,
Sra
£3
EDITORIAL
A Solid Gold Line
Perhaps what the Back Mountain needs more
than anything else is a Solid Gold line right down
the center of every single secondary road. Center
lines need not be reserved exclusively for use in
town. In fact a center line painted on most of our
Back Mountain roads would serve two purposes. It
would not only emphasize the narrowness of most
country roads but would also indicate approaching
curves and other hazards.
Certainly the plethora of motor vehicle accidents
was climaxec! last weekend with the unnecessary
deaths of two 14-year old youths on our narrow
country roads. Now the time has come for all Back
Mountain drivers to consider some immediate and
positive action that we can take to make our travels
more safe. The paucity of caution signs is false
economy. Shoulders on all roads should be widened
and brought up to the level of the pavement. Far too
many times the ruts along our roads, left over from
last spring’s thaw, are the cause of a driver losing
control of his vehicle. Unmarked intersections and
blind driveways aie another source of concern.
Street lights for ' major intersections could
eliminate another hazard.
Perhaps the best vvay for us to accomplish these
simple improvements would be to use the voice of
the people. A few letters and phone calls to town-
ship supervisors ard their road maintenance
crews; a few more letters and phone calls to our
county commissioners about the maintenance of
county roads; finally letters and phone calls to the
Pennsylvania Departnient of Transportation about
problems on state roads would help to emphasize
the need for basic improvements to area highways.
Meanwhile, let us not forget that each one of us
can be more careful with our driving habits. ‘‘Slow
‘Down and Live’’ has already proven most effective
on super highways. But it also applies to our
narrow, winding Back Mountain roads as well.
Then perhaps we will not repeat the tragic losses of
Dale Ide and Jeffrey Coolbaugh.
Millie Hogoboom
Carnpaign Reform
The rnoment of truth for campaign finance re-
form iia the 93rd Congress has arrived. After
nmionths of delay the House Administration Com-
m ittee has drafted a bill and will soon send it to the
flo or for a vote.
T he Sienate has already passed a comprehensive
cam \paiign reform bill which includes a mixed sys-
tem of private financing for congressional and pre-
sides ntial elections and an independent elections
com: mission to enforce the law.
Reg ‘rettably, the House bill is a grossly inade-
quate response to the money-in-politics scandals
which have been the under-pinning of the Water-
gate st ory. For instance, enforcement of the law
would t re placed in the hands of a board of seven
persons , six of whom would be members of Con-
gress o r their direct employes. This incestuous
proposal means a continuation of the 50-year his-
tory of nc menforcement of campaign finance laws.
There ii 3 no provision in the House bill for public
funds to s upplement private donations in congres-
sional ract 2S, only in presidential campaigns. The
implication 1: Congress is ready to clean up presi-
dential con tests but not its, own.
The need for a strong law has never been more
clear. Accor 'ding toa Common Cause survey, avail-
able politica 1 funds from various special interest
groups are or 1therise. Money from health groups is
up 223 percen 't from 1972 contributions; agriculture
and dairy gr( >ups are up to 106 percent. Business
groups are up 96 percent and labor funds are up 59
percent.
The messag( ¢ to the members of the House of
Representative 's couldn’t be clearer. Unless Con-
gress acts to pr. ovide for new clean sources of cam-
paign funds, ou r current system, with all its cor-
rupting consequ ences, vill thrive and prosper.
> | --Larry Hertz
/
The Senate performed an act of rough but
regrettable justice June 24, when it voted 82-9
to provide emergency loan guarantees for
livestock producers. This was a bad hill. It
was also a necessary bill. Our governmental
masters ought to learn something from this
melancholy experience, but they probably
won't.
The bill provides a federal guarantee for
repayment of 90 percent of seven-year loans
up to $350,000 made during the coming year to
bona fide livestock producers. No direct sub-
sidies are involved; borrowers themselves:
must pay normal interest. It is impossible to
predict what the guarantee may cost the tax-
payers. If markets stabilize, losses may be
small. If chaotic conditions continue, this
could cost us a bundle.
The bill is a bad bill for all the reasons ad-
vanced by Senators James L. Buckley of New
York and Jesse Helms of North Carolina.
Both senators have large rural constituen-
cies. Both demonstrated a rare political cour~
age in speaking against the measure.
“I vote against the bill,”’ said Sen. Buck-
ley, ‘because it continues the precedent of
government props that I believe to be danger-
ous and which I voted against in the case of
Lockheed. Second, it will serve artificially to
channel scarce credit to one sector of the eco-
nomy at the expense of others, such as hous-
ing.”
~ “There are several reasons,” said Mr.
Helms, ‘‘why in good conscience I cannot vote
for this bill. The first, obviously, is the prece-
dent it would set. Second, is the very real
possibility that despite the best efforts to
police its operation, this loan guarantee pro-
gram could be misused and abused, thereby
costing the taxpayers millions—perhaps bil-
lions—of dollars.”
These are valid reasons. If it were not for
other compelling circumstances, these would
be convincing reasons. But a couple of pertin-
ent proverbs come to mind: Who calls the
tune must pay the piper. As you make your
bed, so you must lie in it. Who sleeps with
dogs wakes up with fleas.
In the case of the livestock producers,
government made this mess. ‘In simple jus-
| TRB
from Washington
by Richard Strout
My social contacts with millionaire farmer
Roswell Garst of Coon Rapids, Iowa, were
never formal; the only time I met him was 15
years ago when he threw raw ensilage at me.
He had visited Russia in'1955, and now in 1959,
300 reporters and photographers were travel-
around America and heading for the great
Garst & Thomas hybrid corn showplace.
Farmer Garst supplied the press with eight
pages of advance information; ‘‘when corn is
down to 30 percent moisture,” he explained,
“it has reached maximum dry weight” which
was good to know but unlikely to grab a head-
line.
Mr. Garst hadn’t reckoned with the self-
defeating press mob that boiled about him
like a herd of rampaging heifers and he
tunity, including corn cobs and over-ripe
vegetables while Mr. Nikita grinned.
Dignified New York Timesman, Harrison
Salisbury got kicked. All of which indicates
the difficulty of detente.
Farmer Garst still works for detente. Just
before last week’s Moscow summit Sen.
William Fulbright inserted some letters into
the Congressional Record written by Mr.
Garst to the Soviet Embassy here, a continu-
ation of a 19-year crusade: “You have fertil-
izer, we have food”, he said, ‘Why don’t we
get together?” It sounds wonderfully simple
and sensible. There are echoes of that in the
message Messrs. Nixon-Kissinger bring
back.
Mouth-watering American technical know-
how, of course, in agriculture and industry is
what Russia wants now. Russian fields are so
Capitol Notes
by William Ecenbarger
One of the timeliest and most important
issues facing Pennsylvania today is the state
teacher tenure law—should it be retained,
abolished or modified?
At stake is what kind of individuals will be
permitted to shape young minds in public
school classrooms.
But despite an obvious need for review of
the subject, not a word has been uttered in the
proper forum for such discussions, the legis-
lature.
Pennsylvania has one of the strongest
teacher tenure laws in the nation. It says that
once a teacher has a two-year probation per-
iod, he or she cannot be dismissed except for
Letters expressing readers’ views
are welcome, and will appear on the
opposite editorial page. They must bear
the signature and address of the writer,
be in good taste, and are subject to
condensation. Anonymous letters will
be discarded. All letters become the
property of the newspaper, and are not
subject to individual acknowledge-
ment.
tice, it is now up to the government to clean up
the mess if it can. By interfering with normal
marketing operations, through such fiascos
as the Soviet wheat deal and the on-again. off-
again price controls, government threw the
market into turmoil. The government’s pur-
pose, presumably, was to improve foreign
relations and to protect consumers from ris-
ing food prices. The purpose was fine, but the
results were disastrous.
During the brief senate debate, Minne-
sota’s Sen. Walter Mondale cited the entirely
typical example of a cattle feeder from Blue
Earth, Minn. He bought 44 steers last Septem-
ber at $395 per head. He spent $215 per head
on feed and labor, making a total investment
of $610. He sold the steers April 8 for $471 per
animal, for a net loss on each steer of $139.
Multiply that experience by several million
head of cattle, and the sum is catastrophe.
Wyoming's Sen. Gale McGee puts the loss to
livestock feeders in the past 10 months at $1.5
billion.
Governmental tinkering has staggered
not only the livestock producers but other
farmers also. Hog prices have dropped 43
percent since January. Chicken, turkey and
egg producers face real threats of bank-
ruptey. A farmer in London, Ohio, recently
wrote the Springfield Sun: ‘On Feb. 24, 1974,
-
Greenstreet News Co. Publication
wheat at our local elevator was $6.62 per
bushel. We were then paying 57 cents per loaf
of cracked wheat bread. On May 24, the price
of wheat was $2.98 per bushel, a 60 percent de-
cline, and we were still paying 57 cents a loaf.
1 wonder what it would cost if we gave the
wheat away?”
Senators Buckley and Helms are right:
The guaranteed loan bill is a bad bill. It sets a
precedent—or at least adds to precedents—
that no conservative can view with applause.
But governments, like individuals, ought to be
liable for the harm they do. When the roll was
called up yonder, reluctantly and resentfully,
I would have voted aye.
CO WE
THINKS OF ITY
QC 7
- SPONTY SN
far north that only about 10 or 15 percent of
the corn raised in the US can mature there.
. Even with special hybrid Garst strains the
Russians won’t be able to raise crops the way
the American cornbelt:does: thereiisia prob-
able vast continuing Russian market for
American grain.
And what American corn farmers want,
farmer Garst points out to Soviet Am-
bassador Dobrynin just before last week’s
summit, is Russian nitrogen for fertilizer.
The Soviets have an abundance of natural
gas. Four-fifths of the air we breathe is nitro-
gen, but factories use natural gas to manu-
facture it, to ‘‘fix’’ it.
“Nitrogen fertilizers are the thing we need
most in the USA,” said old farmer Garst,
reminding Mr. Dobrynin of the things he
showed farmer Khruschev in Coon Rapids in
the 50’s--fattening cattle, for example, with
ground corn cobs and molasses, and the
techniques of fertilizer, insecticides, her-
bicides, and the amazing American farm
machinery...
To farmer Garst things are simple and
direct; forget submarines and think of her-
bicides, push aside metaphysical MIRVs and
contemplate the megatonnage of soybeans!
That’s the way you develop hybrid corn, and
world peace. At least, that’s today’s message
from Coon Rapids, Iowa.
How nice it sounds. Alas, Nixon-Kissinger
return to a poisoned world. We are up for a
third test of detente; perhaps the hardest.
You remember that after the Khruschev visit
in 1959, Ike Eisenhower was scheduled for a
return visit to Moscow: they had even built a
golf course for him. But just before the Paris
Summit the visit was shot down with the
American U-2 spy plane, and Ike never got to
Russia. It delayed detente 15 years.
Next came Lyndon Johnson's proposed visit
to Leningrad in 1968 when he was supposed to
discuss limitations of strategic arms with Mr
Kosygin; he didn’t go, the Czech issue came
up.
That brings us down to today, with the
temptation to oversimplify matters in the
Garst formula. Actually, it’s hard to think of a
situation that is so confused or so likely to get
more so. Here is a highly unpopular President
urging us to be nice to a highly unpopular ad-
versary at a moment when we must decide on
impeachment which will be highly unpopular
either way. Almost any expression of opinion
is apt to be misinterpreted.
Readers know that this column can restrain
its enthusiasm for Mr. Nixon without any
great effort of will yet, in this instance, we
support him. We expect he will exaggerate
what he got from Moscow and to try to use it
to his political advantage but, just the same,
if there is a way to reduce tensions with
Russia we're for it.
It was Sen. Fulbright who cited the Garst
letters in a powerful speech on the floor the
other day, and he noted that enemies of Mr.
Nixon on this issue were not liberals but con-
servatives.
“With a flawless sense of timing,” he
charged, ‘‘the enemies of detente have chosen
the moment of the President’s departure for
Moscow to fire a few broadsides at his
policy.”
Sen. Fulbright is hardly a friend of Mr.
Nixon; he has just been defeated for re-
nomination and is probably bitter, yet he
supports the Nixon-Kissinger detente policy.
He detects something that looks like a GOP
mutiny in the Pentagon. Paul Nitze, former
deputy secretary of defense, member of the
‘SALT néBotiing team’ (and a sincere public
servant) abruptly’ resigns: just before the
Summit, accusing Mr. Kissinger; of softness;
Defense Secretary Schlesingerg®: friend of
Nitze, talks tough about the SoV¥ets’ missile
power; Sen. Henry Jackson (D. Washington)
presidential aspirant who is liberal at home
and a hawk abroad, attacks Mr. Kissinger,
and skips over for a private sung
It is almost as trying for us to’support the
Soviets as to support Mr. Nixon. One of the
most shocking things we ever saw on tele-
vision was the abrupt cut-off of U. S. com-
mentators in Moscow by Communist officials
last week as they tried to broadcast the
results of .the Summit. Wouldn't Spiro Agnew
have loved that trick or the whole Watergate
crew for that matter! We deplore the Com-
munist emigration policy. Sen. Jackson's
amendment would de-bar Moscow from get-
ting non-discriminatory tariff treatment un-
less it permits unrestricted Jewish emigra-
tion. We fear the move is self-defeating. Sen.
Fulbright’s Foreign Relations Committee will
thrash it out this month. ‘Stabilizing the
peace is our own overriding interest,” Sen.
Fulbright warns bluntly, ‘‘and it is too im-
portant to be compromised by meddling-even
humanitarian meddling-in internal Soviet af-
fairs.
We missed detente in 1955, and again in
1968. Certainly we must not pay too high a
price for it. But it’s still the ee in sight.
the most egregious of reasons—immorality,
mental derangement and worse.
So inflexible is the current arrangement
that in the past 30 years less than 100 Pennsyl-
The statute was passed in 1937, and it was
very much needed at the time. Unscrupulous
school boards would require under-the-table
payments from job applicants, sexual favors
were expected at rehiring time, and causes of
dismissal could range from growing a mus-
tache to flunking the quarterback.
The law today reads substantially as it
was written 37 years ago, and recent events
dictate a new look at it. :
Since 1970 Pennsylvania teachers have
had the right to bargain collectively with
school boards and strike, if necessary, to sup-
port their demands for higher wages, job se-
curity and fringe benefits.
Moreover, teachers are no longer the
fragile pawns manipulated by omnipotent
school directors. They have organized the
Pennsylvania State Education Association
(PSEA) into one of Harrisburg’s mightiest
lobbies—far more powerful than its adver-
sary, the Pennsylvania School Boards Asso-
ciation (PSBA).
A vintage teachers’ complaint about
school boards was that they were political.”
That hasn't changed much, but now the
teachers also are up to their necks in politics.
Many incumbent state legislators serve at the
mercy of the PSEA.
Currently, there are about 110,000 public
school teachers in Pennsylvania, and com-
mon sense tells us they're all not good. Many
are mediocrities, which will exist in any pro-
fession. But we can also conclude that there
are some downright incompetents in the
classroom—chiefly due to the air-tight tenure
law.
This takes on additional meaning right
teachers than classrooms. While the tenure
law is shielding incompetents, it is driving
talented new graduates to seek employment
in other fields because no jobs are available.
Earlier this year a “Citizens Commission
on Basic Education’ issued a report with 180
recommendations for improving public
schools. One of them suggested a review of
the tenure law.
Yet state legislators, many; of whom
cower before the PSEA, refuse oa the
issue. Legislation to loosen up théffenure law
has sat on the shelf for 16 months.
Unquestionably, the tenure law has pre-
vented a lot of good teachers from capricious
firing. And unquestionably there is a need to
protect them in the future.
But the legislature ought to be equally
concerned with protecting children from in-
competent teachers. This the present tenure:
law fails to do. There is a middle ground
somewhere, and it’s the responsibility of the
legislature to find it.
Telephone 675-5211 or 825-6868.
Es i ES