Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 22, 1995 TAG: 9507240020
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Short
The officials have confirmed that the final blow that knocked the tiara off her pate was in part that she, well, enhanced the facts regarding her status as a first-year student at the University of Miami Law School. Apparently she's on the waiting list, not yet accepted.
Officials say the decision was explained to her privately. Yet Ballengee, true to form, says she wasn't told the reasons. Perhaps she has forgotten.
And so this miss exits the pageant stage in the same manner she entered - in apparent bewilderment about the difference between make-believe and truth, between the world as we might wish it were and the world as it is.
SOCIAL Security's old-age benefits have been declared untouchably sacred by Democrat and Republican alike. When Congress agreed a few years ago to raise the qualifying age for full benefits from 65 to 67, it was deemed an act of political courage - even though the phase-in isn't to start until the year 2000 or reach full implementation until 2017.
To help both balance the federal budget and protect the Social Security Trust Fund, the anti-deficit Concord Coalition suggests raising the age to 68, and accelerating the phase-in to begin this year and be completed by 2006. Unfair? When Social Security was established in the 1930s, the coalition points out, average life expectancy was 60 years; today, it's 76. Is three more years of work for 16 more of life really so horrible a swap?
by CNB