The Raleigh Register from Beckley, West Virginia • Page 4

4--Kaleigh Register, beckley, w. inursuay Aliernuon. august 14. is)75 I State Subsidizes Criminals I It was kind of a "can of serve a little time and then get worms" that ex Treasurer of a pension from the state West Virginia John H. Kelly against which one commited opened by resigning from of- an offense.

fice before pleading guilty to There is what is called a charges of i mail "loophole" in the law which a and i last month. The action raised evebrows allows this, and there is some a a i loophole, but perhaps many and questions concerning officials consider the possibili'- other ex officials who served time for crimes against the state. Several fellows, who abused the State of West Virginia, and served time for it (mostly in somewhat stylish prisons), are receiving pensions from the selfsame State. A thoese are ex Governor W. W.

Barron, ex Attorney General C. Donald Robertson, and ex Road Commissioner Burl Sawyers. The resignation of Kelly, reportedly, was a "dodge" designed to assure that he didn't lose a State pension when he reaches retirement age. It is a neat trick, if one can get away with it, to pocket illegal gains, be convicted, ty that there may come a time when they might want to take advantage of said loophole? Frequently the convicted ones spend their ill gotten gains and pensions in new homes they acquire far away from the scene of their crimes and the pensions are a dead loss to the State in every way. The example' of the law is poor when vice is rewarded.

The idea of penalty or sanction is frustrated when offenders find financial comfort at the expense of the victims. the "ex cons" usually flee to other states and climes to spend their State money, and don't contribute anything to the economy of the state they abused. Oh That False Depiction! Whose idea was it to falsely depict miners as (sic) a pot bellied, distorted figure and hang that image from ithe light poles on Beckley streets? The figures were carved by Steve Turkovich (Turko Handcraft, A a i Charleston, W. Va. 25301).

This was thought to be a kind of symbolic representation of those who dig coal. i a been rather popular. It i a very i representation. It is a kind of joking caricature, that was thought to be pretty inoffensive. Obviously the caller was somewhat offended.

It is, of course, almost always impossible to find any symbol that is absolutely representative, and inoffensive to everybody. Some people thought it was kind of a "fun" figure. Not very many people get upset by Uncle Sam. Not many people a caricatures in cartoons. Rictures aren't perfect.

are a i of likeness, but they serve in their way, and many people recognize a person who has been photographed, usually. Nobody, of course, could photograph every miner and make the perfect composite. Or at least it seems quite unlikely that anybody could. Words are almost never absolutely adequate to describe a person: paintings don't always: nor photographs. It would have been possible i i perhaps there would, then, have been complaints that there weren't any decorations having to do with miners who are central to mining, for the festival! Some miners have rather admired the figures, even putting out coin of the realm to purchase them.

But certainly not everyone has. Unanimity is very difficult to attain. But. on the other hand, dissent is perfectly legitimate. And, ma'am, you've had your chance to get your gripe out of your system, so the figure may have served more than one purpose! Hurrah, maybe? Ford's Diplomatic 'Triumph' How Moscow Interprets Helsinki By JAMES RESTON c.1975 N.Y.

Times News Service A I We are beginning to see already how the Soviet Union intends to interpret the principles of the Helsinki conference to promote its own revolutionary objectives even in western Europe. At the end of that conference, the heads of governments of the European and North American a i i i States and the Soviet Union, signed a document in support of the most fundamental human rights and it should be noted, as a symbol of the cynicism of the age. that the first to invoke the Helsinki principles were the Russians, of all people, and in Portugal, of all places. In commentary datelined Lisbon, the official Soviet newspaper Pravda complained that the European Common Market countries had deferred until this Autumn a decision about whether to provide economic and financial assistance to the Communist military clique in Lisbon which has seized power in defiance of the overwhelmingly anti Com- munisl vote of the people in the last Portuguese election. Pravda concluded from this a a countries would approve such aid "only if in a develop in a direction that suits the capitalist and added that to insist on such conditions was "to interfere directly in the internal affairs of the Portuguese." "Is it not time." the Pravda correspondent asked, pinning his question on "people" in the Portuguese capital, "to begin fulfilling the obligations undertaken by a i Western powers at the conference i i i i no interference in the internal affairs of other peoples?" Good question.

The Helsinki principles obliged the signatories to support liberty of thought, conscience and faith, the exercise of civil and political rights, a freer flow of information, ideas and people, greater scope for the press, cultural and educational exchange, in addition to the basic principles of relations between a i i sovereign equality, self determination, territorial integrity, inviolability of frontiers, and the possibility of change by peaceful means. There is not a single principle in this catalogue that is not being violated and brutalized by the alliance now running Portugal with secret financial aid from Moscow. Self determination? Conhal, the communist loader sneers at the Portuguese elections that rejected him. Liberty of thought, conscience and faith? i i a a Republica, the last really free newspaper in Portugal, attacked the Catholic Church and stormed its radio station. And the Port a protested all this are described in the official Soviet press as "hoodlums and neo fascists." What, is interesting about this is not the violent swing to the left in Portugal.

After almost 50 years of right wing dictatorship! it was probably inevitable. The troubling thing is that the Soviet Union, after getting almost everything it wanted at Helsinki mainly recognition of the national boundaries seized by force should now invoke the Helsinki principles of liberty in order to help destroy liberty in Portugal. Under Moscow's definition of detente, the Soviet Union may assist in "wars of liberation" in Portugal and elsewhere while any Western support for democratic tendencies or parties in eastern Europe is regarded as subversive, aggressive, and a threat to the Brezhnev doctrine, the Soviet empire, and the peace of the world. This is the weakness of the Helsinki agreement, for there is no agreement on what detente means. Fortunately, Ford's secretary of state.

Henry Kissinger, defined at the Upper Midwest Council in Minneapolis on July 15 what he thought the test and judgment of detente should be. "We will judge the state of U.S. Soviet relations not by at- i a successfully he said. "We will respond firmly to attempts to achieve unilateral advantage, or to apply the relaxation of tensions selectively." But while we have heard a lot about U.S. Soviet cooperation in space and the transfer of the food and advanced technology of America to the Soviet Union, we a a i Washington about the application of the Helsinki principles to Portugal.

Not to hear them from Washington is bad enough, but to hear them from Moscow about the tragedy in Portugal is insolent and insufferable. In fact, the Communists have been so excessive in their violation of the Helsinki principles that the church, the Socialists and even the moderate elements in the armed forces are turning against and this is the main hope for the moment. itj BUT. TO IT- SOMEPLACE Despite Abuses Jobless Insurance Is Okeh By LEONARD CURRY UPI Business Writer WASHINGTON (UPI) Unemployment insurance a i a i i and length of joblessness and has cert a i i a i a attributes, but these drawbacks are outweighed by the positive social factors, according to a new study published by the Brookings Institution. i Stephen T.

Marston noted in his study data on abuses of unemployment compensation are inadequate, and concluded there are social factors in unemployment compensation that far outweigh the liberties a few job seekers take with the system. Marston said unemployment insurance can cause insured workers to remain unemployed longer than i i because they can afford to be more selective about the jobs they will accept. Also, it allows a person i i i a prospects to collect a check although technically he should drop out of the labor market until conditions improve. He mentioned several! of i concluded there is insufficient information to support charges that benefits a a i i employment. There are some subsidy features to the insurance, primarily for jobs that are a a i a a a employment.

Without this i a i 'by a government. Marston said many unskilled jobs would go begging. A key factor in jobless insurance, the Brookings said, is a it prevents employers from a i a a a workers when jobs are scarce. Without the guarantee of some income, unemployed workers would be competing for available jobs, which would result in undercutting on pay rates as workers competed for scarce jobs. Because unemployment insurance helps to insulate employed workers from the effects of job loss, labor costs remain higher than might be expected.

As a i a i i or do not drop quickly. "In a world of feeble labor demand and limited a a i inflationary impact of un- i a seems more relevant than its impact," Marston wrote. "The system imparts an inflationary bias to the labor market aside from the automatic increase in government expenditures that it causes." a based these i i a of Phillips curve. Under this principle, prices fall when unemployment rises. This has not been the experience of 1974-75, a period in which inflation has not abated at a rate sufficient to compensate for the highest unemployment rate of the post World War II era.

Marston has calculated effects of jobless insurance a employed begin looking more seriously for employment when benefits expire. "After payments are cut off, some workers take jobs they would have rejected or failed to find before that," he said. "The i i a i pattern in i a a a probably indicates that some workers who would have left the labor force held out until their, benefits were exhausted. "This may be only a semantic distinction: the recipients actually may have given up job search before that time, while maintaining a pretense for employment counselors." On the positive side, Marston'said the benefits have prevented wage cutting wars between job a employed competing for scarce Benefits also insulate the unemployed from severe economic stress, which oc- i a Depression. Education Today Thinking Of Dropping Out? Don't Do it! A I I A McCORMACK UPI Education Editor Memo to high school students thinking of skipping the new school year: Education really does pay off in dollars and sense.

It tends to keeps one off life's trash heap and actively, gainfully employed. Now. more than ever, a job in which growth may he expected requires at entry some skill and or a "completed" academic i a High school diploma is the minimum. a trudge through life missing that link. The job application will ask: High school graduate? Always you'll suffer a personal indignity, checking the "no" box.

Census Bureau figures show the average person who completes high school i earn in a i i $109.000 more a the t'1 a graduate. And person finished the eighth grade will earn $53,000 more than the one who dropped out before finishing the eighth grade. As one moves upward on the educational ladder the differences in lifetime earnings increase. A person who completes four or more years of college will make $243,000 more than a high school graduate. There are exceptions to the law linking education a a i a of self a millionnaires types that got from rags to riches a success formula even though dropping out of i school or a school.

The magic ingredients in such cases usually included super motivation and individual intelligence. Poverty launched many of the self made rich men. Dollars aside, what's the payoff in continuing one's education? Consider some of these answers from the National Education Association: Educational attain- i a i i i a with a larger number of higher quality career alternatives from which to choose in determining his or her destiny. i schooling a have access to jobs with more comfortable working con- ditions, better hours, and i i A a evidence supports the view that education affects not just income, but also oc- a i a choice and one's social and economic position in life. High school drop outs begin the job hunt with severe disadvantages in comparison with those who have a diploma.

As the proportion of persons who complete high i educational requirements of many jobs previously not requiring a high school diploma rise. Many jobs today that require graduation from high school did not 10 or more years ago. Do yourself a favor, high school student. Hang in there. We're Pretty Sure Well Get A Tomato! By JOHN MODEL There is considerable excitement at our house over the fact that one of the tomato plants tnat the little woman brought home some weeks ago has grown considerably, perhaps amazingly, and has a tomato which is beginning to fade from green into the red spectrum! This isn't, of course, what they used to call a "slop press" item.

There are numbers of people who plant and grow tomatoes in gardens and in the front yard "flower gardens," the way our tomato plants are growing. But this doesn't alter the i woman's delight. i a i i background, and successfully growing things like vegetables, continues somewhat to amaze her. It astonishes her. apparently, to realize that she can do it too! Of course the problem at our place is that we have very little ground that isn't shaded by trees or house.

Further, the land that we do have results from filling years ago. In a place or two the red dog which underlies the top soil, is pretty close to the surface. However, for some years we have composted leaves (For a time we composted garbage, too. until the City forbad the operation and decreed that it be removed to a "landfill" somewhat distant from the City which operation requires (almost) that one contract with a commercial hauler. We still compost leaves and a i i a a branches and the like, and over the years we have improved the quality of the soil in some of the flower beds around the house.

Only four tomato plants were purchased and planted. Three of them growing in the somewhat enriched soil, even though shaded considerably by the house, have grown vigorously. Their vines are taller than we are, and they have numerous tomatoes. The one which we put to one side of the house near the property line is in soil that we haven't improved, and that plant is relatively puny. Of course blight may come and get many of our tomatoes since we haven't dusted or sprayed, having some prejudice against such spreading of poisons on, even the food that one himself tries to grow.

We have given some attention to the plants, removing some "suckers," but not all. And it may be that we should pluck off some of the embryo tomatoes to allow the plant's strength to succor relatively few tomatoes and. thus, grow them to considerably greater size. We have pulled a few weeds, but the soil with considerable organic matter therein, doesn't seem to need much "chunking" as the little woman calls hoeing. Maybe most of the tomatoes on the vines will be victims of some variety of "sickness," or blight, but we have a sneaking suspicion that there is some hope of getting a a or two before this happens.

When, and if, it does, the little woman will probably think of herself as a real farmer(ette)? There is some red creeping into the biggest specimen! Our canine has begun to shed her quite plebian past, somewhat, and begins to act like most pets -as guardian of the household and people where she lives. She has found her voice, which is a somewhat mixed blessing. Her voice training has left a lot to he desired. She "sings" in rather raucuous tones, harshly to the human ear. She seems to have some sympathy for other strays and doesn't a i vigorously with strange dogs.

Or perhaps it comes of her past when she shared of necessity or other dogs shared with her? She has been with us now over a year and doesn't seem to have any feeling that she might be She obviously has confidence that she "belongs." A strange, mostly white, dog appeared on the street recently, and she was pretty friendly with it. It had a collar, but no tag that we could discover. We speculated that it might belong to a neighbor not i quently, picks up strays at a camp of his on New River, if we're not mistaken. But we're not sure about the matter, and it seems as if the dog has been around when neighbor has not been. The mutt seems good natured, in reasonably good health, but we're not very sure where it "boards." or what has happened to the collar it wore the first time we saw it! Endorses Morality Apologetically CAN'T BNP A MECHANk: WHO CAN FIX A CARBURETOR." By WILLIAM SAFIRE WASHINGTON An American aircraft manufacturer has just asserted in a forthright way that it paid at least $30 million over the a i a i politicians.

The a paid says Lockheed; part of its S2 billion in sales to foreign nations over that period came as a result of doing as the Romans do. No U.S. laws were broken, the company acted to meet foreign payoff competition, a of U.S. owe i to Lockheed's willingness to follow local customs, and the U.S. taxpayer which keeps the company in business by guaranteeing some of its loans has the a a protected by the 'success of the bribery.

"Sorry. Charlie, business is business," Lockheed seems to say to the hell bent hounds o'f publicity in senatorial and media pulpits, who now howl their horror at practices common to overseas a since Marco Polo's time. I sat down to write an essay defending corporations against the politically inspired application of ex post facto morality. But a lust for philosophical consistency brings me out on the side of the goo goos, bleeding hearts and frank church goers who will be as uncomfortable with my support as I am to be in their ranks. The question at issue is: Should the public policy of the United States be to export its ideas about what is right and wrong to the rest of the world? Put another way, do we have a mission to sell our ideals of freedom and virtue in the far corners of the earth? The answer is yes.

Our founding fathers rebelled against tyranny "not just for ourselves, but for ail mankind" a fairly prententious notion, unmatched in the world until the onset of communism. America has a mission to perfect her own freedom and to encourage the growth of her ideals everywhere. Not every American believes that, but those who do can make five ppints about current affairs consistent with that principle: 1. We are right to pressure the Soviets to permit more human freedom within their borders in return for trade. 2.

We are wrong to tell Portugal's anti Communists that we are powerless to assist them because our President is fearful of criticism if he uses the CIA. 3. We are i to democratic nations like Israel to survive and prosper in a region of one man governments, just as we were right to try to help allies in the past to resist totalitarian takeover. 4. We are wrong to maintain official silence about the rape of freedom in India, and cowardly to a a Kissinger's slur that speaking out in criticism of Mrs.

Gandhi would merely teem." "satisfy our self es- 5. We are right to try to impose our standards of morality in doing business abroad, and to refuse to condone bribery from now on. That's being consistent. The trouble is, few Americans will subscribe to all five applications of that missionary principle. Most of us will be moralists in politics and pragrnatists in business, or vice versa.

For example, the political pragmatists who say cannot impose our ideas of Western on societies totally different from our own" are likely to be in the vanguard of business moralists, who say exactly the opposite that we must impose our most recent ideas of business ethics on the brothers in law of Arab sheiks and the campaign managers of sitting dictators. Sorry, but rationality does not permit us to choose one from column A and one from column B. It is not possibly to sally forth carrying the American message of freedom and virtue on political matters, and then suddenly to adopt the business is business a on the conduct of businessmen abroad. Frankly, the pragmatists have all the fun. In the sunshine of detente, they can shrug off conquest by communism in Portugal, and in the cool of detachment, they can tacitly watch the conquest by coup in India.

And if somfe businessman is to grease a few palms under the palmtrees, what's the big deal? Moralists, on the other hand, are pests. Economic freedom is a i i people's business leads to friction; bumbling democracies are harder to maintain than efficient dictatorships; honesty is the most troublesome policy and morality our least desired export. And yet America, to be herself, must be a force for good. Ethics in business is a part of the American dream, even if we have fallen short often enough; America stands for competition on the basis of quality, price and service, and not on payola. If, in the short run, this costs us jobs and money, that's the price we pay for setting standards.

Holier than thou? Sorry about that, but democracy and honest competition are holier than totalitarianism and bribery. American ways and ideals should travel arm in arm with American trade and power, and that goes for allies, detente, and Lockheed. Opinion and Commentary i John Ilortel Associate i Bob Wills.