Economic Security

The epitaph for the Rodney King episode is likely to be the old adage: ''After all is said and done, much is said and little is done.''That doesn't have to be. We can overcome our national paralysis and dramatically reduce urban underclass poverty. But it won't be easy, cheap or fast. It must be vastly different from what we've tried in the past and what are now hearing.Last week's hurry-up bipartisan accord on enterprise zones, tenant ownership of public housing and a trickle of extra dollars is an election-year cover-up for policy bankruptcy and political fright.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, D-Texas, ha emerged as President-elect Bill Clinton's top choice for secretary of the Treasury, Clinton campaign officials said last night.Mr. Bentsen, 71, has been informed that he is Mr. Clinton's first choice for the sensitive economics post, but officials of the transition team have not yet completed the required background examination of his financial records.If Mr. Bentsen is the final selection, the formal announcement of his nomination would likely come next week as Mr. Clinton names the members of his economics team.

Gun raffle sends wrong message to county students I was shocked and angered the Carrol County GOP raffling of a 9 mm. Berretta semi-automatic handgun as a fund-raiser ("Former GOP official in Carroll bolts over gun raffle fund-raiser," March 11). Westminster Both Hayes and Bush elevated the presidency In response to the letter "Tax plan threatens our economic security" (Carroll letters, March 4), I'd note that the Bush tax plan would return money to the taxpayers. If you pay taxes, you get something back.

Time was when a presidential visit was a big deal. A bit less so in Maryland than in other states because the White House is so close chief executives make the trip frequently. Still, local dignitaries could be expected to muster. Especially those from the president's own party. Not this year. When George W. Bush blew into Southern Maryland last week for a Labor Day event, the state's top Republican leaders and candidates were elsewhere. Snubs are rarely so evident, but Mr. Bush isn't flooded with requests from candidates in tight election contests anywhere to come help rally the troops.

The return of Andreas Papandreou fills European Community officialdom with dismay. Yet he cannot champion the Soviet bloc as he did in his last prime ministry of Greece: the bloc is not there. He will have a hard time supporting Middle Eastern terrorism: regimes dedicated to it are fewer, isolated and spotlighted. As for making trouble for Europe's newest nation, Macedonia, the ousted Constantine Mitsotakis was already doing that.In winning Greece's election Sunday with 171 seats in the 300-member parliament, Mr. Papandreou and his Panhellenic Socialist Movement managed one of the great political comebacks.

Esterhaza, Hungary. -- The years between 1945 and 1989 were a tunnel, through which the East European peoples passed, all but completely cut off from the cultural as well as political and economic development of the liberal West.The people in this region grew up in isolation, experiencing a shabby economic security and a rigidly doctrinaire education and public culture. They now find their economic security destroyed by their countries' convulsive attempts at economic renewal on the Western model.

"I'M NOT AGAINST capitalism,'' Pat Buchanan declared in South Carolina, fresh from his New Hampshire triumph. ''I'm against corporate butchers.''Unfortunately, the two often go together. The essence of pure capitalism is its unsentimentality. If butchery maximizes profit, so be it.Mr. Buchanan is trying to blend oil and water. On the one hand, he is the most extreme conservative in the race -- a foe of big government, regulation, taxes and social spending. On the other hand, he is a champion of the working class and scourge of big corporations.

Even in wealthy Md., poverty takes its toll Mary Ellen Vanni's thoughtful essay should be mandatory reading for every policymaker in Maryland ("High energy costs take a big toll on state's poor," Opinion Commentary, Dec. 26). Her stark descriptions of poverty's immediate effects - of people too poor to afford adequate heat - and of the longer-term consequences of poverty - such as kids at higher risk of serious health, injury and nutritional problems - call out for action by the state's leadership.

DETROIT -- President Bush, in emphasizing private ove public investment in the latest packaging of his economic recovery proposals before the Economic Club of Detroit, was clearly preaching to the choir. Still, the high-powered Michigan businessmen, including major auto manufacturing tycoons, responded rather mildly to the sermon. They had heard it several times before, though in dribs and drabs over the last year.That, in fact, was the problem, as a senior administration official (name withheld under White House rules)

The following is excerpted from a commencement address to graduating seniors at Roland Park Country School on June 13. There is much rumination in these times on "the imagining of America." Where does this imagination about ourselves come from, and how do we express it? How credible is our rhetoric, and does it correspond to the way the United States is viewed in the larger world? If there is a disconnect, what are the implications? Most people know something about the legacy of "American exceptionalism."