The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

NORTHWEST HERALD Section B Friday, July 24,19«5 Pag* 3 Opinion County airport study The feasibility study of a Mc- Henry County airport should be nearing completion in the next few months. A consultant for the county has narrowed the number of proposed- sites down from 19 to four. The sites all have their different ad­ vantages, but the county will de­ cide upon which one to choose. Input from community residents on the sites is being solicited. In an undertaking as potentially power­ ful and advantageous as the selec­ tion of a site and its subsequent construction, it is important that comments from the citizens be heard. A public meeting on discussion on the study and the proposed sites is scheduled for 7 p.m., Wednesday Aug. 14. The meeting will be held in the cafeteria at McHenry Coun­ ty College. Citizens are urged to attend. Branches need trimming WASHINGTON -- The corner bureaucracy, or federal field of­ fice, remains one of the areas of the government that has long needed a thorough housecleaning. Yet perhaps no other area of the government has been so resistent to meaningful reform. Donald Lambro More than one-third of the feder­ al bureaucracy exists outside of Washington -- a shadowy, overem- ployed substructure of regional, state and district offices that rare­ ly receive any serious attention or oversight from Congress or from' their supervisors at the center of power. Their growth over the years has been prolific, thanks to legislators in both parties who have made every effort to bring home the ba-. con in the form of new or expanded federal facilities and jobs. From the almost-moribund 50- state bureaucracies of the Inter­ state Commerce Commission to the U.S. Department of Agricul­ ture's more than 3,000 Extension Service offices, these expansive bureaucratic entities are trtederal field offices blanket the nation in more than 22,000 locations, their labor-intensive delivery of ser­ vices is in many cases much the same as it was at the turn of the century. It is as if modern tele­ communications technology had bypassed government completely. Within USDA alone there are 17,000 separate field offices -- one for every 137 farms in the country -- including the Farmers Home Administration, the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, and the Soil Conservation Service, to name only a few. There are so many agricultural offices that the average farm is within five miles of a USDA office in the East, and within 35 miles of a USDA office in the West. At a time when a mere 700,000, farms produce most of America's food, do we need this many USDA offices? The Grace Commission doesn't think so. It discovered that many of them are less than vital to real farming needs. About 70 percent of all Farmers Home Administration loans, for example, have been going to nonfarmers. Similarly, hundreds of USDA- funded County Extension Service offices, which cost federal taxpay­ ers $330 million a year, have been pitching their services to residen­ tial homeowners -- issuing advice on backyard gardening, tree plant­ ing and shrubbery pruning. When I last checked Virginia'a Fairfax County Extension Service Office, officials were, among other things, providing a week-long sem­ inar on lawn-care tips for profes­ sional landscape people. One offi­ cial described his Extension Service office as "an educational center where people can learn how to deal with their environment." Fine -- but what does that have to do with farming? At the same time, Fred Andre, a dissident commissioner within the Interstate Commerce Commission, doesn't understand why, in an era of deregulation, the ICC is staffing at least 50 state offices to snoop into the daily activities of the na­ tion's trucking companies. "There are about 250 people out there in our field offices, but their work is largely anachronistic," Andre told me. Since the Reagan administration accelerated dereg­ ulation of the transportation indus­ try, "there is a lot less to do. Some of them (ICC field personnel) are doing little more than sending us newspaper clips." * Last year, a White House lntei agency task force concluded tha up to $4 billion could be saved if unneeded or duplicative field of­ fices were closed down or consoli­ dated. Among other things, the task force urged that the existing l-to-4 ratio of supervisors to em­ ployees be raised to 1 to 7. Earlier this year, the Office of Management and Budget came forward with an elaborate plan to merge and cut back Washington's overstaffed corner bureaucracy,, but not a lot of progress has been made. The continuing obstacle: Congress. "Each of these (field) offices is politically well connected," says an administration official, "and these guys immediately get on the phone to their senators and con­ gressmen, and that's when the hell gets raised against those who want to cut the budget around here." (Donald Lambro is a columnist for United Feature Syndicate) HOW*- » -•"mm \ WNVSWNNWVWNV \ XXXXXXVNNXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XX W THE U.S.S. RETALIATION LAUNCHES ANOTHER HOT-AIR STRIKE. The illness of Ronald Reagan The illness of Ronald Reagan has force-fed thought normally in repose; thought about him, his of­ fice, and his successors. Commen­ tators have canvassed many as­ pects of the illness, including highly improbable, but not for that reason hypothetically inconceiv­ able, alternatives, for instance his resignation. When Dwight Eisenhower had his stroke late in 1955, someone asked Len Hall, Republican GOP boss, what would the party do if Eisenhower decided not to run again in 1956, to which the answer was, "When we get to that bridge, we'll jump into the river." Funny, complimentary, and just the thing to say when you know that the president, your client, will read it the next day in the papers. But here are some differences between Ike and Reagan worth thinking . about at this point. Dwight Eisenhower really wasn't particularly ideological. There is a considerable revisionist school that is bavins a successful time elevating Eisenhower, as­ signing to him skills we know now he had but did not affect to have. Murray Kempton wrote 10 years ago an article called "The Under­ estimation of Ike." But even if we acknowledge that although Ike pretended to be aloof from politics, which aloofness gave him the pres­ tige he wanted while all the time he was as shrewd a politico as Mayor Daley -- still, he was not a president who had a considerable impact on his country's politics. And his impact on his party's politics was negligible. When Ei­ senhower was elected in 1952, after five Democratic presidential terms, there was a higher percent­ age of registered Republicans than when he left office in 1960. We know, by contrast, that five years after the first inauguration of Rea­ gan, the number of registered Re­ publicans is at an all-time, post- FDR high. Frustrated liberals, in particular after the last election, decided to anthropomorphize political devel­ opments during the past few years. Ah, you see, it all has to do with Reagan! You see, he is, sim­ ply, magic! He says all those dumb things, and people believe them, and they go to the polls, and they give him every state except Minnesota! But ... Wait until he has left office. Then you will see that in fact his own personality was indispensable to Republican success. All that has been done under his sponsorship will evapo­ rate, and the world will come back to its senses. Buckley At the other end are those who feel that the forward inertia of the conservative movement requires fresh blood. It was frequently com­ plained about FDR by hungry lib­ erals that the New Deal really went no further after 1936, having exhausted the ideological energies of its patron. It was not until Lyn­ don Johnson became president -- goes this theory -- that the welfare state finally flowered. The compa­ rable commentary would have us believe that the natural rhythm of politics will require that further reforms come later, in the post- Reagan period: conceivably much later, allowing for a hiatus either at the hands of a sleepy Republi­ can or of an unlikely Democrat. Such further reforms as what? Well, for instance, a foreign policy that encourages counter-Soviet sa­ lients in extramilitary areas; for instance, agriculture (between Eu­ rope and the United States, we are keeping the Soviet Union from starvation). In domestic policy, a flat tax, a voucher system in schools, and a reversal of the most conspicuous arrogations of power by the Supreme Court. Some think that a president simply can't get much more than what he asks for during those few golden weeks af­ ter he is first inaugurated. Not many people would be willing to say that the tax reductions of 1981 couldhayebeen introduced by Mr. So that two lines of thought suggest themselves. The first is that the tendency of the conserva­ tive revolution, as it has been called, is ratified not only by the personal popularity of its principal sponsor, Mr. Reagan, but also by the ascendancy of the Republican Party. And this tells us that such instability as is ahead of us in 1988 will merely be the result of differ­ ent Republicans fighting for the nomination. That always happens, and it is predictable that no Re­ publican who wants the nomina­ tion is going to campaign on the platform that Reagan was a bad president, or that his politics were too conservative. Reader Forum Tut OfV.WO- iWAtiTTo&VT.&y' CQNTtVT WMSWeOMIA qmwm? OVB •NO KEMmSMJS KMttKMfil RilUk* NORTHWIST HERALD "Keep away from people who try to be­ little your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you fell that you, too, can be­ come great." Mark Twain ROBERTA. SHAW Editor and Publisher LEONARD M. INGRASSIA Executive Editor STEVEN H. HUNTER Marketing Director MICHAEL E. MORSCH News Editor/Regional DENNISM. McNAAAARA Editorial Page Editor RONALD L STANLEY Circulation Director Appalled by Kaul To the Editor: On Donald Kaul's editorial of June 8 on "traditional family tax cuts," my husband and 1 felt it was feminist-inspired and totally in­ sulting to those struggling to keep that much maligned "traditional family" alive. As an at-home mother of four, I've found full-time motherhood to be a very challenging mosaic of inter­ related responsibilities including chef, social secretary, comforter, wife, referee, nurse, laundress, chauffeur, hostess, mechanic, artist, hairdresser, volunteer worker, teacher, accountant, and manager, to name a few. To say the tasks of motherhood are "mind-numbing" and that "the in­ tellectual demands of her routine would not challenge a mushroom" was a falsehood and insult of the highest degree. Besides, my husband does not appreciate being called a mushroom. Seen as a tedious hindrance to pur­ suit of self, perhaps washing dirty clothes would seem boring. But seen in the context of nurturing and giving personal love and attention to one's family, those same tasks take on value and purpose. As for the presumptuous statement about exhausted, apathetic, tradi­ tional fathers, stripped of their abili­ ty to effectively parent, how do he husband's of the career mothers fare better, especially when they have to help the tired, working wife with housework and chores not done dur­ ing the day. (Most working couples can't afford daily housekeepers, and baby-sitters don't do windows). I don't know about the husbands of the feminists, if they exist at all or have succumbed to extinction, but this husband in this traditional fami­ ly is able to give of himself to his kids even after an eight- to 10-hour day at the office. Our kids will always remember the dad who came home from work and played kickball with the entire neighborhood, made pop­ corn with them, fixed their bikes, took them fishing at the pond, and wrestled on the floor with them. Mrs. Thomas (Pam) Jacobs McHenry Fabulous Fourth To the Editor: Thank you Woodstock Jaycees. You promised bigger and better, and you certainly delivered. The 4th of July festivities were filled with lots of fun activities for the entire family. It was certainly apparent that a lot of hard work and months of preparation had gone into making this an event to remember. While waiting for the skies to darken enough to see the fireworks display, the audience got into the spirit with all the entertainment pro­ vided. The combination of the D J and band provided a variety of music for all tastes. The finale of patriotic music, in conjunction with .the fireworks, was inspirational. (Mother nature also got into the act with her own display to match the planned display.) As we were leaving, it was in­ teresting to note the number of cars leaving Woodstock. This is obviously such a major undertaking that many do not wish to spend the time and money involved. Woodstock, let's all get behind our Jaycees and support this and their many other worthwhile ventures. KathyCichonski Woodstock West Park Beachhouse To the Editor: The Crystal Lake Park District would like to sincerely thank the members of the McHenry County Lutheran Brotherhood for their act of generosity in helping beautify the West Park Beachhouse in a recent group project. Under their own initiative, the Brotherhood came to the park district and donated $400 for the res- taming of that building; they also volunteered the necessary hours to complete the work. We would like to sincerely thank Henry and Marilyn Kallimanes, Greg and Rich Cole and Mary and Dick Anderson, along with Jim Zoellick, for all their efforts. Volunteers, such as these generous people, made the Crystal Lake Park District system what it is today, and the entire community benefits. As you drive by West Park Beach ' and enjoy the new coat of paint on the building, we hope you'll remember these people and how they helped parks and recreation in Crystal ',, Lake. Terry Clarke Acting Director of Parks and Recreation Kirk Reimer Superintendent of Parks