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Tuesday, February 28, 1995 Page 4
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Daily
Nebraskan
Editorial Board
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
JeffZeleny.Editor, 472-1766
Jeff Robb. Managing Editor
Matt Woody.Opinion Page Editor
DeDra Janssen.*.Associate News Editor
Rainbow Rowell.Arts & Entertainment Editor
James Mehsling.Cartoonist
Chris Hain...Senior Reporter
Micron makeover
Is computer giantjust anotherfairy tale?
Nebraska, Oklahoma and Utah have all been putting on their best
„ faces.
They’re dressing up for the prince—Micron. But only one of them
can be Cinderella.
All three states have tried to seduce powerful Micron by falling at
its feet with tailor-made engineering education, tax-breaks and other
economic incentives.
Nebraska legislators have put in their pitch. Monday they passed
the final two bills of an economic incentive designed to entice the
computer-chip company to the state.
The University ofNebraskajoined in the fury last weekas it vowed
to speed up engineering upgrades on the Omaha campus in an effort
to lure the $1.3 billion giant to the Heartland.
But will Nebraska be the bride and not the bridesmaid this time?
Maybe the governor, the Legislature and the department of eco
nomic development have put enough makeup on Nebraska’s labor
shortage and “brain drain” to succeed where they failed in luring
BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
Nebraska’s population has seen little growth in the last 20 years,
large numbers of college graduates leave the state every year because
they can’t find jobs in Nebraska and many companies already are
having trouble finding employees.
. But Micron is the type of company that goes a long way toward
changing that. ^
There are questions about whether or not Nebraska could provide
the 3,500 employees Micron needs. But Sen. Don Wesely of Lincoln,
on the floor of the Legislature, said Monday that Micron could find the
employees it needed.
“Should a company come in with good jobs, good wages, good
benefits, they will find employees and they will be outstanding,”
Wesely said.
Membership in the kingdom of Micron would bring those kinds of
jobs and the royal treasure of benefits that accompany an economic
influx of this kind.
Ernie Goss, a business researcher at Creighton U niversity, told The
Associated Press that the construction project alone would put45,000
people to work and generate $3.4 billion in Nebraska’s economy.
Gov. Nelson has said the incentives used to entice Micron also could
be applied to other companies.
“Nebraska is gaining a reputation of a good place to grow a
business,” Nelson said.
If that is so, Nebraska could be turning the comer on a bright
economic future.The decision comes tomorrow. Maybe Micron won’t
go the way of BMW and Mercedes-Benz.
It’s almost midnight. Will die glass slipper fit and will Nebraska
live happily ever after? Or when the clock strikes, will Nebraska once
again be seen as just an ugly step-sister?
In one breath
Roger Bjorklund is making headlines again. Defense attorneys in
the bizarre triple murder trial in Falls City want Bjorklund to rebut
testimony from a jailhouse informant.
What gives the defense any reason to believe Bjorklund? He often
changed his story during his own 1993 murder trial.
Prosecutors have said transferring Bjorklund raises safety factors,
but it shouldn’t. Bjorklund has taken many rides with police, whether
it be to eat or in search of a weapon. What attorneys should be
concerned with is his credibility.
Edtorial policy
Staff editorials {present the official
policy of the Spring 1995. Daily
Nebraskan. Policy is setby the Daily
Nebraskan Editorial Board Editori
al s do notnecessarily reflect the views
of the university, its employees, the
students or the NU Board ofRegents.
Editorial columns representthe opin
ion of the author. The regents publish
the Daily Nebraskan. They establish
die UNL Publications Board to su
pervise the daily production of the
paper. According topolicy set by the
regents, responsibility for the edito
rial content of the newspaper lies
solely in the hands of its students.
Letter policy
The Daily Nebraskan welcomes brief letters to the
editor from all readers and interested others. Letters
will be selected for publication on the basis ofclarity,
originality, timeliness and space available. The Daily
Nebraskan retai ns the right to edit or reject all material
submitted. Readers also are welcome to submit ma
terial as guest opinions. The editor decides whether
material should ran as a guest opinion. Letters and
guest opinions sent to the newspaper become the
property of the Daily Nebraskan and cannot be
returned. Anonymous submissions will not be pub
lished. Letters should included the author’s name,
year in school, major and group affiliation, if any.
Requests to withhold names will not be granted.
Submit material to the Daily Nebraskan, 34 Nebraska
Union, 1400 R St., Lincoln, Neb. 68588-0448.
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Send your brief letters to:
Daily Nebraskan, 34
Nebraska Union, 1400 R St,
Lincoln, Neb. 68588. Or fax
to: (402) 472-1761. Letters
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phone number for
l
Health Nazis take on enemy
Try to imagine America as a
cavernous and rather popular
restaurant. You walk through the
doorway on any given day, and the
maitre d’ immediately asks your ,
preference for the country’s future.
What will it be: Smoking or Non
Smoking?
Faced with this choice, most
Americans have decided to take
their place in the non-smoking
section of this public health
argument. Even smokers, backed
into small comers under exhaust
fans, have tended to agree.
But a not-so-funny thing is
happening on the way to a smoke
free environment. The public
debate is shifting deliberately and
subtly. The anti-smoking campaign
has come up against a new enemy:
the anti-anti-smoking campaign.
The old enemy — the tobacco
chieftains — is now matched
against a new enemy — the health
chieftains.
The maitre d’ now offers a very
different choice of designated
seating to Americans. What will it
be: “Freedom-Loving Individual
ists” or “Health Nazis?” Take your
pick.
In the courts, the tobacco crowd
is (Hi the defensive. In just the past
week, Mississippi and Florida both
filed huge suits demanding that the
cigarette companies rather than the
taxpayers ante up for smoke-related
illnesses. A federal judge in New
Orleans has cleared the way for a
gigantic nationwide class-action
suit by a consortium of 60 law
firms on behalf of 100 million
smokers and former smokers.
But outside the courtroom, it’s a
different scene. The label slapped
onto this by the tobacco industry is
sticking. The perverse warning
about the dangers of anti-smoking
extremists, of big government and
Ellen Goodman
uncivil non-libertarians has been
taken up by conservatives with
something approaching glee.
This month, the cover story of
The American Spectator is a satire
about smoking in New York. Most
of its barbs are pointed at anti
smoking yuppies who “almost all
think of themselves as allies in a
moral and ecological crusade.”
The National Review has a piece
by a writer in the throes of nicotine
withdrawal. But he lauds the
“renewed popularity” of smoking,
calling it “a swipe at all Health
Nazis, part of what commentators
are calling a nationwide ‘conserva
tive renaissance.’”
Cigarettes and conservatives are
being packaged together as tightly
these days as the radio and the right
wing. Not surprisingly, Rush
Limbaugh, the right’s gift to cigar
manufacturers, is a regular in the
attack pack.
This is one way for conserva
tives to keep peace with those
whose political lives are tethered to
tobacco. A star of this group is
Virginia’s Tom Bliley, a pro
tobacco mortician who now heads a
House subcommittee on health and
the environment. Talk about
conflict of interest. Then there is
Tennessee’s Sen. Bill Frist, a heart
and lung transplant surgeon, who
may tell his patients to quite
smoking but promises his constitu
ents to defend “smokers’ rights.”
Just a year ago, a very different
Congress held hearings to show
how the tobacco folk kept smokers
hooked, calibrating the dose of
nicotine and even changing the
tobacco gene. There was talk of
regulating nicotine like any other
drug. Now there’s hardly a puff of
concern coming out of the Capitol.
The linkage of the right wing
with the wrong stuff isn’t complete.
It appalls those like Beth Whalen
who describes herself as a “politi
cally conservative Newt Gingrich
person and an anti-smoking *
activist. As head of the American
Council on Science and Health, she
says angrily, “I’m tired of being
called a Health Nazi.”
Indeed, for all its conservative
chic, an oligopoly of a half-dozen
cigarette makers isn’t much of a
role model for a free market. Nor is
a business that kills its customers.
For that matter, the purest
libertarian, the person who believes
that we should be free to cruise
down the highway of life at any
speed, in any condition, without a
government license or a helmet
law, still makes a distinction
between adults and children. But
cigarette advertising targets
children. The number of kids who
leave high school as confirmed
smokers hasn’t gone down in a
decade.
Now adults are being sold the
tobacco party line ip politics:
smoking as freedom. But the
cigarette makes a perverse icon to
liberty. The freedom to get
hooked? The right to addiction?
The issue isn’t “Health Nazis.”
It’s still health. The only “Free
dom-Loving Individualists” that the
tobacco industry cares about are the
ones in need of another fix.
© 1995, The Boston Globe Newspaper
Company.
