Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 101, No. 51, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 1, 1979 Page: 2 of 18
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2—THE NEWS-TELEGRAM, Sulphur Springs, Texas, Thursday, March 1,1979.
forum
In our opinion
Final push for civic
center top priority
It is painful to think about hitting
the civic crusade trail again, especial-
ly when the ultimate goal is a whop-
ping $140,000.
One of the aspects of the spectac-
ular civic center plan was to channel
the construction money available
into basic buildings. These, it was
reasoned, represented a one-shot op-
portunity. Nothing more could be
added later.
Once the buildings were erected
and beginning to serve their purposes,
it was reasoned, an impetus for fin-
ishing the job by acquiring auxiliary
features required would be set in mo-
tion. That is what is happening now.
Most of the prospective new in-
vestment probably will be centered
in the auditorium. Things such as
stage curtains and lighting systems
for a building this large run into big
money.
Also mentioned are rodeo equip-
ment, seating and maintenance equip-
ment for both buildings and grounds.
There undoubtedly will be other
things.
Sulphur Springs has the basic
buildings for a community asset of
real excellence in the civic center. We
must now find a way to get the other
things required to put the new crea-
tion to use most effectively.
The keys to the whole problem,
as we see it, are a financing plan that
will capture the public imagination
and a campaign organization that will
go out and get the job done.
Given these two assets, the assign-
ment should not prove an insurmount-
able challenge.
Son of Proposition 13
By Don Graff
Never underestimate the power of a popular movement
to panic the political establishment — particularly a
movement concerned with something as popular as
money.
California’s Proposition 13 is perhaps the most recent
spectacular case in point. But that tax-slashing measure,
affecting directly only one state and the result of a mere
referendum, is bush league compared to the movement
now underway to impose a balanced budget upon the
federal government.
Water system expected
to top billion gallons
COMMENTARY
u Donald F. Graff
The means would be a constitutional amendment. And
with approval already having been voted by more than a
score of legislatures, the movement is almost in sight of
the 34 states necessary to summon a constitutional
convention for the purpose.
California’s Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr., from whom new
highs — or lows — in political trendiness come as no
surprise since Proposition 13 opened his eyes to the
relationship between wallets and votes, joined up early. He
is reported preparing to launch a nationwide “balance the
budget’’ campaign which only incidentally might also
enhance his presidential availability. Right on, Jerry!
Other political names, especially of the governor’s own
Democratic persuasion, take notably different views of the
prospective amendment. President Carter finds it
“dangerous,” to Sen. Edward Kennedy it is “ominous”
and from labor’s George Meany comes the definitive
evaluation of “a very dangerous right-wing legislative
threat.”
The predominant response in Republican ranks is
handwringing. On the one hand, there is concern that
Democrats could pre-empt a traditional Republican issue
— economy in government. On the other, there’s recogni-
tion of the dangerous oversimplicity of the idea and the
possibility that as political issues go, it might well turn out
to be more effective as a boomerang.
It is not necessary to oppose fiseal responsibility on the
federal level to be able to shoot holes in this proposal for
achieving it. A constitutional convention is a cumbersome
approach, has not been utilized since the original gathering
and conceivably could become a “runaway” — rewriting
the entire document.
The foremost consequence of a constitutional budgetary
limitation might be fiscal chaos, depriving an administra-
tion of the flexibility necessary to meet economic and
political crises. The entire nation could become a
Cleveland. Further, it is no service to the nation to clutter
the Constitution with matters better handled through the
existing political processes. An amendment would not be
an adequate substitute for responsible performance in the
public interest on the part of an administration and the
Congress, or of state government.
The latter has not been showing up too well on the
amendment business. The kindest word for the haste with
which many legislatures have endorsed the convention call
is “unseemly.” Less thought and debate has been devoted
to the issue in several chambers than to changes in local
speed limits — considerably less, since deviations from the
nationwide 55 miles-per-hour could cost a state funds from
the federal highway program.
Which brings us back to money and a possible do-it-
ourselves way of easing federal budget problems. As a
New York congressman, Rep. Peter Peyser, suggested to
Governor Brown, California might consider giving up the
funds it receives from Washington under the myriad state
and local aid programs. That at a stroke would cut the
budget deficit by close to $4 billion. And if all the states
renounced their federal doles, it could be wiped out
altogether.
(NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSN. I
Sulphur Springs’ water treatment
plant is expected to establish new
production records in 1979 as the City
of Cooper comeB on line to increase
the demands.
The modern treatment plant,
which continues to be updated with
new methods, processed 986 million
gallons of water during 1978, which,
of course, was a year of extreme
droughts. The average daily con-
sumption amounted to a comparative-
ly modest 2.7 millions, with the max-
imum for any one day running a little
over four million gallons.
In addition to the new demand
from Cooper, other lines and systems
in Hopkins County beyond the city
limits have been expanded and en-
larged to serve a wider area of resi-
dents with a more consistent flow.
Since 986 million gallons is not
far from one billion, observers feel
reasonably certain that new consump-
tion records will be marked up in
1979.
With Lake Sulphur Springs brim-
ful and actually splashing excess
water over the spillway, it is a com-
forting feeling for both Hopkins and
Delta counties, particularly Cooper,
that days of limited and poor quality
supplies are about over.
As water demands continue to in-
crease, it would be wise that commun-
ity leaders keep a close watch of pro-
jections of future needs and continue
to push for other alternate supplies,
including Cooper Lake, so that this
area will not come up short as it has
several times in past years.
Essential personnel
Wall Street Journal
There was a big snowfall in Wash-
ington last week, and most of the city’s
226,000 federal employes couldn’t
get to work for days. With the excep-
tion of the few people needed to run
various communications systems, the
federal government was shut down.
The telephones and Xerox machines
were silent. The paperwork didn’t
Jack Anderson
move. Unknown numbers of meetings
were canceled. A scheduled briefing
at the White House for fifty Senate
press secretaries was shelved. The
country saved tons of fuel.
In fact you will not be surprised
to hear that in this nice little experi-
ment on what life would be like with-
out most of the federal apparaturs,
the Republic did just fine.
The Almanac
Today In History
By The Associated Press
Today is Thursday, March 1,
the 60th day of 1979. There are
305 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight in history:
On this date in 1781, the
American Articles of
Confederation were adopted by
the Continental Congress in
Philadelphia, paving the way
for a Federal Union.
On this date:
In 1562, 1,200 French
Huguenots were slain in a
massacre at Vassy, France,
provoking the first War of
Religion in France.
In 1780, the Pennsylvania
legislature passed an act
abolishing slavery.
In 1867, Nebraska became the
37th state.
In 1872, Congress authorized
the creation of Yellowstone
National Park.
In 1932, the infant son of
Colonel and Mrs. Charles
Lindbergh was kidnapped from
the couple’s home near
Hopewell, N.J.
In 1954, five congressmen
were wounded by three Puerto
Rican nationalists firing wildly
from the gallery of the House of
Representatives in
Washington.
Fraud's in eye of beholders
WASHINGTON - Justice
Department prosecution of
a “phantom” native
Alaskan village corpora-
tion, indicted for allegedly
trying to euchre Uncle
Sam out of 69,120 acres of
valuable land, was quietly
-- and reluctantly -
dropped after a govern-
ment lawyer’s affidavit
knocked the bottom out of
die case.
The lawyer, former Bu-
reau of Indian Affairs offi-
cial Robert E. Bruce, In-
sisted that the Shuyak Vil-
lage corporation was
entitled to land it claimed
at Port Williams.
More crucially, Bruce
stated he saw ‘‘no evidence
of fraud” in the enrollment
figures for the village, on
which the land claim was
based. They were the fault
of the BIA and the “com-
plexity of the concepts ...
particularly as applied to
an unsophisticated and
uneducated people.”
This cast doubt on the
fraudulent intent neces-
sary for criminal prosecu-
tion of the village corpora-
tion, and the case was
dropped.
The Sh
Shuyak Village cor-
poration is a subsidiary of
Koniag Inc., a regional
native corporation. Koniag
submitted 16 villages for
certification that would
give them over a million
acres of federal land In
Alaska. But FBI and Inte-
rior Department investiga-
tors checked out Koniag’s
villages on the scene and
ram* to the conclusion that
seven of them - including
Shuyak - were phantom
settlements created by Ko-
niag to gain title to more
than 600,000 acres of public
land.
The Bureau of Indian
Affairs initially approved
all 16 of Koniag’s village
certification applications.
But one federal investiga-
tor labeled the certifica-
tion reports “absolutely
fraudulent,” noting that
there were cases where
“the bulk of the supposed
villagers were living in Los
Angeles.”
Doubts about the authen-
ticity of Koniag’s villages
led Interior Department
officials to call in the FBI
for a thorough investiga-
tion.
The years-long probe of
Koniag’s operations got no
cooperation from the na-
tive corporation. Quite the
contrary. Karl Armstrong,
Koniag’s executive vice
president and Washington
lobbyist, made this aston-
ishingly self-incriminating
admission to our associate
Hal Bemton: “I sent word
out to the villagers not to
discuss their affairs with
any strangers... especially
not any officials of the U.S.
government.”
Undeterred by this self-
proclaimed attempt to ob-
struct their investigation,
FBI agents methodically
tracked down and inter-
viewed the natives listed
as residents on the Shuyak
Village application. They
concluded that 90 percent
of the enrollment was
fraudulent. This led to the
indictment that was even-
tually shot down by
Bruce’s affidavit.
The roots of the Alaska
land-grab - described by
some officials as the big-
gest attempted public-land
swindle of the century —
can be traced to the incred-
ibly lax regulations which
Implemented the 1971 law.
“Native villages” were de-
fined in terms so loose as to
Invite fraud. The regula-
tions permitted native
“residents” to be enrolled
by the very corporations
which had the most to gain
by padding the figures,
since the land was
awarded in proportion to
the village population.
These vague regulations
were enthusiastically lob-
bied for by Koniag’s Wash-
ington lawyer, Edward
Weinberg, a former solici-
tor in the Interior Depart-
ment under the Johnson
administration. They were
opposed by some Interior
Department officials who
recognized the potential
for fraud.
Interestingly, our
sources report that these
same officials have had
little better luck with
Jimmy Carter’s appoint-
ees in the Interior Depart-
ment. Indeed, instead of
pressing for vigorous pros-
ecution of Koniag Inc., the
department brass has
come out in favor of a
special congressionally
sanctioned conveyance of
115,000 acres of prime
timberland to one of Koni-
ag’s phantom villages.
Junketing Junkmen:
The Pentagon’s junk deal-
ers apparently like junkets
as well as the next bureau-
crat. So each year the
Defense Property Disposal
Service holds regional con-
ferences so officials from
Washington can discuss
the finer points of unload-
ing excess military hard-
ware with their field repre-
sentatives overseas.
The Pacific region shin-
dig is held in Honolulu; the
European region’s is in
Wiesbaden, Germany.
Thousands of dollars in
taxpayers’ money are
spent to take Uncle Sam’s
surplus property dumpers
to these meetings, which
are supplemented by the
customary cocktail parties
and banquets to relieve the
tedium of the day’s busi-
ness.
The rest of the year, the
disposal service manages
to carry on its business by
telephone. But as a spokes-
man pointed out, “this can
be stifling.” The General
Accounting Office is check-
ing into the service’s anti-
stifling practices.
Andy Evans Addendum:
In a recent column urging
a pardon for Patty Hearst,
we likened her captivity to
that of American soldiers
who were brainwashed
during the Korean War.
We cited Air Force Col.
Andy Evans as one who
eventually signed a false
war-crime confession after
months of mental torture.
Evans, now a retired
major general, wrote to
clarify our capsulized ver-
sion of his record. He notes
that he signed a statement,
which "admitted” partici-
pating in germ warfare,
only after he was certain
the war was over. Also, he
was careful to use as a date
for the germ-warfare mis-
sion a day when he could
prove he was in Hong Kong
on leave.
Practically the last POW
to be set free, Evans defi-
antly thumbed his nose at a
Red Chinese cameraman
filming the prisoners as
they crossed the bridge to
freedom at Panmunjom.
Copyright. 1979
United Fentur* Syndicate. Inc.
&
Snow skids Carter
WASHINGTON (AP) -
When two new snowmobiles
were hauled into the
presidential retreat at Camp
David, Md., a couple of weeks
ago, there was speculation
President Carter and daughter
Amy had acquired new toys.
Such was not the case,
however.
It seems the snow-scooters
were purchased for Carter’s
Secret Service bodyguards as a
necessary tool of their trade.
When the Carters took up
cross-country skiing' as a
weekend pasttime at Camp
David, the Secret Service
pondered the problem of
tracking them during their
outings through the forested
expanses of Catoctin Mountain
Park, which embraces Camp
David like a blanket.
But tracking was only part of
the potential problem. What if
Carter fell on his face and was
injured? How could he be
hauled back to Camp David
over rugged terrain?
The snowmobiles arrived and
quickly proved their value.
Within 48 hours, Carter’s skis
hit a patch of ice on a steep
downslope, precipitating him
onto his face.
Cut, bleeding and shaken, the
president was put aboard a
snowmobile and hauled several
miles back up the mountain to
his lodge.
So Carter proved the hard
way that a far more
experienced presidential skier,
Gerald R. Ford, had no
monopoly on taking pratfalls,
or facefalls, at the highest level
of government.
Still, it was an em-
barrassment that could not be
covered up, inasmuch as
Carter needed heavy makeup
for a few days to mask his
facial abrasions from the un-
forgiving eyes of television
cameras.
Berry's World
01979 by NEA. Inc
“I’ve been Abzuged. ”
Basic principles
being upheld
Editor:
It gives me hope when I see
parents and teachers at-
tempting to uphold basic Bible
principles that seem to have
been lost in our permissive
society.
I am glad books with bad
words are being eliminated
from the availability of
students to read, even though
the words found in those books
were “in common use and a
majority of them heard
frequently on television.” I
don’t think those are good
yardsticks with which to
measure.
I don’t think we are becoming
censors by refusing in-
fringements upon our rights as
Christian parents. Censorship
is prior restraint and an in-
dividual can print anything he
wants, but parents should have
the right to say what their
children are allowed to read
and view.
Lequida Jennings
Sulphur Springs
Children need
adult guidance
Editor:
In my opinion, young
children need guidance and
protection from harm until they
are capable of mature
judgment. Recent efforts by
parents, the principal and
library personnel of Douglas
School to make sure vulgar
language was not found in
supplementary reading
material in school were termed
censorship by your editorial.
Those efforts could much better
be viewed as concern by those
who care and are responsible
for the best development of
these young minds that they be
sure such language is not
sanctioned by parents or school
personnel.
Unfortunately it is true that
there can be few children who
have not heard or read vulgar
language somewhere. Your
reference to its common use on
TV is just one more example of
the lowering of standards as
each year goes by. There are
plenty of places where such
words can be found. There is
one place that it very definitely
should not be found. Many
homes are still teaching
children to avoid the use of
profanity and students un-
derstand that it is not ac-
ceptable by school standards.
There are plenty of years of
adulthood when there will be
the possibility to choose from
“uncensored” literature after
they have matured if such is
their choice. May God grant
that we never lower our
standards to the extent that we
accept bad language in school
literature.
Gwen Parker
Sulphur Springs
Book action
is appreciated
Editor:
As parents of two childen who
are students in the Sulphur
Springs school system, your
paper’s recent editorial on bad
language in library books was
most disturbing.
Though the use of “bad
words” may be part of
everyday language for many
people, it is not the habit of
many others, and we do not
consider their use in library
books for students as an
example to be set by our
schools. The argument that
“everyone is doing it” carries
little validity here.
Is it possible that there are
those who believe that
removing books with offensive
language from Our school’s
library shelves constitutes
censorship? We think surely
not!
We appreciate the parents for
taking action in reviewing the
books and the school system for
recognizing the need.
Joe and Pam Kennedy
Sulphur Springs
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Keys, Clarke. Sulphur Springs News-Telegram (Sulphur Springs, Tex.), Vol. 101, No. 51, Ed. 1 Thursday, March 1, 1979, newspaper, March 1, 1979; Sulphur Springs, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth823718/m1/2/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Hopkins County Genealogical Society.