Cold Hotlines
SCHORR, DANIEL
Washington Notebook By Daniel Schorr Cold Hotlines South Asia's nuclear crisis is beginning to look like a parody of the four decades long Soviet-American nuclear standoff. One hears...
...So, my follow Americans, rest assured that your representative is working with his colleagues to make sure we govern least...
...My Fellow Americans...
...anyway, China was still subject to sanctions for its previous diversion of technology to Iran...
...Let me just mention a few of the highlights: "We have investigated campaign financing...
...His closest associates say they don't know him...
...Joseph Stalin kept his aides on tenterhooks most of the time...
...In a recent year, Americans lost some $40 billion in legal gambling joints, whose operators eased their consciences by paying about $15 billion in Federal, State and local taxes...
...Former Prime Minister Yitzchak Shamir says, "He is not a very trustworthy man...
...Islamabad declared a state of emergency...
...The cigarette controversy now confronts us with a paradox, which some might call hypocrisy...
...Just remember, though, that one man's pork —excuse me, one person's pork—is another's serving your district...
...Not a chance...
...Like President George Bush before him, Clinton issued several waivers, meaning exceptions...
...Undoubtedly, it would be harder to achieve the regulation of nicotine than to raise taxes...
...There are hotlines between New Delhi and Islamabad, installed at American urging in l990 after one of the recurrent critical moments in the Kashmir dispute, but as far as is known they have yet to be used...
...For a while there was a danger that Senator John McCain might get a bill through the Senate...
...Nor is there any solid evidence that higher prices through taxes have an appreciable effect on reducing consumption, even among the young...
...One way to appear to be doing things without doing them is by nonbinding resolutions...
...And now the industry has taken us back to square one, which is square nowhere...
...Congress appears ready to pursue the subject actively through the summer...
...Two American aerospace firms, with more satellites than launch capacity, and the Chinese aerospace industry shared an interest in being able to propel American commercial satellites a top Chinese missiles...
...There is something for 80 per cent of the country's Congressional districts in this bill, including a new Bud Shuster interstate highway in Pennsylvania...
...The "sin tax" on alcoholic beverages brought in about $7.6 billion...
...In the case of contiguous India and Pakistan, the margin is reduced to three minutes or less...
...A principal influence on him has been his father, Benzion, a hard-line Zionist who sees Jewish history as a series of holocausts and does not believe in peace with the Arabs...
...First there is the matter of geography...
...It has been said that the best government governs least...
...Why, of course we did...
...Twenty-four states have legalized casinos...
...Taxes simply serve to establish another form of addiction—governments getting hooked on the proceeds...
...Whether Clinton's motive was promoting trade expansion or promoting campaign contributions, or both, the Justice Department is trying to figure out...
...We renamed the National Airport the Reagan National Airport...
...Was India's decision to proceed with nuclear testing influenced by fear of the enhancement of China's, and possibly Pakistan's, capacity to deliver a nuclear bomb...
...Especially if political contributions grease the way...
...Congress, however, is not ready to pass a tobacco bill, or much of anything...
...Richard M. Nixon had a theory that confusing his adversaries was part of leadership...
...Netanyahu dismisses the idea of paternal influence as "psychobabble...
...But reining in a substance known to be addictive and cancer-causing would make it easier for us to look at ourselves in the mirror...
...What might have some effect would be for the major powers to guarantee the security of both countries against attack...
...Now, I know you've heard a lot about a budget-busting bill containing a lot of pork—$ 18 billion worth, to be exact...
...There is no easy way to bring India and Pakistan back from the brink...
...Same with tobacco...
...I have therefore drafted a speech legislators might want to make when they go home this summer to meet their constituents: "My fellow Americans...
...Still, even though his heart may be with the extreme Rightwing, his mind tells him the status quo cannot endure...
...During most of the Cold War, a nuclear holocaust never seemed more than a remote possibility...
...One hears nostalgic language like "scorpions in a bottle" "testing moratorium" and "mutual deterrent...
...We have talked about keeping cigarettes away from kids...
...But equally, or perhaps more, important is measuring the impact of the transfer of sensitive technology to China on the nuclear arms race in Asia...
...Charles de Gaulle deliberately cultivated an air of mystery about himself...
...A stern declaration from the five nuclear powers does not promise much...
...Furthermore, India and Pakistan lack the infrastructure of controls—the double keys, the elaborate procedure for insuring against an unintended or triggerhappy launch...
...When business interest clashes with national security interest, the game gets more complicated...
...State and Defense maintained that this technology could be converted to military uses...
...If yes, Clinton has more to answer for than "solely" a political contribution...
...That is one of several "sin taxes" that make government the abettor of sin...
...We have tied up contributions to the United Nations and to the International Monetary Fund with a clever antiabortion amendment...
...We endorsed a Puerto Rico statehood plebiscite...
...The trouble was that the Chinese, having crashed one American satellite, needed a better missile guidance system, which the U.S...
...The U.S...
...In South Asia, we start with a situation that looks inherently unstable and may grow more so...
...Tobacco is a bigger benefactor, paying $15 billion, or roughly 30 per cent of its take in a recent year...
...Mystery in Jerusalem A GLOSSY Israeli advertising insert in American newspapers, commemorating 50 years of statehood, featured an introductory article by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu...
...Friends and colleagues who have known him for years do not...
...I don't believe he believes in anything...
...But it indicates the heated atmosphere in which South Asia enters the nuclear age...
...and the USSR were half a world apart, with elaborate radar systems allowing a half-hour for a retaliatory launch on warning...
...On the day before its first explosion, according to the Washington Times, Pakistan advised the United States and the United Nations that it expected an attack at dawn by Israeli and Indian warplanes operating from India...
...We have pointed fingers at the cigarette makers...
...He foresaw an era of peace with Israel's neighbors, but did not mention peace with the Palestinians...
...California is one of 37 states with officially sponsored lotteries...
...If there was a quid pro quo, that would be a crime...
...When business interest clashes with human rights interest, business generally wins...
...But, as David Remnick suggests in a brilliant profile in the New Yorker, Netanyahu may be a puzzle even to himself...
...The South Asia crisis lacks the principal elements that made a superpower stalemate feasible...
...On the subject of giving satellitelaunching technology to China, President Bill Clinton was probably more candid than he meant to be when he said, in a White House briefing last March 6, "I don't believe you can find any evidence of the fact that I changed a government policy solely because of a contribution.' Of course, there were other considerations...
...The smiling answer was "the state lottery," which gave a cut of its proceeds to educational institutions...
...But in the end, we managed to stop that...
...Since we spent so much time not doing things, some of you may be wondering whether we did anything at all...
...Several years ago, a small college in northern California invited me to lecture, offering a surprisingly high fee...
...Will he listen to his own mind and try to come to an agreement with the Palestinians...
...We told President Clinton to consult us before bombing Iraq...
...And, in the end, thanks to the exertions of our leadership, we have managed to pass nothing of any consequence...
...Where that report came from, whether inspired by memory of the Israeli attack on Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981, or whether simply a hoax, is hard to guess...
...This century has had its share of enigmatic leaders...
...But an American diplomat working on the problem said, "With this Congress...
...That brings us to the not unrelated controversy over delivery of satellite technology to China...
...Sanctions, especially unilateral sanctions, are not likely to have much effect...
...Or will he listen to the Right-wing constituencies that keep him in office...
...Once there and having made friends with my sponsors, I asked how they could afford it...
...Similarly, we named a commission to study how to save Social Security...
...But of course, he's the committee chairman...
...If there was knowing acceptance of a foreign contribution for any reason, that would be another crime...
...We have passed nothing...
...Some suggest that if the Soviet-American nuclear deadlock survived the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, then maybe an Indian-Pakistani stalemate can survive the bitter contest over Kashmir...
...For example, without actually legislating we endorsed more trade and investment in Africa...
...Unfortunately, the analogy doesn't work...
...When decision-making is shifted from the security-minded State and Defense Departments to the trade-minded Commerce Department, you know who's winning...
...Netanyahu is something of a puzzle...
...The Clinton Administration wants to raise the cigarette tax by $ 1.10 to discourage teenage smoking, and also wants to use the expected half-trillion-dollar proceeds for cancer research, education and child care...
...I am proud to report that your government, or at least the Legislative Branch, has set new records in nongoverning...
...The public health community has never held much with taxing sin, because it tends to make the Treasury a partner of the purveyor...
...We talked about banning human cloning, but avoided taking any action...
...We have talked endlessly about campaign fund scandals...
...We told President Clinton not to send sensitive technology to China...
...And, naturally, we passed the Highway Transportation Act —$217 billion, the biggest ever...
...We extended for four years the Rhinoceros and Tiger Conservation Act...
...Then he turned over decision-making to the more amenable Commerce Department, under the late politically astute Secretary Ron Brown...
...President Clinton's advisers have spent a lot of energy trying to figure out where he is going...
Vol. 81 • June 1998 • No. 7
