The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 14

The Palm Beach Post l'ulilihed By 'aim Beach Newspapers, Inc. James Cm. Chairman Robert Sherman, President Cecil Kellev, Sr l'uliliher Gregory E. Favre, Kditur Jack Anderson Car Buyers Awaiting Rebates Roliert J. Nannie.

Assiiciate Editor Kavmond .1. Mariotti, Managing Edtlo THURSDAY MORNING, JULY 6, 1972 Lake Osborne Balance WASHINGTON Tens of thousands of car buyers are still waiting for those tax refunds that Detroit promised right away on their new cars. Millions of dollars remain unpaid. An outpouring of angry letters and impatient phone calls have failed to move the mighty moguls of Motor City to open up their purses. After the tax bill was signed into law last December, the innocent buyers began to expect the $300-or-so rebate they had coming under law and had been promised by auto company advertising.

But six months later, GM, Chrysler, Ford and, to a lesser extent, American Motors were still fiddling while their customers burned. Commission to get the dredging ban lifted. It is doubtful the state would agree, but if it did the lake again would be threatened by the dredge. The petitioners claim the weed growh is resulting in an "infestation" of mosquitos. But it shouldn't be assumed that an increase in mosquitos in the area necessarily is due to the new vegetation.

The heavy rains in recent months have left many pools of standing water which serve as breeding ponds. True, if the weeds are allowed to continue their natural growth the lake probably would in time be unsuitable for use by boaters. Since the lake is ideal for boating with its ramps, park and adjoining canals, it would be a shame if this occurred. The county ought to fight excessive vegetation growth with a spray program that would not harm the wildlife or marsh area. This may prove to be a continuous uphill struggle, but it is far better than a return to dredging a sure route to a dead lake.

That Lake Osborne is slowly returning to its original state a swamp understandably is upsetting to boaters and people who like a scenic view of open water. But resumption of a commercial dredging operation is not the answer to the necessary balancing of the lake's recreational and ecological value. The sand dredging was stopped by the state nearly a year ago to save the lake's small marsh area a spawning ground essential for the lake's biological system. The 10-year dredging operation was plagued with destructive spills of muck and silt. Too, the state rightly objected to the private money-making venture within the public's John Prince Park.

One side effect of the dredging, however, was that it helped retard the growth of water vegetation in the deeper parts of the lake. Since the operation has been halted weeds have begun a full-scale assault on the open water. Residents around Lake Osborne dislike the weeds and are asking the County "Ie Got Him. Ie Got Him!" William V. Shannon Muskie Faces Convention Quandary Typical was the experience of Sydney Kronish of North Miami Beach.

He bought a shiny new Caprice on August 17. 1971, and got a note from GM in early 1972 promising a check in three weeks. on the Rocks Kronish waited for two months. Then he wrote GM, but never heard back. He phoned GM's tax refund officials in Detroit and was promised a refund that week.

But still no money arrived. On May 8, he called Detroit a second time and again he got a promise of an immediate refund. On May 17, there was still no money, and he took to the telephone again. But he got nowhere. Kronish followed up with several more calls.

He even had his dealer wire and phone Detroit. But GM even ignored its own dealer. Finally, Kronish wrote Chevrolet's general manager: "Now, what's going on, Mr. General Manager? To add frustration to this celebrated chess mess comes the Soviet Chess Federation demanding, despite Bobby's apology to Boris, that the American forfeit the first game because of his bad conduct. That hardly seems fair.

In fact, it would be unfair if an order went out only to lift a lance on one of Bobby's knights, muss the miter of one of his bishops or pilfer one of his pawns. After all, the idea of this match is to determine the better chess player not the better diplomat. At this juncture, it must be hoped that this crisis-to-crisis affair in Iceland does not continue, that Boris and Bobby quit playing games and start playing games, that their ego antics do not checkmate U.S. -Soviet relations or, Heaven forbid, lead to World War III. Considering that cold war going on between Bobby and Boris, it seems appropriate that they will square off or might square off or might not square off in Iceland.

American Bobby Fischer, who obviously doesn't want to get rooked either by his chess opponent or by the purse that goes along with the 24-game match, riled up Russian Boris Spassky by showing up late and not appearing for the draw to determine who would play white in the first game. So Boris gets all huffy. He says Bobby broke the rules, insulted him and the Soviet Chess Federation, and that he must be punished. This crisis comes on the heels of other match postponement threats. balanced result among himself.

Humphrey and McGovern, he would have a reasonable claim to be the compromise choice. But in as much as McGovern has achieved such a preponderant share of the delegates, the only possible nominee in the event of a deadlock would be the man who never entered any primaries. Sen. Edward Kennedy. He is the only alternative candidate the disappointed McGovern supporters might conceivably accept with good grace.

Thus, Muskie has to reckon that if he is successful in helping to bring about a stalemate, he will achieve not his own nomination but Kennedy's. Or in the unlikely event the nomination did come to him. he would have even more difficulty picking up the pieces than Humphrey did in 1968. If the supporters of Eugene McCarthy were disgruntled then, their hopes had never been as high as those of the McGovern people are now because they had never been close to winning. The three lines of argument converge on Muskie and each has its appeal to a man who is at once a party loyalist worried about the possibility of a political catastrophe in November, a decent generous man who would like to be a good loser and help reconcile the angry divergent factions of his party, and a disappointed ex-frontrunner who still thinks his own candidacy makes the most sense.

Since he likes to let the natural logic of events shape his decisions as much as possible, Muskie held back from a McGovern endorsement last month be cause he wanted to see how well McGovern could do in unifying the party. But time has only served to worsen party strife. A decision by Muskie is now WASHINGTON Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, who once expected to be the presidential nominee of a reasonably united Democratic party, now finds himself at the center of a storm which is tearing his party apart.

Muskie has (ewer than 200 of the approximately 3,000 delegates, but in a closely divided convention his supporters occupy a decisive position. What he decides to do at Miami Beach next week is likely to determine not only the nominee but also whether the Democrats can conduct an effective campaign in the fall. Muskie could actively align himself with Hubert Humphrey. Henry Jackson, the AFL-CIO and the uncommitted southerners in the coalition which is desperately trying to stop the nomination of George McGovern. Thus far.

the pro-Muskie delegates have been voting with the coalition in the credential fights, but Muskie has declared his own neutrality in these preliminary disputes, thus leaving himself free to move in any direction. Alternatively, Muskie could endorse McGovern as he very nearly did three weeks ago and thereby make the lat-ter's nomination virtually certain. As he ponders his hard decision. Muskie characteristically keeps his thoughts to himself and listens to various sets of advisers put forward contradictory lines of argument. One view sincerely held by some party leaders is that a McGovern nomination must be stopped at all costs because it would be a disaster for the party's local, state and congressional tickets.

Granted that President Nixon would be the favorite against any Democratic nominee, this argument runs, there is a vital difference between a candidate who loses by a half -mill ion votes as Humphrey did four years ago and one who loses by six or eight million votes as McGovern might. The difference in vote spread could spell the difference between keeping control of the House of Representatives and losing it. Muskie, a loyal party man who led the Democrats in his own state out of their chronic minority status, appreciates the force of this argument. But he is also a cautious man who tries to weigh competing risks. Would the bitterness and disaffection of the McGovern people be too great? Is it worth defeating McGovern at all costs? At that point, other younger advisers make their counter-argument.

They express the viewpoint of many former Muskie staff persons who have already defected to McGovern. They emphasize that in his thinking on most issues. Muskie does not differ from McGovern. Their style and approach are dissimilar but their convictions are fundamentally compatible. Moreover, in the crucial struggles not being fought out inside the party, they contend that Muskie as a liberal and a reformer ultimately has to come down on the McGovern side.

He owes nothing to the AFL-CIO bureaucrats whose blind hostility in Pennsylvania and Ohio wrecked his own candidacy. He does not agree with the Jackson cold warriors or the Southern conservatives. He has no reason to sink beneath the waves with the Humphrey bitter-enders. But might not the anti-McGovern coalition produce a deadlock and make Mu-skie's own nomination possible after all? Hope still whispers its insinuating seductive phrases. Yet as a realist.

Muskie knows that the chance of his own nomination is small. If the primaries had produced a Korean Cozy-Up A few days after sending copies of his letter to us and Ralph Nader, Kronish got his money six months late. The Treasury Department, which is supposed to oversee the excise tax rebate, has permitted the auto makers instead to delay refunding the money. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader has complained to Senate Finance Chairman Russell Long and House Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills. Letters to the Editor Low Tactic To Change Rules i The Nixon administration would like to think, and so would the American people, that the President's recent visits to China and Russia had something to do with the surprise announcement that the two Koreas are getting together to work toward unification.

Granted that North Korea and South Korea began negotiations a year ago to consider the possibility of reuniting families, some 10 million people, who were separated by the 1945 partition. However, the recent summits, bridging divergent ideologies, possibly have spurred discussions by the two Koreas and contributed to initial negotiations successes. Both Koreas announced that through secret talks they "made great progress in promoting mutual understanding." Later, South Korean Premier Kim Jong-pil, put the new accords into perspective by cautioning that unification will take time, patience and trust to accomplish. The two Koreas have opened a hot line between their capitals, sworn off military provocations and established a joint committee to keep the talks going. The next likely step before tackling the difficult political problems involved in unification would appear to be agree ments on travel, trade and a variety of exchanges.

Certainly, improved relations between the Koreas merit a particularly warm welcome in Washington. With the United States maintaining 49,000 troops in South Korea and supplying multi-millions in military assistance, the easing of tensions ultimately can result in the easing of these expensive, and in the case of the troops, questionable commitments. There ought to be some kind of "peace dividend" here and the American people should not be denied it. The prospect of peaceful relations in Korea also comes as welcome news to neighboring countries that are fretful enough about the intensity and expansion of the Asian war currently in progress. With Russia and China bordering Korea, and Japan just across the Sea of Japan, new fighting in Korea could force side-taking by some big powers and tense up the world situation in a hurry.

When the Korean War ended in 1951, there was an armistice at the 38th parallel but unfortunately there was no peace treaty. And now the two Koreas seem bent on correcting this 21-year-old discrepancy. This is good for the Koreas, for their neighbors and the United States and above all, for peace. To depend on a good husband is as risky as a benevolent plantation owner depending on a slave ROXANNA PEEVEY West Palm Beach All we want is equal pay. equal time, equal opportunities.

Then both parties will have to prove themselves as people for a prolonged relationship in which nobody will be left out in the cold financially. Very few women live alone by choice. As it is brought out in Si-mone de Beauvoir's latest book about age. it is mainly the farmer who will put up with his old wife it is still too far to get to the city land may be too expensive). It is much more common, as Barbara Somerville puts it.

"what happens when he takes you off the pedestal?" There is a whole army of willing women waiting, mainly because he earns more money and now he ran even buy a hairpiece. Jim Fiebig Kremlin Guests I have read that Fidel Castro was to occupy the same guest quarters in the Kremlin in Moscow that Mr. and Mrs. Nixon were put up in. I am glad that the Nixons got there first.

Otherwise, our first lady might have found the place covered with chicken feathers. LAWRENCE A. SOPER Lantana 1972 by NEA, l. 'Gosh! The Runaway Problem Seems To Be Worse Than I Thought' Milton Viorst Quoted from Granlland Rice. "He marks, not that you won or lost, but how you played the game! I wonder how Hubert Humphrey marks himself when he does not mean what he said right after the results in California's winner-take-all election.

I also wonder how he would have reacted had he won that election and the 271 ielegates'' A person who admits to the statement. "I've got a little habit. I just talk too much." is surely not fit to be a candidate for the presidency. It would be like changing one liar for another. Speaking of playing the game, when all contestants know the rules at the start of competition, it seems to us illegal to try to change the rules after the contest has been played.

Where is the sense of lair play? Or have Humphrey and Muskie lost that, too'' Humphrey's statement that he wasn't going to match what he called a gnashing of teeth and a waving of arms by McGovern is most interesting. I wonder how he will react now that the court has rightfully restored those delegates to Sen. McGovern. How can Humphrey expect to lead this country when he stoops to such low tactics. Surely, he does not expect the voters to believe he did not have a hand in this most das-tad rly act.

MRS GEORGE R. SMITH North Palm Beach New Sound at the U.N. After Stockholm Death Penalty Ban: Now We 're Civilized? Stockholm was a crash course in diverse environmental perceptions which icas desperately needed and its many messages are now more readily available for the world's UNITED NATIONS. Y. When the sound of discord between Communist and capitalist.

Jew and Arab, colonizer and colonized, stills momentarily here, it's possible to hear another and. perhaps, more important sound. The other is the sound of people of many races and stages of economic development working to meet the long-term crises on the globe poverty, population and pollution. These people, divorced though they may be from the political disputes between nations, have their clashing conceptions and their vested interests, too. But if, on the one hand, their encounters are less dramatic than, say, the strident debate over an incident on the Lebanese border, on the other their degree of success probably will have more to do with the world that our grandchildren inherit.

For the moment, the best example of their encounters is the recent conference on the environment sponsored by the I'nited Nations in Stockholm. If there were no U.N.. it is unlikely there ever would have been such a conference. Harmony is not a word one would use to describe the Stockholm meeting. But why would one expect harmony? What transpired, however, was far from the futile exercise in mutual recrimination which characterizes so many of the 's political sessions, and which gives the organization its reputation as a chamber of meaningless vituperation The feeling pervades the international community here that Stockholm was a major achievement not because of what the delegates agreed on.

which was rather little, but because they listened" respectfully to one another and aeknflwl- In effect, she was challenging our notion that, because we can support them, we can "afford" more people even if India cannot. She makes us see that, in the world's terms, our people are really more expensive than her people She also questions the dearly held American position that the costs of cleaning up the world can be absorbed by the fat profits to be made from it. "It would be ironic," she said, "if the fight against pollution were to be converted into another business out of which a few companies, corporations or nations made profits at the cost of many What statements like these indicate are the worries that others find in programs like population and the environment which seems to irreproachable to us. Mrs. Gandhi was not saying "no" to such programs.

In fact, she proudly cited India's elforts in ecology and family planning. She was saying that different societies might have to proceed differently to achieve the vital global objectives of population and environmental stability. Over the past decade or so, the United Nations has quietly shifted its attention to these global objectives. It has become more than a forum, which is the purpose it most frequently serves in dealing with international political disputes It has begun to provide not just encouragement, but financial and technological resources for dozens of countries to begin programs that are compatible with social needs, yet are in the interest of the world community. It's too early to gloat.

But solutions to big problems begin with recognition, then with small steps. And they are what makes the United Nations today deferent from what it was not very long ago Big Kisk PHOENIX-It was the "old Supreme Court," the one we came to know and love through its decisions in the '60s, that outvoted President Nixon's appointees 5-4 last week in declaring capital punishment unconstitutional. The death penalty, one decisive vote decreed, is cruel and unusual punishment. So now you can spread the word: We're civilized. Pass it along to the prison guards first the guys who keep all those poor unfortunate victims of society off the streets.

The guys for whom the death penalty was the best protection against getting a sharpened spoon in the stomach from some unhappy lifer. Tell the cops next. Tell them the fugitives they face now know they have little to lose by trying to shoot their way out of an arrest. Unfortunately, there's no way to pass the word to most of the victims of the people who were on death row. but edged that, despite their differences, they had to find ways to agree.

Indeed, Stockholm was a crash course in diverse environmental perceptions which was desperately needed and its many messages are now more readily available for the world's consideration. The Indian Mission, for example, is circulating the text of the address by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in Stockholm. It gives those who were absent a chance to look at the environment from the viewpoint of a great underdeveloped nation. What Mrs. Gandhi argued was that the industrial nations must not delude themselves with the simple belief that the biggest threat to the globe lies in overpopulation in underdeveloped lands.

"When it comes to the depletion of natural resources and environmental she pointed out. "the increase of one inhabitant in any affluent country, at his level of living, is equivalent to an increase of many Asians. Africans or Latin Americans at their current material levels of living" 4 tell their mothers and wives and husbands and kids how civilized we are now. Tell them death is cruel and unusual punishment. Relate how the folks on death row "whooped and shouted" when the court's decision was announced.

Tell all those people but save your breath on the greasy punks and professional criminals and heroin addicts who'll rob anyone with a dollar just to get through another day. Save your breath. They don't know the meaning of "civilized" and "cruel and unusual punishment Save your breath. You jiight not have it for long. There was inherent male chauvinism in Or Alsefrom's recent address to a mainly young female audience.

His "Life with Father" attitude made us nostalgic for a safety we never knew, which possibly never existed The unpleasant little uprising of the female sex was long overdue It is a humanist movement, touching on war. minorities, the monstrosities which the male has created and is trying to uphold bigot-edly for their own gdld..