The Daily American from Somerset, Pennsylvania • 4

Opinion Daily Somerset. Thursday, December 23, 1982 MV SS BEFORE YDU THE VBY FIRST BUILT LTO TrTDOMESTKCMENT INDEED WE CAN All TAKE PRIDE IN KNOWING CAR WS PUT T06EIHEB WITH THE The American's View Using our coal abroad COMBINED HHP CF600P OP mm know-how and WORKER ML HHP CONSTRUCT MOST i 50LDIN1HE -IX w. it- 1 qj XL f. operators in the Keystone State. The Senator pointed out that it doesn't make sense to buy foreign coal when the United States coal industry is in such distress.

As a result of this action, the state's coal industry will get a badly needed boost. There probably will be more jobs, not only for those-who mine the coal, but for those in related industries, such as railroad workers and shippers. Several years ago, Pennsylvania coal was bought for shipment to foreign military bases. Later, however, the regulations were.changed and foreign coal was used. Now, that change is being reversed.

Hopefully, Somerset County will benefit. The Defense Department is finally stepping up-its purchase of Pennsylvania coal for use by the armed forces stationed in Europe. United States Sen. Arlen Specter said a few days ago that the Department will buy $53.8 million worth of Pennsylvania anthracite and bituminous coal -for use at Army and Air Force bases in Europe. It was Sen.

Specter who sponsored an amendment lo another congressional bill requir-, ing that only U. S. coal be bought for American military bases abroad. Congress approved the legislation and the amendment. As a result, there will be coal purchase contracts with 16 coal fHooo back when December 23, 1972 Santa Claus may soon be carying a union card.

"Santa is probably the most public employe in the world, yet he has no job security," said Gerald W. McEntee, state director of the Americaji Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. December 23, 1957 Contributions to the Children's Aid Society are reportedly needed very badly. According to Mrs. A.D.

Graham, president of the society, the organizations is in John Chamberlain Atari' Democrats view the future The' I Pray for Readers 1 view 1 America The Democratic Party, so we are informed by the Institute for Socioeconomic Studies of White Plains, N.Y., is "spliting into two camps on the issue of the economy. One group, led by Walter Mondale as heir to the presidential mantle cast asjde by Teddy Kennedy, is fi protecting the old basic industries of steel, automobiles, harvesting equipment and heavy durable goods with quotas or high tariffs orman-datory "made in America" parts percentages. The other group has come up with a fancy name, the "Atari Democrats," purloined from a computer subsidiary of Warner Communications. the Atari Democrats, whose numbers include many of the Southern "boll weevil" contingent that has supported Reagan on taxes, is for using government to channel investment money to the newer "high tech" industries. This may make more sense than an attempt to fjbail out a heavy industry that can.

no longer compete in world markets with the Japanese, the West Germans and the Swedes. A House of Representatives Special Task Force on Long-Term Economic Policy, headed by Rep. Timothy 'Wirth of Colorado, thinks the phenomenon of "Japan, Inc." provides us with a proper role model. In Japan, the government takes a hand in formulating credit polities, making -funds available to industries that are specially adapted to undercutting inefficient businesses in Europe and the Western hemi sphere. The Atari Democrats are flaunting a persuasive slogan, "The future will be J.

won with brain power." But wtten they argue that the government must set up an Economic Cooperative Council a composed of business, labor and government officials, to "clarify economic choices" and establish the priorities that would enable us to keep up with the Japanese, the proposition recalls the old plan of Walter Reuther for saving industry after World War II. Power struggles under any tripartite government- sponsored controlling organization, usually invite a gang-up of either business or labor with government bureaucrats to gain the upper hand. If business and government dominate, it's fascism; it if is labor that pulls the state bureaucrats to its side, it's the syndicalist version of communism. The difference today is that the Atari Democats propose something more selective than anything suggested by Walter Reuther. They would be leaving heavy industry out of the picture.

Can anyone imagine Lane Kirkland of the AFL-CIO or the United Automobile Workers Douglas Fraser taking this lying down? But even if the Atari Democrats would get their proposed tripartite agency going without a debilitating fight, wouldn't it be a supererogatory gesture? If the savings are there, the newer high-tech industries will be doing the borrowing anyway simply because they can pay higher interest on loans than steel or autopiobiles. And if the savings are not there, money shunted by tfeUymericamJ and the Berlin Record, combined with the Somerset Bulletin, the Somerset Standard and the Bos we 1 1 News. Founded bHENRY BAKER REILEY ord rlihe 1939 1962 proposals and get riddled with bullets. Then the political branches can if this seems the least unsafe option hide behind the shredded remains of the commission's recommendations, bowing with well-advertised reluctance and distaste to the commission's "expertise." But Greenspan's commission is different than many "expertise" groups that governments have used to solve problems such as the British commission assigned to refute rumors that Hitler did not die in the bunker, or the Warren Commission charged with establishing the facts about the Kennedy assassination, or the group asked to evaluate basing modes' for the MX. Those groups were asked to render technical judgments about empirical evidence.

Greenspan's, commission is inescapably involved in making equity judgments of fundamental importance. To the editor: This Christmas season it would not be inappropriate to express a few thoughts regarding the Person whose birthday we celebrate. He has been called Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus Christ, The Son of God, The Prince of Peace, Our Saviour, and, on occasion. Our Lord. Upon reading in the Daily American that our Congress has sept to President Reagan a.

biJI containing -a raise for House members and abandoning the jobs program for unemployed Americans while -giving a possible green We must be strong To the editor: The recent anti-nuclear demonstrations nuclear weapons and the idea to abolish nuclear weapons is a good idea but it has one fault, the Russians are not doing the same. As long as we are strong there will be world peace. For as long as the U.S.A. has what the U.S.S.R. has in weapons, peace will be maintained.

Also I would like to comment on the inability of our Congress to pass appropriations on time to keep our government functioning is a national disgrace. Get your act together and do the good job representing the people who elected you. J. Burket Somerset George Will need of funds' to defray the expense occurred by the'Christmas packages being prepared for local-children who come from needy homes. December 23, 1932 Possibly the most interesting Christmas store window, in Somerset is that decorated by J.W.

Og levee, of the Glad hurt Greenhouse to grace his Christmas store in the Berrits Building. To see 'this window alone would be worth anyone's trip to the Somerset shopping district. light to research on the MX missile my heart dropped a notch and I again looked up to the Lord of this universe to ask "Why?" Why will a responsible leader and his followers repudicate the "quick fix" of job programs and endorse the. "quick destruction" of'military programs? Why must some people right here in the Somerset area look through garbage cans for food while others leisurely lunch at expensive steak houses and plush motels, charging the bill to taxpayers, while government programs which are the last hope for many needy people are cut. And more weapons are built! Why does the Christian community not consistently heed Christ's teachings to: "Love your enemies." Do good to those who curse you.

Give to' those who ask." Read the sermon on the mount in the Gospel of Luke and then tell me that we are a Christian naton. Study the military history of America and tell rile that we are a Christian nation. Visit our slums and then, if you can, the citadels of wealth in America and in foreign extensions of that wealth and tell me that we are a Christian nation. While there is time. This Christmas, season, pray for America.

Mark Beech, Somerset Greenspan studied jazz and baroque music. The combination pjMQared him for economic reasoning, which looks ornate but is primarily improvisation. After service to three Presidents, he has learned the awful truth that no good deed goes unpunished. He has been made chairman of the commission assigned to recommend cures for the Social Security crisis. This' musical economist is supposed to make it easier for the political branches of government to do their Increasingly, American government resembles baseball's designated hitter, who can do only one thing.

The designated hitter is only an aesthetic calamity in baseball: Other members of the' team can do other things. But it is a systemic calamity when the political system can do only one thing extend benefits and can not provide requisite revenues. The result is a ratchet effect in the "Qnly with a currency that is guaranteed not to depreciate," say Paul and Lehrman, "will we ever be able' to have once again low long-term rates of interest." Ron Paul is flabbergasted that the Atari Democrats can't see this. He has just written a letter to the chairman Of the House Banking Committee calling for an immediate investigation of the present monetary-crisis. Inflation is still the lurking enemy and inflation doesn't distinguish between Atari companies and old-line steel and automobiles.

EDITOR NOTE: Letters submitted to the Daily American for publication must be signed and contain the address of the writer. The phone number must also be included for number, Jtowever, will not be published. Letters should be limited to about 250 words. Letters submitted by groups must have the name of a spokesperson or officer for publication. Large lists of names will not be printed.

Names will be withheld only when publication of the name may result in bodily harm. The Daily American reserves the right to edit. DAVID H. REILEY lutinrm Monog, JEFFREY E. 0 BRIEN Monogtrtf Editor Member of the Associated Prees The Associated Press is entitled exclusively kvtw and reproduction of all local news printed in this newspaper as well as the AP newt dispatches.

branches. Now those branches may further dilute their responsibilities by making frequent use of commissions like Greenspan's. XOf course the political branches never wanted a Greenspan commission to tell them how to raise benefits). Greenspan has the gift rare among saxophonist of saying with calm clarity what he feels with intensity. So one sometimes wishes there were more Greenspans to deploy against those problems before which politicians take only evasive action.

But the existence of Greenspan is, for the political branches, a temptation to the bad habit of displacing their responsibilities. Those branches believe, as Oscar Wilde did, that the way to cope with temptation is by surrend ring to it. Copyright 1982 The Washington Post Co. government to computer companies and such would have to be manufactured by the Federal Reserve and would simply add to the inflation. The Atari Democrats pride themselves on their long-term But they fail to reckon with the critics who insist that there can be no good future for any big segment of American business unless the currency can be stablished over an even longer span of time than anything the Ataris have in mind.

As long as heavy government deficits are soaking up the savings of a nation, there will be little investment money available for hih-tech research and development expansion no matter who does the thinking about future markets. Two, of our longer-term thinkers, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and Lewis Lehrman, who almost made it to Albany as the unexpectedly popular Republican candidate for governor, have just collaborated on writing a book on the future of the dollar. The book is "The Case for Gold: a Minority Report of the U.S. Gold commission," published by the Cato Institute.

Whether gold has any chance of becoming the basis of the American money system in the next 10 years, the logic of returning to what Paul and Lehrman call a "standard unit of is incontestable. Published daily except Sunday. New Year's Day, Memorial Ooy. July Fourth, Lobor Day. Thanksgiving and Christmas by SOMERSET NEWSPAPERS, INC.

334. West Main Somerset. Pa. 15501 HENRY BAKER REILEY JR PuMithar ond Editor In ChtrH Any recommendations the commission make about raising revenues or moderating benefits will involve answers to questions such as: Who should pay how much to whom? How should the competing values of social generosity and econorhic efficiency be accommodated? How are such virtues as thrift and foresight to be encouraged? These are political questions because politics is about how we ought to live; it is about the authoritative assignment of social values. The political branches have protested, with more vigor than sincerity, about the courts "usurping" power and responsibilities.

But the political branches have all too often been only too eager to see judges take custody of issues (such as race relations, capital punishment or abortion) which properly belong on the agendas of the political Greenspan and the 'music' of the economy political system: All movement is in one direction. Government gives; it can not take back. It is plagued by the mismatch between its hair-trigger spending mechanisms and its arthritic approach to raising revenues. By now, virtually 100 percent of all congressmen and senators recognize the danger to and the danger from the Social Security system. But there are many blends of measures all painful for dealing with it.

And perhaps only, say, 30 percent of Congress can be rallied behind any one blend. So unless Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill can come to terms, the conflict over Social Security reform will continue to resemble a gunfight in which whoever draws First gets shot. He will be shot at by everyone too timid to take the lead in choosing among painful alternatives. The political branches want Greenspan's commission to make WASHINGTON-Civics textbooks should be recalled by their publishers for revision. They teach that there are three branches of government: legislative, executive, judicial.

But today there is a fourth. Call it the Greenspan branch. It is enchanting to have a branch of government named after a Nature was prodigal when distributing talent in the Washington Heights section of New York City about four decades ago. Alan Greenspan and Henry Kissinger were (if you can imagine this) teen-agers there. When Greenspan was an "irrepressible young blade, he yed saxophone and clarinet in a traveling dance band that included a saxophonist, Len Garment, who was to be counsel to President -Nixon just before Greenspan was chairman of President Ford's Council of Economic Advisers.

At the Julliard School' of Music,.