Where I Stand: A dangerous time in the U.S.

Monday, March 25, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

THESE ARE DANGEROUS times in the United States, and don't expect the danger to recede prior to November. In fact, it will probably get even more deadly this summer during the national political conventions and when some freshmen members of the U.S. House of Representatives find themselves lagging in the polls. "What, the voters don't see me as the political hero they elected two years ago?"

Last week, the House got carried away when members flashed their patriotic colors with a resolution urging the United States to defend the Republic of China on Taiwan. This bit of useless rhetoric only added another gob of chewing gum to the jawing going on between the White House and Beijing.

The People's Republic of China was flexing its military muscle in international waters off Taiwan and conducting a war of words with our country. It was being handled in backroom negotiations and the quick movement of our naval might into the area of possible conflict. All the House resolution did was create another political reason for Beijing to make some more outrageous public statements.

Despite our sophistication as we near the year 2000, words flashing across the world and igniting a conflict is still a possibility. War today isn't like it was in Teddy Roosevelt's day, but even then, he wisely kept his voice low and carried a big stick. Our big stick was being shown, and it wasn't wise for members of Congress to add fuel to a possible fire. I wonder how many of them gave any thought to exactly what we would or could do with mainland China after we defeated its small navy.

Here at home, the same group of legislators is doing everything possible to make our streets even more dangerous by repealing the ban on assault weapons that has been law only two years. They know that the deadly streets of our country will only become deadlier with more sophisticated weapons in the hands of potential killers. But this realization evidently isn't as impressive as the desire to pay a political debt to the National Rifle Association for its help in getting them elected. This stupidity is a special-interest payoff so more help will be forthcoming for this year's campaign.

Have the House members forgotten that it was less than three years ago that Luigi Ferri killed eight people and wounded eight more with two TEC assault weapons in a San Francisco law office? How about the AR-15 that a punk used to kill police officer Christy Lynne Hamilton in Northridge, Calif., or the killing of a Maryland police officer, John Novabilski, with a MAC-11? Dozens of other American names can be added to the death list, and to forget them and condemn even more innocent victims isn't a responsible act.

Even poor kids and the working poor aren't safe from becoming targets of Congress. A badly needed immigration control bill came flying out of the House, 238-87. Several parts of the bill are good and should have been enacted years ago. But is it wise or necessary to include provisions to kick illegal immigrant kids out of public schools or deny food stamps to American children who have illegal immigrant parents?

The working poor who make $4.25 an hour have also fallen victim to a House committee vote foolishly cast to stay on the side of greedy businesses. Because of the decreasing value of the dollar, present-day minimum wage rates will soon be at a 40-year low. Good American men and women who are working are being punished by this action. All the nonsense about a 90-cents-an-hour raise hurting businesses is nothing other than greed. Greed that a Republican-dominated House committee wants to pay back for campaign dollars received and to be received during this campaign.

President Clinton is playing his own political games when, as a sop to Southern California voters, he puts out the word that he will approve the building of an additional B-2 bomber. This assures additional life to an expensive and long-recognized unnecessary program with the possibility of even more being built in the future. This move was made before GOP presidential candidate Sen. Bob Dole promises to build more of the B-2s when he visits the bomber plant at Pico Rivera in the near future. You can sure safely bet that all of the aerospace workers will receive more than $4.25 an hour.

Just to make sure that ranching interests are given some goodies, the Senate has approved a land-management act that will reduce the power of all public-land users except those who oftentimes use and abuse it the most. The voices of hikers, hunters, fishermen, rockhounds, photographers and savers of our fragile environment will be all but silenced.

Also in the middle of this election-year mess is the argument over limiting damage awards from faulty-product lawsuits. Big business won this one in the Senate with a 59-40 vote, but Clinton says he will veto it because it is anti-consumer. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., says it is a very fair bill that balances the interests of the consumer and business. Dole says the only reason the president doesn't like the bill is because it hurts his trial-lawyer friends.

Personally, I don't know who is right or wrong in the arguments over the product-liability law, but I am convinced that, before all is said and done, some people without power or money will be hurt. We should expect nothing else from a Congress, Democrats and Republicans, and presidential candidates who are willing to talk themselves into a war, deny food and education to certain children, return killing weapons to our streets, keep the working poor down and out, spend big dollars on unnecessary weapons and further damage our fragile environment.

Sadly, it's all triggered by the desire to stay in or gain office and done under the guise of being patriotic. Yes, these are dangerous times for all Americans as the world's superpower readies for an election. If politicians don't contribute to an international conflagration, they will, at the very least, do their best to tear out our own guts by hurting millions of Americans who least deserve the additional pain coming from Washington.

archive