Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 103, No. 73, Ed. 1 Friday, March 27, 1981 Page: 2 of 24
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: Hopkins County Area Newspapers and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Hopkins County Genealogical Society.
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it,
t-J 2—THE NEWMIIIGRAM, Sulphur Spring!, Texas, Friday, March 27,19S1.
forum
Jack Anderson
Air Force eats up billions
in phony purchases and repairs
t ; jfn our opinion
■-■r—
«V.
Spring is good time
to eliminate hazards
,«C
Along with the annual clean-up cam-
paign currently progressing in
Hopkins County, homeowners should
consider checking their houses inside
and out for safety hazards which may
have developed during the winter mon-
ths.
hips sustained by older Hopkins Coun-
ty citizens every year. It is possible
that
v
Accidents in the home kill approx-
; ’ imately 22,000 people and injure more
than 3.3 million each year. Safety ex-
. perts say that falls account for 7,000 of
perts say that falls account for 7,1
these fatalities; fire, 4,700; and poison-
z ings, 2,600.
•, One of the hazards found in many
homes is unsafe walkways which may
■. cause falls. There are many broken
at some of the falls could have been
prevented with the removal of
hazards.
To help prevent fires, a homeowner
should clean out closets and storage
rooms, discarding old items, along
with junk, that lead to costly fires.
Older homes should also be checked to
see that electrical wiring is sufficient
to handle increased loads.
Spring, of course, is a good time to be
alive and to enjoy the lovely Texas
weather. By eliminating safety
hazards, life will be a good deal more
enjoyable.
By JACK ANDERSON
WASHINGTON - The Air
Force is in line for a $14 bil-
lion budget increase in 1982.
But a far smaller amount
would do if the Air Force
brass would only clean out
the fraud and corruption
that eat up billions of the
taxpayers’ dollars each
year.
The danger of throwing a
few more megabucks at the
generals and admirals is
that they’ll interpret the
budgetary largesse as
rge
approval of the sloppy way
they’ve been spending the
Double-check returns
to avoid mistakes
A great many people are facing a
deadline coming up in mid-April and
robably go down to the
:they will probably go down to the wire
! before winding up the tusk fit hand. In-
dividual imeome tax returns are often
v,: delayed until the last momnent and
* then prepared in great haste.
The Internal Revenue Service
recently noted that people who prepare
x- -their returns in haste and without
double-checking them often overlook
mistakes.
In 1980, the IRS reports, 7.1 percent
&:&:bf the people preparing the simple
Earned Income Credit when eligible.
Most common math error on both
Forms 1040 and 1040A was the incor-
rect reporting of the tax from the tax
table. Problems resulted from tax-
payers using the wrong tax table for
their filing status, following the line for
the wrong income level, and looking
under the incorrect column for number
of exemptions for that taxpayer.
There are a variety of other
mistakes that can be made, or avoided.
That is one of the reasons IRS is stress-
Form hart ak least,one
:ror of some type on the returns. Emor
ing that individuals carefully check all
entries and then re-check them to
ranged from incorrect'addition and
subtraction to failure to compute the
^elimiiudapoaaibleerrara. ,, . ..
IRS also notes that accurate returns
are processed more quickly and
refunds can be returned quicker.
»
4*
99
mamm
What people are saying*...
as
&-■
!; “There comes a time when
:: you realize there are other
impulses, and it’s very sad if
i we can’t publicly admit that
•%v there is a personal, nurturing,
domestic side to us."
— Jane Pauley, explaining
why she decided to combine
— Pierre Trudeau, prime
minister of Canada, respond-
ing to chanting anti-U.S.
protestors during a visit to
Ottawa by President Reagan.
"Later on, Bob’Hope’s going
to be out here to tell you about
plans for his Christmas show
from El Salvador.”
— Johnny Carson, on NBC-
TV’s “Tonight Show.”
her career as a TV Journalist
.with marraige to cartoonist
I-4 * ■ Gary Trudeau, creator of
“Doonesbury.” (Mi. Maguiae)
“Have all the fashion writ-
ers finished?"
“Hey, guys. When I go to
the United States, I’m not met
with these sips.”
— Prince Charles of Brit-
ain, kidding when his fiancee,
Lady Diana Spencer, created
a media sensation by wearing
a strapless, bare-shoulder
black silk gown to a charity
event in London.
“Refugee crises have been
treated as isolated, unpredict-
able upheavals, much like nat-
ural disasters."
— Kathleen Newland,
author of a Worldwatch Insti-
tue study that warns refugees
are most often created by
international political strife.
public’s money.
As another of my continu-
ing reports on waste in the
Pentagon, I’ll focus today on
the privately operated sup-
ply stores at Air Force
bases, from which the ser-
vice must buy spare parts
and other hardware items.
The contractors have been
ripping off the Air Force for
years and getting away with
it, possibly because of offi-
cial connivance. There have
been 41 separate investiga-
tions of the supply stores
since 1977, yet for some rea-
son the Justice Department
has taken a ho-hum attitude
toward the evidence of
criminal misconduct.
A classified government
report reviewed by my asso-
ciate Indy Badhwar details
the ripoffs. Here are some of
the more outrageous exam-
ples:
- A single International
Harvester panel truck at one
air base supposedly required
the following inventory of
replacement parts: 48 spark
plugs in six months; two
starters and two alternators
in two months; a new two-
barrel carburetor in March
1980, a two-barrel carbure-
tor kit the same month and a
four-barrel carburetor kit
three weeks later. Where the
stuff went is anybody’s
guess.
-- A 1978 Chevrolet pickup
truck was billed for eight
new shock absorbers during
a two-month period when it
was driven 3,000 miles.
- A firetruck supposedly
required five new oil filters,
though it had been driven
only 199 miles.
-- Twenty-five new spark
plugs were purchased for
one 1978 Chrysler Volare
sedan during a six-month
period - enough for three or
four complete changes with
on*
~ A Chevy stejrvan appar-
ently required four new
water pumps in eight
months -- yet none was
replaced under the vendor’s
one-year warranty. “Proce-
dures broke down,” officials
lamely told investigators.
- At one base, 53 percent
of all parts sold to the Air
Force did not match the
items listed on the sales
slips. For example, an air-
conditioner compressor
described on the sales slip as
new was clearly identifiable
as rebuilt.
-- Investigators found that
"sweetheart” companies
Trade and the doughnut
There’s more to being on a government mailing list than a
mailbox overflowing with material you don’t have time to
read on subjects of minimal interest.
Occasionally an item in the inflow can be unexpectedly
enlightening, such as the current Special Report No. 74 issued
by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Public Affairs.
Tersely titled “Trade Patterns of the West, 1979”, this docu-
ment lays out the exchanges of goods and services of the Unit-
ed States and 23 of its principal economic associates with each
other and the rest of the world in 14 pages of mind-numbing
tables and charts. Fortunately, an introductory summary in
perfectly comprehensible English comes to the rescue with an
overview making some interesting points.
One is the increasing importance of trade to the American
bought $27 billion more than we sold, and Japan, where the
These were the
imbalance was $9 billion in Japan’s favor,
most massive contributions to the American global trade defi-
cit of $25.3 billion for the year.
That is certainly bad news, of a type to which we have
unfortunately grown too accustomed to. But it disguises some-
what better word.
The State Department study is in line with the trend in
which foreign trade, once a relatively minor factor in the U.S.
economy as a whole, is playing an increasing and increasingly
profitable role. Purchases and sales abroad now account for
approximately a quarter of the gross national product, twice
the comparable proportion in 1970 and almost three times
that of 1950.
Of further interest is the nature of the merchandise being
traded. We know all too well how hugely oil and Japanese
autos contribute to the U.S. import bill We also hear plenty
about the importance of wheat and other agricultural prod
ucts to exports, suggesting that in world trade the United
States is becoming an industrial second-rater, primarily a
COMMENTARY
States is becoming an industrial second-rater, primarily
source of natural resources for more efficient economies.
Less publicized are manufactured exports. Since 1973,
according to Commerce Department statistics, these are up
235 percent, almost double the growth rate (131 percent) of
Don Graff
agricultural exports.
Far from taking a beating in world trade, the United States
is an increasingly active and successful participant.
All this is of more than academic interest at a time when
J * •
economy, and in particular of trade with Western Europe. We
are on the receiving end of a flood of goods from the Euro-
peans, right?
ht. The statistics prove it. But they also show that the
United States than we
Right The statistics prove it. But they
Europeans are better customers of the Uni
are of them.
irnesuc situation.
; protectionist sentiment itself is eminently exportable,
efuctance of the Japanese to open their home market is
ious, and there is selective resistance in Europe to Amer-
In the year under study, 29.5 percent of all American
exports went to Western Europe but only 5.9 percent of
i reached the United States. In dollar terms •
Europe’s exports reached the United states. In dollar terms -
the only ones, after all, that are bankable - U.S. sales to
Europe totaled $53.6 billion. Purchases from Europe came to
$42 billion, a U£. trade surplus of $11.6 billion.
That was, of course, more than offset by deficits in two
other key markets - OPEC, from whott oR producers we
-—S?-
protectionist pressures are also on the rise. Mention the auto
and steel industries and you’ve already spoken volumes about
the domestic situation.
But I
The reluctance of the,
notorious, and there is selective resistance in Europe to Amer-
ican products that could be heightened by American actions.
Self-indulgence in self-protectjon at the cost of encouraging
protectionism in world trade in which we are not doing badly
at all obviously would net be in our long-term interests.
In our preoccupation with the problem areas to the virtual
exclusion of the bigger picture, we are behaving like the
baker’s super-piety customers. We're concentrating on the
hole and ignoring thMoughnut.
(NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN.)
7
•’V.
were used to provide phony"
inflated price lists for the
supply stores and to submit
duplicate invoices to enable
the stores to bill the Air
Force twice for the same
item.
-- The Air Force has paid
its supply store proprietors
$78 for a $47 carburetor, $40
for a $21 muffler, $2,100 for
a $1,050 transmission, $21
for a $12 water pump, $12
for $6 concrete reinforcing
rods, and $25 for $5 lock
mechanisms.
If the Air Force is in such
urgent need of funds, it
might start by shooting
down its supply store prices
out of the wild blue yonder.
PAULA’S AFFAIRS: The
lovely lobbyist, Paula
Parkinson, apparently was
attracted to Capitol Hill dig-
nitaries because of their
■ maturity - Her - preference-
for older men, in the words
of her husband, caused her
to “cut a swath through the
political arena that makes
Elizabeth Ray's sexual
activities look like a scene
from The Sound of Music.’ ”
Paula has succeeded Eliz-
abeth Ray as the seductress
in Washington's latest sex
scandal. A number of ner-
vous lawmakers now await
the lurid memoirs that Pau-
la is offering to publishers.
She started out to write a
more respectable sex book
with her husband. Hank
Parkinson, advising men in
ther mid-50s how to be bet-
ter lovers. Hank claimed his
wife was an authority on the
sex habits of mature men,
having dallied with “lots of
men in their 60s.” Her oldest
sex partner. Hank confided
after consulting his research
notes, was age 72.
— -In their unpublished
manuscript, with alternating
chapters by the Parkinson
pair, Paula wrote: “It gradu-
ally occurred to me that my
most satisfying affairs had
inevitably been with older
men. With few exceptions,
the younger dudes had been
general disappointments...”
WASHINGTON WHIRL:
Chiselers who milk Uncle
Sam for payments they’re
not entitled to are not just a
figment of Ronald Reagan’s
campaign rhetoric. Federal
inspectors estimate that
more than half a million
individuals are drawing dis-
ability payments from
Social Security after they
have fully recovered. The
cost is at least $2 billion a
year ... Energy Secretary
James Edwards has adopted
a novel tqphniqve to avoid
congressional criticism over
his budget cuts: He has sim-
ply refused to appear on
Capitol Hill to testify. He
even refused to send an
assistant whose presence
had been requested -- on
grounds that the man hadn't
been officially confirmed
yet - and another official
was dispatched instead ...
Jeane Kirkpatrick, our
ambassador to the United
Nations, failed to charm the
members and staff of the
House Committee on For-
eign Affairs at a private
breakfast. One fastidious
participant noted that the
guest of honor gobbled up
her food and then gave a
long boring speech on a
“typical day" in the life of
an ambassador.
Copyright, 1981,
United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
<r_.,
iMIl
I
“I know what you’re thinking... It’sloo good to be true. Star Wars has come to
Latin America.”
Developing character
- - - ■ - ' •' ’• J ”
I couldn’t have been more surpris^H I had asked Moses to
rpr
tell me the full story of how ne got his hands, on the Ten
Commandments and he had stared at me blankly and said:
“Ten Commandments? What Ten Commandments?”
The letter on my desk was from Charles Lindbergh. For
many years I had been giving talks to all kinds of groups
based on Lindbergh's list of character traits which I had cop-
ied from a 1930 magazine.
I told how the young Lindy would, go down the list every
night before bed and grade himself 6n the 59 traits - cheer-
fulness, no fault-finding, perseverance, politeness, self-
control, etc.
Then the idea came to me to write Lindbergh, asking him
how he happened to compile the list, how long he had stuck to
it, etc. It would make a nice sequel to the story.
Well, now I had my sequel but it wasn’t the one I expected.
“The charcter list is pure bunk,” said Lindbergh in his letter
to me in May, 1973, “one of those numberless concoctions by
the press that have no basis in fact whatsoever...
“Those stories get into the newspaper record files and are
carried over and over again through the years until they are
rather generally accepted as factual. The character trait list
has even been carried in a dictionary.
“Actually I had no such list and had no interest in this kind
of thing.”
That punctured a cherished myth of mine, but I have contin-
ued to think that a Lenten regimen based on “Lindy’s 59 char-
acter traits” could be beneficial to us all.
SAINTS AND SINNERS
George Plagenz
Berry's World
"I agree that we should win in El Salvador. Let's
declare victory and get out!”
Many of the traits in the list sound quaint and old-fashioned
(“Clean body, clean speech, modesty, neat appearance”), as if
they came from a YMCA character-building manual of the
1920s or from one of Horatio Alger’s novels for boys where
virtue, if not its own reward, rewards one with success and
riches.
To get a good score on “Lindy’s 59” will, nevertheless,
develop our will power; this in itself makes it a fine Lenten
exercise.
A case could probably be made that the decline of character
in our society has gone hand in hand with our downgrading of
will power. r‘If it feels good, do it” is not a motto which will
encourage us to develop our will power.
Will power in most cases demands a large measure of self-
denial. This is only one of the things that is involved in charac-
ter-building.
What I am proposing is that we observe Lent this year in
the old-fashioned way by “giving up” some of our self-indul-
gent ways and concentrate on developing our characters.
Lent has already begun but it is not too late to start. A lady
in my parish in Boston had a saying, "If you can’t begin at the
beginning, begin in the middle.”
If you would like a textbook for your Lenten self-improve-
ment program, get Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations.” This little
volume of Stoic thought is available in paperback.
Marcus Aurelius was emperor of Rome in the second centu-
ry. He wrote his Meditations in an age of decadence. To the
Stoic, happiness consisted of virtue, endurance, self-sufficien-
cy and right disposition. It was these qualities which enabled a
man to rule as lord over his own life while the world seemed
lord over his own life while the world seemed
to be crumbling around him — which makes much of Marcus
Aurelius’ advice applicable to us today.
I will leave you with a few of his meditations to ponder until
bookstore:
yougettotheL________
— “The best way of avenging the wrong-doer is not to
become like him.”
— “In my father I observed a mildness of temper, an
unchangeable resolution in the things he had determined after
due deliberaton, and a love of labor and perseverance. He took
a reasonable care of his body’s health ... so that, through his
own attention, he very seldom stood in need of the physician’s
art or of medicine.”
— “Practice thyself even in the things which thou
despairest of accomplishing.”
— “In the case of most pains, let this remark of Epicurus
aid thee, that pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting, if
thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou add
nothing to it in imagination.”
(NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN.)
•V
The Almanac
By The Associated Press
Today is Friday, March 27,
the 86th day of 1961. There are
279 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight in history^
(hi March 27, 1945, during
World War H„ Gen. Dwight D.
Eisenhower declared that
German military forces on the
Western Front had been
defeated.
TtiL
<
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Keys, Clarke. Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 103, No. 73, Ed. 1 Friday, March 27, 1981, newspaper, March 27, 1981; Sulphur Springs, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth823685/m1/2/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 11, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Hopkins County Genealogical Society.