Times-Advocate from Escondido, California • 16

TIMES -ADVOCATE MONDAY. MARCH 20. 1978 B-5 Investors gamble paid triple Odds favored stocks Jones 65-stock average. Argus Research Corp. of New York, in an analysis of gaming stocks, recently cited several reasons for public approval of gambling.

Theodore Anderson of Argus said most Americans believe that the tax benefits from legalization of gambling would be very substantial. That is certainly the case in Nevada, where gaming-related revenues pay half the cost of running state government. In past years, traditional money sources like banks had been leery of gaming investments because of allegations of organized crime ties at some clubs. Anderson said there seems to be an attitude now that competition from private enterprise is the best way of forcing the criminal element out of gambling. He also said studies show about 60 percent of Americans participate in gambling and about 80 percent favor its legalization in some form.

By BRENDAN RILEY CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) If you had invested $1,000 in stocks of major gambling firms in December 1974, when the Dow Jones industrial average was at a modern low, your investment would be worth nearly $3,000 today. The tripling in value among eight major publicly traded gaming stocks compares with a leisure industry growth of about 92 percent, and a Dow Jones industrial average increase of 33 percent. Most investors figure theyre doing good if they double their investment in five to seven years, says Jake Noel, chief of the Economic Research and Securities Division of the Nevada Gaming Control Board. The gaming stocks have almost tripled in value in just over three years.

Though no figures are compiled, considered the industrys main financial backer, had more than $210 million in loans and loan commitments to casinos when the law passed. Main gaming stocks include Bally Manufacturing Caesars World, Harrahs, Hilton Hotels, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Del Webb all traded on the New York Stock Exchange; Showboat stock traded on the American Stock Exchange; and Golden Nugget stock traded on the Pacific Stock Exchange. Noels growth chart compared the casino-related stocks to about 20 leisure industry stocks ranging from Disney Productions to sporting goods and bathing suit companies and even fast-food chains. The chart also included all stocks used in the Dow Noel estimates that investments in casino-related stocks is in excess of $1 billion. The increase in value for gaming stock has not gone unnoticed.

When stock offerings are made by major gaming-related firms, the securities are snapped up quickly. As an example of the popularity of such stocks, Noel notes that a $25 million public offering by Caesars World last December was sold within two days. The growth is good news for the casino industry, which had to look for new revenue sources after passage of a 1975 federal law restricting loans from the Teamsters Unions Central States, Southeast Southwest Areas Pension Fund. The pension fund, which was Vacant lot Sylvia Porter Retirement age change creates many questions In a matter of days, landmark legislation will go on ouV statute books raising the legal mandatory retirement age for most of us in the U.S. work force from the longstanding, artificially established age of 65 to a just as artificial but more realistic age of 70.

The new retirement age will become effective Jan. 1, 1979, for tens of millions in private enterprise and state-local government jobs (with two limited exemptions for top business executives and tenured college professors). Also, as, of Oct. 1, 1978, the federal governments present retirement age of 70 for most civilian employees will be abolished with restricted exceptions. No longer will you be forced to leave your job at age 65, no matter how good your performance, your health and how eager you are to stay on.

Nor will you be required to stay on after the discarded retirement age of 65, if you neither need nor want the job or pay. The choice will be where it belongs up to you. Even before this historic adjustment takes place, the pluses and minuses are being debated with seemingly endless anxiety. Opponents are forecasting that shock waves will roll over the entire business, industrial and academic worlds; pension plans are being rewritten (or at least renegotiated); many giant firms are trying to work out systems and tests under which workers with inferior, if not downright negative, records still can be compelled to retire at 65; the extent to which the burden on the Social Security System will be eased is being calculated and recalculated, etc. One key concern is how their own peers, who may be jealous, ambitious or whatever, can define and then accurately measure incompetence among fellow executives, and particularly professors.

Another is how to judge whether an employee is deteriorating physically or mentally to the point where he or she is slated to become a drag on the company. What is deadwood really? What is competence among top executives or professors who may be extremely unpopular but still of undeniable value to their institutions? How will younger workers respond when their promotions are delayed because those ahead of them in their categories are remaining on the job for longer periods? What will be the impact on job opportunities for women and minorities, particularly, if the employment ranks are jammed? Can workers truly keep performing at acceptable levels as they age? An encouraging report, privately circulated by Prentice-Hall, suggests that for many companies, keeping workers on the job until age 70 would pose very few problems." Only three problems emerge as serious, the most serious being (1) the delicate problem of dealing with reduced job performance among people who are only a few years away from retirement; (2) increased costs due to absenteeism, benefits, and (3) dealing with advancement for younger go-getters. On the challenge of dissatisfied younger workers, possible solutions include: offering incentives or alluring bonuses to older workers to retire before age 70; offering incentives to younger workers to stay with the company; revamping the companys compensation program to tie pay more closely to performance. On the problem of jobs for women and minorities, few companies expect opportunities to shrink (only 4 percent). Several corporations said, in fact, that they would make an extra effort to see that highly qualified minorities receivev special advantages.

On the question of job performance, many employers said they would tighten up their policies to make sure employees in the older age groups are still working up to par. A fascinating finding of Prentice-Hall is that while the mandatory retirement age is rising, the number of employees choosing to take early retirement also is increasing. So many of you would prefer to retire early if you can swing it financially. No matter what your yiews as an individual, this historic discrimination on the basis of age alone is finally being eliminated from the law. Our societys attitude toward our elderly has been and is far more barbaric than the barbarians eyen dreamed of.

I hail the step, although it is only one move forward. It has been so long in coming. ready for building By JOHN NUNES A Staff Writer ESCONDIDO A retail store and office building is planned for the vacant lot at Grand Avenue and Kalmia Street, where O'Bryans Restaurant was destroyed by fire in 1975, the worst blaze here since 1952. The bottom floor of the proposed two-story building may house a restaurant, according to Marshall Petty of CAS Building, project developer. The top floor will consist of professional offices, he said.

CAS does not have any tenants yet. The firm hopes to complete construction by late November, he said. Plans are to construct a Spanish-style complex with a courtyard. It will be named the Searcy Building. Carl Searcy is owner of the project.

The building will be 16.648 square feet in area. The lot has been vacant since the blaze. Besides the restaurant, Escondido Beauty College and Jed's Shoe Repair were lost in the fire. O'Bryan's, a restaurant-bar, was a landmark in Escondido. It originally was named Casa Saska and was changed to O'Bryan's five years before the fire.

The restaurant had housed many antiques that were destroyed in the blaze. The building was owned by Dan Johnston who still owns the land, according to the city planning department. TRANSITION STAGE From the ashes and rubble on the site of the former O'Bryan's Restaurant, a two-story retail store and office building is planned to rise. Developers of the now vacant lot at Grand Avenue and Kalmia Street hope to complete construction of the Spanish-style complex in November. Precedent-setting case Firm must pay public Magnin firm PORTLAND, Ore.

(UPI) A federal judge today announced the first recipients of a plan, believed to be the first of its kind, in which a company was ordered to make restitution for customs violations by financing projects benefiting the public. U.S. District Judge Otto R. Skopil Jr. Friday said 11 projects would share $56,000 in restitution ordered paid to "aggrieved parties" in the case involving customs violations by White Stag, a Portland, sportswear firm.

"In this case I found that the aggrieved parties were members of the public at large deprived of customs revenues as a result of the criminal conduct of White Stag, Skopil said. Included as recipients were a college program on business ethics, a learning center for emotionally disturbed children, a poison control center and purchase of a unique nature area. The firm pleaded guilty to 150 counts of failing to report some costs of importing clothing made in the Far East. It paid a $100,000 fine, was put on probation for three years, and was ordered to make restitution of $200,000. Skopil appointed a five-member committee to choose projects to receive the restitution money.

The grants, ranging from $2,000 to $7,000 each, were dispersed on the basis of broad public benefit. Applications for the funds were solicited. The judge said more recipients will be announced later. Skopil said the reparation plan was the first of its kind in the nation where payments were made on the public behalf rather than to individuals who were wronged by a companys action. The grants announced were: $4,500 to Western Washington State Colleges Business and Economics Department for an executive in residence program on business ethics.

$7,000 to Las Luminarias Council of the Blind, Albuquerque, N.M., for purchase of a vehicle specifically designed or adapted to transport persons confined to wheelchairs. $5,000. to SOAR (Speak out for Auditory Research), San Francisco, for support of a rehabilitation program operating within the San Francisco Hearing and Speech Center. $7,500 to Oregon Lions Sight Foundation, Portland. $2,000 to Alexander Childrens Center, Charlotte, N.C., for construction of a learning center for emotionally disturbed children.

$2,000 to Living Opportunities Medford, for expansion of living facility for retarded persons. $5,000 to the Nature Conservancy, Portland, for funding a preserve management intern position. $5,000 to Paraplegia Cure Research, Washington, D.C., for use in program of encouraging research in area of paraplegia. $7,000 to University of Oregon Health Sciences Centers Poison Division of Emergency Medicine, for operational costs of a poison control center. $5,000 to Riley Cancer Research for Children Indianapolis, Ind.

$6,000 to University of California's Natural Land and Water Systems, Los Angeles. to open store in Maryland WASHINGTON (AP) -I. Magnin Co, a San Francisco based speciality department store, has announced it will open its first East Coast branch in the Washington area. Ross Anderson, the stores chairman, said the store to be opened Aug. 11 in suburban Montgomery County, will be the 24th outlet in a chain owned by Federated Department stores.

Anderson told a news conference in the Senate wing of the Capitol that the store in the new White Flint shopping mall near Bethesda, will have 81,000 square feet on two levels and employ 150. He said it will take an investment of $10 million. Sens. Mark O. Hatfield, and S.I.

Hayakawa, participated in the conference. The chain has stores in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona and Illinois. I Increase in exports urged for U.S. Incomes show slight increase i WASHINGTON (UPI) j-Americans' personal income, which Is an indicator of money available for future consumer spending, rose 0.5 percent in February, more than double the January increase, the government said late last week. The Commerce Department said the size of the February improvement would have been $1 billion to $1.5 billion larger if it were not for the nationwide coal strike, which caused some business to cutback or temporarily shut down operations.

Payrolls in all private and public sectors showed increases last mortth with the exception of farm income. I Commerce secretary takes look at textiles institute, which represents many of the 6,000 textile companies in the United States. Our trade deficit can be reduced more effectively by increasing exports than by restraining imports," Kreps said, stressing that America will have to compete more aggressively in world markets. If we are going to import more, we are going to have to export more-more textiles as well as other goods," she said. She assured the textile manufacturers that the Carter Administration is seeking to help improve the economic climate by reviewing regulatory proposals and providing greater incentives for investments.

The textile industry has criticized government health and safety regulations saying adequate protection is provided through existing engineering and medical surveillance. A fact sheet produced by the textile industry said over $2.8 billion would be needed in captial investents to meet Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements regarding cotton dust and between between $3 and $13 billion would be required to have weaving machines comply with OSHA noise standards. SAN FRANCISCO (UPI) U.S. Secretary of Commerce Juanita M. Kreps has called for more vigorous world exports of American textiles.

She also wants the American Textile Manufacturers Institute to enter into a San Francisco Agreement in which the industry would pledge to help the federal government solve growing problems of urban decay and structural unemployement in return for a federal commitment to help solve the industrys burden of restrictive regulations and growing competition with imported goods. Kreps appeared Thursday before the 29th annual meeting of the textile We will soon begin a program under which certain of the Presidents advisors will review proposed regulations," she promised. Each major new regulatory proposal must be accompanied by an analysis explaining why the proposed regulation is better than alternative ways of achieving the same objective." Kreps said the Carter Administration is committed to maintaining orderly world trade. She said recognition of the textile industrys special status is evidenced by discussions with several countries not now covered by bilateral agreements on apparel categories. i.