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Show 'Oopsr DESERET NEWS LETTERS TO THE EDITOR SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH iiiiiiiiiitiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniimiiisimiiiiiiiHiiiiiiiiiiiniiiisiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiii We Stand For The Constitution Of The United States As Having Been Divinely inspired U A EDITORIAL PAGE TUESDAY, NOVEMBER Airport Problems Ignored? 24, 1970 Recently you said the critics of the airport bond were not facing the facts. Some of your points were very well taken, but I think you are failing to consider the most important facts concerning the citizens of this valley. You published in your editorial section Sept. 24 To Help Slow Inflation, an excellent article on the problems facing airports in the major population areas of this country. It seems a strange paradox that our political leaders and those governing our information media, after having been made aware of these facts, would have the temerity to urge the people to bond themselves for $25,000,000 in order that the mistakes of the past might be compounded here. We live in an area of vast open spaces where we can, at a relatively low cost, solve these problems. Our airport doesr need to be four miles from the city center. Modern rapid transit systems will eliminate this need. Our airport shouldnt be when we located in an area that is often can place it in an area where this problem seldom exists. If a cool examination of the financial facts wiU produce the results you predict, then it seems safe to predict that bonds for a more modern and more efficient facility could be retired in the same way. Try Price Guidelines The national administration is not yet prepared to call for guidelines to help slow inflation. voluntary wage-pric- e Thats the word out of Washington as the Presidents Council of Economic Advisers prepares to issue this week its alert pinpointing some of the latest second sources of price rises. major Its too bad the administration isnt prepared to escalate the war on inflation. Its too bad because, judging from the election returns, Americans arent satisfied that the steps taken so far against inflation have been as effective as they should be; because its an unavoidable fact of life that inflation can be curbed only if wages and prices increase no more than productivity does, as contemplated by the guidelines; and because voluntary guidelines have worked before in keeping the economy from overheating. Just as many motorists will not automatically follow sensible ways of driving unless there are some traffic rules or signs, business firms and unions cannot be expected to exercise needed price and wage restraint without some indication that others will be asked to do the same in the context of some sort of ground rules that spell out the public interest. This point was made only today by the Research and Policy Committee of the Committee for Economic Development as it voiced a strong plea ior a return of voluntary wage-pric- e guidelines along with some sensible recommendations for implementing the guidelines. g The functions of the new Inflation Alert system should in appropriate cases be used, the committee urged, to highlight important prospective wage and price developments rather than being solely directed at decisions that have already been taken. The Presidents new National Commission on Productivity should be assigned the task of developing broad norms of wage and price behavior that appropriate would give some guidance to business and labor groups which may' be affected by Inflation Alerts. commission should be authorised to publicize reon of wage and price behavior by individual instances ports uniohs or companies that deviate substantially from the established norms. Theres no getting around the fact that when one union wins' an exorbitant contract settlement, other unions feel compelled to seek similar benefits via similar tactics . . . that theres a sharp limit to the higher wages and fringe benefits that industry can grant without passing the higher costs along to the consumer . . . and that inflation alerts ought to be issued not just for labor and management but also for government at all levels, since government spending contributes to inflation in a big way. By no stretch of the imagination does this mean labor must forget about getting ahead economically. Americas productivity is increasing all the time, permitting wages to advance accordingly. Only when wages and prices increase and faster than productivity do they become inflationary then nobody really gains. Without voluntary guidelines, there may be no effective way to control inflation except mandatory wage and price controls, wbch would impair the efficiency and freedom of the economy. The choice should be clear. . anti-inflati- fact-findin- , d School Production Must Improve A. Freeman, formerly the top White House man on education, delivered himself of a first-rat- e speech in Oakland a few weeks ago. His broad theme was the necessity, as he sees it, to fix Roger new goals of pro- ductivity in our school system, and to make schoolmen accountable for the students they turn out. These things need to be said repeatedly, emphatically and loudly, until they begin to have a positive effect upon the parents, teachers and school board members who can spell cut reasoned demands and make them stick. ry v-T- he Air Ecology Reports Conservationists who thought they had obtained a sharp new sword to protect the environment have found it to be no more effective than a butter knife. Under the 1969 Environmental Policy Act, the ecological consequences of federal proposals are supposed to be made available to the President, to his Council of Environmental Quality, and to the public. The catch is that the law doesnt impact appraisals are to specify when these environmental be made public. As a result, the appraisals often arent released until after which means the the agency involved has made a decision on decision. can no influence have or the little public Happily, both the Presidents council and the Senate Interior Committee have promised a review of this policy, which certainly ought to be changed. Granted that too much public participation can slow action on needed projects. But that danger doesnt seem nearly as great as the danger that the public will be frozen out of decisions affecting its vital interests, or that the ecological findings will become mere formalities designed to justify predetermined conclusions instead of influencing them to help protect the. environment. Take back the butter knife, please, and replace it with a sword. Freeman would be reckoned a conservative in the world of education, but the dissatisfaction that he voiced in his talk to California elementary administrators is shared by liberals as well. John Lindsay, for example, complained last year that New Yorks schools are the most lushly funded in the nation, with ratio in the land, the lowest teacher-pupi- l but the management cf the thing is such that we just dont get the Portugal could take the first meaningful steps in bringing that country into the 20th Century when its National Assem- d reform legislably meets Wednesday to consider tion. But if the wheels of justice grind slowly, the reform movement in Portugal may be even slower. d dictator of 40 years, Dr. Antonio de Portugals Oliveira Salazar, died last July after he was forced out of the premiership by a stroke in 1968. But his successor, Dr. Marcello Caetano, has shown no great desire to change the system which has kept his small country in a strait jacket since 1928. So far, Caetano has eased press censorship slightly. He has curbed the political police somewhat more than b;s predecessor. Portugal also is reported turning toward a more vigorous economic policy to improve living standards, considered among the lowest in Europe. But all these measures are only slight thaws of Salazars longstanding policies. According to one opponent of the regime, they are meant merely as a safety valve for a society that remains basically closed. It may, however, take a man more adroit than Senor Caetano to determine just how far the safety valve should be opened without bringing on a national explosion. badly-neede- The industrial analogy is valid. A vast amount of money, textbooks, capital investment and special equipment is poured into one end cf the school system; students emerge at the other. At the end of twelve years, in the normal school high experience, they have learned something. Yet all too often, the system fails. Why is this so? Freemans answer is to challenge some of the basic assumptions beloved by professional educators, that an answer lies in higher teacher salaries, permitting the employment of qualified specialists, who will preside over classrooms. This is the conventional wisdom for treating disadvantaged children of the ghettos. But the conventional wisdom may not be so wise. Neil Sullivan, former superintendent of schools in Berkeley, told a Senate committee last May his experiWe ence in compensatory education: went the whole route, lowered class size, remedial reading teachers, provided bought the machines, did those things we thought were right. The results after two and a half or three years clearly indicated that not only did the child in the inner ever-small- By SYDNEY Attending the premiere of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyns first play, a few days after he had won the Nobel Prize for literature this fall, I wondered if the people who pride themselves on being the silent majority have any idea what it costs to speak up and speak out in a hostile environment. City not improve, he had retrogressed. Where do we go from here? If the conventional wisdom is no good, perhaps answers can be found in unconventional wisdom. That is part of Freemans appeal: A far greater variety of instructional methods could be tested by free market methods If parents were given a choice in the type of school to which they want to send their children. The virtual monopoly of public education could be remedied by a voucher pl?n. Freeman wants to see it fairly tried. Such an experiment in tuition grants has been proposed repeatedly at Sacramento, but Californias powerful teachers lobby has killed the bill every time The hour will come for this idea. Califor-nischool system is tire largest in trie nation, but thousands of parents, I am told, are not happy with They manifested this unhappiness by denying Max as it Rafferty a third term as superintendent of public instruction. Raffertys successor, Wilson Riles, may have caught the word. His campaign pledge was to seek new ways to hold schools accountable ior their academic performance. This kind of talk makes teachers nervous, which is too bad, but many teachers are dissatisfied too. On the academic assembly lines, something has to give; and it has to give soon. It nearly cost Solzhenitsyn his life, and may still. For his criticisms of the stupid brutalities, repressions and injustices of the long Stalin egime in Russia, he spent 11 years in prison, work-camand exile from his beloved country. He has been expelled from the National Russian Writers Union, and officially declared to be an unperson. There is some doubt that the Communist authorities will permit him to go to Sweden next month to receive the award. And none of his work has been published in Russia. How many of us would have the courage to speak and write as he has, when the punishment is so swift, severe, and J. HARRIS certain? I am not at aU sure I would; perhaps I would find some way to compromise with the tyranny of the state, to the lesser rationalize it as somehow evil. This is what the silent majority has done in Russia, what it did in Nazi Germany, what it has always done when faced with state power. It is what the majority of American colonists did before our Revolution. in mind that throughout history it has not been the ordinary man who took a militant position against despotism; it has always been the intellectual, the creative person, the academician, the person who values the works of the mind and spirit. If we look at contemporary Russia, we see it is the poets and the students, the professors and the intellectuals who are the only voices raised against the repression of thought, speech and action It is worth keeping in the Soviet Union. Everybody else is just doing his job." In Germany, it was the great middle-classe- s who went along with Hitler, who felt it was patriotic to support Germanys expansionist policies, who refused to believe the atrocities on every side. They supported their government, and thought they were being good citizens when they were being bad men. What worries me about Vice President Agnews intemperate attacks on dissenters is not that he disagrees with them, but that he apparently thinks they have no right to disagree with him. It is not that he opposes their view of the he has a right and a duty to state but that he seems to think oppose it we would all be better off if they, too, were silent. But a silent majority must be balanced by a clamorous minority, or the whole democratic process is doomed. What Mr. Agnew thinks cf as unity is what Mr. Solzhenitsyn knows as moral cowardice. Foot Fashions Give Her No Boot I have no idea of the circumference of my legs. I only know they are bigger than a water glass, smaller than a furnace duct and impossible to fit into h new the knee-lengt- boots. is p; ubably my own sensitivi- It ty, but I always imagine salesmen boot are the They are serving time in this department only because their father, who owns the store, wants to keep them humble. I would like a pair of boots, I said to a salesman. He scrutinized me closely, squinted his eyes and appeared with a pair of Arctic boots that laced up to the knee. No, you dont understand, I said. I dont want to build a snowman. I want a ERMA BOMBECK pair of dressy boots to wear with wools and jumpers. With detachment, he went over to a display table and returned with a boot so long and narrow it had an echo. There was only one pair of legs in the world s. that would fit into that boot: Phyllis (As a friend of mine once remarked on Phyllis legs: The last time I saw legs that size they had a message attached to them.) Wheres the zipper? ' 1 askeu. There is no zipper, he yawned. h Theyre the new pinions. He reached in to take out the tissue ppper and his arm got stuck. Perhaps one with a zipper, I sugDil-ler- easy-stretc- gested. He placed the zippered boot on my foot and bpgan to ease the zipper all the way up to my ankle bone. Then it stopped. Thanks anyway," I said, but . . No, no, he insisted. Itll work. Just twist your foot a little and bear down. A crowd began to form, Really," I said, Its no use. The boot is too . . . We can do it, he insisted. His pocket comb fall out and he ignored it The blood rushed to his head and I feared for a nosebleed. Maybe if you took off those heavy hose. My nylons? I gasped. Look, Lady, he shouted forcing the zipper, Suck in! Suck in! My leg throbbed. I spoke softly. I appreciate what you are trying to do, but bring me that pair over on the cen- ter table. Are you sure thoe are what you want? he asked. Theyll do fine, I said. I slipped white boot easily into the ankle-lengtwith a stencil of Cinderella and a castle on the side. I may not be a fashion plate, but Ill be a smash at Show and Tell. h iron-fiste- I 1 the small society bv Brickman LOYD 816 Russ Author Knows Free Speech Cost lowest in seniority. Rumbles In Portugal? JAMES J. KILPATRICK -F- THOMPSON Gladiola St. Build Hospital , Too I was reading on the editorial page why voters should support the Airport Bond. I was thinking that if there were to be larger airplanes coming in to land, wouldnt it be wise if they would raise more funds and put up a hospital right on the airport? Of course, I realize there are not enough doctors now to go around, but if an airplane came in with 400 passengers and crashed, and only 200 got hurt, where would they put them? --NEIL L. GARDNER West Jordan Cuba: In Castro's Fist It is important that the American people know the tmth about actual conditions in Communist Cuba. Fidel Castros sister, Juanita Castro, appeared before the House Committee on Activities (now the Committee on Internal Security) after she had broken her ties with the Castro regime and defected from Cuba. Miss Castros testimony has been published by the U.S. Government Printing Office, and the synFidels feelings for this opsis states in part: country (the United States) in particular cannot even be imagined by Americans. His intention, his obsession to destroy this country is one of his main Miss Castro told the interest and objectives, Activities on June 11, Committee on 1965. The witness, who fled her homeland in June, 1964, testified that Castro views the United States as the principal obstacle to his plans to take over all of Latin America. In the area of Cuba's foreign affairs, she said that Castro financed the trips to Cuba of the New d Student Committee for Travel to York Cuba in order to provide American propagandists who would return home and parrot the watchwords (i.e., party line) of Cuban Communists. Red Cuba has developed several schools for indoctrination and guerrilla warfare activities in Latin America. Students come from all over Latin America and, upon completing their courses, return home to conspire against and subvert their own governments. In addition to supplying Communist revolutionaries in this hemisphere by means of its fishing vessels are utilized to fleet, Cubas ocean-goinsend aid to the Viet Cong, as well as to Chinese and African Communists, Miss Castro stated. City-base- g -A- LICE HATCHETT Syracuse, N.Y. Thanksgiving Challenge Thanksgiving, 1963, was a memorable occasion. days earlier President John F. Kennedy was murdered. At Thanksgiving Day Mass the priest asked us to be more thankful ior the many wonderful things we have and that if we werent more grateful that, like the loss of the President, we would experience other losses. Since that day a terrible war in Vietnam has embroiled the U.S.; Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and four students at Kent State were shot; racial riots and campus demonstrations have planes have been hijacked. Pollution has worsened, crime has increased, and more youth have turned to drugs. Thanksgiving Day should be set aside to express thanks to God, each in his ov.n way, for what we have and for what we are. Very few of us go to bed hungry each night; we have nice clothes, a decent car, a television set. More importantly, we while have good health; we can see, hear, walk a neighbor cant. Are we not more fortunate than the GI in rice paddies, the auto accident victim in the hospital, the homeless people of East Pakistan? Those words of that priest, during those dark hours of November, 1963, suddenly have become more meaningful. Can we live up to his challenge? Only six SABOL 221 So. 12th E. Facts On 'San pitch Saga ' With reference to your item captioned Sanpitch Deseret News, Nov. 18, Saga Now Available, please set the record straight in some particulars. The Saga of the Sanpitch, Volume II, is a publication containing winning entries from the 1970 Historical Writing Contest, sponsored by the Manti Region of the LDS Church, comprising the four Stakes of Sanpete County. In 1969, Volume I was sponsored by Sanpete South Stake. Two printings of Volume I have been sold out. However, a limited number of Volume H is still available in each of the four stakes. Mrs, Despain is our enthusiastic Historical Writing Contest representative from Gunnison Stake. Other stake chairmen are Miss Jessie Oluroyd, Fountain Green, Mergfii Stake; Stanley Anderson, Spring City, Sanpete North Stake; Mrs. Eleanor Madsen and Mrs. Linnie Findlay, Ephraim, Sanpete South Stake. Additional committee members who have assisted with the contest are: Ross P. Findlay, Ephraim; Mrs. Leona F. Wintch and Mrs. Norma WarJass, Manti, and Vernile Shelley, Mt. Pleasant. It might also be interesting to note that all money costs incident to the contest, including cash prizes, printing and publication, copyright, postage, vo been covered from the sale of the boohs pin entries. Much of the containing the actual work of the contest and publishing has been done by volunteers. MRS. ROSS P. FINDLAY Contest chairman Ephraim prize-winnin- g f |