The Akron Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio • Page 7

imtarv mm dtd March 1, 1984 Akron Beacon Journal A7 Our young people give us great hope 'This is the first one that I've won and didn't know what to do about Michael Abrams Hart Florida campaign manager 1 if i Mjl 'id Lm. Hart is unprepared to ask voters for delegates in Southern states -1 WE CAN all be proud. Black history was observed during February with many programs throughout the nation and the Akron area. These observances are fine and I hope the memories will last longer than the 28 or 29 days set aside each year for them. The fact that we must have a Black History Month is sad but a reality.

Black history should have been a part of this nation's history. It should have been taught and studied as a regular portion of our educational system's curricula. Since this did not occur and blacks were virtually ignored in American history textbooks, black history programs have become vital to all Americans. Blacks have contributed immensely to the development of this nation and it is only right that these contributions should be recognized along with those made by other Americans. However, because of a thing called "color of the skin," blacks have generally found themselves at the base of the ladder, struggling to climb It.

Most of us know about the recent black struggles but few know about black life during and after slavery. Blacks were depicted as ignorant, shiftless and lazy during that period. Great minds such as Frederick Douglass, George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington, Benjamin Banneker and many others were helping to build this nation. However, they were virtually ignored by historians.

I was particularly impressed with the black history program this week at the Akron Community Service Center and Urban League. The Karamu Players from Cleveland presented Colored Peoples Time. This was a series of reflections on black life from slavery to the present. Sadness, frustration and joy were depicted in scenes of the Underground Railroad, city riots, the Marcus Garvey movement, boxing champion Joe Louis' triumph over Max Schmeling, and the role of the black soldier during World War H. The highlight of the program was the recognition of the essay awards winners.

This year's essay contest, which covered seven topics on black issues and achievements, attracted 423 students from the seventh through 12th grades. There were 36 finalists. Each received a trophy and the grand-prize winner at each level received a $50 savings bond, a certificate, an Urban League family membership and a ticket to the Urban League's annual dinner March 30. Although the Beacon Journal published the names of the winners in an earlier story, I think they are worth repeating because these youngsters wrote some outstanding essays. The winners: Todd Breaux, seventh i By Tom Fiedler MIAMI Colorado Sen.

Gary Hart's shooting-star campaign, which in eight days brought him from debt-hobbled pack runner to New Hampshire front-runner, faces a new challenge: how to, keep from fizzling out March 13, the so-' called Super Tuesday of the Democratic contest. Hart's surprising victory Tuesday in the New Hampshire primary put him in the unusual position of a candidate running far ahead of his organization a precarious situation somewhat akin to running up a ladder with the next rungs missing. "This is the only campaign I have ever been in that has developed this qiiickly," said Hart's Florida campaign coordinator Michael Abrams. "I really drat know what to do." Added Janet McAliley, a prospective Hart delegate from Florida: "Frankly, I didn't anticipate this. As highly as I think of Gary, I wasn't prepared for his wMiing." Hart's victory, which shot him past Walter Mondale in New Hampshire and perhaps beyond the reach of tumbling John Glenn, sends him into the next round of primaries the Super Tuesday i which 627 delegates will be chosen.

That is the biggest block of the campaign. And the biggest single batch of delegates elected that day will come from Florida, which is allotted 143. Two other Southern states, Alabama and Georgia, will add another 98. In none of those states does Hart have an organization that comes close to matching that of either Mondale still the New York Yankees of Democratic presidential politics or Glenn, who hSs promised to make his last stand here. In Florida, Abrams runs the Hart campaign part-time out of his law office; there is no Hart for President office or even telephone.

have no staff, no headquarters, arid I am getting swamped," Abrams moaned. Albert E. Fitzpatrick grade, Litchfield; Shannon Reed, eighth grade, Perkins; Dawn Hampton, ninth grade, Roswell Kent; Gloria Pagan, 10th grade, North; and Pamela Jones, 11th grade, Kenmore. Lorenzo Bagley of Buchtel, Eric Green of Central-Hower and Jangela Hall of Kenmore won the 12th-grade competition. This was the third straight winning effort for Ms.

Hall. An interesting footnote: Some of the finalists and winners are white. This is good because it shows that young people are willing to learn about each other and the rich cultural heritage that goes with our different backgrounds. The young mind is our true hope for achieving recognition and respect for all in our society. A visit I made to Essex School in northwest Akron last week provides another positive example of the value of youth.

I showed slides of my recent African trips to the curious youngsters. The students were very attentive and asked many questions. They were intrigued when I told them that in most African countries, men are allowed to have more than one wife. They asked at least 10 questions about that rule. Some of the girls were disturbed because women in Africa seemed to have few or no rights.

The boys didn't seem to be concerned about the dominant male role but wondered how one could maintain harmony with more than one wife under the same roof. The students were interested in the different attire of the Africans and their lifestyles. The young minds were inquisitive. They saw different people on the slides but they viewed them as fellow human beings who happen to have a different way of life. They will not write off the Africans as non-existent, they will remember them as part of our overall society.

The youngsters who participated in the Urban League essay competition will not forget black history and black issues. These things will be incorporated in their development, which will enable them to be sensitive citizens. We have some fine youngsters who will not walk the path of their "forgetful" forefathers. We can all be proud. Fitzpatrick is Beacon Journal assistant editor.

jiggery-pokery, no deliberate effort to deceive. No one is cooking the books. The government's projections, both in OMB and CBO, are the work of professionals doing the best they can. These experts read computers, not woolly bears, and they construct models, scenarios, and best and worst cases. But computer slaves are ruled by the great god GIGO.

If you put garbage in, you get garbage out. Statistical garbage is part of the very essence of political existence. In our own household finances, the problems are not so difficult: We know pretty well what our incomes and expenses are likely to be. Economic forecasters have to ask themselves: What will be the prime rate of interest in September 1988? How many persons will be unemployed in the spring of 1986? What will the rate of inflation be in the fourth quarter of 1985? The professionals have to make their best guesses on automobile sales, building permits, housing starts, retail sales, crop yields, the balance of trade, and the level cf industrial production in terms of plant capacity. Such variables are unknowable.

The very best economists, applying their very best skills, could not have predicted in 1S81 that the consumer price Index for January 1984 would rise sharply because of two factors: the breakup of which produced higher telephone bills, and a disastrous freeze In Florida, which produced higher prices for food. Every time we try to etherize the future, and to lay It neatly on a table. It rises up and kicks us In the pants. Other unknowables plague the budgetary process. Every president, no matter his party, predicates his budget upon a political wish list: This appropriation will be reduced; this tax will be imposed.

Reagan's January budget is no exception. The wonder, perhaps, is that from time to time the professional soothsayers come even reasonably close to the mark. There will be federal deficits into the foreseeable future of that we may be certain. The deficits will be disturbingly large. Their dimensions? Their impact? Nobody knows.

Kllpatrick is a syndicated writer. One can't be certain of villains these days Nobody really is certain what the deficit will be Associated Press Hart's victory smile Worse, Hart has filed complete delegate slates in only five of Florida's 19 congressional districts. That failure could be particularly damaging here because of the nature of the primary in which voters cast ballots directly for delegates, who are listed on the ballot adjacent to the name of the candidate they are pledged to support. The ballot also includes a separate "beauty contest" in which voters can choose among the candidates, but the results are meaningless in allocating the all-important delegates. By not filing delegate slates in most of the districts, Hart has left himself in the position of possibly winning the popularity contest, but coming out a distant finisher in the delegate count.

Although Hart has done better in getting delegates qualified in Alabama and writes, Hollywood is about to issue another Mutiny on the Bounty film and it is going to get it all wrong again. If you recall the book and movies, Captain Bligh was mean and ornery and fat and slobby not the sort of bloke you'd enjoy going for a sail with. But, says Maurice, not only was there no real mutiny, but Bligh was not at all like the man Laughton portrayed in the movie. Maurice says the captain was "slim, 5 feet 10 inches tall and quite a handsome fellow." He was also only 32 then, married and the father of eight. And Christian, says Maurice, was "not Brando-handsome" but rather "effete," "bow-legged" and "possibly a narcotics withdrawal sufferer." No other manufacturer Is allowed to, misrepresent his goods, Maurice argues (naively, I must say), so why should Hollywood (not to mention books, TV, plays and newspapers) be able to get away with such fakery and distortion? Sail on, Maurice.

Nice to hear from you. All the best to you and the late Breadfruit Bligh. Coffey is a Chicago Tribune writer. Georgia, his opponents openly deride his organizations in all three Southern states. Mondale spokesman Ernest Lotito said Hart's victory in New Hampshire "will have no effect on us in Florida.

We've been here on the ground for more than a year. We've got an organization that's in place and tested," he said. Even Glenn and Reubin Askew backers managed to find the silver lining in the otherwise black clouds of distant finishes, third and a miserable eighth respectively. Because Mondale was beaten, "It's a whole new ball game," said Askew, who conceded he would rethink his future later this week. New Hampshire "just bears out what John Glenn has been saying all along that the nomination Is not a foregone conclusion," said Dan Rambo, Glenn's Florida campaign manager.

"There's no Hart campaign in Florida. We've thought all along that if Mondale stumbled in New Hampshire and we made a reasonable showing which we did then we'd go into Super Tuesday in pretty good shape." Florida state Sen. Roberta Fox, also a Glenn backer, said the former astronaut can take heart in learning that Mondale's organization isn't invincible. "If Mondale had won tonight, especially by a clear margin, it wouldn't have made any difference who was No. 2," she said.

"Now, with Super Tuesday, we've got a horse race." Both Glenn and Mondale already have begun television advertising in Alabama, Georgia and Florida. Hart strategists insist, however, that they don't intend to stand still in the next two weeks. "We feel we can play in the South, especially in Georgia where we have had some organization in place for six months," said Hart spokesman Rick Ridder in Washington. "We'll probably do something in Florida, even if it's only to make a few visits." That effort was to begin in a modest way today. Hart was to fly into Tallahassee, Florida's capital, for a late afternoon press conference, his first visit to the state since April 1983.

Although the stop is brief, it is aimed at getting Hart's views spread across the local media, almost all of which maintain Tallahassee bureaus. Abrams, the state coordinator, said he is also considering contacting uncommitted delegates in those congressional districts in which Hart is short In the hope of persuading some to publicly commit to the senator. That would be akin to playing a defensive game, denying delegates to the other candidates, he said. But such a strategy requires a campaign that is capable of educating large numbers of voters to vote for the uncommitted slate, he conceded. Hart also could benefit from the problems afflicting other Florida campaigns, particularly Askew's and that of California Sen.

Alan Cranston. Cranston has withdrawn his candidacy. Abrams said he already has received calls from some Cranston delegates and supporters interested in casting their votes for Hart. But what the candidate will finally do to exploit his new-won status, Abrams added, isn't yet decided. "I've been in many campaigns," Abrams said, sorting through the options presented by Hart's victory.

"This is the first one that I've won and didn't know what to do about it." Fiedler is a writer for Knight-Ridder Newspapers. It is that Reagan has vastly overreacted to the Soviet threat, thereby distorting the American (and hence the world) economy, quickening the arms race, warping its own judgment about events in the Third World, and further debasing the language of international intercourse with feverish rhetoric. A subsidiary charge, laid principally by the Europeans, Canadians and many Latin Americans, is that in a desperate desire to rediscover "leadership," the United States under Reagan has reverted to its worst unilateral habits, resenting and ignoring, when it deigns to notice, the independent views and interests of its friends and allies. It is almost impossible to convey even to the most experienced Americans just how deeply rooted and widely spread the critical view has become. By Raymond Coffey WASHINGTON Wait a minute.

I was going to fill this space with the New Hampshire primary or the Reagan deficit or something equally boring, but there's news just in from Maurice Bligh of No. 1 Watling Place, Sittingbourne, Kent, England. Bligh is a descendant of the late Captain Bligh of Mutiny on the Bounty, whom you probably better remember as Charles Laughton from the movie. Anyway, according to Maurice Bligh, history and Hollywood have done his seagoing ancestor a great injustice. And what is worse, he says, Hollywood is about to do it again.

It is high time, saith Maurice Bligh, to sink and scuttle once and for all this blight on the Bllghs. I have come upon this news by way ofsa letter from Maurice Bligh which began with a reminder that just 12 years ago I wrote a piece reporting on Maurice's campaign to "put the record straight" about the late captain who survived the alleged mutiny on his ship and lived to become an admiral. Maurice recalled that I had met him at Sittingbourne "one bleak winter's day" and had arrived "wearing a very sensible deerstalkers' hat" Actually, I don't recall owning a deerstalkers' hat and I have a hard time remembering doing anything sensible. But I do remember Maurice, who also notes ruefully that he is "now, unfortunately, aged 40." His argument, then and now, is that there never was a "mutiny" on the Bounty and that Captain Bligh has been mightily maligned for nigh on to 200 years now. When we met 12 years ago, in fact, Maurice had just returned from what he now calls a "seafaring adventure" of his own to the South Seas for the purpose of clearing the late captain's name and writing a book to be titled Bligh In the Wake of the Bounty.

"Would you believe that I have not yet finished writing that book?" Maurice asked in bis letter. Yes, I would. But his real point in writing, he went on, is that "I need your help in letting it be known that the facts of history are, there never was a mutiny," but rather the Bounty was "seized by pirates who came from within. "Yet now, for the third time," he Thoughts By James J. Kllpatrick WASHINGTON Figures tend to mesmerize.

Here in Washington a moving decimal point has the effect of a hypnotist's swaying watch. The '87 deficit will be 180.4 The '88 deficit will be 123.3. You will now balance the budget. You will now Under anesthesia or hypnosis, we may do foolish things. We begin to take budget estimates as revealed truth.

In our hearts we know that budget projections are largely baloney, but we cling to budget figures anybody's budget figures because they have a semblance of order and reality. This mindless dedication ought to be shaken off. Let me tell you the truth about the numbers that have so engrossed us: Nobody knows what these deficits will be. The probabilities are strong that today's projections arent even close to what the reality will be. This fundamental truth of federal finance recently was attested in a four-part study from the Heritage Foundation.

The authors concluded that economic forecasters "are no more reliable than fortunetellers or astrologists." Between 1971 and 1983, deficit projections from the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) had an average error of 254 percent. Only five times in these 13 years were OMB's projections within 50 percent of reality. For some specific examples: Nixon's budget office predicted for fiscal '71 a surplus of $1.3 billion; the reality was a deficit of $23 billion. Ford's budget office predicted a 1975 deficit of $9.4 billion; the reality was a deficit of $45.2 billion. Carter's people said 1980 would bring a deficit of $29 billion; the deficit was $59.6 billion.

Reagan's OMB projected the 1983 deficit at $91.5 billion. It turned out to be $195.4 billion. Forecasts from the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) have been slightly better, but not much better. Projections from experts in the private sector are in the same class. The CBO had an average error of 104 percent between 1979 and 1983.

So respected an outfit as Chase Econometrics has been embarrassingly off target. In all of this, believe me, there is no David Wart of England, former director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine: Let us put our cards on the table. There are two basic views about President Reagan's foreign policy. One, the administration's, appears to be accepted by the majority of Americans. It is that the United States, after years of weakness and humiliation, has faced the challenge of an aggressive, expansionist Soviet Union, revived the global economy, rescued the Western Alliance and reasserted true world leadership.

The other view is shared by much of the rest of mankind, with the possible exception of the Israelis, the South Africans, President Marcos of the Philippines and a few right-wing governments..