Published Tuesday, January 27, 2009
THE TRIBUNE'S VIEW
CPS budget cuts
By HENRY J. WATERS III, Publisher, Columbia Daily Tribune
Faced with a need to reduce coming operating expenses, interim Superintendent Jim Ritter focuses on reducing the ranks of academic coaches and other employees added in 2007 when Columbia Public Schools spent nearly $11 million from one-time reserve funds, a bad budget decision rewarded by voters with the defeat of a levy increase the next year.
TRIB TALK
Call 815-1776 to contribute.
"I wanted to apologize to the home builder and others of his caliber for my
comment about hastily built, ticky-tacky homes..."
JOHN DARKOW CARTOON
OPEN COLUMN
Alarmists can’t decide whether it’s hot or cold
Editor, the Tribune: Some headlines this month confirmed our worst global warming fears: "Chicago Coldest in Decade," "Flint, Michigan breaks 95-year-old record," "47 Below Zero," "Blowing snow, frigid temps pound nation." Is anyone still wondering why global warming alarmists have become so insistent that people stop calling it "global warming" and start calling it "climate change"? No one wants to look that foolish.
OPEN COLUMN
Poor planning, not business, creates city traffic problems
Editor, the Tribune: Although I chuckled at Steven Wise’s letter to the editor on Jan. 16 with his pedantic definition of the words "hideous" and "overwrought," his strangely sarcastic statements also piqued my curiosity about his interest in commercial development along Stadium Boulevard.
ON ETHICS
School’s penalty dubious
By RANDY COHEN
My husband teaches at a private high school, where several students under the influence of marijuana came to an event and consequently were required to miss a day of class. The school called this a "restriction," not a "suspension," so as not to have to report it on college applications. The students were separated from the community for a day without damaging their chances of admission. Was this use of language ethical?
Blind faith in violence
By GEORGE P. SMITH
Israel’s war in Gaza has killed 1,250 Palestinians and 13 Israelis and created
a severe humanitarian crisis. A new cohort of Palestinians has been recruited
into the ranks of implacable Israel haters, and throughout the world people have
demonstrated in moral revulsion.
Do the Balkan countries have a future?
By GEORGY GOUNEV
Before proceeding with any attempt to address such an uneasy question, some necessary clarifications would be not only appropriate but absolutely mandatory as well. The first one: The author does not have anything to do with the dramatic-sounding title. As a matter of fact, it is a question that a student asked. The second clarification contains an interesting component: The only country that has been left out of the frame of student’s curiosity was Albania, the future of which, according to the young man’s opinion, was secured.
‘Grand bargain’ of entitlements reform is no bargain
By GEORGE F. WILL
WASHINGTON - Days before becoming responsible, in the eyes of a public fixated on the presidency, for almost everything, Barack Obama vowed to convene a "fiscal responsibility summit." It will consider the economy’s long-term problems, one of which is the growing cost of entitlements in an aging nation that is caught in the tightening grip of an iron law of welfare states: Graying means paying.
Every four years, America gets a miracle
By LEONARD PITTS JR.
WASHINGTON - It begins before the sun does. Not yet
5 a.m., and at a suburban Metro station there is a line of people going out of
the station and up the escalator and around the corner and down to the far, far
end of the parking lot. In town, it’s worse.
