LOSERS: Taxpaying mortgage holders. Looking for ways to raise cash, Congress is mounting a campaign to limit the tax deduction that homeowners can take on their mortgage interest payments. Such deductions amounted to $51 billion this past year. The tax break has been in existence since 1913 and allows interest deductions on loans up to $1 million. Some proposals would limit that to loans of $250,000. Others, involving flat tax plans, would eliminate all deductions entirely. When it comes to home mortgage interest, everybody is interested.
LOSERS: Defense Department employees. Under President Clinton's "reinventing government" plan, the federal payroll is supposed to shrink by some 272,000 jobs by 1999. But so far, most of the job losses have been among civilian workers in the Defense Department. Only nine-tenths of 1 percent of the reduction has been among bureaucrats in domestic agencies. Critics say what is happening is a restructuring of the Defense Department rather than a downsizing of government across the board.* WINNERS: U.S. citizens who lost property in Iran. During the 1979 Iranian revolution, more than 3,000 American individuals and corporations suffered some property loss as did the U.S. government. It was a point of diplomatic contention for years. But Iran finally paid $105 million to Washington to settle all claims. The last of the checks will be in the mail in a few weeks. U.S.-Iran relations are now on an easier footing.
LOSER: The environment. For the past four decades, the seas off San Diego have been gradually warming. More than 220 scientific cruises in those years show the gradual disappearance of fish and birds in a 50,000-square-mile region. This watery desert is the result of disruption of a critical link in the oceanic food chain. The top 600 feet of water has grown warmer, killing off the tiny zooplankton that are the primary food for hundreds of fish and bird species. Nobody knows the cause of the warming, whether the man-caused greenhouse effect or a natural change.
* WINNERS: Black African rhinos. The rhinoceroses have become an endangered species because of poachers seeking the rhino horns for sale as a magical powder for everything from fever to impotence. In 1992, the government of Zimbabwe captured and sawed off the horns of all the rhinos to make them unappealing to poachers. It worked. The rhinos can still resist natural enemies and the lack of horns hasn't hurt the birth patterns. So the rare black rhino population is rising once more.
LOSER: Upsala College. This private, four-year college in New Jersey has decided to declare bankruptcy and close after 102 years. The studentbody is predominantly minority. Only 435 students are enrolled, down from 1,500 last year. The school, founded by Lutheran immigrants from Sweden in 1893, has $12.5 million in debts and not enough money to make payments on a loan from New Jersey's Essex County or even cover necessary insurance premiums.
LOSER: A petty California thief. Under California's "three strikes" law, Jerry DeWayne Williams, 27, was sentenced to 25 years to life after his latest offense and must serve at least 20 years before being eligible for parole. His crime? He stole a slice of pepperoni pizza from a group of children at a public pier. That must have been a pizza with really everything on it.