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EDITORIAL
No Better Way
As much as we are turned off by the steady up-
ward climb of gasoline prices, we are advocating
that they rise one more cent and that the state
gasoline tax be temporarily raised from eight to
nine cents per gallon. Then let’s hope it stays there
until we have the money to repair the crumbling
state road network.
PennDOT has cancelled its 1974 road resurfacing
program because of a shortage of maintenance
funds, aud state legislators, in agreement that
additional funds are needed are not agreeing on
how to obtain them.
There’s no better way than an increase gas tax.
There’s no fairer tax than a tax that charges in
direct proportion to.the use of the tax benefits.
Those who drive little, use little gas, and thus pay
little tax. Those who are heavy ‘users, like the
trucking firms, will pay heavily.
Out-of-staters, using our roads, will be paying
too.
—Russ Williams
Something Missing
No matter how close ohe listened to President
_ Nixon’s State of the Union message there was
something missing.
A few nights later, the nation was treated to the
wise words of Senate Majorit;” Leader Mike Mans-
field, who designed his speech as a rebuttal to the
President. But again even close listening found
something missing.
As the big daily press arrived the next morning
after the speeches, we scanned them hurriedly to
see if some other political leader had voiced con-
cern that the same thing was missing. But the
search through several of the nation’s largest
newspapers was fruitless.
It’s obvious that the President was in a tight spot
that Wednesday night. But he did have plenty of
time to work on his State of the Union address. Sen.
Mansfield may have held the upper hand in his re-
marks, as leader of the Democratic controlled Con-
gress, and perhaps he didn’t have as much time to
prepare. But he omitted that special something just
as sure as did the President.
Both men were obviously aware of the frust-
rations that plague the people of the nation. Both
know that Watergate, detente, the energy crisis, in-
flation, recession, and the rising cost of food are up-
permost in the minds of constituents. But both men
also know, or should know, that the people need
something more than promises of solutions to
« material problems.
Neither of the leaders said anything really that
we have not all heard before in political rhetoric.
The President told us in essence that we had a few
problems, but that things were going to get better
because he was going to make it so. Sen. Mansfiela
said that things were not quite as well off as the
President had indicated, but that Congress was
going to wrestle part of the control of the govern-
ment away from the Executive, and then things
would be better again. Everyone who believes that
may stand up and cheer.
It adds to the rhetoric, perhaps, but neither man
- mentioned integrity. Neither suggested that one of
the basic things missing in government these days
is basic honesty. Neither man hinted that the next
crop of congressmen to descend on Washington, or
the next man to occupy the White House is going to
be selected more because of his basic virtues
rather than how much money he has in his cam-
paign chest or better still, how he came to acquire
it.
Neither man said he wanted to change the elec-
toral process so that a member of the working class
the ITTs, the industry, or other
special interests. Neither said that they were going
to turn the special interest groups out of the temple
and make room for a voice who has no special
benefactor except the public interest.
It appears to us that both ment spent their time
talking about material things to a nation divided
not because of long lines at the gas station, or the
lack of steaks at the meat counter, or what’s hap-
pening in the Mideast. It seems to us that the time
has come for our leaders to drop their rhetoric in
favor of a few basic virtues like honesty, integrity,
abolition of secrecy, and representation for all
Americans.
dairy
—J.R. Freeman
Alas for Myra Bradwell! She was born too
Supreme Court completes its judicial ratifi-
cation of the Equal Rights Amendment, per-
haps the women’s libbers will revive her
name and pay her poshumous honors.
These reflections are prompted by the
court’s action the other day in cases involving
three pregnant school teachers, two of them
in Cleveland, the third in Chesterfield, Va. All
three had been suspended from their jobs
under school board regulations. With Justice
Rehnquist and Chief Justice Burger dissent-
ing, the court ruled the suspensions unconsti-
tutional and laid down new guidelines. Local
school boards henceforth must not infringe
upon the “basic constitutional right’’ of school
teachers to get themselves pregnant and stay
on the job.
It was a notable victory for women’s
liberation. The majority opinion, written by
Justice Stewart, further buttressed a judicial
structure that has been under construction
since November, 1971, when the court nulli-
fied an Idaho statute which said that ‘males
must be preferred to females” in certain pro-
bate cases. Subsequently, the court has held
that single women in Massachusetts are en-
titled to obtain contraceptives; that Louisiana
and Texas cannot discriminate against il-
legitimate children; and that the U.S. Army
must treat women officers like men; and that
the Pittsburgh Press cannot classify help-
wanted ads by sexual preference.
Whether the court sails under the flag of
Equal Protection, or Due Process, or Privi-
leges and Immunities, the course is clear:
The Court itself, sub silento, is ratifying the
pending Equal Rights Amendment. It is of
only passing interest that Montana on Jan. 21
became the 32nd state to ratify, leaving six to
go. Stewart and his gallant colleagues are
making the states obsolete.
One supposes that Myra Bradwell would
be pleased. All that I know of this pioneer lib-
ber is that she was born in Vermont, moved to
Chicago, got a legal education, married and
in 1872 applied for a license to practice law.
This was only four years after the Fourteenth
Amendment had been declared part of the
Constitution. The Illinois Supreme Court flat-
ly turned her down, and on April 15, 1873, the
U.S. Supreme Court voted 8-1 to affirm.
TRB
from Washington
Fulani is a little girl who lives in India,
with small bones and lackluster eyes, who is
only eight but looks 12, and she is probably
one of the millions who will die this summer
from the food shortage growing out of the oil
shortage. About mid-August America is likely
to discover that there is a crisis, not merely in
India but possibly in Africa, much of the Mid-
east and parts of Latin America, and it will
send emergency food supplies, by which time
it will be too late. If a world food bank is
begun it will have to be done now. There
seems no sign of movement, however, by the
government here.
We are so bemused by our gasoline short-
age, that we can’t see what’s happening on
Spaceship Earth. It’s not hard to trace, how-
ever. Oil is a big component of nitrogen fer-
tilizer; if oil leaps in price so does fertilizer.
Japan imports oil, uses it to produce fertili-
zer, exports it to India. Less fertilizer, less
food. Lester Brown of the Overseas Develop-
ment Council, tells me that Japan has cut fer-
tilizer production 25 percent and its exports
will be reduced probably one-third. China will
grab what it can. It means that the Indian
subcontinent of 740 million (including India,
Bangladesh and Pakistan) will suffer.
That’s only a part of it. Food also depends
on irrigation. In Asia two million irrigation
wells are often pumped by small motors,
chugging along, burning oil. The price of oil
rises, irrigation costs more; food costs more;
people who can’t pay die.
In few places are food and population
more delicately balanced than in India. Ber-
Capitol Notes
by William Ecenbarger
The idea that the Pennsylvania General
Assembly makes decisions on the basis of
what is best for the general public is an illu-
sion that persists despite some damning
evidence to the contrary. :
This is not to say that the legislature
never acts in the public interest—only that it
acts in the public interest by accident rather
than by design.
The illusion is fostered by the special in-
terests that abound in the legislative halls—
and which really determine what the senators
and assemblymen translate into the law of the
Commonwealth.
Take the current furore over the proposal
to abolish the state’s retail liquor monopoly.
The anti-monopolists are arguing that the
public will get lower prices by turning retail
liquor distribution over to private enterprise.
Pro-monopolists counter that the public is
better served by a system that exerts maxi-
mum control over the sale and use of alco-
holic beverages.
Thus each side is couching its pitch in the
rhetoric of what is best for the people—thus
fostering the illusion that this will be the basis
Justice Samuel F. Miller spoke for the
court, saying that if a state wants to prohibit
women from practicing law, nothing in the
Justice Joseph P. Bradley added a concurring
opinion in which he rang all the bells of male
chauvinism:
“The civil law,” said Justice Bradley,
“as well as nature herself, has always recog-
nized a wide difference in the respective
spheres and destinies of man and woman.
Man is, or should be, woman’s protector and
defender. The natural and proper timidity
and delicacy which belongs to the female sex
evidently unfits it for many of the occupations
of civil life.” :
It is repugnant to the concept of family,
Justice Bradley went on to say, for a woman
to adopt ‘‘a distinct and independent career
from that of her husband.” To be sure, many
women were unmarried, but they are excap-
destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the
noble and benign offices of wife and mother.
This is the law of the Creator.”
In Justice Bradley's interesting construc-
tion of the law, both constitutional and divine,
Justices Stephen Field and Noah Swayne
agreeably joined. It was quite some time, I
suppose, before Illinois licensed lady lawyers.
Now this is our thought for today: Not one
comma of the Fourteenth Amendment has
been changed since that day in April when
this Illinois Portia lost her case. Only the
judges have been changed. It is a fair
assumption that the eight justices who con-
curred in Bradwell v. Illinois in 1873 had a
was intended to accomplish. Certainly they
must have had a clearer understanding of
“intent’’ than the eight justices who united in
1973 in Frontiero v. Richardson, the case of
the woman . fficer. i
Well, Justice Bradley is dead, but Justice
Stewart lives. The Constitution is what the
judges say it is, and the ‘“‘intention of the
framers” no longer greatly matters. It
doesn’t greatly matter, in any event, in that
expanding citadel of jurisprudence which
ought to be known to memorialis@@ hereafter
as the Myra Bradwell School of the Law.
I LIKED THAT PART
OTECTING THE G
LE ENVIRONMENT
A 3
4%
MORE Su EVER IN
nard Weinraub cabled in the New York Times
last week from New Delhi of a striking elec-
tion upset by the Communist Party in the
heart of Bombay that jolted Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi’s New Congress Party. Three
years ago the Congress Party polled 216,000
votes; now it’s 70,185. Among the reasons: the
“unprecedented 20 percent rise in the price of
food in the last 12 months.” Of course demo-
cracy in India is a thousands time more worth
saving for the US than the odd government in
South Vietnam for which we spent billions and
50,000 lives. But what will we do about it?
The sudden Arab oil boycott is something
that has never, repeat never, occurred before
in economics. It recalls Jay Gould’s attempt-
ed “gold corner’ in 1869. It affects the world
and the United States in grotesque ways that
we have yet to realize. The pedicab fare has
doubled in Jakarta. And little Fulani may die
of hunger in Bangalore.
“I want all African and Asian brothers
here to know,’”’ Hubert Humphrey grimly told
representatives of 45 nations in mid-Novem-
ber at an international food conference in
Munich, West Germany, ‘‘that when the Arab
nations boycott oil to the United States, all
they are doing is signalling you that you will
starve.”
This is too strong; a lot of other factors
are involved. But the fact remains that in any
crunch the poor and helpless fare worse, and
in the crisis now developing the earth may be
pushed over into a famine forecast for years.
About a third of the world’s 3.9 billion
people goes to bed hungry at night. World
population increases two percent a year,
about 80 million people. It will double at the
present rate by the end of the century. That
means double the food to feed them. And
there are these e¢minous circumstances:
—For the first time America’s arable
land, the world’s great bread basket reserve
is all in use.
—World grain reserves expressed in
days’ consumption stood at 95 days in 1961
now is down to 37, smallest in history.
—Fertilizer supply is very short and the
price is zooming.
—Something strange is happening to the
world fish catch; some feel the very oceans
are overfished; for the past 21 years the total
world catch inereased every year to 70 million
metric tons in 1970; it has dropped in the past
three years to 62 million.
Lester Brown comments, ‘With less fer-
tilizer and two percent regular increase in
population, this is the first year in which one
can say positively, ‘“There will be a reduction
of food production in Asia regardless of the
weather. Never before in my memory has it
been possible to say that.”
Countries are divided into two tiers, the
northern tier with relatively low birth rate
and adequate food supply, North America,
Western and Eastern Europe, the Soviet
Union and Japan, recently joined by Korea,
Taiwan and Mainland China. The other tier
are the hungry lands with relatively high
birthrate—most of Africa, much of the Mid-
east, the Indian subcontinent and parts of
Latin America. This is the crisis of the 4 F’s:
food, fuel, fertilizer and fertility.
for the legislature’s ultimate decision.
The truth is, however, that each side is
motivated by its own narrow economic in-
terest, and the liquor issue will be decided on
the basis of which can exert the most muscle
at the opportune moments.
ers is no-fault automobile insurance. Most ii +
surance companies are pushing for the bill on
grounds it will be good for their policyholders.
Negligence lawyers, on the other hand, are
opposing it on grounds it would rob the people
of Pennsylvania of important legal rights.
One of the enduring absurdities of Penn-
sylvania life is its Blue Laws, that myriad of
legal restrictions on ‘‘worldly activity” on
Sundays. The issue, which is a perennial one
in Harrisburg, is always discussed in terms of
public morality. It has nothing whatsoever to
do with morality.
The. Blue Law battle is between those
commercial establishments that want to do
business on Sunday but can’t, and those that
can do business on Sunday and don’t want any
further competition. The public interest? It’s
not even visible.
One would think that it would be the legis-
lators themselves who would represent the
public, warding off the assaults of special in-
terest lobbyists. But the legislature has fallen
so far behind the times that it must rely on
others for basic information. The chief source
of such information is the lobbyists, who write
bills for the lawmakers and otherwise provide
them with the expertise with which to make
decisions.
The legislature is a rudderless vessel,
{
»
“This year there is no cushion any
longer,” Mr. Brown says, “things are very
thin with a shortfall of rt With a
drought somewhere, or unfavorab¥e weather,
there would be a scramble for food unlike
anything we’ve ever seen. And in Washington
a feeling that no one’s in charge.”
Most people can’t believe 9 food sup-
plies won’t expand, just as the}¥ were sure
cheap gas would continue. This may prove
ultimately correct but in the meantime there
could also be the greatest calamity in the his-
tory of mankind. The weather cycle is impor-
tant. The US and Canada now control a larger
share of the world’s exportable grains that
the Middle East does of oil, and the US pro-
vides 90 percent of the world soybean exports.
Bad weather could reduce this. A cycle of
droughts has hit North America roughly
every 20 years since the Civil War when re-
cords were first made; the 1930’s created the
dust bowl and in the 1950’s it appeared again:
Even a mild return would be dangerous to-
day.
“The issue that may well arise before this
year is over,” Lester Brown says, ‘‘is whether
belts to fill what will be by far the largest food
deficit in Asia that we've ever seen.”
Toney Dechant, President of the Farmers
Union, recently denounced the lassitude in
Washington: ‘A world grain crop like that of
1972,” he said, “would doom milli@s to star-
vation.” # :
Fortunately prospects are for a bumper
crop, but with high fertilizer prices it is not
certain that the hungry lands can buy it.
manned by part-time land-lubbers who know
little of the sea. As such, it follows the direc-
tion of the strongest wind.
What to do? One could go at length listing
the need for more and better legislative staff-
ing, less secrecy and all the other familiar
remedies prescribed for the Pennsylvania
General Assembly.
But they all point to a single essential—
harder-working, more conscientious legisla-
tors.
Telephone 675-5211 or 825-6868.
Media Association.