Polk County Enterprise (Livingston, Tex.), Vol. 98, No. 39, Ed. 1 Sunday, May 18, 1980 Page: 4 of 22
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PAGE 4A-THF. PO< * COUNTY ENTERPRISE. SUNDAY MAY 12, 1980
Editorials
Sure fire
A sensible handgun control bill has been in-
troduced in the House by Rep. Peter W.Radino,
D-N.J. It will undoubtedly arouse the organized
opposition of the gun lobby, but, in fact, would do
nothing to restrict the legitimate use of firearms
for sell-protection or for sport.
It seems to be the position of the National Rifle
Association to oppose any gun control legislation
or regulation, no matter how mild, on the theory
that one step can lead to another with the end
result being dangerous interference with
Americans’ right to bear arms.
But it can be argued that sensible regulation,
like Rodino’s proposal, should be enacted in order
to undercut support for more expensive and
restrictive gun control action.
No law-abiding citizen has any need for im-
mediate purchase of an easily concealed, cheap
“Saturday night special” or for the purchase of
handguns in wholesale lots. Such weapons, cheap-
ly manufactured and sometimes sold in large
numbers often find their way from states with tax
firearms laws to metropolitan areas where they
are used for criminal purposes.
More than 8,000 Americans lost their lives last
year as handgun victims.
The measure would create a federal commis-
sion to decide which weapons are to be declared
easily concealed. The manufacture, importation
and sale of such weapons would be banned
outright.
Other handguns would be subject to a 21-day
waiting period before purchase to enable dealers
to verify the buyer is 21 years old, and has no
record of criminality, mental illness or drug
abuse.
A dealer would be allowed to sell no more than
three handguns a year to any person and records
of handgun sales would have to be kept for 10
years.
These are not puntitive provisions. They might
not reduce the number of handgun deaths by
much. Guns would still be stolen and bootlegged.
Criminals still would find a way to get guns. But it
would not be so easy as it is now. And there might
not be so much pressure to register all firearms.
That is why we believe the gun lobby should sup-
port the Rodino measure.
Leaning
I
Ever since Sandinista revolutionaries over-
threw the regime of Anastasio Somoza last year,
foreign observers have been watching Nicaragua
anxiously for signs of which way the new govern-
ment was leaning - left toward the Marxist faction
withing the Sandinistas or toward the pluralistic
politics of social democrats who also opposed
Somoza.
Tragically, recent events warn that Nicaragua
is sliding toward a Marxist future.
Recently, the two moderates serving on
Nicaragua’s five member ruling junta resigned in
protest over a transparent power grab by San-
dinista radicals. Alfonso Robelo, an American
educated businessman and longtime foe of
Somoza, offered a succinct explanation of his
resignation: “We just got rid of one dictatorship
and the poeple don’t want another one..”
The second junta member to resign, Violeta
Barrios de Chamorro, cited “ill-health” but warn-
ed privately of the junta’s increasingly obvious
Marxist tilt.Chamorro, whose anti-Somoza hus-
band was asassinated by unkown gunmen in
January 1978, is the publisher of La Prensa,
Nicaragua’s only independent newspaper.
Ominously, La Prensa was shut down recently by
its Sandinista-controlled labor union.
But the immediate cause of both resignations
was the Sandinista plan to pack the proposed
Council of State with radicals sympathetic to the
junta’s Marxist drift. Moderates and social
democrats have been given only token represen-
tation on the council to be formed later this
month.
The Sandinistas already control Nicaragua’s
police, public schools, banks, insurance com-
panies, mining industry, and that half of the coun-
try’s farmlands and commerichl enterprises
previously owned by Somoza and his relatives.
Hie Sandinistas are also organizing Nicaragua’s
new army and, recently, they nationalized all
private schools.
Finally, the junta has pushed back the tentative
date for national parliamentary elections to “1983
or 1984.”
These are hardly the actions of men interested
in representative government.
The Carter administration continues to support
congressional passage of a $75 million aid
package intended to help Nicaragua’s economy
recover from the destruction of last year’s
fighting between Sandinistas and Somoza’s na-
tional guard. Significantly, Nicaragua’s business
community insists the aid is essential if what is
left of the private sector is to be salvaged.
State Capitol Highlights
Reagan- Clements duo possibl
AUSTIN-Govemor Bill Gements en-
dorsed Ronald Reagan for president
following Reagan’s Texas primary vic-
tory over Texas George Bush; thus fuel-
ing speculation that Gements may get
the tap for vice president this summer.
A Reagan-Clements ticket would go a
long way in bringing Bush’s supporters
to the polls in November. Gements has
played the peacemaker between the
Reagan and Bush factions in Texas.
Illinois Sen. John Anderson, the man
who might run for president as an In-
dependent, sent his team to Texas last
week to gather over 40,000 signatures
needed to get his name on the Texas
ballot.
Anderson has not shown enough
strength in the primaries to indicated
he can actually win the presidency, and
his candidacy is generally considered
by voters as a politically heathy alter-
native to Reagan and Jimmy Carter.
The big question is: will he siphon off
more voters from President Carter or
from Reagan? Can he muster enough
support to throw the election into the
U.S. House of Representatives?
Texas Attorney General Mark White
is expected to rule soon whether voters
in the May primary are eligible to sign
Anderson’s petition. Both Secretary of
State George W. Stroke, a Republican,
and Gary Mauro, executive director of
the Texas Democratic Party, claim
their primary voters are ineligible.
Another Speaker Candidate
Goliad State Rep. Tim Von Dohlen
held a press conference last week to say
he is running for House Speaker next
January, if Bill Clayton has to step
down because of his Brilab woes.
Von Dohlen, a Clayton team member
of high standing, promised he would not
use his position as chairman of the
redistricting committee to win votes in
the speaker’s race.
Already in the race are Reps. Gib
Lewis of Fort Worth, John Bryant of
Dallas. Bill Carawav of Houston, Lynn
Nabors of Brownwood, Bennie Brock of
New Braufnfels, and Wayne Peveto of
Orange.
Clayton Still Hopeful
Clayton told reporters he had an-
ticipated the candidacies of his former
team players, but that he expects to be
cleared of the Brilab scandal and re-
elected to a fourth term as speaker.
Clayton is being investigated for
allegedly accepting a bribe in connec-
ton with securing a state insurance con-
tract.
The federal grand jury will
reconvene in mid-June to avoid muddy-
ing the waters of the run-off election,
and prosecutors expect then to win an
indictment against Clayton, to the
dismay of other legislators who fear it
will prompt voters to "clean house” by
voting out all incumbents.
Thus, from the moment of his indict-
ment, Clayton will become a political
liability to all legislators, and he must
I ON PAYS TELL
WHEN TjjjeVWD K
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act speedily to dear himself of^ any
c CopWy N«wi S«rvtc«
charges. Clayton, well aware __
predicament, told reporters last week
he will step down if be isn’t cleared by
next September.
Brown, Kubiak and Gasohel
Agriculture Commissioner Reagan
Brown took a planeload of reporters to
visit Rockdale Rep. Dan Kubiak and
view his hometown alcohol fuel plant
Kubiak and former Green Bay Packer
Lee Roy Caffey built the plant after
Gov. Gements vetoed funds last session
for an alcohol fuel pilot plant
Brown praised Kubiak for acquiring
Texas’ first two alcohol fuel plants in
his legislative distict (the other is in
Marlin).
Kubiak said he would like to see con-
trol over gasohol permits shifted to the
agriculture commissioner’s office. A
leading proponent of gasohol, Kubiak
promised reporters he would sell his in-
terest in the Rockdale plant before the
next session in order to avoid any con-
flict of interest. He built the plant to
keep his promise to legislators who
voted for gasohol, he said.
Attorney General Opinions
Mark White ruled last week the Texas
Department of Health cannot buy sup-
plies from a business owned by a
member of the state board of health,
which oversees the department
The issue was raised by purchases
which the department’s crippled
children’s division made from board
member Bill Edwards, a Galveston
pharmacist and medical supply com-
pany owner. Records show some $28,000
in purchases over the last three years.
White also ruled that information
gathered by the governor regarding
potential nominies for public office is
not per se excepted by the Texas Open
Records Act. Documents containing
derogatory, largely unverified informa-
tion are not required to be revealed.
Brilab Footnote
The man who allegedly gave Speaker
Clayton $5,000 to secure an insurance
contract has been sentenced to two
years in prison for a $5.5 million swin-
dle of union funds. Joseph Hauser
pleaded guilty to the charges unrelated
to Brilab. He was, however, the FBI’s
chief undercover informant in its
Brilab investigation of politics and
labor.
Big business bad business?
By
Richard L. Lesher
Richard L. Lesher has been Presi-
dent and Chief Operating Officer of the
Chamber of Commerce of the United
States since 1975.
(c) Public Research, Syndicated,
1980.
During the four fiscal years,
1977-1981, federal spending will have
soared from $400 billion to $600 billion.
That means the federal budget will
have grown at least half again as much
during th so four years, as it did during
all the previous 188! To “balance” this
enormous budget the government now
proposes to combine the tiniest of spen-
ding reductions-about $4 billion-with
the most punishing tax increase in
American peacetime history-close to
$100 billion.
There is one group, however, which
claims to speak for “America,” but
which is concerned not with April 15th
but with April 17th.
Led by Ralph Nader, these in-
dividuals don’t have a lot of time to
commiserate with Americans who are
being hurt by government’s runaway
spending, taxation and regulation. In-
stead, tn< y have been feverishly work-
ing to stage an antibusiness day for
April 17th, to convince America that the
business community should be blamed
for ever) national ill from chronic infla-
tion, to ring around the collar and sore
feet. In their eyes it is not big govern-
ment, but big business that Americans
ought to resent.
Is business really running America?
Does business really have all the
power? Well, ask yourself this: If you
were running America would you..
-Allow Ralph Nader to make horrible
charges, pillory your reputation, and
call you nasty names without restraint?
-Allow environmentalists to block
your construction projects with inter-
minable delays?
Allow politicians to run for office
against you, and then, (in the case of
the energy industry) slap hundreds of
billions of dollars in taxes on you to
“protect'’ consumers from your
power?
-Submit meekly to endless investiga-
tions by the FTC, the SEC, the IRS, etc?
-Listen to educators run down the
record of capitalism, and actively push
for socialism?
-Capitulate time after time to the
demands of labor unions?
Watch yourself being attacked across
the front pages of many newspapers, on
television news and on entertainment
shows, while realizing your own
remarks often have been buried or
simply ignored?
Come now, would you really put up
with all that if you were running
America?
What most people tend to forget is
this: Th< self-appointed critics who
repeatedly berate “Big Business” for
its alledgedly threatening power never
point out that their very freedom to set
up the straw man contradicts their ma-
jor premise.
Compare, for example, what happens
to the critics of business in our country
with what happens to the critics of the
establishment in a totalitarian state:
Our critics create organizations, ap-
pear on interview shows and grow
wealthy from the royalities on their
books. The critics of a totalitarian
regime tend to disappear.
But tin n those who organized their
anti-business day have never been ter-
ribly fond of the American enterprise
system.Encouraging people to succeed,
to live their own dreams, and should
they prefer, to swim against the tide-
that is not the kind of society these peo-
ple want. Take a look at the cream of
the crop.
Ralph Nader admires China's ability
to marshnll massive numbers of people
in a common cause. He has observed:
“Compared to China, we can’t get
anything done..” and, “I'll tell you what
the real problem is. We ask people to
think instead of asking them to believe.
And history has always gone to those
who belit vc.”
Ralph is backed up by some real
believers. Consider Barry Commoner,
an ecologist known for his love of solar
power. Less well-known, perhaps, are
his political-economic views. In his
book, the Poverty of Power, he wrote:
“Economists and other students of
capitalism will recognize that the basic
ideas I have discussed are among those
first put forward by Karl Marx.
“All this suggests that it may be time
to view the faults of the United States
economic system from a vantage point
of alternatives-to debate the relative
merits of capitalism and socialism.”
For sound practical advice, the group
can turn to John Kenneth Galbraith, a
socialist who stated that the best solu-
tion for New York’s financial problems
was simply to provide the city with
more money.
But for real intellectual clout, the
anti-business coalition can turn to their
clean-up hitter, labor leader William
Winpisinger, who says: “I am convinc-
ed the only way organized labor can
repeal the armies of right-wing
radicalism is by fighting for a total
redistribution of this nation’s
wealth..by completely revamping and
reorganizing the total tax system.”
Who, pray tell, are these right-wing
radicals? Presumably, anyone silly
enough to believe government might be
too big..and too expensive.
Ralph and his gang will shriek to any
camera in sight that big business
monopolizes markets, exploits
workers, gobbles up profits, pollutes
the atmosphere and poisons the
political process. Anyone honestly will-
ing to look beyond this hysterically
dreary litany might want to consider a
few facts:
Since 1975, the private enterprise
system has created an average of 2.5
million jobs every year and still pro-
duces th< greatest variety of products
and servi' es of any society in the world.
Wages paid to workers in the 200 largest
manufacturing firms average about 37
percent higher than for all the rest of
manufacturing. As a percentage of
total national income, corporate profits
have actually declined from 12 percent
in 1963 to 9 percent lasy year. In con-
trast the rarnings of employees during
the same period increased from 69 per-
cent of national income to 73 percent.
What’s ii ore, the biggest stockholders
in Ameri' a are pension funds, mutual
funds, insurance companies and trust
funds which invest the direct and in-
direct earnings of-working people.
Workers justifiably complain that their
higher take home pay buys less.They
must also understand why: During the
last 10 years, federal taxes have in-
creased 61 percent faster than prices,
67 percent faster than wages and 154
percent faster than profits. Who’s been
taking money from whom?
Far from destroying the evniron-
ment, business spent $124 billion bet-
ween 1970 and 1977 to protect and purify
our air and water.
I’ll be the first to admit that the
American business community has
made plenty of mistakes in the past and
will probably be making lots more tom-
morrow. But business is also a collec-
tion of us. And like most of us, it
benefits from constructive, informed
criticism. Working together to improve
business, rather than to tear it apart,
willmakt America an even better place
to live.That’s a pretty good goal for a
country tliat has already accomplished
more for its peoplein a shorter time
than any other in history.
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
PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT
Mike Sims, Production Manager
Dorothy Wilson, Composition Supervisor
Pressroom Personnel- Adrian Dunn, Jimmie Morris
David Holley, Mike Robbins, Terry Johnson
Composition Personnel-Carol Holifield, Brenda Sykes,
Mary Lyons, Kay Bostick
CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT
Joyce Sylestine.
ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT
Linda Dickerson, Ad Manager
Linda Jacobs, Rita Bloodworth
BOOKKEEPING DEPARTMENT
Sue Holley, Manager
FranMeservy
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oat of county. $12.50 per year, out of state. Published semi-weekly,
Sunday and Thursday at 508 Tyler St in Livingston, Texas by the Polk
County Publishing Co. 1
Any erroneous reflection upon the character, standing or rrputotloa
of any person, firm or corporation which may appear in this
newspaper will be gladly corrected upon being brought to the nttrntirn'
of the publisher.
Opinions expressed in columns are those of the writer and not
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Opinions expressed in editorials are those of the Enterprise.
Postmaster: Please send form 2570 to P.O. Box 1278, Livingston,
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White, Barbara. Polk County Enterprise (Livingston, Tex.), Vol. 98, No. 39, Ed. 1 Sunday, May 18, 1980, newspaper, May 18, 1980; Livingston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth781744/m1/4/: accessed June 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Livingston Municipal Library.