Death and Taxes
The Washington Post and USA Today
lead with the Korea Air crash on Guam, and the disaster gets plenty of
front-page space at all the majors. The New York Times
and Los
Angeles Times each lead with local stories--the former with a city
proposal to allow early retirement for public school teachers, the latter with
the mayor's pick of a black 32-year department veteran to be the next LAPD
chief.
The KA crash was of a relatively low-mileage 747 on final approach to the
Guam airport during a rainstorm. The toll was at least 200 dead, but the
accounts of the precise number of survivors vary, as do reports of how many
American citizens were on board. With facts such as these scarce, the papers
have plenty of room left over to speculate. So previous terrorism-related Korea
Air crashes and/or TWA 800 get trotted out, and the NYT wonders whether
the aircrew was familiar with the Guam airport.
Yesterday's signing at the White House of the budget bills also gets big
play. USAT seems to maintain the most detachment from the hoopla, saying
that the celebration capped "a week of self-congratulation." The NYT
notices that likely 2000 Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Richard
Gephardt wasn't there. Both the WP and NYT note that President
Clinton's claim that "the sun is rising in America again" was Reaganesque. And
Newt Gingrich's promise to work with the president on a bipartisan basis to
reform the Medicare system is duly reported without any of the papers observing
the occasion's eerie similarity to the Clinton-Gingrich handshake pledge of a
few years back to once and for all come up with real campaign reform--an area
where zero has been achieved.
Indeed, both the NYT and LAT have front-page pieces based on a
report released yesterday by Common Cause stating that, despite this year's
many fundraising scandals, both parties have raised record amounts of soft
money, with the Republicans bringing in twice as much as the Democrats.
The Wall Street Journal 's "Tax Report" notes that the new tax
bill means more than 800 changes to the tax code--the most changes since 1986.
That column also quotes the suggestion of a Yale Law professor that given this
trend, Congress ought to try to raise money for the Federal treasury by
offering to name new tax provisions after donors.
In the "Living Arts" section of the NYT , the Times man in
Hollywood, Bernard Weinraub, notes that after a flirtation with Arab terrorists
and other sorts of non-standard villains, action movies have once again
installed communists as the bad guys of choice. One reason is that communists
don't have a lobby capable of making producers nervous, and another is summed
up by a film studies professor Weinraub quotes: "For most of us, it goes back
to our youth. I gave my moviegoing life to the red menace. Now they're going to
snatch them away from me and replace them with aliens or Arabs? I don't think
so."
