PAGE FOUR
EDITORIAL | [TRB en
‘gas country’
It is important to the citizens of Northeastern
Pennsylvania that Luzerne County Dist. Atty.
Blythe H. Evans Jr. has launched a criminal negli-
gence case against Rulison Evans, whose sprawl-
ing corporation, Pennsylvania Gas & Water Co. is
the largest business concern headquartered in the
region.
Mr. Evans (of PG&W) has operated his utility
through the years with an air that this region is his
kingdom in which he can do no wrong, despite an
abundance of evidence that the utility has been
administered contrary to the public interest with
flagrent disregard for safety precautions.
In this one case, at least, it appears that Mr.
Evans’ ‘‘robber-baron’’ philosophy will not work.
A utility sponsors a necessity for its com-
munity. It operates under the sphere of a
monopoly, and is trusted to protect the public.
Corporate irresponsibility in this case becomes far
more important a social concern than syndicated
crime. Such white-collar criminal operators must
be stopped if the public interest is to be protected
from the monopolistic tendencies of the $61 million
corporation, whose first responsibility appears to
be only to show a good return for stockholders.
In the six months following a natural gas ex-
plosion that ripped through a nursing home in :
Harding, similar gas blasts in PG&W'’s territory
destroyed three businesses, killed four people,
- maimed eight (including a child), left ten people
homeless and without possessions, and caused
property damage in excess of $300,000. As we have
said before, this seems a high price to pay for the
lack of public concern on the part of Mr. Evans and
his gas and water company.
Even with such flagrent abuses it appears that
state regulatory agencies are not going to
insist that the utility clean up its operations despite
the fact that cost cutting on the part of the company
promotes shoddy installation of pipeline, poor
training for employes, shortages of repair equip-
ment, delayed repairs, and inadequate safety pre-
cautions.
{The utility, after all, is a public resource which
‘must be administered by those who hold concern
for the public trust. When this breaks down it’s
about time the district attorney acts.
for the record
“Sewers? What do you mean we're getting
sewers? I never heard anything about it.”’ The kind
old gent was quite sincere in his protestations—he
truly hadn’t known the Back Mountain area was
getting sewers until the mammoth power shovel
began chomping away at the pavement of his street
one day last week.
We’ve been amazed to find that our perplexed
friend is only one of many to discover the existence
of our community’s sewer project in such a
dramatic way. R. Spencer Martin, chairman of the
Dallas Area Municipal Authority, says his tele-
phone hasn’t had a chance to cool off since the
construction began two weeks ago, what with in-
dignant residents calling to demand why they
hadn’t been informed of the undertaking.
So once more—just for the record—we repeat:
Sewers will be ready for use in many parts of
Dallas Township, Kingston Township, and Dallas
Borough by summer of 1972. Costs to property
owners will include an $8 per front foot assessment,
$150 connecting fee, and $118 annual rental charge.
Additionally, the installation of sewer pipe from
home to street will also be the responsibility of the
property owner.
And while we're at it, perhaps we should point out
that few major changes in any community can be
accomplished without some inconvenience to the
community’s residents. While the sewer pipes are
being laid we're going to have to put up with muddy
streets, re-routed traffic, and torn-up thorough-
fares—there’s just no other way for the contractors
to do the job. As the cartoonist used to say, we’ll
just have to grin and bear it.
Tie DALLAS 20ST
An independent newspaper published every Thursday morning by the Greenstreet
News Co. from 41 Lehman Ave., Dallas, Pa. 18612.
Entered as second class matter at the post office at Dallas, Pa., under the Act of March
3, 1869. Subscription within county, $5 a year. Out-of-county subscriptions, $5.50 a year.
Call 675-5211 for subscriptions.
The officers of the Greenstreet News Co. are William Scranton 3rd, president and
managing editor; J.R. Freeman, vice president and general manager; Doris Mallin,
secretary-treasurer.
Editor emeritus: Mrs. T.M.B. Hicks
Editor: Doris R. Mallin
News editor: Shawn Murphy
Advertising: Carolyn Gass
Who will forget the celebrated ‘‘home-by-
Christmas’ broadcast of President Nixon
over the great victory in Laos? Word of an
important announcement built up immense
anticipation but was delayed till the start of
the monsoon rains. There was an upward
jiggle in Mr. Nixon’s poll ratings which had
previously been faltering as Louis Harris
recorded that 46 percent felt troop withdraw-
als were too slow and George Gallup reported
a Nixon rating of 51 percent, the lowest to
date, and that only 19 percent thought Laos
would shorten the war.
It was the first presidential broadcast in
which sound effects were used, as part of the
steady experimentation by the White House
with new ways to reach the American public.
Observers expected encouraging news but
had little idea of what was to come. The
Pentagon disclosed the capture of immense
quantities of arms and ammunition and al-
though American reporters were barred at
first from the war zone the Army displayed
dramatically pictures of smashed tanks,
three-foot sections of gasoline pipe taken
from the Ho Chi Minh trail, freshly laundered
uniforms from COSVN, and quantities of rice
boiled and ready for consumption.
As Mr. Nixon’s face flashed on the screen
it was seen that he was gravely cheerful. He
began with a terse review. The war, he noted,
was not his, but inherited; his one goal had
been peace with honor. The easy and popular
course would have been immediate with-
drawal but he had rejected it because it would
have destroyed American credibility. What
other small nation, he demanded, would have
trusted US protection if we had abandoned the
The Right
To Write
To THE POST:
I often think about life and the heartache
that comes with the new born babe and what
its small body must learn to bear as it grows
to adulthood because of the unjust greed of
people. Why must every generation be the
slaves of the past, or are we all looking for the
answers in what Sir Thomas Moore in his
Utopia thought was the most perfect system
of laws for life?
I wonder why we cannot find the answers.
Why do we keep on running? Are we afraid to
face our own guilt for the conditions of the
world? There must be an answer somewhere.
We refuse to understand that in order to
survive we must all have the same rights
regardless of color, creed; orirace, and then
and only then will we find the answer.
Maybe we can all change the night of
darkness into the glory of a beautiful sunny
day for all with Hope, Love, and Charity.
C.R. JONES
Trucksville
changes
by Eric Mayer
Once upon a time the Ku Klux Klan was
big in Dallas. Not big enough to stage lyn-
chings, but big enough to burn crosses in front
of College Misericordia. Seems that the
Klansmen, good citizens that they were,
abhored the idea of ‘the Catholics” erecting a
college right in the middle of the town’s un-
sullied Protestantism. Today such erstwhile
ideals seem repulsive. Everyone knows that
only bigots and fools malign fellow citizens
for their religious preferences.
Today good citizens malign people for
more logical reasons, like hair length. And,
being less boorish than their narrow-minded
ancestors, they often resort to a kind of
“middle class bigotry” a gentile bigotry, a
choreographed dance of raised eyebrows,
upturned noses and curled lips, that is fast
becoming a folk dance of sorts. We've all
heard the litany of insults that accompany
these circuses of disdain (the kind of . common
knowledge slurs that were levelled at the
Irish, Polish, etc. . . . ho-hum) so there’s no
need to dwell on them. It’s sufficient to say
that to a certain ignorant minority anyone
with hair to the bottom of their earlobes who
isn’t a girl is a hippie, and Bob Hope, Spiro
Agnew and other purveyors of self-serving
misconceptions have supplied the sophisti-
cated bigots of this land with as much un-
savory ‘‘knowledge’’ about hippies as they’ll
BY J.R. Freeman
footnotes
‘“We need to get down to some grassroots
democracy,” a local school board candidate
remarked the other day as he attempted to
extol his personal ways and means of spend-
ing less money in the school district.
His counterpart is running for the sole
purpose of removing sex education from the
classroom.
Both men seem hell bent on getting elect-
ed to public office, not on the positions they
take on important issues, such as how to
better educate our kids, but on how their
personalities justify their election to office.
As often as not individuals such as these, once
seated in office, are overwhelmed with the
burden of work and decisions to the extent
that they are ineffective at improving any
quality of life. They remain in their position
because of the prestige the job carries, or be-
cause that particular office may be used as a
THE DALLAS POS1, MARCH 25, 1971
pealing
Vietnamese as they suffered a million civilian
casualties? To have bowed to threats abroad
and critics at home (who, of course, had a
perfect right to their opinions) would have
ended America’s record of never having lost a
war, an all-time winning streak, as he smil-
ingly observed.
The president paused. Casualties, he
noted, had been cut to half what they were be-
fore Cambodia—at least American casual-
ties. Cambodia, he said, encountered a drum-
fire of television criticism, night after night,
just as had this new success. Now at Easter,
Mr. Nixon said reverently, the country might
recall the 50,000 lives which it had invested in
the search for a just and lasting peace. It was
time, he said, to bring the holocaust to an end.
He had therefore ordered the use of small,
tactical, nuclear weapons which were already
being employed. These were clean bombs, he
emphasized, with little if any radiation
danger outside the immediate vicinity and
practically no long-range ecological pollution.
There might be critics, he said. But he
was confident that it was a humane act since
it meant a quick, surgical termination of an
eight-year nightmare. Rejoice, he said, that
the step would accelerate US troop with-
drawal and cut down American casualties
(give or take a negligible loss by accidents in
the delivery system). Hereafter American
names like Jones, O’Leary and Pucinski
would not figure in the battle deaths.
‘I'he president continued. It was pre-
posterous for a nation with advanced tech-
nology to fight with one hand tied behind its
back. When men explored the sea, communi-
an eloquent Te Deum
cated by satellite and walked on the moon,
what folly it was to forego modern imple-
ments of war. Think of the result: The accel-
erated return of the GI's would make, he
hoped, a modest present for wives, sweet-
hearts and parents. Surely by Christmas, he
said, the agonizing struggle would belong to
history. As Mr. Nixon paused many people
believed they heard the faint notes of Han-
del’s oratorio behind him, which, indeed, had
been arranged experimentally to accentuate
the mood of the moment.
Like a lawyer, the president anticipated
objections: Americans were primarily inter-
ested in de-escalation and this, he said, was
the ultimate ‘‘Vietnamization’’. The step
eliminated an otherwise unacceptable threat
to our reduced forces. Also, he said, the
enemy had obdurately rejected peace pro-
posals like that of Oct. 7, for mutual with-
drawal, prisoner exchange and a Thieu-Ky
regime left free from the armed aggression of
foreigners invading its soil.
It was a virtuoso display. Instead of sev-
eral war zones, he explained, it would all be
simplified to one. He reviewed privileged
sanctuaries, free-fire zones, incursion, inter-
diction and body-count; strategic hamlets,
pacification and protective reaction. No
longer, he said, would it be necessary to
punish enemy missile sites for “locking on” to
our unarmed reconnaissance planes by
having the planes annihilate them. Morale
was never higher in South Vietnam which,
with US bombers, helicopters, artillery, mis-
siles, war material, back-up forces and plan-
ning, had won the present victory.
Mr. Nixon approached the end of his half
hour. Critics, he said (and they were perfectly
entitled to their opinions), would argue that
nuclear weapons would kill civilians, but they
forget how it would shorten the war. The new
weapon, he said, pointing to a chart, was. a
small model already devastating enemy
territory, with a yield of 50 tons TNT-equiv-
“alent which, at 1000 feet, cleared the ground in
all directions for a third of a mile from ground
zero. These small, clean, tactical devices, or
LYDTW (low yield discriminate tactical
weapons) would kill people by blast and heat
effects from 1000 feet but would mercifully
not cause serious damage to urban strue-
tures. This meant that survivors would find
their beloved abodes safe, yes, even though
they were merely palm fringed huts in a
jungle.
The president’s eloquence at the end
recalled his celebrated peroration of Novem-
ber, 1969, the ‘‘great silent majority’ ad-
dress. There would be opposition, he knew
(and they were entitled to express their views
in a free country). But not to have taken this
logical step would have made America a piti-
ful helpless giant; lost the confidence ( our
allies and—far more dangerous—‘‘we would
have lost confidence in ourselves as we saw
the consequences of failure; inevitable
remorse and divisive recrimination would
scar our spirit as a people.” By contrast he
offered America the lift of a driving dream.
As Mr. Nixon finished the organ pealed an
eloquent Te Deum which was generally
acknowledged to have been one of the finest
effects ever put on television.
CF lS EERE AE SINATE
1971 THEDENVER 7O8T———
mina
__
"YOU'RE RIGHT! PERHAPS IF WE
TOOK IT THROUGH CANADA INSTEAD...
~ as
Te yy Ri
bigotry by any other name
ever need. Many of today’s hippie haters are
nigger haters who’ve come to the bitter
realization that nigger hating isn’t chic
anymore.
Since bigotry is no longer fashionable in
its more ugly manifestations, it rarely bub-
bles to the surface of local affairs. To those
who are not innurred to its odor, the resulting
stench is pretty strong.
Consider the case of the Wilkes-Barre
Police Department vs. the Youth of Wyoming
Valley. It is a case that starkly illuminates
the alleged repression that young people
complain about and parents shrug their
shoulders over—a case clearly proving that
the kids have a point.
Last year the police, acting under orders
from the city council, began to enforce no
loitering laws in Public Square. These laws,
as no one even bothered to deny, were aimed
at dispersing the groups of long haired youth
who tended to gather in “Public” Square to sit
in the grass and talk, having no other place to
go, thanks to the lack of concern the city
fathers display for their sons and daughters.
The effect of this law was to protect the
sensibilities of Wilkes-Barre bigots by
depriving the young people of a decent
gathering place. :
Now, still attempting to uphold the wide-
reaching, and arbitrary ‘rights’ of the
ignorant, the police department has decided,
in effect, to take the law into its own
unqualified hands. At least that’s how I in-
terpret it when the police chief asserts that
he’s been trying to close down a city dance
hall and apologizes that the axe job hasn’t
been successful so far since the afore-
mentioned dance hall isn’t violating any laws.
According to Chief Ruddick, the place is
frequented by troublemakers. He fails to
explain though why he hasn’t tried to cancel
athletic events, which are the scene of so
many fights, or bars from whose portals issue
so many dangerously inebriated drivers. In
point of fact, the trouble makers who plague
the Crab Apple aren’t the loathsome ‘hip-
pies” but rather the typical short haired
hoods (some of whom, alas, have let their hair
grow) that Wilkes-Barre has always had its
fair share of. The majority of patrons, natur-
ally, detests this element as much as the
police.
Troublemakers though, aren’t the real
reason the city wishes to clamp down on the
dance establishment. As an editorial in the
Sunday Independent makes clear, bigotry,
pure and simple, has been the motivating
factor in this typically repressive situation.
Ranting subjectively on, the editorial
complains of how Wilkes-Barre’s grimy, run
down square is being marred by the presence
of “. . . an unbelievable collection of un:
washed types,” and ‘‘unkempt slobs.” Not
surprising epithets, coming from the gpe-
writer of a man who has flatly stated thaglong
hair results in lice. (I hyperbolize not.)
Such ravings and babblings seem to me a
gross warpage of journalistic responsibility
on the part of the Independent’s edigrial
staff. Bigotry is bigotry is bigotry, printed
under an editorial banner or not. A newspaper
which feels it necessary to appeal to the
basest instincts of its most hate filled readers
is in bad shape indeed. And it is only con-
tributing to the stagnant atmosphere that is
driving an increasing number of the area’s
most gifted and most needed young people to
more mature climes.
This is what area youngsters are often up
against. A government that passes arbitrary
laws against them, law enforcers who wish to
enact ever more prejudicial laws, and a press
that encourages the sordid goings on in
adolescent tones.
This area, especially the city that $e
as its hub, will not progress far with this type
of thinking. There will have to be changes. In
the meantime, bigotry by any other name
smells the same.
local politics ignore the issues
stepping stone toward a political career.
These individuals tend to ignore the fact
that if democracy suffered at a state or fed-
eral level as much as it does on the “‘grass-
roots” level, our whole system would prob-
ably crumble.
They tend to ignore important issues
while expecting their constituents to favor
them on personality alone. Their campaigns
are built around these personality traits
rather than issues, or worse yet, around the
egos of inexperienced political hopefuls.
School board candidates may run on no
more than a flimsy excuse to eliminate sex
education in the schools, or how to hold the
line on spending the taxpayers’ dollars.
Seldom does the candidate come along whose
only concern is improving our children’s
educational opportunity, no matter what the"
cost.
Almost as seldom do we find a candidate
for borough council or township supervisor
who advocates reform, from reorganization
of the police department, to improving traffic
congestion or pollution abatement programs.
Most often it’s the case that any long-range
planning carried out by prior administrations
is tossed aside with a more conservative atti-
tude glorified for the future.
After election, the successful candidates
often tend to ignore the press, thus their
public, hoping that any decision or position
that they take will raise as few ripples as
possible; heaven forbid any tidal waves.
Party politics doesn’t fail to wield a heavy
hand on the local level, tending to make poli-
ticians out of people who are charged with
setting policy for education, the courts, and
law enforcement.
As often as not a minority can control,
particularly when it comes to endeavors of
community service, such as library improve-
ment, roadway proficiency, police protection,
and sanitary facilities.
It’s just as often that a well qualified
candidate is found unacceptable because he is
a newcomer to a community, or because he
fails to toe the line of party wishes. x
Gone are the days when a candidate runs
because of the respect he carries in the
community, the leadership he gives to a
thankless job, and the progressive planks of
his platform.
This is not to say that we should return to
the ‘‘good old days’ because our system has
always contained certain flaws. But it would
be well to return to the day when candidates
ran for office because of their leadership abil-
ity and their progressive ideas and ideals.
rw
crs
L;
P
Th
Boar
$1.25
for th
regul
mont
the
$2,80(
chaki
a “b
scho
comn
On
Lash
inves
tifica
matu
ec
er
Ar
tiona
aime
cabj
wasy
com
tion
Walt
presi
CW
ticul
need
federe
Glogo
prop
man;
educ:
separ
vod
Nix;
bette
scho
Wha
vide
educ:
mem
healt]
meet
the
Luzer
i The
of ta
begir
' The
spons
Hos!
Nort}
(HHI
the a
area
Lack:
Wyor
Rol
exect
task
const
healt!
ppt
47