The Galveston Daily News from Galveston, Texas • Page 4

Editor Utlcn Itr lit Ikti to hell tophi tireiU, Bill pifef typtwrltln Letleri But ke ky writer irt tkt iMrm mutt Ililcd. 4 Jlailu. Hysteria Of Ignorance' Over State Institutions TO'THE EDITOR: The March 1 letter by Mrs. R. W.Jtolfman of the San Antonio Chapter of PARTS defending the exiting concentration camp method of operation dealing with theresidential mentally retarded sad example of the hftteria of ignorance being by elements in our state government to generate op- poiltion to community based facilities and services.

If' PARTS would use their energies in promoting standards of care and services for the handicapped wherever they may be living, it would not have been necessary for we and other parents of children similarly situated in Austin and Denton State so called schools to have had to file our class action suit in Federal Court in Tyler to secure our. children's right to an ducation and humane treatment in a facility close to home. We could relate many horror stories of the goings on in the existing institutions PARTS defends, but it.would be inappropriate since the suit is pending. It is a tragedy that supposedly well meaning individuals are being manipulated to vehemently work against what courts have repeatedly declared as a civil right. Also, the guidelines for the Community Development Act funds which Galveston is about to begin using requires that facilities for the handicapped be provided locally.

We appeal to everyone to join us in this struggle for humanity and decency. After all, any one of us might find ourselves flung into one of the "dungeons for the disabled" as the result of an illness or accident. John and Ruth Lelsz 107 Albacore People With Hate In Their Bodies, Souls Hurt Pets TO TOE EDITOR: What kind of people live with hate in their bodies and souls? Well, first off, why do people mistreat animals who don't either bother or belong to them? Why do they tease and throw rocks at them and on top of that healing a cat about the head costing the sight of an eye and making the cat fall as he tries to walk around. My husband and I have dogs and a cat. All of them are kept fenced in the yard and taken to a vet when it is time.

They are also fed better than some people. A light bulb was thrown in the yard last week. Then this week my cat got his head beat by some dumb person. Why do people do these things? I don't think they have a heart for God or animals. Please, let's try to do something for them.

They're not as dumb as you think they are. Mr. Mrs. Jack D. Causey 201G Ave.

Housing Act Meetings' Coverage Commended TO THE EDITOR: The League of Women Voters wishes to commend The News for the extensive coverage given the Housing and Community Development Act meetings in February. Between this publicity and the federal requirement that early open meetings on the Act application be held, many citizens are now much more aware of the existence of this additional revenue sharing program and what areas are and are not eligible for funding. This Act places the planning and decision-making responsibilities into the hands of local government to develop viable urban communities, provide decent housing, and improve those living conditions which are detrimental to the health, safety and welfare of Galveston citizens. Janice R. Coggeshall President LWV Of Galveston Reader Enjoyed Metric System Series TO THE EDITOR: The series you are running (on the metric system of measurement) in your paper is one of the many things I like about your paper.

If people would start now studying it, by the time we start using it they wouldn't have so much to learn. I don't need it since I'm living in tne Taft Nursing Home but I think it is interesting to keep up with everything. I am making a scrap book of the articles but I missed the first article and would appreciate if you could send me a copy. 1 look forward to your paper every morning. I like papers about that size.

If I can finish my scrap book I may be able to help someone else that needs it. Grace Allen Taft Nursing Home Hitchcock, Texas MRS. ALLEN: A copy of the first of the series is on its way to you In the mail. For a loyal reader like you, we really move our sails. The Editor.

Looking Backwards By Stanley E. Babb The Elusive City Water Leak Has Been Found 25 YEARS AGO MARCH 8, 1950-City Waterworks Commissioner Marshall McNeel Jr. and Superintendent Robert Owens announced triumphantly Tuesday afternoon that the mystery of the missing city water leak has been solved. The elusive troublemaker, which has cost the city about $140,000 during the last decade, was cornered at 42nd Street and Avenue by two crews of pipeline men who have been struggling with old water lines, railroad tracks and hundreds of yards of fill during the month in an all-out effort to stop the waste. Owens said the leak would be repaired by Wednesday night or Thursday morning.

HOPING TO bring the Broadway controversy to an end, the Galveston Planning Group Tuesday sent an open letter to Street Commissioner Charles H. Oehkr, recommending that he initiate an engineering study of the local traffic problem, beginning at the Texas City Wye and ending in the Galveston downtown shopping area. Meanwhile, members of the Lorette Burr Bible Class met at the First Methodist Church Tuesday afternoon and enacted a unanimous resolution expressing unalterable opposition to the proposed widening or changing of Broadway and removal of the Texas Heroes Monument. DAMAGES aggregating $129 458.52 are sought in three suits filed in the district courts Monday as an aftermath of the Turf Grill building fire which occurred two years ago this week. The fire caused damage of and occured after a hectMg and air-conditioning unit Saturday Morning, March 8, 1975 Tlw Bread Line Jatlg Jfefcf Editorial News OCU8 Mao Hits 'Capitalist Remnants By NEA-LonSon EconomM SwU LONDON (LENS) With the dust hardly settled after the moderates' success at last month's National People's approved while he kept his dis- An Anhwei two tance in Changsha.

weeks ago called for action they'do not attack the con--against enemies.who are under- stitution as such but seem in- mining socialist enterprses. A monms nauonai reopie tended to remind Mao's countyparty in Congress, China is gearing up colleagues that the "bourgeois Hupeh for what looks like yet anothe? rights" enshrined in that docu- peasants and radical campaign. like right of agriculture ra The battle cry for the new peasants to farm private plots others who are expanding drive is a "recent instruction" and the system of paying from Mao-Tse-tung, the first workers according to tiieir utterance formally at- work, on a complex grading tributed to the chairman for system, rather than according several years. It is every bit as to need are merely tem- delphic as most of his previous porary expedients and should instructions and the three press be restricted as soon as possi- articles that "explained" it recently left a wide margin of ambiguity. But what they all seem to in- 'dicate is another drive to destroy "remnants of Mao himself has been obsessed with the possibility of a reversion to bourgeois values, and the emergence of a Djilas- style "new class" in China, ever since he first identified the Russians as marching off to revisionist perdition 15 years ago.

The congress may well revived these worries; in fact, the instructions could be some of the chairman's iiiarginal nets c-n the nes slate constitution which the congress ble. Private plots and material in- centives in general have always been a political barometer in China. So it seems very likely that this latest campaign in backed by China's more radical leaders who feel they did not get much of a show at the con- The articles introducing the new anti-capitalist theme suggest that a moderating brake is also being applied: Red stresses the need for gradualism and insists that the "spontaneous forces of capitalism" cannot be overcome "at a But reports from the provinces in- sllcsta that local leaders have already taken the radical hint. private plots. And a provincial secretary in the same province cited "new bourgeois elements" who have been colluding with traditional bad- dies like landlords to corrupt cadres arid engage in theft, speculation and Chou En-lai and his moderate allies should have no trouble' swallowing a campaign against such obvious and familiar illegalities as these.

But Chinese mass campaigns have a way of getting out of hand, and last week's articles implied that one way this one could turn would be a purge of party and state bureautracies. This would be a blow to the moderates just when they have managed to reconstruct the state apparatus nine years after the last destructive campaign. Whether the current rumblings will go that far will depend largely on the mood and power of that wily old instruction writer in Changsha. Jack Anderson Washington Merry-Go-Round Nixon's Financial Woes Touches Some People WASHINGTON Richard Nixon, living in lonely splendor in his California seacoast estate, isn't exactly a poverty case. He has drawn hundreds of thousands of dollars from the taxpayers to help ease the shock of being reduced to civilian status.

He collects a $60,000 annual presidential pension. He is attended by aides, at an additional cost to the taxpayers of $96,000 a year. Yet the former President is deeply depressed over his finances. Close friends say he isn't taking in enough cash to meet his obligations. They claim his personal bank account is down to $500 and he has only $2,800 left to operate the San Clemente estate until July 1.

Even minor expenditures, such as an eastern trip his wife is planning to take next month, now cause a family budget problem, a friend told us. Nixon paid off his back taxes with a $284,740 check which cleaned out his cash reserves, intimates say. He can't afford to pay an additional $148,000 tax debt, which is no longer collectible but which he had promised to pay, they report. He neglected to take out health insurance when he left the White House. He.

was stuck, therefore, with a $23,000 hospital bill for his phlebitis treatment He recently paid off part of the bill with an $11,000 check, which left only S500 in his personal bank account He had to rejuggle his San Clemente mortgage to reduce the payment schedule. He is left with little more than an acre in his own name, according to a friend. Nixon became so desperate that, he asked his Florida crony, Bebe Rebozo, to sell Key Biscayne houses just to pay off the mortgage Instead, Rebozo is leading an effort to raise from the public to purchase the two bayside homes as a nonprofit center for international study. This would leave Nixon a comfortable profit, since he purchased the homes in late 1968 for only $125,527 and $127,800 respectively. On paper, of course, he is not a poor man.

But he lacks the income to sustain his life-style. He is desperately looking for ways to increase his cash flow. He hopes to make a substantial sum, for example, for his memoirs. But a $145,000 advance payment has already gone for research and salaries, says a friend. Increasingly, the former President is counting upon his hardcore supporters to bail him out of his financial difficulties.

Address cards have been prepared on 300,000 people who have written sympathetic letters to him. These cards have been turned over to the Nixon Historical As- sociation, which Rebozo formed to buy the Key Biscayne homes, and to the President Nixon Justice Fund, which Rabbi Baruch Korff formed to raise legal expenses. Direct-mail appeals have been going out to the 300,000 names. The mail that continues to pour into San Clemente, meanwhile, is processed by some 70 volunteers working in shifts of about a dozen at a time Of the $100,000 that Congress earmarked for Nixon's transition, interestingly enough, he spent an astonishing 159,721 for stationery. He purchased a huge supply of paper, according to one insider, for the mass fund appeals.

Rabbi Korff acknowledged to us that he sends out 5,000 direct- mail appeals each month but denied using stationery supplied by the taxpayers. All expenses for the mailings, including the envelopes and postage, is paid by the VS. Citizens Congress, he said. This is another nonprofit, patriotic group which he heads. The rabbi said he has promised to raise $1 million for Nixon.

Of this, $400,000 has been committed to pay his legal ex- -penses; andlhe remaining $600," 000 will be turned over to Nixon to supplement his government allocation. In touching language, the rabbi described the financial plight of the former President. "He broods about finances all the time," said Rabbi Korff. "Oh, does he worry! It saddens me terribly just to listen to him. He is a very troubled maa" Another close friend confirmed that Nixon is haunted by the memory of his childhood poverty.

When he was a boy, his mother used to get up before dawn to bake pies for sale. She scrubbed, cooked and tended furnace so could stay at a nursing home with an ill son. Young Richard used to take his turn preparing meals of canned chili, spaghetti, pork and beans and other cheap foods. "There were many he has said, "when I ate nothing for breakfast but a candy bar." This experience has driven Nixon harder than most men to seek an affluent life for his family, the friend says. Medal of Freedom: The Academy of American Poets has iproposed Katherine Garrison Chapin, widow of the late Attorney General Francis Biddle, for the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Her nomination has been endorsed by many distingiushed poets, including Robert Lowell, Archibald MacLeigh, William Jay Smith and Allen Tate. As Stanley Kunitz, the poetry consultant for the Library of Congress, said of Katherine Garrison Chapin: "Her life and her work testify to a fineness of mind arid a long pursuit of excellence." Ray Cromley Ghana's Corruption A Caveat To United States had been installed in the building. GOVERNOR Allan Shivers will appoint a Hoover-type state commission within the next few days to remove the dead-weight in Texas' economic structure, it was revealed here Tuesday. The commission will be set up on recommendation of the Texas Association of Employers and other organizations. 50 YEARS AGO MARCH 8, a good sized vanguard already in last night, including national officers and committeemen who attended the Monterey meeting and District Governor Harry Rogers of San Antonio, fully 1,000 Rolarians from various parts of the state are expected to arrive today for the 10th annual conference of the 13th Rotary district which opens tomorrow in Galveston for a two-day session.

AN INVITATION to the Galveston County commissioners Court to call upon the state highway commission at Austin on March 16 was received yesterday by County Judge E. B. Holman from Frank V. Lanham, chairman of the state highway commission. This will be the opportunity to present all of Galveston County's road problems, including the asphalt topping proposal for the Galveston-Houston road.

EXPORT AND coastwise shipments of cotton from Galveston this season yesterday had passed the 3,000,000 mark by 40,000 bales, having exceeded this figure earlier than of any previous season. WASHINGTON (NBA) A remarkable study of a small African country could prove to be a major clue to one cause of corruption in other lands, including our own. The book: "Political Corruption: The Ghana Case," written by Professor Victor LeVine, of Washington University in St. Louis, and head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Ghana from 1969 to 1971, may be such a study. By 1965, says LeVine, the Ghanian government had become an administrative jungle of ministries, boards and independent agencies.

Lines of authority were mixed up and coordination had become nonexistent. In this environment, access to political figures becomes more important than technical or economic It is no secret that the federal government in Washington has become an "administrative jungle," so complicated that citizens and officials alike lose their way. Presidents of sorra of this country's 500 largest firms, with large staffs at their bidding, find it next to impossible to get the data, or clearcut rulings they need on crucial issues such as energy pollution and price regulation. A series of presidents to my own knowledge, Truman, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Johnson and Nixon found it impossible to bring order out of the system. Four out of the five found operating through the maze so difficult they resorted to unorthodox and sometimes illegal means to exert their will as president on their own executive organization.

In defiance of civil service regulations laid down by law, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon inserted their own men down thfi line at leverage points not reserved for political appointees. If the labyrinth is difficult for the president of the United States Marquis Childs Sen. Percy: Flames Of Jewish Wrath WASHINGTON Sen. Charles H. Percy of Illinois who, prior to Gerald Ford's ascendancy, dallied with the idea of running for President, has never been known as a man of exceptional daring.

Yet not long ago, by speaking the unspeakable, he set himself up as a kind of one-man laboratory to test reactions in this country on the explosive issue of support for Israel. Returning from a three-and-a- half week trip to 12 Middle East capitals, he said Israel could no longer count on automatic support from the United States. He had told Israeli leaders that if they launched a pre-emptive strike against the Arab states they could not expect the back- InIM! Te xas' Olde it Newspaper Dedicated lo the growth end progress of Gilveston and all of Galveslon County. Published every morning by Galveston Newspapers. Teichmann Hoad.

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Israel's request for $2.5 billion in military aid was unrealistic and would have rough sledding in Congress. The senator did not have to wait long for the reaction. The Jewish community came down on him like a ton of bricks. A seasoned political reporter in Chicago covering a meeting Percy held with a Zionist group said afterward he had never heard such violent emotions expressed. Catcalls and angry denunciations sounded throughout the hall so that the senator had trouble in making himself heard.

One source of tte anger was a misleading headline in a Chicago newspaper stating that he had characterized Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization as a "moderate." What he had said was thai many Palestinians regarded Arafat as a moderate. He reproached Israel for fnil- ing to negotiate after the 1967 war with King Hussein of Jordan on (he fate of tho occupied West Bank. Having held hack fur seven years, the Israelis now faced Ihe necessity of negolial- ing with Arafat. This fed Ihe (lames of wralh. Percy professed lo be astonished at the violence of (he reaction, particularly since In- had long been a friend of Israel and had spoken repeatedly at Israel bond drive plained that he had said the same things in Jerusalem to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Yigal Alton and they had understood.

flow of liiis vital commodity will have the highest priority in the event of another war. As the sole friend of Israel, the United States is said to have Why shouldn't there be the 'made up all the losses suffered in same freedom of expression in the Yom Kippur War of 1973. But with Ihe ma's of sophisticated weapons from the Soviet Union pouring into Syria, Iraq and, more recently, Egypt, the Israeli; arc pressing for greater help. When he was in Jerusalem in November, Sen. Hubert Humphrey, one of Israel's staunchest friends, listened to the urgent plea of the leaders for a five-year authorization covering the S2.5 billion in assistance.

He informed them that two years was Ihe outside limit and in a further warning he said it would be very difficult to get approval for the full amount. Percy found that Israeli officials have little understanding of how recession coupled with in- In light of this continuing threat. Percy performed a service in revealing Ixiw deep- seated are Ihe feelings centering on the fate of Ihc Jewish state. While Ihere is less likelihood of another oil embargo because of Ihe surpluses accumulated in the the United States? he asked. Some moderates in tire Jewish community told Percy privately they understood what he was saying and perhaps the need to say it.

at this lime. But he got lit- lle or no outspoken support from any quarter and while the furor subsided il will not soon be forgotten. As Secretary of Stale Henry Kissinger prepares for his next and perhaps crucial Middle East mission, he is somewhat more optimistic aboul the chances for peace. Prior lo the previous shuttle between Egypt and Lsrael. he had pul Ihe ndds al no heller than 50-50.

Today, il may Ix- 60-40 for avoiding another ('undid. and the strongest of our industrial giants, what then for the rest of us? To do business in Washington it is now necessary for most institutions whether businesses, universities, states, major cities, trade associations, special or public interest groups to have their own lobbyists here, men and women who spend full time getting to know the right people and how to influence them. These groups, when possible, search out and employ the ultimate prize a man who has been on the Federal Trade Commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission, or in the Congress. Or someone who has been an administrator in a key department recently enough to know the right men sufficiently well to have influence on their decisions. Successful colleges and universities hire specialists in submitting proposals, men who know the decision makers.

Labor unions, business associations and other groups donate funds to senators and congressmen with influence in the Executive as well as on Capitol Hill. No one would suggest that administration in Washington has become as tangled as in young, inexperienced Ghana immediately after independence. Nor is corruption here as great. The problem is that administrative confusion, bogdowns and uncoor- dination have increased year by year, whether under Democrats or Republicans so that the importance of knowing the right man has grown beyond all reason. It is becoming more and more difficult to accomplish anything, except the most routine actions, by going through proper official channels and following the stipulated procedures.

You must know someone. This situation, of course, leads to corruption. What's required at the minimum is a streamlining of the executive ind a clearing of the channels through which government decisions are made. It would help beyond belief if these channels were open to public view especially those which deal with the needs of individual citizens or groups. Berry's World Wesl.

it cannot be ruled out With the almost total dependence of Weslcrn Europe and Japan on Middle Kast oil. UK- continuing Hal ion and the prospect of a huge budgetary deficit color the attitude of even loyal friends of the beleaguered Jewish state As demands pile up $900 million for Vietnam and Cambodia for Ihe balance of the current fiscal year with an upcoming need for Ihe new year resistance stiffens. I'mlcrl Feature Syndicate 0 by NEA. Inc. "What's new with my family is I teel like I'm living in another new Norman Lear situation- comedy breakthrough!" 4.