The Paris News from Paris, Texas • Page 7

The Paris 4. 1977 Opinion Pat M.Bassano, publisher John R.Thomas managing editor Write your officials "If you take all the experience and judgment of men over 50 out of the world, there wouldn't be enough left to run it." Henry Ford. Want to write your governmental representatives? Here's how: U.S. SENATORS: the Hon. John Tower or the Hon.

Lloyd Bentsen Old Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510. U.S. CONGRESSMAN: The Hon. Sam B.

Hall 318 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515. Phone (202) 225-3035. Paris office: Room 210, Post Office Building, P.O. Box 350, Paris, Tex.

75460, phone 785-0723. STATE SENATOR: The Hon. A. M. Aikin Texas Senale, P.O.

Box 12088, Capitol Station, Austin, Tex. 78711; or P.O. Box 385, Paris, Tex. 75460. Austin phone (512) 474-3474.

STATE REPRESENTATIVE: The Hon. L.P. (Pete) Patterson, Texas House of Kepresentatives, P.O. Box 2910, Austin. Tex.

78769; or Brookston, Tex. 75421. Austin phone (512) 4755727. Study of 'kiddie porn' commendable Texas House Speaker Bill Clayton has drawn mixed reviews in his two terms: Liberals see him as a stand-patter, firmly in the pocket of the establishment; conservatives, not surprisingly, find him the model of a good administrator. There is at least one point, however, on which Texans of all persuasions should'be able to support him: His action in appointing a special committee to study and recommend action on the problem of child pornography.

"Kiddie porn" is so far as we know, not nearly the problem here (hat it is in, say, California always seems to lead the nation in such phenomena but nevertheless, this despicable traffic does operate in Texas, and given the freedom to do so, it will doubtless expand. That is where the just-appointed panel comes in. Headed by Rep. Ralph Wallace of Houston, who was active in trying to place curbs on pornography in the last session of the Legislature, it will determine just how widespread kiddie porn really is, and will propose new laws to enable authorities to bring it under control. It is no small task that the panel will be taking on.

It will have to seek ways in which the sexual exploitation of children can be halted yet without setting precedents that could be used at a later date to curb legitimate freedom of expression and association. The matter is further complicated by the weakness of the laws now on the books: In order for a child pornography case to be prosecuted, the child or children involved must be called as witnesses. Worse, under present statues, adults who have sexual relations with a child may be let off with as little as a $200 fine. The fact that the job will be a difficult one, however, is no reason to delay undertaking it. The human cost of allowing kiddie porn to proliferate both in terms of the children psychologically maimed by such exploitation, and the general degrading of society is utterly unacceptable.

We wish the special committee well in its work. It will be an arduous and repugnant business, but it is indisputably worth the effort. Abortion is, above all, a moral issue (The author is president of the Special Olympics, a program of sports and games for the mentally retarded, a branch of which operates each year in Lamar County.) By EUNICE KENNEDY SHRIVER While Congress debates the language of federal legislation on the public funding of abortion, a concerted attack is being waged on President Carter's opposition to such funding. Even the moral basis of the president's position is being misconstrued as the imposition of his religious beliefs. Such arguments are misleading and do an injustice both to President Carter and the presidency.

Much of the confusion stems from an inability to distinguish between religious discourse and moral discourse. Religion defines man's relationship to God. Morality debates such issues as the meaning of life human rights, justice equality and freedom on philosophical grounds which are independent of one's religious convictions or affiliations. WHEN HE spoke to the Houston Ministerial Association in 1960, President Kennedy said, "Whatever issues come before me as President. I will make my decision in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates.

In taking his stand on abortion, President Carter is saying exactly the same thing. He is proclaiming that presidential leadership above all else, must be based on moral conviction. He is not speaking from the context of his religion but with the clear voice of his conscience. ABORTION IS not exclusively a religious issue. It is also a moral issue involving the moral principle of equity which Mr.

Carter has vigorously supported. This principle demands respect for the rights of the powerless as well as the powerful, of the fetus as well as the mother. It insists on the right of protection and good physical care for the unborn during the uterine stage of growth and development, just as we all need and are granted various forms of protection during each stage of our lives. It is not true, as has been claimed, that President Carter is "imposing the moral views of a minority on the majority." For example, a recent poll shows that 63 per cent of all Americans oppose governmental support of abortion through Medicaid. But it would not matter if 63 per cent were on the other side.

For the deeper point is that numbers count for little when human rights are at stake. The reason we have a Constitution and why human rights need protection is that majorities, throughout history, have often been insensitive to the rights of minorities. THE ABORTION issue is no exception. When President Carter expresses his concern for the rights of the unborn he acts in the great tradition of American justice by refusing to permit a powerless minority to be disposed of either by a consensus of the majority or by a decision of the more powerful. Not only is this in the tradition of the American Constitution; it is in the tradition of the American presidency as well.

From George Washington in the Revolutionary period to Abraham Lincoln in the Civil War until today, presidents have used their office to advance moral discourse and to preserve moral principles. I think it is totally misleading to compare this with the imposition of religious doctrine. The Constitution separates church from state but not morality from government. When Theodore Roosevelt called the presidency a "bully pulpit" he was referring precisely to the unequalled opportunity for moral leadership which theofficeprovides. Similarly, opposition to federal support, for abortion should not be equated with the Catholic, or any other, faith.

The fact, as we all know, is that many Americans of every faith and of no religious belief at all share the conviction that federal support abortion (except under rare circumstances involving survival of the mother or rape or incest) is unacceptable both as moral principle and as public policy. IT IS UNFORTUNATE that in the present situation the rights of the unborn can be protected only in some cases. The Supreme Court has created a form of economic inequality that is regrettable: but would there be truly greater equality if even more of the unborn had their lives terminated? Would it be more moral if all the powerless were put at risk? Those who agree with President Carter's position recognize that the present compromise is an imperfect one. But they recognize, too, that our obligation to social justice and the needs of the poor can be met in more humane ways. Instead of spending public money on aborting the unwanted babies of the poor, we should be finding out why these babies are unwanted and alleviating the conditions which produce hopelessness, alienation and despair.

For example, the most glaring lack in our social agenda is the absence of any strong public policy towards strengthening the family and making the welfare of infants and children the center of our national concern. Even today, we are one of the few countries to deny public funds to assist young women ha ving their first babies. INSTEAD OF focusing only on ways to prevent infants from being born, we should be looking for times and places to strengthen families, to repair the- shattered network of communication among parents and their children, to give': young-men and women less reason to feel rejected and unwanted themselves, and therefore less reason to reject their own children as unwanted. We know that efforts in this direction can make a difference. One teen-age pregnancy center at Johns Hopkins Hospital and Medical School, for example, has been able to cut down on prematurity, encourage girls to stay in school, lower the level of infant mortality, dramatically reduce the number of repeat pregnancies, and at the same time, strengthen and sustain the concepts of rights, duties and responsibilities within the family life on which society is founded.

'You did that behind the barn when you were Why Should America -b'eWed to sin a A treaty to give away land that belongs to lt How well will work Carter's plan to mix work and welfare? WASHINGTON When the government 10 years ago initiated an experimental program of making cash grants to provide "income maintenance" to the poor, federal officials tried to cloak the project in secrecy because the idea was so controversial. A decade later, that concept also known as a "negative income tax" or "income support" has gained such broad acceptance that President Carter has made it the centerpiece of his proposal for far-reaching structural reform of the federal welfare system. But the nagging question remains: Will a government program that provides cash assistance to low-income families and individuals encourage a substantial number of poor people now holding jobs to "quit work and live off welfare?" THE WORKING poor historically have received no benefits from the nation's welfare system. As a result, Carter is attempting Robert Walters Angle Washington columnists Newspaper Enterprise Assn. something no other president has ever done to mix work Hi Hers flip their pennies Dear Editor: We Killers keep hearing about the plan to drop the penny, to stop using it as money to buy things with, and to make the nickel be the smallest coin of exchange.

As usual, since we have more leisure than you salt mine folks do, we did something about it. We called a meeting of minds on the subject and had a real round of penny talk. OUR COPPER bottom decision, subject to change if current currency rates change, is in favor of taking the penny out of circulation, and the sooner the better. As you already know, today's penny has passed the point of useful purchase of things and has become an extension of taxation. The taxmen have taken the penny away from the trade people and are using it to add to taxes.

An example is the sales tax. It's paid in pennies. Itmay round off ata nickel, but it won't remain there. Given time, it will rise to six cents, or six pennies. Maybe even seven.

The penny-pincher has had his day. Anyone who tried to pinch pennies now will soon find his belt pinching his backbone. WE MILLERS have taken all this into considseration. We have talked about it and rocked on it. We are for dropping the penny before it taxes us RockirT chair philosopher RCP Is a resident of Lamar County to death.

We can't afford it. It is our hope that the tax people, without the penny to fall back upon, would have second thoughts and sit on them. They just may lack the backbone to raise the sales tax, for instance, a whole nickel at a time. So, not being able to raise it less than that, they might not raise it at all. And wouldn't that be wonderful! SOME OF our big-salaried readers may have the idea that we Millers are tax-exempt.

They may figure that we just rock and loll. They may reason that Morning Glory Hill is beyond the reach of the tax collector and that we Killers are in fact already in gloryland. But the truth is something else. If you send one of your reporters out here he or she will soon find that our necks are still bared to the tax ax. We pay just about every tax in the book.

Some of us don't pay the income tax, of course, but that's because our incomes are too small to come under the tax rule. It's also true that we had some property tax reductions, or taxes based on property. And that's good. But most of us have had our property reduced, too. And that's not so good.

ANYWAY, we Killers try to be honest with ourselves. We consider any kind of cover-up to be a crime. Maybe that's because we have so little to cover. As we see it, to stand up for something that is taking us down is pure hypocrisy, even high level hypocrisy. We see the penny as the taxman's cat-o-nine tails and we see our sore backs as the cat's favorite back alleys.

So for the Penny we If filers say: Take it away, boys, take it away. Before I close this, I have a little confession to make: The Killer vote on the penny was not 100 per cent in favor of abolishment. We have one random rocker out here, and I'll tell you about him later. Hoo boy and yours truly, RCP. and welfare.

A current example: To be eligible for "unemployed parent" benefits from the biggest of the federal welfare programs, Aid to Families of Dependent Children or AFDC, the male head of the family must be totally unemployed and have exhausted all unemployment compensation benefits. Carter announced his proposal only last month, but those who designed much of his program and will be required to administer it if Congress approves the reform have been quietly working since 1967 to find the right formula for combining work and welfare. THEY ARE the federal officials at the Office of Income Security Policy Research in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, who have conducted four separate experiments involving payment of more than $7.5 million worth of "income maintenance" grants. The first experiment involved poor whites, blacks and hispanics in Trenton, Paterson, Passaic and Jersey City, N.J. and Scranton, Pa.

The second project concentrated on the rural poor, both black and white, in farming communities of Iowa and North Carolina. The third involved poor blacks in Gary, while the last was aimed at whites, blacks and hispanics in Denver and Seattle. With the exception of the final Denver-Seattle project, results of the experiments now are being made available to those who request the information. THE KEY statistic in each experiment was the average number of hours worked each week by Hie husband, invariably the principal wage earner in the participating families, after two years of receiving "negative income tax" payments. Total hours worked declined but only slightly in each case.

The reduction was 6 per cent in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 1 per cent in Iowa and North Carolina, and 7 percent in Gary. For wives, the decline in the average number of hours worked was much more marked 31,27 and 17 per cent. Texas Treasury had cash 13 years ago September 4,1964 Huge flocks of birds, identified by Dr. Lane B. Cooke, county health director as "mud were creating a nuisance, especially on trees and wiring in front of St.

Joseph's Hospital. HOPKINS COUNTY was transferred from the Marshall Division of U.S. District Court to the Paris District which included Delta and Red River. GEORGE BUSH, Republican candidate for the United States from Texas was speaking in Paris at Bywaters Park tonight. Aug.

16, 1953 Texas State Treasury kept the State's money in a vault in the office of the Treasurer until the custom of depositing it in banks was begun. After the capitol burned a temporary building was erected and used while the granite building was being constructed. In the temporary frame house was the vault where the Treasurer, Uncle Frank Lubbock, kept the money. A NEWSPAPER MAN visited the office in -February, 1888, and told what he saw. He said the vault had about two million dollars in cash and securities, which was about one-fifth the amount of cash rendered for taxes in the State.

A burglar-proof safe in the vault contained a package about 10 by 24 inches, bundles of currency amounting to $1,250,000. About $250,000 in gold coins was in bags in the safe, and A.W.Neville Backward glances In history, from the files of the late editor of The Paris News, 1936-1956 outside the safe a pile of bags containing silver dollars reached nearly to the ceiling. Other bags of silver, some with halves, quarters, dimes and nickels, were piled against the oposite wall. IN THE BIG SAFE, besides the currency and gold, were packages of bonds, and public debt certificates. The cashier had just completed counting the currency and other money except the silver; which was checked by.

weighing. The big new capitol was to be occupied in three months and the cash would be moved to vaults in that building. There were special treasury guards besides the regular guards for the building, and the reporter said several of the clerks knew how to shoot if necessary, so they had a little concern about attempted robbery. THE TREASURY paid the State's obligations with warrants which the banks cashed and when these were brought to the Treasury by the bank Messengers the Treasury paid out cash to the amount. After the Treasury was moved into the new building visitors were allowed to look in the vaults and see the evidences of money for operating the State Government..