deal or the White House reaction to investigations, the GOP report was written to cast suspicion on her and give comfort to her enemies. The Doles, of course, will say nothing about this publicly because it could cause a backlash. Others will talk about it for them.
What would really be interesting, certainly more than the traditional vice presidential debate, would be an extemporaneous encounter between Hillary Clinton and Liddy Dole. Unfortunately, it's not going to happen. Both sides think it's too risky. Each woman has come a long way. But, like the country, not far enough.
But even though Elizabeth Dole says she would be the first president's wife with a paying, full-time job of her own (she says she would return to her job as head of the American Red Cross if her husband is elected), the Dole campaign wants voters to see a traditional wife, not a powerhouse executive. Bob Dole says his wife "will be the greatest first lady in America's history." He admits he depends on her but does not say that she is one of his key advisers. When Mrs. Dole quit her Cabinet post in the Reagan administration to campaign in 1988 for her husband, ABC anchor Peter Jennings announced: "One of the most important women in government has given up her job for a man." In contrast, Bill Clinton campaigned.
