Warren Times-Mirror and Observer from Warren, Pennsylvania • Page 30

WORLD CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP mWMK(KEAND On The Right Short $42 Billion By Wm. F. Buckley Jr. la mays a warn! If. 'Mr.

Fischer seems to be ready now shall )ve commence, Mr. Washington Merry Go Round Meany Is 'Mean' By Jack Anderson those earning less; by 43 per cent for those earning $3 5 thousand by 27 per cent for those earning $5 7 thousand and so on, with a reduction of 1.7 per cent for those earning $50 100 thousand; and an increase of 7 per cent for those earning $100 thousand and over. But the figures are tiresome, when put beside the principal point, which is that over the years Congress and the Executive have done what they thought best to affect the allocation of resources. The Mellon Bank's economic newsletter sums it up. "For example, it (the tax law) is used to encourage home ownership, to lower the cost of borrowing to state and local governments, to increase the value of retirement and unemployment benefits, to lower the cost of medical care, and to encourage private philanthropy.

Reasonable men can disagree on whether or not the individual income tax law is the proper vehicle through which such objectives should be accomplished. But it is clear that proposals to abolish the existing set of tax preferences, unless accompanied by other positive measures, imply a repudiation of the objectives which originally led to the establishment of the preferences." It is quite literally that simple: Should Congress, or should it not, encourage married couples, home owners, the sick, the economically venturesome? Candidate McGovern will in due course need to face up to the consequences of his rhetoric. When he does so, I for one, wish that he might say something truly radical. Namely that it is not the proper business of Government to attempt to manipulate human economic behavior by a tissue of built in biases in the tax law. The trouble with the idea of making justice via tax laws is that one never really knows what it is that one is accomplishing; who it is that one is hurting.

Professor Friedman has over and over again demonstrated that efforts by the Government to give the little man a break by this or the other welfare subsidy end by hurting him. A true break with economic interventionism would see McGovern coming out against rinky dink tax laws, against all deductions (except obviously justified deductions), in favor of the elimination of the progressive feature of the income tax, and in favor of a maximum tax rate of 20 per cent. Little by little the analysis rolls in, to the considerable disadvantage of Senator George McGovern who, even as he has now embraced the cause of Israel more hawkishly than anyone since General Dayan, will surely, sometime before Election Day, deliver a paean on the tax loophole. A fortnight ago Mr. Stewart Alsop reported that a big McGovern backer from California, who had made a fortune in computers, consulted his computers, feeding them one of Senator McGovern's formulas for bringing wealth to the needy, and discovered that $42 billion was missing.

I. that just one of the redistributionist schemes proposed by Senator McGovern was under financed by a mere $42 billion. The backer was not the man best suited to question the reliability of computers so it is not known whether he will finally back off from his computers or from his candidate. Now the Economics Division of the Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh, in its news letter, makes a few gentle comments about the loopholes Senator McGovern is forever talking about. Do you remember the one about all the people who reported gross incomes in excess of $200,000 in 1970 who paid zero taxes? High indignation set in every time Senator McGovern mentioned the matter.

What he did not mention is that there were exactly 106 such cases, and that a study of them reveals that the overwhelming majority either a) paid taxes to foreign countries receiving the usual tax credit or b) paid state taxes, or c) had deductions sanctioned by law. Senator McGovern also did not mention that there are in fact 15,000 American citizens who reported incomes in excess of $200,000 who did pay income taxes, at an effective tax rate of 44 per cent. Nor does Senator McGovern stress the use of loopholes to people who are not necessarily rich. For instance, the joint return permitted husband and wife, in the absence of which loophole the Government would realize six to ten billion dollars in additional revenue. The new tax law of 1969, regularly disparaged as a rich man's tax law, deserves to be criticized for any number of reasons, all of them, however, more complicated than those Senator McGovern comes up with.

That tax law reduced the rate of income taxation by 82 per cent for Rather than embarrass the two subordinates, McGovern never tried to square himself with Meany. Only reluctantly would McGovern now confirm the incident to us six years afterward. Lipsen refused to comment, saying only that Meany was "a great man." And Biemiller couldn't be reached. MEETING WITH MEANY At the start of his presidential campaign last year, McGovern tried to make peace with Meany. McGovern carefully avoided compromising the two labor lobbyists and, therefore, didn't mention that he had cleared his controversial vote in advance.

All he said to Meany was "I was wrong on the 14 (b) matter. I struck out. I made a mistake." To McGovern's surprise, Meany shrugged it off. "What upset me more than that," he grunted, "was your criticism of me on the Russian wheat deal." As Food for Peace director during the Kennedy Administration, McGovern had accused Meany of blocking wheat shipments to Russia The AFL CIO chief said it wasn't true. McGovern said his information had come from the highest authority.

"But if I was wrong," he said, "I apologize." What really bothers Meany, say some intimates, is McGovern's anti war record. But whatever it is, the 77 year old labor leader intends to summon all his fading powers to block McGovern's nomination. MIAMI AFL CIO chief George Meany, the angry man behind the Stop McGovern drive, has made kindling of every olive branch the McGovern forces have offered him. The durable old despot has been cordial enough to George McGovern in person and even gave his blunt blessing to a McGovern speech at the AFL CIO convention. Privately, however, the old curmudgeon breathes fire at the mention of McGovern 's name, calls him "the candidate of amnesty, acid and appeasement" and threatens to withhold AFL CIO support if he's nominated.

What's more, Meany apparently won't be mollified. He's accustomed to settling Democratic presidential politics in the smoke filled backrooms, with his own stogie predominant. And he's too old and stubborn to let party reforms change the political habits of a lifetime. Some intimates say he turned sour on McGovern during the Senate battle over Section 14 (b) of the Taft Hartley Act in 1966. The AFL CIO sought to repeal this section, which permits states to adopt right to work laws that weaken labor unions.

The move was defeated by a filibuster, which pro labor senators tried in vain to shut off. On the first roll call, McGovern voted to stop the filibuster. Mc GOVERN MIX UP This was unpopular in McGovern's native South Dakota, which has a right to work law. He, therefore, notified two top labor lobbyists the AFL CIO's Andy Biemiller and the Retail Clerks' Charles Lipsen that he would like to change his vote. He asked for their agreement, promising he would stick with them if they really needed his vote.

Biemiller agreed to give McGovern a "pass," that is, to release him from his labor commitment unless his vote should be needed in the clutch. On the next roll call, McGovern's vote wasn't decisive, so he switched in favor of the filibuster. He was the only one who changed his vote. Meany was so angry that the lobbyists didn't dare tell him they had okayed McGovern's reversal. The old labor lord was attending a shindig at Miami's Americana Hotel when he learned they had lost a vote on the second roll call.

Witnesses recall that he turned on Lipsen, who had flown to Miami for the occasion. "Who was the double crosser?" growled Meany. "Let me explain," Lipsen began. Meany cut him off. "I don't want any explanations," he thundered.

"Just tell me who was the double crosser." Lipsen kept trying to explain the circumstances but finally was browbeaten into simply divulging McGovern's name. That was all Meanv wanted to hear. Dateline: Harrisburg So It Happens Anyway? By Richard R. Haratine CLEANING OUT A REPORTER'S ticketed at $140,000 are headed for limbo. The commission's $16,000 executive director, Arlene Loffman, has spent most of her time in office rewriting the history of Women's Sufferage.

She got short shrift from Appropriation's Chairman Martin Mullen in House hearings who said he "just doesn't see the need for this kind of busy Mrs. Loffman's blunder however was a press handout which criticized the way Senator Austin Murphy of Washington County handled hearings on her project. The executive director's language turned the air blue in closed door meetings of the committee. Senator Louis Coppersmith let the cat out of the bag on the way the Senate would probably go. "What is needed in these two areas (Citizens' Advocate and Status of says Johnstown's Coppersmith, "is more substance and less sound.

Creating new agencies does not solve problems. Our people are tired of window dressing, which I believe is essentially what these two programs would amount to. Such an allocation would be a waste of money and the job is being done by the Human Relations Commission anyhow." HELPFUL MENONITES While the politicians and bureaucrats from Harrisburg and Washington trumpeted their flood wares via press conference and fiat, nearly 200 Lancaster countians private citizens all were pounding up and down recently flooded streets of Harrisbtirg. Their wares: A helping hand, and no charge. Identifying themselves as The Menonite Emergency Service, they spent 10 days commuting back and forth to the flooded area, helping clean out basements, and doing a hundred chores anything, as a matter of fact, asked of them.

Repeat; No Charge. A strange twist in a flooded society where the night beat was being handled by National Guard patrols. CUP RUNNETH OVER Philadelphia's share of the State's $3.6 billion budget proposal, says Gov. Shapp, totals $955 million a one fourth slice of the pie. Its population is one sixth.

NOTEBOOK Pennsylvania's college Republican Chairman Mike Haley has announced his support of a move to permit 18 year olds the right to drink in Pennsylvania. "The reason I feel so strongly about legalization of 18 year old drinking," explains Haley, "is because it happens anyway." Mr. Haley says nothing about legalizing murder, because it happens anyway, too. TORT "If our forebears had enacted an abortion law 60 years ago," said Rep. Fred G.

Klunk, Adams, "perhaps a lot of us would not be here AND RETORT "There are some members of the responded House of Representative's speaker' Herbert Fineman Philadelphia, "who would not be disenchanted with that." ONLY $200,000 Two of Gov. Shapp's brainstorms, a Commission on the Status of Women ticketed for a budget of "only and a Citizen's Advocate Office.