The Fresno Bee from Fresno, California • 23

SI- 'h By Clayton Fritchey phenomenon that could ultimately affect the pocketbooks of millions of Emergency Help 'Ignorant Display' River Channel 1 that it has been prejudiced by McLaren's insensitive failure to protect the Justice Department's disinterestedness In the lawsuit As reported in a previous column the assistant attorney general intervened against Northwest after Goodrich hired the Chicago law firm from which McLaren only recently resigned McLaren became the nation's antitrust chief on Feb 1 and a few days later Goodrich retained his old law firm to push antitrust efforts against Northwest But putting aside (or live moment the proprieties involved the case remains one of unusual significance as was openly acknowledged by Judge Hubert Will who to hearing the injunction testimony After the opening arguments the Judge seemed to agree that a ruling for the government would open up new ground in antitrust litigation really faced here'' he told the contending lawyers "with a whole new area of value Judgments and we're dealing with a new or relatively new phenomenon" We are Indeed and ii is a WEAK Regardless of Judge decision and even regardless of what Congress finally dors about inhibiting the conglomerates Goodrich has already shown how a determined resourceful company cun do much to circumvent the designs of a conglomerate bent on swallowing it up Goodrich not only curried its case to the Justice Department but to Congress as well and the House Ways and Means Committee is clearly showing interest in new legislation to prevent or curtail shotgun business weddings Goodrich an Akron Ohio company has also persuaded the State of Ohio that It ought to come to the rescue That state's attorney general has issued a ruling temporarily blocking Northwest from proceeding with the merger in Ohio Moreover the Ohio Legislature Is considering legislation designed to handcuff all conglomerates Editor of The Bee Sir On April 1969 my son wai taken to the Fresno General Hospital with a gunshot wound in his stomach We would like to thank everyone concerned for the immediate action tntyn when he was brought to the emergency room at the hospital The swiftness each member of the staff used was a factor in helping to save Us life We would like to thank Or Walter Kuminson for the surgery he performed cn him that night We are deeply grateful for the care he has continued to give him We would also like to thank Dr Olsen Dr Regan Dr Hales and the rest of tic staff at the hospital for the care he received It is a wonderful thing to know that someone In your family was taken care if in this manner MRS MARILYN COOUDGE Fowler WASHINGTON Ordinarily the business world Is Instinctively against government interference with private enterprise but the cannibalistic tendency of the conglomerate holding companies to devour everything in sight has altered the traditional attitude of many prominent bankers and industrialists On the whole the Nixon administration's announcement that it intended to halt and even roll back the big mergers of the conglomerates was well received by businessmen even though such a campaign would require stretching the present antitrust laws beyond any previous application This get-tough policy sparked some skepticism among those who thought it might be mostly an administration effort to head off a Democratic drive In Congress for new antitrust laws which would curtail all kinds of corporate mergers The more general reaction however was to give the new administration time to make good It must now be acknowledged that the Justice Antitrust Division under Assistant Atty Gen Richard McLaren has acted swiftly and boldly McLaren has not only brought actions to break up several recent mergers already started but in one novel conglomerate case he has sought to extend the antitrust laws by trying to head off a takeover in advance of consummation It is a significant test case involving the efforts of Northwest Industries (one of the larger conglomerates) to gain control of another major enterprise Goodrich the billkm-dollar tire company which Is tenaciously fighting against the takeover challenge The outcome of attempt to get a temporary Injunction against Northwest from a federal court In Chicago Is being watched with extreme interest in both business and legal circles A ruling to expected very soon CeovriflM lw NmtmMv Inc Editor of The Bee Sir: Let us start now to plan to clean the Kings River channel as soon as conditions permit the work to be done The last time the upper Kings channel was cleaned was on WPA project of the 1930s While we cannot understand It we must accept the fact the prime flood control purpose of Pine Flat Dam Is to keep the Kings River out of its natural basin Tulare Lake In 1967 Army Engineers delayed flood control releases until they were forced to make releases far above the actual capacity of the channel causing much damage along the river Only the grace of God and far below normal temperatures in May and June prevented uncontrolled flow of the river This year flood control releases were limited so no Kings water flowed into Tulure Lake until about June 1 in spite of a record snow pack simple arithmetic showed full capacity of the Kings channel must be used every day Now panic flood releases from Pine Flat are causing flooding all along the river and we are faced with the probability of an uncontrolled flow of the river As the stated number one prime pur pose of Pine Flat is to control the flooding along the Kings River it is up to the corps to clear the channel so It will carry the maximum flow of releases for flood control I urge everyone interested in Kings River to write their congressmen end senators regarding clearing the Kings River channel so we will not in the future be flooded by flood control releases FRED ZETHRAEUS Kingsburg Washington Merry-Go-Round- Russia-China Flap Is Getting Serious Editor of The Bee Sin It seems to be a disgraceful state of affairs when in a commencement program as important as It la in some of the participants' lives an ignorant display of a minority bad to take place This la In reference to the Fresno State College commencement program If this group had to try to stop the proceedings Just to make their demands known why they do it in the right manner? By this I mean they could have requested a hearing with Mr Floyd Hyde and not tried to show how Ignorant they are by trying to break up a commencement program If they think that they have helped their pride they say then they are badly mistaken To my way of thinking they have made fools of themselves in the eyes of many people They said they were going to make the City of Fresno a proud city and were going to control their own destinies I do not believe this to be the right approach I have a senior in Fresno State College and I want to be proud of the fact that he graduated and not ashamed of the people who help to make up the City of Fresno A READER Fresno Women's Shoes Editor of The Bee Sir: In last issue of The Bee there was an article by Woody Laughnan about shoes It said women tend to buy shoes too small for them The truth of the matter is that for years women's shoes have not been made to fit the human foot that is why women always End their shoes uncom- fortable There has been quite a lot of criticism of women who appear in public in sloppy shoes Well those kind are the nearest to anything with comfort that one can get The comfortable medium heel arch support oxford can no longer be bought nor any other comfortable every-day shoe for women 9 Men do not have trouble with their ihnw because men's shoes are apparently being manufactured to fit the masculine foot The matter of shoes is just one more in which women are being discriminated against Fresno DULCIE BROWN By Drew Pearson UNUSUAL Because so much Is at stake in this unusual effort it to a pity 'Narrow-Minded' Editor of The Bee Sin When I read the letter from Ethan Allen It made me realize how narrow-minded some people can be He said he found no sympathy for James Rector (killed in Berkeley) become ha was a sane and responsible sdutt not a kid like the liberal press wants everyone to believe Does a person who is killed senselessly have to be i kid before Allen will have compassion for Urn? And instead of laying that the students should be given a time to express their views be said they should Just be put down (without question) by the police with just violence not a word about settling it peaceMy So go get them blue meanies injure and kill enough people show them kids that democracy lives according to Ethan Allen! JEANNIE BANKSTON Fresno Notice Every communication intended fo publication in The Bee'a Letters From The People column must carry the tme name and address though pen names are permitted at the discretion Letters of fewer ton 250 wordi will be given preference All ktten are subject to Mnn- Those not published will not be returned or accounted for Poetry Is not published In The Bee Washington Insjghh Tssssry 1 sented a more grisly spectacle on foe river Ice for foe benefit of the watching Russians Prisoners would be herded out onto the river and would be accused over the loudspeakers of being Soviet sympathizers They were then beheaded on the spot in full view of Soviet troops One Soviet trick particularly along the Sinklang border which runs through wasteland hus been to remove the bonder markers in the midle of the night and plunt them deeper inside China There have also been clashes between border patrols and serious fighting haa been reported upon occasion The Russians have also given refuge to nomadic Turkestan tribesmen who herd their flocks on both sides of the Slnkiung border and have encouraged them to foment trouble on the Chinese side Militarily the Chinese would appear to be no match for the Russians who not only have lined up missiles aimed across foe frontier at China but huve constructed 185 airfields within easy reach of the border The Chinese have only a few primitive missiles which they are testing In Sinklang Only one or two Chinese airfields are dose enough to the border to be of much use Move To Right Is Tactical By Joseph Kraft WASHINGTON The possibility of war between the two great giants of communism Soviet Russia and Red has been raised in a top-secret US intelligence report The report purely speculative but nevertheless reinforced with certain facts suggests that Moscow may stage hit-and-run strikes at China's nuclear laboratories and armament centers in order to eliminate China as a nuclear threat This is what Gen Curtis LeMay proposed when he was chief of staff of the Air Force it would be paradoxical indeed if a Communist nation now did what a leading US military man once proposed and was turned down by his superiors However here are the facts on which the tup-secret report bases its speculation: 1 Russians have raised such a clamor about Chinese border harassment that counterattacks could be portrayed to tbe world as strictly defensive 2 The Chinese have so alienated world opinion that they would receive little world sympathy There would even be applause in foe United States 3 Red army leaders have argued that Russia should never split its strength between the European border on the West and the Chinese border on the East Today the Chinese have made this necessary The Red army has now assembled a formidable array of strength along the Chinese border hitherto not much butter fortified than that between Canada and the United States This writer has traveled along the border between Siberia and China in the Ussuri and Sungari River regions where recent skirmishing haa been taking place It to a vast relatively unpopulated area somewhat like the Dakotas and you can travel fur miles without seeing a house or a single living thing A Conservative View Go But This Is Ridiculous! WASHINGTON Before going to the Midway Island conference President Nixon allowed himself a burst of indulgence for his most conservative supporters And in some quarters his actions are bound to be cited as confirmation for the theory that the country is moving hard to the right But in fact the President's moves do not express a firm commitment to aa enduring national trend They look much more like a tactical adjustment to what is a basically fluid political situation This fluid situation includes to be sure recent gains for-foe right The election of Sam Yorty as mayor of Los Angeles is only the most visible of these gains In foe same vein are the victory of Barry Goldwater Jr In a California congressional contest this week's election of a mayor of Minneapolis and a school board election in Denver In all these contests candidates taking a hard stand on law and order won striking victories And It does appear that there Is working among low- and middle-income white voters a tide id reaction to protests by blacks and students Racial and adult backlash are not mere inventions of newspapers By James Kilpatrick smothered the law and order candidate of an entrenched machine in the Democratic primary for mayor of Pittsburgh And liberals won both the Republican and Democratic nominations In primary elections for governor of New Jersey Underlying these elections there is also a trend at work The rapidly growing number of better educated voters are Increasingly Impatient with crude appeals emphasizing ethnic and class solidarity Tliey want moderate men who show a capacity to think about complicated Issues In this situation with tides running In opposite directions anything can happen Such uncertainty tends to promote in Mr Nixon the instinct to play the master political tactician going for the other jugular while securing his own base And last week the President went back to his conservative base with a vengeance He attacked the favorite targets of the right wing student radicals at home and the Communist menace abroad He exalted the conservatives' favorite the defense establishment in general and the military In particular Even the places he chose to dignify were conservative shrines One day there was the Air Force Academy in Colorado The day before them was in South Dakota a library named after Karl Mundt' a senator so hostile to what books are generally about that one Washington Joke has it that the Mundt library to an incinerator Still the tough line did not involve any cutting off of options It was largely rhetorical On the two issues where he has come down on the side of the neanderthals the President retains flexibility He can still compromise on the project for in antiballistics missile or ABM He can request legislation liberalizing East-West trade any time negotiations on Vietnam or arms control show signs of progress POWERFUL The Chinese have an estimated 550000 troops along the border and can be expected to muster more This Includes a couple of crack divisions The Russians have only around 400000 men manning the border but they are reported to be superior units The Soviets of course have superior firepower and perhaps even more important far better communications and transportation links The Chinese would have great difficulty supporting their troops in any major engagement over the disputed island In the Ussuri River The Russians in contrast have turned nearby Khabarovsk into garrison city When I was there many years ago it was a primitive town of log houses Troops are easily supplied over the trans-Siberian Railway and a highway not to mention a handy airfield There is absolutely no neutral objective accouut of the incidents that stirred up the recent Chinese-Russlan flap It was the Russians however who trumpeted the affair Into an international Incident They gave It a full propaganda blast around foe world unlike their discreet handling of earlier Incidents Most unprecedented of all however the Kremlin went to great diplomatic pains to give its version of the trouble to other governments Soviet ambassadors approached most of the Western governments from Washington to Bonn to Tokyo with detailed explanations of the incidents CapvrNM MO atll-McClur Syndfcata HILARIOUS Why two countries should risk war over such a desolate region to hard to understand Nertheless there have been repeated clashes along the 4500-mile border though mo6t of them have been propaganda broadsides by loudspeaker and organized demonstrations of contempt Some have even been quite hilarious Chinese solidera for Instance would advance across the Ice toward the disputed Island In the middle of the Ussuri River then halt abruptly and stick their tongues out en masse at foe Soviet border troops Sometimes they would also drop their trousers and turn their ban bottoms toward the Russians a Chinese gesture of contempt The Soviets countered by hastily throwing up portraits of Mao Tse-tung to receive the full impact of the bottoms-up demonstration On other occasions the Chinese pro- CONTRAST But another set of recent elections points In different direction Conservatives woe beaten in congressional races to fill vacant seats In Wisconsin and Tennessee A liberal Questions Joan Collins Is actress Joan Collins married to Howard Tulare measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient" Over the yean the custom has grown up to leave the initiative on all significant bilb to the President If he fails to propose the Congress cannot dispose Mr -Nixon has proposed very little The explanation does not wholly suffice As far back as Jan 15 Lyndon Johnson asked for extension id foe 10 per cent surtax Mr Nixon in a special statement at foe time echoed this plea On March 26 Mr Nixon renewed his appeal On April 2 foe Joint Economic Committee added Its voice The tax Is to expire on June 30 In the interests of orderly fiscal policy an extension should have been voted last month The Congress cpuld not be hurried REFORM Take a different area: The need for electoral reform Is univer- sally acknowledged This need existed long before George Wallace frightened foe pundits fest fall it existed long before December when Dr Lloyd Bailey foe maverick North Carolina elector exercised his right to vote as he pleased The several proposals for constitutional amendment are well known they have been heard to exhaustion in committee both chambers could have brought reso- lutions to foe floor in March Goodness knows they had nothing else to do Now public interest has drifted to other topics the reform movement has lost its momentum: end foe calendar moves inexorably on We are within three weeks of foe end of foe fiscal year It to not only the surtax that to banging firs Appropriations bills as usual are stacked up like jets at Mr budget calls for $1987 billion in revenues against $1929 billion in outlays but foe figures have little meaning in foe absence of congressional action What about the 7 percent investment tax credit? Is it to be repealed retroactive to April 21 or to it to be maintained? Only foe Congress can say Members of foe House and Senate are now drawing $42500 a year It to hot bad pay They haven't done much to earn it so far CapyilM Mfc WHNnston DC SMr Syndic Joan Collins to married to Anthony Newiey Jean Peters a former screen star is Mrs Howard Hughes WASHINGTON One oj the working rules for a frte society is simply this: The fewer laws the better As a general proposition foe maxim baa much to commend it but with deference to this Jeffersonian concept) what we are witnessing on Capitol Hill foil spring is getting to be absurd At the end of May the United States Senate had been in session for JOS hours the House for 115 hours On the record of positive accomplishment these must rank among the 381 most useless hours ever spent in marble balls Let us see: The two chambers acting together have raised the pay and raked their own as well They have hiked the debt limit to $377 billion They have completed action on only 28 bills all fold including nine bills of a private nature The Senate on its own has' confirmed the Cabinet and approved the treaty on nonproliferation of nuclear Weapons The Houses laboring heroically haa changed the name of the Committee on Un-American Activities and seated Adam Clayton Powell The House also has continued school milk funds and extended aid to education it has voted funds for Coast Guard procurement for water pollution and for the International Development Association Such toil has left foe members They have taken three recesses and look forward to a fourth three weeks hence APPLAUSE? Speaking generally as I lay such a record might well command our applause It is quite true at least in the conservative view that foe multiplication of laws tends not to enlarge our freedoms but rather to hedge them around John Randolph of Roanoke once urged that a ceiling be placed on legislative enactments: For every useless new law approved a useless old law I would have to be repealed It was a re-irkably sound idea Granting all this the Congress goes wniag into June with nothing much de-ered and very little in the pipeline me of foe Name for this soporific ses-m properly lies on foe White Hx-tder the Constitution foe President to recommend to foe Congress "such I Sir Walter Raleigh Did Sir Walter Raleigh ever visit Fresno He never visited any part of the territory now comprising the United States and It to doubtful if he ever set foot on the mainland of North America Miss America Was Bess Myerson die television commentator ever Miss America? Oakhurst MV 1HK1AT FEELS LIKE I'VE StOAlKWEP A H0CKEV STICK THESE 'SOOPMS JUST KILL MEIONT TAKE IT NOT RIGID Moreover the enlightened members of the White House staff though fenced oft from the speech-' writing business report nq hardening against their opinions on substantive issues Indeed it now aoneari that the most liberal member of the i I a 1 Nixon entourage Leonard Garment will coon be Joining the White House staff as a special adviser on ethnic problems None of this means that the President has recentlv been showing to pood advantage For mv monev he has been showing his worst side the side tht earned him the name TrirVv OirV But Mr Nixon has not enne nvrtrmrr1 And neither is there snv need for tbpe of us who opnose riehf-wlng extremism to take to the hills shooting widv There to still a case for responsible opposition based on careful and discriminating discussion of the difficult problems that confront the country CowrisM IHt FWM EntorprhM Inc Yes she won the pageant in 1945 Bay Bridge Deaths How many men lost their lives building the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Fresno Twenty-four A kjiai.