The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 16

es 33b 3Pfttfatalpftm fnqutor An Independent Newspaper Published Every Morning by Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc. 400 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101 Pension Is Far FREDERICK CHAIT, President SAM S. McKEEL, General Manager JOHN Mc MULL AN Executive Editor CREED C.

BLACK Editor JOHN S. GILLEN Managing Editor Saturday, February 19, 1972 Page 16 Mr. Nixon's Peking Journey: Initiative, Daring and Perception 'Into the bus, off the bus, into the bus, off the bus man, what an Letters to the Editor Hold Hearings on Oil Pipeline Letters should be brief 'and written on one. side of the paper. The writer must sign his name and give his address.

Names will be withheld at the editor's discretion only for good reason. The Inquirer, reserves the right to condense. The cup runneth. over with those comparative superlatives so dear, to the hearts of populariz-ers of history, journalists and sports statisticians. It suffices, we think, to recognize that Jn terms of international relations, President iKixon's arrival in the Peoples Republic of China "tomorrow will begin a sequence cf events so profoundly significant and unusual that all parallels found in the history of the American presidency are, for purposes of setting perspective, useless.

One of the most startling symptoms of that uniqueness is the informality of the mission. No elaborately staffed preliminary agenda-setting has preceded it none of the traditional boiling and rendering of issues, topics and communique-drafts by diligent, almost-anonymous negotiators. And yet, less than any conceivable confrontation an American President might undertake could the Peking trip be a matter of glad-handing and reassertion of fluently invoked mutual-interests. There lies its significance and its suspense. For when Mr.

Nixon and the two men who control China's policies meet, they will be concentrating on the broad, historic interests of their worlds. Optimally effective, they will be fashioning history in terms of decades, perhaps generations. If they fail? Well, events will continue to tyrannize, to manipulate men's decisions. "We must find a way to see that we can have our differences without being enemies at war," Mr. Nixon said of his ambition for the trip at the moment of his departure from Washington.

"If we can make progress toward that goal on this trip the world will be a much safer world and the chance, particularly for all those young children there to grow up in a world of peace, will be considerably greater." Mr. Nixon was orating, as was appropriate. And there is folly in projecting from oratory an estimate of ultimate actualities. But until the actualities evolve, there is valid significance in Mr. Nixon's citation of parallel oratory in a toast made by Chinese Premier Chou En-lai: "The American people are a great people.

The Chinese people are a great people. The fact that they are separated by a vast ocean and great differences in philosophy should not prevent them from finding common ground." This is an era of political production-numbers and instantaneous communication and fast-flaring, fast-fading fads of public enthusiasm. Much of the public attention, the news coverage, the swift analysis attending the Peking journey will fit in that contemporary genre. Modern appetites are impatient for main courses. But the original and ultimate promise of the journey defies that impatience.

The real substance whatever, dramatic events may occur is not to be expected quickly, perhaps not for years. If Mr. Nixon is successful in his broad mission, of which the China trip is a dramatic early act, it will be in terms of the world-view he described recently to Congress: 'Our alliances are no longer addressed primarily to the containment of the Soviet Union and China. They are, instead, addressed to the creation with those powers of a stable world peace." That creation will not rise, whole and sudden, from the still hotly smouldering ashes of the Cold War. If it comes and history offers fearfully little precedent for optimism it will be wrought bit by bit, with setbacks and with suspense.

But in the face of that uncertainty, it remains certain that without initiative and daring, and perception of the needs of generations by world leaders, a stable world peace would be deeply improbable. For those qualities, and the hope they offer, Mr. Nixon deserves full credit and the support, or prayers, of everyone. To the Editor: Secretary of the Interior Rogers C. B.

Morton, recently announced that he expected the proposed 789-mile trans-Alaska oil pipeline to be approved two weeks after the environmental impact statement is published. The administration has not scheduled and does not intend to schedule public hearings, even though there are vital public interests at stake. In trying to circumvent the public on an issue as important as this one, the administration has clearly demonstrated its desire to appease industrial interests, over and above the interests of the American public. That the construction of a trans-Alaska pipeline would cause some degree of environmental destruction, is undisputed. The degree to which the environment would be affected can only be discovered through debate on the environmental impact statement, that is, public hearings.

DON FOREST Elkins Park. From 'Best? To The Editor: Last week, your Harrisburg reporter wrote that one of our recently retired judges was "awarded" an annual pension of $35,835, whereas his salary had been The article went on to say that this "is the result of the special treatment accorded the Judiciary in the state retirement system." This was followed up by your editorial of Feb. 12, under the banner of "Retire and Get a in which you state that we have "the best pension system in the that while we contribute to the pension system, we "put in only a small part of what (we) take that our "contributions amount to about 5 percent of salary." Not content with this, your February 13 editorial awarded "Jeers" the "geniuses who dreamed up" such a retirement plan. Permit me to refute your statement that ours is the best pension system in the world. '1 The Federal judiciary, for example, contributes nothing at all toward their retirement.

A District Court judge, whose jurisdiction and work-load is akin to ours, receives a $40,000 sai-ary, and may retire at full salary at age 65 with 15 years of service or at age 70 with 10 years of service. In Massachusetts and Louisiana a judge contributes nothing toward his retirement. In New Jersey, comparable judges receive $37,000 a year; their annual contribution is about $700. As a matter of fact, the annual contribution of Pennsylvania judges toward retirement is the highest in the country! In my instance, as another example, I pay $4,110 annually into my retirement fund, which includes the Social Security Integration Supplement. That amounts to 13.7 percent of my salary.

However, I receive no tax credit for this, and I pay federal, state and city income taxes on the entire salary of $30,000. In industry and the professions, tax shelters permit a substantial portion of salaries and earnings to be siphoned off, tax-free. To illustrate this, the Internal Revenue Code permits any salaried employe (except us) to contract with his employer to have a substantial part of his salary withheld and paid into a pension plan. The employe pays taxes only on the net salary he receives. Thus, a $30,000 a year employe who has been granted a $10,000 salary increase, could elect to accept only $4,400 of that in salary, and have the other $5,600 paid into his retirement fund.

It costs his employer nothing, while the employe saves $2,700 a year in federal income taxes alone! We, however, are denied that option. An unbiased reporter and a fair editor might have thought it of interest to mention that the judge in question has been making his taxed contributions since March 1, 1937, almost -35 years. It would not have been without relevancy to concede that 35 years of savings, with compound interest, whether the contributor was a reporter, editor, garbage-collector or judge, would create a substantial retirement fund. It would also have been pertinent to make the comment that the total contributions of this judge, with compounded interest, would have produced a sum which would have purchased from an insurance company an annuity comparable to the sum "awarded" this judge! Finally, the judge whom you scape-goated will be 81 on April 21 of this year. I wish him many more years of a healthy life, but the mortality tables indicate otherwise.

His beneficiary, according to you, is his wife, who is quite ill. The odds are overwhelming against either of them drawing $35,835 for too many more years, which should abate if not eliminate your jeers and the public's outrage. HERBERT S. LEVIN' Court of Common Pleas Philadelphia. Human Vivisection To the Editor: I believe the bodies of murderers could be put to beneficial use for medical research.

It may be possible to find out why they were murderers and also find ways to prevent murders in the future. JOE LANDIS 30 should bring most, if not all, of the many millions who demonstrated against our involvement in S.E. Asia out to the streets. It is not enough to condemn acts of evil once or twice and then forget the whole matter. If the conflict in Asia ended today there would still be enough cases of injustice left in the world to keep the peace groups busy for years.

HERMAN D. BARKER Philadelphia. To the Editor: No one with human feelings would fail to agree that the 13 deaths in the Londonderry shooting, were sad events. But without any disrespect for these 13, who happened to be Roman Catholic and received ample attention from Catholic dignitaries, what about the scores yes, scores of other Uls-termen who have died in the past two to three years at the hands of the IRA? And don't forget the murders of British soldiers. They were largely Protestant, and their deaths were spaced out over a long period.

But contrasting their little noticed killings with the abundant press coverage given the 13 in Londonderry, one gets the impression these others counted for less. The mourning for the 13 should not obscure the fact that none of the deaths, anywhere in Ulster, need have happened if an organization of coldblooded terrorists had not started it all. The IRA, not the British Army, gen- erated the wave of violence that plagues Ulster today. Eliminate the IRA and you remove the need for soldiers. EDWARD P.

FOLTZ Philadelphia. Fishy Story To the Editor: The mass media can and has done a great deal to alert the public to the value of our natural resources and the danger these resources now face from society's indifference. Unfortunately, the media and has done much to foster an attitude of indifference on the public's part. A blatant example of this indifference was the Inquirer headline on Feb. 6 "100,000 Junk Fish Killed in New jersey; Atomic Plant Shut Down Blamed." May I respectfully submit that anyone from the 6th grade on up, who has even a basic understanding of the ecological chain, knows that there is no such thing as "junk fish." The article, in fact, refuted itself when it pointed out the value of the "junk fish," better known as Moss-bunkers, as bait fish.

Any living species is a vital link in the total ecological process. DON C. KENLEY Philadelphia. Philadelphia. A View From the Bench All members subscribe to our code of ethics, which is designed to protect the public and assure motorists of adequate automotive service.

Further, many of our members guarantee their work through IGO's nationwide warranty program. While none of the steps outlined above possibly guarantee perfect service by every member on every occasion, we feel that self-policing by an industry is far preferable tc having the government handle it. DONN W. SANFORD Executive Vice-President, Independent Garage Owners of America Hillside, 111. Rape in Mt.

Airy To the Editor: The lengthy article in your Feb. 13 Sunday Magazine concerning crime and rape in Mt. Airy was at the height of yellow journalism. The author, with her tricky "inside the victim" style, equalled if not surpassed the famous shower bath stabbing murder in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho." Could it be that the writer had some personal relationship with one of the rape victims? Obviously the attempt was to engender sympathy for the victim. But, one must ask, was "overkill" necessary? The article went even further; it stirred up the most primitive levels of fear, hatred and racism.

In no way, shape, or form did your treatment of crime in Mt. Airy help that community in working through its crime problems problems that are hardly unique to that portion of Philadelphia. OREN A. PETERSON Philadelphia. Wise Saying To the Editor: I was very pleased at Thacher Longstreth's comments on Mayor Rizzo's performance on his first month in office.

This is by far the wisest thing Longstreth has said in many months. MARY G. CUORATO Philadelphia. Injustice in Ulster To the Editor: The shameful conduct of the British paratroopers in Londonderry on Jan. We are pleased to publish on this page today a view from the bench on pensions for the judiciary.

Judge Herbert S. Levin of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas has written an eloquent brief in defense of a pension system which we believe pays excessive benefits. Judge Levin's letter speaks for itself. To keep the record straight, we would like to clarify several points. 1 The editorial in question was about the pension system for Pennsylvania state employes including, but not exclusively, judges.

It emphasized the complexity of the system noting there are numerous categories of employes who inake contributions to the fund in varying amounts about 5 percent of salary for many. We noted, in fact, that the State Employes Retirement Board often requires months to make a computation of pension benefits, as it did in the case of former Judge Robert V. Bolger. With regard to Mr. Bolger, our editorial specified his age (80) and salary ($30,000) at retirement and that he went on the bench in 1937 at a salary of $12,000.

In reference to his annual pension of $35,835 we said: "There is something radically wrong with a system that pays people more for not working than working. And senses of value are incredibly out of whack when Mr. Bolger, at 80, makes more money in retirement than any active employe of the state except the governor and Supreme Court justices." We still think there is something wrong with that kind of system, which is costing the taxpayers of Pennsylvania $60 million a year to support, and we are disappointed that Judge Levin doesn't think so, too. Checkmate or Stalemate? American chess champion Bobby Fischer and defending world champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union were unable to agree on a site for their world title match so the International Chess Federation has ruled that the first half of the match will be in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, which was. Mr.

Fischer's choice, and the second half in Reykjavik, Iceland, Mr. Spassky's selection. No doubt the next phase of negotiations will be on the shape of the board. Acting Like Mice To the Editor: While our national priorities have been directed at "saving" the cities, the percentage of our population living in cities of over one million has dropped from its Depression high of 12 percent to only 9 percent. Current ecological research indicates that humans react like mice in a box when population density exceeds 7,000 people per square mile.

No wonder that public housing is turned into new slums before it is completed. THOMAS H. LATIMER Assistant Secretary-Treasurer American Federation of Small Business Chicago, 111. Rating Garages To the Editor: With regard to your editorial entitled "Know any 4-Star' Mechanics?" we would like to advise you that while a rating system is being talked about by Virginia Knauer, the President's advisor on consumer affairs, the Independent Garage Owners of America, a association, has been working the problem from a slightly different direction. Reform -Not Squabbling White House Protest Was Singer Courageous or Un-Christian? For.

years now, the only thing New Jersey legislators have seemed able to agree on has teen their dislike for one another. This year the animosity has been compounded by Assembly-jnan David Friedland of Hudson County, a Democrat who has lined up against his own party in return for a key committee chairmanship and a hefty hunk of normally Republican patronage. The heightening of tensions has come at a particularly bad time. I Gov. William T.

Cahill is calling for tax reform in the Garden State and any action in that direction will require serious bipartisan effort, The $2 billion budget the governor introduced this week is strictly a stop-gap measure. Common sense and a recent court ruling dictate that the state revamp its tax structure by taking over a greater portion of the cost of education. New Jersey communities finance their schools almost exclusively with the third highest per capita property tax rates in the nation. The result has been superior schools in wealthy communities and horrible schools in less prosperous ones. Moreover, the higher education system in New Jersey one of the country's richest states in personal income is still a disgrace compared to college opportunities in neighboring states despite significant improvements over the past few years.

A special study commission is supposed to release its recommendations on how to resolve the situation within a few weeks. The recommendations are expected to include a state-wide property tax and a graduated income tax, both designed to lower local property levies drastically. In a densely populated state like New Jersey, with hundreds of tiny, independent municipalities and a few blighted cities, a stronger state government seems the only way to avert impossibly high local taxes. Right now, less than half of all the tax dollars collected in New Jersey go to Trenton. In most other large, urban states, the figure is closer to two-thirds.

The one stumbling block in this equation is the quarrelsome state legislature, where partisan squabbling has superceded the vital business of government. It's time now for New Jersey politicians to set aside their political differences and do the job they were elected to do. To the Editor: I should like to explain to Jim Rei-mer and others who consider singer Carol Feraci's war protest at the White House that had indeed Jesus Christ been present at that illustrious gathering, He would have reiterated those words spoken so long ago, that His "Kingdom is not of this world." Christ could no more sanction Miss Feraci's political activism than He could the political zealots of His own day, who, Mr. Reimer may recall; fervently wished Jesus' aid in their, own revolutionary struggles against Imperial Rome. His refusal to go along, His decision to stand only and always above politics! nationalities and strife, cost Him then as it probably would now His life! I think we all have had our fill of' those who shout "peace" but are not.

n-aceable, and cry "love" but are not lovable. URSULA L. HENRY Philadelphia. To the Editor: Carol Feraci, the young singer who denounced the Vietnam war from a stage in the White House on Jan. 28, spoke for millions in Canada who share her revulsion for this hideous war.

I speak for them as well as for the several hundred British Columbia members of Voice of Women (Canadian women working for peace), who are unanimous in their support of her courageous act. Carol's protest has had plenty of press coverage in' Canada and we hope this is also true in the United States, for we know she has millions of supporters there, and deserves millions more. By contrast with Carol's courage and sense of values, the uncivilized manners and lack of morals shown by some of the White House guests in their reactions is embarrassing to us as members of the same species: they are the ones who should have been thrown out, being unfit to be in the same room with Miss Feraci. DEENO BIRMINGHAM President, B. C.

Voice of Women. Nanoose Bay, B. Canada. pfL. fcv jy if I.

i The Notebook JOHN S. KNIGHT's Notebook views President Nixon's journey to China with mixed emotions of hope and a trace of apprehension hope that better understandings will spare future generations from nuclear war, apprehension lest the President be out-maneuvered by Chou En-lai as Stalin deceived Roosevelt and Truman. The Notebook, in wishing Mr. Nixon Godspeed, sees the Peking visit as a positive beginning 'and an ena to negativism and sterile diplomacy. Read It on Sunday's Opp-Ed Page of Singer Carol Feraci shows her protest sign f7: 7.