Nov. 24 The Capital Times, Madison, Wis., on Congress: Here's a saga of pettiness and arrogance run amok. Last February, the in-house magazine of the National Park Service contained a column by the agency's legislative specialist. The column began by needling Congress for raising its members' pay. That offended the congressional staff member who handles the agency's budget. When Park Service officials learned that Neal Sigmon of the House Appropriations Interior subcommittee was upset, they went out of their way to apologize to him. A lot of good it did them. When the House and Senate worked out a compromise version of the Interior appropriations bill for the coming year, $75,000 was deleted from the Park Service budget - the $75,000 allocated for publishing the magazine. On the record, everyone claims to be mystified by the deletion. Off the record, one congressional staff member said, ``From time to time, signals are sent to agencies when they've been bad.'' It did not seem to matter whether or not the in-house newsletter served a useful function in communicating with Park Service employees who, of course, are scattered all across the country. All that mattered was that a congressional staff member felt that congressional pride had been wounded. --- Nov. 22 Roswell (N.M.) Daily Record on Congress: Despite all the talk about American voters throwing the bums out of Congress on Nov. 6, fully 96 percent of House members and 97 percent of senators who sought re-election were victorious. ... Members of Congress are so entrenched that there literally is more turnover in the Supreme Soviet. And this undemocratic situation will continue as long as big money corrupts the electoral process. ... The cleanest way to put an end to vote buying by special interests is to outlaw political action committee contributions in federal elections. If a flat ban proves to be unconstitutional, there should at least be strictly enforced caps on such contributions. No less important a reform is shutting down the soft-money system that enables political parties to launder large contributions through generic get-out-the-vote drives. These efforts are unfair because they almost always benefit incumbents. Also, let's end the widespread abuse of the congressional frank, or free mailers, at election time. --- Nov. 22 Daily News, Los Angeles, on Michael Milken: Michael R. Milken learned a tough lesson ... : The more power you get, the more you are obliged not to abuse it. U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood said essentially that in handing out a stiff, but appropriate, sentence of 10 years in prison to the former junk-bond financier, who pleaded guilty earlier this year to six felony charges of securities fraud and conspiracy. ... Legitimate investors can do without the contempt for the rules that Milken brought with him in his pursuit of profit. Whatever contributions Milken made to the financial world, those were offset by a combination of greed, ego and deceit that turned securities markets into personal playgrounds for the unethical. --- Nov. 24 The Providence (R.I.) Journal-Bulletin on legal services: A recent issue of The Economist, the British news weekly, said of the ever-growing demand for legal services in the United States: ``Much of the `demand' for the output of this swollen industry is created not by clients but by other members of the (lawsuit) industry, as if doctors went around injecting diseases for other doctors to cure. Is this really a boost to living standards?'' That's a good question, to which we suspect the answer might be no. So it's a good sign for our economy that at least some big American companies are trying to do something about this disease. The same magazine enthusiastically reports that earlier this month the chief executives of 17 of the country's biggest companies sent out a group letter urging their fellow executives ``to negotiate and settle (disputes) early before litigation takes on a life of its own.'' ... The endless use of lawsuits, threatened and actual, to resolve disputes in our society has diverted time and money from what are usually more productive ends. Let us hope that in taking a pledge to try to avoid litigation, big business provides some useful suggestions to individuals of the numerous ways in which arguments can be resolved to everyone's satisfaction without lawsuits. An America with less litigation would probably be a richer and happier country. ---
