THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 18, 1994 TAG: 9409160251
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
What's going on here?
Some of the things happening here and abroad these days are so outlandish they would be laughed about by any self-respecting Hollywood script writer.
For sheer lunacy, consider President Clinton's apparent resolve to invade Haiti to rid the island of the tyrannical yoke of Col. Raoul Cedras and his goons.
Clinton is under the illusion that American GIs - as good as they are - can bring democracy to a nation steeped in 300 years of tyranny at the point of a gun.
This brings up a prickly question: What does the U.S. do when the next despot - and there will surely be one - takes over the reins of state in Haiti? Send in the Marines again? Stamp our feet? Drop back and punt?
Then there's the cancellation of the major league baseball season due to greed.
Media pundits are thunderstruck. Imagine, M O N E Y standing in the way of the national pastime! No World Series for the first time in 90 years! No more boring TV games and watching players spit and scratch their crotches!
Fans or would-be fans, the general consensus is, could care less at this point. They're tired of listening to a bunch of whining millionaires complain about their lot in life. They want to watch a real sport - like FOOTBALL!
Next, we have the apparent political resurgence of Marion Barry, former Washington, D.C., mayor and ex-con, who won the Democratic mayoral primary last week.
Barry's victory apparently makes him a shoo-in to win the seat again. Hey, if the folks in D.C. want a big-spending, supposedly reformed cocaine-sniffing womanizer to be their city's mayor, that's their problem.
We've got Ollie and Chuck, Doug and Marshall to worry about here in Virginia.
Democrat Charles S. Robb and Republican challenger Oliver North, both are taking their lumps and dishing a few on the issue of character. Lying, whether under oath or otherwise, is a teensy-weensy little flaw shared by both.
As the soap opera race for Robb's U.S. Senate seat unfolds, we are confronted with another sudden twist in the plot. Former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, a challenger to this point, has dropped out of the hunt because of slumping popularity - and financing. But not ol' J. Marshall Coleman, the independent in Republican's clothing. Ol' Marsh is hanging in there `til the bitter end, apparently content to be an also-ran once more.
But, don't worry. There is still mud to be flung, bells to be rung, empty promises to be sung before the November election arrives. And when it's all over Virginians will, no doubt, rejoice in the wisdom of their choice.
While the senatorial campaign rumbles to a rancorous close, Gov. George Allen is cranking up the wattage in his crusade to abolish parole and thereby end crime as we know it here on Earth.
The General Assembly members and political opponents, meanwhile, are wracking their brains to come up with their own tough-on-crime strategies, like building more prisons and making more barbed wire.
Problem is, the state is running low on dough and taxpayers will have to be squeezed for more cash to build more and more slammers to house all the bad guys.
An ingenious alternative could save the day. It involves moving all non-convicted Virginians into West Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee and leaving the vacant land and buildings to the growing inmate population.
Another alternative, suggested by two Hampton Roads shipyards, has possible merit. The two companies are set to market and build jail barges or ``floating detention centers'' to alleviate prison or jail overcrowding.
When ground-bound cells fill up, the theory goes, inmates can be loaded on barges and floated up the river or out to sea - maybe even to Cuba. This could be Uncle Sam's answer to the Cuban raft invasion. Yeah! by CNB