Banner Graphic, Volume 9, Number 286, Greencastle, Putnam County, 9 August 1979 — Page 7
opinion LARRY GIBBS ERIC BERNSEE Publisher Managing Editor
Letters to the Editor Shelter house filthy
To the Editor: Our family recently held a reunion in Greencastle's Robe-Ann Park. I was under the impression much was being done to improve the park. If that’s true, I don’t know where the improvement is. The shelter house we had reserved looked as if it had not been cleaned this summer. It was filthy! Also, there was no water and no electricity. This made it impossible to try to clean the shelter ourselves. I
Why no rain checks?
To the Editor: Concerning Kids’ Day at the Fair Wednesday afternoon from 1 to 5 p.m. I took two children there to enjoy the rides. There isn’t too much for the little ones to enjoy at the fair. I carried a four-year-old and led an eight-year-old through mud and pouring rain to get them a ticket for the rides. The man who gave me the wrist bands said as soon as the rain stopped, the rides would start. I asked about a rain check and he said very smartly that he had no control over the weather and that I’d have to take my chances with everyone else. Well, I waited for three hours and no
It's the same thing
To the Editor: I have just finished reading Monday’s paper and “About the Fair Parade”. I was just wondering how many floats and bands (besides Shrine Clubs) he has tried to obtain for the parade. Of course, he wouldn’t put down the Shriners, being the ex-president, but how many years has he sat in the
The oil lobby It's the Slick and Smiley Show
By RICHARD HALLORAN c. 1979 N. Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON - It’s known on Capitol Hill, sometimes admiringly and sometimes begrudgingly, as the Slick and Smiley Show. William T. Slick Jr. is a senior vice president of Exxon U.S.A., and he is in charge of government and public affairs at the company’s Houston headquarters. His colleague, Donald E. Smiley, is a vice president of the parent Exxon Corp. and is in charge of its Washington office. Together, Slick and Smiley lead a squad of oil lobbyists that is widely considered among the most effective in Washington. “They really get out and lobby,’’ an admiring competitor said. Smiley quietly agreed: “Yes, we do.” Not everyone in Washington admires Exxon’s lobbying prowess, of course. Notable among the nonadmirers is the president of the United States. In news conferences and speeches, President Carter has repeatedly assailed the entire “oil lobby” of which the giant Exxon is but a small part for opposing his proposed “windfall” profits tax and other energy measures. Immediately after he proposed the tax last April, Carter predicted that the oil lobby would be “all over Capitol Hill like a chicken on a June bug.” More recently, he blasted what he called “the enormous power of a well-organized special interest” for trying to thwart his efforts. In the Babel of voices and causes that is Washington, Smiley and Slick and scores of other oil lobbyists are competing mainly for access to influential people, the assurance that they will return their calls, hear them out and take their point of view seriously. By most accounts, that access and trust comes from providing reliable information to congressmen and their staffs, who are deluged with an endless variety of complicated problems Especially useful information would include an accurate assessment of how proposed legislation would affect a congressman’s home district. The lobbyist works his influence
do know, too, that the shelter house nearby was in the same condition. I might also add we paid $5 for this. I also wonder why, on a Sunday when there’s a lot of people in the park, can’t there be a front and rear entrance open to the park. Or at least have the park posted that there is only one entrance and exit. Seems to me there is room for a lot of improvement in Robe-Ann Park. Reta Sutton Kay Thompson R. 1, Greencastle
rides. Being a homemaker, I had to get home by the supper hour. I can’t understand the Fair Board allowing them to sell all those tickets in the rain, then not operate all afternoon. They took in lots of money and didn't put out a thing. We live in and support the county, then these amusements come in and take our money and get by with it. We have a lot of disappointed children who won’t forget this. A rain check should surely have been in order and I don’t think I’m alone in this belief. Thanks for printing this. Mrs. T.N. R. 5, Greencastle
sun watching them do the same thing over and over every year at the parade? I like the Shriners, but who likes seeing the same thing over and over? Why don’t they change their routines? Brad Sandy R. 1, Cloverdale
by playing what is known as “constituent politics.” Campaign contributions from business political action committees, for example still exist. But, according to several lobbyists, contributions have become less important because of recent federal election campaign restrictions. However, a contribution does help open a door, the lobbyists acknowledge. Smiley and his staff of six collect political intelligence on legislative and executive-branch actions that will likely affect Exxon or the oil industry and pass it along to New York or Houston, together with their recommendations on what Exxon should do. In Houston, Slick assembles specialists to analyze that intelligence, to research and write position papers and to plan Exxon’s strategy on the issue at hand. That work, in turn, is passed back to Smiley in Washington, where his lobbyists seek out members of Congress, administration officials, and, in particular, their staffs, to expound the views on the world’s largest oil company. “Exxon is unique,” another lobbyist said. “They can get together a task force of 10 people, do a position paper, fly it up from Houston overnight, and send an expert to explain it.” Those in the oil lobby, however, vigorously dispute the portrait their critics paint of a vast monolith, a powerful conspiracy, a mysterious legion of insidious lobbyists. It all depends, the oil people contend, on whose side the lobbyists take: When they are against you, they are sinister; when they are for you, as President Harry S. Truman once said, “we would call them citizens appearing in the public interest.” “There is no oil lobby; there are dozens of oil lobbies,” a long-time lobbyist here asserted. A senior official at the Department of Energy agreed, “There’s nothing monolithic about the oil lobby,” he said. “Out there, it’s a sea of constantly changing alliances.” The most pronounced difference is between the large international oil com-
Too much technology to Soviets? c. 1979 N.Y. Times News Service CHICAGO Strong concern over what it called the “transfer of critical technology to the Soviet Union” in the form of computers, precision ball bearings, seismic equipment, oil-drill bits and other products was expressed Wednesday by the executive council of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations. The council, ending its three-day summer session, said that exports were vital to the United States, providing jobs and income for American workers, farmers and businessmen. But it added that it was dangerous for the nation to send abroad new technological devices that, in the council’s opinion, weakened the nation’s technological superiority. The council said it was particularly concerned about Soviet acquisition of American products that gave the Soviet Union devices it lacked or that had military application. The council adopted a statement that said the “list of recent Soviet acquisitions is enough to make Lenin’s statement that the Western democracies would ‘sell us the rope for their own hanging’ seem like a prophecy.” Asserting that many of these technological devices had application for nuclear warheads, armor-piercing rockets and submarine detection devices, the council said it would support legislation to control the transfer of what the federation believed was sensitive technology. Legislation to amend the Export Administration Act is scheduled for consideration when Congress returns in September. The council said that it would also work to limit exports that, in its view, contributed to inflation in this country, and that it would work to prohibit the sale of Alaskan oil to foreign nations. On another matter, George Meany,’the AFL-ClO’s president, who is ailing and unable to attend the meeting, called the council, according to Lane Kirkland, secretary-treasurer, to express his “absolute outrage” over a statement issued Tuesday by the Chamber of Commerce of the United States. The statement condemned the federation’s call for a study of possible nationalization of the oil industry. The federation said Monday that the nation should seriously consider nationalizing the industry if it did not more adequately serve the American people. The chamber indicated that Meany had always been a champion of free enterprise, and that the council, with Meany absent, had issued a “call for socialism” as it looked for “something dramatic to highlight the new leadership.”
panies, known as the “majors,” and the smaller “independents.” “That’s been a definite improvement over the last five years,” the spokesman for one independent oil company said. “We’ve finally established the difference between the small producers, and Exxon and Texaco and all those big guys.” In Washington, the majors like Texaco Inc. and the the Standard Oil Co. of California are regarded as industry oriented because they are affected by anything that happens to oil. By contrast, companies like Ashland Oil Inc. are considered issue oriented. Ashland’s executives tend to be uninterested in the windfall profits tax because their company has little domestic crude oil to be taxed. Among the independents, it can be a free-for-all. They run the gamut of explorers, producers, pipeline operators and truckers, jobbers and refiners. Their broadest trade group is the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which has 5,100 members in 33 states. But there are dozens of smaller, more specific associations, There are basic differences in tactics among the oil companies and associations. Some prefer that their own people do the lobbying; others hire Washington firms with good contacts in the administration and particularly on Capitol Hill. Some company men typically look on Washington lobbyists as “hired guns,” out for themselves, while the Washington firms deprecate the company men as “bureaucrats,” who do not understand the political scene. Top-flight lobbyists can clear as much as SIOO,OOO or more a year for their efforts, while salaries for most company lobbyists range between $20,000 and SBO,OOO. Those in consulting and legal firms charge fees of S3OO a day and up. Nobody knows the overall cost of oil lobbying, which includes Washington operations, public relations, advertising and campaigns to involve shareholders and employees. The lobbying laws do not require extensive reports. But the fact that it runs into hundreds of millions of dollars seems safe to say.
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A windmill saga Beating the system not so easy
By ASTRID RONNING c. 1979 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK The most original wedding gift I received was a windmill, a present from my husband Frank, which we installed to generate electricity for our home. Occasionally, it does. Home is a small island off the coast of Connecticut —a Victorian cottage on an acre of solid rock. Much to Frank’s delight, since he feels that all utility companies are out to get him, there is no electric line from the mainland. We do have a telephone, a water line from shore and bottled gas, but Frank considers these temporary luxuries and is researching cisterns, solar water heaters and homemade methane gas. Our backyard power plant is a Dunlite 2,000-watt wind generator with three 10-foot blades mounted atop a 60-foot Rohn guyed tower. It all looks very much like a television transmitting station with three starched flags at the top. One cannot, however, simply put up a windmill and plug in the toaster: We have 19 six-volt storage batteries (to hold the electricity cranked out by the windmill); a 2000-watt inverter (to convert the direct current coming from the windmill to alternating current, which is normal for household use); and a 2K Onan propane gas generator (to be used as our backup source of electricity in the unlikely event wind power is not enough). Actually, I understand none of it. April 1978 We are lulled to sleep every night by the gentle whirring outside the window. We delight in showing off our energy system and explain in great detail how it works to anyone mildly interested. We are constantly mistaken by passing boaters for a Coast Guard weather station. We photograph the windmill from every angle, enchanted by the shadows cast over the island at sunset. One day the inverter doesn’t click on automatically as it should and we are directed by the specialists to hit it with a rubber mallet until it does. We do. It does. May 1978 It seems that even with a windmill, one should try to conserve power. Our life becomes circumscribed by how much current we use. We begin shutting off the refrigerator overnight. Using my electric curlers calls for advance planning and I discover one morning that they can, in an emergency, be heated in a vegetable steamer over the gas stove. A light negligently left on becomes the leading topic of discussion at the dinner table and from now on we are to plug lights into only the direct current outlets. This gives us straight windmill power, avoiding the inverter and saving the two whole amps it uses clicking itself on. As a result, we develop headaches reading by the fluctuating light that surges in accordance with the variable winds. No one will admit to plugging the stereo into the direct current instead of the alternating current outlet and blowing out the amplifier. June 1978 The bills finally come in for the windmill and are enormous. “1 Jar of Vaseline” for $2 is curiously listed beneath “1 Wind Energy Conversion Plant” for $8,235. We are advised by our accountant that although we might be eligible for a tax break on our wood stoves and new insulation, a windmill deduction is not yet possible. He further urges Frank, an actor, to accept the next part offered. Frank spends most of the month doing a movie in Japan and I cope with voltmeters and capacitors, reading the daily water levels in each of the 19 batteries. July 1978 There is no wind, and none of any significance is predicted. To keep the refrigerator going we have to use our gas generator full time. It needs a complete oil change every 35 hours of running time and we are at a loss as to where to dispose of the gallons of used motor oil collecting on the back porch. It uses up propane gas faster than we get it delivered, so we must juggle the 100-pound tanks from shore ourselves. The noise is unbearable. Summer guests seeking a glimpse of island paradise are given the choice of shouting over the racket with ice in their drinks or having a quiet conversation over a mug of warm beer. August 1978 The electrician is making house calls three or four times a week. The diagnosis is that the inverter is too powerful for the refrigerator, and this, along with the lack of wind, explains why our system isn’t working at full capacity, let alone any capacity. The gas generator, long overtaxed, can now only be started by disconnecting the automatic start wires, holding the gas switch in the “on” position, and thumping the circuit box with a two-by-four. Toward the end of the month we are incensed to see a regatta in full sail skimming by and the windmill not turning. When it fails to start by jiggling the brake line, Frank terrifies me by climbing the tower to give it a spin. September 1978 The night before our Labor Day party, the gas generator, with a final death rattle, falls apart. We have food for 50 in the refrigerator, so must boat to shore for bags of ice. A phone call reveals that the generator can probably be repaired for SSOO, after the repairman takes a look we’re told we’d be better off buying a bigger one for S9OO.
July 9,1979, The Putnam County Banner Graphic
Frank, in a fury, spends four days tracking down the windmill specialists from the local store who, it turns out, have had their hands full in Massachusetts tending to someone else’s wayward windmill. He tells them that if they had installed the right system, we wouldn’t be having these problems, and that until they correct the mistakes he won’t pay them the $2,000 still due. They announce their intention to sue. October 1978 We are now living out of coolers and ice buckets and the house hasn’t been vacuumed in two months. We are childishly not speaking to the windmill people, nor they to us. By chance we run into them on the town dock one afternoon. A heated discussion with much name-calling ensues but to the dismay of the townsfolk, who have relished each chapter of the windmill saga, no one gets punched in the face nor shoved in the water. November 1978 While letters fly back and forth between lawyers, we close up the island and make our usual move to a sublet on shore for the winter. Frank is rude to a total stranger who says cheerfully, ‘ ‘So how’s the windmill working? ’’. It is now summer of 1979 and we are again living on the island, having reached a tentative agreement with the windmill specialists. They replaced our inverter with a smaller, less powerful one and rewired and converted a refrigerator to run on direct current. We have been assured in great technical detail that this new arrangement should solve all our problems. The smaller inverter, however, cannot handle our few appliances; to iron or set my hair, the gas generator must be used. For the amount of money we've spent so far on the windmill project more than $12,000, including electricians’ bills, maintenance costs, lawyers’ fees and gas for the generator we could have paid for three electric lines from shore and had the convenience of being able to run the refrigerator and the vacuum at the same time.
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