Page 4 No Exceptions With so much clamor over the violation of consti- tutional rights regarding such major and immed- iate issues as wire tapping and abortion, the public eye has somehow been diverted from other legal vagaries requiring thorough re-vamping if not total repeal. : The so-called Sunday “blue laws’ are a tarnished example of such out-dated legislation, some of which have gone unrevised since the state’s initial formation. Coupling that with their discriminatory undertones, actual enforcement of these laws is bound to result in controversy. Recently a local business was forced to discon- tinue sales in adherence to the state's statutes governing retail marketing for Sunday. Later, the real reason for referring to the blue laws was learned to be the prevention of traffic congestion in the vicinity of this particular business establish- ment. It appears that the statutes were appealed to as a last resort in solving what appears to be a pro- blem of another nature entirely. Whether or not the blue laws are a valid means to remedying the whole affair is undeniably question- able. But the greater question is how the state can “legally’’ limit sales in one store when the ‘‘store down the street’ is allowed to maintain its daily business uninterrupted, Sunday or not. In 1961 when a Supreme Court ruling upheld one particular state’s enforcement of blue laws, they did so on the grounds that Sunday be ‘‘set aside as a day of rest and recreation.” If this decision (dis- putable as it is) means to hold true, those who in- tend to abide by the laws should do just that, with- out exception. TACKI Did you see recently in the various papers the list of the International Best-Dressed or, in some papers, several pictures of some of those who were “pictures, did you ever see the like?" Vr vi 9h ui Mick Jagger in a lacy sleeveless jumpsuit. Nancy Reaganiin a study of craggy hipbones. (Hipbones were IN last year. That’s why some of us were OUT.) Mrs. Henry Ford II in a ‘costume’ of sleeveless, saggy-bosomed dress slit to the waist, hot pants and boots. Etec. Now, partly because of these ludicrosities, and partly due to just general perversity, the Taste ‘Against Cumulative Klutz Institute (TACKI) has studied the news pictures over the past year and has decided upon some awards. These not being, understand, the most coveted awards of any season. : Today we will concentrate on fashion and related ~ cultural impediments. Later we might bestow TACKI awards in the fields of arts and sciences, politics, sports, and whatever we think deserves a TACKI award. Nominations are still open and will “be given rapt attention. Now, the top TACKI prize just has to go to the International Best-dressed List, in particular, and all other best-dressed lists in general. You just can’t get any TACKIer than some of the stuff we’ve seen recently. The institute considered giving an award for the sake, Do you remember how embarrassing it used to be, when the old wood stove got the school room too warm, to take off your jacket and have those long BVD sleeves showing below short dress-sleeves? That was the Layered Look. Only we hated it. In the men’s department, the TACKI boos go to wedgie shoes. Wedgies are hideous enough on women. Thank goodness, they seem to have fallen flat on men. Now for the Un-Dressed Award. Undisputedly, those Playmen Magazine unposed portraits of Jackie Onassis on the beach must win, hands over Nothing other-Kennedy Joan could have put on-- or taken off--could have upstaged Jackie this time. This even though one member of the institute thought Joan ought to get some recognition for “her see-through blouses with blue brassieres’ and and Santa Claus hot pants (that show off a little round belly). But there will be other years. Now on to other things. Think TACKI "72 and we are sure you can make a list of your own for TACKI SER by H. H. Null, II] It didn’t even make the front page of my morning paper, so our state legislators could easily deduce that nobody in this state really cares how often or how much they raise their own divvy from state funds: They could even be right about it as little criticism developed in the press or on the air, so the legislative re- action could now be that they are sorry that they didn’t grab more. The legislature, or at least 117 of the House members, plainly believe in putting first things first and wouldn’t think of begin- ning with their onerous duties without the customary pay raise; although, for the re- cord, 73 House members voted against it. How many of the 73 were sincerely opposed to the grab and how many voted against it with a good idea that it would pass anyhow and they would not only get the additional money but would also be able to go home and tell the voters they were on record against it, can never be known. After all, the raise will only add $2.5 million to the taxpayers burden and if the majority have the least consideration for the taxpayers burden, it wasn’t brought out by them. The majority opinion, of course, was that more pay is needed to get higher-calibred public servants, or otherwise stated, that they are worth every dime they get. My own thoroughly-mulled-over opinion is that there is no doubt that higher pay will get us greedier public servants, but there is no proof whatsoever that it will bring us any better quality. Blasphemous as it may sound, I hold that a regard for integrity and a desire to serve others will, on the average, bring out better public servants than a burning lust for more and more from the public coffers. This money-mad House majority doesn’t believe in being cheap, as long as they are distributing somebody else’s (the taxpayers’) money. They, very graciously, raised county Judge’s an average of $10,000 a year. Not $9,000. Not $8,000. Not a dime less than $10,000 could be expected to entice our present judges to do their full duty or attract lawyers to seek the post at the next &lection. Pardon me while Ihave a snicker at that. Ihave never in my al- most 74 years of life seen or heard of a judicial election without candidates. And I never will. As for the obviouse retort that lawyers who can earn that or more without the responsibil- ities of a judgeship are not attracted to seek the office, the truth is that they would be damned fools if they did. They have it made ‘TRB from Washington An American woman had a baby in Helsinki the other day. A fine, bouncing child; total cost, $7.50. An American tourist had a erisis in ‘appendectomy. All well+no ‘charge: ‘ An embassy official had a letter from his mother in Ottawa last week; she is hospital- ized with a tumor requiring cobalt treatment. Her only cost is for the telephone she had in- stalled near her bed. (Bloody lucky she’s not here, says her son!) The United States is the only industrial- ized nation that doesn’t have some form of national health insurance. Of course it means that taxes in other nations are generally high- er; most of them don’t think of these health costs as taxes, however (though they are). They think of them as purchase prices for something essential they have to buy. The American system is different. NBC put on a fine documentary the other night, “What Price Health?”’ There was this lower- middle-income worker with a heart attack. The hospital took him in, thinking he was covered by California’s state health in- surance; he wasn’t. He cashed his life in- surance for $400 and gave it to the hospital, but he was left with $8000 still to pay. The doctor told him to go home, take it easy, re- lax, don’t worry about anything. Rather hard to stop worrying, isn’t it, when your life savings are gone, and you have a bad heart and no coverage. The health thing is coming up again in Congress and in the President’s budget. Mr. Nixon proposes to slash an estimated $1.6 billion from 23 million elderly Americans in Medicare. Mr. Nixon says no new taxes and is | The Empty Pew by W. Jene Miller There’s a wonderful guy I'd like for you to meet. You'd love him, I'm sure. One of the things he does is go around pouring gasoline on people and setting them on fire. Oh, if he likes you, he wouldn’t do that for the world. But if people don’t happen to do what he says, he waits until he has them in his power, then he sets fire to them. Now, doesn’t that sound like someone you'd love to live with? How can you think that sounds stupid? That is what I grew up thinking God was like! The religious leaders went around shouting about this big ““god”’ up in the sky who handed down abunch of rules, and if you kept them he liked you. But, if you didn’t keep his rules, he would not give you credit for being an individual. He called you a “sinner”, and as soon as he had you in his power (up in “Heaven’’) he would set you on fire forever and ever and ever and ever and... What I could never understand was why these religious leaders called this kind of preaching ‘‘the Good News’. I didn’t really figure that was such good news. Oh, they said, the Good News was that if I figured out what their God-who-sets-people-on-fire wanted, he such a God? and they know it. Even a much larger slice of our tax money wouldn’t convince them to want a change. As bludgeoned and bleeding taxpayers, we know what to expect for the next two years—and probably for the rest of our lives— more and bigger spending of public moneys with the unexpressed purpose of passing on some of our money to pressure groups in re- turn for votes. In spite of the clear evidence that public laws and public support of the environmental- ists has brought us to the edge of fuel scar- city—meaning cold, darkness and immobility will soon be ours unless practicality comes back; our legislature will support these mis- directed zealots in their dunder-headed acti- vities—at whatever cost to us which may be deemed necessary. And so on through the list of Liberal de- mands. The legislature will have no concern as to whether we can afford it; only, will it bring us more votes two years from now. That the deliberative body has any re- sponsibility toward stemming inflation, so far as I know, was not even mentioned. Probably, if thought about at all, it was shunted aside as something that can be cured by more inflation and when the deluge comes, can be blamed on somebody else. Trying to stem it would be like spitting into Niagara Falls—the effort would count for so little. I had hoped that Republican control of the state capitol would bring about a change in the legislature’s attitude—that there would begin a period when we could say to our- selves, “‘our representatives down there are trying to operate the state economically, in order to keep down our taxes and are spend- ing only when it is necessary.” Of course, I just hoped that. I am cynic enough to have doubted. Still, I did have some hope and it was met with a bucket of chilled oh water when I picked up the paper and saw that Greed, as usual, was triumphant. Probably, if I was a wise man, I would pick up and emigrate to a state which does not believe in being the biggest spender, the biggest taxer and the highest-salaried state in the Union and tries daily to hieve that status when some other state’ id bit more extravagant. But I won't do it. I have always and I'm going to stay right here. I am going to vote against the unprincipled rogues who care only for money and I am going to work against them—no matter what party banner shelters them. If there be any who agree with me, I in- vite you to do the same. Find out how your local representative voted on this $2500 apiece steal and don’t ever forget it. Two years from now there will be another election. We can remember that long. wen ‘CHARGE!’ pounding Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society with the wrecker’s ball. There is not a peep in his budget about the $4 billion Family Assist- ance Plan (guaranteed income) that he offer- ence’ in August 1969. But that was three years ago. The real Mr. Nixon has finally stood up. Nevertheless, the idea of national health insurance won’t down. Majority leader Mike Mansfield told UPI reporter Roy McGhee the other day that this Congress will passit: “It is absolutely necessary, with medical and hos- pital costs skyrocketing.” Rep. Wilbur Mills promises to take it up this year after the tax reform and hopes for Senate enactment next year. Young Richard Nixon saw his oldest brother Harold contract tuberculosis and saw him taken to a private sanitarium in Arizona. There he was bedridden for five years. All the time the bills mounted; in the same time the younger brother, Arthur, died of tubercular meningitis; and then Harold died. The family was left in ‘‘catastrophic’’ straits—Nixon’s own words. The Nixon family rejected charity and outside help; they heroically fought their way out, leaving an indelible impression on Nixon that that’s the way it ought to be—uphold the Puritan work ethic, reject hateful bureau- cratic aid. There is nobility in this austere creed, without a doubt; but it is Calvinistic to apply the sink-or-swim standard to those who must have help or sink.’ Chief backer for the new national Health Security program is Sen. Edward Kennedy. He wasn’t self-made; with a wealthy father he went through no such traumatic boyhood as Richard Nixon (though he knows what it is to have a retarded sister, Rosemary). Maybe some of Nixon's discipline would have been good for him, who knows? But the point here and representatives of 40 national labor, church and consumer organizations (in- cluding AFL-CIO and Teamsters) are trying to pass a law for a health system at last. They kicked it off here last week; there are citizen lobbies for it now in a score of states, and they want them in all states, pressuring Congress. If the law passes they might call it a memorial to Harry Truman; the greatest dis- appointment of his presidency, he told Ed- ward R. Murrow in a 1957 TV interview, was failure to get a national system of health care. The AMA beat him. A woman we know went to the hospital re- cently for an emergency check-up and chose a low-price room; she was discharged two days later—hospital bill, $237.10. The American Hospital Association says a day in a hospital now averages $105.30. Health costs have shot up 40 percent in four years. It’s all right to argue that people should buy insurance; a lot don’t, or can’t. The US now spends around $90 billion annually for health care and buys $17 billion of insurance. But the US still ranks 12th to 15th among the world’s nations in infant mortality (over 20 per 1000 live births) and it’s here that the dis- parity in income between rich and poor really shows up. In Detroit, for example, in a better suburb, infant mortality is around 12 per 1000; an incredible 69 per 1000. While the US is graduating 10,000 doctors a year, the Soviet Union is graduating 35,000, according to Hubert Humphrey. The American doctors are the best in the world, using the finest technique; the problem is to get the doctors and technique out to the big sign hanging over the main street for years, ‘Nauvoo Needs a Doctor. gEive thou- sand US communities have no 2L0r. In his budget message Mr. Nixon said the country has all the hospital vel) needs, so he’s suspending the Hill-Burtdf® act sub- sidizing hospital construction. Maybe he is right, if the number of beds is averaged, but the present wait in an emergency hospital ward is still several hours. Everybody agrees something must ‘be done. The Kennedy-Griffiths plan is for a complete national health system costing $60 billion or $70 billion (but absorbing much pri- Association wants merely a voluntary in- surance scheme to protect against catas- trophic costs. Mr. Nixon has a bill somewhere in between. It’s a pity Americans don’t ever look up to Canada. There are 3000 miles of contiguous border fenced by an iron wall of apathy. Canadians have a reasonably i health system started in 1958. Dominion plus Provincial hospital and medi- cal insurance. Virtually everybody is cover- ed. The cost hasn’t risen (except to the government). Doctors fought it at first but are generally reconciled; in Newfoundland, for example, doctors suddenly went from the lowest to highest paid profession when they could collect for services. Maybe ‘‘bureaucracy,”’ is bad, but surely it is better than a system where life or death depends on ability to pay medical bills. Now, the whole point of this is to dissociate the traditional concepts of ‘“‘God’s judgement” from the Biblical judgement. You see, the judgement of God upon the world is currently celebrated under the name of “Christmas”. Man looks upon his desperate state and cries for ‘“‘salvation’’. Ti IALLASCDOST An independent newspaper published Thursday by Greenstreet News Co. from 41 Lehman Ave., Dallas, Pa. 18612. Entered as second class matter at Dallas, Pa., under the Act of March 3, 1869. Subscription, $6, per year. Telephone 675-5211. The officers of Greenstreet News Co. are Edward M. Bush, president and chief executive officer; J. R. Freeman, vice president and managing editor; William W. Davis, vice president, marketing; and Doris Mallin, secretary-treasurer. Editor Emeritus: Mrs. T. M. B. Hicks Editor: Doris R. Mallin Advertising Manager: Dan Koze And, God sends a baby. The eternal judgement on man will be, the way he treats the call to Love. If he rejects that Love, he lives in hate. If he responds to that Love, he lives under obligation. If he ignores that Love, he lives in loneliness. If he kills that Love, he lives in guilt. If he defies that Love, he lives in a “garbage dump” (the word Jesus used was Gehenna, or garbage dump, NOT “Hell” as it is usually tran- slated.) If you have not found the fulfillment of the promises of God, find out how you’ve been treating the babies of the world in Milwaukee, My Lai, or The Manger. pr Former television commentator David Brinkley recently made these comments while addressing a student group at the Uni- versity of Southern California: “To politicians on an ego trip, which is most of them most of the time, any piece of journalism not filled with overwhelming and obsequious flattery is biased on its face. “What Gertrude Stein said of writers applied with equal accuracy to politicians. She said writers want only three things: praise, praise, and praise. “If T went on the air tomorrow night and said Spiro Agnew was the greatest American statesman since Washington, the audience * might think I was biased. But he wouldn't. “When politicians and the press are quarreling with each other, that is their natural state. That is what they ought to do. And it is in the best interest of the American people. “If over the last generation, the politi- cians and the bureaucrats in Washington have made such a mess of things with the press keeping some kind of watch over them, what would they have done with nobody watching? “There are numerous countries in the world where politicians have seized absolute ‘power and muzzled the press. There is no seized absolute power and muzzled the politi- cians. ] “So if people are concerned about danger to their rights and freedoms, they should be aware of where the danger comes from. And it does not come from the press.” v
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers