The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 4

YESTERDAY'S CXRTO OS-TODAY'S NEWS THE ENQUIRER FRANCIS L. DALE President and Publisher BRADY BLACK Editor and Vice President THE ENQUIRER'S DECLARATION OF FAITH, APRIL 10, 1841 "If tee fail, that failure shall not arise from a tvant of strict adherence to principle or attention and fidelity to the trust ice assume." Saturday, July 8, 1972 I li Ml i iil iV Si i I Mi MM! Ill I if t- i 1 I i i I 1 Ml A Change For The Better NORTH AND SOUTH Korea have come a long way with their pledge to seekt 'Unification through peaceful means'? from the clays not so long past when Norlh Korea was openly threatening new invasion of the South. The two Koreas' joint communique, following a series of secret negotiations, says they have agreed to establish a "co-ordinating committee" as a continuing channel for negotiation, to cease both the propaganda and the armed attacks on each other and "to carry out various exchanges," otherwise unspecified, "to restore severed national ties." On the part of North Korean leader Kim Sung, who has long sought to overthrow the government of South Korea, this may be no more than a change of.tactics. In fact, in announcing the negotiations and agreements, South 'RELAX, DEARIE! ON Aii Accountable Agency Headers9 Views Korea is vital to that security. It is likely that Premier Kim will argue, as he did a month ago in his first interview since the Korean War with American journalists, for a U.

S. withdrawal. Unless serious, substantive advances are made, however, toward a secure peace in Korea, such a withdrawal or a further cutback in U. S. forces, already reduced by the removal of a division a year ago, would shake South Korean confidence badly.

The best contribution the United States can make to the still tentative efforts of the Koreans to work out their differences peaceably is to continue to show that we are a steadfast ally of South Korea. The progress the two Koreas have made, and the potential in their new agreements, could have importance beyond their own relations. It must be more than coincidence that the first North-South contacts in Korea between the two Red Cross organizations on behalf of divided families began shortly after President Nixon and the Chinese Communists declared their intent to build a new relationship. The present contacts coincided with Mr. Nixon's summit meeting in the Soviet Union.

Could it be that' Premier Kim has been moved by the evidence that his two allies, the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union, are exploring the possibilities of negotiating with the United States instead of confronting it with rigid hostility? If he has, could there be a signal here for the leaders of North Vietnam to start seeking peace? These possibilities must be put in the form of questions, for it also could be that Premier Kim believes that the weariness in the United States with the Vietnam War means the Nixon Doctrine's call for an easing of U. S. burdens in Asia is a weakness to be exploited. There may well be, of course, a mixture of motives and needs at work in the developing North Korean policy. Peace on the Korean peninsula would be welcome, but the best way to obtain it finally is for South Korean President Chung Hee Park to deal from a position of secure strength, another Nixon principle.

IT IS A SAD truism of American politics that, whenever Congress perceives a public outcry, it creates a new agency that will further clutter the bureaucratic landscape but will do little of substance to solve the complaint. It is a neat way for a senator or representative to wash his hands of a sticky situation. This, we believe, was the case in the Senate's 69-10 passage of a bill creating a new Consumer Safety Agency (CSA). which will be independent of presidential control, much like other independent regulatory agencies. Its function would be to insure the purity and safety of consumer products, notably food and drugs.

Although both the President and Congress agree that a federal agency to police consumer products is needed, there is disagreement over that agency's structure. The administration has argued that it should be part of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) to do otherwise (as the Senate has done) would "create more of the fragmentation and lack of cohesion which already plague the federal establishment," as Frank C. Carlucci, associate director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), put it. Supporters of the bill disagree with the administration, charging that consumer-safety bodies within HEW have been ineffective. This view was expressed by a Senate Commerce Committee report: "An independent agency with publicly accountable decision makers is able to make determinations unfettered by political dictates, self-interested industry pressure or blind consumer zeal." Unfortunately, the committee view ignores the fact that an independent agency's decision makers arc not all that "publicly accountable." Without being accountable to the White House, the CSA administrator would have no accountability to the public, which is best able to make its will felt through the ballot daily THOUGHT The question is in Irnlli between the people and the Supreme.

Court. We contend that the great constructive principle of our system is in the people of the states, and our opponents that it is in the Supreme Court, itis is the sum total of the whole difference: and I hold him a shallow statesman ho. after a proper examination, does not see a hu it most in conformity to the gen-iis of our s'item ami the most effective and sale in il operations. John Calhoun. Korea stressed the enormous difficulties of the "dialogue" with the North and said "continued all-out efforts for our national security are required." The U.

S. force in South box. The administrator, like the Supreme Court, would answer to no one. The Senate has attempted to get around this difficulty through a provision allowing citizens to sue the new agency. It is easy to foresee frivolous lawsuits, agency timidity about approving new products, added burdens on the federal coffers in judgments and legal fees but not so easy to see real accountability.

If, as the senators sa', the present HEW structure is inadequate, then it should be made adequate, as the President has proposed, through a new agency that is subordinate to HEW. An alternative way is found in the bill reported by the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee and pending before the House, which would vest new consumer safety functions within ITEW's Food and Drug Administration (FDA). With a Consumer Protection Agency bill also in the congressional works, any legislation creating yet another consumer bureau is probably superfluous. But if it is one of those ideas "whose time has come," the versions proposed by the President and the House committee are a little less superfluous, and one of these should prevail. The Fischer BOBBY FISCHER, the American chess master, has proved he is the champion in temperament with his antics before the matches for the world championship with Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union.

Mr. Fischer demanded more prize money (and finally got it). He arrived in the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik at the last possible moment and then slept through the meeting at which he, the challenger, and Mr. Spassky, the champion, were to draw lots for the first move in the first game. It is no wonder that the Russian showed some temperament of his own, demanding an apology and the forfeit of the first match.

munity Action Program Council, is adamant in Its stand against the uniform-rate provision. In a scries of media ads, the UAW Is contending that a state income tax, if the current version is repealed, will Inevitably come within a few years. When it does, says the UAW, it will be a flat-rate rather than a graduated tax and will cost the low- and middle-Income worker comparatively more. THE I I i A ADMINISTRATION, while professing a wait-and-see attitude on the repeal, Is doing its share of propagandizing. Various administration officials, nich as Ohio School Superintendent Martin Essex and Finance Director Harold A.

Hovey, have been crisscrossing the state delivering speeches In which the dire fiscal consequences of a repeal are invariably suggested. But If the lines of opposition are clearly drawn In the state Income-tax struggle, the clarity stops there. When it gets down to talking specifics on taxes, public expenditures and budget, allocations, the repeal question becomes a muddied mess of charges and countercharges, allegations and denials, suppositions, innuendos and hypotheses. Administration spokesmen stress their belief that the Income tax Is far more equitable than either a sales or property tax. They maintain that both would have to be increased if the Income-tax repeal Is successful.

What's more, Gllligan people assert (no doubt, correctly) that neither tax alternative could be stretched to do what the Romance TO THE EDITOR: In these modern times where much importance is centered on youth and one has lived too many years with inflation to possess little more than a collection of wrinkles and a Social Security number, life can still be exciting. One can scan the editorials of The Enquirer, fervently engaged in the re-election of Mr. Nixon. One can look forward to a hot summer of great television. It will all be there.

The colorful antics of the politi-cos of both parties, who are as much alike as identical twins. We will see the fighting, Letters submitted for publication should be addressed to Readers' Views, Cincinnati Enquirer, 617 Vine Cincinnati 45201. For the sake of public interest, good taste and fairness to the greatest number, the editors reserve the right to condense or reject any letter and to limit the appearance of each writer to once in 30 days. the screaming of the delegates, hear the empty promises of the candidates world peace, tax reforms, revenue sharing, the liberation of all minorities, health insurance for the aged and equality for the businesswoman. And while we are being both confused and amused, there will be the reports of the casualties of Vietnam, with scenes from the battlefields, tiresome repetitions regarding the negotiations in Paris, all of which will represent the biases of the liberals.

In spite of It all, America is a great country. Romance still lives! Years ago I was deeply moved when I listened to a young king of England renounce his throne for the woman he loved. Women are Incurable romantics. And now we have our modern version. Martha and John have become reconciled.

I sincerely hope that Mr. Mitchell will never regret his decision, and because my sympathies are with him, with the telephone company, for the nation as a whole. I should like to repeat in the words of one Archie Bunker "they (or John) shoulda stifled tihiat dingbat long ago." BARBARA MAIER, 1238 Corbett Ave. 'UnconstitutionaV Of course, we peasants don't yet know what the Supreme Court meant when it acted to knock out capital punishment. Obviously, since nine opinions were written, it means nine different things to nine different constitutional experts.

But two of the five opinions of the majority (Brennan and Marshall) are based on the gounds that capital punishment per se is unconstitutional. I maintain that those opinions are in themselves unconstitutional. Article of the Bill of Rights, adopted at the same time as Article VTH, which has to do with "cruel and unusual punishments," clearly indicates that there are crimes deserving the death penalty when it speaks of "capital or otherwise Infamous crime" and again when it cites the possibility of a person's being "deprived of life" with "due process of the law." If one constitutionally denies that capital crime exists, he must amend Article V. It is not the function of the Supreme Court or any other mundane authority to usurp the jurisdiction of the Congress and the consensus of three-fourths of the states to edit or expurgate Article of the Bill of Rights by indirection. JOHN H.

COOK, 5406 Moundcrest Norwood. YOU IT LOOKS Still Lives! paclty to stop our part of the killing. Our Ohio senators would not meet with us nor did they have the courtesy to send one of their aides." I joined with 115 others, including actor Jon Volgt, Dr. Benjamin Spock, actress Candice Bergen and Nobel Prize-winner George Wald in demonstrating our deep concern for the victims of our bombing by sitting or lying down in front of the door leading to the Senate floor. We were all arrested.

I felt highly privileged to be a member of this group but deeply disappointed that only three senators would even come out to discuss this urgent matter with a delegation of citizens. Such acts as ours will not alone stop the war, but if enough people speak and act it will have to stop. Would you be willing to face jail If it would help end the war? If not (and there are many reasons for choosing other paths), what would you do? LARRY GARA, 21 Faculty PL, Wilmington. 'Lack Understanding9 Your footnote to Walter Beall's letter (June 21) on no-fault insurance points out the lack of understanding of the above subject. comprehensive, collision and medical-payment coverages as currently written are "no-fault" in nature since the Insured collects even if he Is at fault.

While these coverages may not be "affected" by no-fault the cost to the insuring public is greatly affected. For example, do you realize that collision, with its varying deductibles, is the only way you could collect for damage to your car? Many people with older cars who do not now purchase collision would be forced to do so under a no-fault system. This will increase their automobile-insurance costs. The big problem media-wise is that all that has been published implies no-fault auto insurance, instead of educating the public to the fact that they already have available everything no-fault bodily injury offers, and a good deal more. Incidentally, the Massachusetts program has made the independent agent more necessary for serving the public.

If you doubt this statement, compare the 12 pages of policy provisions of a Massachusetts motor vehicle liability policy to the simple four pages now used in Ohio. C. M. YELTON, CPCU, Yelton Insurance Associates, Greater Cincinnati Insurance Agents Association No-Fault Committee, 1660 Cooper St. 'Consumer Pays9 Robert Acomb's displeasure (June 28) with Councilman Jerry Springer for questioning the Cincinnati Gas Electric Co 's advertising policies is understandable.

After all, advertising is Mr. Acomb's business. But while resorting to the age-old tenets of tine advertising profession to defend policies, he failed to explain why a company without competition needs to advertise at all. Where else can Mr Mrs Cincinnati go to buy their gas and electric service except from And who pays the exorbitant advertising bill budgeted each year? The consumer, of course It's difficult to understand how the consumer can be the winner In this scheme of things as Mr. Acomb Implies.

Councilman Springer is to be commended for keeping the public's trust. WILLIAM P. SHEEHAN, 1015 Vine St. THE ENQUIRER 417 Vine St. Cincinnati Ohio 45202 BY MAIL OUTSIDE OF CARRIER DELIVERY DISTRICTS IN ZONES 2.

3 AND BEYOND Do'ly one J39 Sunday on, year 1 50 Second clan postage paid at Cincinnati, Ome. The Associated Press entitled delusively to the in. r. kr of olMh. loco, n.

tfc poTZ IEWS IWEWS Washington, D. 20004 Columbus, Ohio 43215 Botovia, Ohio 45103 CovingtoaKv.41011 1 317 Notional Press Bldg. oMBeggs Bldg. Parsons Bldg. o00 Greenup St.

HOty Third St. 1347 Cnl A Homilton, Ohio 4501 1 Middletown, Ohio 45042 Lowrencebur 9, Ind. 47025 605 Wilson Creek Rdl SAWYER FfPaiKnw 1 uai icn GENERAL ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVE Should Ohio Have An Income Tax? By Robert Clerc Temperament Some people say all this is part of championship ches3 strategy, a war of nerves for psychological advantage. But it all smacks of the press-agent hoopla of a prize fight. The excitement and the challenge of chess are in the battle of minds in the game itself, not in the huffing and puffing that have gone on before Mr.

Fischer consented to play. He may be the best chess player in the world. He claims to be. But his antics are irrelevant to his ability. That can be tested and proved only by his sitting down and playing Mr.

Spassky. Income tax, even at the current low rates, can do. THE REPEAL FORCES have no argument with this, however. State Rep. Chester T.

Cruze (R-Clnclnnatl), a leader In the repeal effort, agrees publicly that the Income tax Is the only feasible revenue source at current spending levels. But here he parts company with the administration. In a press statement last month, Representative Oruze said, "We think repeal of the Income tax will force the legislature to act responsibly In putting the lid on government spending." And more directly, "We're going to lhave to make cuts in public welfare." The new money generated by the state Income tax during the current biennium will total some $754 million, an amount equal to roughly 1r'c of the revenue of the state's general fund. Simply allowing for normal economic growth, this amount will increase and the percentage will grow. Accordingly, If the repeal effort is not successful this time, it is not likely that It will be tried again.

The share of the budget funded by the Income tax is too great to permit retrenchment once It becomes firmly established. AND SO THE ISSUE stands not a popular selection of a particular form of taxation, but rather a collective voice on Che desired limits of government services and spending. With all the figures, statistics and claims flying about, it Is likely to be a close vote if, Indeed, there is a vote. TIME IS GROWING SHORT for those Ohio legislators who organized rcpcal-thc-income-tax movement to gather the required number of valid signatures to qualify- for taking the issue to the people in November. And while the fight was uphill from the beginning, it, is hound to pet worse In these closing days as the opposition braces for a showdown.

THE RESPONSIBILITY I OR circulating the petitions has fallen to a group called "Citizens for Repeal of Ohio's Income Tax" and that group's local affiliates. To accomplish there purpose, the petitioners must Mr. Clerc Is An Editorial Writer For The Enquirer collect 318,414 valid voter signatures by August 2, three months prior to the November general elections. If successful, the antitax people will have wbn, the chance to seek voter approval of ah amendment to the Ohio Constitution that would, besides repealing the present personal and corporate income taxes, require voter approval of any future income tax and provide for separate rates for Individuals and corporations but uniform rates within each of the two clashes. Tax obligations incurred during 1972 would be binding, but future collections would hang on the decision of the voters.

The provisions of the proposed amendment. contain one of the points that Is drawing strong opposition to the repeal movement. Organized labor, mainly through the United Auto Workers Com 'Highly VrivilcdgeiV While traveling to our vacation spot in the Poconos, we saw the terrible, devastation of the recent floods in Pennsylvania. It was a heart-rending spectacle which brought to mind the human suffering involved. It also reminded us that in our dally bombing raids in Indochina we are deliberately creating even worse destruction of property and people, including the very young, the aged and even the hospitalized.

Somehow the floods brought home the horror of our deeds In Vietnam, and I decided to travel to Washington to join a group presenting a petition to the U. S. Senate, asking It to act in an emergency ca-.