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Editorials -- More lottery money should go to schools The (McMinnville) News-Register Dec. 28 Among the big winners in Oregon's Lottery games are the owners of bars and taverns where video machines are placed. About a quarter of the 1,830 establishments pull in a bundle, $100,000 or more a year - all for occasionally making change for the players, dusting off the machines now and then and providing floor space. The 35 percent commission is excessive. It's a sweet payback to operators courtesy of the Legislature, which set the rate and hasn't had the courage to make a change. In the 2001 session and earlier, bills were introduced to reduce the commissions. Those proposals went nowhere. They were trumped by Oregon Restaurant Association lobbyists who argued that reducing the "take" would lead to removal of machines and loss of jobs. Those arguments, combined with significant campaign contributions, have stopped legislators from moving to reduce Lottery game commissions. A study in the mid-'90s reported that 10 to 15 percent commissions would be about right. Even so, the Legislature has merrily continued the four-level range of 20 to 35 percent of net poker receipts, minus payouts. The higher percentage is calculated on revenue of less than $200,000; the lower to those of more than $600,000. The result is that $70 million a year goes to commissions that average about $70,000 per operator of Lottery games. Oregonians' appetite for gambling is in itself astounding, but to each his/her own for entertainment. If it's sitting on a stool in a dark room tapping pictures of cards on a video machine, so be it, although in extreme situations, that also means hungry kids and broken homes resulting from huge gambling losses. If this state-sanctioned gambling system is deemed a proper way to raise government funds, then, for sure, a bigger share of those fun-time dollars should be going to schools and social service programs. If legislators are serious about financial accountability, here's a place to start. Simon's simple solutions to holiday hangover Roger Simon WASHINGTON - As usual, I am presenting my list of holiday hangover cures. I do not know why. When you need this, you probably won't even be able to read it. Your eyes will be two pink dots, your teeth will itch, and your mouth will feel as if the Russian army has marched through it. Actually, I have no sympathy for people who awake with crushing hangovers. A hangover is God's way of telling you that you are still alive. But I know you expect aid and comfort from me, and so I will once again share with you my collection of expert cures for this hangover season: 1. DR. PHILIP THOREK, a surgeon with an interest in nutrition and drinking: "Boy, alcohol really knocks the hell out of your liver. And the liver is a marvelous organ. But what do we do to it? We go out and kill off a fifth and turn into bibulous slobs. "The only real cure for a hangover is what I call the Tincture of Time. You have to wait hours and hours for your body to metabolize and destroy the alcohol. And it is not just the alcohol, but the impurities. The fusel oils! The congeners! The aldehydes! "A hangover is a form of poisoning. There is no doubt about this. Now, eating fatty foods, bread or cheese will help absorb some of the alcohol. But this doesn't mean you can go and drink more. That's crazy. Moderation, moderation. This is what we must learn. "A glass of wine is a good tranquilizer. But you must remember temperance. Not abstinence, but temperance. But what do we do? We go out and drink triple martinis, wake up with a terrible hangover and blame the olives!" 2. ROBERTO SURO, famous reporter: "Here is what they do in South America. One takes the rawest of fish. The fish is placed in lemon juice and raw onions. Hot sauce is added. The fish is then soaked for two days. No less. This is eaten with popcorn and beer. Yes, they have popcorn in South America. "This cure is known as tratamiento de choque. In North America, you would know it as the 'shock treatment.' "I also hear that among unsavory elements at some American places of higher education, a certain type of cigarette is smoked immediately upon awakening to remove all sense of pain. It is my understanding that this is not strictly legal, and therefore, I have never tried this myself. Also, I hear Valium is good. "There is also a ritual to be followed. We do this every New Year's at my mother's. As the clock gongs midnight, a grape must be eaten upon each gong. Of course, with clocks with no gongs, this becomes difficult. In that case, just eat 12 grapes quickly. "Then a raw egg is cracked into a glass of water. One carefully watches the shape of the egg white. From this, the future may be predicted." 3. THE GUILT CURE: Look in the mirror and read this in the voice of your spouse: "You slob. You absolute pig. Look at yourself. I can't stand the sight of you. You do this every year. I hope you're pleased with yourself. You look awful. If you ever do this again, I'm throwing you out of this house. You make me sick. You ought to be ashamed." 4. THE TRADITIONAL CURE: Chicken soup cures anything. You can drink it. You can soak your head in it. You can wash your face in it. You can take the spots out of your tie with it. You can even mix it with white wine and soda and make a chicken soup spritzer. Even if it doesn't help your hangover, it will remind you of your mother. 5. LORD BYRON'S CURE: "Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter/Sermons and soda water the day after." 6. ANOTHER MEDICAL CURE: Drinking causes dehydration and the contraction of the blood vessels. To cure this, drink water or fruit juices, and take aspirin. Unfortunately, another shot of booze might also swell the blood vessels and relieve the pain. But this just starts the whole thing over again. 7. ZAY SMITH, newsman and former bartender: "People would come into the tavern in very bad shape and ask me for something to stop the pain. The only thing I knew about was Worcestershire sauce on a lemon wedge. "You just close your eyes and bite the lemon wedge. It helps if you are standing up while doing this. Actually, this is not a cure for hangovers. It is a cure for hiccups. But these guys were so drunk, they didn't know the difference. "I'd ask them if they felt better, and they'd say: 'Huh? Where am I?' "So I guess it works." Roger Simon is a syndicated columnist for the Baltimore Sun. Civil rights pandemonium in America William F. Buckley Jr. It is a historical opportunity lost that Trent Lott didn't pause while going down in flames. He might have made a point worth thinking about, in his progressive apology on the matter of Strom Thurmond's campaign of 1948. What he might have said was that he acknowledged his faults, but thought it correct that his critics should examine their own thinking, specifically that every bill or petition or declaration that has the words "civil rights" in it is to be venerated as a reiteration of the Emancipation Proclamation. Because that is where we are headed, and Lott didn't give reasonable analysts the chance to raise their hands, however falteringly, and say: To vote against a national holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. was not necessarily a vote against civil rights. The fires are stoked, and dissenters are marked for public execution. Consider: The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which represents 180 traditional civil rights organizations, is urging President Bush to toss away a slate of judges he has endorsed for positions on the federal bench simply on the grounds that their records have shown "deep hostility to core civil rights principles." What exactly the Leadership Council has in mind is not at hand, but we know that the conference wants an amendment to the transportation bill that would forbid racial profiling in any state. The federal government is not supposed to dictate to individual states procedures by which they seek to discourage crime. The implied reasoning here is that because more minorities are targeted by racial profiling, therefore the objective of racial profiling is to diminish the civil rights of minorities. As a philosophical exercise, that sequence is defective. If it were applicable by such reasoning, then of course states could not decide for themselves whether to decree capital punishment. If the manifest objective of racial profiling is to move by concentric advances toward the target, and if the incidence of drug-toters is, by observation, greater among Latinos than whites in Florida, then to detain Latinos is not racially invidious provided that the motive for their detention was free of bias. But travel along that paralogism is at high speed. Ms. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the Democratic delegate who represents the District of Columbia, advises us that it should be a federal crime to attack someone because of his or her sexual orientation. It isn't clear what the racial point here is, since there isn't any evidence, for instance, that blacks are more heavily homosexual, or more heavily induced to batter homosexuals. But the words "civil rights" have a transfigurative effect - and such legislation is enjoined on us. Ms. Norton informs us that an extension of unemployment insurance is a matter of civil rights. How so? Because more minorities, per capita, are unemployed than others. So that the question becomes not is an extension of unemployment benefits a good idea; it becomes: Is it a good idea if more Latinos are relieved than Caucasians? What Sen. Bill Frist needs to do is to declare publicly that a line must be drawn, that the Republican Party fervently endorses an application of civil rights laws and the defense of minorities, but that to sanctify any proposed measure purely by naming it as a civil rights measure is to abandon one's capacity to make distinctions. What is absolutely required is such a declaration from political men of manifest integrity, one that denounces any effort to proscribe speech on the grounds that it questions a program espoused by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Coming up quickly, of course, is the final showdown on affirmative action. The Supreme Court will rule in the matter of the University of Michigan Law School's affirmative-action program. The objective is to decide whether equal rights extend equally to applicants to law school who aren't members of racial minorities. One senses that the Republican leadership is holding back in arguing the case for genuine equal rights because of the avalanche triggered by Mr. Lott's indiscretion. We will need to watch carefully how the Bush administration comports itself on the University of Michigan question. Will the Justice Department file an amicus brief defending the right course? Or has the Leadership Conference assumed veto power on the question? William F. Buckley Jr. is a nationally syndicated columnist. Guest forum - Garbled facts the highlight of Mtn. Meadows report By Marguerite Craig Ashland Like other residents of Mountain Meadows, I regret the partially inaccurate reporting on our community meeting by your reporter, Sean Wolfe, who had no right to attend a private meeting. He proceeded to garble many facts. I seem to recall a similar problem when a Tidings reporter misquoted people at a teen youth center meeting she had not even attended. Can we count on The Tidings to accurately report events and organizations in Ashland? I read your paper for local information but I'm beginning to wonder why. With regard to Mountain Meadows, I am very happy with my home here and intend to remain in the community the rest of my life. I arrived two years ago after having investigated retirement communities in California, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico before choosing Ashland. I have no family here but am Oregonian via birth in Klamath Falls. I've lived most of my life in California. Every retirement community I looked at had fees as high or higher than fees here, and each one informed me their fees would rise annually. I did not think any I saw had the quality of Mountain Meadows. So in my opinion a rising fee is to be expected. I feel we are lucky the projected fee hike is expected to hold for four years once it is accepted by our residents. In my time here I've spoken to very few people who are not happy with their choice of Mountain Meadows. Our food in the dining room is great, the fitness center is adding much to my life through water aerobic classes and use of fitness machines, and it helps us all maintain health. I take pride and pleasure in our beautiful clubhouse and attractive gardens, and I'm glad they were built larger and better than originally planned. I'm very grateful to Madeline Hill and Larry Medinger for the quality construction here and for extra costs they bore to carry out their vision of good design and quality building, and for their careful management of our facility in the prior years until the board took over this year. It has been my life experience that the emotions, energy and attitudes one puts out come back in similar positive or negative form. I endeavor to live centered in my heart with a sense of love and joy with which I respond to people and events, and I have good experiences here. I've observed that people who complain frequently about their lives tend to draw negative experiences to them. When a resident has a complaint at Mountain Meadows they can communicate their dissatisfaction to our Board of Directors (all volunteers who are their neighbors) and they can work to negotiate a more preferred outcome. There are also scheduled meetings where residents can suggest changes they would like to see happen, or can discuss a problem should they have one. Then, if they remain unhappy they always have a choice to change their attitude or to sell their unit and move. LINKS: DAILY TIDINGS: Main | News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Opinion | Columnists | AP News | Subscribe | Archives | Weather | Classifieds | Contact Us | Privacy REVELS: Main | Calendar | Dining | Movies | T.V. OTHER: Road Cams Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings 541.482.3456. 1661 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. - Advertisers -