Page 4 Duplication From an editor’s point of view, there’s a lot of talk about cutting down costs in government spending--and precious little action. Witness the array of news releases which lands on this editor’s desk each day: releases from the Governor’s office, releases from State represen- tatives and senators, releases from Washington. Now news is news, and we do not argue with our government representatives for wanting us to know that they're working dilignetly for us, the tax- payers. So while we don’t think it’s the scoop of the century that Sen. Richard S. Schweiker is ‘‘gratified’’ at the passage of the Black Lung Bill, for example, we don’t mind his telling us that he is. Once. But the point is, he and his colleagues persist in telling us not once, but twice--thrice--in duplicate, triplicate, and----more! The releases, identical copies, are addressed variously to 1) the Editor 2) the News Desk 3) the Vice President 4) the City Editor 5) the Dallas Post. Not only does it create quite a clutter, this daily landslide of identical releases, but it also tends to release carries. Well, newspaper editors are renowned for their deftness at hurling crumpled papers into waste baskets, so it’s a small task for us to sort through the pile and toss out what isn’t needed. But the taxpayer in us balks at the dollars which are wasted in free postage (franking privileges are enjoyed by federal officials) and at the money that Haste makes waste--and so does duplication. On Genocide The Convention on the Prevention and Punish- ment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted unani- mously by the UN General Assembly in 1948. It came into force in 1951, and since that time has been ratified by the governments of 75 nations of the world. And though every US delegation to the UN has favored ratification since the day in 1949 when President Harry S. Truman urged its adop- tion before the U.S. Senate, members of that august body still are reluctant to adopt a treaty which makes it punishable by international law to destroy Every U.S. President since Mr. Truman has urged the Senate ratification of the Convention, as Mr. Nixon now does. And last March, after 21 years, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted favorably, 10 to 4, to report favorable to the Senate for advise and consent to ratification. But those four men who oppose ratification are power- ful indeed, and inside observers say they doubt the measure can pass a full senate vote. For members of the Senate to fail to adopt a genocide treaty surely puts the U.S. in worse focus before the eyes of the world. But more than that, it points out the misconception most people hold in their opinion of the Congress. It points out that maybe we haven't come nearly so far as we might like to think when it comes to humanizing this great country of ours. Any act of genocide is repugnant to most tutional philosophy. It is inconceivable that the U.S. Senate would hesitate any longer in making an international commitment against mass murder. At a time when human rights would appear to mean so much here at home, no matter what our govern- ment does abroad, it would seem particularly im- portant that the Senate find it imperative to pass favorably on such a treaty so thoroughly consistent with our national purpose. Notice Will the last GI out of Vietnam please turn off the light at the end of the tunnel? | g By Eric Mayer’ 1 wonder whether the United States would be better off today if Richard Nixon had possessed All American ability on the gridiron. Perhaps he would be coaching the Green Bay Packers instead of America; turning his aggressions toward the winning of mythical titles rather than the killing of young Americans and Vietnamese. To hear his administration tell it, the war in Indochina is nothing but a game. ARVN is ‘‘an ex- pansion ball club,’’ the mining operations are code named ‘Linebacker’ and naval com- manders headed for new tours off Vietnam talk about being signed up for another season in the big leagues. Of course the problem could be the way in which the media treats the news. Maybe if it started looking at the world in a more appropriate manner. . . From New York, this is the Nightly News, with Chris Schenkel. “Good evening. The New York Mets are the 1972 World Champions of baseball. This afternoon the Mets, behind the pitching of Tom Seaver, beat the Oakland A’s 2-1 to capture the seventh game of the world series. Bud Harrelson scored from second on a ninth inning single by Willie Mays to beat Vida Blue and give the Mets their second championship. “Following the game President Nixon, saying, ‘we want winners on our team,’ in- dicated that, if re-elected, he would appoint Met manager Yogi Berra as Secretary of State. “World reaction varied. Hanoi labelled the series a ‘farce and an incredible lie” while China hailed the win as ‘‘another glorious triumph for the people of the world.” Moscow has yet to issue an official statement. Insiders say that the Kremlin's caution may be due to its previous support of Oakland. It might also be due to the current Soviet in- vasion of Yugoslavia, presently in its third day. ‘““At a press conference this morning Richard Nixon commented on that invasion, praising the ‘hardnosed, disciplined game plan’ employed by the Russians. He said the US would not interfere as long as Russia, ‘stays in its own league.’ He warned Hanoi that America’s ‘fair play’ should not be construed as ‘any weakness on my part.” He vowed to continue bombing the North in order to ‘catch the communists in their own end TRE. ur It’s too early in his career to determine whether Louis Patrick Gray, III is par- ticularly qualified to be acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but even at this point it is clear that Mr. Gray is one great public relations man. : Since form often obscures content, and a little bit of style goes a long way toward disguising a lack of substance, a man’s public relations talents can carry him far before anybody notices whether there’s significance beneath the surface. Mr. Gray has stepped into a situation which is a PR man’s dream— because his predecessor, the late J. Edgar Hoover, neglected many of the possibilities. Mr. Hoover almost never 1) talked to the press, 2) made public speeches, 3) appeared before congressional committees in open session, or 4) communicated with the public in any fashion, save the ‘‘Director’s Message’ printed in the FBI's monthly magazine and the terse press releases an- nouncing the periodic arrest of real and imagined felons. Under Mr. Hoover, the bureau was the last refuge anywhere in the federal government for advocates of a policy of tokenism in the hiring of blacks, Chicanos, Asian-Americans and Indians, not to mention the all-out male chauvinism which precluded the employment of any woman in professional positions. And there also was the late director’s dress and grooming code, which prescribed everything from mustaches to wide lapels, except for undercover agents posing as hippie radicals. With that act to follow, any appointee would look like a hero by granting interviews to newsmen, making public appearances, announcing plans to hire more women and members of minority groups, allowing special agents to wear striped shirts and longish hair and proclaiming his intention to Guest Edit (From: DuBois Currier Express) One of the issues drawing pro and con support these days are the views on right to work laws. Pennsylvania is hearing more of it with the recent tests and proposed legislation that would permit the setting up of ‘“‘agency shops’’ where an employee would be forced to pay union dues whether he belonged or not, based on the fact that non-members benefit from union secured benefits through collective bargaining. From the top, the most repeated, philosophy by supporters of right to work laws centers about the fact they believe freedom to associate or not to associate with private organizations, such as unions, is a basic right derived from democratic and constitutional concepts. Their key bill in the Congress would delete or amend the language of the National Labor Relations Act and the Railway Labor Act that now permits union officials and employers to negotiate agreements that require employees to pay union dues as a condition of employment. Strangely enough, its supporters, at least many of them, are not head-hunting for unions. They accept the union concept but fall out when its demands traduce basic liberties. zone’ and expressed confidence in the South’s ability to ‘make a goal line stand against the long communist drive.’ “The president, in high spirits, joked with newsmen about anti-war critics. ‘Sure we’ve had 50,000 soldiers killed. But that’s not the point. The point is, the North has lost even more. If these anti-war people had ever played golf they’d know that it’s the low score that wins.’ “In a more serious tone he amplified his position on the war saying, ‘The communists are over the foul limit and from now on I will feel free to assess penalties accordingly.’ The president sympathized with the families of POWs. ‘Just as players are sometimes removed from a baseball game and cannot return to action, so our fighting men have sometimes been rgmoved from action in Vietnam. But they will be returned and there will be other games for them to play in.’ “Elsewhere today former Cy Young award winner Denny McLain, acquired recently by the Mudville Pharmacy team of the Southern California Little League association, was battered for 13 runs in the last inning as Centerville Grocery edged Mudville by a score of 20-19. McClain did hit two home runs and said that his return to the majors as a first baseman was ‘a good bet.’ “The results of the tenth monthly World Leadership poll showed the United States retaining its position as number one. World leaders gave the US 625 votes. Russia, hurt by its recent invasion, dropped to third behind China which trails the US by 50 votes. Japan remains a distant fourth at 135. It is expected now that the championship will be decided in the big Vietnam confrontation between China and the United States scheduled for later this year. “The election campaign continues to make headlines. With a report, Howard Cosell “Hello again everyone, This is Howard Cosell, speaking of politics. We all know by now the story of George McGovern, an unknown, a man the experts didn’t give a chance, but a man who had the courage to persevere and, finally, to win the nomination of the Democratic party. We all know that story. And we all know what the experts are saying about his chances in the upcoming bout with Richard Nixon, he of the ‘Nixon Shuffle’ fame. Yesterday, noting that George McGovern had neglected to comment on the weekend football games, Richard Nix: n, in talking to this reporter, said, ‘Georgidis a sissy. He couldn’t fight his way out of a”Zaper bag. I will be a projected winner by 8 p.m.’ It is this reporter’s opinion that both the experts and the president are underestimating the challenger from South Dakota.’ “Thank you Howard. Final scores today; Dow Jones down 5, Saigon 12 dead 38 woun- ded—Hanoi 120 dead and 380 wounded; Egypt leading Israel and India a come-from-behind victory over Pakistan. “Finally, Spiro Agnew is expected to miss most of the remaining campaign due to a sprained tongue suffered at a rally yesterday in Chicago. The vice president, replying to hecklers, reportedly tripped over an allitera- tion. Doctors say the injury is not serious but will require rest.” A & RL -— A ko i “open the window a little.” That’s what Mr. Gray did during his first weeks in office, but what may be more significant are his plans, announced in his first formal speech since taking over, to deal only with “the questions of style that may FBI.” If the bureau’s handling of its first major case under Mr. Gray’s direction, the at- tempted assassination of Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace, is any indication of the course it will follow until a permanent director is nominated by whoever is elected President in November, there is good reason to believe that there will be no “new sub- stance.” FBI fans will recall that the bureau initiated and perfected under Hoover's direction the practice of picking the high- visibility criminal cases which would gain it the most favorable publicity (Mr. Hoover wasn’t without PR sense, either). Then it would usurp the authority of law enforcement agencies which had done the initial investiga- tive work—ranging from Treasury Depart- ment and other federal agencies to state and’ local police departments—to cover itself with glory. The only suspect in the Wallace shooting, Arthur H. Bremer, was arrested at the scene of the crime by the police of Prince Georges County, Md., a suburban county directly east of Washington. He was taken to a local hospital for treatment of head wounds in- flicted in a scuffle with the crowd at the Wallace rally and was expected to emerge from the hospital as a county prisoner. Notwithstanding the Justice Department tradition of deferring to state and local governments in cases where there is overlapping jurisdiction in a pending prosecution, the FBI moved in and sum- marily took possession of prisoner, investiga- tion and prosecution on behalf of the federal government. Thomas Farrow, special agent in charge of the FBI's Baltimore field office, reportedly inovked the names of both Acting. Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst and President Nixon, insisting that it was the turned over to the bureau,” For those who think only the FBI can do the job right, there’s a fascinating footnote to that episode. The bureau, first to Bremer’s everything found in the cluttered vehicle. On the list of items found was an ammunition clip for an automatic pistol, but no weapon. The local police waited patiently until the FBI finished its search of the auto, then got per- mission to examine the empty car. They found the gun. Because President Nixon has installed Mr. Gray in the country’s most sensitive law enforcement position under circumstances which preclude Senate confirmation proceedings, there will be no opportunity for questioning about some earlier episodes in Mr. Gray’s Justice Department career. Among them: : In April 1971, Mr. Gray led the team of government lawyers who went into the US District Court in Washington to seek an in- junction against overnight camping on the Mall in front of the Capitol on the part of approximately 1,000 members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The court order was signed by Judge George L. Hart Jr. and upheld by the Supreme Court. The veterans defied the injunction and set up their camp on the Mall, and it was only then that Mr. Gray and his superiors realized that arresting Vietnam veterans while they slept would be a massive public relations blunder. When the court order went unenforced, Judge Hart angrily summoned Mr. Gray and the federal court. “The judiciary hzs been degraded by this whole affair and the’zt\anner in which it has been handled. I don’t think it could have been handled worse,” said the judge, hisvoice shaking ‘with anger. ‘This court feels: that one coordinate branch of government, the judiciary, has heen dangerously and improperly used by atfither equal and coordinate branch of government, the executive.” Whereupon the injunction was dissolved by the judge. Earlier this year, Mr. Gray was involved in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s protracted hearings on Kleindienst’s rela- tionship to three disputed antitrust cases against the International Telephone & Telegraph Corp. During the first week of the hearings, Mr. Kleindienst saw no conflict of interest in playing the dual roles of the nominee whose appointment was being questioned and the Justice Department of- ficer in charge of approving or denying document requests from the committee. After the obvious impropriety of that situation was pointed out to him, Mr. Kleindienst turned over to Mr. Gray the job of screening requests for information from the committee. By the end of the hearings, Mr. Gray had successfully rebuffed the senators’ requests for scores of documents, including all of the Justice Department’s files gg] the ITT anti-trust litigation. He even rejected a department had selectively refused to make public. In his new job, Mr. Gray says he has been told that ‘‘there are no secret files.” Is he suggesting that the FBI is prepared to allow public acess to its files? Or is he playing states. They claim we have returned to a similar situation when big business flaunted its power to aggrandize the employee and the general public. That brought about the passage of the Wagner Labor Act in 1935. Now the pendelum, they insist, has swung the other way and it is now labor that is wielding the whip. They argue that the proposed laws would be a significant step in restoring the balance between the two big giants of business and labor. They also quickly demolish arguments that right to work laws would wreck the lot of workers, pointing to the lack of upheaval in states where the laws are now in effect. Here again.it would be much the same reaction that occurred when labor laws were liberalized several decades ago. Calamity was howled then but didn’t prove out that way, they declare. Those on the other side of the issue claim there is no real reason to seek drastic changes in labor laws. they claim the Taft-Hartley law permits voluntary contracts to be entered into between a company and a union to have each worker join the union and pay monthly dues. But here again we run into the fact that a job still becomes the slave of joining a private organization or no job. They claim that union security arrangements have made more responsible collective bargaining in that union leaders don’t feel compelled to exaggerate their grievances to keep membership up and management can trust and respect unions and expect less belligerency and more reasonable demands. Labor supporters point out items about states that have right to work laws, averring that some of them discovered that the laws did not improve their economic position or the welfare of their workers. It must be admitted they chose to cite such states as Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and South Carolina. There is little chance right now for any great changes in labor law. A Democratic Congress prevents this. But the right to work group has been pecking away, getting a toe- hold in state after state. Their adherents seem to multiply. Organized labor could probably blunt the thrust if it stopped spen- ding huge sums in the political arena and distributed its funds to the general welfare of those who pay the dues. fa The rank and file don’t seem to shartine same philosophy as their leaders who feel they must have war chests to buy political protection. / — Editor emeritus: Mrs. T.M.B. Hicks Editor: Doris R. Mallin News editor: Shawn Murphy Advertising: Carolyn Gass AE SS CAS nae
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers