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∂CSL Mr. Mike Royko↓%2Chicago Sun-Times%1↓Chicago, Illinois∞

Dear Mr. Royko:

	After you saw through Teddy Kennedy, I didn't think you would be
taken in by Jerry Brown.

	Since it has become difficult to expand government programs
by increasing taxes, the some people's
thoughts have turned to redirecting
the pension plans.  I don't know how you feel about your pension plan,
but I am a college professor and my own retirement fund
is the Teacher's Insurance and Annuity Association.  I
recently read in the papers that it is the largest stockholder in
Exxon, owning one percent of the company.  This fact leaves me
with some hope that when I retire in another 13 years, I will actually
get a pension.

	Jerry Brown's statement:
%2"It is time to redirect the vast pension funds of this nation to
more socially responsible objectives. There are $650 billion in
deferred wages, earned by the working men and women of this country.
This is the single most significant source of investment capital for
the decade of the '80s."%1 fills me with terror.  Stewart Brand,
the %2Whole Earth Catalog%1 dilettante, visited my laboratory once,
and I have read some of his proposals, and I think he has a great
talent for wasting other people's money.  While, I am an enthusiast
for space exploration, I thought Brown's California
space program proposed to spend money without any clear objective.

	Please leave my retirement money with the management of
Exxon, etc., and don't help Governor Moonbeam redirect it.

	As for the rest of the speech, it assumes that the United
States is responsible for poverty the world over and could cure
it, if only Americans weren't so selfish.  The United States can't
cure poverty in the world any more than it can police the world.
Blaming the United States for poverty is the out for politicians
the world over who can't bring themselves to encourage productive
investment.  Where this has been done, as in say Singapore and
Taiwan, people are climbing out of poverty.  Brown's speech plays
into the hands of politicians in non-developing countries, who
want an external scapegoat for their own failures and irresponsibility.

.sgn