Independent from Long Beach, California • 14

1 I I 4 1 1 v.1 A U-- 4.,: -s i 1 -i- rti T-: i i 1 i -i 1 i I 1 BOOKWORMS eople1 and i the jja 'W- Hennas H. Ridker, Puttubtr Conference SnCCmmCitRa9 Hirold M. Hina; Aj. fa LA. Collins, Sr, iikorhi Chmia WaiisaV.

Btoocn. Mir Tuesday, November 22, 1966 LONG Wire Jungle Will Long Be With Us THE CITY of Long Beach has taken an affirmative position in the prolonged hearings on ridding cities of pole and wire jungles in favor of underground installation of public utility facilities. A 10-page statement filed by City Leonard Putnam and his deputy assigned to that subject Phil J. Shafer, offers both general'' and specific suggestions for review by the State Public Utilities Commission. IF ALL were adopted, they arernot calculated to dear urban skylines in this decade or even in this century.

The jungles have been growing too long. Getting rid of them will cost billions of dollars, besides much planning and 7 coordination. Do We Overdo Jillions of Moon Photos and Bits One -thing the city did not pro- eacb has iso far failed to do. pose -was that the pay Th conversions suggested here the costs out of theuuownmcney. wffl sokly esthetic 'wTXte'rfeopahiM indeed jy" teasonsBomfi wiTtibjeet fo pay? most 'of the bills, but under any nig anything extta on their utility -lawful' formula the money will bills just to make their city a littie 7 come to them from their automeri-" i idents.

Last week. Ereslde Jahnsok.traCtotmlers fall li abeed Qf us oh turnpikes, blotting put our view ahead and driving us half mad with was badly overdone again. All week long it was impossible to Unlike most business firms, public utilities are entitled by law to a fair rate of return on their investment'' One of Long Beachs proposals is That by utilities fftxn tax reductions and refunds be added to the companies conversion fund. DinW H. Wd.

C-P M3ei Su, ExremiM lihor WcpIm Staling MUfri Um 3on OW. Eiitmid Pv Ztor BEACH, CALIFORNIA Pegs B-2 usually a few cents each in some of these cases. Instead of the few tjiey might be willing settle for. the removal of the poles and lines in their neighborhoods. The city statement argues that local, governments should have some voice in selecting priorities of areas to be improved.

But it is considered this authority could not equitably left entirely to municipalities. A formula suggested by the city is that conversions be restricted to areas affected by the public interest, such as the Select System of City Streets. IT SHOULD be possible, as the city argues, for conversion funds to be allotted to each community in proportion to the gross utility revenues produced there, More difficult will be the coordination of improvements by various companies to avoid the familiar phenomenon of streets tom up, hastily repaired, and then dug -up again for some unrelated job. If the state commission produces an answer to that old vexation, it 'will have accomplished what Long THE WEIGHT OF opinion is that more than prettiness is involved. Sociologists and many ordinary people are concerned about the growing defacements of modem cities.

Romantics to the contrary notwithstanding, an ugly is not conducive to sat-r isfactory living. a leader in office -A nominee is like a freshman trying out for the team. If he makes it, he must become part of thejteam and play within the realities of the game. He cant -just do things according to his own judgment Reagan will find, if he doesnt already know, that political leadership is a game on a day-by-day basis. He must live within the realities of what is possible with his team.

He must occasionally yield. There is only one sure prediction. Reagan, like all first-time governors, will learn a lot in four 'years. i A attended the Janie P. Abbott School Until we voted to be annexed into file City of Lynwood this spring, we were almost a forgotten area.

If we called the police, it was always a long time before they arrived; and our Janie P. Abbott School needed much repair and improvement in appearance. While our school, has been left to be run-down, the schools on the west side of Compton have had to be fixed due to the aidless breakage and vandalism that was much more urgent -Should we be punished because we respect law, order and property? By going into the Lynwood. School District, our taxes will be much less even though we are still liable for the school assessment from Compton. In all the years we lived.

in the county, the City of Compton did not want us. or askus to become a part of their city. But now that we are a part of Lynwood, arid Lynwood is interested in helping us with our schools with a lower tax rate, Compton finally, realizes that our tax money is about --to be cut off, and they shout Dis "crimination." May I ask, after ail these years of being ignored, who is being discriminated against? 1 MRS. RALPH J. QUASE "Lynwood Such windfalls have not been uncommon in recent years for companies in this area.

Most customers are, nonetheless, one target to be probably have forgotten it, but attacked for the sake of more live-they have been given small credits able surroundings. The utility jungles are not the worst of our defacements. They ON THE FINAL DAY of the. Manila Conference, I was watching the 'proceedings on television when the program cut away from the pompous platitude of officialdom to an NBC correspondent standing in a public square in Saigon. Li.

I cannot quote him exactly, of course, but whet he said was a breath of fresh, air after the stale and cloying SYDNEY HARRIS atmosphere of Manila. He was simply reporting the reactions of the South Vietnamese to the conference. Most of the people there, he laid, were supremely Indifferent to it All they wanted to do was survive. About. 80 per cent of.

the population live in villages, and they couldnt see how burning villages was going i to bring them a better life. They regarded the conference, as purely a prop to support Premier Ky and his military cadre. Neither communism nor democracy; as ideologies, mean much to them, and they feel that neither China nor the U. S. caries about their welfare, -but are just using the country as a bloody chessboard for power politics.

THIS CORRESPONDEfirS cool and candid report reminded me of an Associated Press dispatch from Sai-gon I clipped out of the paper fills summer. It ran: North Viet Nams order for partial mobilization and a stepped-up -war in South Viet Nam hr ought-shrugs in Saigon today. Today is Sunday, the people go to the movies, said a young Vietnamese, who had succeeded in obtaining a discharge. from-the army. "PremTer Nguyeij Cao Ky was sailing off a scenic island in the South China Sea.

Many of his generals were either gambling, visiting or basking in the sun near swimming pools. WHAT KIND OF war is this, in which we are saving" a people who show no desire to be saved, protecting a country by burning its villages and destroying its crops, promoting democracy by supporting militarists and opportunists, and defending law and order by violating three treaties and the U. S. Constitution? If we feel we must fight, if'we feel that communism must be opposed everywhere at all times at all costs, let us say so and do so; but let us not mouth the cheap and transparent cant that we are doing so because we care about the Vietnamese or an abstraction called social justice. Nobody, not even our uneasy allies, believes us.

Fast' life By HARRY KARNS IN CALIFORNIA, Governor elect Ronald Reagan, the showman, la re-. ported selecting his cast of charac that is, his policy REPUBLICAN LEADERS in Congress promise alternatives to Lyndons Great Society. The question is: Do people actually want to be self-reliant? FLYING UPSIDE DOWN," says a dispatch describing the Gemini 12 flightrthe pilots got a good view of' the southern United States. And it makes a lot of sense these days to view the southern United States ft ran down. r- r- 6 Dallas three years ago today was the testimony of Mrs.

Lee Oswald that her husband had tried to kill Richard Nixon. She told the Warren Commission how he had read in the newspaper that Vice President Nixon was town, had strapped his holster arid revolver underneath his coat and announced he was going downtown to kill the vice president." Mrs. Oswald, then recently arrived from Russia, didnt know what to do. But when her husband went into the bathroom die locked' the door and kept him there for a couple of hoursr until his ardor for killing had cooled Off. THE INCIDENT puzded the Warren Commission.

Checking on 'the movements of Richard Nixon, they found that he not only was not vice president at that time, hut he was not in Dallas. On tiie other hand. Vice President Lyndon Johnson was in Dallas. Com-mission members concluded, therefore; that it was Lyndon Johnson who -had -that -Mrs. Oswald, recalling then, Vice President Nixons visit to Moscow, had confused file two men.

-New York TIuim Sendee WASHINGTON TheT. national pinion for, overdoing things is getthig worse. Last week, to cite an example, the newspapers displayed yet another batch of close-up snapshots of the moong auxface. When the first set. of moon pictures came back, it was a mildly interesting event The demonstration that man could send a camera a quar-.

a million miles and get photographs of anything at all was, in fect so Interesting that most of us felt it would be unworthy to ask how much these pictures were costing us. Since then moon-surface pictures have been raining down on earth. Let us be frank. These pictures are very dull The typical picture of the moons surface looks remarkably like the typical snapshot of a childs mud pie. It is considered uncouth to say so.

We are expected to. carry Jon.enthu--siastically about these pictures. Editors are expected to display them again and again in magazines and newspapers and on television, along with the pronouncements of space officials about their technical excellence and how these "pictures are gping to help us put a man on the moon one of these days. THE COST of putting this man on the moon, originally estimated at $20 billion, is now re-estimated at $23 bUlion, and will doubtless be re-estimated upwards by. several billion The Thursday Quarterback ITS GREAT FUN on Thursday to explain how Saturdays football game must be played.

But it never turns out that way. Political quarterbacks are explaining what Ronald Reagan must do, may do, can do and wont do. They seem to have his next four years completely planned. They forget that there is a great difference between a. nominee and About LBJ? the need to pass so that we can catch a glimpse of the next bridge.

And yet we seem to crave these excesses. Is there some hideous national need to feel that this moment we are living in right now, this event we are witnessing, this man who has our attention, is the greatest, the the most exciting, the most momentous-moment, event or man has ever seen? ANYONE WHO PAID attention to the football game Saturday between Notre Dame and Michigan State might conclude so. At the beginning of the week, this shaped up as a highly interesting game between two aupoior teams. It was not surprising to see the sports writers, whose business is excess, declaring.that.it would be the game of the year By Friday, the sports pages had elevated it to the game of the decade. as though earful that the national passion for excess woukTdia-courage us all from paying any attention to something that was merely the game of the year.

Perhaps to hold us to our TV sett, the men who described the game Saturday kept assuring us that it was indeed the game of file decade. They were made to look like small timers that night by a' radio sports announcer who declared it the game of the generation. He was quickly topped Sunday morning by the Washington sports pages which called it the game of the century. had run for vice president of the Dewey ticket in 1948. His credentials were of the highest But the Chief Justice was most reluctant He told President Johnson the Supreme Court had made it a rule that its members must not serve outside the court; that they must concentrate' on judicial problems.

He recalled criticism of the late Justice Robert Jack-son when Jackson took leave Of the court to be UJS. prosecutor at the Nuremberg war trials. Justice Frank Murphy also had taken time oft from the court for brief World War II military The Chief Justice was adamant in his opposition. BUT 'LYNDON JOHNSON is 1 a persuasive President The other members of the commission would serve only if the Chief Justice was its chairman. 7 In 1917, Johnson told the Chief Justice, "you put on a uniform and went out to for your country when your country needed you.

Your country needs you today." With tears in his eyes, the Chief Justice accepted. One development in the investiga-ion of the tragedy which occurred in. get him off page one, the radio and the TVtulm There was, of course, his surgery, which certainly justified attention. It required only one day to tell the stray; namely, that the surgery had bean performed, that it was indeed minor and that he was going to be fine again after brief convalescence. But in the American tradition of excess, itwas badly overdone; For BAKER RUSSELL several days beforehand we were immersed in speculation about when the surgery would be performed, where it would be performed, how the Presi-- dent felt about would be ent in the operating room, what the hospital charge would be, etc.

At length we were told that the President had entered the hospital and that Mrs. Johnson accompanied him. Immediately after the surgery came a presidential news conference cohiplete with pictures. Next days headlines told us the President could leave the hospital Then, that he would go to Texas. Then, that he had gone to Texas.

Then, that he had arrived in Texas, that pictures of him in Texas. This overdoing of presidents is re-. peated'every time a president catches possible to investigate the tragedy of Dallas. picked two. Republicans Sen.

John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky: and Rep.fGerald Ford of Michigan. He balanced them against two Demo-. crats Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia and. Rep.

Hale' Boggs of He chose a distinguished elder statesman of the Republican party, John J. McCloy; who had served as assistant secretary of war, high commissioner to Germany, head of the Chase Man- hattan Bank and head of the World Bank; plus Allen Dulles, ex-chief of the Central Intelligence Agency. But these men were willing -to serve only if led by a respected, nonpartisan chairmanand to this end the new President approached the Chief Justice. i Earl Warrea had three times Republican governor of California, cold, drives around bis acres, has a more bef oreJie gets -hamburgerat a roadside stand plays -boys will we get for our, money? More his dogs or strolls on the White And people insist they cannot un-snapshots. House lawn.

As a result, a president derstand how, Ronald Rregan can be This is overdoing things. It is a in America has ceased to be just a regarded as a serious presidential national vice, like overdoing our prev presidenL He is. like oneof those prospecL drives around his acres, has And what was it? A game between TOWNMEEHNG Warren WASHINGTON Today, when a favorite national sport" seems to be that of casting doubt on the findings of the Warren Commission, it might be well to investigate how that commission came into being. I discussed the matter with the new President -of the -United -States -10 days after President Kennedys tragic death. Suddenly from having been a background figure in the Kennedy administration, Lyndon Johnson had been thrust Into the White House, with all its heavy long-range responsibilities plus Its Immediate problems of President Kennedys funeral -and the fixing of guilt for his death.

The latter had been complicated by Rubys shooting; of Lee Harvey Oswald, which unleashed flood of rumors that Lee Oswald had been in conspiracy with file Dallas police, the underworld, or the pro-fascist right wing in Dallas. 4. THE NEW PRESIDENT was fully -aware of this. He also recalled from history the rumors that followed Lincolns assassination, the vicious report that members of Lincolns Cabinet had conspired to kill him. So pick-the most unimpeachable, bipartisan board New Letter Policy, This newspaper has long had a rule requiring the use t)f names and addresses of those writing for the letters to the editor column.

Because' of the increasing volume of insulting, harassing' mail 1 being received by those. letter writers. we are our policy-in the futore we will print onlythe name, and-home towns of those who write omitting street addresses. Upon request, but at the discretion of file editor, will print some letters with rally initials and the home towns. We still require that each letter to be considered for the letters must have a true and address for verification.

As in the past, we also reserve the right to shorten letters for space. The Editor. v- -I- School District Case EDITOR: I live in the Janie P. Abbott School area that the Independent and Press-Telegram have been writing articles about concerning our achoolsJ Your reporter was quite unaware of the rea-. sons the residents want to ge-into the Lynwood School District' I have lived in thig 'I3yeariahd b6tirbf my boys have Tr 1 --JJ a a 0 9 a I f.

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