Friday, January 24, 1986
Page 2
Daily Nebraskan
Bv The Associated Press
rs V. I ti V . J ff, J 4 "SW li i tin
. ri .
Study links religion, democracy
NEW YORK A study by a noted
"think tank," the Brookings Institu
tion, has concluded that the stabil
ity and future strength of American
democracy depends on the under
pinnings of religion.
After three years of examination
and analysis of basic ingredients
holding society together, the report
concludes that secular value sys
tems fail "to meet the test of intel
lectual credibility" for doing the
job.
Representative government "de
pends for its health on values that
over the not-so-long run must come
from religion," the report says.
Through religion, "human rights
are rooted in the moral worth with
which a loving Creator has endowed
each human soul, and social author
ity is legitimized by making it
young)
Pus
House considering
check-hold bill
WASHINGTON The head of the
House Banking Committee asked his
colleagues on Thursday to approve a
bill to shorten the time banks can
hold deposited checks and thus cur
tail an "outlandish policy" that
allows banks to profit from the so
called "float."
The House bill would force finan
cial institutions to give customers
access to their money under a set
timetable in some cases quicker
than they do now.
House Banking Committee Chair
man Femand J. St Germain, D-R.L,
said banks now play "the float" game
with customers' money to earn bil
lions of dollars through interest and
fees on checks inadvertently bounced
by depositors.
1 Daily
ebraskan
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ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 1936 DAILY NEBRASKAN
answerable to a transcendent moral
law," the report says.
The report advocates allowing a
"moment of silence" that could be
used for voluntary prayer in public
schools, making school facilities
available for student religious meet
ings, and giving tax credits for tui
tion paid to religious schools.
Rejecting arguments of strict
church-state separationists that bar
ring all expressions or symbols of
religion from public life would mean
government neutrality about reli
gion, the report says:
"A society that excludes religion
totally from its public life, that
seems to regard religion as some
thing against which public life must
be protected, is bound to foster the
impression that religion is either
irrelevant or harmful."
"Millions of hard-working Ameri
cans carry their paychecks down to
the bank every week in anticipation
that they can use the funds to buy
groceries, pay the rent, buy clothes
and other necessities," said St Ger
Germain. "In all too many cases, depositors
don't have access to the money they
have earned. It is tied up by banking
policies check hold policies that -say
the customer has to wait days and
days, and sometimes, weeks and
weeks, before the bank says the
money is available," he said.
It was not clear when the measure,
up for debate Thursday, would come
to a vote.
Rep. Norman Shumway, R-Calif.,
Asbestos ban proposed
WASHINGTON The government
moved Thursday for the first time to
ban deadly asbestos, a widely used
substance that officials say causes up
to 12,000 cancer cases annually in the
United States.
Under a two-phased attack, the En
vironmental Protection Agency pro
posed an "immediate" ban in five pro
duct categories, mostly in the construc
tion area. During the next decade, EPA
said, it wants to cleanse the environ
ment of all products containing the
known carcinogen.
The decision, attacked by an indus
try group as "unwarranted," culmi
nated more than six years of regulatory
Cancer misdiagnosis
common, doctor says
OMAHA Physicians are writing
off as hopeless a number of treatable
lung cancer cases and underrating
others, a Creighton University re
searcher said.
Dr. Tom DeMeester, chairman of
surgery for the Creighton University
School of Medicine, said the deaths of
at least 14,000 Americans each year
from lung cancer could be prevented
with better diagnosis.
DeMeester based his comments on
his experiences as former chief of tho
racic surgery at the University of Chi
cago Pritzker School of Medicine, where
he headed a 10-year study of 160 lung
cancer patients.
Medical experts for years have as
sumed that the larger the tumor, the
less likely the cancer patient's chances
for survival. DeMeester said his research
Chasm between blacks, whites
widening,
WASHINGTON The National Urban
League on Wednesday called the Rea
gan administration "a Rambo-like des
troyer of civil rights gains" and said its
economic policies have left black Ameri
cans struggling to survive.
The chasm between blacks and
whites widened even more in 1985, as
most whites enjoyed economic recovery
while blacks "slipped further and
further to the rear of the parade,"
league president John E. Jacob said in
issuing the organization's 1 1th annual
assessment of black America.
"The signs of a nation moving toward
a state of being permanently divided
between the haves and the have-nots
were plain to see over the past months,"
he said.
Jacob noted that unemployment
among whites was 5.9 percent at the
end of last year, while 14.9 percent of
offered an amendment that would
allow financial institutions to hold
soul-searching within the government
and months of infighting between EPA
and the Office of Management and
Budget.
EPA Administrator Lee M. Thomas
said human health not monetary
cost was EPA's foremost concern.
Thomas said it would take about one
year for the agency to complete public
hearings and administrative review of
the proposed asbestos rule, which has
been in the works since late 1979.
The ban, when fully implemented,
will avert as many as 1,900 deaths from
asbestos-related lung cancer over the
next 15 years, Thomas said.
indicates the opposite may be true in
many cases.
"Traditionally, we thought of tumors
as going from stage one to stage two to
stage three in a nice continuum," he
said. Stage one is the first phase of
cancer growth, and stage three is the
most advanced stage.
"We didn't take into account the
different growth patterns of tumors,"
he said.
The traditional thinking has caused
physicians to misdiagnose as untreat
able some patients with large but self
contained tumors, DeMeester said.
The traditional thinking also had led
to the undertreat ment of some smaller
tumors, he said.
Lung cancer took the lives of 1 26,000
'Americans in 1985, the American
Cancer Society estimates, making it
the most deadly of all cancers.
Urban League says
the nation's 27.9 million blacks were
out of a job. "If whites had such a high
unemployment rate, it would be called
a depression," he said.
Jacob was particularly harsh on the
Justice Department's efforts to revise a
presidential executive order signed by
Mf whites had such
a high unemploy
ment rate, it would
be called a
depression.'
Lyndon Johnson in 1965, which autho
rized the government to set numerical
hiring goals and timetables for firms
holding government contracts.
"Black people today have jobs and
opportunities they would not have had
without the executive order," said
Carol WagenerDaily Nebraskan
checks longer if there was "reasona
ble belief a check would not clear
In Brief
U.S. operations hold off Libyan cccst
WASHINGTON The United States, in what appear to Is a thinly
veiled warning to- Libya, has notified ehilkn air trciSe cdais that
fighter pk&es from Navy aircraft carriers will be conduct; fU.t opera
tions off the Libyan coast during the next week, sources said Thursday.
The sources, all of whom agreed to discuss the instter criy if not
identified, confirmed the U.& 6th Fleet had mi latcKUStiocal notifica
tion procedures on Wednesday to Mom the air ttsde csatrtl facility at
Tripoli, Libya, of "csrrier flight operations" within its area of control
Rural families offered hcip
LINCOLN Kursl families forced off the ftrra by economic problems
ct find temporary refuge through a model prcran fcassched by three
Lincoln agencies,
Tabitha Inc., Lutheran Family and Social Services z?A Cedr$tae for
Children are cooperating to provide shelter, food, spirited! 6c;pft, job
referral, counseling and child care for tmxlizs forced fcy tzi times to
abandon their homes and communities. The itt&ercn Church in Ameri
ca's Nebraska Sped h serving as a fourth sponsor by usir.g it$ network of
churches h loccte families in need.
Families would be housed for up to three r.eriti.5 htUc! Jpsrsoncga
on the Tabitha ces$v$ in Usxxlx
itlllsililf
Be r;-;mber ex tills r.e&s$ V kibtcn v.!!! ftrtte'j tets 8
&ixx:r:i U ptlUs h;.:io tsstU the f rzi 'id Li ! !:rA, ht2 c-y
lit wc b in ths tzz'Zv ttVA C:n tl f.t C 1 at, -
fumrr
s oiliest regents, vtn
ta.y &ed at the tors ere tzt tX I ' J Ilitai,
where &he had Iked fee 1 972.
She was born Nov, 23, lST3t In a L;ut Vt rAlzj r.crtbvc:t of
Cambridge in Furnas County. She wj trilVJ cidiite cf Cssie
Jacob.
"If there is any single message we
want to send the president today it is
this: 'Hands off affirmative action,' If
the administration wants to be a Rambo
like destroyer of civil rights gains, it
should not pretend that its efforts are
good for black citizens or that they
reflect the color-blind society we have
yet to become."
Economically, blacks still are reel
ing from the recession of 1981-82 while
most whites have recovered, Jacob
said.
The report said median family income
for blacks in 1984, the most recent
figure available, was $15,432. In con
stant dollars, that was $540 less than in
1980 and almost $1,500 less than in
1970, according to an economic sum
mary by David Swinton, director of pub
lic policy studies at Clark College.
because of check kiting, fraud or
bankruptcy.
St Germain opposed the so-called
"good faith" clause, saying it would
give bank tellers authority to reject
checks "if you are from the wrong
side of the tracks, speak with a for
eign accent, or a certain color."
Anyway, he said, it is not needed
because more than 99 percent of all
checks written are paid the first time
through the collection process and
half the 350 million checks returned
unpaid each year go through the
second time.
The banking industry has said in
congressional hearings that the pur
pose of holding customer checks was
not to reap interest or fees on the
"float" created by those funds, but
rather to protect them from check
"kiters" and bad checks.
But St Germain said, "my heart
can't bleed for an industry" that
makes $290 million a year by using
the money in the float period, and
another $3.5 billion a year from
returned check fees.
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