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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 11, 1995)
EDITORIAL Journal’s backing unfair advantage With ASUO election season moving into high gear, candidates are looking for press and publicity in a myr iad of ways. Unfortunately, the Oregon Commentator is already promoting two candidates who also happen to be staff members of the publication. The two. Justin Good and Thomas Schoenborn. are running for president and vice president of ASl JO. They also received a substantial amount of publicity in the April 10 issue of the Commentator. The Commentator has obviously taken it upon itself to promote the Good/Schoenborn campaign — even before the publication has officially "endorsed" anyone. Consider: • An article, written by Good, appears on page 10 of the issue Below it is nn ad for Good /Sc hoen born, osten sibly paid for by the Dominant Paradigm Committee." advising renders to "prepare for the revolution." • Good and Schoenborn were mentioned as being in the race for the ASUO Executive in the "What Rules fc What Drools” section, while no other campaigns were noted. • Items from the Good/Schoonborn platform were mentioned at the ton of the list In a profile of the five candidates. White tliat isn't Incriminating, it is ques tionable that the first item listed, an optional incidental fee system, resulted in a two-page article on the same siibjec». in the same issue. As a journal of opinion whose workers are unpaid, the Commentator should not be expected to adhere as strict ly to the rules of fairness and equal-time as other publi (at ions. However, just as it would ho inappropriate for the president of some student club to use that club's treasury to finance his candidacy, it’s also inappropriate for the editors of a well-read, student-financed publication to use the pages of that publication to promote their own electoral ambitions. It Isn't unusual for a publication to endorse a particu lar candidate, and in fact, it's a newspaper's cherished First Amendment privilege to do so. But there are two important differences between a fair endorsement and the kind performed by the Commentator. First, the candidate usually isn’t a high-level editor at the publication doing the endorsement, with the unique privilege of having his or her name distributed to thou sands of readers, at no cost to him — because the paper picks up the tab. And second, the endorsement is usually the result of an Interview and research process In which all candi dates are compared against one another. The endorse ment then appears in a single issue, in a single place. It doesn't need to be throughout the edition, a whole cam paign on a half-dozen pages. In the interest of fairness, Good and Schoenborn should refrain from contributing to the Commentator until the end of the brief election season. In the mean time, they should seriously look at other ways to pro mote their campaign. 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Dayton Yaa nwnwoom Bu*io**» Office W6-M12 AOV#f tinny Atfv#rtl**ny W6-4W3 ■ OPINION Rich don’t deserve cheap shots Brian Womack n an unprecedented natumal ly-telev isih! speech to the JLnation Friday night, Newt Gingrich spelled out the suc cesses and failures of the first 100 days of the 10-tth Congress. One of the biggest claims of sin.i ess he could boast of was the tax- reduction bill passing the House — finishing up the Contrai l with America before the 100 days were even com pleted The t uts include redut ing capital gains taxes, expanding the tax credit for children to $500 for those making up to $200,000 and slu ing taxes for businesses Obviously, not everybody is happy with these cuts As sure ns ram in Kugene and stress in Info Hell, the Democ rats get out their favorite drums Those drums beat the beats of class envy. Pounding away at our heads until we long for decapitation, the Democratic side of the aisles in Congress bastardize those wealthy individuals as the great Satans of America. 1‘his, of course, is the party of the Kennedy's and the Rocke fellers But the drums persist Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D I said in a story in the Saturday edition of The Oregonian that Republicans "have shown their true loyalties; to the fortes of privilege and power who need no help and deserve no special favors " Bang. bang. hang. ' The speaker s rhetoric can not conceal the reality; Franklin Roosevelt's hundred days were for the people. These hundred days are for the privileged." said the Minority Leader of the House. Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.J. Thump, thump, thump. We Americans ate repeatedly told that the evil people in this nation are the rich. Why? Because they have more money than most of the rest of us. It seems that we often forget the rich don't always get rich ten ause of some big inheritance i heck they got by way of their birth A lot of it just came from good, old fashioned, hard work Names like Hill Gates, Henry ford and Nam Walton prove just that. There are also many small business owners who have laid their life's savings just to start a business. Though thev may not Iw bringing home millions every week, they often have become successful enough to employ 20 employees and own a nice lioat Yet they are the exi option to the rule At least nine in 10 small businesses fail They are among that small percentage that actually had sue * ess Obviously these people weren't just lucky or born with rich. They earned it I'm not saving all these posi tive things about the rich because 1 am one of them. 1 come from a blue collar, sin gle-income household. Money was always scarce Yet, 1 did know that an entre preneur w ho had laid his money on the line was employing my dad. This business owner had a huge house on a large piece of real estate with all the trim mings. Hut this person was taking the risks with his money at every joli he did. My dad, as with any other employee, simply had to work at the job only with the threat of job security hut not every < ent he ow ned As in this (.ase. and most oth ers. the rich signed the pay checks. But even if some of the rich did inherit their wealth, why should we envy w hat they have? Why should they have to have someone else tell them what to do with their own money? Whv should some government have the right to redistribute their wealth? Nevertheless, it seems many Americans believe rich people are a bottomless pit of money that could run the country with their combined earnings. Much of our tax structure ( mors to just such an attitude, and some of the rich in this country- are getting tired of it. A Nov. 21. ltt‘14 article in Forbes explained how sortie of the rich nre actually revoking their citizenship just to escape these burdensome taxes. It explains, "Rich Americans . anyone with on estate worth $.1 million or more —pay 55 per cent. A fairly stiff 37-percent mnrginol rate kicks in for Amer icans leaving as little as $600,000 to their children. The marginal rate, ranges upward from there to 60 percent." Although I wouldn't revoke rny citizenship. I can still see their point Why should people who make more have to neces sarily pay more? Why should hard work be rewarded with higher taxes? One of the ways the rich are supposedly I wring favored in the tax- reduction package is with the capital-gains tux cuts Gephardt said Friday that the average tax cut for the wealthy would be much higher than for some middle class income earn ers. So what? Captial-gains taxes are one of the stupidest taxes 1 know of Ixecause they punish people who make money taking risks in the stock and bond markets among other areas. If the rich are the ones w ho urn afford to take the risk, more power to them Much of their investment spurs the economy, anyway, which gets back to most of us. But the Democrats would rather bang the drums of class envy because the rich have more money than the rest of us Therefore, they should be pun ished with higher taxes. America isn't atiout envy. It's about individuality, it's about seeing what one wants and going after it it's not about playing those drums instead Brian Womack is a columnist for the Emerald.
