Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 102, No. 159, Ed. 1 Sunday, July 6, 1980 Page: 18 of 32
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*2—SECTION 2—THE NEWS-TELEGRAM. Sulphur Springs. Toxos. Sunday. July 6.1980
K ■
Editorials
Tax cuts offer
false hopes
As the time for national conventions draws ever nearer,
the spokesmen and banner wavers of the two major
parties are engaged in a game of “can you top this?” The
stakes are tax cuts being suggested for America by late
this year or early next year.
The rhetoric is senseless because one very significant
factor has been ntissing from the proposal — spending
cuts. ,
Tax cuts sound good to the average citizen. A recent
study showed that taxes (federal, state and local) have
risen faster over the last 10 years than energy costs for
most middle bracket Americans.
But federal tax cuts r a pledge to put more “spending”
money into circulation — without commensurate federal
spending cuts are a waste of time. The deficits created in
such a situation simply come back to haunt us later, either
as higher taxes to reduce the debt or as higher interest
rates so the government can support the debt.
When the political conventions convene let’s hear some
platform planks about cutting spending. The promises
probably would never be carried through, but at least they
would make more sense.
Baked Texas adds
to violations
The Texas Air Quality Board has criticized Collin County
(McKinney) officials and suggested that legal action
might be in the offing because so many roads there
become dust trails when traveled.
If parched Texas doesn’t get some moisture relief, a few
roads in Collin County won’t be the only places where dust
kicks up with a little traffic. The dry spell should be
declared illegal.
Sealing at top
doesn't stop leak
A recent federal agency mailing received by thousands
of business firms in Texas and across the nation required a
return mail statement. To facilitate the response the
agency provided a set of return envelopes on a form, with
instructions to “detach here, fold top and seal.”
Detaching the envelope, inserting the form and sealing
the top all were simple tasks that few firms would find
difficult. The problem was that the bottom of the envelopes
weren’t closed either, a fact difficult to determine on a
quick glance. Anything placed in the envelope and mailed
without taping the bottom almost surely would have fallen
out.
It was a funny example — in a very sad way — of
government inefficiency. Has America really received
value for this proliferation of agencies it has purchased in
the past two decades? ■ .
Young Farmers
deserve thanks
It has become a rather expected local featurle for the 4th
of July to have the fireworks display staged by the Hopkins
County Young Farmers. The event has drawn thousands of
onlookers through the years, and it has always been freS.
If you have been buying a few sparklers and
firecrackers over the years, you know that the cost of these
pyrotechnical devices have skyrocketed much higher than
the skyrockets themselves. The big displays in particular
aren’t cheap.
Yet each year the Young Farmers keep providing this
local display.
It is iust a civic minded gesture from a group of in-
terested people. They deserve, at least, a “thank you.”
IN WASHINGTON
Robert Walters
Synfuel:
bad investment
WASHINGTON (NEA) - When
President Carter signs into law the Energy
Security Act of 1980, the federal govern-
ment will have irrevocably embraced a
new technology that poses a potentially
grave threat to the health of thousands of
workers.
The bill signing ceremony, not firmly
scheduled as yet, will be heavily promoted
and highly publicized because it marks the
nation’s official commitment to the
development and production of synthetic
fuels as a major new source of energy.
The legislation, authorizing the ex-
penditure of $20 billion in loans, guaran-
tees and price supports during the next
five years, establishes a synfuel
production target of 500,000 barrels per
day by 1987, the equivalent of 4 percent of
domestic oil consumption.
■ The extraordinary financial cost is not
.the only price the country will pay for
gambling on an unproven technology to
reduce dependence on imported oil rather
than investing in a broad portfolio of
renewable and alternative energy sources.
Many of those dangers already have
been widely publicized . The Rockies and
Northern Plains could be transformed into
the United States' version of Germany's
heavily industrialized Ruhr Valley.
Synfuel production is likely to disfigure the
region’s land, drain its scarce water
supply and place an intolerable strain on
its limited social services.
But too little attention has been focused
on the dangers of adverse health effects
likely to be faced by the uncounted
thousands of men and women expected to
be employed in coal gasification or
liquefaction and retorting oil shale.
When Congress was considering the
legislation late last year, Ruch C. Clusen,
the Energy Department's assistant
secretary for environmental matters,
offered typically opaque bureacratic
reassurances that a I there were no serious
problems and bl they would soon be
resolved.
While admitting that “we have identified
carcinogenic (cancer-causing t substances
in the products and the waste of all the
synthetic fuels we have studied,” Ms.
Clusen said “government and industry are
cooperating in the effort to define and
ameliorate the risks associated with
chronic exposure to carcinogenic
materials prior to commercialization....”
But a confidential memo sent to Labor
Secretary Ray Marshall only one month
earlier was far more specific — and
ominous — in warning about the "im-
portant health and environmental
problems that may be anticipated” in
synfuel production.
Written by Eula Bingham, the head of
the Occupational Safety and Health Ad-
ministration, the unpublicized memo cited
"specific information available which
links oil shale processing with cancer,
particularly cutaneous carcinoma" or skin
cancer. Extraordinarily high levels have
been documented among both Scottish and
Estonian workers, Ms. Bingham warned.
In the coal gasification process, she said,
“carbon monoxide poses a particularly
dangerous hazard,” while other chemicals
with the potential to cause industrial
fatalities include hydrogen cyanide,
hydrogen sulfide, carbon disulfide and
metal prbonyls.
Commercial coal gasification never has
been attempted in this country, but in
similar industrial operations “the workers
have exhibited higher than expected
mortality from cancers of the lung, kid-
ney, bladder, prostate and skin," Ms.
Bingham noted.
In coal liquefaction, “the car-
cinogenicity of materials produced ...
already has been demonstrated” among a
small group of American workers who
experienced a skin cancer rate of 16 to 37
times greater than expected, she added.
Prior to the relatively recent display of
governmental enthusiasm for synfuel
production, an estimated 40,000 to 90,000
workers were expected to be employed in
the coal gasification industry by the end of
the current century, with about half, as
many people working on coal liquefaction.
But "if coal conversion is developed on
the mammoth scale suggested," Ms.
Bingham warned,, “the occupational
health problems associated with this
technology will affect substantially larger
numbers of workers."
Forum a Page for Opinions
Recession slow to hit Texas
By KRISTIN GOFF
AP Business Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Unemployment in
Michigan is running at 14.1 percent, which
is more than 6 percentage points above the
national average.
And in Texas the rate is 5.5 percent,
more than 2 percentage points below the
national average of 7.7 percent in June,
reported by the Labor Department this
past week.
That national average was little changed
from the 7.8 percent unemployment rate in
May.
But as the Labor Department's report
this past week on unemployment rates in
|0 large industrial states shows, there are
wide discrepancies in how various states
are faring in the downturn.
After Texas, in order of increasing
unemployment rate percentages, are
Florida with 6.4; Massachusetts with 6.8;
California and New York each with 7.3;
Pennsylvania 7.7; New Jersey 7.9; Illinois
•J; Ohio 9.7 and Michigan 14.1.
History shows a wide difference in how
various regions of the country react in
business cycle slumps. Areas such as the
industrial Midwest, which depend heavily
on manufacture of automobiles and
durable goods, have been hard-hit in
business downturns.
The Southwest, on the other hand, has
historically fared better than most
because its economy has a high proportion
of petroleum and petrochemical concerns,
electronics businesses and aircraft in-
dustries, which have generally been less
sensitive to business declines than con-
sumer durables.
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of
Economic Analysis issued a report
showing that the Plains States have been
the most recession-proof in the six
recessions since World War II.
In the latest business cycle, measured
from the start of the 1973 recession,
Alaska, North Dakota and Idaho were the
least affected.
The Commerce Department study
measured changes in nonfarm income and
salaries to examine effects of business
cycles.
*“ In other business developments this past
,
Jack Anderson
(opvnglit i960
I'miMt P»»auui-e Syndicate Inc
We don't get respect,
but there's still hope
WASHINGTON - We have been rocked
by one news shock after another until our
confidence in America has been shaken. A'
rabid ayatollah has held 53 of our coun-
trymen in humiliating bondage. Greedy oil
sheikdoms have driven up petroleum
prices, creating an energy crisis and
reducing us to supplicant status.
The Russians have defied us in Cuba and
Afghanistan. Their puppet, Fidel Castro,
has sent expeditionary forces to install
hostile governments in Angola, Ethiopia
and South Yemen, threatening our oil
routes. Our own allies have balked at U.S.
leadership and have undercut the U.S.
economy with their aggressive trade.
There is a recession at home,
precipitated by the White House in hope of
'check-reining galloping inflation. The
recent violence in Miami demonstrates
that the running sores of racial strife in
America have not healed. The Abscam
disclosures provide dismaying evidence
that political corruption didn't end with
Watergate.
Our country, is being vandalized by tidy
specialists, who scrupulously obey the
codes of their narrow professions, but
claim no responsibility to larger realms —
chemists whose wonders foul the air and
the seas; economists whoise rules speed
the materialistic change that is
obliterating social mores with
catastrophic |effect; agri-scientists who
would poison the land tomorrow so that it
might yield a bigger crop today; lawyers
who endlessly complicate their procedures
while justice languishes; politicians who,
in the name of getting the most for their
districts, bankrupt the commonwealth.
Yet 1 feel in my gut that this wracked
land still offers-the best and brightest Dupe
for the future. In 1814. the British radcuUb
seized Washington and burned the-Wfeto
House and we survived. Before the ClMiil
War, we lived half free and half sisxie mid
we survived. Time and again, depresaionr
gripped the land and we survived, hi the
1940s, the Hitler holocaust threatened the
w orld, and we helped the world to survive
Today, the United States still possesses
the world's greatest resources and wealth
Our industrial and agricultural production
surmss that of all other nations; our
teclmology is the most advanced Sic
foreign despot would dare attack nur
shores.
For oppressed peoples everywhere, this
is still the land of their dreams fhi the
beginning, it was the Pilgrims Today , id's
refugees fleeing from the horrors Uf
Cambodia, the tyranny of Cuba, the
economic repression of Haiti, the cruellties
of Vietnam. People of all colors and creeds
yearn to attain the largesse of liberty
American offers. In contrast, the iovffil
Union has no refugee problem
Our forefathers built on these shares the
greatest nation in history We need only
pull together as they did. putting saunffiiue
ahead of selfishness as they did. to keep :K
great.
INSTANT AMNESIA — When Jmnwy
Carter made his absurd claim that the
botched rescue mission had sumehtw
made the situation of our hostages m Tram
“more manageable," it was a. signal to
everyone in the administration to play
down the American captives' plight
Bureaucrats -at the State Department
and other agencies eagerly took their cue
trim; tie White House, just as they did
When; tie crisis was being played up for
Cartier's benefit in the primaries. Worse
ytat.tShebuainess-as-usual prescription was
adso swallowed obediently by members of
C. ingress and their staffs.
Capital; HR sources tell me the hostages
thane-now become 'passe” in Congress. As
yisn me example, a key staff member of
me congressional committee said he now
qpmife a token few hours- a week on the
nortage situation, where he used to devote
evtiry working day to it
■Most shameful of ail has been the
mmpiiant attitude of the press in sweeping
tie hiiHtagtts desperate plight under the
mug With few exceptions — notably Walter
Cmmtate's dogged nightly reminder of the
teiwneans’ lengthening captivity — the
media has let Carter get away with his
cynical manipulation of the hostage issue.
Disc aa it helped him hype the situation into
ai feonE-page crisis before the rescue
misHum; fiasco.
SmKAWGE TIMING - The En-
vir mnnentul Protection Agency recently
nngamiHiii a speakers bureau of agency
personnel to "actively pursue speaking
tppmrtumties with environmental groups
in; (infer to point out the Administration's
klmmg record of environmental ac-
- limpushments " Those of suspicious mind
might dunk this was an illegal use of
fedkral employees to promote Jimmy
(Carter' s reflection campaign.
Slit an; EPA spokesman insisted with a
straight face that the purpose of the new
weaker* bureau was to push EPA, not the
president
0 %J!}
A heel for our times
»eek:
-The Federal Reserve Board said it
would complete a phaseout of special
credit controls it put into effect in March
when the government was zeroing in on
rampant inflation rather than a deepening
recession.
The phaseout will affect those who
borrow from banks, charge on credit
cards, and invest in popularN money
market mutual funds. '
-The nation’s 2,000 federal savings and
loan associations can begin issuing credit
cards to their 22 million customers next
week. The Federal Home Loan Bank
Bctfrd later will allow the institutions to
offer interest-bearing checking accounts
and other services aimed at making them
more competitive with commercial banks.
-Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., the
nation's No. 2 tiremaker, said it was
voluntarily recalling 1.8 million steel-
belted radial “500" tires after government
tests raised questions about the per-
formance of some of them. The tires being-
recalled are largely ones produced in 1976
and 1977.
Not whu is to be the next president of the
United States, but who drew a bead on J.R.
Ewing may well be the most burning
public question of the swmier.
And if any of you should be wondering
who J.R. Ewing may be, it raises another
question; Where have you been0
J.R. is the hero-heavy of TV’s prime-
time soaper, "Dallas,” the scheming scion
of an oil zillionaire who has given new-
meaning to the word " mean."
How mean is J.R.? We're glad you
asked. He’s meaner than a sidewinder
with a slipped disc, so mean he makes
Darth Vader look like Mary Poppins. And
not only that, he's smooth. Make that
smooooooth.
The TV public loves it. And not only iji
the United States. J.R. is, if anything,
bigger in Britain where bookies are laying
odds on the possible identity of his
assailant. More, when the actor who plays
the role turned up at the Ascot Races a few
weeks back, he upstaged everything in
sight including the horses and H.R.H.
Queen E.A.M. Windsor.
It all suggests that had A.S. Hitler in
World War II only had the prescience to
package himself as a TV program, he
might well have brought off his con-
templated invasion of the island - by
acclamation.
All this has been building since last
season Vinai episode of "Dallas” in which
J.R. was gunned down, leaving the
resumption of programming this fall to
answer the question of by whom. This has
spawned not only the aforementioned
bettiiig fervor in Britain, but crime In
Hollywood. ,
In a late development, the "Dallas”
COMMENTARY
Don Graff
producers have reported breaking 906
entering of their premises by persuns
unknown for the purpose of purloining
several scripts that may or not identify flte
culprit. As an example of life imitating art
imitating life, it would make a good TV
script. And probably will.
Meanwhile, all this raises another
question Why J.R ? Why has the public
made a cult figure of this fictional meame"
Aren’t there satisfactory mqnrationai
figures in real life to fill that need'
Come to think of it, and looking around
at the field, that could be our answer right
there.
Let’s start with politics. JS. Carter,
R.W. Reagan and the rest of Slat crowd
certainly don’t offer much in the way tf
inspiration. (Tree, C.R Vance for a
moment looked like a possibility. hot he
rapidly retired to the Eastern
Establishment back rooms whence he
came three years ago to lend a touch of
needed class to Carter Washington )
As fin- charismatic penmaHSaes m the
business scene, say LA. laoeoca and
you've just about said it all without say ing
very much.
Likewise sports, where getting than *
more the forte sf the SJL Leonards and''
R M Jacksons there days than *KH0h.
for good or bad. of character
%aybe, under the
adifeduin; M Che fictional J.R. is not so
puzzling after all. With no C.A. Ljnd-
ibenghg A£. SCevensons or G.H. Ruths on
the cftntemporary scene, the. public has
turned elsewhere. And compared with
wfeUt real life haa to offer, even television's
tad tends to look good.
Si there you may have it — an ex-
JfeuaOHn for Che public’s choice of a heel
mtfheir than a hero for our Cimes.
JUR. Ewing.
Why.. Bre'ssfl mean...
on another channel
Tow nan entice a viewer to the tube but
J«u can't make him understand
emythm* he sees, or so a recent study of
yuMsxt comprehension of television
pmugrammuig suggest.
OdeatMauig 2,786 viewers on their un-
deraaamdkug of several test tapes,
rareorefan found that the overwhelming
uujjrelj' mimed significant portions of the
The results are of particular concern to
advertisers because it suggests they are
■wt ®tOteg fM sate far the billions they
speud m TV Bttt even so, commercials
rare comprehension
Ob (he
statistics, the
idience may pot
be caldtawg from a quarter to a third of the
■pwt sf ret popular programs as
“Three's Company”
That's bad*
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Keys, Clarke. Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 102, No. 159, Ed. 1 Sunday, July 6, 1980, newspaper, July 6, 1980; Sulphur Springs, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth824727/m1/18/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Hopkins County Genealogical Society.