Daily World from Opelousas, Louisiana • Page 4

DAILY WORLD Opelousas. Nov. 18. 1970 LOUISIANA EDUCATION GIHSTCSITOIAL By JOEL FLETCHER Weiv Specie Delivery, Ox-Marino Vritoi on War fen -s' Here it is received on a similar Teleprinter removed and inserted in a distinctive envelope and sent out by regular mail carrier on the next scheduled delivery. Rates for the service average $1.10 for 50 words, which isjess than for a telegram.

So far, more than 98 per cent of 250,000 Mailgrams sent have been delivered on the next business day. Where distances are great and a two or three-hour time difference exists, such as between New York and San Francisco, delivery can be made the same day. A big advantage Mialgram offers to businessmen is that it is not only fast but, like a conventional letter, provides a written record copy. Usage of the new service is presently limited to business firms, but by mid-1971 it will be made available to the public in a number of cities to test its general acceptability. Honma Daily Courier The public's somewhat less than unshakable confidence in the postal service received another jolt recently when it was charged that special delivery letters just aren't treated as very special.

For various reasons, they are often delivered no sooner than they would have been without the 45-cent premium stamp attached. For those willing to pay an even higher fremium for really fleet delivery, the U.S. 'ost Office and Western Union are experimenting with a new message service called a "Mailgram," which, as the name suggests, is somewhere between a letter and a telegram. This is how it works: A customer of Western Union's Teleprinter Exchange Service (Telex) sends his message by Teleprinter to the Mailgram Computer Center, where it is automatically routed according to Zip Code to the appropriate destination post office. TAYLQ3 C0.7.7.INTARY LE BOCAGE VERT, Lafayette, La.

This continues my three-column series on letters from two interesting persons. This second letter was written by a long-time friend for the public forum of the papers of this area. This man, a Marine Aviation veteran and hero of World War II who holds high rank in the Marine Reserve Corps, comments on the Asian War as follows: "What is happening to our boys (prisoners of war in North Korea and South Vietnam? How many have starved to death? How many have been murdered? Just how many are left? What is their status as to medical care, food intake, "Our government knows very little. It is time for us to bnng them home. "This has been a 20-year war, not a military intervention! THIS WAR WILL GO DOWN IN HISTORY AS THE GREATEST MISUSE OF MILITARY POWER IN THE WORLD! "Don't let our government abandon (desert) our men who so valiantly served our flag.

We can't withdraw from Vietnam without our P.O. "In a recent trail taken here in the U.S.A., 70 per cent of us want the above done. "So, if we make our U. S. Congressmen and Senators tell our military to comply with getting our men home, it could be done in a week -the P.O.

first. "I pray to God, let our people be strong and do the 'Matter of Fact' JOSEPH AI.SOP Slates on Spending Spree Unimaginably Doautiful Dook WASHINGTON Shining with the noblest glory of 'the human spirit: darker than the very depths of terror: richly witty, wonderfully wise and heartbreakingly sad, telling a tale for our time that none should fail to read: above all, an unimaginably beautiful book that is the very least one can THE TIMES-PICAYUNE His Resignation Was in Order! TODAY IN NATIONAL MEANWHILE, do the politicians who raise our state and local taxes always know what they're doing? New York State's lottery proponents solemnly forecast that it would raise $200 million a year. The lottery grosses only about $107 million a year and produces $35 million a mere $165 million a year less than the politicians forecast. There are at least 31 taxes in a loaf of bread, many of these state and local. All but a few are hidden, of course, which is how the politicians make their hay.

Hidden taxes are the invisible hole in our pockets the unrevealed gimmick in nearly every state. The politicians use this gimmick chiefly because the sales taxes are so high and hit the voter right in the eye as well as in the pocket. The highly respected Tax Foundation, an independent research organization, finds that 44 states impose retail sales taxes. In 34 of these it's now the top revenue-source. It yields as much as 51 per cent of Illinois' revenue.

It accounts for less than 25 per cent of the states' revenue in only 12 states. Then along come the cities and towns. Wild and Uneven Before 1945 only New York City and New Orleans imposed city sales taxes. Today one out of every six cities half of all cities with more than 3Q0.000 population levies a city sales tax. In 23 states about 3,500 local governments add this bite.

The upshot is that state and local retail taxes will cost us $15 billion this year. That's a 25 per cent increase over 1969. Now take a look at the. wild unevenness, and a further look at how we pay through the nose. John V.

Cleary, president of the Consolidated Edison Company of New York, tells me: "If New York State and local taxes were the same as in Philadelphia, our company's tax bill would be about $35 million. It's about $160 million. We could roll Afof So lams' Ducks By HENRY J. TAYLOR The states have gone on a spending spree quietly squeezing more and more right out of our hides. And, in all good conscience, the newly-elected governors and state legislators have an iron-clad duty to do something about it.

When it comes to tax increases the states make the Washington government look like a piker. In the past 10 years they've raised their taxes about 130 per cent straight up, like the Eiffel Tower. Florida designed an additional $350 million tax package. Texas designed a $175 million one: New York a $153 million package: New Jersey $116 million, etc. And so it goes, on and on.

This year 24 state legislatures added to their states' taxation. STATE AND LOCAL TOBACCO taxes cost us $2.4 billion in 1969. And this year 20 new cigarette taxes were passed in 19 states. These increases averaged 45 per cent. These taxes have now surpassed the Federal bite and lift the total direct cigarette tax take to about $4.5 billion.

State and Federal gasoline taxes have been hiked more than 20 per cent in the past 10 years. These now average more than 12 cents a gallon. The average family buys 650 gallons a year. Our total vehicles average 775 gallons apiece. Consumers used 77 billion gallons last year.

The taxes drained $9 billion right out'of our hides. Each one-cent hike in gasoline taxes cost us about $750 million a year. Newly-elected governors and state legislators, please note. Killing the Railroads In a single 24-hour period the railroads pay about $2.4 million in taxes, much of them state and local They can afford to pay more? The nation's railroads must invest an $30 billion during the next 10 years to meet their resppnsibiiities. Yet they're earning only about 2.4 per cent on their invested capital.

Their securities bearing 4 or 5 per cent interest must be refinanced with 9 and 10 per cent issues. They can afford higher state and local taxes like the Titanic could afford to hit the berg. By DAVID LAWRENCE WASHINGTON The meeting of Congress this week is called a "lame duck" session because, out of 535 members. 61 are in seats which they either lost in the elections of November 3 or had given up or lost to party associates in primaries. li I-'' I AFFAIRS considerable debate.

Controversies may arise over the large defense-appropriations measure, and discussion may be prolonged. Pressure exists for consideration of laws covering revised job safety and health standards, and of legislation to permit victims of consumer fraud to seek redress in group lawsuits. An earlier bill to provide appropriations for the department of housing and urban development as well as independent agencies which was vetoed by President Nixon as too costly will be up again. Will the congestion caused by these bills prevent the Senate from taking up the proposals for constitutional amendments passed by the House to give "equal rights to women" and provide for the "direct election of Some of the leaders think this may happen. Many Other Matters There are numerous other matters which the administration wants enacted into law as, for instance, a tax on lead in gasoline, a THIS IS a' MARVELOUS TIME for the newly-elected governors and state legislators to live up to their taxation promises.

Hold them to those promises, kind folks. Stop, the tax spree here and now. Hey, that's our money! But there actually nothing "lame" about it. Each of the two houses is still controlled by a majority from the Democratic party, and the new Congress which begins in January likewise has a Democratic majority in the Senate as well as the House. So there can be no escaping the responsibility which the majority party will bear in the final session of the 91st Congress and the first session of the 92nd that starts next year.

Already it is being said that a "lame duck" session cannot accomplish much. But why should thisbe so when the party in control remains the same and in the new Congress its majority in the House will be even larger, while its margin in the Senate will be only a few seats less? Crucial Action Needed There are crucial changes to be made in respect to certain imports which now are hurting American industries and causing a loss of jobs. Modifications are pending on Social Security. A new family assistance plan has been drafted, and there are important appropriation bills to be acted upon, including funds for health. These could" cause say of Hope Against Hope.

By any rational test, such a bookoufiit. to be more important news than most of the stuff that covers the front pages. To illustrate, you could take the entire output of serious writing in America in the last decade, and you could threw in, for good measure, the earlier works by Norman Mailer, Mary McCarthy and a few others. All of it would stLUWEICH less in the balance, both as art and truth, than this long memoir of the last years of Russia's greatest modern poet, Osip Mandelstany The author is Mandelstam's undefeated and widow, Nadezhda. Her friend, Prof Clarence Brown of Princeton, describes her in his introduction to her book as "a vinegary, Brechtian, steel-hard woman of great intelligence, limitless courage, permanent convictions and a wild sense of the absurdity of life." ri'l Simple Themes ii une compeiiea ivw.

beueve every wora oi mis: yet it still seems an inadequate summary of the mind that produced such a book. The book's themes are simple enough, to be sure. They are the idyllic love that united the Mandelstams: their life together, almost as hunted animals, after the poet incurred the displeasure of Josef Stalin: and Mandelstam's final murder by Stalin's order and his widow's defiant conservation of the main body of his work, although the almightly state wished to destroy the poems along with the poet. There is no use, here, trying to say much more than the above. The story the book tells is a true tale of horror of these harsh times.

But the real point is that the tale of horror is told with a counterpoint of high comedy, with a LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Back to the (inning Editor, Daily World: Seems funny. The gapped generation, declaring God is dead and generally expressing contempt for the religion of their immediate ancestors, seem still to have some innate yearning for a supernatural force in which they can place their faith. Where do they turn? Why back to the beginning, of course. To the religion of the earliest ancestors of which we have any record. To astrology, the religion which our forefathers brought with them out of the stone age.

Seems sad, more than funny. PAUL J. MAYNE Opelousas richness of incident and a power of characterization, with a love of life despite life's cruelties and bestialities that are very, very hard to match. First Major Work All this, in itself, is sufficiently extraordinary. Except for the very different Casanova, after all, one cannot think of another truly major writer who only took up the pen in very old age.

But although Nadezhda Mandelstam is a scholar of some distindioh, withEnglish as her speciality, she had produced not a single literary work of any significance before she began to compose "Hope Against Hope." Reading it, you can see why this old lady with the face of an autumn pippin is a prime heroine, at the age of 71, among the more Sromising young writers in tussia. You can see, too, why Mandelstam's only real poetic competitor, the great Anna Akhmatova, who was tamous, lor neraisiasie ior, other women, made a permanent exception for the wife of her beloved Mandelstam. When you read Nadezhda Mandelstam's great book, in truth, your first impulse is to take a plane to Moscow for the sole reason of trying to scrape an acquaintance with her. The translation of her book, by Max Hayward, is well up to the very high Hayward standard; but the wit and wisdom, the celebration of courage and goodness, the proud defiance of tyranny have a reported bite in the original that cannot really be translated. A Shaming Experience Yet the dreadful admission must be made that for an American, at this juncture of our development, there is more to reading "Hope Against Hope" than the sheer glorious exhilaration of quite unexpectedly discovering a major work of art and thought.

For this American, at any rate, it was also a worrying, even a shaming experience. For there is something sadly shaming in the ironic contrast between this book and the sort of thing we in America take so seriously nowadays such sentimental, antirational tosh, for instance, as Charles Reich's "Greening of America." Which Reich never appears to have encountered anything remotely resembling this world's hard realities, Nedezhda Mandelstam, of course, digested a diet of those realities that would have killed or broken any ordinary person. We can only pray that such times as she had to live through will never come again although there is no insurance at all against their (Continued on page 5) REMINISCENCE By HASA OITEOO Hobort Becomes Hoobert Mrs. Leon Mistric of Opelousas recently had as her guest a charming lady by the name of Madame Rose Marie Guidat. her cousin from France.

Mrs. Mistric's daughter. Peggy is a student in a French class at Amy Bradford Ware School so she invited Madame Guidat to visit the class. The French visitor, who speed-up in the collection of estate and gift taxes, and an extension of the automobile and telephone excise taxes which are due to expire in January. All this hardly amounts to an insignificant or secondary program for a "lame duck session.

As a matter of fact, it might well be called an "intermediate, preparatory session." For both parties are going to find it necessary to gird themselves for the political campaign of 1972. rt and the Republicans, arejot likely Jto refraiTt'Trom, speaking out next time against the Democrats on the causes of economic instar bility. Unemployment is spreading, and the political effects will be felt by members of Congress as the jobless increase. The reasons for "curbing inflation" may be widely understood by the economists, but when the nation begins to suffer from unemployment, the people want a cure at almost any cost. This is the political dilemma which confronts any administration with a recession going on as an election approaches.

Party Dissenters Both parties in Congress have large dissenting elements, and the problem of achieving solidarity in the sessions that lie ahead is not going to be easy for the respective leaderships to solve. The fact that President Nixon gave his support to certain Republicans but omitted others has not been overlooked in political circles. Members of Congress who will be up for re-election in 1972 will have to decide whether they want to split the ranks of their party and force independents into some of the races. At present, though, there are signs that the trend will be toward harmony rather than dissension and that the lessons of the 1970 campaign will be taken to heart by Republicans and Democrats. Some state organizations in' both parties have up to now failed to work closely with the national organizations.

Fund-raising which is so vital can better be accomplished by a central group than by divided units. Looking ahead to 1972, President Nixon undoubtedly intends to seek to develop a united Republican party throughout the country in the hope that it can attract the "silent majority" next time in large numbers irrespective of any third-party ticket. The Almanac By United Press International Today is Wednesday. Nov. 18.

the 322nd day of 1970. The moon is between its full phase and last quarter. The morning stars are Venus, Mars and Jupiter. The evening stars are Mercury and Saturn. Those born on this date are under the sign of Scorpio.

American astronaut Alan Shepard was born Nov. 18. speaks no English, "felt at home" with the class in which a number of students speak the kind of French we speak around here even though it is not necessarily the best type as far as pronunciation of words and proper use of verbs is concerned. However, they made themselves understood and were able to ask many questions concerning, among other things, the schools of 1923. On this day in history: In 1883 the United States adopted Standard Time and set up the four time zones.

Central, Mountain and Pacific. In 1903 Panama and the United States signed a treaty for the building of the Panama Canal. In 1967 Britain devalued the pound to make it worth $2.40. In 1969 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean made man's second landing on the moon in the lunar module of Apollo 12. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: George Bernard Shaw wrote, "My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity." France.

SOME of the students in the class cannot speak French at all. Others cannot speak it fluently, but understand it fairly well. But they are learning it rather quickly under the tutorship of their capable teacher, Miss Cynthia Martin. Being able to fully understand and speak the French language, this writer thoroughly enjoyed Madame Guidat visit to the principal's office before and after her visit to the classroom. ONE of the things our French visitor was somewhat puzzled about is why so many people with French names in this area, try to Anglicize their pronunciations by giving them English sounds.

I could have told her, but didn't, that somewhere back' yonder" in earlier days many Eeople with French names ad a tendency to give their names an English sound because they were laboring under the misapprehension that they should be ashamed of its French origin. I could have told her that because it's a fact. Why? I do not know. I see no reason for any person with a French name to be ashamed of it. What the French explorers and settlers accomplished in early America is not to be sneered at.

True, the French lost all their possessions on the continent when defeated by the English in the French and Indian War, but the majority of people of French extraction living here at the time remained here and their descendants of today, naturally, still carry the French names. I KNOW the proud and haughty English people looked down on the French populace as their inferiors. Some of them still do, even some in North Louisiana who find it hard to accept being outdone by those "Frenchmen" from south Louisiana. Anyway, you may have heard of those people from Louisiana who move to other places, especially in Southeast Texas, of all places, and think they must Anglicize their names. If they don't, the Texans do.

Especially around Port Arthur where the Pitres become Petrees, the Comeauxs become Comos, the Heberts become Heeberts, the Soileaus become Swallows, the Guillorys become the Guillroys, and so on, so forth, and so fifth. I WONDER ifaTrudeau becomes a Waterhole: a Lafleur, a The Flower: A Deshotel, a Of the Hotel; a Teezano, A Little Ring: a Trosclair, a Too Clear: a Noel, A Christmas, A Ledoux, a The Sweet: a Dugas, a Of the Gas: a Beaugh. a Beautiful, and so on, so forth, so fifth, and good-bye for today. by Brickman forJ'TTrtoSE PEOPLE THINK I HAVE ANYTHING ENTRE NOUS By FRANK J. D1ETLE1N, JR.

Interceptions Watched Horo YOUNG WALTER MORANT, son of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Morant Sr. of our town, who is on the list at Oschner's Foundation Hospital for a kidney transplant, was beside himself at his home when his brother-in-law, Lloyd Mumphord, intercepted a pass from Billy Kilmer of the Saints and ran for a touchdown. This is the second time this year that the big cornerback for the Miami Dolphins accomplished this feat.

Earlier in the year he intercepted one of Joe Namath's passes and ran for a touchdown. Mumphord is married to the oldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Morant, who own DeFils Liquor Store on North Mar-ketSt. IN F.E.

SHEPHERD'S column "Just Plain Politics," which appears in the Baton Rouge State-Times, the writer had this to say about my friend Dupre Litton: "A first for Louisiana was chalked up when Dupre Litton, chairman of the Louisiana Tax Commission, addressed the International Association of Assessing Officers at Las Vegas last week. It was the first time a Louisiana Tax Commission member was asked to address the group: "Litton also participated in a panel discussion of exemptions from ad valorem taxes. Also attending the meeting were Mrs. Blanche Long, a member of the commission, and Gordon Johnson, executive secretary of the commission." A POST CARD came from Junior Stelly, son of Mrs. Bien-venu Stelly and the late Mr.

Stelly, which bears a Paris. France, postmark. Junior is an engineer with Magobar Oil Mud and writes that he has been transferred to West Africa. For the past year or so he has represented his company in the Persian Gulf. IT IS BEGINNING TO LOOK like I'll make it to Chicago this weekend where young John Fontenot and I plan to see the LSU-Notre Dame football game.

I've been plagued with some kind of a virus for the past day or so, but am feeling much better. Thanks to antibiotics, the doctor says he be-iievesthatl'U make it. When I first arrived at Doc's office and his nurse took my temperature he laughingly told me. "Frank, why do you wait until you're dying to come see me?" Just to be prepared for any extremely cold weather. I called "None' Evan Fontenot at Abdalla's and ordered a suit of insulated long handles.

When I said that I wanted a size 44. None politely asked me if I wanted the long underwear outfit for myself. Telling him that I did. he replied in his nice way of saying things. "I think that you better take a size 46' 'BLACK STUDIES' the small society Woo-VcHl OPNTiTilENT AWL By HENRY E.

GARRETT, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus, Psychology, Columbia University Past President, American Psychological Association (From his syndicated column) Dr. Garrett, every day we read of demands made by these militants for "black studies." Is that a legitimate demand who do they think they are? The demand is not legitimate, not as it is usually phrased. The activities of Negroes should be treated as part of the general history of Americans. That their history is meager is not the fault of the teacher, but of the Negroes.

There is no demand for Irish studies, say, nor for Jewish studies in the public schools. Yet, both of these groups have achieved far more, have a far more noble history than have the Negroes. The real motive behind this demand for "black studies." I suspect, arises from the strong feelings of insecurity of the blacks. They simply cannot learn physics or the calculus, so they demand yakety-yak courses which almost anyone can understand..