Playground Daily News du lieu suivant : Fort Walton Beach, Florida • Page 18

I'age 10B-PLAYGROUND L1A1LY NEWS, Wednesday Morning, September 24,1975 Alaska Not a Happy Man-hunting Ground By Abigail Van Buren 197Sbj Ir.c. DEAR ABBY: This is in response to "Looking in St. Paul," who wanted to know where she and a friend could find eligible men. PLEASE, don't steer them to Alaska. True, there are many men up here, but they are either itinerant military, or summer job seekers who are living off welfare, or itinerant workers who come here to make a fast buck and take it back to their families.

The number of unemployed men in Alaska is staggering. Abby, please give your readers the following message: If you don't have a job and a place to live in Alaska, don't come. The company 1 worked for (ransferred me to Alaska 18 years ago. I've remained because I like it, but the changes thai have taken place here because of the oil'boom are disheartening. Crime is rampant because so many are jobless.

The schools are crowded, and too few people care about the environment. We Alaskans welcome people to our state who have something to offer and will be good citizens. But we don't want people who bleed the land, destroy our wildlife, rip off our neighbors and make money here to spend elsewhere. ALASKAN DEAR ALASKAN: AH right, that settles it. I'll amend my advice to women preparing to go on a manhunt: Forget Alaska! DEAR ABBY: In the four years I have lived in Florida, I have seen only one person wearing a Phi Bete Kappa key who has actually earned it himself.

However, on other occasions, I have seen women wearing Phi Beta Kappa keys on charm bracelets. On inquiry, I learned that the keys belonged to their husbands. The women did not seem the slightest bit embarrassed to be wearing a symbol of academic achievement that they themselves did not earn. Now that Phi Beta Kappa is approaching its 200th birthday, I wish you would stale your opinion of this practice, NOT CLEAR IN CLEARWATER, FLA. DEAR NOT: Wearing ANY unearned symbol of achievement is dishonest, whether it's a Phi Beta Kappa key, a purple heart or a bronze star.

DEAR ABBY: I am writing this for those waitresses who don't seem (o know which side their bread is buttered on. I have never seen it fail. Every time my husband and I sit down to order in a restaurant, the waitress looks only at my husband and asks him what he wants. She ignores me completely. He is the only one who is asked if he wants more coffee.

1 know that is where the lip comes from, but if the waitress was smart, she would pay a little attention to the woman, because she's usually the one who decides where they dine. LEFT OUT DEAR LEFT: Don't blame the waitress for turning to the gentleman for the order. It's customary for him to order for both the lady and himself. However, she should ask the lady Ifirst) if she wants more coffee. Hate to write letters? Send SI to Abigail Van Buren, 132 Lasky Beverly Hills, Calif.

90212, for Abby's booklet "How to Write Letters for All Occasions." Please enclose a long, self-addressed, stamped (200 envelope. Wallace Wristwatch No Mickey Mouse DAVID ANDGOLIATH--Slingshooter "J.J." Pantano, a three-year-old from the Rockvllle section of Vernon, Conn, decided to get in a little target practice last week while waiting outside of the school for his older brother. School crossing guard Henry Boucher was able to prevent any damage by talking him out of it. (UPI Photo) WASHINGTON (UPI) You may smile when someone shows up wearing a genuine George Wallace wristwatch, but the last laugh goes to the Alabama governor. The $22.50 timepieces are helping pay for his presidential campaign with a profit of $7 each for him.

Wallace, a slill unannounced candidate for the 1976 Democratic presidential nomination, got the go-ahead from the Federal Election Commission for the sale of wrist watches and other mementoes bearing his picture and signature to raise funds for both his campaign and his personal bank account. The commission approved the payment of up lo $150,000 in royalties to the governor over a 10 year period, but made clear that it did so with wrinkled nose. Its short advisory opinion to the Wallace campaign committee said "The commission would be less than frank if it failed to note its disapproval of any practice whereby a candidate personally profits from campaign contributions." The Wallace wristwatch, with a caricature of the governor wearing boxing gloves on its face, sells for The governor gets $7 royalty on each sale. Campaign medallions sell $10 in bronze, $25 in silver and $50 in gold, with Wallace receiving $2, $3 and $5 royalties respectively. He also gets a $1 royally for each $4.95 photographic biographysold by the campaign committee.

The campaign committee's contract with the -governor provides that he receive yearly royalties of up to $15,000 for 10 years. He got $14,999 in royalties last year and canv paign spokesmen say enough of the merchandise has been sold this year to assure the governor of another full payment. The campaign said at one time that the money was being used defray Wallace's medical bills, which have been heavy since he was shot and permanently, crippled while campaigning three years ago. More recently, spokesmen have compared $15,000 payment lo the equal amount the cam- paign law permits members of i the House and Senate to collect A fees for' giving speeches. The six-member agency set; up lo police the 1974 federal election law.gave approval to the draft after weeks of wrangling over i its language.

But after writing more than half a dozen drafts, the bi-partisan commission finally settled on a ruling the Wallace campaign lo report all sales of campaign j- merchandise as contributions and all payments for the materials and royalties to the candidate as expenditures subject to the limits set by the law. Commissioner Rejects Compensation Increase State Medicaid Program Injured By Contract Dispute, Chief Says TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (UPI) State Medicaid programs for the poor have been plagued by disorganization, administrative problems, faulty delivery and fraud, Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services Secretary William J. Page said; Page told the first meeting of a special task force studying Medicaid problems that the program is being hindered by a contract dispute with a private firm handling drug prescriptions for medicaid recipients. "Unless we modify the contract, this organization will go bankrupt," said Page.

"Or we may have to give this repsonsibility to department employes, which will be a chaotic situation. We need to receive better estimates in these matters and be able to better forsee problems." Page did not mention the name of the organization. The task force, formed at Page's request, said it will have a report ready in about 90 days about possible solutions to problems of Medicaid, the major public resource of providing health services to the poor. Members of the task force include chairperson Dr. Charlotte Maguire Behrman, HRS medical services coordinator; Division of Health Director Dr.

Charlton Prather; Division of Family Services medical services director Wright Hollingsworth; DFS medical consultant Dr. Matthew Morrow; HRS Division of Planning and Evaluation director Dick Shute and Edward Davis, associate southern reg- ional coordinator for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. "The judicial process has revealed some fraudul-' ent practices," said Page. "We need to know how and when this occurs and how to prevent it. We suspect that transportation and other provisions are abused.

We need methods of curbing abuse." Nursing home care, inpatient hospital treatment and drug services are the largest parts of Florida's 1 Medicaid program. TALLAHASSEE, Fla, (UPI) State Insurance Commissioner Phil Ashler today rejected a proposed 12,5 per cent rate increase for workmen's compensation insurance, saying the hikes would place unfair' burdens on employers paying for on-the-job injuries. The increase, requested by the National Council on Compensation Insurance, would have also changed a wage base formula used in figuring premiums. The which represents underwriters selling the to increase the weekly wage base frtim $100 to $300, a move Ashler said would automatically allow an escalation of premiums. "The practical effect of increasing the wage base formula from the present $100 a week to $300, as the companies requested, would be the imposition of a premium increase for some employers in Florida," said Ashier.

"As the filing docs not contain an alternative proposal providing for such premium increase predicated on the current $100 payroll limitation rule, relief cannot be provided at this time since the com- missionerhasno power to make workmen's compensation rates but may only approve or disapprove those that have been filed." Council representatives claimed during recent public hearings the inflation and in- creases in medical malpractice 'insurance for doctors merited the increase. Raising the payroll limitation, said the council, also would provide greater coverage to workers with high risk jobs. industry and building representatives strongly fought the increase. Jon Shebel, director of Associated In- dustries, a prominent lobbying group, said raising the premiums would prevent new corporations and businesses from relocating in Florida. Members of the Florida Homebuilders Association also said the hikes would increase prices of new homes, placing additional financial burdens the construction industry, which has been hard hit by the recent recession.

The workmen's compensation hike is the second increase rejected by Ashler in a week. Earlier, he turned down hikes for Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Florida. Marijuana Smugglers Fly High In Makeshift Bomber, Jet Fleet WASHINGTON (UPI) Marijuana smugglers have taken to the skies. A makeshift fleet of surplus World War II bombers and modern jets is airlifting Ions of marijuana across southern U.S. borders to enter an illicit domestic distribution network as extensive as the cigarette industry, federal officials say.

According to Jacques Kiere, director of the Drug Enforcement Administration's El Paso Intelligence Center, an estimated 54,750 planes skimmed across the Mexican border and Gulf shores in the past year, flying low to evade government radar posts. About 10 per cent are tracked and seized, or crash before they reach their destinations. The rest make clandestine landings on barren Western flatlands, private airfields or bulldozed clearings in the East and transfer their cargoes to shippers, Kiere said. From there, the marijuana flows through underground channels to high schools, back streets and private homes to feed a national habit that government and private surveys estimate has grown to upwards of 6,000 tons a year worth billion on the retail market. That's enough for Americans to be smoking about 13 million "joints" a day, the experts say.

By contrast, Americans smoked 580 billion cigarettes worth $13.2 billion in sales last year. Kiere's EPIC agency was established in Texas about a year ago to coordinate smuggling intelligence for DEA, custom and immigration agents who seized 2 million pounds of illicit marijuana in 1974. That was only 15 per cent of the total smuggled into the United States. The airlift has surfaced asa political issue in Colombia, where President Alfonso Lopez Michelsen said "powerful organizations" marketing drugs in the United States 1 "ally themselves Colombian occasionally bribe public officials," Responding to allegations of corruption in his government, Lopez charged in advance of talks with President Ford in Washington that the United Slates was "unable lo prevent its criminals from turning our fatherland into their field of action. The State Department replied that "U.S.

law enforcement agencies are working very hard" in collaboration with Lopez's government to halt illicit drug traffic. "When we talk about marijuana smuggling we are talking about the magnitude of an industry that reaches every part of the United States and requires an organization very similartoan industry such as cigarettes," Kiere told UPI in a telephone interview. A Justice Department consultant once estimated there were 17,500 wholesalers and 280,000 retailers in the nationwide marijuana distribution apparatus. Since federal ground agents forced them into the air on a big scale a year ago, marijuana smugglers have flown corridors through Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, the Mexican peninsula south of California and more recently in the East. "The number of clandestine airstrips, literally thousands, is unbelievable," Kiere said.

"In Texas alone there are 5,000. They use dry valleys, dry lake beds no preparation required. "The general pattern is they fly to Mexico, load up and take on additional fuel to increase their range, leave just before dawn and cross the border in the first light. BOTTOM LINE BOGOTA, Colombia (IJPI1 The government has decreed that all restaurants, burs, service' stations, bus terminals or other establishments serving the public must have one sit-down toilet for ever)' 30 men. another sit-down toilet for every 15 womon and a stand-up 111 inal for every 20 men.

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