The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, September 08, 2000, Page 5, Image 5
The ©amecock
Congress fails to overturn repeal of estate tax bill
by Curt Anderson
Associated Press
* WASHINGTON—With 13 Democrats switch
ing sides, the Republican-led House failed Thurs
day to override President Clinton’s veto of a
bill to abolish inheritance taxes in a vote with
political overtones likely to spill into the elec
tion campaigns.
“If the American people really want this
tax relief, we need a Republican Congress with
a Republican president who will sign it,” said
House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas,
framing the campaign issue for the GOP.
By a 274-157 vote, the House fell 14 short
of the necessary two-thirds margin to over
ride the veto with 431 members voting. Fifty
three Democrats voted with all but one Re
publican for the override, compared with 65
Democrats who supported the legislation in
June when it passed 279-136.
^ Clinton praised the vote, calling the re
pealed bill “a huge tax cut for the most well
off Americans” that threatened the nation’s eco
nomic health and critical government programs.
“If the congressional leadership is serious
about estate tax relief for small businesses, fam
ily farms, and principal residences of middle
class families that have increased in value, they
should work with me in a fiscally responsible
manner as Democrats in Congress have pro
posed,” Clinton said.
But GOP sponsors said they would settle
for nothing less than full repeal.
“There is only one way to rid the code of
this immoral, unfair and economically unsound
tax, and that’s to eliminate it,” said Rep. Jen
nifer Dunn, R-Wash.
Even though a clear House majority favored
repeal and polls show many Americans believe
the tax is inherently unfair, Democrats said just
as many people want Congress to focus on pay
ing down public debt, improving education and
creating a Medicare prescription drug benefit.
Democrats also portrayed the 10-year, $105
billion bill as a giveaway to wealthy families —
only about 2 percent of estates owe the tax each
year — and only one part of a huge GOP tax
cut that would consume too much of the pro
jected budget surplus.
“Never have so many spent so much time
to give so much money to so very few,” said
House Minority Whip David Bonior, D
Mich.
Republicans countered that the veto by Clin
ton, and by extension Democratic presiden
tial nominee A1 Gore, was another signal that
Democrats want to spend the surplus on more
federal government programs instead of re
turning a portion to taxpayers.
Republican nominee George W. Bush fa
vors repealing the estate tax.
“I say to the president: This veto does not
mean that money is now available for Wash
ington spending,” said House Speaker Dennis
Hasten, R-Ill. “We will not use it to expand
government.”
Sponsors also took issue with the Democ
ratic characterization of the estate tax as pri
manly benefitting the rich, contending that it
forces millions of middle-class people to spend
thousands of dollars on insurance and estate
planning and threatens jobs of people when busi
nesses and farms are broken up to pay the tax.
“The death tax has given purgatory a new
meaning,” said Rep. Bill Archer, R-Texas, chair
man of the House Ways and Means Commit
tee. “Death as an event should not trigger a
tax.”
Clinton and Gore both called wavering De
mocrats to shore up support for the veto, House
aides said.
One Democrat who switched his vote, Rep.
Sam Farr of California, said he originally backed
the repeal in hopes it would lead to a good-faith
attempt at compromise with the White House.
“You’re more interested in a political mes
sage than you are in solving the problem,” Farr
told Republicans on the House floor.
In addition to Farr, these Democrats voted.,
for repeal in June but opted to sustain the pres
ident’s veto and kill the bill this time: Califor
nia’s Joe Baca, Anna Eshoo, Tom Lantos, and
Zoe Lofgren; Colorado’s Mark Udall; Florida’s
Allen Boyd and Peter Deutsch; Maryland’s Al
bert Wynn; New Jersey’s William Pascrell; New
York’s Mike McNulty and Nydia Velazquez,
and Virginia’s Jim Moran.
Next week, the House will decide whether
to sustain the president’s veto of the 10-year,
$292 billion marriage penalty tax cut.
Like the estate tax repeal, 53 House De
mocrats voted for the marriage penalty tax cut.
That veto is also expected to be sustained.
Congress has tried nine previous times to
override a Clinton veto since Republicans took
power in 1995.
Four overrides have won House approval
but only two vetoes—on budget line-item ve
toes and securities litigation reform — were
successfully overridden by both the House and
Senate as required to enact the vetoed mea
sures.
Turkey stops homosexual tourists
from entering historical site
by Harmonie Toros
Associated Press
ISTANBUL, Turkey — Police in a
Turkish resort banned a group of gay
tourists, many from the United States,
from visiting the ancient ruins of Eph
esus, the tourists said Thursday.
The 800 tourists, who also came
from the Netherlands and Britain, ar
rived in the Aegean port of Kusadasi
^ aboard the cruise liner Olympic Voy
ager on Wednesday as part of a gay
oriented seven-day tour with stops in
Egypt, Israel and Greece.
After authorizing most tourists
to leave the port, local police blocked
the last two buses, apparently after re
alizing that the passengers were all ho
mosexuals, passengers and crew mem
bers said.
Police also stopped several buses
at Selcuk, some two miles from Eph
esus, and ordered them back to the
cruise liner. A dozen other buses man
aged to enter the ancient city before
the police blockade and visit Ephesus,
whiach draws thousands of tourists
each year.
“All they said was ’No pass,”’ said
Edward Timblyn of Houston, Texas,
one of the passengers blocked by po
lice. “I was disappointed, being
stuck on the ship all day.”
The mayor of Kusadasi boarded
the boat Wednesday evening to apol
ogize for the incident, Timblyn said.
Although gay artists, singers and
belly dancers are popular in Turkey,
homosexuality is still taboo in the Mus
lim nation and gays complain that they
often face discrimination, especially
by police. Police in Selcuk said they
were carrying out orders of the inte
rior minister, the daily Hurriyet re
ported Thursday. But Mithat Duman
li, a ministry spokesman, said he was
not aware of any orders from the min-"
istry.
“We are not in a position to make
judgments about peoples’ sexual pref
erences,” Tourism Minister Erkan
Mumcu was quoted as saying by the
Anatolia news agency on Thursday.
“They are in Istanbul now, and I think
they will end their visit without meet
ing any more problems.”
Cody Hamilton, who was able to
visit Ephesus, said he was relieved that
authorities had apologized to his group.
“The fact that this kind of igno
rance is not tolerated by higher au
thorities is very important,” said Hamil
ton, from Durham, N.C.
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Mary Neil Hanks
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Kelly Kramer
Emily Mabley
Julia Mitchell
Alison Mobley
Erin O Hara
Elizabeth Peterson
Erin Shaw
Susan Sherard
Alison Sires
Franje Slothouber
Mardi Smith
Elliot Swanson
Kristen Tant
Martha Woodward
Megan Wright
Jessica Wylie
DELTA DELTA DELTA
Study shows Earth getting hotter
by Paul Recer
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — In a study that adds weight to global
wanning theories, an analysis of freeze and thaw records for
lakes and rivers in the northern hemisphere shows the Earth’s
temperature has risen steeply over the last 150 years.
Researchers report Friday in the journal Science that the
annual freeze of 26 bodies of water in North America, Asia
and Europe shifted about 8.7 days later over the last centu
ry and a half, while the ice breakup dates have occurred
about 9.8 days earlier.
“The strength of this paper is the robust nature of direct
human observations,” said John J. Magnuson, a researcher
at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and first author of
the study. The results, he said, “are not calculations,” which
are subject to bias and instrument error, but “direct human
observations of a 150-year trend of ice freeze and thaw” that
are difficult to refute.
“It is clearly getting warmer in the northern hemisphere,”
he said. “This is very strong evidence of a general warm
ing from 1845 to 1995 in areas where there is ice cover.”
Other researchers said the ice findings are consistent
with recent instrumented temperature readings and tend to
support the idea that the Earth is getting warmer. Some
scientists have said readings taken by temperature gauges
and by satellites are subject to interpretation errors.
“This provides independent evidence that the warm
ing we have seen over the 20th century is real,” said David
R Easterling, chief scientist at the National Climatic Data
Center, an archive center of the National Oceanographic
and Atmospheric Administration.
Temperature trends are a part of the ongoing research
to determine if the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and
oil, is causing global warming. The theory is that carbon
dioxide and other gases added to the atmosphere by indus
try and transportation are trapping heat from the sun and
causing the Earth to warm up.
Some scientists have contended the warming is not re
al or that it is part of a natural cycle unaffected by human
actions.
Magnuson said his study does not address the cause of
the warming trend, but clearly shows it is occurring.
The change in the ice-on and ice-off days found in the
study corresponds to an air temperature warming of-about
3.24 degrees Fahrenheit over the 150-year period, he said.
An average temperature rise of just a third of a degree is
enough to change the icing and deicing dates by one day, the
researchers said.
The data was compiled from records kept at lakes or
rivers in Canada, Finland, Switzerland, Siberia, Japan and at
14 sites in five northern U.S. states.
Some of the records date back far longer than the 150
years studied.
The oldest records are those kept in two churches on the
shore of Lake Constance on the Swiss-German border. Since
about the 9th century, there has been a tradition of carrying
a Madonna figure from one church to the other on the day
that the lake froze enough to walk across. A year later, fol
lowing freeze up, the figure was returned to the alternate
church.
In Japan, ice records have been kept since 1443 at a
shrine on Lake Suwa. Shinto religious leaders believe male
and female deities separated by the lake are united when it
freezes over.
Lake and river ice records long have been important in
Canada and the northern United States because the bodies
of water often were used to transport people and commer
cial goods. The U.S. lakes included in the study were Men
dota, Monona and Geneva in Wisconsin; Detroit and Min
netonka in Minnesota; Oneida in New York, and Moosehead
in Maine.
Scott Collins of the National Science Foundation, which
funded the study, said it “is important because it humanizes
the impacts of global environmental change by using a
simple measurement that is relevant and meaningful to the
public.”
Bomb kills 6 in Pakistani city
by Munir Ahmed
Associated Press
LAHORE, Parisian — A bomb ripped
through a crowded market in the east
ern Pakistani border city of Lahore dur
ing the evening rush hour Thursday,
killing six people and injuring at least
33, police said.
The bomb exploded in Dharampu
ra market in the eastern part of the city,
about two miles from Pakistan’s bor
der with India.
No group has claimed responsibili
ty for the explosion, the fourth in the
city this year. Police said they made no
immediate arrests.
The crude homemade bomb, which
weighed 4.4 pounds, damaged several
shops, shattered glass and caused a stam
pede.
The bomb was tied to a motorbike,
which was destroyed in the explosion,
witnesses said.
At least six people were critically
injured, doctors at a state-run hospital
said. Two of those killed were women.
“I heard a deafening explosion while
■shopping,” said Ghulam Mustafa, 42,
who sustained head injuries. “I don’t re
member what happened next.”
Another victim, Mohammed Nazeer,
18, who had bums on 30 percent of his
body, saw flames leaping as the explo
sion rocked the market.
“I fell from my bicycle...I don’t
where it is now,” he said.
Outside a city hospital’s emeigency
ward, men and women wailed and cried.
Ali Imran, 22, said he carried his injured
teen-age brother to the hospital in a taxi.
“We both went out together. I
stopped at a shop to buy milk, while my
brother went ahead,” said a visibly shak
en Imran.
“Moments later I heard a bang...I
found my brother among the victims.
He has severe bum injuries. May God
protect him.”
Tire Deaths
from page 4
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., plans to
hold hearings before his Senate Com
merce Committee next week. “This is
just the beginning of this investigative
process,” said Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La.,
who led the House hearing Wednesday.
Tauzin said Thursday that “I think
we’ve got it turned around.”
“1 tliink we’ve got the agency (NHT
SA) finally realizing it’s got to do a bet
ter job not only collecting, but reading
information,” Tauzin said on CBS’ “The
Early Show.” “We’ve got the compa
nies, I tliink, finally agreeing to provide
information to a federal agency much
earlier to set up ;;n early warning system
to report foreifen recalls as they oc
cur.
Jacques Nasser, chief executive of
Ford Motor Co., blamed the problem on
what he called defective Firestone tires
but promised changes in how Ford op
erates, including notifying American of
ficials when the car company makes any
safety changes in its overseas markets.
Ford has come under fire for begin
ning a Firestone tire recall in 16 for
eign countries, including several in the
Persian Gulf, more than a year before
the U.S. recall started “How in the world
can corporate officials allow a danger to
go forward in America while protecting
the Saudis?” asked Sen. Arlen Specter,
R-Pa.
Car companies are not required by
law to notify federal officials of overseas
safety recalls and Ford did not do so. But
now, “we will advise U.S. safety au
thorities of safety actions that are taken
in overseas markets and vice versa,” Nass
er pledged, rrom now on, wnen we
know it, so will the world.”
The chief executive of Bridge
stone/Firestone Inc. issued an apology
that didn’t say the company’s tires were
defective and which brought up reminders
of SUV rollover problems.
Nasser later tried to transfer the blame
back to Bricjgestone/Firestone and blamed
it for withholding data.
“Ford did not know that there was
a defect with the recalled tires until we
virtually pried the data from Firestone’s
hands and analyzed it ourselves,” Nass
er insisted. “It was only then, a few days
before the recall was announced, that
Ford engineers discovered conclusive
evidence that the tires were defective.”
Bridgestone/Firestone admitted it
collected and used documents to deter
mine financial losses on insurance claims
but didn’t use the (lata to determine the
safety of its tires.