Commentary Index For 2008/03/25

Published Tuesday, March 25, 2008

THE TRIBUNE'S VIEW
Lamb health plan
By HENRY J. WATERS III, Publisher, Columbia Daily Tribune
Missouri lawmakers are reluctant to fund a plan to produce more health-care professionals in the state. The plan, created by Gordon Lamb when he served as interim president of the University of Missouri, requests $38 million per year to fund training in some 26 universities and colleges all over the state to meet a need widely regarded as critical. Lamb says 90 percent of the state’s counties are underserved. He thinks and hopes his plan still has a chance in this year’s legislative session.

JOHN DARKOW CARTOON

TRIB TALK

OPEN COLUMN
Quality of education affected by cutbacks
Editor, the Tribune: I want to extend my deepest gratitude for all the warm thoughts, cards and especially prayers that I received after my recent emergency heart surgery. I appreciate Columbia even more now and can’t imagine another place I would rather live, except maybe somewhere with more consistently warmer weather.

OPEN COLUMN
Cold economic calculations devalue humanity factor
Editor, the Tribune: Walter Williams recently editorialized against government regulation of unhealthy activities, i.e. helmet laws. He makes a case for libertarian views but amazingly states "there is no moral argument that justifies using the coercive powers of government to force one person to bear the expense of taking care of another."

ON ETHICS
Change a grade, cheat all
By RANDY COHEN
I teach at a state university. Sometimes at the end of a semester a student asks me to raise a grade. Typically it is a student with children, who receives financial aid, health insurance and housing and risks losing these benefits if she receives the F she earned rather than the D I could bestow - harsh consequences. Should I raise the grade?

Ethanol: Solution or snake oil?
By BRUCE DALE
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan’s famous line: There they go again. On opinion pages around the country, including the page opposite this one, a procession of critics has taken to lambasting domestically produced renewable fuels in general and ethanol in particular. The latest entrant into the debate is syndicated columnist Walter Williams, who recently cited a half-dozen wildly distorted reasons for concluding that ethanol is a "cruel hoax on the American consumer."

Energy produced isn’t worth the cost
By DAVID PIMENTEL
The diminishing supply of oil and high prices are encouraging the conversion of grain or other biomass into ethanol fuel. Using corn or any other biomass for ethanol requires large land areas of fertile soil and sunlight for green plant production. As confirmed by the National Academies of Science, significant quantities of water also are required.

It is imperative to keep government intrusion on a short leash
By GEORGE WILL
PINAL COUNTY, Ariz. - The government of this fiefdom south of Phoenix claims that when it approved Dale Bell’s blueprint for his Western-theme restaurant with an outdoor stage in an enclosed courtyard, it assumed the stage would be used for mimes or poetry readings. Mimes in Arizona scrubland? Poetry at the San Tan Flat Steakhouse and Saloon? The authorities were, they insist, shocked when country music broke out, and they are scandalized because some customers, not content to tap their feet to the Western beat while they eat, get up and dance.

Fight to the bitter end might kill Democrats
There is nothing inherently wrong about a presidential nomination fight that lasts until Easter; it’s been argued here that a rational - and national - series of primaries would last until Memorial Day or even Flag Day.

November election referendum on Iraq
Those Americans who have long felt "left out" of the debate about the war in Iraq will soon hold the only microphone on the stage that matters. On Nov. 4, they’ll go to the polls and vote either for Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who staunchly supports President George W. Bush on this war and thinks the effort must be sustained, or a Democrat - Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton - whose priority is to get the United States out of Iraq.