The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 12

A-12 THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRERTuesday, April 14, 1981 THE ENQUIRER WILLIAM J. KEATING President and Publisher C.KORCt: R. BLAKK Vict President, Editor THOMAS S. GEPHARDT Associate Editor HARRY H. BROWNING Vice President.

Operations JAMES E. JEROW jcf President, Sales A Gannett Newspaper FARM PRICES 1914 index that reflects production costs. It is not too much to say that this is 1981 and dairy farmers, however Helms seeking broader support to reduce risks Who Inspires The Assassins? "looks like a code word to me that it's FOR ALL HIS vaunted conservatism, Sen. Jesse Helms, has yet to get the message that, under Ronald Reagan, it's no longer business as usual. Mr.

Helms wants to subvert the President's agricultural program with a largess to farmers that is denied virtually every other businessman. He has introduced a farm bill that gives special though unwarranted protection to producers of peanuts, milk and grains. Mr. Helms proposes that acreage allotments and allowable sales of peanuts be continued as they are under current law. The President has asked that the peanut acreage allotment be dropped and market quotas be reduced.

Mr. Helms further proposes that the taxpayers support a price level of $650 per ton for peanuts. The President proposes $450 per ton. In addition, Mr. Helms' bill would have the secretary of agriculture support milk prices at 75 of parity.

The President proposed 70 of parity. As it is, the taxpayers pay $1.5 billion to maintain the price of milk at 80, the printing of A Thousand Days his celebration of the abbreviated presidency. In the thousand pages of Schlesinger's book, the name Lee Harvey Oswald never appears. Culpability for the "aberrant atmosphere" in Dallas, "the climate of alienation and anger," was placed squarely upon what Rep. Jim Wright called "the steady drumbeat of ultra-right-wing propaganda with which the city is constantly besieged." When it was noted that some Dallas schoolchildren reportedly cheered news of Kennedy's death, Schlesinger noted, "The children were not responsible; they expressed the atmosphere of the city." SINCE JFK'S killer was a defector to the Soviet Union, the son-in-law of a ODDS ENDS BY PATRICK J.

BUCHANAN WASHINGTON: "Too bad he (the would-be assassin) missed. That's the result of sending an amateur to do a professional job I just hope Reagan dies." Reported in Newsweek, this was the comment of a student columnist at the University of Pennsylvania named Dominic Manno. While Manno is evidence that spiritual sickness is not absent from the Ivy League, it appears prevalent in our public schools. Following the attempt on the President's life, a Washington Post reporter visited Alice Deal Junior High, an integrated school drawing from the more affluent communities of the capital. "A lot of people were happy that Reagan got shot," chirped one student.

"Turn the guy loose so he can try again," volunteered another. IN LESS affluent East Baltimore, Dave Ettlin of the Sun, in random survey of 64 people, found 15 indifferent to Mr. Reagan's brush with death, 11 delighted. "I wasn't shocked. He had it coming to him," said a youthful Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) worker.

"It couldn't have happened to a better man," said a 20-year-old gas-station attendant. "What did he expect stepping on poor people this way? I'm going to celebrate," said a 20-year-old female security guard. One proprietor of a grocery store in the area added, "The younger people have been coming in saying they're glad it happened, like they wish he was dead." MANNO AND the like-minded of Baltimore's inner city are more symptomatic of a sickness in society than the mentally deranged youth who would try to murder the President to impress a teen-age movie queen who barely knew he existed. But the question needs asking: Who or what infected and poisoned Dominic Manno? In 1965, less than two years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Arthur Schlesinger went into the first married they are to their daily chores, must accept the reality of the market place and the ballot box.

That means the price support for milk ought to go down the tubes. There is one more market the Helms bill would affect. There would be a new formula for supporting the price of wheat and corn at 85 and 75 of recent average market prices, respectively. The President wants the secretary of agriculture to set the price at a level no higher than the world market price. What Mr.

Helms is trying to do, it seems to us, is coalesce agricultural interests to oppose President Reagan's limited economy moves. But it is not just Mr. Reagan who loses if Mr. Helms wins. Every consumer and every taxpayer will have to shell out more and more dollars to pay for the peanut program, or swallow higher prices and higher taxes for milk supports, or bite down on the bitter dose of higher prices and higher taxes for grains.

Ideally, farmers ought to compete in an unfettered free-market economy with the strongest surviving and the weakest succumbing. They deserve no more than any other risk-taker. end. The school board remains one of the few public offices that carries no compensation. Surely, board members earn something better than brickbats with their long hours and generally thankless service.

it it it IT IS DIFFICULT to see the re-election of Thomas Mooney as president of the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers as anything but (1) a vote of confidence in his two-year tenure and (2) a rebuff to former President Roger Stephens, Mr. Mooney's melodramatic predecessor, who had hoped for a comeback. All of Mr. Stephens' slate for the union's offices won with the conspicuous exception of Mr. Stephens.

it it it OHIO'S STATE legislators are working their fingers to the bones trying to find answers to the state's burgeoning financial crisis. But state Rep. Helen Fix, R-Cincinnati, for one, reports that the legislature has received less mail about the budget than about the bill to permit the hunting of the mourning dove in Ohio. The surge of mail apparently paid off: the dove bill was beaten last week (although it may come back). his remarkable political skill, is the fact that most people in China support the liberation of their country from the economic dead hand of Maoism," says the Economist of London.

"The biggest beneficiaries of his reforms have been the 80 of Chinese who live in the countryside: peasants have gained not only 45 more money income in the past three years, but also more of the independence that farmers everywhere cherish." What frustrates textbook collectiv-ists not only in China but also in the Soviet Union and Poland is the impressive evidence that workers produce more outside lock-step collectivism. Farmers want their independence and workers want it. And in China's case, Mr. Deng wants at least a measure of it. But Maoists mourn for the past.

And to the extent they exert power, national liberation, even the limited Deng version, suffers. going to be all right to kill niggers." AARON HENRY of the Mississippi National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) said that to black America, Ronald Reagan's "name is anathema, like Hitler's." Dolores Huerta of the United Farm Workers: "Reagan hates Hispanics." The widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. noted that "the Klan would be quite comfortable" with Ronald Reagan. After meeting with Jimmy Carter, Joe Lowery of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference emerged from the White House to declare himself frightened by the "forces of racism, right-wingism and reactionism, and racially and religiously arrogant people." Being dubbed a "civil-rights leader" means never having to say you're sorry.

Who called these demagogues to account last fall when they seeded the clouds of hatred against Ronald Reagan? Why expect anything more from minority children except jubilation at Mr. Reagan's brush with death when their "leaders" have compared him to Hitler and predicted his election would mean it's "all right to kill niggers" as did the Hon. Andrew Young, the "finest public servant" Jimmy Carter ever met. ONE WEEK after the attempt on Mr. Reagan's life, a 22-year-old youth with a handgun was picked up in a New York bus terminal, heading to Washington, D.C., to kill Mr.

Reagan. Behind he left a letter of his intentions: "To the Fascist Powers: "Ultimately Ronald Reagan will be shot to death and this country turned to the "If I cannot get at the President, I am prepared to slay some other prominent 'right-wing' political figure." At what reputable fountain of leftist ideology did this man sip of the politics of hatred? shooting. But the absence of cameras there would have changed the chemis try of the moment and perhaps made tne detection oi the gunman easier, perhaps cut down the odds of the President being wounded. The nation could have done without the pictures. National security would not have been impaired had there been no television charting the drama.

FINALLY COMES the need from those institutions organized for political influence and public education to keep the issue alive. In that there seems to be the best hope and the best news. Michael Beard, executive director of the Coalition to Ban Handguns, Is finding new allies in insurance, medicine and retailing groups all now suffering directly from gun violence. Security for a President gets easier in a more orderly public climate. For in the end It is not only the President who has to yield his freedom because of growing threats, it Is the American people.

Together they can do much to make life In this nation tolerably safe for plain citizens and Presidents. THE ENQUIRER (USPS 1 1 3-200) 617 Vin Cincinnati, Ohio 45202 BY MAIL Dolly one year. $124 80 Sunday one year. J44 20 TO SUBSCRIBE CALL READER SERVICE (513 651-4500. Sacond Clou Poitaot Paid at Cincinnati.

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(614 224-4640 Covington, Ky. 4101 1 309 Garrard St. (606 261-6666 Batavia, Ohio 45103 Parsons (513 732-1507 Hamilton, Ohio 45011 1 10 N. Third (513) 663-7962 Middletown, Ohio 45042 1919 Central (513) 424-0030 Indianapolis, tnd. 46204 150 W.

Market St. (317) 634-9751 Lawrenceburg, Ind. 47025 202 W. High (812) 537-0427 Lebanon, Ohio 45036 S. Broadway (513) 932-5276 GANNETT NEWSPAPER ADVERTISING SALES NEW YORK OFFICE-(212) 949-0920 1 ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE On Protecting Our Presidents A groundwork for vilification was laid in the campaign.

KGB colonel, an idolator of Fidel Castro, an itinerant Marxist, who happened to work in Dallas, it seemed stretching matters to blame the assassination on the city. But if "a climate of alienation and anger" can trigger an Oswald, it seems fair to inquire who created the climate of "alienation and anger" which can cause the morally impoverished like Manno and those Inner-city youth to be elated at the attempted murder of a President. Herewith some candidates. During last fall's campaign, President Reagan was the victim of the most concentrated campaign of vilification of any candidate in memory. The political savagery of the so-called civil-rights community was unrestrained.

"Crazy, trigger-happy and dangerous," said Mayor Coleman Young of Detroit, the "Prune Face from the West." If Mr. Reagan wins, "black folks will catch hell for the rest of this century," said Andy Young; the Republican candidate's passing reference to states rights to board a plane while the President is in the area and not send out an alert? Not any time soon, it is safe to bet. And the FBI should put a person's job on the line on that issue. We need to stop right now publishing and broadcasting the daily schedules and movements of the President beyond the White House. Big events can be trumpeted and the President under those conditions can be positioned securely for his appearances.

But the casual drop-bys at dinners and the routine speeches to conventions need no advance billing. THE SECRET Service rightly points out that in every one of the shootings starting with John Kennedy, the would-be assassins learned from local news-outlets times and places for presidential events. Without that help, the assassin's job becomes far more difficult. No attempt on a -President's life has been made when a President moved through the public domain unexpectedly or went to public functions on the spur of the moment. Those trade associations, labor groups and ethnic gatherings that have a rightful claim on presidential attention should now voluntarily begin to curtail their demands.

For years security people have advocated the use of closed-circuit televisidn for such greetings and speeches. Now is the time to try it. Presidents, of course, must agree. THE SECRET Service is going through its own Internal anguish over the Reagan shooting. It too will come up with new ideas for crowd control, numbers of agents in the presidential detail and tactics for entering and exiting difficult areas.

Those of us in the media should reduce our demands for coverage. The camera stakeouts at doors and drives are a clear signal to anyone stalking a President. The media partisans have recoiled at the thought. Had they not had camera crews at the Washington-Hilton they would not have photographed the Chicago's mayor builds reputation as a peacemaker CHICAGO'S MAYOR Jane Byrne has ended her adventure in urban slumming even earlier than many cynics were predicting although she may return to the Cabrini Green public housing project from time to time. For now, however, she believes her presence has restored a modicum of order to a facility that had been torn by crime and fear.

If Mayor Byrne is really the miracle worker she thinks she is, she should rent herself out to other neighborhoods in her own city and others. it- it it THE REPUBLICAN endorsement of Virginia K. Griffin for a city council seat makes her the second school board member to leap into this fall's council race. Fellow Republican John S. Rue is the other.

If either or both succeed in November, school board service may suddenly be seen as a stepping-stone, rather than, as many board veterans have suspected, a dead CHINA Delaying congress may be a result of new ideology TO USE a favorite Communist phrase, something akin to "national liberation" is under way in the People's Republic of China (PRC). And apparently because of the friction it has triggered, Peking failed to call a 12th Communist Party congress last winter. Entrenched Maoists in the central government, good bureaucrats all, abhor Deng Xiaoping's effort to decision-making, to let forces work and, Heaven for-Jbid, even to permit the profit motive ho function. 1 "Mr. Deng's chief asset, apart from BY HIGH SIDEY WASHINGTON: We have a problem of presidential security and so we cry out again for something dazzling, available overnight and certain to banish the threat.

After alternate horror and rage, there is now upon us the sad realization that there is no magic for protecting Presidents. We seem to be in a period of bitter resignation. We cannot find a single new miracle in our quiver. BUT WHAT we can do as a nation -and we may be closer than many think is cut the odds down dramatically by seizing the moment to press for a hundred improvements In statutes, regulations, intelligence, protective movements, equipment and attitudes. We can lay a maze of trip wires that with each passing month will pinch off more openings for those determined to attack a President.

The people in the gun-control business believe the momentum is running their way. In another few years we may have a federal ban on handguns, or before then we may pick up legislation closing off imported gun parts that are reassembled here. Some states require forms to be made out by prospective gun buyers, the forms then checked, and felons and other dubious buyers rejected and investigated. More states may follow. MAYBE NOW, with violence so alarming in every part of the country, the alert from the attempt on President Reagan will not dissipate.

Surely police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Secret Service can press for more public awareness. The environment seems right for stiffer penalties for the illegal possession and use of handguns, either mandated by law or from a sterner Judiciary. Will an FBI agent in some other city besides Nashville learn of a young drift er with three guns and 50 rounds trying.