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ITORIAL
From Experience
We knew a teacher once, a proud and brilliant
: man with an acrid sense of humor, who repeatedly
insisted to his students that ‘““man does not learn by
experience.” That inability to learn, he would con-
tinue with a slow, easy smile, is man’s tragic flaw.
Another teacher, equally brilliant but perhaps
more humble, would conclude his course with the
question, ‘“Does man learn from the lessons of
history? And the sadness in his eyes told us that he
knew the answer.
Given to reflection as we are at the close of the
old year, we cannot help but consider the problems
of the past and wonder if the future will be better.
President Nixon said Sunday, in accepting a
national award, that we must ‘‘seize the moment”
in an effort to achieve a ‘‘structure of peace such as
we could not dream of after World War II.”” Our
country, Mr. Nixon said, ‘‘is on the brink of exer-
cising its power to do good in the world, such good
as never has been done in the history of civilization,
because we now can muster our moral force, our
economic force, and we, of course, have the
military power to back up our words.”
The time wasn’t ‘‘right,”’ the President main-
tained, to seek that just and lasting peace of which
we have heard so much, during the Eisenhower or
Kennedy administrations. Now, however, the world
has changed, and we can look to a ‘‘safer world and
a better world.” ‘I believe in a world in which the
United States is powerful,” our President said.
And where have we heard the words, ‘‘balance of
power’ before? “We must remember the only time
in the history of the world that we have had any
extended periods of peace is when there has been
balance of power,” Mr. Nixon reminded us Sunday.
“It is when one nation becomes infinitely more
powerful in relation to the potential competitor that
the danger of war arises.”
“I believe in a world in which the United States is
powerful...balance of power...the military power to
back up our words...seize the moment in our re-
lationships with the superpowers.’’
Idealistically inclined, we would not have thought
that one time were more ripe than another to seek
world peace. We did retain, once, a thread of hope
that the ancient eye-for-an-eye and might-makes-
right philosophy that is the cornerstone of power
politics might fall by the wayside in the enlightened
seventies. Denying the maxim, we wanted to
believe that ultimately man might learn by ex-
perience, from the lessons of history:
Atleast one of us, it appears, has not.
Milking Consumers
The capricious and arbitrary action of the
Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board in main-
taining exorbitant and inflationary consumer milk
prices far out-weighs any beneifts the board might
have to offer either consumers or dairy farmers. In
the Wilkes-Barre—Scranton area alone, because of
the milk board’s illegal action, consumers have had
to pay more than a million dollars needlessly
because of a 1970 price increase, according to
experts.
Of the 40 states which enacted legislation
creating state controlled milk prices in the
depression years, fewer than 10 still retain such
commissions. No state which has ever abolished
milk control prices has ever re-adopted them.
Pennsylvania, as a large milk producing state,
is viewed by large dealers as the last bastion of
state-regulated controls. Once Pennsylvania
decides to abolish milk price control, the other
remaining few states with controls are expected to
do likewise.
The inequities promulgated by the arbitrary
milk board are not only robbing the pocketbooks of
the consumer, but creating other injustices as well.
According to recent publicity, the inefficient
operations of the milk board cost Wayne County
Farmers $250,000 because of a sloppy bonding
procedure involving a milk dealer.
Ignoring the wishes of the governor for more
public interest decisions, ignoring Commonwealth
Court orders as to accounting procedures, and
ignoring the right of the consumer to go to the
marketplace to obtain a fair and reasonable price
for milk, the Pennsylvania Milk Marketing Board
has in essence decreed that it will uphold only the
interest of the big milk dealer, while granting a
license for the inefficient operator to gouge the
consumer.
Changes
By Eric Mayer
By the 26th, Christmas expectations have
been shredded and discarded like the bright,
insubstantial paper that wrapped the battery
operated tanks and plastic air guns. Goodwill,
brotherhood, and the rest of the seasonal
rhetoric has been swept up with the ribbons
and excelsior. Vacation sentiments, like silly
party hats, are cast aside in the embarrassed
sobriety of New Year’s dawn. An outside ob-
server might find Christmas a perplexing and
disappointing holiday. . .
Far out in space, at the very bottoms of the
deep chasms between galaxies, where time
runs in a thick, black sludge, dwell beings
who could be gods, if they were so inclined.
But as it is, and was, and, indeed as it will be
long after the last Christmas has sputtered
out along with celebrants, these secretive
beings are content merely to wait and watch;
dabbing from time to time in philosophical
matters. Even to them the wild expansion of
galaxies is but half of a cosmic heartbeat in
the life of some still greater entity.
Now one of these elusive creatures-a young
one just setting out on his own-made himself
at home in one of the ultra-dimensional con-
vulutions of the universe; a place where
numerous gravitational fields converge to
form a roomy fold in Dr. Einstien’s space-
time continuum. The nameless being dusted
the nebulas off his hypothetical floor, picked a
few star clusters to decorate his theoretical
walls, and dozed off for slightly less than
forever.
His fresh star clusters had burnt them-
selves to dim cinders by the time he awoke.
He yawned, sending immense ripples out into
the fabric of space, profoundly influencing the
intellectual thought of several nearby
planets.
Searching for entertainment during break-
fast, he chanced to look in on an insignificant
little planet that was featuring something
called the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.
Interesting.’ he thought. "Maybe if I hurry I
can get there before its over.”
So, sliding down slippery lines of electro-
magnetic energy, leap frogging several
galaxies and taking a relativistic turn just
this side of Andromeda, he arrived in the
vicinity of the solar system - just in time for
the finale of World War II.
For a moment (years by our measure) he
considered plucking the whole offensive globe
out of its orbit, hiking with it to the End of
Time, and dropping it right off the edge of the
universe into Oblivion. But that was a pretty
TRE
Washingion
There's a wonderful, wonderful idea that
has been on the back burner of the Treasury
department for several years now—an in-
direct, invisible, self-policing new tax that
can be turned on and off like a faucet and that
raises almost uncounted billions. To a
revenue man the idea is like catnip to a cat.
It’s all the rage in Europe, and Britain will
automatically adopt it when she joins the
Common Market, all of whose members now
have it. Over there it's called the ‘Value
Added” tax bul to you or me it’s just a
national sales tax. There’s only one thing the
matter with it. It’s unfair and falls most
heavily on the poor.
Yea, it's regressive. It will widen the gap
between high incomes and low incomes. Well,
so what?—say the Treasury people de-
fensively. The beauty about poor people is
that there’s so many of them—think of the
consumer taxes they will pay! It may have
faults, they add. but it’s a bad idea whose
time has come. !
France adopted the first tax because many
Frenchmen had a congenital reluctance to
pay income taxes; France invented a tax that
outsmarted delinquents. When the Common
Market started, leaders thought taxes of all
members should be unified; other countries—
Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy—if they
didn’t have the tax already, adopted it. It is
self-policing because it applies to the ‘value
added” at cach higher stage of production, so
that the buyer of steel rods, for example, is
going to be good and sure that he has evidence
that the fabricators below paid their tax all
the way up from the iron mine, before he
turns the rods into mouse traps or whatever.
Guest Edit
From: The Argus-Champion
Newport, N.H.
The sign ‘“‘Under New Management’
always seemed intended to imply promises.
Somehow new management, like the new
broom that sweeps clean, was supposed to
wipe away all old faults and bring in new
efficient service.
~All that whoop-de-do in the Post Offices a
while back was a sort of latter-day ‘‘Under
new management’ sign.
To grasp its profound significance,
however, we need to go back to the ancient
Greeks and to a fascinating girl named
Pandora.
She was a sort of Eve, the first woman.
She was created by Hephaestus and was
endowed with all the graces. She was
presented to Epimetheus. But that is not all
that was presented. There was also a box in
which Prometheus had confined all the evils
that could trouble mankind.
As long as the lid was kept closed,
mankind would be all right. But the gods
anticipated correctly. They figured that
Pandora’s curiosity could get the better of
her, and it did. She opened the box and the
evils escaped.
That could be what we've done with the
mails.
THE DALLAS POST, DEC. 28, 1971
long walk, and besides, he was getting too old
to be playing ‘“‘wrathful gods and sinners.”
Maybe he’d just sneak‘down for a closer look,
disguised as a wisp of moonlight or a glimmer
of fog.
“So it was that he arrived at the tatterred tail
end of an impossible marriage. (I, Christmas,
take this cconomie system. | .)
Obviously here was a barbaric holiday
stuck together with Scotch tape, credit cards,
and an errant prayer or two.
Landing invisibly in the midst of a busy
city, the visitor peered curiously into the
teeming minds that surrounded him. He saw
gorgeous platitudes, opening gaudy petals to
the holiday warmth. But they seemed to be
poorly rooted in barren, frosty earth and it
became apparent that these glorious plants
flourished only for a few short December
days each year.
Looking deeper, he learned more; learned
of the customs of this world. Perplexed, and
suddenly playful, he filled the city sky with a
choir of angels.
The crowd hurried on, unconcerned,
sparing only an occasional upward glance.
“Amazing what they can do with lights now-a-
days,” commented one shopper. “I’ve seen
better,” sniffed her companion. A father was
explaining the principals of holographs, 3-D
pictures, to his young son, who was scanning
adjacent buildings, ‘hoping to see the
projectors.
The visitor grunted with disgust and the
angels vanished. Riffling through passing
minds he found a swirling confusion of
mangers with chimneys, jolly fat men and
wise men, all bearing gifts, sheep and rein-
deer. It didn’t make sense. ;
Already, he could feel the platitudes wilt-
ing, shrivelling, blackening in the harsh air of
reality. Forgetting himself, he made a
million, tiny, simultaneous adjustments. The
platitudes bloomed again. Dying sparks of
Christmas spirit flickered back to life. And it
was nearly the first of January! Unheard of!
‘JUST IGNORE ME—I'M NOT RUNNING!
A Greenstreet News Co. Publication
And A Happy New Year
Inevitably, this excess goodwill seeped
down into the dark, grinding gears of destruc-
tion that churn eternal beneath the facade of
society. And for a split second, hindered by
the sticky Christmas cheer, the gears stop-
ped. :
Oops, thought the visitor, retreating up the
nearest moonbeam. Such meddling was
frowned upon.
A shudder ran through the earth then. In
Washington a man in a neat gray suit paused
in his work. shivered, glanced around in
sudden terror. At that instant, in all the
capitals of the world and in all the corporate
board rooms of the world, the same thing was
happening: important men feeling a sudden
icy blast at their here-to-fore protected backs.
Then the gears worked themselves loose and
that was that.
Back in his problematic home the nameless
meddler slept, dreaming about the world he’d
visited. When he finally woke up he thought to
look in on the place again. But it was gone.
——
70 ey
On the Back Burner
What seem te be two irresistible forces are
now coming together in America to produce a
third. 1) The decay of the nation’s social
structure has reached a point where more
money must be spent or the whole house will
come tumbling sown. 2) To do what has to be
done more money is imperative; this is
evident everywhere; we have been on an
amazing binge of tax cutting to get the
cconomy turned round and Mr. Nixon re-
clected; we face a huge budget deficit that
has to be met sooner or later; we are going to
hear a big ery from hawks for more defense
spending because the Russians are doing
something or other better than we are; and
the revolution of higher expectations is going
full steam ahead. So we come to 3) (or at least
it looks like that)—a national sales tax.
Here's the evidence. President Nixon has
said that “we may very well move” toward
the value added tax ‘‘as a substitutuon for
some of our taxes.” A year ago the Treasury
set up a group to study it. Yale economist
Henry C. Wallich, the senior consultant to the
Treasury and a conservative, writing last
April in Fortune noted ‘reports out of
Washington’ that the Administration ** has in
mind proposing a VAT (Value Added Tax) as
a means of reducing a variety of other
taxes’; the courts are now throwing out the
property tax (which from the 18th Century
has been the basis for financing public
education) because it gives affluent suburbs
good schools and sooty ghettoes poor schools;
and just this month Mr. Nixon told senior.
citizens here again, “We need a complete
overhaul of our property tax, of our whole
system. of financing public education’ and
added! that “specific: proposals’ are under
consideration. Oh yes; and the other day
Commerce Secretary Stans repeated that
more than a year ago he recommended VAT,
and hasn't changed. Organized business is
solidly behind it. It sees a way out of the
corporate income tax.
There's another argument, too. As it works
in Europe, nations are exempt from
paying the value added tax on the goods
which they export which means that such
goods get a kind of export subsidy: a French
perfume leaves France at a cheaper price
than it would be wholesale at home. American
exporters look on enviously.
A tax like this can be almost invisible. Who
can disentangle all those cumulative values—
added in the price of a pair of stockings? To
the consumer it’s like a cloud; all it does is to
send up the cost of living. When Holland
adopted it under Common Market the cost of
living jumped 8.1 percent. That was the rake-
off of the state.
The thought of the revenue makes the
Treasury's eyes bug; Professor Wallich es-
timates the yield at “some $5 billion per
pereentage point.” Oh, boy, it's a gusher!
Imagine the emotions of a Treasury official
who saw repeal of the 10 percent surcharge
lose him $10 billion; the so-called 1969 tax re-
form and relief act take another $10 billion,
and now repeal of excise taxes on autos, re-
instatement of the investment tax credit
loophole. and other gimmicks cost maybe
another $10 billion!
Yes. it's fine, but we think it’s immoral.
This is why.
io)
The gap between rich and poor in America
hasn't been getting smaller. It did for a while
but not recently. The distribution of incongg in
the United States has remained practi¢dlly
unchanged in the last 20 years, says a study
by HEW. The lower classes haven't been able
to hold their own in the private economy and
city. state. Federal and private welfare
payments have had to go up to prevent a
gradual crosion of their income. This is
primarily because ‘progressive’ taxes(that
put a bigger bite on the affluent) have grad-
ually vielded to ‘regressive’ taxes (that put
a bigger bite on the poor). Chief regressive
taxes are state and local sales taxes plus the
huge ungraduated Federal tax on workers to
support social security. Until these trends are
corrected, says Joseph A. Pechman of
Brookings Instution. “the tax system i
continue to disgrace the most affluent natior
in the world.”
The value added tax, if adopted, would be
the grand-daddy of all regressive taxes
though doubtless it would exempt things igh}
food. of which poor people cat so much. Mr.
Nixon would have a good name for it,
Education Tax’ maybe or ‘Generation of
Peace Tax.” or the “New Revolution Spirit of
76 Tax.’ America needs money, but who will
the politicians tap? Standard Oil with its
depletion allowance, Senator Eastland with
his subsidy for not growing cotton, Senator
Russell Long who wants to make welfare
mothers work and collect tax-exempt in-
come? These, or the politically inarticulate
blue collar workers, the low income groups.
the poor? You guess.
Under New Management
Ever since Ben Franklin started it, the
Post Office Dept. was intended to be a service
institution. In recent decades, however, as we
become obsessed with profit-making, the Post
Office, we heard over and over again, was
operating at a loss, and as every red-blooded
American knows, that’s bad. !
So now we have invented a new thing
called the U. S. Postal Service, and it’s
supposed to operate at a profit. It would be
rather pleasant if it also managed to deliver
the mail on time, but its main purpose is to
operate at a profit. That’s so that none of our
tax money will be needed to make up the
difference between what it costs and what it
takes in.
Right there is where Congress has
become a whole band of Pandoras.
Suppose Congress applies that standard
to the rest of government.
Suppose it decides that every department
will have to take in at least as much as it
costs. That way we could eliminate taxes
entirely. ’
Take the Defense Dept. for starters. Its
current budget is in the neighborhood of 60
billion dollars, give or take a few billion,
nearly all of which is a loss.
Take the Dept. of Agriculture. It operates
at an enormous loss.
Maybe the Treasury Dept. could be
operated at a profit. After all, if you control
the Bureau of Printing and Engraving and the
Mint. . .
The Internal Revenue Dept. could
probably stand pretty much unscathed. Yet if
we succeed in applying to all government
>
services the philosophy we have now applied
to the Post Office—that each department
ought to be financially self-supporting —we
wouldn’t even need the IRS, and the grief of
most of us might be controllable.
The Pandoras in Congress might find
themselves in a most vulnerable spot,
however, if the people catch this pay your-
own-way fever, we might find Congressmen
delivering the mail.
Editor emeritus: Mrs. T.M.B. Hicks
Editor: Doris R. Mallin
News editor: Shawn Murphy
Advertising: Carolyn Gass
4
Tie SDALLASC0ST
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, news; William W. Davis, vice president and general manager ; Doris Mallin, secretary-treasurer. :
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