Del Rio News Herald from Del Rio, Texas • Page 4

Opinions 4-Del Rio, (Texas) NEWS-HERALD, Tuesday, October 25, W3 Mistakes are made even by David Rockefeller Well, everyone is entitled to one little mistake. Even an expert. Even such an expert in his field money as David Rockefeller. It was just three years ago that the globe-trotting banker and trilateralist stopped off in Buenos Aires to congratulte the generals and admirals then running the show, for having "stabilized" Argentina. Rockefeller found the situation "much better than before." Meaning before the officers seized if that is the word power from the ineffectual President Isabel Peron.

What brings this to mind is a yellowing newspaper clipping in my background files. Here's another one: New York Times correspondent Juan de Onis reporting Dec. 6, 1979 that the American business community in Buenos Aires generally supports the military regime and lobbies enthusiastically on its behalf ba'ck home. "We do a lot more work now trying to explain Argentina in the United States than we do in trying to obtain favorable consideration of U.S. commercial and investment interests in Argentina," the executive secretary of the American-Argentine Chamber of Commerce told de Onis.

Don Graff Syndicated Columnist If he's still around, he could well be wondering if perhaps a bit too much enthusiasm might not have gone into the effort. The way things have turned out, with Argentina teetering on the brink of default of its $40 billion foreign debt and the generals and admirals rushing to turn over power to a civilian government before they are physically dragged out of their ofices, the stability of their regime would appear to have been grossly oversold. Granted, Rockefeller did have in mind guerrilla terrorism that was threatening Argentina with anarcy "before" the generals and admirals took over. And it is true that for a time they did make an effort to put the economy in order, cutting budgets and a bloated bureaucracy, lowering trade barriers that had long shielded inefficient industries from foreign competition and attacking entrenched inflation with a painful tight-money policy. But that effort didn't last long.

It never does in Argentina. The generals and admirals and well- connected businessmen and union leaders who benefit from a mismanaged economy won't let it. Then, of course, there was the cost financial and psychological of the Falklands war. No one should expect even Rockefeller, who has been around the world a couple of times, to be prescient. But he and his fellow international bankers, who have happily been pouring millions into Argentina, might at least have been cursorily cognizant of the past.

This is pretty much the same old story for the Argentina of this century, certainly since Juan Peron put his destructive stamp on the country in the 1940s. His formula for political success was a mix of high employment, high wages and protected nationalized industries. It was vastly popular with the unions, Peron's power base and, unlike elsewhere in Latin America, strongly anticommunist. But it could only be paid for with printing press money and accelerating inflation. The Argentine story ever since has been a recurring cycle of Peronist governments raping the economy, overthrown by military regimes that usually make things worse, followed by a nominal return to democracy and the beginning of another vclo In the few non-Peronist civilian interregnums, when the military had banned Peronist participation union political sabotage made it impossible for leaders from the traditional political parties to five years," Jacobo Timerman recently wrote "Argentines attempt to eradicate prior history.

But each fresh start is merely a formality for the essential nature of the cycle is repeated each time as a new generation revives Peron's slogans." It is about to happen again. Argentines will vote- in a civilian government Oct. 30 and the Peromsts are again considered virtual shoo-ins. It would be bad enough if it were only themselves the Argentines hurt with their inability to learn from experience. But it's not, as David Rockefeller must surely be aware of by now.

News-Herald Editorial Board Emergency care vital Emergency room proposals are to be heard Wednesday at a special meeting of the Val Verde Memorial Hospital Board of Directors. The emergency room has become a topic of concern to residents; this concern should be translated into an effort to become informed about it, since emergency care is highly important to everyone. The meeting Wednesday will be held in the Lab Conference Room at the hospital, scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. Those interested in attending the meeting Wednesday should enter the hospital through the emergency entry, proceed to Nurses Station One and turn left; the Lab Conference Room is nearby and marked with a sign. Dr.

John Henry Scale, a member of the hospital board, said the meeting is open to the public and residents are encouraged to attend. Currently, there is no full time physician on the staff in the hospital's emergency room. To remedy this situation, the board members are delving into the possibility of engaging a firm that provides emergency room physicians. Five firms providing such service are to make presentations to the board at the special meeting Wednesday afternoon. What they offer and what the cost will be should be of interest to Del Walter Block, another member of the hospital board of directors, said it is important that residents attend the meeting and afford the directors the benefit of their views and concerns.

"The proposal to engage a firm that provides emergency room physicians involves the expenditure of public funds," Block said, "and that naturally is a concern of everyone, in addition to the fact that emergency room care should be the best quality care that we can offer." The relationship between physician and patient is unique; the patient feels a great dependency on his doctor. This is true at any time and in an emergency it is emphasized. A patient can become alarmed and fearful if He is taken to the emergency room only to find a physician is not available. We must be informed on matters of concern to us so we can act intelligently. Too often rumors fly and are repeated, growing each time they are told.

If concerned residents attend the meeting, listen to the proposals and ask questions about things they do not understand about the plans, they can act with intelligence. Their presence and their remarks will be helpful to the board of directors as well. This is an important meeting that as many as possible should attend Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. It will present a two- way avenue to communication that should be highly rewarding. Steve Hochman, president of the Crown Vending on the drop in popularity of video games.

Hundreds of video arcades have gdne out of business. 'I don't understand men. I think when God made man he was just practicing. His ultimate achievement was woman." Mary Kay, the founder and chairman of Mary Kay cosmetics. QUOTES The bloom is off the rose too few machines are chasing too few Del Rio News-Herald Published Every Day of the Year Except Christmas By The Del Rio Publishing Company, Inc.

A Harte-llanks Communications, Newspaper Turk Tergliafera Publisher Diana Managing Editor ImaJoFleetwood Associate Editor sxssi grid exceed 400 word, in length. The editors reserve the BAck out? That's YOUR job!" FIVE YEARS AGO A formal dedication ceremony was held at Garfield Elementary School to celebrate the construction of 12 new classrooms. TEN YEARS AGO Port Director Ed Herring of the U.S. Customs offices confirmed today that several new Customs Patrol cars would be arriving soon to augment patrol for contraband. TWENTY YEARS AGO Penney's Amistad Specials featured girls' cotton dresses, sizes 1 through 12, for only $1.00 each.

THIRTY YEARS AGO The Twinklers rolled two victories and the Ramblers followed suit in the WAF league. FORTY YEARS AGO Of the approximately 3,800 volumes available at the post library, 3,225 were gifts, Mrs. Ethel G. Preston, librarian, announced. tribulations of airline industry NEW YORK (NBA) The current trials and tribulations of the U.S.

airline industry, five years after the deregulaton of routes and fares, are a useful reminder that economic freedom is a wonderful thing even if it is a little messy when it suddenly replaces decades of government regulation. Up until 1978, the operating assumption was that poppa, in the form of Washington knew best. Poppa told the airlines which routes they could fly and how much they could charge. Since it was understood that they would be allowed to charge enough to make a reasonable profit, the airlines didn't mind greatly that they had forfeited their right to take bigger chances and reap bigger profits: open new routes, offer innovative variations in service and undercut their competitors' prices. Those were the good old days, if you happened to be in the right spot or knew somebody who was.

Many a congressman became a hero to his constituents by pulling enough wires in Washington to make sure that some major carrier kept flying in and out of the chief city in his district, even if the local air traffic didn't justify, it. As for the airline union, they were in hog heaven. Pilots' salaries rose as high as WILLIAM RUSHER NEA Conservative Advocate stewardess could earn up to 9,000. Then, in 1978, in a spasm of free enterprise rectitude, Congress voted to deregulate air routes and air fares. The airlines were summarily turned loose, to see how well they could do on their own.

Not surprisingly, some did a lot better than others. Among the gainers were United, American, Delta, Northwest and Piedmont. Among the losers were Braniff (which overextended itself and went bankrupt), Eastern (which ran into stiff competition from lean young outfits like People Express and New York Air) and Continental. In Continental's case, and several others, the problem was the swollen salaries being paid to its employees salaries that the line's earning power simply couldn't justify in any market but a heavily regulated one. Also unsurprisingly, the first few years after deregulation has seen some wild swings in both service and fare structures.

Congressman McSnurd and his constituents now have to fly in and out of their one-horse metropolis in a noisy propject operated by a commuter line, rather than the 727 to which they had become accustomed. And it now actually costs more to fly from New York to West Mudbucket, than all the way to San Francisco which sounds absurd, until you reflect on the reltive demand for seats to San Francisco and West Mudbucket and recall the famous old law of supply and demand. Above all, and least surprising of all, the average basic cost of airline transportation is coming down and that's what it's all about, isn't it? There are a few more bumpy years still ahead, while this once heavily- protected industry is sorting itself out and finding the right mix of routes, service and fares. In the process, the inefficient operators will be chased out of business by the more efficient ones, to the accompaniment of a few dolorous bankruptices and the wails of the pilots' and night attendent's unions. But in the long run the result will be what a free market system always delivers not merely the biggest, most complex and freest airline industry in the world, but the most varied, the most ingenious and the best.

Truth is as elusive as peace and as political PARIS The Nobel Peace Prize committee has truly served its founder's intentions this year with the award to Lech Walesa. There have been some grumbles in the West that the prize was too belated to make a difference, that it would have helped Walesa more last year when he was interned under martial law, that it would have helped Poland more the year before when Solidarity was still legal. No matter. There has been anger in the Polish military regime and in Moscow at what the Soviet officialdom called an "anticommunist provocation," the fourth after Andrei Sakharov's peace prize and the literature prizes to Boris Pasternak and Alexander Solzehnitsyn. But the citation made clear that Walesa was being honored not just because of his courageous challenge to abusive power but because of his peaceful methods.

His actions, it said, "have been characterized by a determination and cooperation without resorting to violence. He has attempted to establish a dialogue between the organizaton he represents Solidarity and the authorities." Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite, established the prizes in contrition because he came to realize that it can be used to destroy as well as to construct. His purpose was to encourage the world to use human genius, humane motion, to enhance life and to oppose their equal capacity to devastate. Of course the prize is political, Peace is necessarily political, the nonviolent way of FLORA LEWIS NY Times Columnist dealing with inevitable human conflicts. It is the way Walesa and, thanks to his sturdy leadership, Solidarity and the Polish people chose to pursue their decent aspirations.

They have not yet won. But reflect a moment on what has been won by terrorists who use bombs and murders to assert their cause. They too gain wide recognition, of an ugly kind, but they have never yet moved a millimeter closer to the goals of freedom or justice which they proclaim. Revolutionaries sometimes succeed in toppling power, but only when they can draw on the support of great numbers of people who want to build, not ruin. Even so, the greater the violence of the struggle, the less likely is the result to be anything but replacement of one oppressive power by another.

The reflex of the Polish and Soviet rulers to Walesa's award is itself a recognition of how totally they rely on force and reject peaceful striving to tame the use of brute power. They advertise themselves as "peace-loving." But they automatically condemn any effort to seek government based on peaceful politics. They reveal their incapacity to understand the difference between peace and order. Order can be achieved for a time by power alone. But power necessarily provokes resistance because change and challenge are essential to life.

Peace can only be achieved when it is possible to find another means than violence to limit the encroachments of power. It is no criticism of the Nobel committee to note that its decisions are political, Nor should this year's prize be seen as a point scored for the West's leaders against the East's. The question is whether the choice of the laureate, and of those to be passed over, reflects a politics of fear, self-service and ambition as has sometimes been the case, or the world-serving politics of rising above the use of force. Peace is an intricate idea and offers wry possibilities. On the same day the prize for Walesa was announced, a report came from East Germany on the spread of a peace movement among youth in that heavily militarized country, nonetheless permeated by West German TV and radio.

With the encouragement of the churches, more and more young East Germans are braving the authorities by proclaiming themselves conscientious objectors. If they succeed in overcoming the tricky regulations, they are drafted not as fighters but as "bausoldaten" (construction soldiers.) It is a stigma for life, foreclosing hopes of university admission or a good job. But there's a chance that becoming a nuisance will get the protester's name on the list of people East Germany ransoms to West Germany from time to time, usually for about $20,000 each..