'Don't worry, be happy'

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Sending invitations to the President Bush inaugural festivities must have given a bevy of social secretaries some sleepless nights. Some 450,000 invitations were sent out, but only a short list of the most elite got invitations to all nine events, including a $1500-a-plate dinner. (RSVP with a check please.)

About 400,000 people were sent commemorative invitations, which gave admittance to no events, but could be framed and hung on the wall.

At the inaugural banquet at Union Station, dead animals (in the form of coats and mufflers) outnumbered the people. "I do a lot of this sort of work," confided one of the 28 coat checkers hired for the occasion. "And I've never seen mink like I've seen here.

As Republican merry-makers gorged themselves (they were served a commemorative Early American menu), protestors and homeless people outside Union Station made do with chili, rice, and tortilla chips for supper.

Bush's son, George Jr., staunchly defended his father's multi-million-dollar celebration for the wealthy. But he conceded, "If the people outside want to express their views, that's fine." (Very kind and gentle of him, to be sure!)

Protests by students and faculty of Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y., cancelled a speech by Oliver North, who is facing trial for the Iran-Contra scam. He would have been paid $25,000.

"They felt it was obscene that this man, who would be coming to the campus for a few hours, should be getting more (money) than half the employees here make in a year," said Thomas Miller, of the student-affairs committee.

VOLUERIAR DREES SyND. 1 OND8 DrE BUFFALO NEUr President George Bush has decided to send Dan Quayle on his first major assignment as VP. Quayle-one of the most ardent backers of the contra death squads in Nicaragua—is to travel to El Salvador to tell the generals to clean up their act and curb the death squads.

It wasn't that long ago that Reagan sent Bush on a similar mission. In December 1983, Bush traveled to El Salvador with a list of 25 military officers involved in civilian death squads. "Put these officers on trial or BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DEFICIT? AND THE ENVIRONMENT? WE'RE TEETERING ON THE ABYSS AND YOU SIT THERE LIKE KING FAROUK.

WELL READ MY LIPS BUsTER, tran couL5 HAPPY HONEYM I WAS HOPING FOR A -KINDER, GENTLER NATION U.S. will be cut off," he is alleged told the Salvadoran government.

Of course, nothing ever happened to those 25 officers, and billions of taxpayers' dollars are still being funneled down to the deathsquad regime. As Yogi Berra once said, it's deja-vu all over again.

The California legislature passed 1647 laws in 1988. Not one of them tackled the burning problems of health care, transportation, and high auto-insurance rates.

The legislature, however, came to the aid of on credit-card interest rates. Now the sky is the limit. Usury is in fashion.

U.S. tobacco corporations are doing very well, thank you, despite the health problems caused by their products. They simply export the cigarette habit to teenagers in Asia and Latin America.

The United States forced Taiwan and South Korea to repeal laws banning cigarette advertising. In Taiwan, a year after the U.S. companies entered the market, smoking had risen by 4 percent.

Now the U.S. tobacco giants are establishing sales sales opportunities in the Peoples Republic of China. Think of it—1 billion potential nicotine addicts!

Liu Xigui has stirred a national controversy in China. He is a 33-year-old tycoon who took Deng Xiaoping's "Enrich Yourself' maxim to heart: He made a fortune with his private trucking business. Last month, Liu Xigui asked to join the Communist Party.

Many said "no," there should be no millionaires in the party. Others in the ruling circles were not so sure. After all, they argued, the new economic reforms have given China such institutions as stock markets and a private business sector employing over 26 million people; so why shouldn't there be room in the party for the country's leading entrepreneurs?

As we go to press, the debate is still raging. Stay tuned.

"Mississippi Burning," the movie that applauds the FBI as the savior of helpless Blacks during the civil-rights movement, opened in movie houses across the country on Martin Luther King Day. That was quite appropriate, since J. Edgar Hoover's Fat Boys spared no efforts in their attempts to disrupt Dr. King's life and work.

At San Francisco's Coronet Theater, young people in the audience were quite vocal in stating what they thought of the film. The cops were called, the projector was shut down, and everyone was told to go home.

This is a page where our readers can speak out. We welcome letters. But please keep them short. When necessary, for reasons of space, they will be abridged. -The editors propping up Haitian dictatorships since they began. Democracy and living conditions of the people have never been a concern. U.S. business and political interests see Haiti as fair game for exploitation, a cheap and never-ending source of cheap labor.

Martineau ended his talk by summing up the message of the Haitian people to the U.S. government. "We are saying to the