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Show nthoiiv fl)r Salt fake Srilnuu First Section Wednesday Morning, March Page 15, 197H -- Tel Aviv Attack To Hall Peace? - U.S. Impact Aid to Schools Should Reflect 1978 Facts aid funds. Among other would reduce or eliminate he things, to payments districts that do not have large concentrations of eligible children. Payments would be eliminated for children whose parents work outside the county in which the school district is located. says Rep. Gunn McKay, this would work a hardship on Utah school districts next door to federal installations such as Hill AFB which happen to be in another county. Rep. McKay is correct. Ixiss of federal funds that have been pouring in for years will hurt districts that have come to depend on them despite the fact the conditions that once made federal impact aid advisable may no longer exist. It would be interesting to know how many Hill AFB employees who live in Morgan County, for instance, own homes there or have lived there for years and no longer are part of a federal impact that once worked a hardship on local facilities. No doubt justification for some impact aid remains almost 30 years after the first assistance was authorized. But the criteria for receiving it should be the degree of hardship imposed by the impact, not hardship caused by withdrawal of money a district no longer deserves. When the Lanham Act was passed in 1940 there was an obvious need for federal aid to local communities whose populations were swollen by After the deaths, the fear, the heartsickness, terror does its ultimate damage: to the hope of peace. That will almost certainly be true of the savagery just carried out by Palestinian terrorists in Israel. For the attack was shrewdly, cruelly timed to disrupt a crucial moment in the search for peace in the impact inspired defense installa- federally tions. New York Times Service BOSTON By 1950 this type aid was extended to schools on the basis of the number of students whose enrollments were to a nearby federal installation. Later, stugovernment dents living in federally subsidized housing were included in the aid formula. Impact aid to schools now is provided 4,350 local school districts and affects virtually every Congressmans home town school system. Despite its popularity with local school boards and members of Congress, impact aid has largely outlived d the pressures that figured in its creation. Many of the federal workers who may have once resided on federal property or rented in nearby towns own houses and pay taxes in those communities now. And even where large numbers of federal workers still require rental housing, the school districts in which they rent have had years to adjust to the new realities. Like every president since Harry Truman, economy minded Jimmy Carter promised to try and cut back attributable war-impose- East. Israel and her friends were just at the point, it seemed, of grappling Middle with some of the hard questions posed by Pres- Mike Ko ko Even Parks Softball Tosses Political Cim c in Chicago Chicago CHICAGO Sun-Time- s EVen in Chicago, certain things should be above official graft and corruption. We assume that highways and airport concessions, assessments and racetrack dates are How to Start a Water Fight It goes by the rather ponderous name dendrochronology and it might be the means of upsetting some highly cherished ideas and practices concerning water use and allocation in the southwestern United States. Dendrochronology is, roughly defined, the scientific study of tree rings and interpreting what has happened to the trees and, in turn, determining what the weather was like. Trees have been called living weather stations. All trees annual rings vary in width depending on the amount of water available to them during a growing season and most trees form one ring a year. In dry years the rings are narrow and wide in wet seasons. This Morse code that radiates around the tree holds a staggering amount of information about water cycles. Also the reading of the rings is extremely accurate. As Dr. Bryant Bannister, director of the Laboratory for Tree-RinResearch at the Tucson campus of the University of Arizona, explains : If you start with living trees, you know the calendar date of the outside ring because you collected it yourself and it is always the product of the last growing season. Then you can assign calendar-yea- r dates to all the rings. to us start with a modem It allows the inner rings tree and to cross-dat- e of that sample with the outer rings of a sample from an old dead tree. g Working in such fashion have been able to produce information on past patterns of precipitation, temperature and atmospheric pressure, along with producing maps showing these patterns across the United States by seasons for each year since 1600. Some scientists are on the brink, but just on the brink, of saying drought cycles are predictable, because they have identified past periods of drought in the western United States by studying tree rings. While no reputable student of tree rings is ready to say when the next drought is due, one study shows the Colorado River's long-teraverage flow is significantly less than the amount of water apportioned among the seven basin states by the histone 1922 Colorado River Compact, the dendro-chronologis- ts m legal instrument that has undergirded much of the water litigation and planning for more than a half century in Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, California, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona, as well as Mexico in later years. Dr. Charles Stockton, also of the Research Laboratory, has reconstructed the Colorado Rivers flow at Lees Ferry, Ariz., back to 1510 data collected in the using tree-rinbasin. His rivers analysis indicates Tree-Rin- g g the rivers average annual flow is rather only 13.5 million acre-feethan the 15 million used for the allocations of water to upper and t, i lower basin states in the 1922 compact. If Dr. Stocktons analysis is accurate, then there is only 90 percent as much water in the Colorado River as the 1922 planners thought there was. that portends renewed, even more bitter, conflicts between the basin states than existed before the compact was drawn. The easy solution would be to simply reduce each states allocation by 10 percent. But that overlooks the fact, for example, that California is already glancing covetously at the upper basin states still unused allocations, saying it needs more water because its rate of development and growth has greatly exceeded the predictions of 1922. Upper basin states, naturally, dont take kindly to such suggestions. After all, without water they cant grow and they aren't about to surrender, pleasantly and of their willingly, a single acre-fo1922 allocations. Tree-rin- g reading might be fascinating scientific work, but it also is the way certain to kick a sleeping dog. And ot Orbiting Paragraphs These days, Hollywood is a dream factory where the studio bosses are having nightmares. Haldeman says Richard Nixon was insecure. There were even times when he acted as if his conversations were being taped. Theres new evidence of close tis betwepn Hollywood and the Mafia. It turns out that "The Godfather was a documentary. large political pies, with our leaders chomping away at them. But the innocent passoftball? time of Does the city's noblest game have to be a so source of sly profit? Apparently it does. A former Chicago Park District employee has told me he and others got sizable kickbacks out of the park systems huge softball program. Because he fears retaliation, he asked that his identity be withheld, so well call him Tom. P,t he explained how the softball graft works. I hadnt been working in the parks very long, and I didnt know what went on. Then one day a guy came to see me. Hes a park recreation instructor, but hes also a salesman for a trophy company. "He wanted to talk to me about the trophies Id be needing in my park that year. Each Team Pays $240 Fee "You see, every softball team pays a $240 fee to play in a league. The money covers the balls, umpire fees and trophies. "So I told him wed be needing six team trophies and 60 individual trophies. "He takes out his pencil and does some figuring. Then he writes $500 and puts a circle around it and says: Thats what we have left over. "I wasnt sure what he meant by that. But when he started explaining how the system works, I caught on. The $500 was for me, for buying the trophies from him. "He told me that I didnt have to worry no matter what happened, nobody would know. He said the trophy companys records would look legitimate and the receipts would correspond to the catalog price. "But he said Id get a check for $500. And I did. I really didnt feel good about it, but I needed the money. Then I got transferred to another park. I didn't handle the softball program at that one. But the supervisor went on vacation and I was in charge while he was gone. "One day I was opening the mail, and there was this check from the trophy company made out to the supervisor. It was for $1,300. "Now, neither of those parks have really big not like some of the really softball programs big parks. But mine was still good for $500, and the other for $1,300. If thats what we got, the big ones have to be gold mines. Thats why some guys even turn down promotions. Theyd have to go work in Park District headquarters, where they wouldnt handle softball. Theyd lose money if they got promoted. And that one salesman sells trophies to every park that Ive had any contact with. Hes all over the North and Northwest Side. Tom is correct there could be big money involved. About 300 city parks have softball programs. And they buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of trophies each year. One company has a lock on all that business. And the salesmen are all Park District employes themselves. The former employee explained why jackets are never awarded, instead of trophies, although many softball teams would prefer jackets. Jackets Would Be Nicer? When I first went to work for the parks, I told one supervisor that I thought it would be nice if the winning teams got jackets instead of trophies. He almost had a stroke, he got so upset. He said, No, no, no, that wouldint be a good idea at all. Then when the teams had their meeting at the beginning of the season, to go over the rules and other things, some of them said theyd like jackets. Heck, its their money and it should be up to them. But the supervisor made this big speech about how trophies last forever, but jackets get worn out. I mean, he really laid it on. And he talked them out of it. "Back then, I didnt know why he felt that strongly about it. Then I learned. Nobody in the jacket business is giving kickbacks; thats why he loves trophies. Gets Fed Up With Things Tom said he recently quit his job in the park system because he' got fed up with things like trophy graft, being told he had to be a machine precinct worker, if he wanted to get ahead and indifference to the public. When I started, I was idealistic. I thought the park system could be great. But all these guys care about is how much they can stuff in their pockets. Look at that salesman. Hes a Park District employee, but he finds time to work for the trophy company and give people bribes. Thats why Ive always said that this citys official motto should be Ubi Est Mea, which means Wheres Mine? One of these days, were going to find out that the Easter Bunny has to kick back on eggs. (Copyright) Smith H rnijh'tone Saudi Arabia a Poor Wealthy Nation DHAHRAN Saudi Arabia is not a wealthy country. It simply has a prodigious amount of money. There is a difference, and it is an important one. J The monetary statistics are mind boggling. Saudi Arabia earns more than $100 million each day from its oil exports, $40 billion a year. It has foreign currency reserves of at least $27 billion (the second largest in the world after West Germanys), and at the present rate of acumulation will have $100 billion by 1980 This desert kingdom billion and $40 billion in short and mediumterm U.S. Treasury notes (the Treasury, at Saudi insistence, refuses to reveal the exact amount). It has perhaps $60 billion more squirreled away in Europe and in private American investments. It is financing without the slightest financial difficulty a $142 billion development plan that will end in 1980 If it wants more money, it has but to pump more oil. which it can do without significant new capital investment Not since the conqm.dadorcs looted the New World of its gold and brought it home to Spain has there been such a vast transfer of wealth as has occurred since the fourfold increase in the five-yea- r price of oil in 1974. No matter how much the Saudis spend, give away or waste, they are confronted with more money than they can handle. Saudi And yet and this is the paradox Arabia is in many ways a poor country It is poor because only the accident of the pieseiice not the of ml in virtually limitless quantities fecundity of its soil or the inventiveness, industry or vitality of its people has made it rich. While 7,000 Saudis are studying in the United States land a lesser number in Europci, any siate in the Union boasts more doctors, lawyers, engineers, educators, pilots, scientists, technicians or craftsmen. Saudi Arabia lacks adequate roads, railroads, ports, housing, health facilities, schools, iinranes, factories and farms, the things that create wealth rather than me ney. Only one percent of its land is arable. Only 13 percent of its people are literate in their own language. There are only 5 million Saudis and 1.5 million foreigners brought in to do everything from running the airline to collectm an area the size of the ing the garbage United States east of the Mississippi. Life expectancy is about 40 years. Americans train fie Saudi armed forces, they pump the oil Egyptians wait on tables Pakistanis keep the books Filipinos work oil construction jobs. South Koreans clean the airports. If every foreigner departed tomorrow. Saudi Arabia would cease to exist as a modem state. I This is not a cnticism; its simply a fact. There are Saudis of great intellect, accomplishment and industry. But they necessarily are few because the population pool from which they are drawn is smaller than that of Chicago. And they have had a late start as a nation. Saudi Arabia until 1932 was more a congeries of warring nomadic tribes than a country. Until oil was struck in 1938, there was nothing to draw people to Saudi Arabia and much including a particularly dour brand of Islam to keep them away. Yet building (as the Saudis have done) a hospital at a cost of $1 million per bed is not going to eliminate sickness. Constructing a school and three new ones go up each week is easier than educating a people. Buying you cannot fly or maintain properly does not make you a military power. 220-be- Saudi decision-maker- s are doing their best to create a modem state out of an antique society. It is being done at a cost to traditional values that is not small. Nevertheless, the Saudis deserve our understanding, sympathy and support. For the moment, they remain a ioor people with a lot of money. Whether by the time the oil runs out they will have become wealthy in ways that matter no one can say. Three hundred years after the coriquisla dores triumphantly brought home the golden wealth of the Indies to Madrid, Spain was a poverty-riddebackwater of Europe. (Copyright) n ident Sadat's peace initiative. A significant political debate had started inside Israel about settlements, withdrawal from the West Bank, the whole relationship between territory and security. Prime Minister Begin was due in Washington for what American officials hoped would be a first thorough discussion of those basic issues. Now all that is swamped in the emotions aroused by terrorism. For the moment, at least, opinion in Israel will harden against withdrawal from occupied land, against any concessions. There will be pressure for retaliation, swift and brutal, and if that comes, feelings on the Arab side will make the task of peace even more difficult for Sadat and other moderates. Underestimate Feelings It is not for outsiders to underestimate the feelings of those immediately affected by such terrible events, much less to criticize. Who among us, if we were there, could keep a calm eye on larger issues? But sooner or later life and diplomacy must go on, as Israel has shown under similar grim circumstances in the past. In May 1974 when Secretary of State Kissinger was making a protracted shuttle effort to separate Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights, terrorists seized a school in Maalot and 20 children were killed. The tragedy stopped the negotiations, but only briefly. Two weeks later a disengagement agreement was signed. So there is no calousness in trying to keep the basic issues of peace in the Middle East in focus even as the cruel incident north of Tel Aviv has its intended effect. Interruption must not become an end to the whole process set in motion last November by Sadat. Peace Too Risky One real danger is that some in Israel, and among her friends, may be driven by this incident to think of negotiation and peace itself as too risky. One can imagine the arguments: This shows that Arabs cannot be trusted; we dare not give up territory ; w'e are surrounded by hostility. Such views would be understandable, but I think they would be wrong dangerously wrong. The terrorist incident in fact shows how desperately important it is for Israel to break the front of Arab hostility against her. Sadat has offered the chance. If it is lost now, that would truly be a disaster for Israel. There is a real possibility that Sadat, or a successor, would reorient Egyptian policy toward war. The Saudis would surely turn back from their beginning gestures toward acceptance of Israel. The Arab irreconcilables would flourish. Nor, logically, does the attack north of Tel Aviv suggest that Israel would gain security by holding on to occupied territory. Those terrorists came not from the West Bank but from the sea. Wh;.t they did could be done in any modern state. Secret Approval an alien army engenders by Occupation hostility. That is human nature, and it is not suspended by economic or other advantages Israel has brought the West Bank. According to those familiar with the area, a good many West Bank Palestinians must secretly approve the terrorist attack as an assertion of their cause: a terrible fact, if true, but one not to be ignored. The Palestinian question was achingly difficult before, and it has been made more difficult. The claim of responsibility for this terrorist incident by Fatah, a central element in the coalition making up the Palestine Liberation Organization, seems to indicate a tumaway from the course of political action favored by some leading figures in the PLO recently. The shift is a blow to those of us who saw hopes of moderation in the PLO. But the difficulty of the Palestinian problem cannot justify avoiding it. To the contrary, this incident shows the danger of letting rancor a desperation that build into desperation threatens to frustrate the forces of moderation in the whole Arab world. It is even harder now to see how Sadat can make any deal that does not at a minimum let the Palestinians, as he and President Carter said at Aswan, participate in the determination of their own future. Delicate Responsibility It will fall on Carter and other Americans to keep these things in mind at a painful and delicate time, and in due course to say them to Begin. It is a delicate responsibility. But the alternative may be a return to the cycle of terrorism, retaliation and war. Life is risky for Israel at best. The miestion is where the balance of safety lies, and the true answer is with peace. To think otherwise is to let the terrorists win. (Copyright) i |
