Polk County Enterprise (Livingston, Tex.), Vol. 99, No. 12, Ed. 1 Sunday, February 8, 1981 Page: 4 of 20
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KA.Vrii^ 616
, SUNDAY FEBRUARY 1,1981
state against
a majority, are sur-
s calamities and are In-
in the freedom and
land, they have
building a modern
seemingly insurmountable
Nothing has come easily for the Israelis, who
have known little but struggle and sacrifice since
the founding of tbeir modern little nation in 1947.
But Israel perhaps has experienced no time of
troubles to compare with the intractable,
And, un-
threat of
in, the Israelis are
recrimina-
compare
discouraging problems now
fortunately,
without
wcS^Sjnmlves with
ticns and animosities.
Israel’s annual inflation rate of more than 130
percent is the highest in the world. The annual in-
XglgL A ‘
inexation. To keep from losing money, stores and
businesses are constantly changing their prices
upward. Every three months, employers must
add 90 percent of the last quarter’s inflation to
their worker’s wages. Because of enormous
domestic and foreign borrowings, Israel must
spend a crippling 30 percent of its gross national
product on interest and repayment of loans.
Meanwhile, Israel is increasingly isolated in the
international community, being opposed at every
turn by the Arabs, other Islamic nations and the
Communist bloc- and being cold shouldered by na-
tions everywhere intimidated by Arab oil
pressures. Moreoever, the occupied West Bank
with its nearly 1 million Palestinian inhabitants
remains a roadblock to peace on the one hand and
a menace to Israel’s survival on the other.
Prime Minister Menachem Begin, having sur-
vived numerous crises, is being pulled down by
domestic economic stresses he has been unable to
control. His finance minister, Yigael Hurvitz,
resigned recently - the sixth defection from the
Begin cabinet since it was seated in June 1977.
Hurvitz left after the cabinet made concessions to
the nation’s teachers, who are demanding pay in-
creases promised by a government commission
last year. He said the treasury couldn’t afford the
promised raise.
Ike Hurvitz departure leaves Begin’s govem-
ment with 58 seats at most in the 120-member
Knesset. This means the prime minister could
receive a no-confidence vote at any time and be
forced to call fofrjtetiouhl elections in May or June
instead of waiting until the end of his term in
November. Because two Begin cabinet members
have been charged with corruption, early elec-
tions are thought to favor an even more sweeping
victory by the Labor party led by Shimon Peres
than would be probable in November, when the
odor of scandal might have dissipated.
Thus, the chances are good that Israel will have
a new government to undertake fresh initiatives
with the newly installed Reagan administration.
This prospect offers a rare element of hope in the
bleak Israeli outlook, because President-elect
Reagan and Secretary of State-designate Alex-
ander Haig have defined an enlarged dimension
for the U.S.-Israeli relationship. They describe
Israel as an indispensable strategic and military
ally in the dangerous Middle East. The Israelis
like this concept, because it is the role they see for
themselves instead of being used as a pawn to
placate their powerful Arab enemies-a policy
they suspect other U.S. administrations have
followed.
Suffice it to say, these are times when Israel
needs even more understanding and support than
usual from the United States, its chief friend.
Havoc
You may have no trouble with five-digit zip
codes or even a seven-digit variety. But those nox-
ious nines being planned by the Postal Service will
play havoc with us all.
That’s the word from W. Ronald Salafia, pro-
fessor of psychology at Fairfield (Conn.) Univer-
sity. He claims we all have a short-term memory
ceiling of seven separate bits of information.
That ceiling was noted by researchers as long
ago as 25 years and has been confirmed in-
numerable times since, according to Salafia.
The short-term or immediate, memory retains
information for only one or two seconds-hardly
long enough to allow you to consult a zip code
directory, close the bode, walk over to your desk
and write the numbers down.
Retention for a longer period requires concen-
tration and rehearsal. If the phone rings or the
baby cries, forget it. About the only sure thing is
to keep a paper and pencil handly and copy the
figures from the directory.
And all that’s just for writing to Aunty Gussie
three times a year. As fra- committing your own
zip to memory, the woods are full of people willing
to teach us h|i to expand our permanent or k
It would seem the woods j
panjandrums who make i
dreaming up prepc 1
State Capital Highlights
Clements to keep game plan
By Lyndell Williams
AUBTIN-Republican Governor Bill
domett, who has often said he sees no
dtfference between numing a large cor-
poration and running state govern-
ment, last week demonstrated he is go-
ing to keep the game-plan to bring unru-
ly Democrats to heel
And he didn’t do a bad Job, either,
deapite indications the Legislature is
getting Its back up at the former oilfield
worker who went on to found one of the
world’s largest oil drilling companies.
In short shrift, Clements backed
dawn the House and Senate on the issue
of an emergency pay raise for state
employees., and he tried to grab the
momentum from Atty. Gen. Mark
White on the issue of racial discrimina-
tion hi Texas universities.
White was Texas' hereo in January
after he flew to Washington and stalled
off punitive federal action for alleged
racial segregation. Following his visit,
the U.S. Department of Education
agreed to a six-month reprieve to allow
Texas to divert more funds to
predominantly black colleges.
Perhaps angered that White had
stolen a political march on him,
Clements declared last week he alone
will control future dealings with the
Education Department, and he fired off
a letter to the Reagan Administration
reiterating that point
Clements apparently was angry at
the success of White’s mission which
saved Texas between 1250 to $300
million in federal funds from being cut
off. Clements views White as a potential
opponent in the 1982 gubernatorial race,
and wanted to reserve negotiating ac-
tion to his own advantage, a source in
the Governor’*! office said
emergency pay raise
last week’s emergency pay raise bill
affected only state employees, but it
was significant as the “opening guns
issue” between the Legislature and
Clements. Clements probably won.
The basic play: Clements had wanted
a 3.4 percent pay hike, and Lt. Gov. Bill •
Hobby countered with a 6.8 percent
figure. Clements settled for a 5.1 per-
cent compromise and vowed to veto a
higher figure.
Nevertheless, the emergency pay
raise bill by Sen. Lloyd Doggett passed
the Senate at 6.8 percent and was sent
to the House. A House Appropriations
Committee amended to 5.1 and sent the
bill to the House floor for debate.
Several attempts failed to jack it
higher, until the House finally agreed to
5 1 but with a $75 floor instead of the
governor-approved $50 floor. II was a
“dare” to veto and the votes to override
were apparently almost enough
(two-thirds) majority).
But the bill was tailored to the Gover-
nor’s wishes in conference committee,
and the conference committee, and the
confrontation never appeared. Even if
Clements had signed the “dare”, he
could have saved face and state money
by postponing the pay raise by a month.
The real losers would have been state
employees who depend only on the
Legislature for a raise, unlike in
private enterprise. As their equivalents
in private enterprise will probably
agree, a $25 point of difference pales
against the vivid background of double-
digit inflation.
AGRICULTURE BILLS
Already introduced this session are
several bills to seek help for Texas
agriculture.
A bill by Rep. Bill Keese,
D-Somerville, would strengthen the
rights of fanners and other landowners
in cases where cities and utility com-
panies use eminent domain laws to ob-
tain land of right-of-way easements.
Keese complains that some 170 types of
governmental bodies have eminent do-
main rights.
Pete Patterson, D-Brookston, has a
bill to keep foreigners from buying
farm and ranchland, and to require pre-
sent alien owners to register their
claims with the state.
Patterson is worried about the huge
amounts of prime farmland taken out of
production, not only by foreigners but
by developers and expanding urban
areas.
State Senator Ray Farabee,
D-Wichita Falls, has authored a bill to
outlaw the state inheritance tax which
often forces persons who inherit family
farms and businesses to sell them to
pay the tax.
A farm bill by an urban legislator,
Sam Hudson, R-Dallas, would give
farm-workers the right to bargain col-
lectively with growers. The bill is being
pushed by the Texas Farm Workers
Union, a group which often makes
below minimum wage. Opponents say
farm produce prices are so low now
that the industry cannot afford a hike in
labor costs.
Prosperity or poverty
Choice still dur own
ifti.
•i i
ob
BY LEWIS H. GANN
Dr. Gann is n Senior Fellow ai the
Hoover institution, Stanford Universi-
ty-
(c.) Public Research, Syndicated,
1981
The rise in the world's oil prices has
thrown the world’s doomsday sayers in-
to a new mood of depression. The
forecasts currently made by many
Western experts would make Cassan-
dra into an optimist. The age of the
consumer-wc are toId--is over;
. technology has come to the end of its
'.-tether; worldwide poverty is in-
escapable; Western civilization faces
breakdown.
The villains held responsible for our
jwedicament are many. They com-
promise the Western consumer who
' needlessly squanders the global oil
reserves by cruising on the freeways
with his girlfirend, or, more respec-
tably, by driving his children to subur-
ban cub scout meetings or ballet
lessons. Another object of public op-
probrium is the Arab oil sheikh, that
stock figure of newspaper cartoons, a
hooked-nosed scoundrel in flowing
robes whose greed results in ever in-
creasing oil prices, and thereby con-
tributes to worldwide inflation and
global poverty.
Oddly enough, the higher a country's
living standards and the lower its
dependence on foreign oil imports, the
greater the pessimism evinced by
many of its leading specialists. The pro-
phets of gloom are most numerous in
the United States and Great Britain;
these are the very Western countries
that are least dependent on oil
shipments from overseas; both are
favored by geography with large
reserves of oil and coal; both can draw
on an impressive reservoir of scientific
and technological skills of the kind
needed to cope with current energy pro-
blems.
Our energy problems are real
enough; so is the present economic
recession. But our existing problems
should be kept in perspective. They do
. not amount to an earth-shattering
catastrophe. The last thirty-five years
have in fact seen an almost incredible
recovery after the devastation of World
War II; during his or her lifetime,
every middle-aged American has
witnessed a phenomenal increase in liv-
ing standards both in the developed and
in many parts at the undeveloped
would have been
to our parents in the
The Western economic miracle was
helped to some degree by new
discoveries of oil. Between 1939 and;
about 1965, Hie industrial world increas-
ingly shifted its supply of energy from
horsepower (still the main power of
locomotion for Hitler’s armies in
Russia during World War II), and from
coal. Oil became the world’s major
source of energy and continued to be
produced in ever larger quantities. Un-
til 1974, oil prices actually declined in
real terms. Thereafter prices increas-
ed, but for all the international
hullabaloo concerning OPEC’s alleged
rapacity, the average American
worker needed less time in 1980 to cam
the cash to buy a gallon of gasoline than
he did in 1950.
This is not to underestimate the pro-
blems occasioned by the recent in-
creases in oil prices for the developed
and, even more so, for the
underdeveloped world. The Gulf War,
by damaging oil production in Iraq and
Iran has done serious harm to the
economies of these two countries and of
the world at large. If the West were cut
off by some sudden stroke from its Mid-
dle Eastern oil supplies, the results
would be catastrophic. Nevertheless,
the part played by OPEC and by the
assumed worldwide shortage of energy
in bringing about the present recession
can easily be overestimated. Ironically,
the two major Western countries with
the lowest economic growth rates arc
the U.S. and Great Britain, the two
powers least dependent on OPEC oil
imports. By contrast, West Germany,
Japan, and Switzerland, none of which
has a single oil well in its territory,
have done better in the economic field
than their English-speaking com-
petitors.
Many of our difficulties are in face of
our own making, not OPEC’s. By con-
trolling the price of natural gas, we
have deliberatley kept down supplies
and caused shortages to develop. Our
policy with regard to oil has been equal-
ly inept, and the Republicans* record in
this respect has been no better than the
Democrats’. In 1975, for instance,
President Ford failed to veto the
Energy Policy qtocTConsevation Act, a
law dubbed by its opponents as the
OPEC Relief Act As a leading scholar
such as Thomas Gale Moore has
pointed out we proceeded to tax our
own producers in this country, using the
proceeds to subsidize imports. Our
policy caused the cost of imported oil to
drop, whereas the cost of American-
produced oil increased. Not suprising-
ly, oil imports rose rapidly in the 1970’s
until they amounted to nearly half of
our total at the beginning of the 1970’s.
What of the future? The outlook is not
as bad as the pessimists assume. As
long as energy was cheap, consumers
had no incentive to save on their heat
and fuel bills. The problem was com-
pounded by political propagandists who
persuaded the credulous that the pro-
blems of energy somehow derived from
the conspiracies of bankers and oil
sheikhs, and that great tankers, filled to
the brim with oil, had been malicious^. ,
hidden off our coasts by the oil com-'\
panics.
As oil and gas prices are fully decon-
trolled, and as prices continue to rise,
consumers will increasingly invest in
smaller cars, in domestic insulation,
and so forth. As Suliman S. Olayan, an
international expert, points out, the
price increases since 1973 have already
occasioned remarkable improvements.
The long-standing dispartiy between oil
prices and prices for other forms of
energy has disappeared. Domestic con-
sumers and industrialists alike have
begun to heed the call for energy con-
servation and a more efficient energy-
use. The development of extensive new
fields in the North Sea, Alaska, and
other parts of the world is under way.
Energy users have increasingly looked
to other forms of energy, including
coal, i\atural gas, synthetic fuels, solar
power, and the like.
If we are determined to deregulate
energy, we shall be able to draw on ade-
quate supplies of traditional fuel for the
rest’of this century and well into the
next. If we expand nuclear power, as
the Soviet Union and its allies are
resolved to do, we unfounded
pessimism boscure our true prospects
for the future. Prosperity or poverty-
the choice is still our own.
POLK COUNTY
ENTERPRISE
ALVIN HOLLEY, PUBLISHER--\
Entered as Second-Class Matter at the Post Office at Livingston,
Texas 77351 under the Act of Congress of March 3,1897.
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Barbara White, Editor
Grace Holman, Family Editor
Beatrice Hall, Special Correspondent
Van Thomas, Sports Editor
Greg Peak, Area News Editor
Brenda Davis, Staff Writer
Susann Walker, Darkroom Tech.
PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT
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Paul Holley, Beamon Goodwin
Composition Personnel
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Greg Dillon
ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT
Linda Dickerson, Ad Manager
Linda Jacobs, Rita Bloodworth
Jimmie Morris
BOOKKEEPING DEPARTMENT
Sne Holley, Manager
Patty Hankerd
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oat of county. $14.88 per year, out of state. Published semi-weekly,
Sunday and Thursday at 588 Tyler SL in Livingston, Texas by the Polk
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White, Barbara. Polk County Enterprise (Livingston, Tex.), Vol. 99, No. 12, Ed. 1 Sunday, February 8, 1981, newspaper, February 8, 1981; Livingston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth781734/m1/4/: accessed July 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Livingston Municipal Library.