The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

Good evening. I'm Ray Suarez. Jim Lehrer is on vacation on the New Zowerton night and update on the Western wildfires and a conversation about controlling them, our wrap of the weekend politics with Gigo and Carlson, an America growing more diverse and still living apart, and an Ode to ice cream from Robert Pinsky. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday. Major funding for the New Zower with Jim Lehrer has been provided by Imagine a world where we're not diminishing resources. We're growing with ethanol, a cleaner burning fuel made from corn, ADM, the nature of what's to come. And by the Corporation for Public

Broadcasting, this program was also made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. About a thousand Army soldiers and Marines are being sent to help fight wildfires in the West. Federal officials announced that late yesterday, two battalions will join thousands of firefighters as they try to put out more than half a million acres burning in 10 states. The first NATO troops arrived today in the capital of Macedonia, Scorpia. They're from the Czech Republic, France and Britain. Britain will lead the force of about 500 soldiers. Their job will be to determine if it's safe enough on the ground for a full deployment of 3,500 NATO troops. The NATO mission will be to collect weapons turned in by ethnic Albanian rebels as part of a new Peace Accord. In Washington, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld described the U.S. role. We are not sending forces, technically, to Macedonia. We have agreed to participate in the

activity and the event it is to occur. And that decision has not been made. We have agreed to participate in the following ways with some logistics supports and intelligence support, some medivac support, the availability of Camp Bond steel and Kosovo for hospital care if it proved to be needed. And finally, the possible availability of U.S. forces along the in Kosovo, along the border, to serve as a collection point. Rumsfeld also reviewed a new battle plan being developed at the Pentagon. It would require the military to win two major conflicts at once, but to occupy only one of the defeated countries. Rumsfeld said the current plan, which calls for a military big enough to occupy two countries, was not realistic. A two-star general is one of eight marine officers charged with misconduct in the Pentagon's investigation into the V-22 Osprey aircraft.

The Marine Corps disclosed that today. Major General Dennis T. Crop commands the Osprey squadron based in North Carolina maintenance records for the tilt rotor aircraft were allegedly falsified there to exaggerate the Osprey's airworthiness. All eight officers have agreed to appear at a punishment hearing. The Ford Motor Company announced today it will eliminate up to 5,000 jobs in North America this year, largely through retirements. That's about 10 percent of the company's salaried workforce. Ford said the cuts were necessary because of slumping sales and costs related to the firestone tire recall. A U.S. appeals court in Washington today refused to delay the anti-trust case against Microsoft. The court ruled the matter should go to a new federal judge in seven days. That judge will decide how to penalize the company for anti-competitive practices. Separately, Microsoft has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones industrial average closed down 151 points

at 10,240. And the Nasdaq index was down 63 points at 1867. For the week, the Dow was down about 1.5 percent, the Nasdaq about 4.5 percent, and the S&P 500 about 2.5 percent. That's it for the news summary tonight. Now it's on to Fighting Wildfires, Gigo and Carlson, Segregation in America, and an Ode to Ice Cream. Elizabeth Farnsworth begins our look at the western fires and the debate over how to control them in the future. It's become an all too familiar summer scene, wildfire's raging across the West. This week, more than 20,000 firefighters have been battling 42 major fires in 10 western states. The blazes have scorched around 600,000 acres

since last weekend. Though some progress has been made in containing some of the western fires, flames continue to shut down roads and threaten hundreds of homes, especially in the Pacific Northwest, where Oregon and Washington face dry conditions and wind gusts up to 35 miles per hour. Lightning strikes continue to start new fires there. Yesterday, the federal government raised its national preparedness to its highest point, level five, which allows marine and army battalions to be called in to join clues working the fire lines. This season's rash of wildfires follows one of the worst on record. Last summer, more than 30,000 fires burned about 7 million acres of western forests and grasslands by October. Only you can throw things for its fires. For much of the past century, the federal government practiced the smoky the bear approach. Stamp out fires at nearly any cost. By most accounts, the policy led to a buildup of trees

and other fuels that made fires hotter and more destructive. We have very sick forests as a result of a lot of factors, a lot of down and down in timber, we haven't been thinned, we've suppressed fires, and we saw last year that the consequences of that can be catastrophic. Now the former suppression policy is under serious revision. Among the questions, how should logging be used to reduce fire threats? Where should planned fires so-called prescription burns be used to manage forests? And what role should endangered habitats play in fire protection plans? Monday, western governors and federal officials agreed to a new coordinated approach for the nation's $3 billion annual firefighting effort. At the meeting, the leaders agreed on principles for the next 10 years. The plan calls for active prevention measures like thinning trees and prescribed burns, wildlife habitat restoration for the long term, and new flexibility for the states

to make firefighting decisions. Our forests today on public lands are 10 times as dense as they were in 1900. This means that there are so many small trees that did not used to be there. And so when fires burn, they are much more devastating to the forest as well as dangerous to local communities. What we need to do is to have prescribed burns to help clear out some of that small growth before we're in a huge fire kind of situation. Today, fire crews in Nevada reported they were winning their battle against the wildfire spreading across more than 290,000 acres of the state. But in Oregon, winds and lightning forecast for the weekend could make fires there worse. We get three views now from Lyle Laverde, the US Forest Service National Fire Plan Coordinator, Michelle Ackerman, the

wildfire policy coordinator at the Wilderness Society, an environmental group, and Holly Fretwell, research associate at the Political Economy Research Center, which promotes free market approaches to environmental problems. Lyle Laverde, maybe we can start with an overview of the fire lines today and get an idea of how things went in battling these big blazes. Hooray, we've had yesterday a little over 100,000 acres of new fires that burned today. We are approximately 2.6, 2.7 million acres of fire that have burned already. And as you discussed, the weather is a critical factor for us in terms of how successful the crews are going to be. We had some successes yesterday in containing some of the fires, and we're still pushing and evacuating some communities. So the weather doesn't look like it's about to give you any relief either for the rest of today or over the weekend.

There's actually a red flag warnings in parts of the eastern part of the Great Basin up in Montana, and so it's still a challenge with the weather. What's that, a red flag warning? Just indicates that humidity is low and winds are high and the potential is extremely great in terms of the extreme fire behavior. Did you start off sort of already under threat during this summer season because of the light rains over the winter and early spring? Great, we had some early warnings this spring that we were going to be in drought conditions, particularly in the northwest and the upper Great Basin part of the country. So we had those indications early on. Holly Fret, well, how should we understand what's going on out there in the various forests today? A natural part of what happens in a forest or as something that we have to, as a country, manage? Well, absolutely, it's a natural part of our forest, a

natural part of the ecosystem. However, we have changed the ecological structure of our forests largely because of our previous management and fire suppression, we've suppressed fires for nearly a century and fires that have historical fire patterns of five to 25 years have really changed in ecological structure. And without a doubt, we've changed the intensity in the wildfire situation. So what do we do? Do we change direction? How do we undo what you seem to be implying is what created this problem in the first place? Well, we definitely need to have active management and we need to have more localized management. Our federal lands policy tends to be very much command and control from the center from Washington, D.C. We allow for some local input, but we often don't continue through those processes. Quincy Library Group projects and flag staff where they've coordinated groups of forest service people, university

scientists, locals, local agencies, environmental groups, they've all agreed on how to restore some of the areas surrounding their towns. Yet we can still have one group that opposes this situation. And suddenly they'll take it to appeals and we can no longer do the restorative processes that were intended by this collaboration group. So we get this political type management instead of resource management that we really need. Michelle Ackerman, is that really the problem, a conflict between local management and management from Washington? Well, I think that the 10-year strategy that was referenced in the opening that really has a lot of those collaborative aspects is going to, if it's implemented correctly and if it's implemented strongly, I think that it will go a long way toward making sure that the people that need to be at the table are at the table for those local collaborative processes. But one of the things that we really need to make sure we're doing is that we're making really wise decisions with the resources that we have.

We really need to be prioritizing communities that are at risk and making sure that our top priority is saving homes and lives and not just while the fires are burning, but the other nine months of the year as well, making sure that our resources are going there right to the areas around communities that are situated near or in our forests and they're more and more of those every year, and making sure that we're taking the steps that we know how to take those common-sense steps to make sure that those communities are protected and ready for what Holly rightly describes as a natural process, which is fire and forest. Well, you say saving homes and lives. You didn't say saving forests. When when forest burn and there are no homes and lives at jeopardy, should they just be allowed to burn? Well, in some cases, yes. I mean, fire is a natural part of a healthy forest ecosystem. It plays a very important role in Western forests. It cleanses the forest. It creates habitat and food for animals such as elk. In fact, some trees can't reproduce without the heat of a wildfire to break open the cones and release their seeds. So, yeah, there are places where we believe it,

fire should be allowed to burn naturally. Lylavity, what is the forest service doing during the off season, away from the height of the fire season, to try to make these fires less dangerous and less hard to contain? All right, it's a rather interesting question because we started fire season in Florida January 1st that we've been fighting fires in different parts of the country. But in terms of what are we doing to reduce the threat of the risk? We're working with communities as Michelle and Holly both talked about to begin to design projects that we can in fact implement on the ground that will reduce the risk of fire catastrophic fire to some of these communities. We just published in the Federal Register a list of about 10,000 communities that have been identified by the governors and the western state and the state foresters around the country that are in harm's way because of fuel conditions.

And from this list of communities, we'll be working with the communities, with the governors to identify projects that we can begin implementing on the ground to reduce those risks. In addition, the state foresters have identified another 10,000 communities that are not in the vicinity of federal lands, but are at some risk of harm's way because of fuel conditions across the country. It's a national problem, it's not just a western issue. Well, Holly Fretwell, if your vision of greater local control and greater collaboration was actually seen at forest level, would the forests look any different? How would they be managed differently? Well, that depends on what the community wants. I guess my biggest point here is that just throwing more money into the pot to try to control this is not going to solve the problem. We really need to allow the local communities that have already created some plans and processes to take care of their forest, to go through with those. Even we have, all it takes is one zero cut group to come in and appeal the process and they can't do anything.

The restoration is done, all their planning is over. We need to allow the consensus and not make it force it to be unanimous. There really is some processes that are occurring out there that have some great restorative measures within them, but they're not allowed to continue because of the appeals process, because of the way the legislation for it is set up. Well, you talk about one zero cut group. I guess you mean people who would not want us to touch the forests at all? That's right. That's right. There's a lot of different groups that say that we shouldn't be in there at harvesting timber and that may be an agenda and it may in some forest have some logical and rational approach to it. It depends on the forest. That's again why we need to be looking at a local level. However, all it takes is one of these groups to take a logical restorative process. They appeal it and the process can no longer go on and it becomes extremely costly. And we leave the forest in the state of unhealthy state that it is now throughout the time that they're trying to

go through the legal process. Well, Michelle Ackerman would have forest that we allowed to just stand there and be managed by fire. Look very different from a forest that we actively manage and restrict cutting on and do some of the things that you just heard Holly Fretwell talking about? Well, it entirely depends on the forest. We have 192 million acres of natural forests. But the ones that are burning this week in the western United States, largely pine forests, would they look very different? You know, again, it depends on the forest. It's interesting to hear Lyle and Holly talk about kind of the historical conditions when the forest war in is dense. But one of the most famous fire years that we've had in the last century was in 1910. And that was, it was called the Big Blowup and 3 million acres burned in Idaho and Montana. And that's, you know, that's a half million acres more or so than have burned so far this year. So, you know, even as Holly pointed out before, it's a natural process and it's a cyclical process.

I think the most important thing that we can do right now is make sure that our priorities, our resources, our prioritized towards communities. I think that we also need to be careful. Some of the restorative processes that Holly was referring to, the thinning and the logging. We need to be really sure that thinning and removing some of those small saplings or twigs or branches from the areas around communities is that thinning and doing those things does not become a code word for logging or a code word for businesses usual. Going out into remote forests far from communities and continuing to cut down trees is not going to reduce fire risks to communities and that's something that government studies have shown. It's something that is pretty clear. So, we need to make sure that we're targeting resources where they need to go to protecting homes and lives and not toward logging remote forests and that we're really making the decisions about those resources based on the ecological health of the forest, based on those local collaborative processes, and mostly based on the priority of protecting homes

and lives in the event of wildfire. And, Lyle, Lafferty quickly before we close, are we actually having a less eventful summer than we did last year? I mean, not to minimize the suffering and the danger that's going on right now, but are we actually well ahead of where we were last year? No, we're not, Ray. In fact, one of the last year about this time we had about four and a half million acres that we'd already burned and this year we're just about at two and a half million. We've had certainly different weather conditions in different parts of the country, but on the other side, with the funds that the Congress provided, we've been able to add an additional 5,000 firefighters over the year that we had last year. So, the resources that we have available this year have, in fact, helped us to contain some of these fires and keep them relatively small rather than losing them and ending up with large conflagration. So, we're behind in terms of acres burned, which is a real blessing, but I think there's a number of factors that have contributed to that, but in part, I think it's because we do have the additional resources

to take care of them. Yes, thank you all for joining me. Still to come on the news hour tonight, Jago and Carlson, increasing segregation in schools and society, and an ode to ice cream. Kwame Holman begins our political rap with a report on President Bush's week. President Bush spent much of this month on what AIDS call a home to the heartland vacation. Oh, no! Based out of his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on Monday morning, he teed off at a nearby course and alluded to criticism of his decision to be away from the White House for 30 days. I had every shot good people without one working. Later in the day, the president conducted official business as he has throughout his two weeks beyond the beltway. He signed a bill releasing five and a half billion dollars in emergency agriculture aid.

It is my honor now to sign this piece of meaningful legislation that should make the lives of the people who farm and the people who ranch much better off. The top questions on reporters' minds concerned the president's announcement four days earlier that he would allow federal funding of stem cell research only on existing human embryos cell lines. Mr. Bush said he would veto any legislation that goes beyond that. I spent a lot of time on the subject. I laid out the policy I think is right for America and I'm not going to change my mind. I'm the kind of person that when I make up my mind and I'm not going to change it. That's what you're out here for. Tuesday found a president Bush in Colorado. He visited Rocky Mountain National Park and helped clean up a hiking trail. Escorted by interior secretary Gayle Norton, the president spoke of the need to maintain federal lands. We're going to make a strong commitment to our parks. It's a really important part of the American scene. At a YMCA summer camp picnic,

the president sampled barbecue and corn, then spoke to the group about the importance of instilling values in families and communities. The spirit of America is found in the character of our citizens, the value base that makes America, I think, such a different kind of place. And the vision is that we can teach our children right from wrong and we can teach them good sound values so that when they get older, they'll make the right choices in their life. Later in the day, President Bush mixed in party politics. He attended a fundraiser in Denver that netted $1.4 million for the campaigns of Governor Bill Owens and Freshman Senator Wayne Aller. Listen to your teacher. The second and final day of his swing took Mr. Bush to Grayego's elementary school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The president read the very hungry caterpillar to students on their first day of school. On Friday, eight through five. It's a hard word on. President Bush underscored student testing the centerpiece

of his education reform plan. Final action on the legislation awaits Congress's return next month. You need to know whether your children are learning to read early. And if they're not, we got to make sure they do. You need to know the results. We shouldn't fear accountability in America. We ought to welcome accountability. And there are other legislative battles ahead for the president, notably how to deal with shrinking budget surplus projections. Congressional Democrats say a smaller surplus and revenues lost to the president's tax cut mean the government may dip into social security funds to pay its bills. Something both parties have vowed not to do. But yesterday, the president's aides said new end of the fiscal year figures show no need to touch social security funds. For now, those political battles remain on hold while the president enjoys the rest of his vacation far away from Washington. And Terrence Smith takes it from there.

We get more on the president's weak and other matters political from Gigo and Carlson. That's Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigo and Time Magazine columnist Margaret Carlson. Mark Shields is off tonight. Welcome to you both, Margaret. The White House has been working to convey an image through this vacation, this working vacation. Man of the people out there stressing values. Is it working? They protest too much. The idea that you would give it a name, first of all, they home to the heartland tour. It makes you think of a rock star going out on a concert tour. And the fact is he is from the heartland. It's a great place. You don't have to make it up. He's pretty much convinced us now that he is a Texan and he's not one of those awful Kenabung port or Martha Vineyard's vacationers. The other thing he has to do is show that he's no slouch. And so this working is very, very important.

And in fact, it's so important that when a poll showed that I think 55% of the people thought 31 days, which was I think breaking Nixon's record was a little too long. Today they announced that it would be three days shorter. Now those three days are going to be spent at Camp David. So I don't know that that's really, I mean, it's more theoretical than real. You know, he put on the Jimmy Carter tool belt and went and built a house for a single mother. And he spent 45 minutes doing that because his poll showed that he's too in touch with the corporate bosses and not in touch enough with women and moderates. So go build a house, get in touch with the compassionate side of your conservatism. And that's another part of what he's doing here. But of course the compassionate things actually cost money. So... It sounds like it's working from everything Margaret said. This is Bush's as an old presidential role. Ronald Reagan used it.

President's going back to Andrew Jackson used it president's outsider. He's not part of the belt way. He's going to stay out there. The other thing is Bush is popular. A lot of his popularity is rooted in who he isn't. Margaret alluded this. He's not Bill Clinton. He doesn't go to Martha's Vineyard. He's from the red states. He's not from the blue states in that famous division of the electoral map. He's from the heartland. And I think they're playing into that. And they're probably overdoing it a bit in terms of the advertising for it. But this is part of this White House's message just on this. One thing they did learn from Bill Clinton. They have a message that they're going to drill it into you. And they're trying to do that. One thing Reagan never did, however, was he said, I'm on vacation. He wasn't trying to cover up that fact. And that authentic part of Reagan came through. This looks a little bit just a tiny bit overproduced to me. What about the issues that he is stressing, the environment, education, traditional values? Are we getting a little foreshadowing of what we're going to hear on the phone? Sure you are.

There's no question about it. You're also getting a little bit of a shift amid course correction. The tax cuts done. They figured that that was really had solidified in many ways the economic conservatives. And now they want to shift somewhat to appeal to some of those women that Margaret talked about and talk about education. But very practically too, they have an education bill in the Senate. And I mean, that's been passed, actually, both parties. But it's in a conference committee. They want to get that out. So this is using the bully pulpit to leverage that. So it has a legislative goal as well. And then the value stuff is there's no question that that is rooted in, I think, again, in the point I made about his popularity being personal and who he is, who he isn't. He's the anti-clinton. And so they're going to represent Bush as a spokesman for mainstream value. But it's also, you think, Margaret, somewhat to contrast the corporate connection as you put it of the first few months? It is. Do you remember Chris Matthews wrote a piece in the new republic that became rather famous in which he called the Democrats the mommy party and the Republicans the daddy party?

Well, the Bush did the daddy part. And now he's moving over to the mommy part. And he's concentrating on these mommy issues. The problem with that is that the mommy solutions are expensive. And there's not a lot of money around. We even see that with the defense budget, which is, when you do a tax cut and you want to cut government, just want to give the money back. You want there not to be enough money for this bloated government. You actually end up hurting things you want to do. And so this is more, you know, proof through than it is substance because that tax cut has determined a lot of the Bush agenda. Well, let's talk about the budget because later this month, Paul, the Congressional Budget Office will come out with his numbers, its forecast, for surplus, et cetera. And the issue of social security will be right in the front. Are we cruising for a big political battle over the budget and social security? There was going to be a fight, no matter what happened, because it would have been a fight over spending parties.

As always, it's at the end of each year. But this time, it'll be a little fiercer because the tax cut for this year has taken out good portion of the surplus as it was designed to do, by the way. That was the point. Explicit in the campaign. And then the economy has also reduced the expected revenues. So they're getting close. Not too adeficit. We're still going to have the second biggest surplus in history. But close enough to that at the edge of the so-called social security surplus to make it a big political issue. And both sides are going to use it. I would expect President Bush is going to use it against Democrats to say, you can't spend anymore without dipping into the surplus. And the Democrats are going to say, we were right about the tax cut. It's now cut in the social security. Mr. President, repeal that tax cut. Maybe if they'll go that far or down the road. So I think it's not a fiscal problem. It's a political debate. It can fact sounds like a classic debate. It's definitely a problem because the one Bush read my lips was, I will not touch the social security surplus.

So you don't want to touch. It's like a hot stove. You don't want to get closed. What the Democrats don't want to do is to be seem to be rooting for a recession or not enough money. The way Republicans did after the Clinton budget, oh, we're going to be thrown into the worst recession in a decade. And there you were seeing them wishing that something bad would happen. The Democrats don't want to do that. But I think they're right to point out that the tax cut has defined the Bush administration. And they have to live with it. And what they didn't know was that they were going to have to be living with things that would hurt them, like the military budget, the education bill. And their priorities are going to be hurt as well. There's another initiative out there that doesn't look so good. Right now, the faith-based initiative that the president pushed. We now know that John D'Hulio, the director of the White House office, on that, is resigning.

There's trouble in the Senate. Is that going anywhere in Poland? Well, it's already passed the House. Yes. And I think in the Senate, the majority leader to Asheville City is not going to bring it up any time soon. But there's a lot of negotiations going on behind the scenes between Republicans and Joe Lieberman, who is, who is, I think, the lynch pin here. If this is going to pass the Senate, Lieberman will be vital to doing that. So I don't think this is, this is by any means, over with, or are going to fail. I think the one downside of D'Hulio leaving is that he has a very good relationship with Joe Lieberman. D'Hulio is a Democrat. And so, I mean, I think he always said he was going to only stay about six months. He is somebody who, I think, is a brilliant academic, identified this issue early on. It's always been better, I think, at academia and writing, as some of us are, than actual practice, practical politics and legislative politics. So it's just something of a blow to the initiative. I don't think a fatal one.

Margaret, what do you think? I mean, it's a fatal blow, but he was the intellectual heart of it, and it would have helped if he'd seen it through the Senate, especially with Joe Lieberman. But that House Bill is not going to pass the Senate. It's going to be altered. And the faith-based initiative is like the missile defense shield, great if it works. And if you can expand it without getting into the catch 22, I think Joe Lieberman and others think it's a wonderful idea. But if the very reason they work these programs is that they have a religious content, but you have to take out the religious content to get the money, well, then where are you? You don't want to preserve separation of churches. Which seems to have worked for 200 years. We saw another bit of image making this past week. Paul Al Gore came out from the political wilderness, conducted a seminar for young Democrats who want to campaign. How did it look to you? I thought he looked pretty good. I mean, I thought much derided beard seems to me to be fine. Those of us who have gray beards don't mind seeing one.

I think Gore has been smarter than his critics in one particular. And that is saying out of the news for six months. A lot of Democrats said, we're worried now. You got to be, you should have been in there, plugging, you should have been in there fighting bush. He was smart. It wouldn't have made any difference to anything that has happened in the first six months. And it would have hurt him. And I think arguably hurt his party because it would have been seen as sour grapes. The best speech he gave in the campaign or at least the most well received was the concession speech. And that's the one that said, look, I'm bowing out. I thought the good fight. And the president, a new president needs time to fight or to govern and see if he can do it. I'm bowing out. He's honored that promise. And I think that's going to make him a more powerful potential candidate the next time. So don't rule out Al Gore. Paul would go right. Grace and politics is so hard he showed it. And not talking is very hard. And he showed he could do that. But his home to the heartland tour with Memorial Exander, I don't think was the right way to come out. And not with the beard.

Because the beard reminds you of Naomi Wolf and earth tones and alpha male. And the things about Al Gore that he stumbled over, he's such a decent guy, he's a smart guy, he's an intelligent guy. But we got sidelined over there to all this image stuff. And so the beard looks like a little piece of imagery. And the next headline we're going to read about Al Gore is Al Gore cuts beard. Every middle age man in America when he goes on vacation grows a little stubble. I'm going to cut it when they come back. Well, as you two look at the Democratic field, that might emerge between now and 2004, where do you put Al Gore in that ranking at the top? The more people who run the better Al Gore may do because he can solidify his base, which is African Americans, and all those people who think he was robbed as opposed to those Democrats who think he let it get away. But do you say, don't get him out? No, I think he's at the top of the list

no question, but he's got a national standing, and all these other people who haven't run, they look terrific in the Senate. But they're in the Senate. And that's not proven to be a very good launching pad for many political careers. Just asked Bob Dole, he got the nomination. But he was an insider, an entrapped insider, and that's very difficult to run. And given that George Bush is trying not to be in Washington, it's not a good place to run from. All right. All right, Paul. Margaret, thank you both, friend. Thanks, Harry. Next, increasing segregation in schools and society, and to Gwen Eiffel. America is becoming more diverse, but is it also becoming more segregated? A new report from Harvard Civil Rights Project says, yes. The study finds 70% of the nation's black students go to predominantly minority schools. 37% of Latino students, a 10 schools were 90% to 100% of the students are also minorities.

While white students on average, a 10 schools were more than 80% of the students are also white. What does this mean for education? And what does it do to the ideal of a colorblind society? We turn for answers to the author of the report, Gary Orfield, a professor of education and social policy at Harvard, and John Logan, a sociologist at the State University of New York at Albany, Sheryl Cashin, a professor at Georgetown University Law School, Ward Connerly, a regent at the University of California, and a leader in the anti-affirmative action movement, and Harry Bischon, the president of Thomas Rivera Policy Institute at the Claremont Graduate University. Gary Orfield, how does this trend toward re-segregation really affect our children's education? Well, we're becoming a very diverse society. We're only a relatively short time away from a society where half of the school age children will be from non-Anglo groups. But our kids are becoming more separate from each other.

And our minority populations are growing up in increasingly isolated schools, both by race and ethnicity and by poverty. And some of them by language as well. These schools are systematically unequal, both in terms of what they offer, and in terms of level of competition, and the probability that students will go on to college, the teachers that are qualified teaching at them, and many other dimensions. So we have more and more separate than unequal schools that are kind of less and less able to prepare us for the multiracial society that's emerging around us. If we are to assume that the reason that this is happening in part is because residential segregation has continued to increase in that gulf. People are choosing to live where they want to live. Why is residential segregation necessarily a bad thing? A residential segregation is not choice. Only about one-tenth of African Americans, for example, want to live in all black neighborhoods, but many millions of them do. And almost none of them want to live in poor neighborhoods with poor schools, but a great many millions of them do. So this is caused by discrimination

by the history of inequality, by unequal resources that have grown out of the inability to get into the homeownership market, many, many dimensions, but it's not just choice. And it has vicious effects. It produces a weaker life chance as in terms of education, employment, access to college, success in college, preparation for working in multiracial settings. And it's a serious harm. It's also a serious harm to grow up in an all-white suburb and go to all-white schools and then work in a society like California where more than 60% of the young people are not white. Worked connerly, Professor Orfield paints a pretty bleak picture. Is, are we talking serious harm when we talk about re-segregation? I'm not sure how serious the harm is. I concur with his conclusion. And I believe that we certainly would have a more desirable society if we were integrated. But I'm not sure that we're forever poisoned by not sitting next to somebody in class.

That's a different background from us, gun color-wise, or whatever. But I generally agree with him. Unfortunately, I think that our country has lost its stomach for pursuing racial integration. I'm not so sure that any longer color blindness is our objective. I think we're more preoccupied with diversity and that's desirable. But frequently, it's diversity without integration as I think the study demonstrates. Cheryl Cashing, let's talk about the whole idea of integration, which for so long was considered automatically to be a good thing. What is perfect integration? Is there such a thing? And is it a worthwhile goal? Well, perfect integration does not exist in American society. The trend since the 70s has been one of very modest segregation, desegregation of the races. But if you look in the major metropolitan regions with large populations of minorities, most African-Americans live in majority black neighborhoods and Latinos and Asians, interestingly, in those cities where they exist in large populations,

they became more racially isolated in the 1990s. So Americans in public opinion surveys overwhelmingly say they support the ideal of integration in the abstract. But we're not living that reality by and large at the neighborhood level. So with current studies, it would take another 70 years for our society at the current levels of desegregation, rates of desegregation, to reach perfect integration. And it's not likely to happen. John Logan, what about the choices that we've heard laid out by Ward Connerland, Cheryl Cashing? And that is precisely the choice between preferring to live separately and having it imposed upon you? Well, I do think that's the crux of the matter in terms of whether we should be concerned with the trends or we should just accept them and say that's the way our society works. And on the whole, I think that for African-Americans and to a large extent for Hispanics, the choice is not really so much the issue. In fact, there was research done

on what people's preferences were for where they'd like to live and then looking at, well, so then where do they actually live? And there's only a very slight difference among African-Americans between those who prefer to live in an integrated neighborhood, those who prefer to live in a more predominantly black neighborhood. They live actually in the same neighborhoods because they are not really able to exercise very much choice in where they live. So I do think that's the crux of the question to what extent members of different groups are able to realize their preferences and to what extent as a society we're putting up obstacles to that. Harriet Preshawn, when we talk about different groups, as we saw earlier when we were capsilizing Professor Orfield's report, we're often talked black and white, but it's a really different story for Latinos, at least this report seems to indicate that. Well, there are significant differences between blacks and Hispanics. By the third generation, Hispanics, as well as Asians, are outmaring by something like 60%. I mean, they marry somebody other than a Latino,

which means that there is, this is a snapshot, which we all should be concerned about, but there's also some positive trends out there. We have a large Latino immigrant community and in these communities in where they settle is typically in burials and that contributes to the segregation index, but that's a generational issue. So that some of it is being offset by the fact of outmarriage, for example. So let me just follow up on that. Is that a distinction then between people who choose to come to the United States, live for a while in segregated societies, and then assimilate and people who are born here and stay entrenched in segregated areas, enclaves? Well, no, I mean, it's a mixture of both, really. I mean, both your immigrant centers, well, as your long-term Hispanics who have been here for multi-generations, they're significant poverty levels amongst them, and they don't have the choice of moving out. But what I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is outmarriage going on, and at least in California, there is not one census tract for example,

an Los Angeles County that has population that doesn't have a Latino family. Unfortunately, that you can't say the same thing for African Americans. John Logan, is there a difference between what's happened with Latinos and what's happened with other immigrant groups who've come to the United States, Italians, Jews, who have settled here, and initially in their own little communities and eventually moved on? Yeah, well, I think that there are some similarities as well as some differences. But I think we should be careful to state correctly what was the experience of the European immigrant groups at the turn of the century. It's true that after 50 to 70 years, they generally did break up those very tight ethnic neighborhoods and move on to new places. But even today in a metropolitan area like New York, there's very clearly Jewish neighborhoods and Italian neighborhoods still as a residue of that old period.

So if we were going to just replicate with new immigrant groups, the experience of the previous ones, then what we would look forward to is a period of 50 or 70 years of continued segregation. Now there is a difference between the Hispanics and the Asians as immigrants to the United States and research that I've done with Richard Alba at the University at Albany, shows that in the third generation, the majority of Hispanic kids, especially Mexican kids, are still growing up in bilingual environments, but the majority of Asian kids in that generation are growing up in entirely English speaking environments. So it's clear that the rate at which groups are assimilating into American culture are quite different and that's going to have clear effects on where people live. I'm sorry, who is that? This is Gary, go ahead. One of the things that's very disturbing about the Latino statistics is say in California, in 1970 the typical Latino student was in a 54% Anglo school. Now they're in a school that's only 22% wide on average

and even in the suburbs there's a very high level of segregation developing. And on top of that, across the country, the Latinos are only about 55% are actually getting high school diplomas. So we have isolation in high poverty, inferior schools with very low success rates even by the measure of graduation. And then in the same states where these populations are, are concentrated, we're abandoning affirmative action in both California and Texas and variety of other civil rights policies that are designed to help kids that are in very weak and isolated schools. And we're also isolating a lot of kids in language school, in schools where there are very few fluent English speakers and then forcing them to abandon bilingual education in a very short period of time. So we've got some really serious contradictions in our policies. Cheryl Cash and when we talk about the economic costs, whether it's the educational costs of people who do not get higher degrees or we talk about the economic costs and not being able to earn more to have access

to other advantages from being in a mixed or a predominantly white neighborhood, how do you balance that against this need discomfort level, this need to not worry about being conforming with the people around you, I guess? Well, the preference data shows that most racial groups white, black, and Latino say they would prefer to live in an integrated neighborhood but one in which their own racial group was in the majority. And I think that's because people feel more comfortable with people like them. But my research has shown that overwhelmingly, particularly for African Americans, racial isolation has cost, racial isolation, particularly for African Americans, tends to lead to a concentration of poverty in the schools, to higher crime, to more social distress, which results in inequalities of opportunity and education and jobs and the like. One thing I want to stress is, although we are improving modestly in racial segregation, we as a nation are becoming more segregated by income with each passing decade and we are increasingly in a situation where we have a risk of a winner-take-all

society, where people who have the luxury of living in school districts with very few poor children, low crime, and no social distress, have a very different opportunity than people who are relegated to high poverty urban schools. And that's destabilizing for democracy. What, Kyle, how do you balance out this notion that people should be able to choose where they live without paying attention to what these other external factors are or internal factors, depending on how you look at it? And the notion that there is a greater good to be served by forcing integration. I don't think you balance out freedom of choice. That should be a given in my view. I think that the idea that we're going to force people to live together and to work together, work possibly, but to make choices based on what we believe is in their best interest is something that's foreign to most Americans. When this study comes out and says that there is greater segregation, I think a large part

of the nations will say so what? It seems to me that the segregation based on race is less of a concern to people than the consequences of that as was recently discussed a moment ago. We are, I think, we're terribly concerned about the class inequities and about the income inequities and to the extent that we can focus on that, then I think we can get some consensus. What do you do a direction? Well, what about that? How do you focus on the income inequities at Cheryl Cash? Well, let's take the University of California, for example, Professor Orfield said that we'd eliminated affirmative action and we have not eliminated affirmative action. We've eliminated treating people differently on the basis of race and ethnicity, but we're practicing affirmative action by class and income and working with underperforming schools more than we ever have. So I think that we should address how we direct our resources to those neighborhoods that are underperforming, those schools that are underperforming,

and worry about that kind of segregation more than we are about racial segregation. Okay, Harry Pashan, I would like, I would just like to ask Harry Pashan to follow up on this point about economic disparities and one of the arguments made about re-segregation or about segregation in its original form was that it encouraged entrepreneurship in these ethnic enclaves in 125th Street in Harlem and Auburn Avenue in Georgia. What do you think about that? Is that a worthwhile goal, worthwhile reason to perpetuate segregation? I agree with the fact that there should be a freedom of choice, but let me disagree with Ward Connerly and so far as the negative impacts of eliminating affirmative action in the University of California system. Reference. Our research clearly shows that in the past three years something like less than six thousand less African American and Latino students attending the University of California system directly as a result of SP1 and SP2, which were the regulations that were passed and in correspondence with eliminating affirmative action.

So when we say that the University of California has not had any impact, that eliminating affirmative action has not had any impact, that's completely incorrect. I mean, you can just look at the statistics. But let's not re-argue the affirmative action argument. What about the notion that ethnic enclaves can foster a new already-antrepreneurship? I think that is certainly not a question. I just like Mr. Poshan to finish, okay. In certain circumstances, clearly they have fostered entrepreneurship as well as the development of wealth creation. We take a look at the Cuban-American community in South Florida and that's a classic example where there has been an ethnic enclave at economy, which has also been helped by a U.S. policy that has generated untold wealth in that community. So there are some positive things about the enclave that we shouldn't overlook. John Logan, you were trying to get in. Yes, I didn't mean to interrupt, but I do want to point out that there are a few examples where an ethnic group that has concentrated residentially also develops an enclave economy

that provides real job opportunities for members and the Cubans in Miami, but actually not the Cubans in any other place in the country. And Koreans in New York and Los Angeles and Chinese in some places also, but on the other hand, the Mexicans are more residentially concentrated, Dominicans are more residentially concentrated, and so are Puerto Ricans and African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans, and in none of these cases has their developed much of economic or employment benefit. These groups all predominantly work in the businesses run by others. Cheryl Cash and finally, what should we be doing about this if we think it is a problem? First, I think we need to have more discussions like this where America becomes honest about the fact that we have persistent segregation or society that's not likely to go away, and inequality flows from that. Then I think we need to work on building a consensus and the unfortunate thing is segregation breeds

social distance which makes it hard to build consensus, but I think all Americans can agree on a fundamental principle that we all benefit from living in a society where every child, regardless of their economic or racial circumstances, has a fair shot at a world-class education. And if we can get some consensus on that, then we can begin to pursue some policies that need that principle. Okay, fascinating. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. Thank you. Again, the major stories of this Friday about a thousand army soldiers and Marines were being sent to help fight wildfires in the West. The first NATO troops arrived in Macedonia and a follow-up. Late today, a federal appeals court refused to free writer Vanessa Leggett from a Texas jail. She's been imprisoned for a month refailing to hand over notes to a grand jury investigating a 1997 murder. Before we go tonight, a poem for a hot Friday in August,

here's Newzauer contributor and former poet laureate, Robert Pinsky. Summer is supposed to be a time of heat and ism. This summer, for example, is supposed to mark the 97th anniversary of the invention of the ice cream cone. But summer can also be a time of heat and ism's exhaustion. The subtle depression that dogs the pursuit of pleasure, even simple, sensuous pleasure. Wallace Stevens wrote great poems about pleasure, about pleasure's subtle, gloomy underside, and sometimes about both at once. Stevens has a way of making even despair seem like a rich, sensuous experience. Here's his poem, The Emperor of Ice Cream. Call the roller of big cigars, the muscular one, and bid him whip in kitchen cups, concupus and curds. Let the winches dawdle in such dress as they are used to wear, and let the boys bring flowers in last month's newspapers.

Let be the finale of scene. The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream. Take from the dresser of deal, lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet on which she embroidered fan-pales once and spread it so as to cover her face. If her horny feet protrude, they come to show how cold she is and dumb. Let the lamp at fix its beam. The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream. We'll see you online, and again here, Monday evening, have a good weekend. I'm Ray Suarez, thanks, and good night. Major funding for the new's hour with Jim Lerer has been provided by. Imagine a world where no child bakes for food, while some will look on that as a dream.

Others will look long and hard and get to work. A.D.M., the nature of what's to come. Helping people with a state planning so that those they care about get more than a simple will can provide. See how we earn it, Salomon Smith Barney, and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, this program was also made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. Thank you. Video cassettes of the new's hour with Jim Lerer are available from PBS video. Call 1-800-328-PBS-1. Thank you.

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. . . . . . . Good evening. I'm Ray Suarez. Jim Lehrer is on vacation. On the news hour tonight, an update on the western wildfires and a conversation about controlling them. Our wrap of the week in politics with Jiggo and Carlson and America growing more diverse and still living apart and an old ice cream from Robert Pinsky. It all follows our summary of the news this Friday. Major funding for the news hour with Jim Lehrer has been provided by. Imagine a world where we're not diminishing resources we're growing with. Ethanol, a cleaner burning fuel made from corn. And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, this program was also made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

Thank you. About a thousand Army soldiers and Marines are being sent to help fight wildfires in the West. Federal officials announced that late yesterday, two battalions will join thousands of firefighters as they try to put out more than half a million acres burning in ten states. The first NATO troops arrived today in the capital of Macedonia, Scopia. In the Czech Republic, France and Britain, Britain will lead the force of about 500 soldiers. Their job will be to determine if it's safe enough on the ground for a full deployment of 3,500 NATO troops. The NATO mission will be to collect weapons turned in by ethnic Albanian rebels as part of a new Peace Accord. In Washington, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld described the U.S. role. We are not sending forces, technically, to Macedonia. We have agreed to participate in the activity in the event it is to occur, and that decision has not been made. And we have agreed to participate in the following ways.

With some logistics support, some intelligence support, some medivac support, the availability of Camp Bond steel and Kosovo for hospital care if it proved to be needed. And finally, the possible availability of U.S. forces along the in Kosovo, along the border, to serve as a collection point. Rumsfeld also reviewed a new battle plan being developed at the Pentagon. It would require the military to win two major conflicts at once, but to occupy only one of the defeated countries. Rumsfeld said the current plan, which calls for a military big enough to occupy two countries, was not realistic. A two-star general is one of eight Marine officers charged with misconduct in the Pentagon's investigation into the V-22 Osprey aircraft. The Marine Corps disclosed that today. Major General Dennis T. Krupp commands the Osprey squadron based in North Carolina, maintenance records for the tilt rotor aircraft were allegedly falsified there

to exaggerate the Osprey's airworthiness. All eight officers have agreed to appear at a punishment hearing. The Ford Motor Company announced today it will eliminate up to 5,000 jobs in North America this year, largely through retirements. That's about 10 percent of the company's salaried workforce. Ford said the cuts were necessary because of slumping sales and costs related to the firestone tire recall. A U.S. appeals court in Washington today refused to delay the antitrust case against Microsoft. The court ruled the matter should go to a new federal judge in seven days. That judge will decide how to penalize the company for anti-competitive practices. Separately, Microsoft has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. On Wall Street today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 151 points at 10,240. And the Nasdaq index was down 63 points at 1867. For the week, the Dow was down about 1.5 percent, the Nasdaq about 4.5 percent,

and the S&P 500 about 2.5 percent. That's it for the news summary tonight. Now it's on to Fighting Wildfires, Jigou and Carlson, Segregation in America, and an Ode to Ice Cream. Elizabeth Farnsworth begins our look at the Western fires and the debate over how to control them in the future. It's become an all-too familiar summer scene, wildfires raging across the West. This week, more than 20,000 firefighters have been battling 42 major fires in 10 Western states. The blazes have scorched around 600,000 acres since last weekend. Though some progress has been made in containing some of the Western fires, flames continue to shut down roads and threaten hundreds of homes, especially in the Pacific Northwest,

where Oregon and Washington faced dry conditions and wind gusts up to 35 miles per hour. Lightning strikes continue to start new fires there. Yesterday, the federal government raised its national preparedness to its highest point, level five, which allows marine and army battalions to be called in to join clues working the fire lines. This season's rash of wildfires follows one of the worst on record. Last summer, more than 30,000 fires burned about 7 million acres of Western forests and grasslands by October. Only you can prevent forest fires. For much of the past century, the federal government practiced the Smoky the Bear approach, stamp out fires at nearly any cost. By most accounts, the policy led to a buildup of trees and other fuels that made fires hotter and more destructive. We have very sick for us as a result of a lot of factors. A lot of down and down in timber haven't been thinned.

We've suppressed fires and we saw last year that the consequences of that can be catastrophic. Now the former suppression policy is under serious revision. Among the questions, how should logging be used to reduce fire threats? Where should planned fires so-called prescription burns be used to manage forests? And what role should endangered habitats play in fire protection plans? Monday, Western governors and federal officials agreed to a new coordinated approach for the nation's $3 billion annual firefighting effort. At the meeting, the leaders agreed on principles for the next 10 years. The plan calls for active prevention measures like thinning trees and prescribed burns, wildlife habitat restoration for the long term, and new flexibility for the states to make firefighting decisions. Our forests today on public lands are 10 times as dense as they were in 1900. This means that there are so many small trees that did not used to be there.

And so when fires burn, they are much more devastating to the forest as well as dangers to local communities. What we need to do is to have prescribed burns to help clear out some of that small growth before we're in a huge fire kind of situation. Today, fire crews in Nevada reported they were winning their battle against the wildfires spreading across more than 290,000 acres of the state. But in Oregon, winds and lightning forecasts for the weekend could make fires there worse. We get three views now from Lyle Laverde, the U.S. Forest Service National Fire Plan Coordinator, Michelle Ackerman, the Wildlife Fire Policy Coordinator at the Wilderness Society, an environmental group, and Holly Fretwell, research associate at the Political Economy Research Center, which promotes free market approaches to environmental problems. Lyle Laverde, maybe we can start with an overview of the fire lines today and get an idea of how things went in battling these big blazes.

Array, we've had yesterday a little over 100,000 acres of new fires that burned today. We are approximately 2.6, 2.7 million acres of fire that have burned already. And as you discussed, the weather is a critical factor for us in terms of how successful the crews are going to be. We had some successes yesterday in containing some of the fires, and we're still pushing and evacuating some communities. So the weather doesn't look like it's about to give you any relief, either for the rest of today or over the weekend. There's actually red flag warnings in parts of eastern part of the Great Basin up in Montana, and so it's still a challenge with the weather. What's that, a red flag warning? Just indicates that humidity is low and winds are high, and the potential is extremely great in terms of extreme fire behavior. Did you start off sort of already under threat during this summer season because of the light rains over the winter and early spring?

Ray, we had some early warnings this spring that we were going to be in drought conditions, particularly in the northwest and the upper Great Basin part of the country, so we had those indications early on. Holly, Fred, well, how should we understand what's going on out there in the various forests today? A natural part of what happens in a forest, or as something that we have to, as a country, manage? Well, absolutely, it's a natural part of our forest, a natural part of the ecosystem. However, we have changed the ecological structure of our forests, largely because of our previous management and fire suppression. We've suppressed fires for nearly a century, and fires that have historical fire patterns of five to 25 years have really changed the ecological structure, and without a doubt, we've changed the intensity in the wildfire situation. So what do we do? Do we change direction? How do we undo what you seem to be implying is what created this problem in the first place?

Well, we definitely need to have active management, and we need to have more localized management. Our federal lands policy tends to be very much command and control from the center from Washington, D.C. We allow for some local input, but we often don't continue through those processes. Quincy Library Group, projects and flag staff where they've coordinated groups of forest service people, university scientists, locals, local agencies, and environmental groups. They've all agreed on how to restore some of the areas surrounding their towns. We can still have one group that opposes this situation, and suddenly they'll take it to appeals, and we can no longer do the restorative processes that were intended by this collaboration group. So we get this political type management instead of resource management that we really need. Michelle Ackerman, is that really the problem, a conflict between local management and management from Washington?

Well, I think that the 10-year strategy that was referenced in the opening that really has a lot of those collaborative aspects is going to, if it's implemented correctly, and if it's implemented strongly, I think that it will go a long way toward making sure that the people that need to be at the table are at the table for those local collaborative processes. But one of the things that we really need to make sure we're doing is that we're making really wise decisions with the resources that we have. We really need to be prioritizing communities that are at risk, and making sure that our top priority is saving homes and lives, and not just while the fires are burning, but the other nine months of the year as well. Making sure that our resources are going there right to the areas around communities that are situated near or in our forests, and they're more and more of those every year. And making sure that we're taking the steps that we know how to take those common-sense steps to make sure that those communities are protected and ready for what Holly rightly describes as a natural process, which is fire and forest. We say, saving homes and lives, you didn't say, saving forests. When forest burn and there are no homes and lives at jeopardy, should they just be allowed to burn?

Well, in some cases, yes. I mean, fire is a natural part of a healthy forest ecosystem. It plays a very important role in Western forests. It cleanses the forest, it creates habitat and food for animals such as elk. In fact, some trees can't reproduce without the heat of a wildfire to break open the cones and release their seeds. So, yeah, there are places where we believe it fires should be allowed to burn naturally. Lylavity, what is the forest service doing during the off season, away from the height of the fire season, to try to make these fires less dangerous and less hard to contain? We've been fighting fires in different parts of the country, but in terms of what are we doing to reduce the threat of the risk? We're working with communities, as Michelle and Holly both talked about, to begin to design projects that we can, in fact, implement on the ground that will reduce the risk of fire catastrophic fire to some of these communities. We just published in the Federal Register, a list of about 10,000 communities that have been identified by the governors and the Western State, or the State Foresters around the country that are in harm's way because of fuel conditions.

And from this list of communities, we'll be working with the communities, with the governors to identify projects that we can begin implementing on the ground to reduce those risks. In addition, the State Foresters have identified another 10,000 communities that are not in the vicinity of federal lands, but are at some risk of harm's way because of fuel conditions across the country. It's a national problem. It's not just a Western issue. Well, Holly Fretwell, if your vision of greater local control and greater collaboration was actually seen at forest level, would the forests look any different? How would they be managed differently? Well, that depends on what the community wants. I guess my biggest point here is that just throwing more money into the pot to try to control this is not going to solve the problem. We really need to allow the local communities that have already created some plans and processes to take care of their forest, to go through with those.

Even we have, all it takes is one zero cut group to come in and appeal the process, and they can't do anything. The restoration is done. All their planning is over. We need to allow the consensus and not make it force it to be unanimous. There really is some processes that are occurring out there that have some great restorative measures within them, but they're not allowed to continue because of the appeals process, because of the way the legislation for it is set up. Well, you talk about one zero cut group. I guess you mean people who would not want us to touch the forests at all over. That's right. That's right. There's a lot of different groups that say that we shouldn't be in their harvesting timber, and that may be an agenda, and it may in some forest have some logical and rational approach to it. It depends on the forest. That's again why we need to be looking at a local level. However, all it takes is one of these groups to take a logical restorative process. They appeal it, and the process can no longer go on, and it becomes extremely costly. And we leave the forest in the state of unhealthy state that it is now throughout the time that they're trying to go through the legal process.

Well, Michelle Ackerman would have forest that we allowed to just stand there and be managed by fire. Look very different from a forest that we actively manage and restrict cutting on and do some of the things that you just heard Holly Fretwell talking about. Well, it entirely depends on the forest. We have 192 million acres of natural forests. But the ones that are burning this week in the western United States, largely pine forests, would they look very different? You know, again, it depends on the forest. It's interesting to hear, you know, Lyle and Holly talk about kind of the historical conditions when the forest were in his dense, but one of the most famous fire years that we've had in the last century was in 1910. And that was, it was called the Big Blow Up and 3 million acres burned in Idaho and Montana. And that's, you know, that's a half million acres more or so than have burned so far this year. So, you know, even as Holly pointed out before, it's a natural process and it's a cyclical process.

I think the most important thing that we can do right now is make sure that our priorities, our resources, our prioritized towards communities. I think that we also need to be careful some of the restorative processes that Holly was referring to, the thinning and the logging. We need to be really sure that thinning and removing some of those small saplings or twigs or branches from the areas around communities is that thinning and doing those things does not become a code word for logging or a code word for businesses usual. And going out into remote forests far from communities and continuing to cut down trees is not going to reduce fire risks to communities and that's something that government studies have shown. It's something that is pretty clear. So we need to make sure that we're targeting resources where they need to go to protecting homes and lives and not toward logging remote forests and that we're really making the decisions about those resources based on the ecological health of the forest based on those local collaborative processes. And mostly based on the priority of protecting homes and lives in the event of wildfire.

And Lyle Laverty quickly before we close, are we actually having a less eventful summer than we did last year? I mean, not to minimize the suffering and the danger that's going on right now, but are we actually well ahead of where we were last year? No, we're not, Ray. In fact, one of the last year about this time we had about four and a half million acres that we'd already burned. And this year we're just about at two and a half million. We've had certainly different weather conditions in different parts of the country. But on the other side, with the funds that the Congress provided, we've been able to add an additional 5,000 firefighters over the year that we had last year. The resources that we have available this year have, in fact, helped us to contain some of these fires and keep them relatively small rather than losing them and ending up with large conflagration. So we're behind in terms of acres burned, which is a real blessing, but I think there's a number of factors that have contributed to that. But in part, I think it's because we do have the additional resources to take care of them.

I guess thank you all for joining me. Still to come on the news hour tonight, Jigou and Carlson, increasing segregation in schools and society, and an ode to ice cream. Kwame Holman begins our political rap with a report on President Bush's week. President Bush spent much of this month on what AIDS call a home to the heartland vacation. Based out of his ranch in Crawford, Texas, on Monday morning, he teed off at a nearby course and alluded to criticism of his decision to be away from the White House for 30 days. I hit every shot good people without one working. Later in the day, the president conducted official business as he has throughout his two weeks beyond the Beltway. He signed a bill releasing five and a half billion dollars in emergency agriculture aid. It is my honor now to sign this piece of meaningful legislation that should make the lives of the people who farm and the people who ranch much better off.

The top questions on reporters' minds concerned the president's announcement four days earlier that he would allow federal funding of stem cell research only on existing human embryos cell lines. Mr. Bush said he would veto any legislation that goes beyond that. I spent a lot of time on the subject. I laid out the policy I think is right for America, and I'm not going to change my mind. I'm the kind of person that when I make up my mind, I'm not going to change it. That's what you're out here for. Tuesday found President Bush in Colorado. He visited Rocky Mountain National Park and helped clean up a hiking trail. Escorted by interior secretary Gail Norton, the president spoke of the need to maintain federal lands. We're going to make a strong commitment to our parks. It's a really important part of the American scene. At a YMCA summer camp picnic, the president sampled barbecue and corn, then spoke to the group about the importance of instilling values in families and communities. The spirit of America is found in the character of our citizens, the value base that makes America, I think, such a different kind of place.

And the vision is that we can teach our children right from wrong. And we can teach them good sound values so that when they get older, they'll make the right choices in their life. Later in the day, President Bush mixed in party politics. He attended a fundraiser in Denver that netted $1.4 million for the campaigns of Governor Bill Owens and freshman Senator Wayne Aller. Listen to your teacher. The second and final day of his swing took Mr. Bush to Grego's elementary school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The president read the very hungry caterpillar to students on their first day of school. On Friday, eight from five. The president Bush underscored student testing the centerpiece of his education reform plan. Final action on the legislation awaits Congress's return next month. You need to know whether your children are learning to read early. And if they're not, we got to make sure they do.

You need to know the results. We shouldn't fear accountability in America. We ought to welcome accountability. And there are other legislative battles ahead for the president, notably how to deal with shrinking budget surplus projections. Congressional Democrats say a smaller surplus and revenues lost to the president's tax cut, meaning the government may dip into social security funds to pay its bills. Something both parties have vowed not to do. But yesterday, the president's aides said new end of the fiscal year figures show no need to touch social security funds. For now, those political battles remain on hold while the president enjoys the rest of his vacation far away from Washington. And Terrence Smith takes it from there. We get more on the president's week and other matters political from Gigo and Carlson. That's Wall Street Journal columnist Paul Gigo and Time Magazine columnist Margaret Carlson. Mark Shields is off tonight.

Welcome to you both, Margaret. The White House has been working to convey an image through this vacation, this working vacation. Man of the people out there stressing values, is it working? They protest too much. The idea that you would give it a name, first of all, they home to the heartland tour. It makes you think of a rock star going out on a concert tour. And the fact is he is from the heartland. It's a great place. You don't have to make it up. He's pretty much convinced us now that he is a Texan, and he's not one of those awful Kenabung port or Martha Vineyard's vacationers. The other thing he has to do is show that he's no slouch. And so this working is very, very important. And in fact, it's so important that when a poll showed that I think 55% of the people thought 31 days, which was I think breaking Nixon's record was a little too long, today they announced that it would be three days shorter. Now, those three days are going to be spent at Camp David.

So I don't know that that's really theoretical, I mean, it's more theoretical than real. You know, he put on the Jimmy Carter tool belt and went and built a house for a single mother. He spent 45 minutes doing that because his poll showed that he's in touch with the corporate bosses and not in touch enough with women and moderate. So go build a house, get in touch with the compassionate side of your conservatism. And that's another part of what he's doing here. But of course the compassionate things actually cost money. But it sounds like it's working from everything Margaret said. This is Bush's as an old presidential role. Ronald Reagan used it. President's going back to Andrew Jackson used it. President's outsider. He's not part of the belt way, he's going to stay out there. The other thing is Bush's popular. A lot of his popularity is rooted in who he isn't. Margaret alluded this. He's not Bill Clinton. He doesn't go to Martha's Vineyard.

He's from the red states. He's not from the blue states in that famous division of the electoral map. He's from the heartland. And I think they're playing into that. And they're probably overdoing it a bit in terms of the advertising for it. But, you know, this is part of this White House's message discipline. That's one thing they did learn from Bill Clinton. They have a message that's going to drill it into you. And they're trying to do that. One thing Reagan never did, however, was he said I'm on vacation. He wasn't trying to cover up that fact. And that authentic part of Reagan came through. This looks a little bit of just a tiny bit overproduced to me. What about the issues that he is stressing, the environment, education, traditional values? Are we getting a little foreshadowing of what we're going to hear on the phone? Sure you are. There's no question about it. You're also getting a little bit of a shift amid course correction. The tax cuts done. They figured that that was really had solidified in many ways the economic conservatives and now they want to shift somewhat to appeal to some of those women that Margaret talked about and talked about education.

But very practically too. They have an education bill in the Senate. I mean, that's been passed, actually, both parties. But it's in a conference committee. They want to get that out. So this is using the bully pulpit to leverage that. It's not just, so it has a legislative goal as well. And then the value stuff is there's no question that that is rooted in, I think again, in the point I made about his popularity being personal and who he is, who he isn't. He's the anti-clinton. And so they're going to represent Bush as a spokesman for mainstream values. But it's also, you think, Margaret, somewhat to contrast the corporate connection as you put it of the first few months? It is. Do you remember Chris Matthews wrote a piece in the New Republic that became rather famous in which he called the Democrats the mommy party and the Republicans the daddy party? Well, the Bush did the daddy part. And now he's moving over to the mommy part. And he's concentrating on these mommy issues. The problem with that is that the mommy solutions are expensive. And there's not a lot of money around.

We even see that with the defense budget, which is, you know, when you do a tax cut and you want to cut government, you know, just want to give the money back. You want there not to be enough money for this bloated government. You actually end up hurting things you want to do. And so this is more, you know, fruit fruit than it is substance because that tax cut has determined a lot of the Bush agenda. Well, let's talk about the budget because later this month, Paul, the Congressional Budget Office will come out with his numbers. It's forecast for surplus, et cetera. And the issue of Social Security will be right in the front. Are we cruising for a big political battle over the budget and social security? There was going to be a fight, no matter what happened because it would have been a fight over spending parties, as there always is at the end of each year. But this time it'll be a little fiercer because the tax cut for this year has taken out a good portion of the surplus as it was designed to do, by the way. That was the point. Explicit. And then in the campaign.

And then the economy has also reduced the expected revenues. So they're getting close. Not too a deficit. We're still going to have the second biggest surplus in history. But close enough to that at the edge of the so-called Social Security surplus to make it a big political issue. And both sides are going to use it. I mean, I would expect President Bush is going to use it against Democrats to say, you can't spend any more without dipping into the surplus. And the Democrats are going to say, you were right about the tax cut. It's now cut into Social Security. Mr. President, repeal that tax cut. Maybe if they'll go that far down the road. So I think it's not a fiscal problem. It's a political debate. It in fact sounds like a classic debate. It's definitely a problem because the one Bush read my lips was I will not touch the Social Security surplus. So you don't want to touch. It's like a hot stove. You don't want to get close. What the Democrats don't want to do is to be seem to be rooting for a recession or not enough money. The way Republicans did after the Clinton budget,

oh, we're going to be thrown into the worst recession in a decade. And there you were seeing them trying, you know, wishing that something bad would happen. The Democrats don't want to do that. But I think they're right to point out that the tax cut has defined the Bush administration. And they have to live with it. And what they didn't know was that they were going to have to be living with things that would hurt them, like the military budget, the education bill. There's priorities are going to be hurt as well. There's another initiative out there that doesn't look so good right now. The faith-based initiative that the president pushed. We now know that John D'Eulio, the director of the White House office on that, is resigning. There's trouble in the Senate. Is that going anywhere in Poland? Well, it's already passed the House. Yes. And I think in the Senate, the majority leader to Asheville City is not going to bring it up anytime soon. But there's a lot of negotiations going on behind the scenes, between Republicans and Joe Lieberman, who is, who is, I think, the lynch pin here.

If this is going to pass the Senate, Lieberman will be vital to doing that. So I don't think this is, this is by any means, over with or going to fail. I think the one downside of D'Eulio leaving is that he has a very good relationship with Joe Lieberman. D'Eulio is a Democrat. And so, I mean, I think he always said he was going to only stay about six months. He is somebody who, I think, is a brilliant academic identified this issue early on. Always been better, I think, at academia and writing as some of us are than actual practice, practical politics and legislative politics. So it's something of a blow to the initiative, but I don't think a fatal one. Martin, what do you think? I mean, it's a fatal blow, but he was the intellectual heart of it. And it would have helped if he'd seen it through the Senate, especially with Joe Lieberman. But that House Bill is not going to pass the Senate. It's going to be altered. And the faith-based initiative is like the missile defense shield. Great if it works.

And if you can expand it without getting into the catch-22, I think Joe Lieberman and others think it's a wonderful idea. But if the very reason they work these programs is that they have a religious content, but you have to take out the religious content to get the money, well, then where are you? You don't want to preserve separation of churches. In order to preserve separation of churches. Say which seems to have worked for 200 years. We saw another bit of image making this past week. Paul Al Gore came out from the political wilderness, conducted a seminar for young Democrats who want to campaign. How did it look to you? I thought he looked pretty good. I mean, I thought much derided beard seems to me to be fine. Those of us who have gray beards don't mind seeing one. I think Gore has been smarter than his critics in one particular. And that is saying out of the news for six months. A lot of Democrats said, we're worried. You should have been in there plugging. You should have been in there fighting bush. He was smart.

It wouldn't have made any difference to anything that has happened in the first six months. And it would have hurt him. And I think arguably hurt his party because it would have been seen as sour grapes. The best beach he gave in the campaign, or at least the most well received, was the concession speech. And that's the one that said, I'm bowing out. I thought the good fight. And the president, a new president, needs time to fight or to govern and see if he can do it. I'm bowing out. He's honored that promise. And I think that's going to make him a more powerful potential candidate the next time. So don't rule out Al Gore. Mm-hmm. Paul is so right. Grace and politics is so hard. He showed it. And not talking is very hard. And he showed he could do that. But his home to the heartland tour with Carl Alexander, I don't think, was the right way to come out and not with the beard. Because the beard reminds you of Naomi Wolf and the birth tones and alpha map.