Your Pentagon Inaction
The New York Times and Los Angeles
Times lead with the failure last night of a key test of the Pentagon's
prototype anti-missile defense system. The "kill vehicle" was anything but,
missing the surrogate incoming warhead 140 miles above the Pacific. USA Today
leads with its latest political poll, which finds that no issue is considered
extremely important by more than 40 percent of the respondents, suggesting that
in the presidential election, the candidates' perceived personal qualities may
be more important than their positions on the issues. The Washington Post goes completely local above the fold, with
its top non-local story the Russians' fiercely contested advance into Grozny.
(The early editions of the WP and USAT that Today's Papers works
from closed before the missile test results had been released.)
The NYT explains that the Pentagon's failed test was the first time the system's
anti-missile was evaluated while being governed by a fully integrated system of
sensors. Both Times say there will be only one more test before
President Clinton decides up or down on the program. The LAT high up
says that yesterday's failure "measurably increases the odds" that Clinton will
choose not to go ahead with a national missile shield.
On the heels of yesterday's studies from two think tanks suggesting that the
income gap between rich and poor continues to grow, the LAT fronts and
the Wall Street Journal front-indexes similar word today
from the Federal Reserve. The difference is that the Fed focused not on income
but on accumulated wealth. Some of the more striking findings: Although from
1995 to 1998 the median family net worth rose from $60,900 to $71,600, the
median family with a main breadwinner younger than 35 saw its net worth shrink
by nearly 30 percent; during that same time span, median family debt rose from
$23,000 to $33,300; and the percentage of families that own stock went from
31.6 percent in 1989 to 48.8 percent in 1998 and, notes the WSJ , fewer
than 10 percent of American families don't have a checking account. The
WP and NYT stuff the story.
In the half-full, half-empty department, the LAT headline reads,
"BOOM TIME A BAD TIME FOR POOREST, STUDY FINDS." The Journal 's reads:
"STOCK GAINS PROPEL U.S. WEALTH; MORE AMERICANS OWN SHARES."
The NYT reports that President Clinton announced that he agrees with
Bill Bradley and Al Gore that the Confederate battle flag should be removed
from the South Carolina Capitol building. William F. Buckley Jr., in an
LAT op-ed, says that the matter should be put to a national plebiscite.
Buckley says that the flag doesn't enshrine slavery but rather "nostalgia and a
sense of Southern idealism and cultural particularism." And he mentions a raft
of dead Southern idealists who he thinks might well have voted to keep the
Capitol flag in place, but it's significant that he doesn't mention any living
ones. (For more on the politics of the Stars and Bars, click here.)
USAT reports on Page 8 a story that in most alternative universes
would have been front-page news: Hillary Rodham Clinton denies that she'll
leave her husband when he leaves the presidency. HRC says she will "spend the
rest of my life" with her husband.
The WP and NYT report that former Angolan rebels say their
leader, Jonas Savimbi, ordered the shoot-down of two U.N. aircraft that crashed
mysteriously on separate days just over a year ago, resulting in 22 deaths.
The WP reports that the Department of Justice will announce today
that it will receive nearly $500 million (enough for five missile tests) to
settle a health-care fraud case it brought against a national chain of kidney
dialysis centers. The government alleged that the centers caused Medicare to
pay for hundreds of thousands of needless tests for patients and had paid
kickbacks to obtain referrals.
In a WSJ commentary on the TV networks/drug czar flap, John Podhoretz
claims that the government's attempt to influence the content of shows is
"nothing untoward." After all, he observes, the Pentagon reviews scripts all
the time when filmmakers seek to use its facilities and equipment. And the
filmmakers don't protest that the government has exploited them. But one man's
modus ponens is another's modus tollens : The Pentagon
script-vetting process seems outrageous to Today's Papers, all the more so
because unlike the drug-TV case, all the money and assets involved come from
public funds. Why should taxpayers only get to see war movies the Pentagon
agrees with?
