Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 102, No. 209, Ed. 1 Wednesday, September 3, 1980 Page: 4 of 24
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4—THE NEWS-TELECRAM, Sulphur Spring*, Tmm, Wwdnusdoy, Swpt. i, 19S0.
Community development
program in spotlight
I
JSopkins County’s Community
Development program, which will be
highlighted in tours next week, has
contributed to the progressive move-
ment for years in this sector of Nor-
theast Texas.
Jours are scheduled to Sulphur
Bitiff, Peerless, Arbala and Reilly Spr-
ings to allow judges and friends to see
first-hand the concerted community
progress.
Jhen, to guarantee large crowds
when formal recognition is
acknowledged, awards to the winning
communities will be made during the
Fall Festival in Sulphur Springs. The
awards will be presented during the
Hopkins County Stew contest, which
always draws large and appreciative
crowds.
Lack of moisture combined with
unusually hot weather has dealt some
severe blows to Hopkins County’s rural
sectors this year, but there are many
>lus factors to be considered in all of
he communities to be judged. New
tomes have been constructed, various
mprovements added, and the spirit of
the progressive citizens is undaunted.
Hopkins County’s status as a leader
in rural improvement is often
challenged but seldom equalled. The
story of Hopkins County’s great strides
in the dairy industry since the early
1930’s continues to bring the area good
press reports in magazines and other
publications throughout the United
States.
Development of Hopkins County is a
continuing story. The main ingredient,
of course, is progressive people. The
upcoming tours will showcase many of
these fine people.
I Found cut WHAT You
HAVE, hr. Smith, and iT doesn’t
look SOOP- I’M AFRAID IT’S
A CASE OF
PATENT INFRINGEMENT.
Poland's Labor Day
Reagan having trouble
with throwaway lines
Wall Street Journal
Lech Walesa, who has just won the
Polish government’s agreement to an
independent labor movement, will
know as well as anyone that his test
has only begun. Not only has he suc-
cessfully challenged the Communist
Party of Poland but the whole massive
apparatus of Soviet and East Euro-
pean communism. He has laid bare a
fundamental untruth in the Communist
ethnic, that it isa political system that
serves the interests of working people.
Over the next weeks and months a
lot of powerful peole will be out to get
him for that. And the conflict here is so
elemental that it would be unrealistic
to expect much protection from the
agreement signed Sunday by Poland’s
Deputy Prime Minister, Mieczyslaw
Jagielski. Either the Polish workers
must continue to fight for a party and
state system designed for one thing on-
ly, control, will roll back the gains they
have won. A recognition of this was
reflected in the loud hoot of disbelief
from the Gdansk shipyard workers
when the Deputy Prime Minister
assured them that he had already
eliminated special privileges for the
secret police.
This harsh reality, however,
needn’t diminish estimates of what the
striking Poles have achieved. It is
nothing less than an agreement from a
well-entrenched Communist Party to
accept what it clearly regards as a
rival political party. There can be no
other interpretation of a docoment that
gives workers the right to seek
representation outside party controll-
ed official trade unions. The leaders of
the new autonomous unions were pro-
mised legal protection and, along with
their ally, the Church, greater freedom
of expression.
The importance of what the Polish
Communist Party has conceded, on
paper at least, can be read in the
diatribes in Russia’s Pravda directed
at Mr. Walesa and his colleagues over
the weekend. The Poles are trying to
break the Communist Party’s “ties
with the working class, the main
source of the strength of the party and
the Polish state,” said Pravda. Pravda
trotted out the usual charges of “anti-
socialist” elements and Western
Jack Anderson
subversion.
Indeed, there has been western
“subversion” of a sort, but not, so far
as we know, the official kind Pravda
was suggesting. It is much to the credit
of the United Auto Workers and other
American and West European unions
that they have sent money to the Polish
strikers to help them defy a system
that has always courted moral
justification in the name of the working
man. Few people have come to unders-
tand the falsity of that claim better
than the leaders of genuinely free and
independent labor unions. Labor
unions in Poland, the Soviet Union and
other states of the Soviet bloc are
merely another agency through which
the Communist Party’s power elite ex-
ercises control.
Mr. Walesa’s future will be made no
easier by the economic circumstances
under which he must try to hold on to
the government’s concessions. Infla-
tion will not disappear, and it can be
expected that the Party’s efforts to
discredit Mr. Walesa’s movement will
use some of the same arguments that
are used in the West against free trade
unions, that they are the source of in-
flation. The true source of inflation in
Eastern Europe is, of course, the inef-
ficiency of a government - managed
economy.
The biggest threat to Mr. Walesa,
however, will continue to be the Soviet
Union. There are reports that the
Soviets, too, have had labor troubles in
recent months, although they have
managed to minimize the internal and
external publicity. The Soviet leaders
probably could imagine no worse
threat to their power than a general
uprising of the type that occurred in
Poland. Such events are much less
likely in the Soviet Union, with its
powerful secret police and other in-
struments for repression. But the
danger will be serious enough to re-
quire Soviet efforts to destroy the
Polish precedent.
Mr. Walesa will know all this, and
he will know that when the excitement
of victoi7 has diminished the pressure
will begin. Then he will need as much
support as he can get, both from inside
and outside Poland.
By WALTER R.MEARS
AP Special Correspondent
DETROIT (AP) - Ronald
Reagan keeps having trouble
with his throwaway lines, a bad
habit for any trouper — and a
worse one for a presidential
campaigner.
It tends to create issues where
there were none, and on matters
that have little or nothing to do
with the business of being
president.
The latest Reagan con-
troversy, over the Ku Klux
Klan, is a prime sample.
Reagan wants to make
President Carter’s record In
office the central issue of the
campaign. That’s a sensible
approach for a candidate
challenging an incumbent
president in a time of economic
woes.
Carter, on the defensive,
wants to make Reagan the
issue. Any time the Democrats
can change the subject from
unemployment, inflation and
foreign crises to talk about
Reagan instead, that’s just
what they’ll do.
They sure did Tuesday, with a
chorused retort to Reagan’s
Labor Day remark that Carter
had chosen to open his re-
election campaign in Klan
country. And the Republican
presidential nominee wound up
defending himself, just when he
wanted to take the offense
against Carter on the economy.
He said he "intended no In-
ference” that Carter, or
Tuscumbia, Ala., or the state of
Alabama, or the South at large,
was sympathetic to the Klan.
Then he accused Carter of
trying to manufacture an issue
out of the Klan.
"It is a desperate and I
believe futile attempt to divert
attention from the real issue of
this campaign, which is his
sorry record,” Reagan said. "I
don’t intend to let him do it."
Maybe not, but it was Reagan
himself who handed Carter the
Klan controversy as talking
point.
The Democrats already had
found handy, off-the-subject
campaign material in Reagan’s
expressed skepticism about the
theory of evolution — which is,
after all, irrelevant to a
presidential campaign.
They had seen him eclipse his
Our shipowners foisting off
unwanted hulks on U.S. Navy
By JACK ANDERSON
WASHINGTON - It’s a
rare international situation
that doesn’t give slick busi-
nessmen the chance to make
a buck.
The crises over Iran and
Afghanistan, with the result-
ing decision to beef up the
United States’ rapid deploy-
ment capability in the Mid-
lie East, have opened up
irofitable possibilities for
merican shipowners,
re trying to unload
they can”t use on the
- at a cost to the tax-
.s of hundreds of mil-
of dollars.
acre’s no doubt about the
N«*s serious lack of trans-
port thips to ferry troops
a“4lilies to international
In an emergency
requiring quick transporta-
tion by sea, the Navy would
have to rely on a reserve
fleet that consists of hulks
dating back to World War II
vintage.
So some shipowners are
trying to fob off uneconomi-
cal vessels on the Pentagon -
- at outrageously high pric-
es. With heavy lobbying and
some legislative sleight of
hand, they’re about to con-
vert otherwise useless mer-
chandise into a profitable
item.
One example: Sealand
Industries has eight speedy
oil-burning ships the compa-
ny bought before the price of
crude oil went sky-high.
They are now no longer
profitable to operate
commercially, so Sealand is
selling them to the Navy
Sealands ships are the
fastest transports in the
water, and the asking price
of $35 million apiece is
much less than they could be
built for today. But they’re
not what the Navy wants,
and it would cost an estimat-
ed $60 million to bring them
up to scratch.
Insiders told my associate
Peter Grant that a little
tough bargaining might get
the ships for as little as $18
million each. But both the
Senate and House Armed
Services Committees have
okayed paying Sealand its
asking price - a total of
$285 million 3
An even more blatant
money grab in the sacred
name of national security is
being attempted by Water-
man Steamship Corp. The
company ordered three car-
go ships from Sun Ship Inc.,
primarily for trade with the
Soviet Union.
After Afghanistan and
President Carter's trade
embargo, the Russian trade
evaporated and Waterman
found itself stuck with three
ships for which there would
be little use The company’s
solution was to dump the
three ships on the Navy -
for $270 million.
The Marine Corps, which
would be the primary user
of the ships, has shown little
enthusiasm. The Marines
wanted to wait for the TAK-
X, a more versatile ship
that's still on the drawing
board.
own defense policy speech by
writing into it a defense of the
nobility of America’s cause in
South Vietnam, a sharply
debated observation about a
war long ended.
Bui that was nothing to
compare with the way they
jumped on Reagan’s comment
about Carter in Klan country.
Actually, the Klan was
founded in Pulaski, Tenn. One
Klan faction does have a new
headquarters in Tuscumbia.
Reagan said he saw that on
television.
About 70 Klansmen demon-
strated in Tuscumbia on
Monday, and Carter denounced
the organization in his speech
there. “As a Southerner, it
makes me angry to see them
with a Confederate battle flag,”
he said.
Campaigning on Tuesday,
Carter accused Reagan of
slurring the whole South, of
divisively alleging that “the Ku
Klux Klan is representative of
the South or Alabama or
Tuscumbia.”
That put the non-issue back in
Reagan’s court, and he wound
up saying he had been misin-
terpreted. He also called on
Carter “to apologize to the
people of Alabama for using this
issue in a way which may be
detrimental to them.”
The Almanac
Today in History
By The Associated Press
Today is Wednesday, Sept. 3,
the 247th day of 1980. TTiere are
119 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight in history:
On Sept. 3, 1783, the
Revolutionary War came to an
official end with the signing of
the Treaty of Paris between the
United States and Great
Britain.
On this date:
In 1916, after weeks of long
and dreary battle, the Allies
finally turned back the Ger-
mans at Verdun, France,
during World War I.
In 1939, Britain and France
declared war on Germany at
the start of World War II.
In 1967, nearly 6 million South
Vietnamese went to the polls
and elected Nguyen Van Thieu
to a four-year term as
president.
In 1976, the Viking II
spacecraft made a successful
landing on Mars.
Ten years ago, the United
States charged that Russia and
Egypt had violated the Mideast
ceasefire.
Five years ago, a teachers’
strike in Chicago kept nearly
one million students from
returning to school.
Last year, Cuba’s President
Fidel Castro launched a summit
meeting of the nonaligned
movement with a sweeping
attack on America’s global
policies.
Today’s birthday: Former
baseball player and manager
Eddie Stanky is 63.
Thought for today: Soap and
education are not as sudden as a
massacre, but they are more
deadly in the long run. — Mark
Twain (1835-1910).
BARBS
walk around with a smug
smile and the boss will spend
the day worrying about what
you've been able to cover up.
Berry's World
G M by Nt» Inc
"Ya say you’re looking for something that gets
good mileage, eh . . ?"
COMMENTARY
Don Graff
Tax-cut fever
It’s something-for-everyone time again on Capitol Hill.
The Senate Finance Committee, in a burst of legislative
energy, has rushed to completion its version of the tax cut
everyone in Congress is talking about and quite a few are
trying to do something about.
Why the rush? Surely you haven’t forgotten the significance
of November 4? The measure is scheduled to go to the floor
immediately after Labor Day and, if rushed through both
Houses before pre-election adjournment, would take effect
January 1, the start of the next tax year.
I? includes a little something for nearly every individual
taxpayer, boosting the standard personal exemption $100, to
$1,100, and trimming the average personal tax load an esti-
mated $250
(I has something for business, a cut in corporate taxes from
46 to 44 percent and faster tax write-offs for investment in
new plant and equipment.
»t tosses in something for investors, exempting from taxa-
tion 70 percent of most capital gains, instead of the present 50
percent, and lowering rates on the rest.
It, even takes a stab at the much-publicized “marriage tax".
A special deduction for two-income households is designed to
bring taxes cn joint returns into better balance with those on
identical incomes reported separately. /
There are more somethings, many more, and they all add
uc tc a $39 billion cut in the annual American tax bill. ,
Quite a bundle, and the committee wrapped it up, the Wash-
ington Post reported, "amid laughter.” That came when it
voteo to append the tax measure to a bill, already passed by
the Hcu..e and now before the Senate, authorizing duty-free
irr’porta’ion of six bells for the United Methodist Church of
Washington. This to acknowledge the Constitution's vesting of
the lower chamber with primary jurisdiction in tax and other
money matters. -.
Very funny.
But the humor is likely to be lost on the House, where the
leaders!: p has a much less severe case of tax-cut fever and is
thinking more in terms of very limited cuts, if at all, this year.
To be followed by a comprehensive and unhurried review of
the entire tax structure come January and the convening of a
new Congress.
There is much to be said for much of the Senate commit-
tee’s work — research and development tax breaks to spur
technological advance and a better tax deal for Americans
working abroad, improving the competitive position of U.S.
firms seeking foreign contracts, would work to the benefit of
the entire economy.
The primary purpose of the clutch of provisions designed to
reduce the personal tax load — offsetting steeply rising Social
Security taxes and the hidden tax of inflation — is also desir-
able.
But the timing of this measure and the speed with which it
his been thrown together are not. It has not been devised with
adequate consideration of the effect on deficit-swamped
budgets, let alone the real needs of a wobbling economy. The
primary motivation is to meet a deadline, and a political one
al that.
This is tax cutting with a hatchet. The public may think it is
getting something out of a tax bill such as this. But what it’s
really getting is a bill of goods for which it may find itself
paying several times over in the negative long-term effects.
THEU.S.ANDYOU
William Steif
Fair free enterprise
Suppose you wanted to build a house and an agency of your
state or local government said: “OK, we’ll issue a tax-exempt
bond, build the house you want and rent it to you on a long-
term lease much more cheaply than you can do it yourself.
And at the end of the lease you’ll own the property.”
Would you agree? Of course you would.
But you, the individual, can’t operate that way. You've got
to go to a bank or savings and loan and negotiate your loan at
commercial rates, which now run around 12 percent. If you
could knock that down to 8 percent, which is roughly what tax-
exempt bonds now pay (because the bond owners don’t pay
tafts on them), your cost of living in that built-to-order home
would be a lot lower. That's exactly how some smart business-
es are operating today.
Result: Merchants in places like Dalles, Ore., Hamilton,
Mont., and Ottawa, Ohio, are about to see a decline in their
main-street business. K-Mart is planning to move into new
“shopping malls” on the outskirts of those towns, just as it’s
done in 40 to 50 other locations in the past three years.
K-Mart isn’t the only company doing this. Holiday Inns,
Burger Kings, McDonald's, Pontiac dealers, medical clinics,
law offices and dozens of other businesses are using a finan-
cial instrument known as Industrial Development Bonds to
get cheap money. The tax-exempt bonds, known as IDBs, are
proliferating like crazy in the 20 states that permit them.
The idea behind IDBs, when they first sprang up, was that
they could revitalize rundown areas, permitting state and
local agencies to lure labor-intensive manufacturing back to
places with high unemployment. Abuses began in the mid-
1960s, and Congress cracked down, limiting IDBs to no more
than $5 million per issue in 1968. But in the 1970s the limit
was raised to $12 million per bond issue, and as interest rates
soared in the late 1970s, the IDBs looked better and better.
One lawyer’s estimate is that a company involved in a $1
million, 20-year IDB can save $300,000
Early Congressional Budget Office research found that
IDBs to finance private industrial and commercial invest-
ments more than doubled from 1978 to 1979. In Ohio, for
example, there were 19 IDBs totaling $26.9 million in 1978;
for 1979 there were 42 issues totaling $54.6 million marketed.
Banks just buy these things and tuck them away. The CBO,
now doing an intensive inquiry, figures there is a considerable
federal tax loss. In short, your federal taxes are making up for
the losses engendered by IDBs.
There’s another loss, too, as small merchants around the
country can testify. A slick new shopping mall opens outside
of town, and folks migrate there to shop. The downtown
declines, merchants go out of business and in some cases
towns are forced to the wall because state and local laws
preclude paying taxes on municipally or county-owned prop-
erty.
Now a new element enters the situation. The National Com-
mittee of Small-Issue IDBs, which will testify to the House
Ways and Means Committee soon, wants the permissible limit
on IDBs raised from $10 million to $15 million per issue. The
national committee says its goal is “to preserve and increase
the effectiveness of small-issue IDBs as capital-forming
mechanisms and as tools for creating new jobs.”
Smooth words, indeed, but who’s behind the national
committee? Well, there are investment bankers E.F. Hutton
and Goldman, Sachs, the Marmon Group, Inc., which repre-
sents K-Mart, and such giants as Monsanto Chemical, B.F.
Goodrich, IT&T, Ralston Purina, Hoover Universal and
Anheuser-Busch. Among “development organizations” on the
national committee are the Indiana Department of
Commerce, the Tennessee Development Council, the Kentuc-
ky Development Finance Authority and the Illinois Depart-
ment of Commerce and Community Affairs.
All these people are hot to push cheap money - for them-
selves. But the question is: Why shouldn't they compete in the
free enterprise marketplace, which they so often and so loudly
tout, like everyone else?
Rep. Sam Gib
the House Ways and Means Committee, and'you might drop
jibbons, D-Fla., asks the same question. He’s on
him a note and tell him you think the IDBs are a ripoff, sub-
verting small business. His address is Room 2206, Rayburn
House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515.
Your letters can help keep free enterprise fair.
, (NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN.)
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Keys, Clarke. Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 102, No. 209, Ed. 1 Wednesday, September 3, 1980, newspaper, September 3, 1980; Sulphur Springs, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth824385/m1/4/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Hopkins County Genealogical Society.