Ldge 4 EDITORIAL : No Response The Back Mountain Memorial Library, as part of the Inter-Library Task Force, an organization of representatives for public library service to every- one in Luzerne County, is hoping for a cut of the federal revenue-sharing monies that the Luzerne County Commissioners have under their control. Over 75,000 Luzerne County residents are not served by any library or bookmobile. The Back Mountain library hopes that the county assistance is coming, because more localized governmental help is strangely lacking. i President of the board of the Back Mountain Memorial Library, Homer Moyer, reports having made requests of all Back Mountain councils for 10 percent of their revenue-sharing money. These funds could have helped provide a necessary ser- vice to the people of the Back Mountain. Lake and Franklin Township each donated $100 to the cause. Jackson Township has promised $200, Mr. Moyer has been told. He reports ‘‘no response from the larger townships at all.” It’s sadly ironic that the larger and more local municipal governments haven’t donated to the library which is situated in Dallas Borough. Book readers and scholars of all ages from Dallas Township, Dallas Borough and Kingston Township must be, by far, the major users of the Back Mountain library. Why then haven’t the legi- slative bodies from these three municipalities re- sponded to the library’s request? Their resident- users of the area library would want their elected representatives to consider that request, we're sure. It’s time that they started considering. It’s time that they either allot part of their revenue-sharing money to the library, as they do to roads, recreat- ion, borough building repairs, etc., or give the lib- rary and the voters a good reason for not doing so. One response or the other is required of repre- sentative officials. No Witch-Hunt / The Supreme Court, in its anti-pornography ruling during the week of June 18, made it quite clear that it was making it easier for local com- munities to attack so-called hard-core obscenity. The ruling contains no provisions that should set off a witch-hunt or return to the too prim, too proper 1890s, and we think this distinction ought to be made from the start. Court justices quite rightly, however, gave an in- terpretation on pornography that has been needed. The confusion of the 1957 ruling has led to abuse upon abuse. Nonetheless, it is probably correct to say that the fence-straddling position of the present court, somewhere between anything goes and no- thing goes, may lead to abuses in another direction- --harassment. Quite correctly, hard-core pornography, as defined after being subjected to all the tests suggested by Chief Justice Burger should be made less accessible. At the same time, all the pub- lications and movies, all the words and pictures are not necessarily prohibited under the new ruling. It will take some court experience in several diverse communities to determine, in a practical way, what is and what is not hard-core pornography. The problems that nationwide publishers and movie producers will encounter are relatively in- significant compared to the good that the Court’s ruling can do. The best answer to hard-core porno- graphy, or to anything that tends to offend an in- dividual, it is not to buy it, not to tune it in, not to watch it or not listen to it. If it’s not money— making or popular, it will fade away. Yet, the abuses of the publishing and film-making firms have brought the legal ruling down on their own heads. Even at its most permissive, the Supreme Court has always set higher standards for young people, especially those 16 and under. The new ruling will certainly make those standards easier to enforce. That is perhaps the best result of the new ruling. The Supreme Court has not, however, returned us to a prudish era. As Justice Burger suggested, the ‘‘sexual revolution” has had ‘‘useful by- products in- striking layers of prudery from a subject long irrationally kept from needed ven- tilation.” \ Capitol Notes by William Ecenbarger Despite the enormous need for reform, Gov. Shapp’s proposed restrictions on cam- paign financing in Pennsylvania raise serious questions. First and foremost is the problem of enforcement—the same rock on which the similar federal restraints foundered last year and became a potent factor in the Watergate Scandal. The Shapp plan designates as the police- man of the reforms the Department of State, which, at least in the case of the party in power, is like sending the fox to watch the henhouse. The department traditionally is a very political arm of the governor, and the current situation is no exception. Mrs. C. Delores Tucker, the department secretary, also serves as the vice chairman of the Demo- cratic State Committee. Clearly, this will not do. Aside from its inherent weakness, legislative Republicans— who surely will have to provide some votes for the proposal—will never support for such a stacked deck. What is needed is an independent com- mission, armed with subpoena power, that can go directly to court to enforce the law, regardless of the party affiliation of the sus- pected offender. The second major weakness of the Shapp plan is that its restrictions on campaign spending automatically place incumbents at a heavy advantage. Sitting governors and incumbent legislators has tax-paid adminis- trative and clerical help that can be—and are— used for political purposes. Governors have massive “public in- formation” operations that double as pur- veyors of political propaganda, and legis- lators use their expense allowances to produce ‘newsletters’ to their constituents that often contain more self-serving pap than news. TRB from Washington It is a strange picture—John Caulfield of the Committee to Re-elect the President, holding a ladder in a back alley of George- town while another man at the top of the lad- der puts a “bug” on the telephone line of syn- dicated columnist Joe Kraft. It caused hilar- ity in the White House as Caulfield told the story, and ousted presidential counsel John Dean reported it to the Ervin committee in his 245-page statement. The big things are being taken care of in the Watergate shocker: For the second time in history formal accusations of criminal ac- sional committee against a President. (An- drew Johnson was first). So let me tell about the little things, that somehow make vivid the atmosphere in the White House under Rich- ard Nixon. In one corner of the executive office a professional housebreaker and crook, enlist- ed for the President’s personal Gestapo, is pasting together diplomatic cables (pres- sured from the State Department) to forge a spurious cable, making it appear that Pre- sident Kennedy connived in the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam. The fake cable is found in Howard Hunt’s safe, along with bugging equipment—part of the political scene that includes wiretapping, burglary and similar revelries. Or the White House atmosphere that causes income tax audits of writers on the Long Island newspaper Newsday that pub- lished an article about the President’s friend C. G. Bebe Rebozo. Nothing new in that, though; the President smilingly tells Dean to keep a list of hostile newsmen in the cam- Challengers from private life have no such “free” resources available and would have to spend money from their legal allot- ments to achieve the same expesure in a- campaign. Shapp himself presents a good example of the problem. As a virtual unknown in 1966, he had to spend some $4 million to win the Demo- cratic gubernatorial nomination and run in the general election. But under his own proposal, gubernatorial candidates could spend no more than $2.4 million on their entire campaigns—primary and general election. To make the spending ceilings fair, we need either tighter prohibitions on the use of tax-paid facilities for private political gain or, more realistically, a readjustment of the ceiling formula to allow challengers to spend more than incumbents. Despite ifs faults, which are not in- surmountable, the Shapp plan represents an immense improvement over what we now have in Pennsylvania— a meaningless, unen- forced campaign expense reporting law that } { makes filers indistinguishable from chiselers. In the longer view, Watergate has gal- vanized some thought on what not too long ago would have been unthinkable: Public financing of political campaignsygthrough a special assessment on every adi%? citizen. Under the Shapp guidelines, a two-man gubernatorial race in Pennsylvania should cost about $5 million, or less than $1 per adult once every four years. That’s not a high price to pay for the knowledge that state govern- ment is owned by the people. “tp, ES de | Rustlings by Russ Williams Junk mail is as welcome in most homes as the ‘Preparation H” commercial that always comes on during an evening meal in front of the TV. But it’s a millions of dollars business. Third class mail rates and mass production of mailing pieces makes the cost very low. Even though most are thrown away without a look, the minimal cost makes the rare favor- able responses worthwhile. Third class rates on those gaudy, often bulky, mailing pieces is a good deal less than the eight cents that the average citizen pays to send a letter. Post office officials are projecting a few years. It’s not hard to imagine that charging low prices to handle huge amounts of junk mail, could have had its effect on the rapidly rising cost of the penny post card. Junk mail is always unsolicited and un- wanted, an invasion of privacy on a small scale. The invasion of privacy of junk mail graduates to a higher scale in many cases these days, however. Ever wonder how the ‘Pickle of the Month Club’ found out your name and address? They bought a huge list with your name and address on it. They probably bought it from the “Book of the Month Club’ or some other outfit who already has you on their list. There are even firms who buy lists from all those clubs and correspondence outfits, and then rent the now-gigantic list out to other clubs ahd gimmicks. Your own private name and address has become a commodity. You are sold for about a fifth of a penny to any outfit that has the It would be interesting to see the figures, paign so that they can give them trouble after the election. That’s Dean’s story anyway. Actually, the moral distance is not very great, some will think, between breaking into Watergate, and inviting Federal Judge Bryne, at the climax of the Ellsberg case, to come down and visit the presidential offices and be tempted with appointment as head o the FBI. : Here is a little tidbit from the story of Jim Mc€ord who turned state’s evidence. Cri- minal lawyer F. Lee Bailey, had been helpful in'dealing with the recalcitrant McCord, Dean reports; he had a client with a cache of gold and wanted an arrangement to turn the gold over to the government without prosecution. It was a little too crude, though. At a war council Mitchell addressed the request for assistance to Haldeman (Dean asserts). But in this case (‘Haldeman was nonresponsive and the matter was dropped.” Intrigue was different in the case of poor, loyal Pat Gray, acting FBI director. He was ‘persuaded by awe of the President to turn over confidential Watergate files to the White House as fast as they were gathered. Secre- taries at GOP headquarters wouldn’t talk to the FBI while their bosses were present and demanded private interviews, little knowing that what they said went promptly back to the GOP again. 3 Gray himself was led into the disposal of incrimination documents, taken from Howard Hunt’s safe and gingerly handled by Dean. Ehrlichman coolly told Dean to shred the papers and ‘‘deep six’’ the Hunt briefcase. Dean refused, but asked what ‘deep six” meant? Ehrlichman said, ‘“You drive across river.” wouldn’t confirm. the “‘national security’; then John Mitchell). snarled Ehrlichman. leaks, and demonstrations and a belief that somehow it all intertwined with foreign plots. They instituted an FBI investigation of CBS barrassedly said they were investigating him “for a government post.” They got a tip from munist’’ help. Again, a memorandum from curtly, “We need to get our people to put out a story on the foreign or Communist money that was used in support of demonstrations the Democrats as part of the peace move- ment...We could let Evans and Novak put it out and them be asked about it to make the point that we knew, and the President said it was not to be used under (sic) circum- stances...” These are the little tidbits that tell more than big" ones. Toward the’ erg the! White House was being blackmailed convicted Watergate conspirators demariding hush money—up to $1 million. According to Dean, anyway, the President told himg#hat was no repeated it. But in his next-to-last meeting with Dean (April 15) the President began ask- ing him a series of leading questions which made Dean think the conversation was being taped. Perhaps Mr. Nixon was justified, Dean was now a double-agent, reporting each night to government prosecutors. Dean alleges that the President corrected that comment about a “million dollars being nothing to raise’; he had of course, he said, only been joking. (We all know what a wag Nixon is.) In any case) Dean thought it odd that very near the end the President got out of his chair, went to the far: corner of the office and ‘‘in a barely audible tone’’ said that he had probably been foolish to discuss Hunt’s proposed executive cle= mency before a third party. oon strange and bizarre. Someday somebodsis going to start a novel about the White House in 1973 and give it up. Nobody would believe it. how much of our national forest has been cut down, “sliced” into sheets, and printed with things like, ‘‘3336547770-This is YOUR Lucky Ducky Number! YOU may ALREADY BE A LUCKY DUCKY WINNER!!!!” They’ve no doubt come up with some frightening example for the figure-‘‘A forest the size of the state of Maryland’, perhaps. Maybe all of the equivalent of Penn’s Woods have been chopped down, mailed out, and thrown away. Someone else has probably determined how much oxygen-production all that tree-cutting has thus far done away with, too. Probably something like, ‘‘as many oxygen-producing trees have been cut down as could provide oxygen for all the smoke-filled rooms in the world.” And that’s not the only way that junk mail has to be disposed of. Most of it, perhaps, goes up in air-polluting smoke. If you think I'm just going to go on and on about how awful junk mail is just to get you upset, you're wrong. I have a suggestion. But the post office has to help. They should. They're our agency, there to serve us. They should either allow those who don’t want the junk to send it back, requiring return postage from the sender, or they should allow us to fill out a form, refusing acceptance of any mail sent to ‘occupant’, ‘‘box holder’’, to an address only, ete. If you dislike the junk as much as I do, you're probably in favor of the first recom- mendation. It could be really fun. Send it back! Mark it “Not Acceptable, Return to Sender’. Cross off the return zip code, so they have to pay the first class rates like everyone else. How ironic! What sweet revenge! Sending them pay for it! should be able to send it back anyway. to accept. accomplishes anything. allowed to return what we don’t want. teach’em to mess with my privacy! about a computer-run junk-mail outfit that him. this article, Id like to point of YOU’VE GOT JUST TEN MOR send YOUR MONEY NOW!! And don’t forget the BIG CONTEST!! YOU could be THE WINNER of SEVEN DAYS AND no NIGHT'S in SUNNY OCEAN CITY!! (tax, tip and transportation not included) ... per year. Call 675-5211 for subscriptions. The officers of Greenstreet News Co. are Edw; President; and Doris Mallin, secretary-treasurer. Mrs. T. M. B. Hicks, editor Emeritus J. R. Freeman, managing editor Doris R. Mallin, editor : "Dan Koze, advertising manager Sylvia Cutler, advertising sales pt ep Y—y
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers