The Baytown Sun from Baytown, Texas • Page 4

4 A THE BAYTOWN SUN Monday, March 1986 Plans to help needy working There's good news about experiments designed to help get people off public assistance rolls and into productive employment. All things considered, that isn't an easy goal to reach. Despite derogatory reports about people on welfare and endless stories about how welfare programs are abused, nationwide surveys have shown that most welfare recipients are not dependent by choice. Critics of "workfare" projects, which require welfare recipients to take unpaid jobs, may be disappointed to learn that these experiments are proving successful in places where they are being tried. The Manpower Demonstration Research Corp.

has surveyed 35,000 welfare recipients in 11 states since 1982, and has concluded that workfare is not as punitive as its detractors feared or as praiseworthy as its advocates claimed. Most participants in workfare projects agreed that work requirement as a condition to receiving public assistance is fair and not burdensome. Generally, the MDRC survey revealed, participants liked clerical, park or maintenance jobs in which they were placed, even though the work in itself did not enhance their marketable skills. More widely used than workfare in the 11 states surveyed by MDRC is a technique known as "job search." Its purpose is to match welfare applicants or recipients with jobs. Research centering on job search programs in California, Maryland, Arkansas and other states shows that workfare projects can be operated without trying to welfare recipients.

This approach merits conti- study and should be accelerated. i Sun files '56: Deputy Sheriff Brown clears series of burglaries From The Baylown Sun files, this is the way it was: 55 YEARS AGO Robert L. "Bobby" Carter an- his candidacy for Position i in the Goose Creek City Commission. H. Coy Goodman iilsci is seeking this position.

The only candidate for Position 2 is O.J. Hazelwood. Incumbent Mayor J.W. Powell is being challenged in his bid for reelect ion by Commissioner 11.C. Ferguson.

Joe Reid, city attorney for Goose Creek, will lake necessary steps to collect more Hum in back taxes. All Red While stores in the Tri-Cities offer a ticket to the Theater with each pur- eluise of six bars of Lux soap.The tickets will be for the film. "Stolen Heaven," which Nancy Carroll. 50 YEARS AGO H.ll. "Red" Pruett is renamed mumiger of the Texaco Station at Pruett and Texas.

Let- Tag hosts (ho first mooting of the Tri-Cilies Philatelic Club. A. K. Archer serves as training eh'uinvum for the I-'asl Harris TCtty Seoul District. 40 YEARS AGO Rifle-shooting juveniles wreak havoc over the weekend in Pellv and Baytown.

causing much destruction and damage to properly. One bullet from a .22 rifle barely missed 4-year-'old Maurice ilarvey as he was playing in a yard in Pelly. 30 YEARS AGO Deputy Sheriff M.M. Brown clears up a series of burglaries in Wooster alter quizzing a number of juveniles. He says the youngsters were involved in 12 Ihel'ts.

H.E. McKee, former Baytown Police Chief, tiles for District 4 position in the Baytown Council election. Other District 4 hopefuls are W.C. "Pop" Swain and Arthur J. Lindslrom.

20 YEARS AGO Last candidates to file for the Lee College Board ol Regents election are Wallis Hunt. Travis Porter, Sam Hastings and Allen Rice Jr. Other candidates are E.L. Gunn, David Tracht and incumbents Alma McNully, Warren Spivcy and Jim Black. Carole Opryshek is the last to enter the school board race.

She will seek Position 1, now held by incumbent Ben Shirey. while incumbent Knox Beavers and Robert C. Wahrmund will vie for Position 2. Mr. and Mrs.

George B. Carroll celebrate their 5()th wedding anniversary. "Of course, my situation is a little different than Lee lacocca's, but I've been fired a lot, too." WHAT PIP YoO Po WITH ALL THE TGAVEYoO? Don Graff Jack Anderson Corruption old story in Haiti Leon Brown. Editor ond Publisher Fred Hornberger' Assistant to Publisher Fred Hartman Editor and Publisher, 1950:1974 EDITMIAl DCfARTMENT Wanda Orrofji. Managing Editor Joan McAnoll News Editor ADVERTISING DEPARTMENT Bill Cornwell: Advertising Director CmCULATtON Gory Dobbs Circulation Manager Boytowo Sun-(USPS oj wcood.dasi mantr 01 Boriown.

Poit 77532 urxler Act of Congmt oi Morch 3. 1879 artirnoom, Monday through Friday ood Sundays at 130) Memorial In Bgiftown, 77520. SubKripiion By carrier. $5 25 month. M3.00 year; copy 25 Doily.

50 emu Sunday Moil on request. nationally PuWicotiom POSTMASTER; toTHE BAYTOWN SUN, P.O Box90, Boytown, WASHINGTON The American people can take satisfaction in their government's apparently crucial role in the ouster of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, whose term as "president for life" of Haiti was abruptly cut short by his longsuffering people. For years, we tirelessly exposed the brutality and corruption of the Duvaliers, father and son, who looted their impoverished nation under the spurious cover of a "revolution" that gave blacks political power over their mixed-race countrymen. We sent reporters to dig out the truth about Haiti, at considerable risk to themselves from the Duvaliers' dreaded security police, the blue-clad Ton-Tons Macoutes. One of our reporters, Hal Bernton, posed as a itinerant student a decade ago and gathered appalling evidence of poverty in Haiti wretched, life-threatening poverty that contrasted obscenely with the luxurious life of the Duvalier family and their cronies.

(Our sources estimate that Baby Doc has more than $200 million squirreled away in Swiss banks, even after a lifetime of extravagant spending.) Bernton hiked through the parched mountains to a remote vil'nge, where he lived with the people for more than a week. He saw naked children too weak from hunger to play, their hair discolored and their bellies ued from starvation. hose pitiable Haitian children weren't victims of an "act of God," like the drought- induced famines in Africa. They were the inevitable byproduct of a ruling family determined to suck out every dollar that found its way into Haiti. When Haitian reporters tried to tell the world of their country's agony, they were beaten or murdered by the Ton-Tons Macoutes.

Gassner Raymond was a courageous young reporter who dared to write a story critical of the Duvalier regime. His body was found in a ditch two weeks later. Aid from the United States and other countries often did not rereh the Haitians who needed it. It went instead to Duvalier and his insatiable cronies. "The have included millions in indeed U.S.

economic which have i'lto the palace ac- reported in March booty also included a 020 million emergency loan from th? Internationa! Monetary Fund. Baby Doc took good care of his family. His wife, Michelle, drew a $100,000 monthly salary for her duties as "Mrs. President." Her father, Ernest. Bennett, also became wealthier during his son-in-law's reign.

Not surprisingly, an auto dealership he owned was looted and burned during the celebration of Duvalier's downfall. In 1984, as Haitian "boat people" were risking and often losing their lives trying to sneak into this country in flimsy, overloaded craft, we sent another reporter, the late Jock Hatfield, to Haiti. He found that well-intended Book asks, 'Who are the U.S. food shipments were winding up on the black market, with little attempt even to hide the corruption. At the downtown market in Port-au-Prince, Hatfield found stalls piled with bulgur wheat, dry milk and soybean oil from the United States.

The wheat had been repackaged into plastic bags, but the oil and dry milk were being sold in their original containers bearing the warning in French and English: "Furnished by the people of the U.S.A. Not to be sold or exchanged." A few miles from this thriving black market, children were dying of malnutrition in unspeakable slums. If Haiti is to pull itself out of the chasm of the Duvalier years, foreign aid and investment are needed. And this will require guarantees that future millions will not be siphoned off by corrupt officials in the Duvalier style. TRADE DILEMMA: Wouldn't you know one of the few American products the Japanese are happy to let in without restrictions can no longer be exported.

The unique product is citrus fruit, which the Japanese reportedly are "desperate" to buy from U.S. growers. But as of Feb. 1, the chemical ethylene dibromide can no longer be used to fumigate the fruit because of the danger to workers. Cold storage has been tried and doesn't work.

An Environmental Protection Agency spokesman said: "Until we can find a way to get worker risk down to an acceptable level, there won't be anything going to Japan." FOGGY, FOGGY bottom: Sometimes we can't help wondering whal kind of tea leaves the seers at the State Department are reading or smoking. We hear that some of the Iran-watchers in Foggy Bottom are placing great significance on reports that the merchants in Tehran are grumbling about the endless war with Iraq. The analysts note that it was when he lost the merchants' support that the shah was finished. This bizarre bazaar theory of despotic downfall strikes us as akin to saying that when German shopkeepers lost faith in Hitler, he was doomed. MINI-EDITORIAL: Have you ever noticed the amazing speed with which retail prices zoom when supplies are short, and the painfully slow way they go down when the product is plentiful? A freeze in Florida or an OPEC embargo sends prices soaring overnight, as if the citrus processors and oil refiners had no inventory whatsoever.

We're still waiting for gas prices at the pump io show some hint of the drastic tumble in crude oil prices. Now we're told that a drought in Brazil will push coffee prices to $5 a pound and higher, and they may stay there. We say: Caffeine addicts, unite! Drink tea and let the wholesalers eat their coffee beans. Dale Van Alia co-aultiored today's column with Jack Anderson oj United Fevturt Syndicate. NEW YORK Who exactly are the Nicaraguan contras? Terrorists, as the Sandinista regime in Managua charges? Or "freedom fighters," as the Reagan administration claims? The question is at the heart of Christopher Dickey's "With the Contras." If the book doesn't come right out with a definitive answer, it does offer a wealth of evidence from which the reading public can draw conclusions of its own.

Dickey is a Washington Post correspondent whose beat from 1980 through 1983 was Central America. As such, he was witness to the development of the contrarrevolucion against the Sandinistas. The book covers its beginnings among remnants of the defeated Somoza National Guard, subsequent American pre-emption and efforts to shape an effective fighting force, infighting and upheavals in the contra leadership and growing public- relations problems as the dirtier aspects of their war became public knowledge. AH that is prologue and epilogue, however, to six days Dickey spent in the field with the contra force of "Suicida," a leader given his nom de guerre by followers who said he led them into situations from which no one should expect to get out alive. Suicida was the pride of the contra command at the time.

Striking into northwestern Nicaragua from bases in Honduras, he was inflicting real damage on the Sandinistas while otherwise the war was mostly one of words. Suicida's reputation turned out to be deserved, as Dickey discovered in accompanying a column advancing on the town of Jalapa that ended in a pitched battle with Sandinista forces. More harrowing was the subsequent withdrawal. After an exhausting forced march, they reached the Poteca River. On the other side, Honduras and safety: "And then the fighting started.

There was a burst from one of the FALs. A pause. The clatter of fire from behind. An M-60 answered. The Sandinistas had followed us I had found a refuge behind a little dip in the ground near a deserted shack I lay down totally exposed, unable to go farther, in the ash of a burned garden plot.

My only thought was the rhythm of my labored breathing and the expectation of the shot that would kill me." That shot was never fired. The Sandinistas broke off the engagement. The experience did more than convince Dickey that the reputation of these contras as a fighting force was deserved. Talks with Suicida's men indicated there also was substance to the reports of brutality. They took no Sandinista prisoners.

These freedom fighters were men, Dickey writes, "who loved to kill." And not only Sandinistas. Turning on suspected defectors and pursuing personal feuds, Suicida's men began killing each other. As this got out, the contra leadership's attitude toward Suicida changed from pride to embarrassment. Refusing to accept orders, he became a problem that ultimately was resolved by arrest and execution. Dickey believes the contras pose a serious threat to the San- dinistas.

But, he said in a recent interview amplifying points made in "With the Contras," they have also been of help to the regime they are fighting. Pointing to that threat, the San- dinistas have been able to tighten their grip on Nicaragua. Far from being dislodged, they are in firmer control now than when the war started. As for the American role, Dickey thinks policy makers in Washington seriously miscalculated in thinking that unrest in Nicaragua would produce a groundswell of support for the contras that would drive the Sandinistas out. Nothing of the kind happened.

That leaves this country, now publicly committed by the Reagan administration to the removal of the Sandinistas, in a bind. "If the contras can't do the job and there's a lot of reason to believe they can't what's our alternative?" asks Dickey. "How do we eliminate them? How do we get rid of them?" Don Graff is a columnist for Newspaper Enterprise Association Today in history By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Today is Monday, March 3, Ihe 62nd day of 1986. There are 303 days left in the year. On March 3, 1931, "The Star- Spangled Banner" officially become the national anthem of the United States.

On this date: In 1845, Florida became the 27th stale. In 1847, Ihe invenlor of Ihe telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 1849, Ihe Home Department, forerunner of the Interior Department, was established. In 1875, Bizet's opera "Carmen" made its premiere in Paris. In 1879, Belva Ann Bennetl Lockwood became the first woman to be allowed to practice before the U.S.

Supreme Court. In 1885, the U.S. Post Office began offering special delivery for first-class mail. In 1918, Germany, Auslria and Russia signed Ihe Treaty of Brest-Lilovsk, which ended Russian parlicipalion in World War 1. The treaty was annulled by the November 1918 armistice.

In 19(59, Apollo IX blasted off on a mission to tesl Ihe lunar module. In 1974, nearly 350 people died in one of avialion's worst disasters as a Turkish Airlines DC-10 crashed shortly after takeoff from Orly Airport in Paris. Ten years ago: Mozambique closed its borders and cut off all links with Rhodesia. Five years ago: In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled thai while malhemalical formulas and computer programs cannot be patenled, manufacturing processes that rely on them can be.

One year ago: Britain's coal miners union called off its 357- day-old strike, ending the longest and most violent walkout in British hislory. AftockMd (nffttod to UM for xpublicollon to ony dctpoKhn to it or not hi popv 'ocol nmrt ipontormus origin publithwi ftighti oJ npuWkolkin o( nil om obo Ttx BoyioWW Son molni notionolly known wrltxt' byltrwd ont tkmt do not Sun'i Bible verse Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28 Only cowidvw) for publication. Namn -ill upon rcqurtl tor good and uiMkkwit Muton, rt Th rlntiyo Urttwi By Ned IT'S AN TO ARE UNPLANNED GO JUST ABOUT WELL TWEAA THAT PLANNED..