The Central New Jersey Home News du lieu suivant : New Brunswick, New Jersey • 16

Comment Editorials Inside Report Ted Kennedy: A Port in the Storm Oft Ml By ROWLAND EVANS end ROBERT NOVAK his year, that President Nixon starts far in front and that he genuinely wants to follow the fervent desires of his family that he not run. Yet, Mills's continuing promotion of Kennedy and the dramatic metamorphosis among Democratic leaders show that his disavowal was not believed. The press has staked out the Kennedy Hyannts Port cottage, where be is spending convention week, and his office is deluged with calls from politicians asKing him to reconsider. His answer: still no. But if McGovern fails, the convention may well stampede to Kennedy and make all his protests irrele-' vant.

As Mills told friends on June 29, he had an earlier conversation that day with Kennedy ending with Kennedy signing off in these words: "Yes, Mr. President-maker." Ecology Stressed In Meadowlands Hearings axe scheduled to begin today in Hack-cnsack on a consultants' report which would give first priority to restoration of the proposed $200 million sports complex envisioned for a 750-acre tract of the meadowlands. The hearings are being conducted by the State Department of Environmental Protection and the llackensack Meadowlands Development Commission. As described in Friday's Home News by staff writer Gordon Sharp, the stadium for the New York Giants football team goes unchallenged. But the study does challenge much of the rest of the ambitious development of the complex, including the racetrack, baseball stadium, hotel and "theme center." The consultants would, Sharp reports, prefer that these other parts of the gigantic sports complex be delayed at least until water and sewerage facilities are adequately provided.

The consultants stress the importance of a 130-acre portion of the 750-acre site as an environmental educational center, a subject which previously attracted headline notice throughout the state. Drainage and sewerage improvements are needed to make the environmental educational center viable. We look forward eagerly to the results of the hearings which are to commence today. The whole of the Hackensack Meadowlands has been described as perhaps the most valuable tract of comparable undeveloped real estate in the nation, if not in the world. It is of the utmost importance that development of this tremendously important state asset be as nearly perfect as possible, and serve the people of the whole state as completely and wisely as cr, Mayord Richard J.

Daley of Chicago, over the telephone that he was helping Daley fight the credentials challenge end that "Teddy is going to win" the nomination. Then, with Brooklyn Democratic leader Meade Espo-sito on the line, Mills remarked: "Meade, get a room next to Ted Kennedy at Miami Beach if you want to get near the next president." Mills has a large 6take in a Kennedy nomination. If It happens, Mills who, as Mr. Taxation on Capitol Hill, i has the confidence of businessmen frightened by McGovern's tax policies would be favored for the vice-presidential nomination. Other reliable signs are mounting that if McGovern fails on the first two ballots, an overpowering demand for Kennedy is predictable.

The irresistible pressure behind such a scenario is the conviction among Democrats of all persuasions that Kennedy alone could prevent a third-party movement if McGovern is stopped. "Kennedy gets everyone off the hook," one Western liberal pledged to Sen. Edmund S. Muskie told us. "The reason: Kennedy appeals to McGovern's militant cadres.

His positions on the war, welfare and defense are scarcely distinguishable from McGovern's. Yet, Kennedy is totally acceptable to party professionals such as Daley who justifiably think McGovern's cadres want to run them out of the party. Teddy Kennedy, in short, has suddenly become the only port in the political hurricane now besetting the Democratic party. But would Kennedy accept if the convention drafts him? Tt took Kennedy months of soul-searching before issuing bis Shermanesque statement, and the reason goes into the bedit oi tue problem. Kennedy did not feel such a statement would be credible coming from an elective politician.

Indeed, Kennedy's inner conviction is that 1972 is not WASHINGTON The depth of the dilemma threatening the Democrats is best understood in phenomenally transformed attitudes by Southern end Border state leaders toward Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. "Ted Kennedy," a key Democrat in conservative Oklahoma told us, "is way ahead in this state today. It's amazing, but the Democrats here are looking to Kennedy as the savior of the party.

What is true in Oklahoma Is duplicated in state after state. The sudden proliferation of party leaders who see salvation only in nominating the last of the Kennedy brothers is supremely ironic. Just months ago, many argued Kennedy and Chappaquiddick would kill the Democratic party in 1972. Deepening Feeling What changed that was the rise of Sen. George Mc-Govern and, within the last week, the deepening feeling that he spells disaster but might yet be stopped.

Mc-Govern hurt himself badly inside the party with his intemperate reaction to the California credentials decision by threatening a third-party bolt. That credentials loss, in turn, reduced McGovern's first-ballot nomination prospects from 100 to 1 down to around 10 to 1. McGovernites reply angrily the nomination would be worthless to anybody else. But, counter beleaguered party regulars, that would not apply to Kennedy, because he and he alone could cut losses by unifying the party. Moreover, the instinctive feeling across a broad spectrum of the party is that Kennedy could be compelled to accept the nomination despite bis Shcrmanesque statement that "under no circumstances" would he run.

That feeling emerged at 3:20 p.m. June 29 in the office of Rep. Wilbur Mills of Arkansas. On an impulse, Mills reached into his pocket, extracted three nickles and offered Rep. Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois this bet: Mills's three nickels that Kennedy would be nominated against Rostenkowski's one that he would not.

Moments later, Mills was telling Rostenkowski's lead- A Conservative View At the End Of the Trai CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP Obscenity And the Law MM 'MR. FISCHER SEEMS TO BE READY NOW SHALL WE COMMENCE, MR. By JAMES J. KILPATRICK WASHINGTON For politician and political writer alike, last weekend brought a point of termination. The road that began last March in New Hampshire now runs to the sea at Miami.

We have reached Hie trail's end. It is a road, in my own view, we ought not to travel again. The present system of presidential primaries con-tains some good features, but it offers much less good than ill. By 1976 a better system must be found. This year saw the Democratic candidates struggle through 23 primary elections.

Advocates of the system insist that it benefits both the voter and the candidate. The voter has a chance to observe the contenders under conditions of stress, and to judge how they stand up under fire. The candidate, for his part, has a road-show chance to try out his company before taking the play to Broadway. Valid Points Both points are valid. In retrospect, it seems evident that Edmund Muskie's campaign was doomed long before' he denounced the Wallace voters in Florida or shed those famous tears in New Hampshire, but the emotional outbursts were fatal.

If he could not keep his cool under so little heat, what would he do in the White House? As for campaign organization, we saw in the McGovern operation the benefits of staff experience. His top people got the fumbles out of their system in Florida; thereafter they played like the Cowboys. Nobody else was in the same league. Yet the drawbacks far outweigh the advantages. Any primary system is bound to be physically exhausting, but the helter-skelter scheme that now obtains is needlessly exhausting.

Campaigns are bound to cost money; they ought not to cost a fortune. At the very least, party primaries should be just that they should produce a nominee who is the first choice of his own party, but crossover voting makes a travesty of this objective. A single national primary late in August, under the plan proposed by Sen. Mike Mansfield, is not the answer. Such a system would undermine our federal structure, and assuming a runoff election in September, it would demand three national convulsions in less than three months.

A system of five regional primaries, advocated by Oregon's Sen. Robert Packwood, offers a better solution. His plan would preserve the role of the states; it would retain the ultimate party conventions; it would eliminate wasteful travel, and it would provide abundant time, over a five-month period, to examine the candidates' minds as well as their stamina. Meanwhile, we are stuck with what we have; and the trail has had its memorable moments. One of the highlights for me came in Jacksonville on a balmy night in March, when George Wallace turned up at a TV station to be interviewed by four regional newsmen.

The governor is the best base-running shortstop in politics; he gloves everything that comes his way, and he can hook-slide around a question with consummate skill. No one ever lays a tag on him. This particular night saw all the usual questions neatly fielded. Then a reporter asked Wallace how he would deal with the Allende government in Chile. I happened to be sitting behind his lovely wife, who was in the front row, and saw her grow tense, xne governor never flinched.

"The problem," he said in effect, "cannot be separated from larger problems of foreign aid. Now let me tell you where I stand on foreign aid." That was the last of the Allende government. Relief After the broadcast, Mrs. Wallace permitted herself a small sigh of relief and pleasure. "I like to died," she confided, "when that man asked George about Oile.

I thought, what does George know about Chile? But you saw, didn't you?" Her wifely pride bubbled over. "He knew all about Chile." The same kind of story could be told of the others-Hubert Humphrey in the snows of Milwaukee, Henry Jackson doggedly appealing to barefoot collegians, McGovern at his best in California. It has been a long trail typewriters and telephones, planes in the night, tears1' and laughter, violent shock. We ought not, I say, to travel this particular Barnum Bailey route again, but if the primary campaign of '72 proves to be the last such parade, it provided an unforgettable show. l-v'v Letters to the Editor Where the Taxes Went To the Editor: There are some pertinent questions about the tax reform proposals raised in a letter by Mrs.

Kronick: What happened to the revenue that the state has raised from the sales tax and the lottery? Since the sales tax was enacted in 1966, state aid to county and municipal governments and to school districts has increased by more than the annual sales tax yield. The total yield of the sales tax is being used to keep property taxes down. The effect is. not noticed because property taxes throughout New Jersey have been going up at a rate of more than $250 million a year, even with increased aid. If it weren't for the sales tax, property taxes would probably be at least one half a billion dollars higher than they are now.

The lottery is expected to generate about $151 million from its first two and one-half years of operation. $40 million has already been spent and $30 million will be spent on higher education. $69 million will be spent for lower education and $12 million for Institutions and Agencies. Commuters to New York will not have to pay any additional income tax on income earned in New York! The $1 per $100 of statewide property tax would be based on true valuation which is based on market value. MAY FRANKEL, Tax Reform Chairman, League of Women Voters, Franklin Township Arguments about what is and what is not obscene have raged throughout history, with learned men struggling vainly to reach unanimity in legal and moral definitions of obscenity.

In contemporary America, arguments about obscenity attempts to define it and to prohibit it by law have most frequently been raised because of the increasing freedom of movies. The motion picture industry's answer has been the controversial movie code, a completely voluntary and self-policing set of guidelines which is not and never can be totally satisfactory. No film producer is required to submit his movie for a rating, and no theater owner is required to enforce the code to exclude minors from rated films, to require that minors be accompanied by an adult to rated films. In fact, however, the majority of those at either end of the cinema business DO attempt to imake the code work for the benefit and guidance of audiences. Nevertheless, public pressure continues for somebody somehow to do something about what some believe is obscenity in movies.

In February, the state legislature was moved to pass a law making the showing of obscene films a misdemeanor. The problem with this law as with previous laws of a similar nature is that the definition of what constitutes obscenity is almost impossible to write without infringing on constitutional rights. The state law is clearly on thin constitutional ice and a successful court challenge of the law would not be surprising. All of which brings us to the current controversy in South Plainfield, where tonight the Borough Council will vote on an ordinance which would bar the only theater in the borough from allowing persons under 18 from seeing any film defined as obscene. The definition of obscenity would follow exactly the definition under the new state law.

The opponents of the proposed ordinance are not in favor of showing obscene movies to youths. Who, in fact, is FOR obscenity if only we could agree on WHAT is obscene. But the ordinance would go beyond the standards of the motion picture code which the theater management is reported to observe and enforce scrupulously. The ordinance would go into a more nebulous region, and penalties for violation would be fairly severe. A court test of such an ordinance would appear to be inevitable and it inevitably would cost the taxpayers a good deal of money to defend a legal challenge with the strong likelihood the ordinance would be struck down.

It seems to us that any community considering obscenity laws ought first weigh carefully the costs and the benefits. The odds are against court approval of obscenity laws which in any case are difficult to enforce. And there ARE alternate methods of "fighting obscenity." One is to petition the motion picture industry for changes in the code. Another is not to go to movies that might be offensive. And still another is for parents of children under 18 to prohibit their children attending films which are rated or and to give the parental guidance which the PG rating implies should be exercised.

A law is not always the answer to every Humphrey Attacked Elks Can End Discrimination To the Editor: The 108th Grand Lodge session of the B.P.O. Elks will hold their annual convention this year in Atlantic City from July 9 through 13. A proposal to eliminate the restriction in the Elks constitution, limiting membership exclusively to white males will be introduced New Jersey, as the host state, can decide the success or failure of this motion, for within the proximity of the convention site live several thousand past exalted rulers of local lodges who are eligible to vote. Past grand exalted rulers have gone on record as favoring the proposed change. One of the last bastions of racial discrimination can be destroyed if the Elks will grasp this opportunity to assume leadership in the struggle for social equality within the framework of private organizations.

The United States Supreme Court, in a recent decision, ruled that private social clubs holding liquor licenses may exclude blacks. The Supreme Court, in effect, has ruled that the right of free association has a place within our system of government. The concept of private rights must be protected, for what social progress can there be if we establish one man's right at the expense of another's? However, it would certainly add much to their stature as Elks and unquestionably affirm their dedication to brotherhood if they would voluntarily discard this archaic custom. Your newspaper can render a valuable contribution towards the elimination of this odious restriction if you would, through the good offices of your editorial staff, publish the views of your paper regarding this issue before or during the Elks' convention. JOHN J.

TURI, GILES VIGNEAULT. East Brunswick Smokes by Mail Legal? To the Editor: I often wonder if our duly elected or appointed government officials have ever read the U.S. Constitution that they so blithely swear to uphold and defend. I refer specifically to an article published in The Home News of July 1, under a Trenton dateline, in which state taxation chief Sidney Glaser stated, "a concentrated effort is under way to stop the flow of illegal mail order cigarettes into New Jersey." He also states that, "New Jersey residents who order cigarettes through the mails would still be expected to pay the state tax." I contend that it is not illegal to import cigarettes from one state to another. I also allege that the state of New Jersey is guilty of the illegal seizure of trucks and their cargo of cigarettes bound from North Carolina to New York State because the New York cigarette tax had not been paid.

I attest that the above acion by New Jersey is unconstitutional, and in support of this statement I quote Article I Section 9 of the U.S. "No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any state." "No preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another." "No State shall, without consent of Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any JState on Imports and Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and control of the Congress." This letter is not prompted by ulterior motives. I quit smoking four years ago. RICHARD L. CALDWELL, New Brunswick I 'V To the Editor: The recent outrageous and blatantly preposterous decision by the Democratic Credentials Committee at the pre-convention hearings to strip Sen.

George McGovern of 151 of his freely elected California delegates is the most obvious attempt to totally undermine the present American political system in many years. Moreover, the theft, engineered by Sen. Hubert Humphrery and jammed down the throats of the American people, is indicative of not only the type of individual Humphrey is, but also represents all the "worsts" of politics, bossism, organizational armtwisting, and a complete lack of regard for what the people desire. Quite frankly, I agree that the system used in fornia Democratic Primary, in essence the same system used for the Presidential election in November, where the candidate with the most votes receives the delegates, is wrong; and, indeed, in the future, it should be changed. But for the principal argument of this letter, the fact that the present system is a bad one, is entirely and totally irrelevant.

Each candidate knew California was a winner-take-all affair. Senator Humphrey didn't complain then. But when Humphrey lost that state, all of a sudden the system was a disenfranchisement. It is as if Humphrey, the organization man, told McGovern, who won a large plurality of delegates through volunteer "grass roots" campaigns, in the true spirit of the way politics ought to be, "Okay, George, you played well but the game is over. Bump the people, we're taking over." McGovern started his quest 18 months ago, an unknown from a small state.

He became the front-runner almost entirely through the hard labor of many thousands of young volunteers throughout America. He is the true candidate of the people. During the past decade young people have been consistently urged to work "within the system." McGovern's supporters have done this admirably. Some day the American people are simply not going to allow political power plays to be shoved upon them. If McGovern is railroaded out of the Democratic presidential nomination which he so richly deserves, that day could come in 1972.

D. LAWRENCE SWEENEY, Milltown The Home News 1972 by NEA, lac Sunday newspaper established 1786 Daily newspaper established 1879 HUGH N. BOYD, President and Publisher MONDAY, JULY 10, 1972 "Doesn't it seem rather strange that you're tor McGovern and I'm for Nixon? 16.