The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MUDD: Good evening. I'm Roger Mudd in Washington.

MR. MacNeil: And I'm Robert MacNeil in New York. After the News Summary, we have excerpts from President Clinton's exchange with business leaders, then two Senators debate campaign finance reform: Should the taxpayers finance congressional elections? Business Correspondent Paul Solman has a report on sports business. Charlayne Hunter-Gault talks about race in America with author Cornel West, and we close with a Timothy Ferris essay on the super collider. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MUDD: President Clinton's efforts to entice conservative Democratic Senators into supporting his economic plan today may have cost him the support of some liberal Democrats in the House, including the 39-member Black Caucus. Yesterday, Mr. Clinton abandoned his BTU energy tax under pressure from oil state Senators. He said he would seek another kind of broad-based energy tax and would cut more spending, including some cuts in entitlement programs like Medicare. That decision brought criticism from liberals who helped the President push the original plan through the House.

REP. PATRICIA SCHROEDER, [D] Colorado: I think we've been left hanging out on the plank. And I must say I, I don't like it. There's no question that the BTU tax has never been very well explained. I think it was the fairer way to go, but the retreat apparently was signaled without anybody really being aware of the retreat. And there we are doing a tap dance out on the end of the plank as it's being sawed off from underneath us.

REP. KWEISI MFUME, [D] Maryland: We are not prepared to accept this notion that's being floated of additional major cuts in entitlement programs, programs that have already been cut in some instances to the bare bone by the action that was taken here in the House a week or so ago. We believe that further reductions in those programs, those entitlements that mean so much to people who need and benefit from them is something that becomes a point of non- negotiation and something that imperils the passage of this legislation.

MR. MUDD: Sen. John Breaux, a Democrat from Louisiana, today offered an alternative energy tax aimed at the consumption of fuels used for transportation. He also proposed $30 billion in cuts of new spending on Medicare. The Associated Press reported this afternoon that President Clinton and top Senate Democrats have tentatively agreed to such a plan, but the White House said this was only the opening bid in negotiations. The President said House members may not give up the BTU tax for something like a transportation tax and said he was not at all sure how it would all sort out. The President spoke to a business group this afternoon and told them his program had not gotten a fair hearing.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: There has been a calculated effort to distort and to destroy this program by calling it "tax and spend." Never mind that for years the leaders of this effort gave us "borrow and spend." But one more time the apostles of the easy answers seek to divert the attention of the American people with their simple slogans. I've been through a lot of political wars in my lifetime. I've on occasion gotten knocked down. Sometimes I've knocked myself down. But I always try to come back, and this time, the administration is going to come back, because we're telling the truth to the American people and if we don't face this problem now, we're going to let it get out of hand and lose control of our destiny. That is the big issue, and we've got to have the courage to face it.

MR. MUDD: We'll have more of the President's remarks right after the News Summary. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: White House Spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers said today the U.S. will comply with a federal court order and allow a group of HIV positive Haitian refugees to enter the United States. The group of 150 Haitians has been detained at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba for up to 20 months. A federal judge yesterday ruled their detention was unconstitutional. Myers said the administration may appeal that ruling sometime in the future. Muslim forces in central Bosnia expanded their offensive against the Croats today. Croats fought their former Muslim allies with heavy weapons but have been unable to stop their advance. The Muslims yesterday took control of the strategic town of Travnik and today torched several nearby villages. The battles were the worst of the Muslim-Croat conflict. Sec. of State Christopher reassured European allies today that the U.S. would provide air cover for U.N. forces protecting Muslim safe havens. After meeting with his counterparts in Luxembourg, he emphasized that the U.S. and its allies were in agreement on a policy for Bosnia.

WARREN CHRISTOPHER, Secretary of State: I made clear our commitment to provide air power to protect the UNPROFOR forces on the ground and our commitment eventually to provide ground forces in connection with an agreement negotiated in good faith by the parties to settle the matter. On these points, I am sure there is no confusion and no mistaken impressions.

MR. MacNeil: The United Nations forces in the Somali capital conducted weapons sweeps today and moved staffers to fortified quarters amid fears of impending fighting. AID workers in Mogadishu said U.N. officials had warned them there would be a major retaliatory strike against warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid. He has been blamed for a weekend ambush attack which killed 23 Pakistani peacekeepers and wounded 50 others. U.S. and French reinforcements entered the capital today and administration officials in Washington told Reuters News Agency the U.S. would send four AC-130 attack aircraft to the region for a possible use in a U.N. strike. The large, heavily armed planes were used against ground targets in the Gulf War and the 1989 invasion of Panama.

MR. MUDD: The Veteran Affairs Department is looking into claims of a mysterious illness among Gulf War veterans. Several veterans told a House committee today they suffered from flu-like symptoms and were getting no help from the government. Undersecretary of Veterans Affairs James Holzinger told the committee there was a small number of cases with no readily available answers. Another official said the illness may have been caused by exposure to fires in the Kuwait oil field or by inhaling dust from non-radioactive uranium used in artillery shells. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has used that employers must provide the same health insurance benefits to workers with such disabilities as AIDS, epilepsy, and deafness as to non-disabled workers. If they don't, they are required to offer justification. The rules take effect immediately.

MR. MacNeil: Connecticut today became the third state to ban the sale of semiautomatic assault weapons. Gov. Lowell Weicker signed the bill into law over objections from the National Rifle Association and a weapons manufacturer. New Jersey and California have previously passed similar bans. The city of Los Angeles elected a new mayor last night. Multi-millionaire Richard Reardon became the city's first Republican mayor in 30 years after defeating Democratic rival Michael Woo. He said his first priority was to put more police on the streets. Reardon takes over from retiring Mayor Tom Bradley on July 1st.

MR. MUDD: The country's major cable operators today settled an antitrust lawsuit that could open up programming for the viewers. The cable operators agreed to pay nearly $5 million and provide programming to new types of television services such as so-called "wireless cable systems." The suit brought by 40 states alleged the major cable operators were able to squeeze out smaller competitors by refusing to sell them such programs as CNN, HBO, and MTV, which the big companies control.

MR. MacNeil: In a solemn tradition bound ceremony, Japan's Prince Narahito today married Masako Owata, a commoner and former diplomat. Many in Japan hope the couple, both educated at Oxford, will modernize the 1500 year old Japanese monarchy. We have a report from Peter Sharpe of Independent Television News.

PETER SHARPE, ITN: With all due formality, Masako Owata left home for the last time this morning bowing farewell to her family as she left for the Imperial Palace and the start of a new life. The world's oldest monarchy gained a new crown princess today. The 29 year old former diplomat educated at Oxford and Harvard joined the heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne Crown Prince Marahito in solemn procession this morning, entering the Royal Palace's most sacred shrine for the short ceremony. Away from the cameras it was left to Japanese television's computergraphics to take viewers behind the bamboo screen to the holiest of holy Shinto shrines where they were wed in secret. She emerged 15 minutes later a Crown Princess, dressed in the style of Japan's 8th century rulers in a heavy 12-layered kimono. She looked poised to step back into history, rather than take her place in modern day Japan. But the people of Tokyo saw a different princess. As the royal motorcade left the palace, many in the crowd now hoped that she'll act as a catalyst for change in the deeply conservative imperial household, bringing new life to a centuries old institution that has fallen behind the times.

MR. MacNeil: Administration officials said today that former Vice President Walter Mondale is President Clinton's choice for ambassador to Japan. The President reportedly will not make a formal announcement until the Japanese government approves. If confirmed, Mondale would replace Michael Armacost, who is a holdover from the Bush administration. Mondale, who's 65, has been practicing law in Minnesota since Ronald Reagan defeated him in 1984. That's our summary of the news. Now it's on to President Clinton on the economy, campaign finance reform, sports as business, a conversation with Cornel West, and the super collider. FOCUS - SALES PITCH

MR. MUDD: We go first tonight to President Clinton's newly styled efforts to build support for his budget plan which is now being negotiated with the Senate Finance Committee. This afternoon, the President talked to a group of business leaders meeting in Washington. In his remarks to the Business Round Table he stressed the need for congressional action and talked about the current fight over the energy tax. Here are excerpts.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: The thing we have to do most of all is to act. We have to act. We have to act, because that is the only thing that will produce results. I believe that we're going to do that. I think you will see the Senate act. I think you will see the Senate and the House come forward with a program that meets the basic principles that I have outlined. I think you will see America in control of its economic destiny. I think interest rates will stay down and growth will stay up and will continue to generate jobs for this economy. But it requires a lot of courage when all you hear day in and day out are people trying to paralyze action with the same old rhetoric that put us to sleep for 12 years and got us in the fix that the first chart showed. I like these results better than that first chart, and if you do, I hope you'll support our efforts. Thank you very much. [applause]

SPOKESMAN: Mr. President, as one you just refinanced my own home mortgage, I want to thank you for that. My question really goes to the apparent demise of the BTU tax which was announced by Sec. Bentsen yesterday. And obviously, to work with Congress, it's required in the last administration or this one to make anything really happen. I heard you say that another broad- based energy tax would be recommended. I appreciate any comment you'd have on that and why you think another broad-based energy tax might get more reception or rather not have the same treatment that the BTU tax had. Thank you.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, let me say I'm still not sure how it's all going to come out, and let me try to answer this very carefully. Sec. Bentsen did not so much announce as to grudgingly acknowledge the state of play in the, in the Senate. And it's quite interesting, because, you know, he's from an energy state and he came to this BTU tax after going through a lot of other issues. Let me tell you what the state of play in the Senate is first of all. You've got essentially a Senate Finance Committee where no Republicans will vote for this bill, because they are not going to be for any taxes, and the Boren substitute is a massive shift of the burden to elderly people and to working people just above the poverty line. And if it got on the floor of the Senate, I bet it wouldn't get 20 votes. So there is no other viable alternative out there. But with an eleven to nine majority, the Democrats cannot lose any votes on the Senate Finance Committee and get any bill out. Now, Sen. Bentsen -- or Sec. Bentsen had what I thought was a great suggestion for modifying the BTU tax, which is, would essentially have drastically alleviated all but eliminated the burden on production, whether industrial or agricultural, but have otherwise left the tax in shape so that it applied to all forms of energy and, therefore, was less burdensome to any region of the country, but got out of the whole business of whether we were being uncompetitive with people from where we exported or products or whether imports would acquire a competitive advantage and whether we were putting too much of a burden on energy intensive forms of industry which had led the House to make too many exceptions to it, so just essentially had a blanket alleviation of the production sector, which is what Sec. Bentsen was talking about. It looked to us like that was the best thing. There had been so much said about the wording of the BTU tax, and I must say some legitimate concern about the whole administrative difficulty of starting a new one, the Senate seems disinclined to go forward. That does not mean that the House will give up on a modified BTU tax. I don't know what's going to happen from here on in. And we have not agreed to anything or disagreed with anything. We have been in consultation with the Senate and would go to any meeting they asked us to, but they're going to have to come up with their own program. And they know what the principles I have outlined are. And I just gave them to you. So I don't know what's going to happen now. Sen. Breaux has some ideas that he wants to float and some others have some ideas that I don't think -- I think you'll have plenty of time to react to them. A lot of them want to rely more on a broad-based transportation tax. But that also has some economic difficulties if you -- even if you raise less money. The No. 1 thing we -- 100 percent of us agreed and the House members agreed that we would lower the dollar volume of the energy tax, the value, the total money raised, and make it up in various kinds of cuts. And that was -- and I think that's where everybody is now. Everybody is there.

MR. MUDD: He also said he thought possible cuts in entitlement programs should be taken up as part of a health care reform package. FOCUS - PUBLIC OR PRIVATE?

MR. MacNeil: Now we move on to another issue the administration has in Congress. President Clinton's proposal to reform the financing of national political campaigns face crucial tests in the Senate tomorrow. There will be two efforts to remove the provision calling for some public financing for Senate and House races. On the eve of votes on two key amendments, we join that debate with a strong backer of public financing, Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, and a leading Republican opponent, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Sen. Wellstone, it looks like high noon for public financing tomorrow with amendments eliminating it, correct?

SEN. WELLSTONE: I think, I think there are going to be big votes on the floor tomorrow.

MR. MacNeil: Why is public financing of Senate and House campaigns a good idea?

SEN. WELLSTONE: I can't tell you an issue I feel more strongly about, Robin. I mean, it's the alternative to an obscene money chase. It's an alternative to government to the highest bidder. It's an alternative to auction block democracy. My dad was a Jewish immigrant from Russia, and he taught me that in a representative democracy, each person counts as one and no more than one, and we've moved dangerously away from that principle. Most of the people in this country feel like it's a big money gain, and they feel ripped off and left out. And they should feel that way. And you mentioned health care. $41 million by the health care industry in the '90/'92 cycle. I mean, what does that mean in terms of our ability to come through for people?

MR. MacNeil: $41 million contributed by the health care industries to --

SEN. WELLSTONE: Broadly defined. Soft money, hard money, individual contributions, PAC money. It's big money dominating politics and in all due respect to my good friend from Kentucky, I believe that what we're trying to do with public financing is get the big private money, interested money out, and get the disinterested public money in. And I think that he's essentially defending a system that shouldn't be defended, kind of block in some change that really needs to take place in our country.

MR. MacNeil: Sen. McConnell, one of the amendments I referred to that would kill the public financing idea is yours tomorrow. Why is public financing a bad idea in your view?

SEN. McCONNELL: Well, first, Robin, I think it's important to remember that there has to be money in politics, and there are only two places it can come from. It can either come out of the public treasury, or it can come from individuals who volunteer their contributions to the candidate of their choice. I respect Paul deeply, but there is no big money in congressional races. There has been for over 15 years a limit on what individuals can contribute to a campaign, and a limit on what PACS can contribute to a campaign. And if the campaign is able to raise a lot of money, it must come from a whole lot of different individuals and Political Action Committees, and they all have different points of view on the issues there before us. Paul is very well meaning, but he believes, essentially, that everybody up here is for sale, and not only are they for sale but they're selling, according to Paul I gather, rather cheaply, because the individual and PAC limitations are really quite small. And I don't know anybody that I serve with in the Senate who is about the business of selling influence.

MR. MacNeil: Sen. Wellstone.

SEN. WELLSTONE: Well, yeah, I'd like to, I'd like to respond to Sen. McConnell, a couple of points. First of all, most regular people don't consider individual contributions of up to $2,000 to be small contributions. Second of all, in 1992, we spent something like $675 million as a nation on congressional races. Third of all, by a typical standard of an average Senate race, I'm supposed to be raising twelve or thirteen thousand dollars a week throughout my six year term. And by the way, I'm way, way, way behind. I'm not criticizing colleagues. I'm saying it's something more serious than that. Certain people march on Washington all the time. Their economic clout gives them too much political clout, and the vast majority of people feel left out of that loop. They don't want this to be dominated by these large amounts of money. And that's what we are talking about. A typical Senate race of $4 million is a tremendous amount of money to spend.

MR. MacNeil: What about that point, Sen. McConnell, that by public financing you would make it possible for other, for all Senators, you included, not to have to spend so much of your time raising dough?

SEN. McCONNELL: Well, in fact, most Senators don't spend much time raising money, Robin. We studied the cycles, and 80 percent of the money raised by Senators is raised in the last two years of the, of the six-year term. So there is no, no money chase. Each of us, however, makes an individual decision about whether we want to raise money. Nobody makes us do it. I mean, Paul, for example, decided after the election to raise money. He raised money from Political Action Committees and from others, but nobody made him do that. And most Senators choose not to engage in fund-raising until near the end of the cycle. And the reason they do it is because we don't own these seats. We do if we want to continue have to appeal to individual, individuals out there for support. And what contributors do is they support those whose views are similar to theirs, and they oppose those whose views are dissimilar to theirs. And it's important to remember, Robin, that we really don't spend much in politics. I mean, we spent more advertising yogurt last year in this country than we did on politics. You have to compare.

MR. MacNeil: I won't make a comparison between the two --

SEN. WELLSTONE: But, Robin, I think --

MR. MacNeil: -- the two products I was talking about.

SEN. WELLSTONE: But it's not talking about selling products. I just want to respond to a couple of quick things. One thing, I decided to do it differently. I raised very little of my money through PAC money through the campaign. I raised about the smallest amount of money ever spent in a Senate race against someone who outspent me seven to one. After I paid off my debt, I don't take any PAC money or individual contributions over $100 per year. I'd like to continue that, but if we go with this obscene system where huge amounts of money are spent, then I think all of us are put in a very difficult position for the sake of representative democracy, for the sake of getting the big money out, for the sake of people having a voice; we've got to make the change.

MR. MacNeil: Sen. McConnell, address Sen. Wellstone's point that the public doesn't like the system the way it is, and, in fact, an NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll recently showed that 53 to 39 percent the public favors public financing of congressional campaigns.

SEN. McCONNELL: Robin, I don't know how the question was asked, but I can tell you the most extensive survey ever taken in American on any issue is taken every April 15th on the question of taxpayer funding of elections. Every April 15th, taxpayers get to decide whether to check off a dollar of taxes they already owe, not an additional dollar, but a dollar of taxes they already owe, to the presidential publicly-funded system. And the participation has dropped from 29 percent back in the '70s to 17 percent. In Paul's state, Minnesota, it's only 13 percent. I mean, we know how the people of America feel about taxpayer funding. I have no earthly idea how that survey could have been, how that question on that survey could have been asked, but I can tell you, you can walk out on the floor of the Senate, and even the most ardent proponents of taxpayer funding of elections know that the American public hates, detests, and despises the notion of taxpayer funded elections.

MR. MacNeil: Sen. Wellstone, let me -- can I ask you --

SEN. WELLSTONE: Sure, as long as I get to disagree with him, I'll ask [answer] any question you ask me.

MR. MacNeil: You disagree, but would you also address the point, I don't think many people understand how the proposal for public financing would work. There is something called communication vouchers. Explain how those would work.

SEN. WELLSTONE: Actually, I'd like to have even more public financing, but what we're talking about is discount values for television for broadcasting, and we're also talking about a discount on mail in exchange for agreeing to some spending limits which also I think Sen. McConnell opposes. Now, I have to tell you it depends upon how you ask the question we agree, but --

MR. MacNeil: What does discount vouchers --

SEN. WELLSTONE: -- but let me --

MR. MacNeil: What does discount vouchers mean? What does that mean?

SEN. WELLSTONE: That means you don't spend the normal, what you would normally have to spend in terms of, for advertising.

MR. MacNeil: In other words, out of government funds, the Federal Election Commission, you when you wanted to appear on a commercial television station in Minnesota would use these vouchers and get a cut rate, is that it?

SEN. WELLSTONE: That's correct. As communications technology, unfortunately, has become the major weapon, and that's a very expensive proposition, but let me go back to Sen. McConnell's point, because I think this is real important. People are smart in our country, and they know with the presidential elections, there's too much soft money going in. It's a sieve. Now, in this bill, we make sure that that doesn't happen. So that has changed. That's No. 1. No. 2, this isn't for politicians. This is for people. People should own their own elections. People should control their own government. This capital should belong to people, and we've got to get the big money out so that we can restore some democracy. That's really what we're talking about here.

MR. MacNeil: Sen. McConnell.

SEN. McCONNELL: Robin, the Supreme Court has said that spending is speech, protected under the First Amendment, and that there cannot be constitutionally any limit on speech. In other words, you can't dole it out in equal amounts. You can't say, Sen. Wellstone, you'll only get so much speech, Sen. McConnell, you'll only get so much speech, don't speak too much. So spending limits are unconstitutional. What this bill seeks to do, Robin, is to bludgeon unwilling candidates into accepting a limitation on their speech by providing all kinds of punitive features. Among them, if you don't want to limit your speech, you'll lose a broadcast discount as soon as you speak above the arbitrary limit. Tax dollars are given to your opponent to counter your excessive speech. And listen to this one, you'll love this. If a citizens' group, say a civil rights group, based out of state, for example, say B'nai B'rith objected to the Senate candidacy of David Duke in Louisiana and wanted to express themselves in opposition to this former klansman, David Duke would get taxpayers money to respond to the independent expenditure against him in Louisiana by civil rights groups. I'm tell you that if the American people understood what was in this underlying bill, they would go crazy, they would be completely outraged, this brought to you by the same people who've run up a $4 trillion debt that we would now spend their tax dollars --

MR. MacNeil: Let's give Sen. Wellstone a chance to rebut this.

SEN. McCONNELL: Sure.

SEN. WELLSTONE: First of all, I was elected in 1990. I didn't run up that debt. I don't know how long you served here, but I didn't run up that debt. The second point I want to make is that I think that David Duke is a big kind of step sideways to avoid the central issue. Sen. McConnell wants to talk about the expense. Ask people this question. Ask people that are viewing this. Four hundred and fifty million dollars, or whatever the cost would be, which I think is what it would be for congressional races, would you be willing to spend that, or would you like to see lobbyists essentially have their tax reduction removed, which is what we're talking about, so that we no longer have government to the highest bidder, so that we have a more level playing field, so we get the big interested money out, and so that citizens finally believe this is a game they can play? I'm sick of the discussion --

MR. MacNeil: Well --

SEN. WELLSTONE: -- of big players.

MR. MacNeil: We --

SEN. WELLSTONE: People want the change, and I think this Senator is blocking that.

MR. MacNeil: Thank you both Senators. We need to move on, but I guess we're --

SEN. WELLSTONE: Thank you.

MR. MacNeil: -- going to find out tomorrow whether it makes it or not in the Senate, that particular facet of the campaign finance. Thank you both for joining us.

SEN. McCONNELL: Thank you.

SEN. WELLSTONE: Thank you.

MR. MUDD: Now it's on to sports economics, a conversation about race, and a Tim Ferris essay. FOCUS - WINNING STRATEGY?

MR. MUDD: Basketball fans enter their seventh heaven tonight as the National Basketball Association finals between the Phoenix Sons and the Chicago Bulls open in Phoenix. No matter which team wins, it seems the NBA can't lose these days all because of a winning strategy adopted 10 years ago which might be a model for other industries and sports. Business Correspondent Paul Solman of public station WGBH-Boston reports.

[BASKETBALL SEGMENT]

MR. SOLMAN: At five foot three inches, Mugsie Bows could be a metaphor for professional basketball, itself, a modest sized industry that has triumphed beyond all expectations. New teams from smaller markets like Mugsie's Charlotte Hornets can draw a packed house for a routine mid season game against the New York Knicks. Up and down the National Basketball Association or NBA, owners and players are getting rich. Rookie Alonzo Morting will make roughly $4 million this year, regardless of how his team does. His mentor, Patrick Ewing, 5 million. But they compete fiercely nonetheless. The success of the NBA contains a moral for other sports, as we'll see, but perhaps more relevant for our audience it may be a model for other industries as well. Economic thinkers have long pointed out that the so-called "free market" can't be beat for delivering goods at the lowest price. But they've also pointed out that it can reek a lot of destruction in the process, destruction of workers, companies, sometimes even in the long run of entire industries. An age old question then is how to manage an industry so you get the goods while minimizing the casualties. The NBA has come up with a game plan to do just that. Now just 10 years ago, this business wasn't attracting nearly the customers it does today. Charles Grantham, who heads up the NBA Players Association, remembers how recently the League was in trouble.

CHARLES GRANTHAM, Exec. Dir., NBA Players Association: Basketball or NBA basketball at that time was not fantastic. It was at the bottom of the three various sports. We were perceived as drug- infested. We were perceived as too black. Madison Avenue really did not have a love affair with professional basketball.

DAVID STERN, Commissioner, NBA: We were down to five regular season telecasts. We were giving parties, and nobody was coming.

MR. SOLMAN: Grantham's management counterpart, David Stern, is commissioner of the NBA.

DAVID STERN: We were facing a type of bargaining in '83 with football and baseball having recently had strikes or lockouts, and we thought that if we had a strike not that people wouldn't come to our games, but they probably wouldn't even notice.

CHARLES GRANTHAM: Our attendance was down, and we were about to see that four teams were going to go out of business.

MR. SOLMAN: How is it that the NBA turned things around? Well, with business so bad, both sides, labor, i.e. the players, and management, the owners, agreed to put aside their differences and work together in an agreement that you could call a sort of cooperative capitalism. First, since drugs were tarnishing the sport, the Players Association agreed to allow a tough testing policy to help eliminate them. Second, since some teams seemed to be poorly managed and marketed, the owners gave the commissioner a great deal of power and latitude to run the League, making him a super chief executive officer. Third, and probably most important, there was an agreed on limit on team salaries, a salary cap that is. Thus, large market owners, like the New York Knicks, couldn't outbid small market owners for top talent. This controls overbidding, a problem which is now destroying baseball, for example. Fourth, since a salary cap shackles the free market for talent, the Players Association insisted on getting something in return, in this case, revenue sharing with the owners, i.e., getting a guaranteed percentage of the total take.

DAVID STERN: With respect to our players, we have a salary cap in return for a percentage of the gross. This is sort of a realization that we can have our intramural arguments about how to split the pie, but if we work together to grow the pie, we'll do fine.

MR. SOLMAN: Now we wouldn't want to go too much longer without an update of the Knicks-Hornets score. It's the Knicks by 20 in the third quarter. High up in the luxury box is ex-management consultant and Harvard Business School grad Dave Checketts, now president of the Knicks. Does the labor-management deal keep him in line? Let's say there is no salary cap. Would you, Dave Checketts, be able to control yourself in that situation, or would you be liable to overbid for talent?

DAVID CHECKETTS, President, New York Knicks: I would be liable to overbid.

MR. SOLMAN: But you're a guy from -- you're a management consultant, business school, I mean --

DAVID CHECKETTS: There is tremendous pressure to win not only in the NBA but in New York. I mean, you're only as good as your last quarter.

MR. SOLMAN: The NBA's policy of cooperative capitalism kept would-be predators like Dave Checketts in check, but the NBA's success goes beyond the salary cap. The spirit of strong leadership and strong leadership from the commissioner allowed the NBA to focus its energy on exploiting and marketing its product and getting as much revenue as possible from a growing number of sources, ads on towels, for example, ads on scoreboards, commercial sponsorship of every facet of the game.

SPOKESMAN: So the Knicks have been able to exploit them in the transition game.

MR. SOLMAN: But in sports, the biggest revenue source is television. And the NBA has worked hard to make its cooperative capitalism include TV as a partner.

DAVID STERN: With respect to our networks, we're absolutely insistent that we work together after the deals are made to make sure that they profit from it, because if they don't profit, they won't be back, and we will have made a short-term hit but a long- term problem.

SPOKESMAN: The peacock loves this game.

MR. SOLMAN: The NBA, however, seems to be a long-term hit. While baseball, by contrast, is in danger of seeing its national TV revenues go down by 50 percent next year, the NBA just signed a new contract with NBC that will increase revenues by 25 percent, not likely if labor and management were still at odds. And like most smart American industries, the NBA is also looking abroad for future growth. The NBA is becoming a U.S. export to Japan, for example, a country that prospered using the same technique that turned things around for the NBA, cooperative capitalism. But one problem with this sort of capitalism is that it can sometimes work too well, that after years of sacrifice, workers begin to wonder what's in it for them. That's happening now in Japan, for instance, where prosperity has made many people rich, even greedy perhaps, and less willing to work together as part of a team. So too in the NBA, where the cooperative spirit of the past seems to be losing some ground to a free market fantasy where salaries soar as high as the super stars. In fact, the Players Association now opposes the salary cap, claiming it unfairly restricts how many millions its members can make, that this Japanese type approach to capitalism may even been un-American. Why change the salary cap when it seems like that's what prevents the owners from bidding against each other and putting teams into bankruptcy?

CHARLES GRANTHAM: Well, basically, it's kind of un-American.

MR. SOLMAN: But the whole basketball setup was un-American and it worked great.

CHARLES GRANTHAM: Well, it worked great at a time when -- in other words, I've always said that the salary cap was an idea whose time has come and is now gone. I mean, the idea of basic business principles being applicable in basketball, football, and baseball are real. In other words, why should the players, why should the players agree to a technique or a mechanism that will protect the owners against themselves?

MR. SOLMAN: One answer, as we've seen, is that it's in the industry's long-term interest and, therefore, the players' long- term interest as well, and Larry [Charles] Grantham would probably know it. With his union's contract expiring after the playoffs, we figured his rhetoric might be an attempt to get his members a bigger share of the pie. So as the fans focused on the final score, Knicks 114, Hornets 91, we sought out Knicks veteran Doc Rivers, one of the most thoughtful players in the NBA, to see if he thinks the League's industrial policy is un-American.

GLENN "DOC" RIVERS, New York Knicks: It is un-American. It's really un-union. We're a union, the Players Association. It really goes against our principles of the union, but what Charlie Grantham and Larry Flesher at that time saw was to have a union you have to have an NBA, and if there's no NBA, the union won't work, so it worked.

SPOKESMAN: Are you close to being where the team wants to be?

PLAYER: Well, that's a daily process.

MR. SOLMAN: Meanwhile, as his teammates commented on this night's game, Rivers wondered aboutthe longer range implications for corporate America.

GLENN "DOC" RIVERS: It would be great if all corporations can work that way. They probably can't, but then Lee Iacocca couldn't make 23 million a year.

MR. SOLMAN: So he'd have to have a salary cap.

GLENN "DOC" RIVERS: He'd have to have a salary cap and everyone else would also.

MR. SOLMAN: Now in winding up this story, we've got to at least acknowledge a question we'd simply left out. Does the NBA's industrial policy border on collusion and mightn't that be illegal? After all, even the airlines are now having to reimburse customers for past attempts to collude on pricing in their case. It's an issue that lurks behind many efforts of creating industrywide partnerships. And we're not about to resolve it here. Suffice it to say that this partnership has worked wonders for the NBA, and America's other sports, baseball and even football, are now trying to follow suit. And with all the talk these days of the need for cooperation between labor and management throughout American industry, many businesses may have something to learn by pulling a few pages out of the NBA's play book. CONVERSATION

MR. MUDD: Next tonight, a conversation about race in America. The battle over the nomination of Lani Guinier put race relations back in the headlines last week. And a new book by a leading black intellectual argues that an honest dialogue about race is missing from the national scene. The book called Race Matters was written by Cornel West. Charlayne Hunter-Gault spoke with the author recently at the Riverside Church in Manhattan about race and politics and how Americans mix the two. Cornel West is a professor of religion at Princeton University and the director of its Afro-American Studies Department.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: You've said, and I think many people would agree, that Americans have had a hard time having an honest dialogue about race. How do you think that dialogue should begin?

CORNEL WEST: I think you've got to begin with first a recognition that when we talk about race, we're not simply talking about black people as a problem people. We're talking about black people as fellow citizens, some of whom have problems and disadvantages. that means, on the one hand, of course, there's a stress on black responsibility, but at the same time, there is a collective responsibility having to do with the intolerable levels of social misery in this country that we find among the black working poor and very poor, and I would add among the working poor in general, among the poor in general. And so in order to understand what we mean by race, we have to talk about on the one hand, poverty that leads to levels of despair, and on the other hand, we have to talk about paranoia that leads to levels of distrust.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But you say that Americans can't have that conversation because they're trapped in a narrow framework of dominant liberal or conservative views, worn out vocabulary, ideological straight jackets.

PROF. WEST: Yes. The liberal conservative log jam regarding issues of race has been disempowering in the following way, that liberals want to talk about government programs, rightly so, but rarely want to talk about culture, rarely want to talk about the levels of meaninglessness and hopelessness and lovelessness that we see throughout major pockets in black America. Conservatives want to talk about individual responsibility, rightly so, but rarely want to talk about what, in fact, the larger society's responsibility is, in fact, to disadvantaged citizens. And, hence, I'm calling for an attempt to accent the insights of both to go far beyond it. We still have to talk about poverty but not the way liberals do. Liberals do not want to talk seriously about public accountability or corporate power. Liberals want to talk about government programs that complement, supplement, or are compatible with prevailing corporate power. I'm talking about a democratic critique of corporate power that recognizes that corporate elites and bank elites have a disproportionate amount of wealth and power. I'll give you an example. Between 1977 and 1990, the salaries of corporate executives increased 220 percent, this at a time when plants are closing, workers are laid off, payroll, pensions slashed, which means what? Which means they had no accountability. It's not that they're demons. It's not that they're devils, but they have no accountability. And they have a disproportionate amount of wealth and power in our society. They provide moneys for the campaigns that in many ways account for the role of big money in campaigns. They provide money for the lobbyists that help shape the agenda in which we understand, various issues of which we have to come to terms. So most liberals don't want to talk seriously about the role of corporate power.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Why is that?

PROF. WEST: I think because most liberals are radical Democrats. Most liberals actually tend to want to allow for the more oligarchic elements in our society to, to remain unregulated. And conservatives for the most part even want it to be more unregulated. But in addition, I think here conservatives are actually on the right track. To talk about culture, to talk about levels of despair and desperation is not in any way to reduce the issue of culture to economics. We're also talking about the degree to which the shattered families, the shattered neighborhoods no longer provide the kind of buffers requisite for, especially young people to gain the cultural armor to deal with what we know to be the traumas of human existence and death and dread and despair and disappointment. But the problem is the conservatives celebrate the market. And I would argue that, in fact, it's the market, especially the culture industry, that promotes the very hedonism and narcissism that partly account for the shattering of family. You can't have family without trust and commitment and loyalty. But when does one see trust and commitment and loyalty as part of a market-driven culture industry in television, in film, in radio, and so forth?

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: I was intrigued by your stinging critique of black leadership. You talk about liberal conservatives failing on race, but you also say that black leadership has failed.

PROF. WEST: Yes. I argue that we live in a time in which more prophetic leadership is necessary. It must be race transcending. And by race transcending, what I mean is a form of leadership that never forgets about the ugly realities of race but at the same time refuses to be confined to issues of race. Main line black leadership has, in fact, refused to address issues of gender, refused to acknowledge the role that black women have and ought to play at the highest levels of leadership. They have also refused to focus on the situation of the black working poor and very poor. What we have for the most part are forms of black leadership in which benefits for a black middle class are made available, to some degree working class, but hardly ever trickling down. Why? Because they also, like so many liberals, refuse to radically examine the role of the big business community in the shaping of our cities and in the shaping of our larger society.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: But you've spoken of a level of destruction unlike anything you've seen in the black community, especially among young blacks, a kind of nihilism, murky waters of despair and dread flooding through the streets of the black community.

PROF. WEST: We talk about nihilism in the black community and think of especially the young poor people who don't have access to effective bonds and supportive networks. Some people talk about this in terms of role models. I talk about it in terms of access to love, care, and concern. Recent studies tell us that young children growing up in the inner city are now manifesting symptoms similar to those of children who grew up during World War I and World War II, with levels of hypertension, with levels of attention spans unable to be sustained because of the fear of a bullet, fear of attack and so forth. We have never seen this in black America. We've never seen this in America, you see, and you ask social workers about this, and they are overwhelmed by a sense of despair, even given the small victories that these noble men and women of all colors are involved with, so that I think we have to recognize that we're talking about despair and desperation as not solely a political issue. It has something to do with politics. We've got 51 percent of young, black children under six who live in poverty. We've got 42 percent of Spanish-speaking children who live in poverty. We've got 20.4 percent of all children who live in poverty. And we think about this, the richest nation in the history of the world, what kind of nation are we? What kind of priorities do we have? What kind of future are we projecting?

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Speaking of the future, I mean, where is the future? Because what you've just described sounds like a lost generation. Realistically speaking, is there any hope?

PROF. WEST: Well, I would say this is the second generation that has experienced what we're talking about. It's not all of them. There's many very gallant young persons who are out there who are struggling, still achieving, still accomplishing very much against the odds. This is the second generation that we're talking about. We see it in levels of criminal behavior. We see it in the doubling of our prisoners, and most tragically we see it in the quadrupling of suicides among young black children. And that reflects a level of despair that is terrifying, because it means that the absurd is beginning to triumph, and black people have always been a people of hope, have always been a people who could hold the absurd at arm's length even if it took the form of simply singing a song or saying a prayer or giving a smile or asking the way Marvin Gay used to ask what's going on. What's happening? Let's relate. Once we lose that sort of resistance to the absurd, the more and more young people are, then we're talking about not just the unraveling of the black community, we're talking about the unraveling of American democracy because every democracy that we know in human history has been undermined based on two fundamental pillars, too much poverty, too much paranoia. And that's why they talk about racism in America to take us to the very core of the crisis of American democracy.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: How do you get beyond this, and whose responsibility is this?

PROF. WEST: I think part of it has to do with trying to reconstruct the art of public conversation. For so long public conversation in this country has consisted of name calling and finger pointing. You cannot have a democracy in which public- mindedness and public spaces in which citizens exchange arguments, analysis, vision is vital. If there's no public life, let alone public conversation, how can we even talk about mutual respect and accountabilities, two foundations for democracy? So what I'm calling for is a public conversation which as citizens, not just as persons with identities, not just as members of a constituency, but as citizens, we understand the degree to which we're in this together, we go up together, we go down together, and what might, in fact, be at stake is the relative success or the relative failure of this American experiment that we call democracy. Much is at stake here.

MS. HUNTER-GAULT: Are you suggesting that the whole of American society could collapse because it can't come to terms with race?

PROF. WEST: There's no doubt that the issue of race is the basis upon which either American civilization flourishes or American civilization flounders. If we can come to terms with race, we would come to terms with issues of gender and class and economic inequality and homophobia and ecological abuse. Why? Because we're dealing with the underdogs of our society. And every democracy always asks the question: Can we ensure that those who have been viewed as underdogs have equal access, every sphere in our society? If we can't answer that question, then we flounder because, as I said before, the levels of poverty generating the despair, the levels of paranoia generating the distrust will unravel our democratic practices, our democratic procedures, our democratic operations. ESSAY - COSMIC QUESTION

MR. MacNeil: We close tonight with an essay. Science writer Tim Ferris has some thoughts about the future of the super conducting super collider currently being built in Texas.

TIMOTHY FERRIS: The pipe organ was central to the career of Johann Sebastian Bach, the greatest keyboard player of his day and the most accomplished organ composer of all time. It represented a triumph of western high technology. By the 18th century, virtually every cathedral and church of any consequence had one of these magnificent machines. They've always been expensive. Even today, building a major pipe organ can cost well over a million dollars. How did the organ builders and church elders justify spending all that money? It's not as if they were rolling in dough in old Vymar, where Bach wrote his Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. Then, as now, too many people were homeless, out of work, ill nourished, under educated, or in trouble with the law. With so many practical problems confronting their society, why spend millions building music machines? These days, Congress is being asked to decide the fate of another costly, impractical contraption. It's the super conducting super collider, an $8 billion piece of physics hardware designed to replicate events that took place during the first moments of cosmic time. It's meant to help shed light on the intricate interplay of beauty and imperfection that bartered the laws of nature and set the stars blazing in the sky. Scientists will use the super collider to seek answers to fundamental physics questions like whether quarks and leptons, the smallest known particles of matter, are made of still smaller particles. Such knowledge might turn out to have some practical use in decades to come, but no one can guarantee such a payoff, so at present, the project is being pursued for its own sake. For lawmakers trying to decide whether we can afford the super collider, that's justthe problem. It's all but impossible to put a price tag on pure knowledge, or to predict the outcome of cutting edge scientific research that by its very nature is unpredictable. So the people with their fingers on the purse strings tend to look for practical value. The most powerful existing American collider, Fermi Lab in Illinois, was built nearly 20 years ago under the direction of the sculptor and physicist Robert Wilson. It cost $243 million, a lot of money in those days. Wilson was asked in a Senate hearing whether Fermi Lab would contribute to national security. He said, "It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another. It has to do with are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets, I mean, all the things we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country, except to make it worth defending." If you'd asked Bach what a pipe organ was for, he might have replied with words he so often penned across the title page of his compositions, "For the greater glory of God." But today such an answer is out of style, and what seems obvious to an artist like Bach is not necessarily so clear to legislators or to the republic at large. In a time of staggering deficits, high unemployment, persistent poverty, poor education, and a weak economy, can we afford both to pursue pure knowledge and to repair our damaged society? Ultimately, the conclusion resides in how we choose to answer Robert Wilson's question. Who are we? What kind of people do we want to be? They're good questions, but the answers are even less clear today than they were when Johann Sebastian Bach was alive. This is Timothy Ferris. RECAP

MR. MUDD: Again, the major stories of this Wednesday, President Clinton's efforts to change his economic plan to please conservative Democratic Senators brought strong protests from liberal Democrats in the House. And the Clinton administration has decided to comply with a federal court order and allow a group of HIV positive Haitian refugees into the country. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Roger. I'm Robert MacNeil. We'll see you again tomorrow night. Thank you.