The Danville Register from Danville, Virginia • Page 4

Donville, Fridoy, Jon. 30,1976 SURVEY and PROSPECT Fishing Waters Are Troubled Iceland had its troubles defending waters from British, md other longtime Peru and Ecuador. All three, as a defensive, measure, asserted their territorial waters extended not six miles, as then International Law in- sisted, but 200 miles off their coasts. Now other nations are extending claims to coastal waters and some new accord and accommodation must be found. The United States, which has taken the lead in trying to bring about new agreements, is walking cautiously, but nevertheless moving, toward ex- tension.

Pressure has been mounting for was intensified recently when New Jersey fishermen went out business to under $1 million, with concurrent loss of employment for Larger and smaller fish firms have felt the squeeze and still are under the threat of liquidation or bankruptcy. Fish long was a relatively cheap food which enabled poor and lower earning families to have an essential part of their diet plenty of protein when meat prices soared. Now fish, too, are scarce and costly and will grow more so in both categories unless a practical solution is found for safeguarding coastal fishing grounds. Legislation was passed by the House of Representatives last fall. The Senate, on S.961, a bill which would establish an interim basis for a 200-mile fishery Holmes Alexander WASHINGTON, D.C.-Two of the Senate's finest--Philip Hart and Roman a fighting against one another and one another's principles in a farewell match.

Both have announced this to be (heir fast session. They are opposing floor leaders on a bill to hire more lawyers and spend more money for prosecuting businessmen under the an- titrust taws. Both men are Hruska Fight Farewell Matcf entirely sincere. In contending that "seed money" in the millions should go to the Justice Department's antitrust division, to the Federal Trade Commission and to the 50 states in grants, Senator Hart takes the or- thodox position of statism or liberalism. This is somewhat confusing because Hart recently admitted that he no longer "has much faith in the Federal government's ability at problem solving.

But on this particular bill, he is captive of his fixed superstition--the one which looks upon free enterprise as free booting or piracy. Almost automatically, a liberal such as Hart assumes that bigness makes business an enemy of the people, and that business E9H.AND MORE TELLING LESS AND LESS! A A M.V*. before dawn to make a customary cat- management zone off the coasts of the ch and found, to their surprise, the United States. strange sight of the whole ocean area a city afloat. a city afloat.

Scores of Soviet" ships were, trawling for mackerel. Close by were 60ffeet long processing factory vessels and huge refrigerated transportation ships to frozen, packaged fish back to Sovie'rports. It was a massive en- terprise, and it since has been found that such ships stay out for months at The Jersey fishermen did not linger. How could they and other family and commercial fishermen compete with this fleet of the Soviet Union? They know they can't and they quickly and desperatedly joined in a call for a 200-mile limit for United States' jurisdiction over coastal waters as the only way to save our fish reso'flflies from fast and complete destruction. This approach was taken by the Senate, rather than laying claim as territorial waters to everything within 200 miles from the shore, so that the Ford Administration, about to enter negotiations with other countries on a comprehensive law of the sea, might do so without trying to confront fellow negotiators with what might appear an ultimatum.

This appears advisable. Even so, there certainly is some urgency about reaching an accord and establishing a sea law that is satisfactory to those nations which have suffered most from the "trawler Virginia, the Carolinas, and.other coastal states Atlantic or Pacific have seen their near shore stocks of fish.being depleted alarmingly and some species have become dangerously low. Without an accord A 00 SmaTLlmeThtag ton has failed from an $8 million an- a few years. 1871 Decision Overturned which NEW5MEN NOT WELCOME void a decision of the i871'Court. The 105-year-old decision had limited the power of states 'and cities to place taxes on imported goods.

Today's Supreme Court has ruled that the case was "wrongly decided." The new decision stresses the fact thatsjustice can be 'obtained, albeit, many years after all may have seemed lost by complainant or defen- dant (whichever was unjustly ser- ved) or in some cases after his and his children's lifetimes. Reconsideration is not a fault, but a virtue, if contrary evidence comes for- th and is indisputably proved valid, or if mercy dictates the alternation of fir- st judgment. Mercy seems to have operated in the 8 1 6 Co de sion as lirection of states, an ri mm 1 harmful to them its are being readied or are 1 ready for sale. Since 1871, have been illegal. In the new; airing Gwinnett County, 'Georgia, suc- cessfully appealed to assess taxes on the warehouse inventory of an im- porter of tubes and tires, in accord with the property tax that the county imposed generally on business in- ventories.

The majority opinion of the High Court made clear, however, that local governments cannot impose duties, and may not tax containerized or other newly acquired or non- handled property nor touch goods hi generally consider Court decision as James Kilpatrick Politics, Postal Service direction of states, cities, and coun- ties, in this modern decision. Suffering for revenues to meet their financial needs, local governments are now enabled legally to institute property taxes on imported goods in the hands Jeffrey Hart Time To Stop overall effect will be to create a better market for American-made goods, which may now be able to compete in price with many foreign products. This will boost our economy nation- wide. WASHINGTON--More than four years have gone by since the old U.S. Post "Office Department became the new- U.S.

Postal Service, the idea" at the time--and it seemed such a good idea at the was to get the maii out of politics. A dismal conclusion has. to be voiced: We had better get the mail back into politics again. That conclusion comes hard. The concept of a kind of private service first advanced seriously by an old-line liberal Lawrence O'Brien, but conservatives embraced it with whoops and hollers.

Down with politicians! Up with businessmen instead! Private enterprise would do the job. It was a noble experiment; it was worth trying: but it hasn't worked, and the best thing to do with experiments that go sour is to drop them. One of the troubles is that the Postal Service created bv Congress in 1971 has been only In a recent column, I commented on the bizarre proposal by Senator James Abourezk that descendants of the Indians killed at Wounded Knee be compensated by U.S. taxpayers to the tune of 5600,000. If (he Abourezk principle holds, the descendants of all (hose killed in battle against the U.S.

Army ought to line up for Jheir checks, including those Englishmen whose ancestors died on the road between Lexington and Concord. (Significantly enough, Abourezk isn't passing out any cash to the descendants of the 60 soldiers the Indians killed at Wounded Knee.) Isn't it about time to stop the posturing where the Indians are concerned? Take the current fad of referring to Indians as "native Americans," evidently based on the desire to correct the original mistake of calling them Indians. But "Indians" at least was an honest mistake. Columbus thought he had reached the East Indies. "Native on the other hand, is not an honest mistake but a dishonest one.

Everyone knows the term is inaccurate. I Arts Of Company In the first place, anyone bom in the United States is native to it. He or she is "native born." The Indians are no more native than little Kowalski, born yesterday. If the intention of "native is to suggest that the Indians, unlike all other ethnic groups, were the original inhabitants, then that (oo is completely false. I quote Samuel EKot Morison's History of the luring About Indians American "At an era prior to lO.OOf B.C., people of a Mongoloic type began crossing Iht Bering Strait from Asia tc America These people were racially akin to tht American Indians whom Europeans later encountered, but not necessarily their ancestors.

Our Indians may have come later by the same or other routes, they may have exterminated the primitive folk or assimilated them, or driven them into undersirable corners." Evidence of much earlier inhabitants than the Indians is plentiful, though these earlier types were not around when the Europeans arrived. Morison, at any rate, calls our Red Men Indians, perhaps because the term, though originally a mistake, at least rests on usage. A great deal of hand- wringing now goes on among radical-chic types like Senator Abourezk about what used to be called (he Winning of the West. Of course, the fighting was often brutal. But does anyone think it could have been much otherwise, or that the early settlements and later cities could have coexisted with tens of thousands of armed savages? Thomas Jefferson, for one, had no doubt about the savagery.

One count against George III in the Declaration of Independence is that he "has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of pur frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions." No one on the frontier was striking radical chic poses about the Indian. One of the most brutal but also profound poems I know is "Vanishing Red" by Robert Frost, about the "last Red Man" in the town of Acton. The Indian is murdered horribly by a Miller, who shoves him down into the wheel-pit of the mill, he is ground to bits. Why does the Miller do it? Themotive is slightly obscure. "Some guttural exclamation of surprise The Red Man gave in poking about the i Disgusted (he Miller physically Oh, yes, he showed John the wheel-pit alright." Para We Of Conflict A shocker.

But also a parable about an ultimate, conflict of cultures, the Miller's loyalty to one of the basic mechanisms of civilization versus the Red Man's "guttural exclamation of surprise." The "vanishing red" of the title is the Indian John himself, and perhaps his blood in (he mill-race, but also the Miller's burst of anger: he saw red. In this poem. Frost tran- scends the Indian melodrama, both the familiar cowboys- and-Indians version, and the liberal inversion of it. The Miller is a murderer, no doubt about that. But he is a mur- derer because of how he feels about that mill.

And the incident has historical reverberations in the poem: "You can't get back and see it as he saw it. It's too long a story to go into now. You'd have to have been there and lived it. Then you wouldn't have looked on if as just a matter Of who began between the two races." The sooner the Indians join the mainstream of American society and become another ethnic group like the others, the better off the country will be. Posturing around about the 19th century does not hasten (he process.

"a kind of" private cor- poration. It has been only a quasi-private operation--the sort of hybrid that George Wallace refers to con- temptuously as a "psooo-do." The corporation inherited so many political liabilities that it could not create offsetting assets. Three premises -supported the new Postal'Service, i Postal volume -would keep rising, (2) mechanization would answer problems, and (3) busine'ss-'managemeht- would be successful. None of the premises has proved valid. Except for second class (publications), mail is declining in volume.

Mechanization has increased, from 25 per cent of volume in 1971 to 60 per cent in 1975, but the expected economics have not materialized. Without getting into personalities, it has to be said that business management has not been remarkably brilliant. The new managers of the Postal Ser- vice got suckered into labor contracts of a lushness almost beyond belief. The Postal Service has 595,000 employes; the median salary for clerks and carriers is $14,200, and the starting salary is $11,444. The contract prohibits lay-offs and provides an annual cost-of- living increase.

The Postal Service lost $13 million in fiscal 1973 and $438 million in 1974. The deficit in the 1975 fiscal year came to nearly $989 million. The current year's deficit, despite rate increases, will be over a billion. Next year's deficit, under the best circumstances, will be at least a billion again. Brace yourself, now, for this melancholy forecast; If present trends continue--that is, if mail volume keeps declining, if the number of delivery points keeps rising, if continues, and if present postal rates are maintained--the deficit will climb to $8 billion by fiscal 1981.

Eight billion dollars! Various options are available. The Postal Service could apply to the Rale Commission for further dramatic increases in postage rates, but it is apparent that the law of diminishing returns already is taking its toll. Private citizens are writing fewer letters; business' houses' are turning to other means of communication and ThV'predictable "growth" electronic banking. will ac- celerate the decline in first- class mail. The Postal Service could reduce profitless services.

Abandonment of Satur.day. deliveries estimated $350 million. Closing 12,000 small post of- fices could save $100 million more. But the Postal Service was created to make mail- handling better, not worse. The Libertarian solution is for the government to give up a postal service altogether, and to let genuinely private enterprise tackle the job.

The idea has appeal, but it is wildly improbable that a predominantly Democratic Congress would go along. A more realistic answer lies in reassumption of postal ser- vices, deficits and all, by the Federal government. The dream of a mail system that pays its own way might as well be abandoned in favor of a system routinely financed in part by postal revenues and in part from the general fund. This is not a happy prospect. Certainly it is not a happy prospect for (hose of us who believe, as an article of faith, that the role of the national government is too large as it is.

But the fiction of a break- even quasi-private postal service has gotten us nowhere. It is like Gunga Din's uniform, which was nothing' much before, un' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind. The sooner we face a policy decision on postal service, the better it will be. Senator Soaper Maybe (he little boy down (he block would make a good PresideiU at that. He's already learned to excuse his naughtiness on the grounds that everybody does it.

Argyle socks are coming back, and we'd welcome them, except that, as we recall, (heir last peak was closely followed by a major war. D.C/s WASHINGTON FOR AN AVOWED NON-CAND1DATC, TB)DY, YOUVE SURE MADE A LOT OF by Leitner, Morain, Hinderer 6UWNESSBOOKOF WORLD RECORDS IS USUALLY IHAVENTMADE THAT MANY, SENATOR D.CJ in government is the way to protect the consumer. For that reason, though the new Budget Control Act would seem to forbid it, Hart would cram over $lll-million down the gullet of the antitrust division, a similar amount down the (hroat of the Federal Trade Commission, and $50- miilion would go to corresponding bureaus in (he states. The money is spread over the next three years. Hart contends--and Hruska denies--that regulation of business by this sort of punish- ment really leads to de- regulation, prevents the danger' of nationalization of our industries.

"Or," says Hart, "worse yet," the danger of "private combinations of businessmen ordering our economic way of life." There seems no sound reason for business-busting at a time when the economy is fighting its way out of a depression. Antitrust laws have been in effect for a century. The antitrust prosecutors have not been idle, and nobody would wish them to shirk their legitimate tasks. But this division's ap- propriation for this year is over $21-million, and its staff is 856 persons. Both are record figures.

Almost $4-million of the groaning taxpayers' money recently went into litigation against IBM, and almost another against ATT. But Hart and 44 co-sponsors are at work for the bill. William F. Buckley Jr. Anti-trust like is a practice that no will endorse.

But to sojtiwof who are dependent on instead voters, are a 19th Century 1, long extinct. The misery Qf consumer over inflated pficfjsi; is caused by governmental'; elephantitis, as illustrated this present Senator Hruska is of mind, but it's unrealistic for even 'a'lcoiK, servative op- pose antitrust laws, Hruska joins the ftghjr'from another angle. vjr It js a very these days. Open any dope you will see an ongoing, brawl between the Executive and Legislative branches of government. Hruska is on the side of the Executive, the Ford administration, in this in- stance.

The Office of Management and Budget- doesn'w want to authorize this spending, and neither does Hruska. The White would rather not be told bythe Democratic majority of Congress how to administer' its law enforcement. Hraska says that for Congress to force its will on the President "strains the separatloh-ofJ powers principle." Hruska won the argument, but probably will lose the fight. The harassment of business has become a political habit. The harassment of the Presidency began with Johnson, eon tinued with Nixon and has not ceased with Gerald Ford; Great Manhunt DAVIS, CALIFORNIA-- One must suppose that, like so many other vague psychological maladies plaguing the land, the general skepticism on the question of who killed JFK is really in the nature of a cognate question: who really ordered Watergate? Who really was guilty of aggression at the Tonkin Gulf? Who really started the Cold War? What were the motives of the Founding Fathers? Who-in- the-hell (that is the idiomatic way of putting it) is God, and what-in-the-hell is He up to? Going the rounds of the colleges, one comes upon a general skepticism, the particular.formulations which reflect, a generic bewilderment at least, cynicism at worst.

Perhaps more than any other single concrete question, the question arises: Weren't we all bamboozled by the Warren Commission's Report on 'the killing of JFK? The most popular current assault on Warren Commission is a paperback by Robert Sam Anson, a detailed examination of which was recently published in National Review by Mr. David Belin, who served as Counsel with the Warren Commission and wrote a book reaffirming the findings of the Commission a season ago. Consider Anson's handling of the circumstances surrounding the murder of Officer Tippit, the other human being murdered in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Both Anson and the Warren Commission agree that (he murder of Tippit was crucial If Oswald did it, Oswald also killed Kennedy unless an inventive alternative sur- passing the reach of current imagination comes through with an explanation that provides a surrealistic alternative. Mr.

Belin interviewed Johnny Calvin Brewer, the manager of a shoe store in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. Brewer, under oath, testified that he was listening to the radio while working in his store and heard the news flash that a police officer had been shot about eight blocks away. He then heard a police siren. At that moment a stranger walked into the lobby outside the shoe store, paused a moment, turned around walked down the street, and entered the Texas Theatre, a few doors down. Brewer, suspicious, followed him' walked into the dark movie theatre, then back to the cashier, asking her to call the police.

The cashier complied, and, the police arriving, the houselights inside the theatre were turned on. "I looked out from, the curtains and saw the man," Brewer testified; i.e., the man who had dodged' into the lobby outside store' after Tippet's killing. 1 "Then.what happened?" Belin asked him. He described the rushing in. Several of" them" surrounded and asked whether identify the suspect.

said, pointing to the man.he could now recognize, the lights having been turned on. "Then what did you see?" Brewer: "Well, I saw this policeman approach Oswald (by this time of course the stranger's name was and Oswald stood up and I heard some rhitr.uPatrolm air McDonald. Patrolman McDonald knocked Oswald back to his Oswald pulled out a gun; was overwhelmed, and taken to the Dallas police Station and for the murder of Officer Tippit. Here is Anson's account, in his best-selling book--the kind'-' of thing the students get their, neuroses from: "McDonald couldn't be sure who he supposed to be looking for. As McDonald scanned the theatre, a man sitting near the front spoke up quietly.

The man. the were looking for, he said, was sitting on the ground floor, the center, about three rows-, from the back. had their man. As they'led away the man in the front row, who had fingered him roseV from his seat, walked outside, and quietly disappeared." In pursuit of Conspiracy, V. the author Anson does his best'n to conceal from the reader graphic line that led fromv- Brewer's identification of Oswald at the shoe store, through to his identificaion of him to the police, including the aggressive conduct of.Oswald!; on being questioned.tfGiveni- this kind of license in writing a book, one would not have much trouble in casting doubt on whether Neil Armstrong- set foot on the moon, or-? whether it was really JFK who delivered the Inaugural' Address that nowadays makes Hubert Humphrey and other candidates for the presidency blush with amnesia.

Why? There is a Horrible' free-enterprise explanation- for it. It's what the people' want-the students, for in-" stance. On CBS's "60" REnutes," a former executive of CIA reveate that a lecture agent told him he could make $10,000 a year defending tbe UA, and ten times that denouncing it It's tbe American tradition, to get. mad at con-men. But easier to get mad at con-men who present themselves, as Anson and his sponsors do, as' devottes of the truth.

THE DANVILLE REGISTER Danville, Va. 24541 Published Daily All Departments Dial 793-2311 SUNDAY ONLY 25c. prompt attention.