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NORTHWEST HERALD Section B Saturday, August31. IMS Page 3 Opinion Bell' s common sense A reduction in the amount of your phone bill? j At least that's what Illinois Bell says will happen once its proposed plan to alter the rates for north­ eastern Illinois goes into effect. The proposal would reduce the certain inter-state long-distance charges paid by many of this ar­ ea's customers. That's welcome news. Illinois Bell would recoup any income loss by charging more to large city area's (such as Chica­ go). The customers in these areas long have been calling great dis­ tances within those cities and pay­ ing much less than customers in other sites who place similar-dis­ tance calls. What does that mean to you. Ji'Well, it shows that Illinois Bell "t; recognizes that customers outside p of Chicago make up a great deal of their income. The new proposed Iphone rates is a way of treating customers equally. Your phone bill may even drop a bit. It's a good public relations idea from Illinois Bell. And that is not a knock against them. Now that the dust is settling from the AT&T breakup, businesses like Bell Tele­ phone are taking a hard look at their practices. Illinois Bell must protect its share of the market in this state. Other long-distances companies are eager to grab up customers. In order to keep its customers, Illinois Bell must change some policies. Showing areas such as this one that Illinois Bell wants to continue to be the dominant phone service makes sense. So does recognizing that the growth from Chicago is continuing its- northwestern migration. * This area is the future and Illi­ nois Bell recognizes that. Message to Garcia C The Census Bureau has just re- pleased the poverty numbers for 1984. Watch this space for com- > ment soon. There will be com­ ment, from me and others, be­ cause the bureau served up data ^ that are honest and comprehensive including 10 different ways of ^-measuring poverty. j£i You don't get an argument any- F- where in the world if you say the tYU.S. census operation is the best - there is. Over the years, the bu- ;reau has fought off attempts to put 'political spin on its statistics. Cen­ sus data are credible. They tell us '-where we've been and where we •lare -- thereby enabling us to try to ^figure out where we're going. You can forget all that if Rep. j^Robert Garcia, D-N.Y., has his Sway. In an Orwellian spasm, Gar­ cia has taken it upon himself to try to write and rewrite the history of our time. John Peter Zenger, wake up! Numbers, as well as words, can be victims of censors. Here's the issue: Until recently, the bureau published one "offi­ cial" poverty rate. It measured only cash income. That Tate is important; but it doesn't tell the whole gfory. After all, in recent decades America started huge pro­ grams for food stamps, rent sup­ plements and Medicaid, just to be­ gin a long list. These programs -- more than $100 billion worth per ^ year -- help poor people even & though they are not "cash." Go to ? a supermarket with food stamps and you come out with groceries. Because statistics should reflect reality, the bureau began publish­ ing several rates that measured poverty by including non-cash benefits. Enter Garcia. He is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Cen­ sus and Population. He's a smart man, knows a lot about social sta­ tistics, and is usually a friend of the census. But he comes from a district in the Bronx that is the poorest in America. He knows that •if you count non-cash income, the >verty rate comes down -- for Example, from a 1983 "official" National rate of 15 percent in pov­ erty to an adjusted rate that goes low as 10 percent. Garcia is apparently worried that if the American people are informed that there is less real poverty now, and less than there Ben Wattenberg used to be, they won't support pov­ erty programs. So he quietly ar­ ranged that the House Appropria- tions bill contain "report language" directing the Census Bureau to cease ^publishing the nasty numbers. If tyou don't like it, dump it. That's what happens when the So­ viets rewrite history in their offi­ cial encyclopedia. It's what hap­ pened when Galileo was forced by the church to deny that the earth moved around the sun (although the earth kept doing it). Garcia challenges the validity of the data. He maintains that what he wants is a broad study of the issue. That's not a bad idea; there are no glitch-free statistics. But conducting a study is no reason to close down a data series that al­ ready has five years on it. Like many wines, economic numbers take on value as they age, reveal­ ing the impact of recessions, booms and policy changes. Now the legislation moves to the Sekiate. If Sen. Paul Laxalt's sub­ committee doesn't act, Garcia's gambit may well prevail. The message from Garcia is not only intellectually corrosive, but politically foolish. On the intellec­ tual front, it would announce that the Census Bureau is engaged in politics, not social science. Who would belieye anything they put out? Politically, Garcia is shooting the messenger that brings the good news, and himself in the foot. Think about it: How do you prove that programs help the poor out of poverty? Unsurprising answer: by data that show it. It was conserva­ tive Ronald Reagan who rose to high office claiming that the pro­ grams were only throwing money down a rat hole. The Census non­ cash numbers make a liberal case, not a conservative one. Garcia ought to understand that. After all, even counting non-cash benefits, there are still 24 million poor people in America. They won't be helped by a statistical gag rule that denies that poverty programs help the poor. (Ben Wattenberg is a columnist for Newspaper Enterprise Association) M* (X NORTHWEST HERALD "When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.". Thomas Paine ROBERTA. SHAW Editor and Publisher LEONARDM. INGRASSIA Executive Editor STEVEN H. HUNTER Marketing Director KAREN A. ANDROS Saturday Editor MICHAEL E.MORSCH News Editor/Regional DENNIS AA. McNAMARA Editorial Page Editor RONALD L. STANLEY Cfrr'tiptistn rw**r*Ar ia *. mMEANcm TO SLASH NPN, 001 HEAR A N0HON TO SLASH PRICES? ( Castro's got a terrific idea Fidel Castro, you will have no­ ticed, is on a high, and few highs are higher than Fidel Castro's be­ cause he has inexhaustible energy and is a born moralizer. What he is up to at the present time is espe­ cially piquant. He is advising Latin American creditors to repudiate their debt to the United States. Few ideas have a greater appeal than this one. There is nothing so appealing as rationalization. I re­ member a professor in my youth who one day carefully explained to me that although a believing Christian, he did not need to repent his non-stop fornication because, you see, he was engaged intellec­ tually in endeavors pleasing to the Lord, and his output was irretriev­ ably dependent upon regular sexu­ al release. Uh huh. Apropos of such reasoning, I note that the clinical psychologist Stanton E. Samenow, one of the authors of "The Criminal Personality," re­ marks in his new book, "From my clinical observation, I have con­ cluded that 'kleptomaniacs' and 'pyromaniacs' are simply people who enjoy stealing or setting fires." The line Fidel Castro is ped­ dling, in speech after speech, sem­ inar after seminar, goes as fol­ lows. The American banks that, during the past decade or so, lent money so heavily to Latin Ameri­ ca, in particular to Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, were in fact en­ gaged in acts of imperialism. Un­ der the circumstances, he explains smiling, the debts to the American banks really don't count -- for the simple reason that you do not need to pay money to bourgeois crimi­ nals. Moreover, any efforts to re­ pay those sums mean austerity for innocent people. Under the cir­ cumstances, Latin American gov­ ernments have a social responsi­ bility to repudiate their debt. We are talking, ladies and gentlemen, about, oh, $300 billion. Now this comes during a season in which Latin America is gravely suffering. In part for natural rea­ sons, in part for reasons that, par­ adoxically, had something to do with easy credit during the '70s. When President Echeverria was inaugurated in 1970, Mexico's debt was approximately $5 billion. Ninety-five billion dollars later, Mexico is impoverished. Unem­ ployment has risen, the population has risen, inflation is disastrous: and the plight of the working man is acute. Granted the stunning scale of official Mexican graft and ineptitude, still it is mind-boggling that so many dollars should have caused that much harm. William F. Buckley The experience -- in Mexico, in Brazil, in Argentina -- tends to bear out the scholarly researches of such as Thomas So well, Charles Murray, George Gilder and Tom Bethell. These scholars say it in various ways, but most directly it is Tom Bethell who concludes that the entire postwar venture of aid to other countries, whether extend­ ed by governments or by banks, has had negative effects. The key to economic progress is the abso­ lute sanctity of property. Property is the universal victim of politics. Lord Keynes reminded us that it is only government that can debauch the currency. Nothing that a Mexi­ can entrepreneur can do is proof against inflation, taxation, or even expropriation. Money flowing in from whatever quarter tends to excite those instincts in govern­ ment most hostile to economic sta­ bility, and to growth. So that what Fidel Castrp tells us, although it is entirely wrong- headed and, in his hands, merely the extrusion of Marxist dogma, is in a paradoxical sense correct: American money has contributed to the despoliation of Latin America. There is a sense in which what Castro is saying is redundant. Peru has already suggested the line most Latin American coun­ tries are iriclined to take: namely, limiting payments to a (small) percentage of exports. President Garcia of Peru has told the United States that he intends to repay Peruvian loans with 10 percent of export sales. It must be a wonder­ ful feeling to become the president of an independent country. You tell your banker what payments you will make, and when. There are consequences in all of this, of course. They are that it becomes impossible to borrow any more money. What if Peru decided tomorrow that it needed a $100 million with which to construct a datfi? Exactly. No banker is likely to step forward. And in the absence of easy credit, Peru may consider alternative means of stimulating production. Meanwhile, Professor Castro can continue to keep his deteriorating economy from utter­ ly impoverishing his people by simply spending Soviet money, which subsidizes much of Cuba, and all of Castro. (William Buckley is a columnist for Universal Press Syndicate Reader Forum Education show To the Editor: The Aug. 19 meeting of District 47 was one of the finest examples of a well-orchestrated and well- rehearsed performance I have ever seen. It could have well been a Broadway show called "You've Grown Accustomed to Our Guile". The prelude consisted of the board unanimously approving unexplained Consent Agenda Items. (These are issues which they have agreed on in secret prior to the public meeting.) This was followed by a monologue by one member proclaiming that he wanted everyone to know he was not a rubber stamp or yes man. He then proceeded to nod his head "yes" all night. One act consisted of the Finance Director proudly pr9claiming that the district had done much better than most districts in the amount of state aid. An additional $703,000 would be received. He did not mention the additional * money anticipated from real estate taxes. You could almost hear a chorus singing "We're in the Money." Another act was a magic act. The president artfully explained the huge .*««;«««. fr>i>*• 'b* tariff* has consistently spent more than its revenue, but somehow never quite associated the fact that he and the rest of the board were responsible for this mess. We were also treated to the spectacle of being told that the building fund, which has a large surplus, could not be used to keep the schools open in the evening because it was a "now you see it, novKypu don't" account which had to be saved for a rainy day. It would have been more effective had they played "That Old Black Magic." The finale featured the passing of a resolution to seek another tax increase so that their policy of spend, spend, spend could continue. "More" from "Mondo Cane" would have been fine as the ending number. The audience, except for a few who were not associated with the district, Write us! ~ Send letters to Reader Forum The Herald, 7803 Pyott Road Crystal Lake IL 60014. Letters must be signed and give the author's ad' dress and telephone number for the editor's reference. We recommend letters of 300 words or less. All let* ters are subject to editing for clarl* tyand brevity. gave the play favorable reviews. I doubt if the taxpayers of District 47 will be so inclined. To quote from another song, "When will they ever learn, when will they ever learn?" R.E.Morris, Jr. Crystal Lake Committee impression To the Editor: On Aug. 14, 1985, I attended a meeting of the Streets Committee at the Cary Village Hall along with school board member Pat Hansell. Mary Patterson, a Maplewood parent, was also in attendance. At that time we indicated our desire to add a sidewalk on School Street on the west side of Maplewood School. We were quite impressed with the reaction of the committee. Construction began the next morning and was completed for the start of school. A special thanks to the members of the committee and the village board for the efforts on behalf of our students. James Waschbusch Principal Maplewood School *