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PAGE FOUR
EDITORIAL
Lockheed
By announcing last week that President Nixon
would ask Congress for $250 million in loan
guarantees for Lockheed Aircraft, Treasury Secre-
tary John Connally made it clear that the adminis-
tration is willing to put up taxpayers’ money to
rescue a company that for all intents and purposes
should have gone bankrupt long ago.
Lockheed’s troubles stem from the mismanage-
ment of several of it’s projects, the L-1011 Tristar
and the C-5a cargo plane the most obvious among
them. In 1964 Lockheed submitted to the Air Force
a bid of $1.9 billion for the C-5A contract, a bid that
fell $300 million short of the Air Force’s own
estimate for the project. The contract was
originally awarded to Boeing, which submitted a
higher bid than Lockheed, because the Air Force
believed Lockheed’s design would cause schedule
delays and cost increases. Later the Pentagon
reversed its decision and rewarded the contract to
Lockheed.
By 1966 costs for the C-5A began overrunning the
budget because of the very design problems that
had worried the Air Force to begin with. As these.
overruns increased, the Pentagon merely revised
the budget, and men like Ernest Fitzgerald, who
publically testified to these overruns, were fired
from their posts in the Pentagon or else transfered
(one man was sent to Vietnam).
In 1969 the Pentagon in an attempt to minimize
the overruns, announced it would cut back its order
for C-5A’s from 115 to 81 planes, but Lockheed
objected, and the Air Force agreed to an extended
delivery schedule which added as much as $75
million to the cost. More cost overruns became nec-
essary when the C-5A developed structural fatigue
(cracked wings), a development which was to cost
$28 million to overcome.
In March of last year Daniel Houghton, president
of Lockheed, sent a letter to the Pentagon saying
the C-5A program would have to be terminated if an
additional $500 million was not received. The
Defense Department responded to this threat by
asking for (and receiving from) Congress a $200
million contingency fund to keep the project going.
In the meantime, men like Sen. William Prox-
mire began to see evidence that some of the
payments for the C-5A were being used to fund
Lockheed’s L-1011 Tristar, acommercial airliner.
Rolls Royce, which had the contract to build
engines for the L-1011, declared bankruptcy last
February, leaving Lockheed in financial jeopardy
while the McDonnel’—Douglas Corp. continues to
work on its DC-10, a plane much like the L-1011.
Furthermore, Boeing is taking orders for a com-
mercial cargo plane based on its original plans for
the C-5A, a plane which is expected to cost tax-
payers $60 million for each plane, even though
Lockheed has agreed to take a $200 million loss on
the project.
"It is clear that we, as taxpayers, are being asked
to salvage the L-1011 (for which far less orders
have been received than the comparable DC-10)
and also the C-5A. The fortunes of these two pro-
grams are financially interconnected, and the
Pentagon has shown no hesitation to commit our
treasure to the salvation of these two dubious pro-
jects.
Fiscal irresponsibility on the part of the Defense
Department and its contractors is nothing new. We
are strangely enough, more than willing to commit
millions to shore up mismanaged defense indus-
tries, while bankrupt cities and empty stomachs
are left to their own devices.
Te DALLAS PosT
‘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
Changes
Getting more by spending less—that
wistful refrain, echoed by so many school
board candidates, is bound to pull a lot of
voting levers in this Year of the Sewers. Area
residents, long accustomed to paying for pot
holes and unplowed roads; fined for im-
proving their property; taxed for working and
even for spending their money in the state of
Pennsylvania; are now being charged for the
dubious privilege of having their lawns and
streets torn up. No one can be blamed for
wanting better education, without still more
exorbitant taxes. Especially when it’s
possible.
Unfortunately the road to the realization
of this goal is blocked by a fat, recalcitrant
herd of sacred cows—time-honored miscon-
ceptions about what constitutes a quality
education. Too much time is spent teaching
students the date of Nebuchadnezzer’s death.
Too much effort is expended on enforcing the
lengths of skirts and sideburns.
Too often our schools are run by a smug
clique of congenial buck-passers and
phlegmatic administrators whose minds are
closed as tightly as their office doors, ad-
ministrators whose reaction to the 20th
century is ‘no comment”. So long as the
musty philosophies of these people go unchal-
lenged, the taxpayer will remain trapped in
his current dilemma, footing ever increasing
costs while reaping steadily diminishing
returns. When better education is simplisti-
cally equated with more expensive lab
equipment, newer football uniforms, and vast
quantities of misused audio visual aids, what
else can happen? You can put a TV set inside
a buggy, but it won’t make the horse go any
faster.
Realistically speaking, we have reached
an educational impasse. Our current goals, of
sending the greatest number of students to
college, of providing modern buildings etc.
are being met, about as well as possible. Even
if we wished to press on in the direction we
are now heading, we could not. The taxpayer
just can’t afford it. The time has come then to
redefine our goals; reorder our thinking. In
their headlong rush after physical facilities,
the schools have run into a financial wall.
They have to change their course.
The most important and most difficult
task in this educational renaissance will also
TRB,
from Washington
Washington snaps back quickly. Just last
week this lovely city was in the throes of anti-
war disturbances but now government has
turned again, in the high tide of Spring, to the
serious” business ‘of passing’ out favors to
special groups.
Before leaving the disturbances,
however, let’s give them a word. The long
hairs were right in one respect; they were out
to provoke people and they knew that block-
ing city traffic is the one unforgivable sin. It’s
all right for the suburbs to blockade the city.
They can throw up Berlin walls that block
bussing and the bursting ghetto and the city
tax collector. But that is an invisible block-
ade, not physical. The right of the suburbanite
to drive into the bankrupt city at the town’s
expense, is universally respected. So every-
one denounced the longhairs and their dis-
turbance which fortunately, was handled with
minimum violence by a well-trained police
and Chief Jerry Wilson. (It takes a Mayor
Daley of Chicago or an Ohio Kent State
National Guard to squeeze the real blood out
of a situation like this.)
We cherish two small memories: First,
the four mounted park police standing guard
on the sidewalk before the White House,
across from the equestrian statute of caracol-
ing General Jackson. They were wearing riot
helmets. (The police, not the horses.) The
plexi-glass vizors were extended straight out,
exactly like King Arthur taking a last look at
the joust before setting his lance and snapping
down his lid.
The other incident was that of a friend who
came to town inappropriately with his long-
THE DALLAS POST, MAY 13, 1971
Getting More and Spending Les
be the most subtle. A school’s climate cannot
be discerned from a curriculum guide, an
architectural blueprint, or ‘even a PTA
meeting. And yet there is nothing in education
so important as the creation and maintenance
of an atmosphere conducive to learning.
Schools should not serve as battlegrounds
where students are pitted against
“authorities” and made to run a gauntlet of
petty regulations. Neither should they be
turned into arenas where students are en-
couraged to compete against one another in
pursuit of questionable rewards.
“A first step toward solving the former -
problem: would involve the scrapping of
purposeless ‘Mickey Mouse” rules—dress
codes, one way halls, library passes, silence-
of-the-tomb homerooms and the like. Such a
move would not only help to eliminate the
mutual distrust that students and ad-
ministrators so often seem to function under,
but it would also free professional educators
to do the job they are trained for, rather than
serving as babysitters, jailers and
disciplinarians. Such a move would indicate
the administrations’ respect for students and
teachers alike. Dire predictions of chaos
would prove unfounded since most trouble-
making stems from a testing of rules that are
absurd to begin with.
The latter problem, that of artificially
induced and rewarded competition, can
eventually be softened by an elimination of
grades. Intrinsically meaningless as they are,
(often little more than measures of parrot
memorization), these ink blots can utterly
discourage students whose talents don’t lie
within the narrow confines of gradable
abilities. Even the straight “A” student can
be hurt by grades if he comes to value them
more highly than the acquired knowledge
they may or may not represent.
Students must be encouraged to develop
their own abilities; and if they are judged at
all it should be on this basis. Never should
they be compared with some officially or-
dained stereotype. Schools are not factories,
it isn’t their job to “mold” students into
“responsible citizens” or anything else. It is
their job to offer each student an equal op-
portunity to cultivate his own unique in-
terests. Such ideals are paid too much lip
service and too little real attention.
We can get more by paying less, but only
if we revolutionize our educational concepts.
Modern buildings mean nothing if they’re
filled with antidiluvian philosophies and
teaching methods. Learning, after all, is not a
material, but a mental thing.
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haired Princeton son. College and street
youths are as indistinguishable today as
Chinese peasants, Every cop glared, The,
alarmed parent fmally took his’ son.into’ the!
exclusive Metropolitan Club * (or: anyway,
that’s the story).
Most people think the anti-war affair was
counterproductive. We disagree(but could be
wrong). We are fighting a wicked war, and
the public has so decided. Last week’s Harris
poll showed an extraordinary tide of revul-
sion: Was Laos a “failure”? “Yes”, 45 to 24.
Is it ‘morally wrong” to be fighting in Viet-
nam? ‘‘Yes”, 58 to 29.
That’s the poll. Why don’t we quit?
Because we must help Mr. Nixon find a
tactful way out that will spare him (and us)
embarrassment. To you and me the sacrifice
of a few thousand young men’s lives for that
object is, of course, wholly justified.
Anyway, Washington has got back to
normal again, doling out its goodies. Let us
note a few. Farm subsidies, for example. In a
just published study by economist Charles
Schultze (budget director, 1965-68) he figures
that the total cost of present farm subsidies is
$9 to $10 billion (Brookings; $1, 1971). To give
you an idea of the size, the comparative cost
of all welfare programs — federal, state and
local, including Medicaid—is about the same.
And these farm subsidies, Schultze sadly
concludes, primarily help the big, rich far-
mers; the vastly more numerous small,
struggling farmers, he says, ‘‘are helped
relatively little.” Well, that’s Washington for
you.
Then there is Lockheed. We sympathize
Off the Cuff
by Bruce Hopkins
Okay all you peasants out there, I'm about
to describe what it is like to be living in ex-
citing Fun City, otherwise known as Man-
hattan. You are going to view a typical
evening in the apartment of that famous
comedy team, Leibman & Hopkins (also
known as Bruce and Jay, in that order). The
events related in this article took place
several weeks ago, but they represent most
any evening. They are factual. The names
have not been changed because protection of
the innocent in New York City is im-
possible. The only unique feature of this par-
ticular evening is the fact that Jay, in-
stead of being his usual bubbly self, is sick. He
has not been feeling well for several weeks,
and has suddently noticed that his normally
lily-white complexion has turned a unique
shade of mustard yellow. Therefore, Jay is
spending the evening in bed trying to cope
with the fact that he undoubtedly has hepatit-
is. Meanwhile, Bruce, the more intellectual
member of the team, is in his typically frus-
trated state, and can be seen wandering about
dazedly, muttering ‘‘Shall I give up my
career as a starving actor and return to the
security of teaching, or shall I become a
superstar; or should I write a book?” At this
time, Bruce is undergoing an annual attack of
The Aprils. They hit him once a year, usually
in April, and cause him to reevaluate his past,
present, and future—all at once. When he has
0
the Aprils, Bruce feels as if his brains are
trying to get out of his head. Everything he
says during these spells is to be ignored.
The livingroom of the apartment is clut-
tered ‘with people and things. The people
spend most of their time tripping over things,
particularly the brand new Hoover vacuum
cleaner sitting half-unpacked in the middle of
the floor. As it is spring, the vacuum cleaner
has been purchased to swallow up the piles of
soot that collect in the Fun City apartment.
This is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill dust,
but it is globs of heavy soot. Spring in New
York is like living in a coal mine. Unfortun-
ately, the cleaner has been sitting in the
middle of the floor for three days. It has not
been used what with Jay turning yellow, and
Bruce pondering his destiny. It is impossible
to do your spring cleaning when you are
either jaundiced or frustrated.
he other clutter in the room includes a box
filled with the complete set of costumes from
Man of La Mancha, a 2000 pound portable
(sic) sewing machine, swatches of material,
various pins and needles, and Elizabethan
dresses (Jay, you may recall, is a costume
designer during his healthier moments) ;
there are books, papers, a typewriter and
numerous writing implements piled atop the
desk of Bruce, the sometimes writer; the
coffee table contains numerous unread maga-
deeply with the unfortunate 15,000-30,000
highly skilled workers, let alone the banks
+ that have the company in hoek. The White
House asks” Congress’ for 'a government
‘guaranty of a quarter-billion-dollar loan to
bail Lockheed out. Some congressmen have
asked sums of a similar order for the 5 million
“or more people presently unemployed, but
that would lower their self-respect. It could
reduce the dignity of ‘scrubbing floors or
emptying bedpans.”
Another proposed subsidy is $3 billion tax
relief to industry in the form of depreciation
write-off three or four times faster than now.
Its purpose is to stimulate economic recovery
and who can quarrel with that? When the
Administration first dreamed up the ideas, it
tried it out on a Treasury man, who said it
was unconstitutional; Congress, not the
President, he said, writes tax law. Poor chap;
he was just a deputy assistant secretary; he
changed his mind quickly when he got the
word. Somehow Ed Muskie got hold: of the
confidenttial memo and objected, but Mr.
Nixon said he was opposing a ‘‘program
that’s going to mean more jobs for Ameri-
cans—peacetime jobs rather than wartime
jobs.” Only somebody politically motivated
would do that, he said.
The Washington faucet isn’t just turned
on for corporations; it’s not all that material-
istic. Church-affiliated schools have run into a
crisis; parochial school attendance has
dropped 20 percent in five years. Mr. Nixon
appointed a Commission on School Finance
explaining (April 1970), that “while the panel
deliberates nonpublic schools are closing at
A Good Night in Fun City
zines and the ceramic pitcher filled with
dying Eucalyptus (when Eucalyptus dries out
it gives off a pleasant odor; something which
the apartment was in desperate need of); in
front of the closet are five pieces of luggage
and a disconnected beige push-button
telephone. These belong to Mickey, a friend of
the apartment. H was ordered out of his house
afew weeks back and is storing his luggage at
the Leibman-Hopkins storage center until he
finds his own apartment. The phone belongs
to him also. His father told him to remove
everything from his room. He obeyed.
The human clutter in the apartment in-
cludes the normal diverse group of degenera-
tes. Crazy Barbara, a fashion designer, and
Crazy Chris, a button salesperson, are there.
They live in the apartment next door, and on
clear mornings, Bruce and Chris can be heard
singing duets in their respective showers at
7:34. Also, in the apartment is Tom Greene.
He came to visit because he needed someone
to talk to since he learned today that his psy-
chiatrist just stabbed his nurse with a butcher
knife and then killed himself. Tom really
knows how to pick a psychiatrist. He and
Chris are on their hands and knees on the
floor cutting out a cape for the villain in the
tennis match for which Tom is stage
manager. In order to totally misunderstand
that last statement you must be familiar with
avant-garde theatre in New York City.
the rate of one a day.” Now the panel has
come in with a report and says ‘some
measure of public revenue support for non-
public pubils is urgently.needed.” g¢The cost
isn’t given. Nonpublic schools light? some of
the municipal burden so perhaps they should
get tax money. While we decide whether it’s
constitutional we can admire the or which
has written a report on parochial’ schools
without once using the sensitive word.
Washington is where who-gets-what is
decided. Oddly enough, in one case, Penn
Central, Congress refused to bail it out. Now
Representative Wright Patman is exploring
an interesting sequel; how did David Rocke-
feller’s Chase Manhattan Bank have the pres-
cience to sell its 286,000 Penn Central shares
Just before the bottom fell out? It suddenly
sold around $14 on a market that plunged to
$6.50. By coincidence Penn Central’s chair-
man was a director of Chase. Was there a
hint? Was it legal? Rockefeller says it was
just good judgment; ‘‘Clairvoyance,” says
the astonished Patman, who deman@® more
information, According to Richard" Barber
(THE AMERICAN CORPORATION, $7.95,
Dutton) Chase and the nation’s 49 biggest
banks hold half of the country’s toa; bank
assets, and they have directors on of of the
nation’s 500 biggest corporations. It’s'a cozy
power concentration at the top where the
word gets around, and where the government
is expected to cooperate—saving the Post
Office by making it a private corporation and
saving the railroads by making them a public
corporation (Amtrak), and bolstering free
enterprise with generous subsidies.
od
”
Mickey is also in the room. He is on the tele-
phone saying obscene things to his mother.
Mickey is a real treat to know. He has come to
the apartment because he needed a change of
clothes.
This is what happens as the evening pro-
gresses: Crazy Barbara laughs at whatever
anyone says, and she also relates stories
about the guy she is currently dating. She’d
like to get serious about him, but he’s a homo-
sexual (‘‘Whattaya want from my life?” she
says with a shrug and a snort). Mickey hangs:
up on his mother no less than four times. Each
time he calls her back—collect. Tom watches
Chris cut out his cape, and mutters about this
being the worst day of his life. Jay coughs
- from the bedroom. Bruce mumbles some-
thing about the trouble with getting what you
want from life is that you don’t know until you!
get it whether or not it’s really what you want,
and everyone in the room ignores him. Chris
keeps munching on Good Mother Earth
Carrot cake. Every 15 minutes someone goes.
into the bedroom, wakes Jay, and takes his
temperature. They do this frequently because
Jay’s temperature happens to be the only
“thing in the apartment that is doing anything
interesting. Eventually everyone goes home.
That is what it’s like to spend an exciting
evening in Fun City. It’s a nice place to live,
but I wouldn’t want to visit here.
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