Page 4 EDITORIAL Forgotten? Years ago, when we were in college, we knew an old lady named Lucy. Whenever we visited Lucy in her tiny one-room apartment in town, she’d steep a pot of tea liberally laced with scotch (if the Dean of Women had ever known!) and regale us with tales of what it was like to be young in the Roaring 20’s. A flapper in the grand style, Lucy had dyed her bobbed hair henna and smoked cigarettes long before most women had come a long way, Baby. Not that we had a great deal of time to spend with Lucy, of course. In the midst of our important concerns--exams, fraternity parties, and how not to figure. In our eager preparations for Thanksgiving recess and the long trip home to family and friends, we gave little thought to Lucy’s plans to spend the day in the neighborhood movie theatre. She had no other place to go, she'd explained, and with the typically self-centered detachment of many students, we accepted the explanation as logical. We thought of Lucy in reading Gov. Milton Shapp’s Thanksgiving Day proclamation earlier this week. He reminds us that ‘many older Americans live alone and perhaps are even physically incapable of preparing their own meal. For these a day of national feasting can seem empty indeed.” And he observes: ‘The cruelest affliction of advancing age is not sickness or weakness; it is being forgotten.” For our friend Lucy, Thanksgiving Day must have seemed a mean hoax, and the movie theatre a poor anodyne for loneliness. This year, let us take time to remember not only our own families but also those older Americans who, through no fault of their own, are isolated from family and friends. Let us try to assure the Lucys in this community that we do care. Foodstuff? When you sit down to an average American meal these days, there’s no telling what you may be ingesting. Mercury-contaminated . swordfish. and botulism-poisoned soup have been pulled off the market. But how many people realize that a three- ounce jar of peanut butter may contain up to 50 roach shells, or that chemical additives banned by the Food and Drug Administration are still finding their way into some brands of hot dogs? Once you learn about the dangers and potential dangers of many processed foods, there is not much you can do about it unless you want to do your own farming and processing of foods. Last year the FDA was pressured into revealing the highly specific code of ‘filth tolerances’ it has been using for some 60 years. The permissible level of rat feces, insect parts and mold depends upon the food: eight ounces of chocolate, for example, may contain 150 insect parts and four rodent hairs, while tomato soup is allowed 40 percent microscopic mold. Unbelievable, you say? Not at all, and since such policies were made public, nobody has made much of an effort to fight them. But filth isn’t all you have to worry about. There also are the chemical additives. Most of us con- sume some five pounds of them yearly without knowing a thing about them. The frightening thing is that in many cases the FDA doesn’t either. And what knowledge exists of some additives is far from cheering. Salt, for example, is used in dangerous quantities that may lead to high blood pressure and heart disease. DES, a hormone given to livestock to in- crease their market weight, is a known cause of cancer in lab animals. Meat producers insist the hormone is passed by animals in their excrement, but the Department of Agriculture revealed recently that some DES residue has been found in meat. And sodium nitrite, a preservative banned almost 10 years ago by the FDA, is admittedly dogs and cured hams. It must be pointed out that the FDA needs more manpower if it is to adequately protect the con- sumer. With only some 200 inspectors to cover some 60,000 food facilities, it cannot do a com- prehensive job. As Ralph Nader’s efforts in other fields have proved, industry finds ways to improve itself when it has to. So far, the challenge to the food industry has been less forceful than the challenges to some other industries. Until that changes, we can expect to eat much more than we bargain for. Thissa 'n Thatta The Shapp Chap made extensive gains in personal unpopularity in the recent election when it became obvious that Republican candidates as well as Democrats Casey and Sloan. running against Shapp. resoundingly sold their position to the voters. His influence on the presidential election was pretty well on the negative side, although fairness compels the sidenote that other Democratic governors didn’t do so well them- selves. However, the Chap was consistent and $70 a plate pseudo-maced dinner and en- dorsing his candidacy, watched his choice fall on his face even before the Democratic convention. He then smiled on Hubert Humphrey briefly and finally beamed on McGovern, only to see them shellacked one by one. It would appear that the wisest politics the governor could practice from here on out would be to keep his mouth tightly buttoned and share his millions with the real Democrats of the state, who are longer on good sense than they are on money. But, of course, he won’t. The Shapp feels that he is pretty much of a political genius and in the next three years can be counted on to make a few more mistakes. His mistakes are inevitable, our only hope being that too many of them will not have to be paid for by the taxpayer, of which I am a lowly example. The outlook is none too rosy, since his budget calls for dipping into our pockets for three billion six hundred and fifty-four thousand depreciated dollars. Pennsylvania’s population, according to the 1970 census, is under twelve million, so you can figure your share roughly, less the amounts to be hooked from citizens of other states, corporations and TRB from Washington President Nixon began comparing himself to ‘Benjamin Disraeli when Pat Moynihan, that ‘erstwhile White House leprechaun, reminded him that reform could be wedded to conservatism. Flattered by the thought, Mr. Nixon sent'Congress his surprising welfare bill for family assistance and guaranteed incomes. Two days before election, Mr. Nixon gave an extraordinarily revealing hour’s interview to Garnett Horner of the Washington Star- News outlining what amounts to a four-year blueprint of Disraeli progressive- conservatism:: a: program of . throwing America’s weight -around; abroad (Disraeli would -have: called iit a spirited foreign policy’’), combined with a revival of national ardor at home, and some vague and unstated upper-class reforms to be vouchsafed at some later time to the poor. Mr. Nixon's self-identification with Disraeli really deserves a new look. ‘I would say that my views, my approach, is probably that of a Disraeli Conservative,” he told Horner - “a strong foreign policy, strong adherence to basic values ...but combined with reform, reform that will work, not reform that destroys...” There is oblique and amusing evidence that Mr. Nixon: has been reading Disraeli’s speeches, .and particularly his thrusts at Gladstone in that magnificent parliamentary duel that dominated British politics for 20 years. Suddenly, at San Clemente, political writers began referring to Mr. Nixon’s cabinet as ‘‘burnt-out volcanoes.” Anybody with the key knew that this was one of Disraeli’s orotund phrases; only he was referring to the Gladstone ministry. He said Guest Edit from the Brownsville (Pa) Telegraph What was sure to happen has happened, and this newspaper is glad for it presents the perfect opportunity to discuss a bit of mis- leading information coming out almost daily from Horrendous Harrisburg. A rather irate woman reader has com- plained because she read in another news- paper how an audit by the State Auditor Gen- eral Robert Casey has shown a school board in this area had overspent its budgeted ac- counts, and she had not read it in this news- paper. But she did read it in this newspaper. She read it three years ago when the overspend- ing was first made public by the school board concerned! What she read from the Auditor’s General's office is ancient history! Those audits by the State Auditor General are about as slick a bit of political shenan- igans as to come out of the state capitol in many a long moon! And they are both mis- leading and are a cause of much undeserved criticism of local officials. In the case of the school board for example, the over-spending was reported in 1969, and what the audit report out of Harris- burg this past week failed to show was that in 1969 corrective measures were taken to avoid such matters! Now shown in this out-of-date audit report from the state is that these corrective safeguards have worked! ! Also, a township in this area was said to have misspent some funds according to a two » or three-year behind-the-times state audit report. the U.S. Government, which is supplied by Pennsylvania taxpayers in part. A clipping. which I just unearthed, tells me that the population of Pennsylvania is lagging: taxes on sales, business profits. inheritances. alcoholic beverages and cigarettes are sharply higher than other states: public welfare costs are the ninth third in population, the average per capita income of a Pennsylvanian is 17th in rank among the states: Pennsylvania's corporate net income tax is the highest in the nation; Pennsylvania's expenditure for hospitals, health, interest payments and highways are well above the national average, plus other interesting facts. Where these figures come from, I can’t say, as that part of the clipping has been lost; however, I think it was the National Tax Foundation. Some of them are good. of course, but all have to be paid for. This budget is the highest ever for our commonwealth and it is probably destined to grow annually. at least while the Chap has anything to do with it. We had better think deeply about his plans for taxing us. We will get a lick at that on some election day as the tight-fisted farmers and lawyers, who framed our state constitution, tried to confine future taxation and spending and stuck in some stipulations that cannot be altered except by popular vote. The most important of these stipulations is that any tax must bear equally on every- body. This seems fair enough to me and. possibly some others, but there are a lot of people who would like to have others taxed at federally, so it may appear to them that they tax because the ‘‘rich guy’’ would have to pay at a higher rate. To me, fairness says that a twice my taxes, whether it is a hundred bucks or a hundred thousand bucks, and that I should pay twice the taxes paid by a man who has half my income, whatever thegamount. But there are different ideas about ®airness, so some. including Shapp, want a graduated state income tax with deductions of course. That “deductions” part is the gimmick that enables the graduated part of the tax to be nullified: not only because the very poor person can’t scare up any deductions but be- cause the very rich person can afford tax and legal help to find lots of them. The straight income tax that we are paying now has no deductions except for welfare payments, social security and such. It is higher tham it would need to be, if state expenses were kept down (they won't be. we can look for the legislators to start working for another salary raise for them- selves) but, at least, even fumbling mathematicians like myself can fig®re that if they were kept down, the tax rate on our in- comes should go down with it. With the graduated income tax it gets more and more complex and thus it is easier to delude us into thinking we pay less, while in reality, paying more. I have found that the simpler laws and . taxation are, the better they work. According to the papers, the State of Massachusetts, which went for McGovern, also voted down a proposal to change from their present state income tax to a graduated tax. Maybe they have some dope on it, not available to me, but on the other hagnd, they might just have wanted to sone in- dependence—out of step with the rest of the country. the row of them reminded him of a South American landscape: ‘You behold a row of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest. But the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional ear- thquakes, and ever and: anon the dark rum- bling of the sea.” Why does the reserved, aloof President identify himself with the flexible, romantic political wizard of the 19th Century? Well, neither was fully trusted. Neither had a gift for friendship. Neither was lovable. The ambition of each was boundless; each had a nickname ‘Dizzy’ as a pejorative is about equivalent to “Tricky Dick.” In fairness, there was another similarity, too; each believed in the loftiness of his country, and felt that it was his role to restore eroded values; ‘to resume the national principles to which we attribute the greatness and grandeur of the country,” said Disraeli: to institute ‘‘a new feeling of responsibility, a new feeling of self-discipline; said the President to Horner. But Dizzy, that hawk-nosed, ringleted, faintly sinister genius, was a romantic as evidenced by the novels he wrote, and his baroque adulation of Queen Victoria. Surely Mr. Nixon is no romantic (anyway, he doesn’t write novels). But wait a. minute. Those gaudy trips of his to Peking and Moscow -- they were in the romantic tradition. Shortly after inauguration he is expected to fly off for another grand tour of Europe; later perhaps to Japan. Dizzy at the Congress of Berlin would have appreciated such. jaunts; they there is another trivial incident; remember how Mr. Nixon proposed to dress up his White House guards in a kind of Viennese musical comedy uniform with vizors and shakos? Like a flash of insight it showed a pure purple vein of romance beneath. 3 It is a temptation to push the analogy too far. Yet Mr. Nixon must have noticed that Disraeli came to power after a long interval of Gladstonian reform that irritated the af- fluent. “Often after a period of stenuous reform,” notes the historian, “a moment people, tires. of being improved.” Yes, McGovern found that out; too. As for Disraeli, he decided that: it was time to beat the patriotic drum for a while, and later put into effect some very valuable reforms of his own in favor of trade unionists that ‘will gain and retain for the Conservatives the lasting af- fection of the working classes.” He was in- terested in enfranchising the ‘‘upper artisan class” (i.e., hardhats and blue collar workers) and not the social ‘‘residuum,” which represented the impoverished masses a century ago (like our ghetto children and welfare mothers), Is there a modern parallel? In his interview with Horner, Mr. Nixon deplored ‘‘more massive -hand-outs to. people, making the people more and more dependent, looking to government...”’ ‘And he declared, ‘‘The average American is just like the child in the family. You give him some responsibility and he is going to amount to something...If, on the other hand, you make him completely dependent and pamper him and cater to him too much, you are going to make him soft, spoiled and eventually a very weak in- dividual.” It is a comment of quite stunning con- descension, hard to believe save in the Disraeli context. He will ‘‘reinstill a pride of country,” make them ‘feel proud of their country’s role in the foreign field’; ‘‘we are going to play a great role in the world.” It is rather alarming. Weary once at the torrential flood of Gladstone’s earnest moral ingfnation the cynical Dizzy called him a man ‘‘inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.” Wow! The two leaders loathed each other, but there was nothing in their exchanges quite like the feeling of personal betrayal and persecution which Mr. Nixon Sous fijfecs uses to his critics. In talking extemporatteously to wives of POW’s he assailed ‘‘the opinion leaders’’---journalists, TV commentators, professors and ‘‘presidents of our univer- sities” -- who failed to rally to him when he resumed bombing. He talked as though their support was a matter of right. There is more of this in his interview with Horner. The nation, he said, has ‘‘passed through a very great spiritual crisis,” one in which “we saw a breakdown in frankly what I would call the leadership class in this coun- try.” He attributes crime, drugs and per- missiveness to this ‘‘breakdown’’; the ‘‘leadership,’”’ he says, should have recognized that ‘‘you must not weaken a people’s character.” Here the parallel with Disraeli, we think breaks down. The highbrows detested Dizzy, too, almost to a man. But the Englishman could not have replied like this; call it style, callit pride -- he couldn’t have done it. Itsounded as though the Township Super- visors has at the very least committed a cardinal sin. Actually all they had done was to pay a bill out of the wrong account, and a simple bookkeeping transfer took care of “absolving’’ the supervisors from their “cardinal sin’! There are several things seriously wrong with the way the Auditor General audits local accounts which involve the use of any state funds. One, the audits are too late in being made! Audits two and three years after the fact are not a case of locking the barn door after the horse has escaped—they are more like trying to lock a barn door after the barn has been taken! Two, the out-of-date audits are rushed to newspapers with a notation as to where one can quickly look fo find ‘‘something wrong” while the Auditor General's staff sits back and waits for these highly favorable headlines to come. There is not a word in those audits about whether the local officials caught and “uncovered” are just that, errors) them- selves, and there is no word in the state reports stating whether or not: locally- conducted audits as required by law un- covered the same errors or not!! So the public is given the impression the staff in the State Auditor General’s depart- ment are a bunch of super sleuths uncovering dire and devious deeds by local officials when in reality, much reported as being wrong in the state-conducted audits have already been disclosed publicly, have already been corrected, and despite the words used to describe the local action, the mistake un- covered is generally a technical bookkeeping “goof” such as paying a bill out of a wrong account! If the Auditor General is going to keep his staff spending so much time going over local accounts, those audits should be up-to-date enough so the official local body will not have to go to the expense of having a local audit made as is so often required by law.. And these rushed-to-the-press reports should include notations as to what corrective action, if any, has already been taken by local officials!! To do any less than bring those audits up- to-date and to include a record of corrective actions taken is misleading to the people and causes undeserved criticism of local officials. Would that the Auditor Genergf's staff would spend more time in Harrisburg watch- ing over the budget and the spending habits there, and ‘would that his office would also keep supplying legislators with a constant flow of up-to-the-minute reports on the status of the state’s financial condition which is something some legislators report they are unable to obtain at present! One appreciates any good try at supply- ing information to the public about what is going on in local government. But two and three-year-old audits are not that good try. The people can watch out over local govern- ment, and they would appreciate a better watch being kept over state government! With all of the publicity mileage the State Auditor General is receiving from his out-of- date, misleading audit reports, one wanders if perhaps he may be paving the | hy for another try at being governor, or is it to be the U.S. Senate this time? Editor emeritus: Mrs. T.M.B. Hicks Editor: ‘Doris R. Mallin News editor: Shawn Murphy ’
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers