itera ind er pees =e Page 4 There are two services Back Mountain com- munities are furnished that are non pareil. These are fire protection and ambulance services. When residents consider that both of these services are GIVEN by volunteer members, they must realize just how excellent and important these services really are. : But, fire companies and ambulance associa- tions can exist only if residents of their areas make donations to keep them going. The members accept no remuneration, but they do have to have money for equipment, machinery and other necessities. It is noted that several organizations have held their annual fund drives, and have been disap- pointed in the inadequate funds received. They will be hard-pressed this year due to insufficient money to keep operating at their peak. Property owners, who sometimes take fire protection for granted, should re-evaluate this service in their own community and then make a donation accordingly. An owner never knows when fire protection or fire fighting service might be a vital one for his own property. Also, those of you who have had occasion to use an ambulance—have you made a contribution to your ambulance unit? Again, this is an emergency service that might have to be used by any one of us at any time. If you have to have an ambulance convey you to a hospital, you will not hesitate to call your community ambulance unit—regardless of the hour. And the volunteer crew members will not hesitate to attend you—regardless of the hour. We urge all Back Mountain residents to support these two service organizations—not only with money, but in other ways. For your fire company, give a donation and observe safety rules in preventing and containing fires. (Firemen would especially like residents to be extra careful when give a donation and do not be guilty of trying to use the unit as a taxi service. “Human beings and natural environments cannot be manipulated with such pointless brutality by people secure in the ultimate meaning of their own lives. Anyone who has worked among American Indochina war professionals—addicts of money, heroin, violence, sex, alcohol, and racism—must eventually be impressed with the nihilism at the core of the enterprise.” John Lewallen And so, once again, Vietnam has captured the headlines. An issue so gracefully pronounced dead by election-year pundits returns to remind us that the collective consciousness of a nation cannot so easily suppress its own bad dreams. That ‘light at the end of the tunnel,” a vision first glimpsed during the Johnson years, turns out to be the reflection of our own delusions, or worse yet, a lie. Is there an end to the tunnel? Is there an ab- solute place where we say ‘‘Stop. This is the end”’? Or do we perservere, replacing men with machines and touching up old lies to fit new situations? What is it about a corrupt government that requires our support at the expense of its own people, their land and their way of life? What are the rewards of ecocide, genocide, and prisoners of war? South Vietnam is not the same country it was in that nation. We have overthrown governments, set villagers suspected of enemy sympathies, we have created thousands of refugees whose way of life we sacrificed to napalm, nerve gas, and the M-16. We have exported democracy, free enterprise, and military power, the results of which are corruption, inflation, government and all it stands for relates no more to the realities of South Vietnam than rice paddies do to Wall Street, but we persist. We persist because South Vietnam is the product of our own political manipulations, the result of the belief in the ‘ultimate superiority of the American ethic and power as a means of its exportation. In the final analysis, what is at stake in Vietnam is the image of ourselves, an image whose ugliness we are prepared to repress for the sake of psychic comfort. Whether or not Vietnam is currently a political issue depends upon how far we are willing to go to delude ourselves and how much we are willing to destroy to ‘save’ ourselves. Changes By Eric Mayer Ashton made $50,000 a year; not bad for a department store clerk, but not good by 21st century standards. Prices were as high as the great, government built ‘‘apart- mentropolises’’ where most Americans lived. Protein cost $50 for a 25 tablet bottle. (one tablet, three times a day) Syntha-steak, in the color of your choice; was $17.50 a pound and real steak was strictly illegal ever since the last cows were hauled away to zoos. All government apartments, in com- pliance with the National Living Standards Act of 2037, were equipped with Tri-D walls, Octaphonic stereo, wall to wall carpeting made of artificial llama fur and other, similar necessities, all of which lucky ‘Americans paid for on easy installment plans to the Uncle Sam Acceptance Corporation (It was dangerous to lag in payments because that suggested that you didn’t accept Uncle Sam.) “Times are rough,’ said Ashton, with all the insight of his 35 years. Sometimes he thought about leaving Paradise, moving out to Shangri-la, which was somewhat less ex- pensive. His wife, Janice wouldn't hear of it. “The trouble is,” she’d say, face reddening under her stylish blue hair, “you never got your PHD. That’s why we can’t afford Paradise.” Other times, because she really did care for Ashton and because the Father-Computer had matched them so they had to be com- patible, she said, “I just don’t know about you Ashton . . . They must have dropped your test tube sometime.” Ashton certainly didn’t look like the result of a bungled experiment, even though he sometimes thought like one. Along with his wife and every other American in 2095, he was as healthy and perfect a specimen as genetics could produce. The “Phase Four Population Control Program’ where-by the only legally living creatures came out of secretly located laboratories, had been intended, originally, More bombing equals more inflation. That formula has been true ever since Lyndon Johnson mistakenly assured the nation that we didn’t need controls in the huge. The formula also spells the biggest crisis for President Nixon since he took office. The Communist attack from North Vietnam in- dicates that his policy of Vietnamization is faltering. And Continuing inflation at home indicates that Phase II is faltering. So he is months before election. He may find a way out but it will take agility. Vietnamization was supposed to mean that our client state could go it alone. As Senate majority leader Mike Mansfield said last week, “We have trained, equipped, paid for and subsidized them for 17 years, and they have an army of one million troops; we have done enough.” Or as Mr. Nixon said, March 4, 1971, ¢. . . the South Vietnamese by them- selves can hack it, and they can give a better account of themselves even than the North Vietnamese units. This means that our with- drawl program, our Vietnamization program is'a success...» Well, maybe. As this is written our government is speeding aircraft carriers and rushing up big bombers. But Senator Man- sfield calls Vietnam ‘‘an American tragedy.” The enemy now controls ‘“‘one-half of Laos; two-thirds of Cambodia,” he says, and he suspects it is stronger in South Vietnam than admitted. The point, though, for a good many citizens paying their income tax bills is that war costs money. You can pay for it in direct as a last resort against overpopulation. But the business interests soon saw in the program a dream come true. The manufacture of consumers in any desired number. Obviously consumers are of value only if they consume sufficiently to fuel the fires of capitalism. So the government drew up laws pertaining to ‘‘minimum consumption standards’. Unfortunately the system was not perfect, as Ashton knew only too well. On the last Friday of each month the red white and blue Automatic-Postman that sat in the middle of the living room. rang for Ashton’s attention and proceeded to disgorge a pile of bills unto the luxurious, fake llama fur rug. Ashton hid the bills, with trembling hands, in a metal box that he kept in the top drawer of his desk. The box seemed to empty only with reluctance, a few bills being paid off with each week’s pay check. The steadily mounting unpaid bills, though locked away in their dark box, cast a shadow across the path of his future. Janice wrote to her sister, “I am so worried about Ashton. He isn’t looking well. He has lost weight and taken to smoking too much which, they say, will shrivel your brain. He hasn’t got his promotion yet and I'm afraid the rent is going to be overdo.” To Ashton she said, “What will I do if the Repossessors come?’”’ Which was a rather blunt and cruel thing to say. As if things weren't bad enough the Automatic-Postman started delivering overdo notices, with a special clamor, at 3 a.m. One day a sinister, black edged letter arrived, saying. Dear Citizen, Maybe you forgot! Due to the hectic pace of modern living, we sometimes are remiss in paying our bills. It can happen to be the best of us, occasionally. Maybe we misplaced our taxes or in inflation, which is an indirect tax. The whole great rise of America’s present inflation came from Vietnam. Before, it the nation had the longest period of uninterrupted prosperity in its history, and most of it with rather remarkable price stability. Then came Vietnam. We watched the thing here in Washington; we remember the easy assurances from President Johnson ‘over worried economic advisers that no particular war taxes were needed, certainly no controls. And taxes weren't voted till too late. We have had four years of economic turbulence at a cost of 25 percent idle plant capacity, 5 million unemployed and 5 to 6 percent inflation. Yes, and all those thousands of young, dead Americans. The link-up now with Mr. Nixon's economic Phase II is quite simple: the new Vietnam cost, if we extend operations, comes just when Phase II threatens to bog down; it’s touch-and go. Otto Eckstein of Harvard is no amateur; he was a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and now runs Data Resources, Inc. This is the way he puts it: when the rise of consumer prices exceeds 2% percent for two years the public gets “sensitized’’ to the inflation factor. That’s the critical period. Everybody adjusts to the prospect of rising prices, particularly wage- earners. Their claims start to rise in a wage- price spiral that is ‘“‘explosive.” That’s what happened in 1969-70 until Mr. Nixon suddenly, sensibly switched to direct action and imposed a three-month freeze. Then came Phase II. But it hasn’t been tough enough or successful enough to persuade workers that they shouldn’t take wage steps for their own protection. Over the last three months consumer prices are up 1.2 percent; over the last six months, 1.6 percent; over a year, 3.7 percent; two years, 8.7 percent. ‘A worker would have to a fool to believe that the inflation in the prices that his family pays are over,” says Eckstein bluntly. So long as prices go up, the rate of wage increases will exceed the supposed guidelines. You can squeeze the balloon here but it will bulge there. It’s not good for the country. It produces an extraordinary savings rate as unhappy families try to meet the situation by cutting back expenditures; it reflects itself sooner or later in rising interest rates, which is happening now. So what to do? Eckstein and a lot of others think that Phase II must be revamped; it can’t be allowed to fail; it must be toughened. Wrong? Possibly. But it is doubtful if the aloof and insecure man in the White House will let things go on much longer the way they're going. The new jump in food prices endangers the whole program. What a dilemma for a President before election. Rising farm prices mean votes in the farm states, but rising consumption costs mean lost votes in the cities. All that and Vietnam, too. The Administration has come through with a lot of explanations, middle- men costs, transportation, and the like. They sound a bit hysterical. “The Administration has decided to keep farmers immune from the stabilization program and to focus only on the retail stage,” observes Eckstein quietly. “This procedure,” he adds, “is void of economic validity.” Why are farm prices high? Simple enough; because Congress and the President bills. Maybe we left them, inadvertantly in our desk drawer. So we are sending you this friendly reminder . . . When the news leaked out, as it always did, one way or another, the neighbors started whispering. ‘“ ... overdue notices . . | €%o straight weeks now. Woke me up last M2nday.” ‘Can he pay? How long do you think . . . I mean before . . . ”’ “And if they . . . You have to feel sorry for his wife. Poor woman.” Ashton visited the manager of the depart- ment store where ~ he worked. “Congratulations,” he was told. ‘Only a month til your promotion comes through.” But that was too late. Ashton’s Notification was not as friendly as his reminder. It went: NOTIFICATION OF REPOSSESSION Item Overdue Rent $1000 Car \ 525 Tri-D wn} 200 Llama Rug iI $150 Misc. 935 Total 2810 Dear Sir—As a sub PHG, Classification DSC275 (clerk), IQ 109, Tested Potential Index 72nd percentile, you have been assessed at $2500. I am sorry to inform you that you have exceeded your assessment by 310 dollars and will be repossessed. When they came for him Ashton went quietly. Janice recovered after a time and wrote, “Dear Sis, Is it true they send the people they repossess to work irgghe Martian tin mines? By the way, I'm gettiff@ married to a fellow I met just last month. Of course we had to send in and wait for Father- Computer’s blessing. Walter is vice president of something or other and is assessed at $5000. From now on I'll be writing you from Nir- vana.”’ keep them high. Economists call something a “market economy” where the market— buyers and sellers—decide prices and how much is produced by supply and demand. The US doesn’t have a market economy in agriculture. Executive and legislative decisions determine how much is grown, what the support prices will be, whajlbutside farm goods and in what quantities are‘permitted to enter the country, and what income farmers will get. Agriculture is striking out fo high meat prices (without any ifs, ands; ‘or Butz) economists are telling Mr. Nixon that it won’t work; that you can’t expect workers to follow a wage stabilization program while farm prices are allowed, nay encouraged, to rise. With prices rising, it’s “unreasonable” to expect labor to accept a 5.5 percent pay target. Just at a time when the new gic of A long way from Vietnam? Maybe. But these matters are coming together on a collision course. Will we expand the in- flationary cost of war? “It won’t cost much, we can do it cheaply.” That’s what they told Lyndon in 1965. There are moral issues in- volved too, but some congressmen are more immediately aware of the pockbook nerve which is beginning to jump. We would expect a new price-wage freeze before long, if Mr. Nixon wants to get reelected. This would include farm goods. We would guess the President might ask the biggest industrial companies to freeze all price actions for three to six months. And if he is wise,he will let South Vietnam alone. The milk als is spilt. by Carl Davies ‘Harrisburg will never be the same,” I overheard an attractive middle-aged woman sporting a ‘Stop the War Now Button’’ on her lapel remark as we walked with thousands who descended upon the scene of the trial of the “Harrisburg Seven’ on April Fools Day to protest the folly of Vietnam and injustice in a “Demonstration Against War and Repression.” Shiny green and white State Police helicopters zoomed above our heads like steel hawks, while a black man bore a huge, heavy wooden cross amid a motley throng of anti- war veterans, women’s liberationists, black power advocates, welfare rights mothers, civil rights activists, white liberals, non- activists, dispassionate observers, and parade lovers. Symbolizing the diversity of political and social movements that are now coalescing to call for an immediate end to the war and the repressive ‘‘political’’ trials of activists like the Rev. Philip Berrigan and Angela Davis were the notables who marched arm-in-arm at the forefront of the orderly processional as itinched its way slowly and, for the most part, solemnly across the State Street bridge to the rallying point behind the Capitol building. Linking arms with Philip's younger brother, the Rev. Daniel Berrigan, was Daniel Ellsberg, the government researcher charged with revealing government secrets in the Pentagon Papers and U.S. Rep. Bella Abzug, the flamboyant, outspoken New York Congresswoman and women’s lib advocate, sporting her trademark, a large, bright red hat. There were also the Rev. Ralph Aber- nathy, leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Fania Jordan, sister -of Angela Davis; William Kuntsler, defense counsel in the ‘‘Chicago Seven’ conspiracy trial a few years ago; and Beulah Sanders, head of the National Welfare Rights Organization. If you have never been to a peace gathering, perhaps the following observations will help you understand what compels thousands of human beings to congregate for the purpose of dissenting with government policies. People go to peace rallies for numerous reasons, and there are various levels of in- volvement in such demonstrations. In a demonstration, one can find organizers, members of specific political groups such as those already mentioned, non-activist in- dividuals who generally sympathize with the goals of the rally, and onlookers who oc- casionally step forward from their sanc- tuaries on the sidewalks just to see what it feels like, only to retreat quickly back to their sanctuaries lest some disguised FBI agent take their picture for the government’s vast “family album” of political protestors. And then there were the kooks and weirdos—parade lovers with highly per- sonalized grievances—who attire themselves in bizarre costumes and weave in and out of the crowd spreading their personal gospels to anyone who will listen. “End the Civil War; unite North and South,” proclaimed a southern gentleman wearing a Confederate army uniform holding a Conferederate flag in one hand and a Budweiser beer can in the other. No parade is complete without floats and mummers, and this one was no exception. Only the floats and mummers were hardly of the variety that you would see at a Rose Bowl or Mummers parade. This was no ordinary Easter Parade, and the floats and mummers possessed the distinct, haunting flavor of the surreal. For example, a huge thirty-foot bright red devil towered above the crowd as a grotesque reminder of the nightmarish evil of war profiteer smoking a ten-foot cigar. Reminding me of the “red death’ of the famous Poe story were the ghostly mummers enclosed in tall, white, propped-up costumes with hideously contorted faces to symbolize the agonies of the Vietnamese women and children. About thirty of these ten-foot high specters marched in an eerie processional Pillay Editor emeritus: Mrs. T.M.B. Hicks Editor: Doris R. Mallin News editor: Shawn Murphy Advertising : Carolyn Gass To ¥ 5 A A ha 4 wailing their sufferings in a chorus of hell. I received thousands of impressions from my journey to Harrisburg last Saturday which would take a whole volume to throoughly report. However, a few con- clusions can be drawn from the event. First, trials of peace activists like Father Berrigan on vague charges of conspiracy amount to political circuses and make a mockery of our judicial system. Second, it has been eleven years since the first American boy died in Vietnam, and the open wounds of our nation cannot be healed mediately. And our resources rechanneled toward the improvement of the TY of our lives here at home. Re Third, in the spirit of spring, joy, and the renewal of life, all Americans from all walks of life must now join to rebuild the shattered hopes and dreams of our nation. EEsu es
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers