The Des Moines Register from Des Moines, Iowa • Page 15

June 21, 1978 OES MOINES REGISTER 15A OPINION mmmmmsuaimiiaaumnnUKrm A drink a day may be OK, or so they say at the AMA SENATE POSTAL BILL AIMS AT 'CITIZEN RATE' 'Ghetto' awards that say 'Not bad, for a woman' young adulthood, are quite likely attributable to what I call social discrimination the non-competitiveness shown by many or even most women because of social pressures. However, even if this hypothesis were valid, there is sufficient overlap such that some women can and should be expected to be fully competitive with the most talented of men. I therefore deem it inconsistent and unwise to have awards restricted to women or to men in fields of endeavor where excellence is not inherently sex-related. As the first American-trained woman to be the recipient of a Nobel Prize in any of the sciences, I feel I have a special responsibility. I know very well that this ultimate reward does not make me more competent, more knowledgeable or in any way more worthy than I was before this recognition.

However, it does make me more visible. Therefore I cannot conform to traditional standards with which I WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) The "citizens rate" for mailing letters was revived Tuesday by a key senator who said he is introducing a bill to freeze the charge for first-class letters sent by individual citizens. Under the legislation by Senator John H. Glenn Ohio), the individual rate would be kept at the current 15 cents a letter for four years.

Since Postmaster General William F. Bolger has estimated that mail rates will go up again in about 2Vk years, this would mean that individual letter writers would be spared the next round of postal increases. Glenn, chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the Postal Service, told reporters that his measure "would benefit consumers most notably those on fixed incomes and help maintain a higher volume of mail, which is needed to sustain the huge system for six-day-a-week delivery." The Postal Service, with President Carter's support, last year proposed that individuals be exempted from a then-pending increase from 13 to 15 cents a letter. However, businesses objected that the two-tier rate would discriminate against them and the independent Postal Rate Commission rejected the "citizen rate." The 15-cent rate for all mailers went into effect May 29. Under Glenn's bill, Congress would authorize funds to cover the difference between the 15-cent rate for individuals and any higher rate imposed during the four years.

Meanwhile, a bill expected to be in-troduced by a group of House members this week would require that the 13-cent first-class rate be reinstituted for citizens. Other features of the Glenn bill would: Extend the present $920 million annual public service subsidy for four years. Under current law, a gradual reduction in the subsidy is scheduled to begin in 1980. Require stricter Postal Service accounting to better allocate costs among different types of mail. Require development of a comprehensive research and development program in the Postal Service.

Glenn said bearings on the bill, co-sponsored by Senators Ted Stevens Alaska) and Jacob Javits N.Y.), probably would begin Monday. Although Glenn said the bill would constitute the most significant changes in the nation's postal institution since the Postal Service was created in a 1970 law, his measure would not go as far as House-passed legislation. In the House bill, which Carter refused to support on budgetary grounds, the subsidy would be increased immediately. Glenn said the administration has not explicitly endorsed his bill either, but added, "The White House supports almost all of this bill." Glenn termed his bill a transitional measure while Congress studies what mail services the puwic wants ana bow to finance them. Judge deplores limit on murder sentence SAN DIEGO, CALIF.

(AP) "That gives you one free murder and one free robbery," said Superior Court Judge Earl H. Maas as he sentenced Jose Gonzalez, 22, to life in prison for killing a man and wife during a robbery. Taking note of a state law banning consecutive life sentences at the sentencing Monday, the judge said, "It means you are eligible for parole in seven years, which is a real tragedy." U.S. seeks to By ROSALYN YALOW i Wk, Hum Yark TlmM Following are excerpts from a letter written by Dr. Rosalyn Yalow, one of the recipients of the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, to Lenore Hershey, editor-in-chief of the Ladies' Home Journal.

In them, Yalow, a senior medical researcher at the Veterans Administration Hospital in the Bronx, N.Y., explains her reasons for not accepting one of the Ladies' Home Journal 1978 "Woman of the Year" awards. IN 1961 a Federal Woman's Award was established to honor outstanding women in the federal Civil Service. This award clearly was in recognition of the fact that women were under-represented as recipients of other awards, presumably open to all in federal service, but generally given largeiy if not exclusively to men. I viewed this award as second-class, and, when I was chosen to be one of the first six recipients, my initial reaction was to reject it. I was prevailed upon to accept, and did in fact use the recognition accorded me to point out that even more important to women than honors or super-grade positions was the requirement of equal pay for equal work.

Women in Civil Service did not have many of the important fringe benefits given to men, such as protection for their spouses and children in medical, pension and death benefits. In the succeeding years some of these benefits have been better equalized, and women are moving up though too slowly to positions of greater responsibility in some, though not all, of the government services. Increasingly, women are beginning to receive a fairer share of recognition for their accomplishments. I was therefore delighted to learn last year that the Federal Woman's Award was to be discontinued I hope permanently. It may well be that, taken as a group, men are more intelligent imaginative and talented than women.

I do not accept this hypothesis. Certainly such differences are not manifest in the very young. And the differences in apparent aptitude even in fields such as science, which are evident beginning in adolescence and 'Only the By RUSSELL BAKER 171, Ntw Yark TUm Nm tervtc NEWS clips: Macy's has been taking the names of customers who pay cash for their purchases. Citibank has been charging a 50-cent fee to customers who pay their credit-card billings promptly and fully. "Only sleazy people pay cash!" the owner of a limousine-hire company explaining that most of his customers use credit cards.

At 7:33 p.m. Car 73 answered a 309 at the Cyprus Hot Dog 'n' Fried Hominy Counter 'n' Carry-Out. At 7:35 p.m., Officer O'Toole radioed for Special Unit assistance on a 625. Inspector Ramirez arrived at 7:52 and attempted to interview the victims. They were incoherent.

"Divil ye minds, lads," said Inspector Ramirez. "Tis as plain as the flask on my hip who the culprit is." Officer O'Toole was baffled, as usual. "But Monsieur the Inspector," he murmured, "as for me well sacre bleu, But I do not see of the clues a single one, in despite of the three hot-dog and fried-hominy counter clerks of whom the state of mind is of the shock deep up to the incoherence." Uttering his characteristic sardonic chuckle, Inspector Ramirez pointed to a small pile of paper and metal. mm a 7. Hi if llM msm.

Ml ST. LOUIS, MO. (AP) One or two drinks a day may be OK, a panel of doctors agreed Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Medical Association. Alcoholics should not drink, they said; and pregnant women probably should not drink, they said. But for the average healthy person, moderate drinking apparently is not harmful.

In fact, evidence is mounting that people who drink alcohol are less likely 30 percent less likely to suffer heart attacks, said Dr. Arthur L. Klatsky, director of the coronary care unit of the Kaiser-Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, Calif. Asked at a news conference to generalize about the effects of moderate drinking, Dr. Frank A.

Seixas, medical and research executive of the National Council on Alcoholism, said: "It seems to me that for most people, except alcoholics, people with some degree of sophistication, people who are healthy and not pregnant, show no harm from moderate drinking. "People with disease conditions, who are taking medication, should be consulting with their physician on how much and when they can drink. And until there's further information on the low-dose effects of alcohol on pregnancy, the prudent woman will exercise her right not to drink during pregnancy." Klatsky defined "a drink" as either a can of beer, about iVt ounces of BOOK HURT CIA STATUS, TURNER TELLS JUDGE ALEXANDRIA, VA. (AP) CIA Director Stansfield Turner told a judge Tuesday that a book by Frank Snepp III about the spy agency's activities has been a major factor in the declining credibility of the agency. Tnrnfr tnlrf IT District Judcre I o- 1 Cirnn I otitic tKiit msnv rTA eiiirtoa have stopped working with the agency because of the book, "Decent The Justice Department had sued Snepp for alleged damages resulting from the book, but Lewis dismissed prospective jurors Tuesday and said he will rule on the suit.

Asked in court if the book has had a bad effect, the CIA director replied: "It certainly has. Over the last six to nine months we have had many sources who discontinued working with us, and many who have expressed concern I am not at tributing this exclusively to Mr. Snepp." Turner said he objected particularly to what he called marketing gimmicks used by Random House, the publisher, in promoting the book. He said it was advertised as being valuable "because it emphasized it did not go through the review process." The Justice Department, in addition to seeking damages, sued Snepp for for an accounting of all his profits from the book, and to force him to put the profits into a trust fund administered by the court. The suit is based on the contention that Snepp did not submit his manuscript to the CIA for review as he was required to do under a secrecy agreement he signed when he joined the agency.

Editor named BOSTON, MASS. (AP) Boston editor Dick Levitan has been elected national vice president of Investigative Reporters and Editors, the news team that swooped into Arizona after the murder there of reporter Don Bolles. bar ADM tion against doing business with the government will be held by a department hearing officer in late July. If he rules against ADM and the others, they can appeal again to the department and then to the federal courts. Andreas has been a key figure recently in the controversy surrounding David Gartner, an aide to Senator Hubert Humphrey from 1961 until Humphrey's death.

Gartner was confirmed last month as a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Gifts In confirmation hearings before the Senate Agriculture Committee, Gartner revealed his children received $72,000 in gifts of ADM stock from Andreas and Andreas' daughter, Sandra McMurtrie. He said he and Andreas and McMurtrie were longtime friends. A number of Andreas' agricultural interests are regulated by the CFTC. Gartner pledged to the Senate that he would sell the ADM stock and avoid taking any actions at the CFTC that would directly affect ADM.

David Gartner is native of Des Moines and the brother of Michael Gartner, president and editor of the Des Moines Register and Tribune Company. table wine or one ounce of 80 proof liquor. In studies of thousands of members of the Kaiser-Permanente health care plan, he said, one of the findings that emerged was that beer drinkers usually know how much beer they consume each day, wine drinkers are less certain, and whiskey drinkers often "honestly don't know how much they consume." Klatsky said that a study of 87,000 patients at Kaiser-Permanente showed that moderate drinking, one or two drinks a day, was not associated with a higher prevalence of hypertension, high blood pressure. He also said that studies indicate the risk of heart attack for those who drink appears to be 0.7, with 1.0 as the standard which represents a 30 percent lower risk. Further, he said, non-drinkers appear to run a greater risk of dying of cardiac sudden death, not just having heart attacks.

An "attractive hypothesis" to explain the apparently protective function of alcohol, said Klatsky, is that alcohol may be related to the amount of a fatty substance in the blood known as high-density lipoprotein, HDL. Recent studies have indicated HDL is directly related to decreased risk of heart attack, as opposed to low-density lipoprotein, LDL, which is associated with a higher incidence of heart attack. AMA to look again at national health insurance ST. LOUIS, MO. (AP) The American Medical Association on Tuesday opened up the possibility of changing its enorsement of the basic idea of a national health insurance program.

An amendment to a resolution on the subject was offered by the Kansas delegation to the AMA's 266-member House of Delegates, the AMA's governing body, which is holding its 127th annual meeting here this week. The proposal urged the AMA's board of trustees to see if a new or substitute bill from the AMA on National Health Insurance "is necessary or not." A reference committee on the subject told the House, "The committee recognizes that many factors, including the recent activities of the Carter administration and its expected promulgation of principles and concepts for national health insurance, will bear on the association's consideration of its program for the future. "Moreover, other factors, such as the resurgent inflation and its effect on the economy, the increasing availability and coverage of private insurance, the current attitudes of the public and the profession, all must be weighed in fashioning the association's programs in response to the needs of the public." Reflecting the concern over the growing, government spending and the increasing revolt of the taxpayers the delegates also approved a resolution calling for the passage of an amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting deficit spending by government The action reflected a deep concern among the delegates about inflation and such proposals as those for National Health Insurance. Several references were made to California's Proposition 13 for reducing taxes.

The original resolution submitted by the Georgia delgation had called for a constitutional convention to propose an amendment. A reference study committee included that approach in its recommendation, but the full House of Delegates deleted that phrasing. The resolution was approved on an overwhelming voice vote. School board delegates meet About 200 delegates from Iowa's public school boards met in Des Moines Tuesday to establish legislative policies for the Iowa Association of School Boards. The group recommended that school boards go beyond the legal requirement for openness in collective bargaining sessions.

That resolution said the first two proposals in such negotiations should be made public. In another resolution passed at the one-day meeting, the delegates opposed a change in the method of certifying teachers. The change would establish a teacher-dominated Profession Standards Board to replace the Teaching Practices Commission, which is made up of administrators and citizens as well as teachers. Also, the group opposed legislation that would allow the payment of accumulated sick leave for school employees. And the delegates voted to allow local school boards to set salaries of administrators without legislative mandate.

The delegate assembly is the final stage of a grass-roots process of de veloping statements on public issues related to schools. Panel CXs trade bill WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) A bill ratifying a trade agreement between the United States and Hungary was approved Tuesday by the Senate Finance Committee. disagree even if it were easier for me not to "make waves." I have decided not to accept the 1978 Woman of the Year Award in the category of New Scientific Community from the Ladies' Home Journal although it would perhaps have been more diplomatic to accept it. 1 think it more appropriate for me to take a positive stand by rejecting what Susan Jacoby would have called a ghetto award.

She stated, very wisely I believe, that: "A ghetto job is a ghetto job as long as it is perceived by male execu tives and by the woman they hire as a job with a for women only sign. It doesn't matter whether the salary is $50,000 or $7,500 a year. The situation can only be changed by women who regard themselves and are regarded by others as being plain excellent not excellent only in comparison to other women. Women who have 'made it' are no longer pleased to be told that their achievements are remarkable for a woman." cash' procedure after each of The Casher's strikes. In the past, his pattern had always been the same.

First, he would become sleazy. Why he became sleazy was a mystery. Some thought had to do with the cycle of the moon. Then he would walk into a reputable place of business, order merchandise and produce cash. In the only two instances in which anyone had remained sensible long enough to demand his name, he had replied the first time, "Kaiser Wilhelm the Second," and the second time, "Nellie Melba." AFTER each strike, the authorities knew, he would use money orders to pay all his bills in full before they became overdue.

Thus, the news that had struck again invariably depressed the financial market, which feared he intended to destroy world banking system. On this night, The Casher, happily listening to hot dogs and fried hominy gurgling in his digestive tract, headed down the shadowy street toward home, thinking of all the bills he would pay on time this very night. Two muggers stepped out of the shadows and pinned him to the pavement. "What do you want?" he gasped. "Sixty bucks," said the presiding mugger.

"And we want it on American Express, Master Charge or Bank Americard." "Got no credit cards," gasped Jack, "but there's $200 in cash in my wallet." Both muggers recoiled. "He's sleazy," said one. "I'm not gonna touch him." "You ought to be ashamed of yourself," the second told The Casher, "going out on the street among decent, respectable, debt-ridden deadbeats." They would have beaten him severely but did not want to get sleaze all over their knuckles. The Casher was so upset he forgot to pay bills on time that night and as a result his real name, which was Diddlesbj turned up in credit-rating bureaus across the country as a bad risk. Soon he began receiving credit cards in barrel lots.

Jack the Casher hasn't struck since, although a certain deadbeat in midtown Manhattan has swindled every limousine-hire company in town for months of elegant transport, which only makes them compete even harder to serve him. As one operator puts it, "He's real carriage trade." sleazy pay "Faith and begorrah," he said. Officer O'Toole was astonished, for he had never seen either faith or begorrah before and would never have guessed they were a combination of paper and metal. "To put it most plainly, in fact," he said, "one would have assumed that this pile small of the paper and of the metal was, in a word, the trash." "Not trash, lad! Not trash!" cried Inspector Ramirez. "It's cash." Officer O'Toole blanched.

"Do ye know then, O'Toole, what it is that you're seeing with your own eyes?" "Is it that it is possible that I am seeing the work of "Of Jack the Casher," said Inspector Ramirez. Yes, Jack the Casher had struck again. Washington was notified. Banks alerted. Department stores cautioned.

The details of his latest depredation were easily reconstructed. A sleazy-looking man had entered at 7:10 p.m., had ordered and eaten a hot dog and fried hominy, then produced his cash. The familiar brutal commands had followed. "Anybody who tries to tail me gets a $5 bill right in the face." No one was in any condition to follow him, of course. Not after looking right into cold cash.

Banks were notified by satellite, electronic miracles, computers and Mailgram. It had become standard T4' lUM Sal it he the his from selling to government ill? 0 1971 NtwsiMMrs WASHINGTON, D.C. The Agriculture Department is seeking to prevent Archer Daniels Midland the food processing giant controlled by Dwayne Andreas, from doing business with the federal government. The reason, according to depart ment attorneys, is that ADM has been indicted, along with two other grain companies, for fixing prices on a corn and soybean-based milk substitute sold to the government for use in a foreign aid program. The three companies ADM, the Lauhoff Grain Co.

of Danville, 111., and the Krause Milling Co. of Milwaukee allegedly fixed prices on $70 million worth of corn soya milk substitute sold to the government. How much other business the three companies have done with the federal government could not be learned. Sales between 1971, 1976 Daniel Wentzell, an agriculture de partment attorney, said the Kansas City, grand jury that handed down the indictment in March had investigated sales that took place between 1971 and 1976. An Agriculture Department attorney said the department is trying to take action against ADM and the other companies before a price-fixing trial because such a case could take years to resolve.

Hearings on the proposed prohibi Iivettigitiog the scene of the cash transaction..