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Public?
For a long time we have wondered whose in-
terests are paramount with Pennsylvania Public
Utility Commission. Is the PUC for the public—the
first word in their title? Certainly, the ‘public’
should be first in interest as well as title. Or, as far
too many of us believe, is the PUC for the
“utility” —which should come second always?
We think we got a partial answer recently when
one of PUC’s own members called the commission
‘““utility-oriented.”’
Louis J. Carter, the newest member of PUC,
wrote a letter to C. Jackson Grayson Jr., chairman
of the Federal Price Commission, in which Mr.
Carter noted, in part, ‘‘state public utility com-
missions cannot be entrusted with the regulation of
public utilities to avoid inflation. The regulatory
laws which they administer are designed to avoid
for the utilities any injury as a result of inflation,
and therefore by their very nature fuel inflation.”
Mr. Carter has been a frequent dissenter from
PUC decisions. His was the lone ‘voice in the
wilderness’ against the rate increase granted by
PUC in December to Luzerne Electric Division of
UGI Corporation.
This commission member also has gone on
record against other utilities and their services. He
10-cent telephone call from a coin-operated phone
than to make a call from a home phone. He was
quoted as saying it cost 13 cents for a two-party
message subscriber to make a Bell Telephone local
call in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
According to Mr. Carter, he has been supported
in many of his statements against PUC by Philip K.
Kalodner, counsel to the commission. We believe,
as Mr. Carter indicates he does, that public
utilities should be treated like any other
manufacturing company and should not have the
benefit of special rules which effectively allow
them to inflate their prices.
Beyond Busing
Last week we editorialized on the subject of
busing. We stated that we felt the central, although
unstated, issue surrounding the current con-
troversy was racism. We are not in favor of busing
per se, but we feel that busing holds the only
practical means to racial school integration, a goal
we hope this nation has not abandoned.
We do not mean to imply, however, that busing
alone is enough to cure the racial ailments of our
busing is that in many cases children will be forced
to leave a school offering better educational op-
portunities than the school he will be required to
attend. In most cases the discrepancies in the
quality of education between one school and
another is a direct result of the amount of money
available to a school district.
In recent months we have seen the concept of
property tax thrown out as unconstitutional by
various courts throughout the country. In light of
this development we now have the opportunity to
insure more equal funding for school districts with
unequal tax bases.
This issue is far more important to equal
educational opportunity than busing; the latter’s
only one step toward true integration. Where
communities and neighborhoods have failed to
integrate, the federal establishment is now trying
to determine whether busing is a partial step
toward this end while promoting more equal
education. :
Busing has become a political issue for that
reason. Its too bad that school financing has not
also become such an issue.
The controversy over school district financing
will affect more local boards of education than the
busing issue. And therefore, the-real challenge in
both episodes lies in whether school trustees will
use their more controlled financial powers to not
only seek federal help in the manner of busing to
promote equal educational opportunity, no matter
whether busing is needed to accomplish this or not.
‘By Eric Mayer
Snow, sifting out of a pale sky, seemed to
materialize between the buildings that
frowned at each other from their shadows on
either side of the street. Big, windblown
flakes of snow scudded across the sidewalk
before coming to rest, swirled above the
traffic, at times appeared to be leaping up
from the pavement rather than falling.
When Steve stepped down from the bus
the wind caught at his hair. For a moment he
paused, studying his surroundings, as if he
were lost and deciding on some random
direction, though, up until six months ago, he
had lived here. Now he was in his first year of
college. He was only home for the weekend,
and only because his parents expected it of
him.
He had excelled in high school. Everyone
had expected him to apply to the Ivy League,
or some large western university, but he had
chosen to attend a small school several hours
away from home. At first his visits had been
frequent but now they were a nuisance which
he avoided.
The bus moved ponderously away,
exhaust steam writhing about its mud-
spattered flanks. Steve thought with a pang of
regret followed quickly by guilt, ‘“The next
bus doesn’t leave until Sunday evening.”’ He
crossed the street, hunched slightly to let the
cold pass over his head. The beginnings of a
headache knotted above his eyes.
The town was unfamiliar, the streets too
narrow. The buildings, mean brick structure
sporting facades of wood or plaster, scowled
at him before lapsing back into the stupor he
had roused them from. Had he left this place
only last September? It might have been
years ago.
He passed by the shopping center which
laundromat. He walked up the hill where,
when snowstorms closed both roads and
schools, he had gone sledding. Sometimes,
Suppose you are board chairman of a
lively little multi-million dollar company,
earning profits, doing fine, with stock quoted
at a gratifying $34—up from $15 just a few
years ago. Then along comes ITT, the giant
conglomerate, and says, “We want you; we
will buy your stock for $50 a share and double
your salary; better come quietly because we
are going to take you anyway!”
Preposterous? That’s what ITT did to
Avis drive-it-yourself (We Try Harder). It
paid 50 percent more for Avis stock than the
stock sold for on Wall Street and after a little
dickering popped Avis into its bag. It has done
this to lots of companies in 50 countries.
In this world of conglomerates the old
rules don’t hold. When Mr. Nixon gets to
Moscow he may find ITT ahead of him. Or
perhaps he will act as its traveling front man
to expand trade with Russia. Don’t laugh.
This is an era you never heard of before,
where super-giants deal with global leaders,
are as powerful as kingdoms, where one of
them has entangled attorney general-
designate Richard Kleindienst in its folds as a
king of laughable side show. Did it or did it not
promise to foot the bill for the GOP
Presidential convention at San Diego to the
tune of $400,000? So what? An item like that
for ITT is like sending a bottle of liquor to
your friend at Yuletide; just a nice amenity.
It would do the same for Democrats if they
controlled the Justice Department and would
settle anti-trust suits out of court.
-To grasp ITT’s size approach the thing by
degrees. Back at the turn of the century it was
a small company engaged in cables and
communications. Then came the merger. ITT
during those past winters, his father and
mother had taken him tobogganing in the
country or skating. He hadn’t liked the
skating. It made his feet too cold. The
tobogganning was better. He remembered
how his father, usually red faced with the
cold, had always managed to steer them to a
long ride and had never seemed to tire from
pulling the big toboggan back up the hill,
Steve imagined he was somewhat of a
disappointment to his parents now, having
given up political science and vague notions
of law school for philosophy. When he was
very small his mother had often referred to
him, affectionately, as “our little lawyer’’.
Laten on she took pleasure in her friends
knowing that Steve was ‘‘going into law, of
course.”” When he told her about his change in
plans, during his last visit, she kept repeating
the only invocation to common sense she
could think of, “But is there a future in it,
J
Stephen? Is there any future in it?’ How
much better everything would have been had
he only chosen a familiar, legitimate career;
some career with ‘good money’’ to be made.
He turned the corner where the theatre
stood. Shorn of its marquee, its entrance
boarded over with plywood, it looked more
like the warehouse it had become. The theatre
had been gone for years but today, for some
reason, he felt in a dim and fleeting manner
the same sense of loss he’d felt at its first
closing.
The snow was sticking to the sidewalks
now, though Steve’s footprints still revealed
dark cement. The houses on this part of the
street - sleek modern houses - regarded each
other with approval. The sight of his own
home (he’d never noticed how like the others
it was) left him without feeling. As he went up
the walk he saw Mrs. Hatcher's house wink a
shade at him, glimpsed the old neighbor’s
head in the window, then he was hesitating in
front of his door, wondering whether he
should ring the bell. But his mother answered,
as if she too had been watching.
“Imagine, having to walk all that way in
this weather,” she said. “You, must be
frozen.” w=
No, he was fine. And school? Yes, that
was fine too. She was anxious to show him his
old room. It had been turned into the
guestroom his parents had always dreamed
of but could never quite afford. Violets and
foliage plants flourished on the window sills.
“A new hobby” his mother explained,
“since we had all this extra space I thought
I'd do something with it.”
Light filtering in through the snow that
fell heavily, melting in runnels where it hit
the window pane, fell around his mother’s
face. It was like the island of lamplight they
had both sat in long ago, when she read to him
from Beatrix Potter.
Stephen was left alone then, while his
mother worried over her special dizer. How
strange it was to feel out of place Hour own
room. How unexpected.
When his father came home they all sat:
down at the dining room table, just as they
always had. Steve was obliged to answer the
usual questions about school and about his
health. His parents talked about relatives,
talked about the weather. The conversation
ran slower and slower like a mountain stream
that empties out onto a broad plain. His father
was smiling. His mother was urging him to
take seconds. Suddenly it seemed funny to
Steve. Were they really that blind? Couldn’t
they see that things were no longergfge same.
Once, back when it seemed thar nothing
would ever change, they had discussed im-
portant matters together. And now-was it
suddenly or did it only seem it?—they had
nothing to say. :
branched out, not buying other com-
munications companies but wildly in-
congruous things. It shortly was the largest
bread producer, the largest homebuilder, the
largest hotel chain, the second-largest car-
rental firm in the country with dozens of other
firms, and its merger with the Hartford Fire
Insurance Company was the biggest in
history.
How did it pay? Simple enough. It let
companies it acquired pay for themselves. It
got a loan from some bank and serviced it
from the profits of the companies it bought.
Hartford, for example, has a billion-dollar
cash flow. Merger-hungry ITTis ravenous for
cash.
Very well, take breath! ITT was merely
doing what other conglomerates were doing.
The statistics are available; the difficulty is
to get people to believe them. In manufac-
turing the top 200 US firms held ‘“‘only” 49
percent of all the nation’s total assets in 1950.
By 1967 this was up to 59 percent, and by now
it might well be two-thirds. The big com-
panies are not all conglomerates. Five of the
top corporations in the [Of
are oil companies. They are aided by
amusingly light Federal taxation. This light
taxation is defended by congressmen from oil
states who never have any trouble getting
campaign funds. (The 23 largest oil com-
panies pay Federal taxes at a rate of only
about 8 percent contrasted to around 40
percent for most corporations. You might
remember that and rejoice with them as you
make out your own income tax!)
Now comes the next stage. The rise of
corporate giantism isn’t confined to the
United States; it’s going on with great
strength abroad. Most of these companies are
international. Where it will end, God knows.
One economist has plotted a curve and figures
that just 300 international giants will
dominate the economics of all the principal
non-Communist countries of the world by
1985. Maybe that exaggerates; maybe the
year will be 1990, or even 2000. Or maybe it
won’t happen at all. The question is what
governments will do about international
companies that are almost taking over the
functions of governments.
Take Mr. Nixon and Russia for example.
Mr. Nixon wants to expand trade. Last
November Commerce Secretary Maurice
Stans made his much publicized trip to
Moscow in the interest of US trade; now he
has resigned to become the GOP’s top money-
raiser for the campaign. Hardly a month
after the Stans visit, ITT opened its own trade
explorations with Russia, reportedly with
Administration encouragement. It was about
to send a follow-up team to Moscow ahead of
Mr. Nixon when the Kleindienst affair rudely
interrupted.
Washington hasn’t been so absorbed in
anything since the Sherman Adams affair.
The governmental problem is the almost
unbelievable size of these giants, ITT with
$6.7 billion of assets, for example. It used its
own size shrewdly in its successful argument
to hold Hartford, charging that its divorce by
an anti-trust suit would cost its stockholders a
billion and might cause a Wall Street panic.
Kleindienst, to whom Mitchell delegated the
affair, first told senators he had no part in
negotiations leading to an out-of-court set-
tlement. Now it appears that he directed
them.
Former attorney general Ramsey Clark
was appalled when he came to turn the
Justice Department over to Mitchell, a Wall
Street bond attorney who managed Mr.
Nixon’s campaign, and Kleindienst, who
managed the Goldwater campaign. They
seemed quite ignorant of the workings of the
Department and insensitive to its dey role.
They politicized the department. indienst
was at the center of the litigation over the
Pentagon Papers, he ratified Haynesworth
and Carswell, and he broke the heart of black
leaders by halting civil rights programs;
2
As for ITT, it regards politicig@,, as in-
vestment opportunities. In 1960 a group of ITT
executives made contributions to both parties
in an effort “To ‘butter’ both sides so we’ll be
in a good position whoever wins’ according to
former vice president J. T. Naylor, in a sworn
affidavit. Naylor quoted ITT president
Geneen as saying the system is ‘paying off
big in Washington.”
The company is probably no worse than
other great conglomerates. Rep. Celler’s
House Anti-trust Subcommittee investigated
them in 1969-70. Object, to find whether they
are more efficient than medium-sized
companies. Answer, no. They should be,
perhaps. Their advertising is vaster, their
unit costs smaller, their proce-fixing power
stronger, their ability to transcend laws of
supply and demand, and even government
controls, unequalled. But the prices they
charge the public remain about the same. The
Kleindienst show is fun but the deeper
question is whether politicians can control
these monsters. WN)
by Carl T. Davies
It was a sad day for people still concerned
with truth and rationality.
Imagine the most hideous nightmare that
leaves you restless and disoriented for en-
dless days and nights.
I was sitting in my living room watching
television, half listening (ironically) to
Beethoven's Eroica Symphony and half
absorbing Walter Cronkite’s latest and lowest
figures on American dead in the Vietnam non-
war. Non-police action? Non-protective-
reactionary operation?
It’s of no consequence. Language, too,
has died an ignoble death. Not unlike those
“few” brave boys who died last week. Who
just died.
Oh, yes, the nightmare.
Walter had just about finished his nightly
rendering (in the fullest sense of the word) of
the earth's news—as seen through the
cataracted eye of CBS—news edited for
television.
It must have been a key word in Walter’s
enumeration of the body count. He spoke so
methodically of dead bodies as if they were
mere tallies in a football game. President
Nixon’s ‘‘game plan,” no doubt.
“ONLY.” Now I remember. The key
word was ONLY. “ONLY three Americans
dead.”
ONLY had triggered an eruption in my
smoldering unconscious. I fell fast asleep and
began falling and falling and falling into a
bottomless, swirling vortex.
In a split second which seemed like an
eternity, I found myself again in front of a
television set.
But this time things were different.
Radically different.
“And now a word from our sponsor,
Baboon’s Farm Banana Brine,” drawled the
husky, deep voice of the commentator.
It was a commercial. A very weird com-
mercial. Two thousand inebriated apes were
jumping and gyrating on a glistening beach
were all swizzling a yellowish liquid from
wine bottles labeled ‘‘Baboon’s Farm Banana
Brine.” All of a sudden a very attractive
looking chimp wearing a polka-dot bikini
leaped into the arms of a big, brutish life-
guard who just happened to be a gorilla and
shouted: “What a way to live!”
The scene abruptly switched back to the
news commentator who was no longer Walter
Cronkite, the human announcer of my
awakened existence. His name was Hairy
Unreasonable, the simian truth-teller in the
murky underworld of my dreams.
“And now, fellow anthropoids, we shall
close tonight’s broadcast with our daily
reading from The Quotations of Chairman No-
Nok, our illustrious leader whose hallowed
words have been sanctified by the great Ape-
God, Agnus.”
And then Hairy Unreasonable began a
throughly undisguised mass hypnotic ritual.
“Today’s subject will be: “Forgetting the
Police Action Initiated by the Great An-
thropoid Alliance Against the Northern
Yellow-Striped Lemurs.”
I could not believe my inner ears.
will believe everything I tell you.”
obviously.
Anthropoid World, I want you to forget.”
existed.”
buildup of troops. It never happened.”
familiar.
“Forget the Gulf of Tonkin resolution,”
he droned on, more forcefully, more like a
@
tragic lullaby. “It never existed.”
The mesmeric lull of his voice was
beginning to lure my thoughts.
“Forget My Lai. Forget the bombing of
the north. They never happened.”
I was on the verge of believing him.
“Forget the peace talks. Forget . . .
Summoning all of the forces of my
willpower and reason, I shouted into the
cavernous darkness of that nightmare world,
“No! No! I will not forget!’’ And I woke up...
At the precise moment that Walter
Cronkite announced: “The United States
Military Command in Saigon has stated that
no further news reports shall be issued
concerning protective-reactionary air strikes
in North Vietnam.” (A
And that’s the way it is. b.
Editor emeritus: Mrs. T.M.B. Hicks
Editor: Doris R. Mallin
News editor: Shawn Murphy
Advertising: Carolyn Gass