Say What? What They’re Saying On Other Editorial Pages

And for a nice backscratch, that’ll cost you extra

How is the Clinton White House like a subway? According to Johnny Chung, fund raiser extraordinaire for the Democrats last year, you put in coins to open the gates ….

The White House says it has tightened up its procedures on visitors. But there can be no cleaning up the record of the Clinton campaign’s reckless fund raising for the 1996 campaign. Nor can there be any guarantee it will not be repeated until Congress enacts a ban on open-ended campaign contributions and cleans up a system that continues to poison American politics, deepens the cynicism of Americans and, in Chung’s case, demeans the importance of an invitation to visit the White House.

From an editorial in The New York Times

Share the wealth with workers

The excellent health of the American economy has greatly profited up to now from enterprises and from cutbacks - the stock market is witness. Workers have benefited from this growth, with massive creation of jobs and a historic reduction in unemployment. But they have also often suffered an erosion of remunerations and a destabilization of status. Today, American wage earners, those of UPS at the moment, are demanding a larger piece of the pie. Tensions on the job market - where shortages in the work force are beginning to be felt - put unions in a position of power. When revenue increases, there is material to go around. Growth permits redistribution.

From an editorial in Le Monde, Paris

Disclose food additives

There is always some flap over whether consumers should have ready access to information about what is in the foods they eat. … An advocacy group called the Center for Science in the Public Interest asked the Food and Drug Administration to require that foods be labeled with their caffeine content.

What? Don’t we all know what foods contain caffeine? Coffee, tea and many sodas, such as Coke and Pepsi, right? But there are some surprises, including frozen desserts, yogurts, candies and even bottled water. It seems we don’t always know how much caffeine we’re getting. …

Consumers can find out how much caffeine a particular product contains by calling the manufacturer’s 1-800 number listed on the product, but that information should be more readily available. Why not put it on the package?

From an editorial in The State, Columbia, S.C. xxxx