Beckley Post-Herald from Beckley, West Virginia • Page 5

September 29, 1971 A MPUtUCAN NIWSPAPtt fOt 71 YtAM HMiltHtD tVIIY MJSINESS DAY MCKLIY NIWSPAPtftS CORPORATION ttckUy, W. 2M01 Ttkptwnw All Ovpartmtnti Mcklty 253-3321 Sccond-Clon mail privittget authorized at pott offiw at ivckUy, W. and Hinton, W. Ya. I.

J. HOMl EdiMr MCMIIR OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Tht Attotiatcd Press is entitled to the use for of all rht local printed in thil at at all AP dispatches. National Advertising Representative WARD GRIFFITH COMPANY, INC. New York, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Angeles Appointment For Life May Be Too Long Only when there is a major reshuffling in the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court, it seems, does discussion about the manner in which the justices are appointed reappear.

It happened after Franklin Roosevelt reshaped the court to his liking in the late 1930s, again after the Warren court stirred considerable controversy in the 1950s and 1960s, and 3 has reappeared again with what is rapidly shaping up as the Nixon court. It is unfortunate that such discussions erupt only at times of crisis or major change at the court. There are legitimate issues involved in the manner in which the justices are selected, the tenure of their office, and their behavior going beyond partisan considerations. There is, for example, the basic point that one of the three co-equal branches of the federal government is appointed, not elected, as are the other two. It was deliberately arranged this way to isolate the judiciary from the political pressures constantly at work in the legislative and executive branches.

The point frequently is raised that conditions have changed since the republic's organization was outlined in the U.S. Constitution. It has been charged, particularly during the activist years of the Warren court, that the nine justices appointed for life may be too insulated from public opinion -leaving them free to go beyond the responsibilities granted them by the founding fathers. Perhaps it would be better to have the justices serve fixed terms, with options for renewal whether elected or appointed. A lifetime appointment can only be canceled for serious cause in reality almost an impossible event which may be going too far in the direction of isolation.

Perhaps a retirement age should be set, too. Russians, Red Chinese Are Competing "We are against. imposing one's concrete methods of development on others." Those words, spoken by Soviet Communist party leader Leonid I. Brezhnev to the workers of a Yugoslav factory, sound strange indeed coming from a leader of the country which savagely crushed Czechoslovakia's bid for liberalized policies. But several conditions have changed in the last few years.

The Soviet Union and Red China are actively in competition for the world's favor. The two are particularly eager to have the loyalties of the mpre-or-less independent bloc of Communist states. Thus it was that Brezhnev was able to say to the Yugoslavs, without fear of contradiction when he returned home, that "It is no secret that everything that constitutes specific features of the present organization of Yugoslavia's social life does not seem acceptable to the Soviet Communists. But the choice of concrete forms of the organization of social life is an internal affair of each Communist party, each people." Sovereignty over internal affairs? For the Soviet Union to adopt that line sounds much like a note of desperation. Atlantans To Decide Bus Fare Rates Voters in Atlanta in November will be asked to make a unique decision on the future of their city's mass transit system.

They will be asked to vote on reducing fares from 40 cents to 15 cents. Why they won't be asked to reduce fares to a nickel is not explained. Anyway, that is only part of the referendum. If they vote in the affirmative, the voters also will impose a one per cent sales tax on themselves to replace the lost revenue. The idea is to see whether modern public transportation coupled with low fares will provide the answer to transportation problems in a major American city.

Much more is involved in the Atlanta proposition than low fares. There is almost no end to it. The private bus system would be purchased by the city, 14 miles of additional bus routes would be established, and a 56-mile rail transit system would be constructed. "With a low fare system," explains Atlanta's mayor, "all of the city belongs to everyone." The question is whether a low fare holds an attraction for the voters sufficiently strong to induce them to vote for higher taxes. Atlantans will give their answer in November.

If it is in the affirmative, other cities may adopt this route to higher levies. Other cities will be watching. Top (j The Morning Changes At Prison Involve Guards By EMILE J. HODEL As we indicated here last Saturday, Sam Shaw, the Moundsville Echo editor and publisher, something of a news-beat in his newspaper last week. In accompanying Gov.

Arch Moore's party to Puerto Rico for the annual national conference of governors at San Juan, Shaw picked the brain of Norman Yost, the governor's assistant. He learned a great deal about the remodeling program that is going on in big institution, the West Virginia Penitentiary. Herewith are Shaw's remarks in part. -0- These changes will make life more humane for the men confined there, and will also cut off the routes to smuggle contraband in and out, and make it harder to get away with some of the nefarious things that have been going on inside. Two days later, when the panel of experts led a discussion before the assembled governors on "Corrections," lo, they were suggesting various things that are already being carried out in Moundsville! This happened repeatedly at this conference: as governors would discuss their problems, it would turn out that West Virginia is already ahead of other states in handling such problems.

-0- Some newsmen have been made mighty unhappy because they were refused admittance to the local prison, on Governor's orders, while the $250,000 program of changes is going on. Norman explained mat what caused this policy was that several out-of-state papers have been trying to get reporters inside, to produce stories about how horrible W. prison is. The Washington Post got a couple of men inside, posing as college students doing a term paper, and the result was a story about how unfit it is for humans. As soon as the changes are made, they plan to hold a press reception.

Personally, I insist that secrecy is always a dangerous policy, and the sooner they get the lid lifted the better. What are they doing at the local institution? They are trying to get all the "regular guys" moved into the "new walls" at the south end, and the "bad guys" moved into North Hall. The maximum security section for hard-core problem prisoners has been located near the south end of the south front cell block, but its presence there has fouled up plans to take advantage of the new cells. Now, they are going to move it up into the south half of North Hall. It will have next to it, a small fenced-in yard where half at a time can be taken out for exercise.

This move will make it possible to house the 520 regular convicts in the most modern cells, one man per cell with individual sanitary facilities, in the new walls; and it makes possible creating a gymnasium and auditorium on south of those, in the front walls, for which access would have previously been hampered by presence of the maximum security section. New policy guards will NOT wear uniforms out on the street. This will minimize the "prison atmosphere" out in town. But more importantly, guards will enter the new-wall entrance in civilian clothes, undress in one room, then walk to another room to put on the guard's uniform. There goes the chance for a few unscrupulous guards to smuggle stuff in and out.

Anotner smuggling route is cut off, as the department of receiving merchandise is set up in the north part of old North Hall, and the yard connecting it with the Wagon Gate onto 8th Street, is enclosed in a double fence, the space between being wide enough to bar putting items through. Most of the old buildings out in the yard are either torn down already or to be. The public is becoming aware, especially since Prosecuting Attorney Tom Gall reported on it a year or so ago, that the prison has become a hotbed of illicit sex activity, with oldtimers forcing young newcomers into it. This is partly due to the fact that whereas in years gone by they had perhaps a thousand more moderate prisoners restraining the hard-boiled ones, now everybody with any sign of decency in him is being sent to Huttonsville or paroled and now it's the jungle type. -0- Yost explained that by taking down the buildings in the yard, guards will have a better view of what goes on.

"These things don't go on in the halls, they go on in hiding places such as under the bandstand or behind buildings," he explained. "This place hasn't been any worse than 36 other states I could name," said Yost. "Now we're going to make this place as habitable as we can, make life as easy as possible for them." Hope Jack Anderson-Lobby Fights No-Fault Insurance WASHINGTON "injury industry" the i a agents, adjusters, lawyers and others who make a profit from grief have a massive, sophisticated lobbying campaign to block no-fault auto insurance. The no-fault system would i a nee companies a accident claims without costly lawsuits determine who was a fault. Advocates say this result in lower premiums, prompt service, fairer compensation and even safer cars.

IT ALSO WOULD cost the big insurance companies, trial lawyers, insurance agents and claims adjusters billions of dollars. The trial lawyers alone would lose $1 billion a year in law fees. Their strategy is to block a national no-fault system by contending this is a matter that should be left to the states. The effect would be to gut the no-fault system, as most state legislatures are dominated by lawyers and can be manipulated by the powerful insurance industry. As i of the industry's power, several high- level insurance i recently paid a call at the White House to discuss no-fault insurance.

The group included the chief executives of the Kemper Insurance Group, Allstate, State Farm Mutual, Liberty Mutual, Firemen's Fund and Insurance Company of North America. to their legislatures and assigned to the purgatory of lawyer-dominated committees. Ten states have voted to "study" no-fault Many of these states will never adopt no-fault bills, and the plans that pass will result, invariably, in fatter bank accounts for trial lawyers and insurance men. The patchwork a system that is emerging as a result of the Nixon approach is precisely what the injury industry wants. Indeed, they have planned it that way.

Robert H. Joost, a lawyer who worked for the American Trial Lawyers Association for more than eight years, told a Senate subcommittee last May how the lawyers plan to beat no-fault. THEIR EMPHASIS, said Joost, is on state legislatures. ATLA has handpicked "key men" including former governors, legislators, and powerful politicos to coordinate the state-by-state assault on no-fault. Joost became "fed up" with his sanctimonious brothers, he said, at a "key man" meeting in Chicago.

Tactics for manipulating state legislatures were openly discussed, Joost said. Such front groups as LIFT (Lawyers Involved For Texas) and ADOPT (Attorneys Dedicated to Ohio People Totally) have been formed. They are intricate, tax- exempt schemes for raising money to defeat'no- fault. An El Paso, Texas, trial lawyers' newsletter, in fact, frankly labeled LIFT "a legislative kitty that is paying off." ADOPT and LIFT are but the tip of a scandalous iceberg. THE NIXON Administration subsequently endorsed the no- fault concept but recommended that it be implemented on a state-by-state basis.

The futility of this approach is always evident. Thus far, five states have passed new insurance bills, but they bear about as much resemblance to no-fault as a tin whistle to a flute. Massachusetts has one of the best plans. It provides for no- fault compensation up to $2,000 but permits lawsuits for damages in excess of that amount. Motorists still have to carry liability insurance, and in many cases the no-fault payments serve merely to subsidize subsequent lawsuits.

Even with these a Massachusetts drivers already have received a 15 per cent drop in some of their auto premiums. ALL ACROSS the country, trial lawyers are forming spurious "citizens groups" to campaign against no-fault. An organization in Nashville, which calls itself the "Citizens Committee to Halt No- Fault Insurance," has been sponsoring radio ads denouncing no-fault as a system which "makes no distinction between the careful and reckless driver." The chairman of the group is Don D. Hildebrand, just an average "citizen" who happens also to be a member of ALTA. In New York City, a group called "Citizens Against No Fault" has bombarded the city with vacuous newspaper ads that label no-fault "a hoax." A NUMBER OF states have had no-fault bills introduced in- THE ORGANIZATION is run by a public relations expert, Irv Spivack, who has refused to name his backers.

There's considerable evidence to suggest the group is being bankrolled largely by trial lawyers and insurance men. The trial lawyers piously insist, nevertheless, that they are really defending the American system of justice. We spoke at length with Marvin Lewis, the ATLA president, who claimed that no-fault insurance would cost more and offer less. No-fault removes the "buffer" between the people and the insurance companies, he said. "Take away the courts and the lawyers, and all you are left with are the friendly hands of Allstate." IN OTHER words, no-fault would do away with the lawyers.

It would also do away with $1 billion in legal fees. We asked whether it was ethical to use tax-exempt schemes to raise money to fight no-fault. "We're carrying on a peoples' lobby," thundered i "We're out there lobbying for the people." The people, who would save billions by eliminating the lawsuits and the middlemen, may have a different idea. The American Insurance Association, whose companies write 30 per cent of the nation's auto insurance, has endorsed a complete no-fault system. Other companies have paid lip service to the concept while seeking to sabotage true no-fault.

Andrew Tully-Commercial Television Dictates Sport Policies WASHINGTON Sen. Sam Ervin of North Carolina is one of my favorite politicians, but I am slightly underwhelmed by his threat, or hint, to look into the possibility that professional baseball may operate in violation of the antitrust laws. Ervin, bless his heart, has cqme late i i nation. He took his dim view baseball ablish- ment only after the American League, in its unremitting pursuit of the fast buck, voted to move the Washington Senators to a bedroom between Dallas and Ft. Worth, and thus bail out owner Bob Short from the swamp of his own mistakes.

So what else is ntw, senator? Baseball, the Great American Trust, has been engaged in such shenanigans for lo, these many years. THE NAME OF the game is profit, in nice, juicy, seven figures, and me No. 1 dictum of this financial jungle says that if the fans refuse to support a team of ham-handed culls and misfits who have to be helped to first base, the club forthwith must be transferred to pastures with a fresh crop of greenbacks. To make its vulgar wanderings possible, baseball for a century has employed a system of peonage mat makes the fiefdoms of the Dark Ages appear beneficent by comparison. A high school or college or sandlot player may not sign with the major league club of his choice.

He is "drafted" by baseball's dictatorship he signs with the club that has claimed his body or else he gets a job selling shoes. all intents and purposes dictates the policies of both baseball and professional football. BOB SHORT, that coarse and foul-mouthed man, secretly arranged to move to Texas because the lords of television decided that Washington was an inadequate market for its mouth washes. Short was getting a mere $250,000 a year in television and radio fees. Texas offered him a radio-television contract of million.

Presumably, there is a much bigger market for mouth washes in the Lone Star State. At any rate, television wanted the poor feckless Senators to move, and what television wants in professional sports, television gets. Television is where the money is. The American a greedy approval of Short's move emphasized again that baseball, far from being the national pastime, no longer is even a pastime for the fan who goes to the ballpark. It is fashioned almost exclusively as a shill for those products whose a ballyhoo is unremittingly forced on the captive viewer.

MOREOVER, ONCE signed, the player becomes the club's property for life. He may not switch to another club except through a "trade." If he decides that me club, of which he is a chattel, is not paying him enough money, he can refuse to sign a new contract. In that event, he is barred from earning a living at his profession. General Motors and Ford would be deported to Russia if they dared engage in such banditry. To make things worse, at least for the fans, a new villain has emerged from the corporate woodwork.

It is commercial television, which now to INDEED, THESE awesome sports stadia erected with taxpayers' money across the country are only incidentally intended for the ticket-buying spectator. Whether he knows it or not, the taxpayer is subsidizing mammoth outdoor studios for the television colossus, which pays no rent for these facilities, while arrogantly decreeing that there be innumerable football time-outs called accommodate its infinite commercials. Meanwhile, the club owners increase their share of the loot by seizing the publicity-owned air waves in their territory to impose a blackout on home games, thus assuring me sale of as many tickets as possible. THIS BIT OF thievery is overlooked by regulatory agencies and, of course, by Congress possibly in their preoccupation with the pursuit of dangerous i i personalities who might say something controversial or sensible. Thus, I am able to restrain my enthusiasm for Sam Ervin's suggestion that the departure of the Senators "might" cause Congress to examine baseball's exemption from the antitrust laws.

Yesterday And Today-Six Days To Cross Fayette In 1774 By SHIRLEY DONNELLY When in Ansted last Saturday to attend a meeting of Fayette County Historical Society, I could not help but recall the time that Regiment and other units in Gen. Andrew Lewis's army were there. It was 1 9 1774, that these tingents i ginia militia reached present day Ansted. It was on a Monday were there and took a right-hand turn up Westlake Creek and over the mountain to the head of Rich Creek, a tributary of Gauley River. Lewis's advance columns had followed a different path.

SEPT. 19, 1774, was not a very good day for traveling over wilderness traces. That day the weather was fickle. It wonld rain awhile, then the sun would break through the overcast. It took all day for the Botetourt Regiment to march six miles after leaving the site of Ansted.

When the head of Rich Creek was reached after the torturous ascent over the steep mountain, a halt was called and an encampment was fixed for the night. This was the eighth camp the regiment had made since the march from Lewisburg, then called Camp Union, was started on Sunday, Sept. 11. Six days earlier, on Sept. the Augusta Regiment had quit Camp Union and began the 160- mile march for Point Pleasant.

It required from Sept. 14 to Sept. 20 for these units to cross Fayette County. the small society by Brickman ANSTED, SEAT of the Fayette County Historical Society, is an old settlement. It is a place that glows with the patina of time.

Yet much of it is as modern as things can be. The first people to inhabit this spot were there long before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War. There was a road house there that preceded the venerable Tyree Tavern of today. It was in 1790 that the people called Baptists organized the first church of any faith or denomination in Fayette County. They called the church they planted that year the Hopewell Baptist Church, still in existence but moved to another location, to New Haven of old.

During the Civil War, Ansted was a center of activity. It was at Ansted that H. E. Danforth conceived the plot of his novel, "The Trail of the Gray Dragoon." The plot centered in and around Tyree Tavern, where the Gray Dragoon unit was headquartered. AT ANSTED IS noted Westlake Cemetery.

In that populous city of the dead reposes the mother of Gen. T. J. "Stonewall" a Inscription on her grave marker reads: "Here lies i a Beckwith Neale. Born February 28, 1798, in Loudon Va.

Married, first, a a Jackson. Second, Blake B. Woodson. Died Sept. 1831.

To the mother of 'Stonewall' Jackson, this tribute from one of his old Brigade." When the "one from his old Brigade" caused that marker to be put at the tomb of his deceased Confederate commander's mother, he got the date of death wrong. Mrs. Woodson did not die in September, 1831, but on Dec. 3 of that year. Capt.

Thomas Ranson, who fought in Jackson's old brigade, was tne one who put up the marker at hit own expense. Ranson was an attorney. AFTER THE DEATH of her first husband, a a Jackson, who died March 26, 1826, Mrs. Jackson married Blake B. Woodson, a widower attorney of Clarksburg, on Nov.

30, 1830. When Fayette County was formed in 1831, Woodson was appointed clerk of the new county and moved to Ansted, as we know it today. At that time the courthouse was in an old store building at New Haven near what is now Victor. Mrs. Woodson bore a son on Oct.

7, 1831, and died of complications related to childbirth. The Rev. John McElhenney of Old Stone Church, Lewisburg, conducted her funeral. THE STORY IS that President Andrew Jackson was passing over James River and Kanawha Turnpike on his return to Washington. When passing through Ansted, he spotted the funeral cortege winding its way to God's Acre.

He had the driver stop the stagecoach so that he might get out and express condolences to the bereaved husband, Blake B. Woodson. A West Virginia highway historic marker at Ansted mournfully recites the story of the grave of the mother of the celebrated Confederate general, hero of the battle of Chancellorsville, where he was mortally wounded. HEADQUARTERS OF the Fayette County Historical Society was the home of Col. George W.

Imboden (June 26, 1336-Jan. 8, 1922). He was a colonel in the Confederate army. Following the close of the battle of Gettysburg, General Lee ordered Colonel Imboden to cover the rear of the retreating Confederate army. That written order stated to Colonel Imboden that "You must be very active." The order was signed by R.

E. Lee in a hurried scrawl. I have held in my hand and read mat original order. Colonel Imboden is buried in Westlake Cemetery overlooking the historic town of Aasted..