Banner Graphic, Volume 19, Number 145, Greencastle, Putnam County, 24 February 1989 — Page 2
THE BANNERGRAPHIC February 24,1989
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Armed Service Committee rejects Tower nomination
WASHINGTON (AP) John Tower’s nomination to be Defense Secretary is headed for a partisan showdown on the Senate floor after majority Democrats on the Armed Services Committee rejected his confirmation because of questions of character. “I cannot in good conscience vote to put an individual at the top of the chain of command when his history of excessive drinking is such that he would not be selected to command a missile wing, a SAC bomber squadron or a Trident missile submarine,” Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., the committee chairman, said before the 11-9 vote Thursday night. THE POLITICAL DEFEAT back home marred President Bush’s global debut at the funeral of Japan’s Emperor Hirohito and marked an abrupt departure from the month-long honeymoon “between the new Republican president and the Democratic majorities of Congress. Should the full Senate reject Tower, it would be the first time in history a newly elected president had suffered a rejection of a nominee to his first Cabinet In all, eight Cabinet nominations have been rejected, the most recent 30 years ago. A handful of Democrats suggested after the committee vote Thursday night that Bush seek a replacement for Tower before next week’s scheduled floor vote. “It doesn’t do the president any good,” said Sen. Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia. “It’s a tremendous burden for any nominee to go to the floor with a vote of no confidence.”
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Sunday Dinner with Senator Richard Lugar Sunday, March 12, 1989,1:00 p.m. Buffet DePauw Union Building Ballroom Annual Lincoln Day Celebration Tickets available from precinct committeemen or by calling Mary Jane Monnett at 653-4666 or Marvin Steele, 539-4331. Public Invited Paid for by Put. Co. Rep. Cent. Comm., MJ. Monnett, Chr.
HI KIDS Visit with me each Saturday morning from 9: GO--12:00 noon at First Citizens Bank (downtown) and register to win a: $ 50.00 Savings Account to be given away on May 13, 1989 OR One of 100 Charlie Deposit T-Shirts to be given away between Feb. 18, 1989 and May 13, 1989. See you at the f “Young Citizens Bank” at ®FIRSTCITIZENSBANK Vu?*V MCMHSOLONATnNALBAMCnP \ \ Charlie Deposit
BUT THE WHITE HOUSE quickly rejected that suggestion. “There’s no consideration of alternative candidates,” presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater told reporters traveling with the President in Japan. “There’s no alternate list bar none.” “He’ll be working to contact senators throughout the days ahead, sometimes by telephone, sometimes in person,” he said. Tower, a former Texas senator who had once chaired the committee, said in a statement he was “obviously disappointed” but would continue to work at the Pentagon “and await the vote of full Senate.” The strictly partisan vote climaxed an extraordinary 2Vz hour night-time committee session at which lawmakers swapped views on the FBl’s investigation into numerous allegations against him. TOWER HAS BEEN dogged by allegations about his drinking habits and womanizing, as well as by questions of possible conflict of interest posed by his earning hundreds of thousands of dollars as a defense industry consultant after leaving the Senate. The committee’s senior Republican, John Warner of Virginia, said Bush was entitled to a Cabinet of his own choosing. Warner noted that many of the senators who had served with Tower had been questioned by the FBI during its investigation. Democrats hold a 55-45 majority in the Senate, and a strictly party line vote on the floor would doom Tower’s nomination.
Bush S&L plan facing stiff opposition
WASHINGTON (AP) President Bush’s plan to close or merge insolvent savings and loan institutions over the next 30 years at a cost of $265 billion is encountering stiff opposition in Congress. After reading the 333-page bill submitted this week, both Democrats and Republicans who support a separate S&L industry devoted primarily to home mortgages doubt it can survive under Bush’s proposal. “THERE ARE TOO many officials within the administration who would just as soon see the home mortgage lending industry done away with,” said Rep. Frank Annunzio, D-111., and chairman of the House Banking Committee’s
financial institutions subcommittee. Annunzio predicted that interest rates on home loans will rise dramatically if federally chartered S&Ls are allowed to disappear, because the remaining financial institutions will not give such loans a high priority. That concern was bolstered Thursday by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who said his board is making it easier for bank holding companies to buy troubled S&Ls and questioned “whether specialized fixed-rate residential lending institutions are needed today.” TESTIFYING BEFORE the Senate Banking Committee, Greenspan said that whatever sur-
‘Sniffles and Sneezes’ Hospitals try day-care for sick children
By ARLENE LEVINSON Associated Press Writer BOSTON (AP) When little Jessica has a cold, her working parents can depend on increasing numbers of hospital day-care programs with such names as “Sniffles and Sneezes” and “Under the Weather.” Springing up nationwide in the past five years, day care for mildly ill children in hospitals and independent infirmaries is catching on. In Massachusetts, about a dozen hospitals offer the service, according to the state Office for Children. THE TREND PROMPTED the state agency to study the need for such health care and to come up with alternatives that suit both anxious workers and employers concerned about lost productivity when staff members stay home. The day-care infirmaries generally take youngsters recuperating from the run-of-the-mill childhood illnesses. Dr. George Sterne, a pediatrician in New Orleans who is on a national panel working on standards for such care, said mixing hospitals with day care came about because hospitals had vacant beds and needed to keep nurses on the job when their own children were ill. Maureen McAndrew, the nurse manager of pediatrics at St. John’s
Banks raise prime rate to 4-year high 11.5 percent
NEW YORK (AP) An increase in banks’ prime lending rate to 11.5 percent, the highest level in over four years, is a direct outcome of the Federal Reserve’s attempt to crack down on inflation, economists say. Chase Manhattan Bank and Republic National Bank of New York announced the half-percen-tage-point increases in the benchmark rate on Thursday, and other banks were expected to follow their lead today. BANKS USE THE prime rate as a base for setting rates on a wide variety of business and consumer loans, including car loans and ad-justable-rate home mortgages. The increases, effective today, lift the prime rate to its highest level since November 1984, when it reached 11.75 percent In the past year the rate has jumped 3 percen-
world
Anti-takeover bill first signed by Gov. Bayh
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - ndiana companies have a new defense against hostile takeover attempts under a bill signed into law by Gov. Evan Bayh. Bayh signed Senate Bill 255 Thursday during a brief ceremony attended by legislative leaders. The signing was Bayh’s first since taking office Jan. 9. HE SAID THE NEW law will help Indiana companies ward off hostile takeovers that could cost the state some its largest corporations. The measure backed by many of Indiana’s largest companies swept
vives will not be the traditional S&L that relied on short-term deposits from savers to finance long-term, fixed-rate mortgages. “My own judgment is that, at the end of the day, thrifts will look a lot more like banks than they do now, but there will still be thrifts,” he said. “Ultimately it’s going to be the markets that are going to determine the banking structure in this country.” Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, testifying Thursday before the House Banking Committee, defended that “market approach” and said the Bush administration will stoutly resist congressional efforts to re-regulate S&Ls by further restricting their lending activities.
Medical Center in Lowell, runs the hospital’s 2-year-old “Sniffles and Sneezes” program. A ROOM AT THE END of the pediatric floor accommodates up to five children with beds and a play area that includes board games and a television set. The program accepts children from six weeks to about 12 years of age. While the number of days is unlimited, they can remain in care for no more than 10 hours a day. The cost is $2.50 an hour, lunch included. “It’s run by a hospital, in a hospital but they’re not treated like they’re in the hospital,” said Mrs. McAndrew, who added the program averages two to three children at a time. Marcia Mandell-Zimmer is a nursing supervisor at St. John’s. Last year, when she worked elsewhere and didn’t know about Sniffles and Sneezes, Ms. MandellZimmer said she missed three days of work for her own illness but more than four weeks caring for her baby son, Jonathan, when he was too sick to go to day care. In January, Jonathan was recovering from a fever and flu symptoms when she took him to the unit at work for one day and was relieved of the worries working parents usually face with a sick child.
tage points. The most recent rise, to 11 percent from 10.5 percent, was on Feb. 10. The Federal Reserve has been trying to keep inflation under control by slowing down the economy. It does that by draining reserves from the banking system, which drives up short-term interest rates and discourages borrowing. Banks are passing along higher rates because their own cost of funds has risen and demand for loans remains strong, said Alan Lenz, director of trade and economics for the Chemical Manufacturers Association. “THE PRIME RATE is like any other price; it’s set by both supply and demand. They’re going to get the best price they can,” Lenz said. Chase said it was reacting to rises in other rates, not anticipating
through the General Assembly in less than one month, winning its first committee approval on Jan. 31, clearing the Senate on a 47-2 vote and being approved by the House on a 93-5 vote. The measure states that boards of directors, when considering buyout bids, can weigh factors other than getting the top-dollar price for shareholders. The new law says that directors can also weigh the interests of constituents such as employees, suppliers, customers and the communities in which the _ companies are located.
THE FAILURE OF many S&Ls has been blamed on imprudent and sometimes fraudulent loans for shopping centers, office buildings and other high-risk ventures after Congress deregulated the industry in the early 1980 s. Annunzio, with the backing of the industry, said he will try to amend Bush’s proposal to restrict 80 percent of future S&L lending to family housing within a 50-mile radius of each institution. He complained that Bush’s plan requiring S&L owners to put up more of their own capital to cover losses for non-residential lending “doesn’t stop the crooks, it just makes them pay more to do business.”
“YOU FEEL GUILTY trying to send your child to day care knowing they really shouldn’t be there,” she said. With the hospital day care, she said, she had no such concerns. “It’s what money cannot buy, and it’s cheaper per hour than a babysitter,” she said. A report in Pediatrician Magazine calculated that businesses lose six to 29 days annually per parent of children under age six who are out sick, at a cost ranging between $2 billion and sl2 billion, according to Judith Presser, chairperson of the Health and Childcare task force of the Office for Children. Sterne said he strongly opposes the notion of a hospital unit for day care unless it is segregated from the hospital setting and uses staff whose primary training is in early childhood education. “THIS IS THE KIND of issue that gets parents very emotionally involved,” Ms. Presser said Thursday. “It’s new. Parents are uncertain of it.” Like Massachusetts, the states of California, Delaware, New Jersey and Minnesota already have or are completing regulations on such health care for children, she said.
them, when it raised its prime rate. “The prime’s a laggard rate,” said Fraser Seitel, a senior vice president. On Wednesday, the Labor Department reported that consumer prices rose in January at an annual rate of 7.2 percent, the highest in two years. SINCE FEBRUARY 1988 the federal funds rate has jumped by more than 3 percentage points. This rate, the interest on overnight loans between banks, is closely controlled by the Federal Reserve. The Fed drained reserves from the banking system on Thursday, seemingly indicating that it wants to keep the federal funds rate somewhere between 9.5 percent and 9.75 percent, said Giuiio Martini, an economist at the investment firm Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York.
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RICHARD L. WARDEN Castration bill sponsor
Castration bill OK’d by committee INDIANAPOLIS (AP) Despite protests that it is uncivilized and unconstitutional, a bill endorsing voluntary castration of some sex offenders has advanced in the Indiana House. After a 45-minute hearing Thursday, the House County and Township Committee voted 5-3 for House Bill 1299. The : measure would permit the jail sentence to be suspended for a convicted rapist, criminal deviate or child molester who agreed to undergo surgical castration. THE MEASURE now goes to the full House, where it canbe amended before coming up for a final vote. Rep. Richard L. Worden, RNew Haven, said he introduced' the bill out of frustration thatcurrent criminal sanctions against rapists and child molesters don’t deter criminals fromcommitting those acts again. The crimes now carry prisonsentences of six to 50 years, depending on the circumstances. Noting that many of the offenders get suspended sentences, Worden said of his bill, “This says, if you’re going to walk thestreets of Indiana, you’re goingto walk the streets without the; ability to rape again.” THE BILL CALLS for a : convicted rapist, child molester or criminal deviate to be set free; if after sentencing the person volunteers for surgical castra-. tion. “You take the part away from the man that starts the process in the first place,” said Worden, an. investigator for the public defender’s office in Allen County and a former constable. Acknowledging he has taken criticism for introducing the bill, Worden said he believes he has support but his supporters are reluctant to come forward. “I feel like Gary Cooper in ‘High Noon.’ Everybody’s behind you, but when you turn around, where are they?” said Worden, who has received national publicity for introducing the measure. Rep. John Gregg, DSandbom, pointed out that many child molestation cases don’t involve intercourse. Offenders castrated after those crimes might still commit child molestation again, he said. “I don’t think we ought to be setting our policy in Indiana to follow Islamic countries,” said Gregg.