Page 4 EDITORIAL Thanks Again Fellows! It turned out to be a false alarm. There was no fire at the Dallas Post, but it was reassuring to know that help was so fast and furious. The odor of wood smoke last Monday night got stronger, and smoke hung over the roof top of the building. We searched everywhere and could find no fire, but. ..the smoke was still there. We were concerned. A call to Bob Besecker asking if he would drop around brought immediate response. Before we had hardly hung up the telephone, the trucks and dozens of firemen had arrived in front of the build- ing, hoses were strung out, and someone was climbing a ladder to the roof. Men were all over the building, searching everywhere, checking every corner for evidence of a fire. They found it...in a neighbor’s trash pile. But by the time the hoses were rolled back on the trucks and the last fireman had gone, we were feel- ing a new sense of pride that we were part of a com- munity such as this. There was no fire, but itis good to know that these men, volunteers, drop whatever they are doing to respond to a call for help, and they do so day after day. And the fact that they do their job so efficiently, indicates that they also spend much of their spare time training. Thanks again fellows! We're glad you are so near. Was It Worth It? Wednesday marked the last day of U.S. bombing in Indochina. The statistics left behind by 12 years of needless war are staggering. This country alone has suffered more than 46,000 killed, and more than 300,000 wounded. There are still more than 1300 American servicemen missing. South Vietnam lost at least 185,000 soldiers with half a million wounded. North Vietnam and the Vietcong suffered nearly a million dead, and perhaps twice that wounded, and these are only military statistics. More than two million civilians were killed or wounded in South Vietnam alone, with perhaps twice that many killed and wounded in North Vietnam as the result of American bombs. That’s a grand total of almost 10 million people killed or wounded, and doesn’t include casualties from Cambodia and Laos, where American bombers have been recently dropping the most deadly destruction ever to be unleashed on a people anywhere. : The Nixon Administration and U.S. military leaders are not happy with the bombing halt in- sisted upon by Congress. They would obviously continue the air war, if not the ground war in the hamlets of Cambodia. Not only have the people of Indochina suffered at the hands of the American war machine, but now restoration of North and South Vietnam is becoming a popular subject. Almost every American everywhere has at least indirectly supported this terrible destruction of life and property, most perhaps without concern of why such action was taken. To stop the spread of Communism? So one country after another would not fall, thus en- dangering our allies? To protect the shores of the West Coast against the evil of the dread Red philosophy? Nothing seems to justify the 10 million. While American leaders now begin to count up the monetary costs, perhaps we should be asking ourselves, was it worth it? Capitol Notes by William Ecenbarger The Commonwealth Compensation Com- mission, which last year provided goodly salary increases for Pennsylvania’s legisla- tors and judges, died in obscurity two weeks ago at the age of two. The commission was guillotined by the lawmakers, who tried to make it look like they were reacting to pressures from consti- tuents. But it was strictly a case of killing the goose after it laid the golden eggs. If there’s any mourning to be done, it’s the Pennsylvania taxpayer that ought to do it—for with the commission died outstanding opportunities to reform the state pension sys- arantee a day’s work for a day’s pay from pennsylvania judges. The five-member commission began its work in 1971 by telling the legislators and jud- ges exactly what they wanted to hear: That they were underpaid and deserved immediate raises. Despite an intense public outcry, they eventually got more money—the legislators’ combined salary-expense allocation going m $12,000 to $20,600 annually, the judges re ceiving an average of $10,000 a year more. But then the commission started saying d angerous things, such as that pensions for judges and legislators were outrageously high and that maybe judges ought to be required to put in 40 hours a week. A study of the state retirement system was done for the commission by the Pennsyl- vania Economy League, and it cited “‘extra- judges and legislators that were becoming an ever more serious burden to the taxpaying public. Judicial retirement allowances higher than salaries are not uncommon in the cur- rent system, and there are some legislative leaders who could quit right now and get a lifetime pension of $50,000 a year. The strongly-worded conclusions of the pension study left the commission with no choice but to recommend a general decrease in benefits. But that recommendation will never be made because the commission no longer exists (or, more correctly, the commission no longer exists so that that recommendation can never be made). Similarly, the commission made it very clear in recommending judicial salary in- creases that the raises were ‘‘contingent upon the judges meeting criteria established by the Supreme Court to determine the adequacy of | TRB from Washington One of the best advantages accruing to a paid observer of the government--and-politics scene is the opportunity we have, while others are out contributing to the GNP, to sit back and sift through the endless stream of papers that feeds the news bureaucracy. The docu- ments that escape the shredding machines and the burn bags often multiply—thanks to the miracle of the Xerox—like fish in a hatch- ery, and they find their way to Washington news desks with astonishing speed. Such has been the case with a batch of ITT memos that engulfed us shortly after the introduction at the Ervin Committee hearings of former White House counsel Charles Col- son’s 1972 memo to Bob Haldeman, the depos- ed White House chief of staff. That was the one, you will recall, that warned there were still other memos floating around that would “directly involve’ President Nixon in the 1971 settlement of an ITT anti-trust suit, hard on the heels of an ITT pledge to shell out $400,000 to help underwrite the Republican National Convention in San Diego. The memos already have been picked over by our hungry brethren of the daily press, extracting the gems that help complete the jigsaw puzzle of ITT’s methodical effort to park its corporate slippers under the bed of the Nixon Administration. Still, it’s instruc- tive to leaf through them at a leisurely pace, because the language therein conveys more than damaging fact; it captures the atmos- pherics in which the special-interest vermin breed. 7 Rustlings by Russ Williams The movie “The Frogs’’ made a short run in the area several months ago. It won’t win any awards, but it was based on an interest- ing idea. All othe animals of the Florida Ever- glades, and for all the viewer knows, perhaps every animal in the world, has it in for one special animal that has been giving him trouble. MAN. Hundreds of poisonous spiders work as a team to entangle and sting one unfortunate victim. Thousands of frogs appear to be at- tempting to suffocate another man under their weight, when the victim dies of a heart attack under a mountain of croaking vic- tors. It’s an ecological backlash movement. But how the fed-up animals become so tricky and intelligent is not explained. It’s an interesting idea, but evecological backlash works differently, though the results may be very similar. It can kill people. And the animals don’t have to make drastic mental advances to pull it off. A recent example of ecological backlash occured in Borneo. It was surprisingly started by the World Health Organization. It was far from surprising that that horrible invention, DDT, was also involved. The health organization sprayed a village Take, for instance, a memo from Edward J. Gerrity, a senior vice president for ITT, to Vice President Agnew dated Aug. 7, 1970, about ITT’s concern that Richard McLaren, then assistant attorney general for the anti- trust division, would insist on fighting the antitrustsuitin court. It’s addressed to, ‘Ted’ and signed by “Ned” (Gerrity’s nickname), and it says: ‘‘Our problem is to get John the facts concerning McLaren's attitude be- cause... McLaren seems to be running all by himself.”” And an attached memo talks of how “Hal (Harold S. Geneen, ITT’s president) had a very friendly session with John, whom, as you know, he admires greatly and in whom he has the greatest confidence.” “John,” it becomes clear as the memo runs on, is Atty. Gen. John N. Mitchell, and after more discussion of McLaren’s attitude, the memo reports to Agnew that ‘John said that he would talk to McLaren and get back to Hal.” About a year after this was written, we now know, ‘‘John and his Justice Department settled with ‘“Hal”’ and his ITT out of court, enabling ITT to keep the biggest element in the contested merger, the Hartford Fire In- surance Co. Lest all this first-naming suggest that the titans of state and industry meet on a casual, spontaneous basis the way the rest of us chew the fat over the back fence after an evening of lawn-mowing, we draw your attention to still another internal ITT memo. This one bears the title “‘Roger’s (sic) Party” and it talks of a party planned tentatively for September, 1970 on the Eastern Maryland farm of Rogers their performance.’ Noting in its salary report that not all Pennsylvania judges are diligent in their work habits, the commission said: ‘There is no special law of economics that applies to the judiciary. There must be some relationship between productivity and compensation.” The commission said failure to imple- ment the accountability recommendations would be taken into consideration in its next x C. B. Morton, then Republican National Chairman and now Secretary of Interior. The party is to include “John” of the aforemen- tioned memo, as well as the Agnews, the Postmaster General Winton Blounts, the Bryce Harlows and Peter Flanigans, then key Wilson. and Gerry Ford, and Sen. Peter Dominick, all Republicans good and faithful. And, oh yes, Hal and June Geneen. The memo, from a public relations man in ITT’s Washington office to his boss ad- vises: “Ned asked that we put together a poop sheet for Mr. and Mrs. Geneen which will in- clude not only brief bio’s of the men but also their wives for June; facts about Morton’s farm; a fairly complete bio on Mitchell and his recent accomplishments in other areas such as crime, drugs, etc.; some detail on the: new Post Office plan; and then general infor- mation as to the type of clothes to wear, plan- ned activities, etc.” From all reports, alas, the party never came off, which meant along with other things that unspecified dollars of ITT stock- holders were spent unnecessarily in prepara- tion for an aborted social seduction of ‘‘John’’ and his escorted GOP sidekicks—and, of course, their wives. Such research, however, seldom goes to waste in the first-name world of the upper-enchelon Washington. There are always other occasions when the servants of the people and the people’s suppliers of goods and services lift cup and break bread toget- her—and perhaps even talk business. At the time the ITT company first held —- * report on salaries. Of course, there will be no next report, and future judges’ raises will be at the tender mercy of the lawyer-dominated Legislature. Thus we have witnessed once again the Pennsylvania General Assembly feathering its own nest and the nests of fell6W politicians while failing to come to grips with their well- documented shortcomings. And once again the public has been had. center stage in our town—in the spring of 1972 during the Senate confirmation hearings of Richard G. Kleinsienst to succeed ‘‘John” as attorney general—the $400,000 convention pledge was a featured item. You’ll doubtless remember the notorious Dita Beard memo (Lord, they are a memo-happy bunch at ITT) tying that pledge to efforts to settle the anti- trust suit, and Ms. Beard’s subsed gent hospit- alization in Denver, where senators and—we went to interrogate her. Of that exercise, Sen. arles MC. Mathias (R. Md.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said: ‘It does not re- plain to me the relationship between a $400,000 commitment to a political party whose incumbent President is likely to be re- elected and a corporate giant which must deal with some level of government every day. It was like a windstorm insurance premium, since it sustained the general level of protec- tion even if it were not immediately offset by reimbursement for storm damage.” Yes, indeed. In the permissive suburbs surrounding Washington, there have been periodic drives by the local law-and-order guardians against a bevy of massage parlors that in their avarice have perm ed or en- couraged their employees to ge”'beyond a standard back rub. Yet within the District of Columbia, in the most sophisticated salons of the governmental-industrial complex, the heavy massage goes on—with instructions in writing, no less. Cockroaches are an amazing species. Their ability to adapt is incredible. Back in the day of the bomb shelter and Cuban missile problems, scientists decided that if a nuclear war were ro break out cockroaches mignt follow the homo sapien and the dinosaur as the next ruler of the world. They would rule, because they would be about the only living things left, the scientists decided. Just as their adaptive powers could allow them to become immune to fall-out and to survive on what was left of the world, after a evolutionary plan), the Borneo cockroaches built up an immunity tc the DDT, carrying concentrated quanties of the poison in their bodies. Geckos are Bornean household lizards, part pet, part insect cleaner-upper, part rat patrol. These lizards ate the cockroaches and became ill. Cats that roamed the village, on rat patrol duty themselves, stopped their rounds to devour the ailing lizards. Cats and lizards were dying right and left: rats were multiplying and moving in. So were the caterpillars. The rats brought N 1 disease and the caterpillars brought danger and damage. The caterpillars, unrestricted by lizards, were gnawing the thatched roofs of the village to the point of collapse. There, fortunately, is a typical calvalry- charge end to this story. Picture a planeload of cats parachuting into the battleground. A planeload of cats were dropped by parachute into the village, to help restore the balance of nature. This was only an isolated case. Cats, and if it had been necessary, lizards, were avail- able elsewhere to be flown into the affected area. But man has to realize that if he con- per year. Call 675-5211 for subscriptions. The officers of Greenstreet 3 News Co. a President: and Dorie wal re Edward M. Bush, n, secretary-treasurer. Mrs. T. M. B. Hicks, editor Emeritus ss R. Freeman, managing editor Doris R. Mallin, editor Dan Koze, advertising manager Sylvia Cutler, advertising sales X § tinues to use DDT and otherwise try to control nature without proper consideration of the consequences, he may reach the day when there are’nt any more ‘‘cats’’ to arrive to the tune of a calvary charge. 3 a ] He has to realize that some species, going the route of the whooping crane, the buffalo, and the bald eagle, may have a very vital part in the delicate, world-wide balance of nature. Having been tipped, that species could possi- bly also tip man into extinction, in an ecolo- gical balcklash of the ‘balance of nature’ scales. = SEE
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers