Banner Graphic, Volume 13, Number 106, Greencastle, Putnam County, 11 January 1983 — Page 7

opinion

l ARPY GIBBS Publisher

City police detective would save time, money

To the Editor: I find it unusual a city the size of Greencastle does not have at least one detective on its police department. Most break-ins and thefts are usually done by the same group of people until they are caught, if they ever are. If we had a detective force or at least one detective, these cases could be cleared up sooner and the people responsible taken off the streets. The taxpayers would be saving money from losses and the break-ins less frequent. It takes an hour or less to process most violations, but investigative work sometimes takes weeks to clean up. When patrolmen have to take this much time from routine duty, the public suffers or if they don't take the time to investigate, the public suffers. In the past year, Greencastle lost more than Ido parking meters. If we had had a detective who could have

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Eyes of Texas, rest of nation as well, on maverick Phil Gramm

Bv SAM ATTLESEY (c) 1983 Dallas Morning News DALLAS - The sprawling 6th Congressional District will be in the national spotlight for the next 30 days as' the Phil Gramm saga shifts from the Potomac to the banks of the Brazos. Gramm’s problems, which led the College Station Democrat to defect to the Republican Party, began in Washington. But the former congressman’s fate is now in the hands of voters in the 6th District, which includes such hamlets as Cotton Gin, Cedar Hill, Bald Prairie and Black Jack. Gramm, a former Texas A&M University economics professor, resigned from the House on Wednesday to seek reelection in a Feb. 12 special election as a Republican, and he starts his "shoeleather” campaign Monday with stops in Johnson County. The throng of national and state reporters expected to cover Gramm’s campaign will even be able to see how the decision

YAF can't spell Walter's name correctly, but they pitch for money

(c) 1983, Los Angeles Times Syndicate •‘Your check for SSOO or even $250 would make me extremely grateful,” the letter says. I don’t doubt it. Checks like that would make me grateful, too. The man with all that gratitude is Sam Pimm, executive director of Young Americans for Freedom. YAF, A WELL KNOWN conservative group, says it has mailed out a couple of hundred thousand letters asking people for money in order to “save” Walter Polovchak. Walter is the 15-year-old Ukrainian struggling to remain in the United States. His parents want him shipped back to them in the Soviet Union. I think YAF is raising money for Walter, anyway. There is a small problem with that. One person who got a letter passed it on to me because it worried her. “Walter’s last name is misspelled,” she wrote. “This causes me to hesitate.” I DON’T BLAME HER. If you can’t spell somebody’s name right, you might not be the best person to raise money for him. And YAF misspells Walter’s name no fewer than 18 times in its mailing. In the mailing, Pimm encourages people to fill out an enclosed “Official Petition to

ER'C BERNSEE Managing Editor

Letter to the Editor

spent time investigating the problems, it would have saved the city a lot of money. When we have more serious incidents, we bring in detectives from Plainfield, the Indiana State Police and others. This makes the department look like a second-rate operation and demoralizes the officers. We have one officer in particular who has done outstanding work in clearing up many major incidents in Greencastle in addition to his job as a patrolman. This has been done with almost nothing to work with and almost no support or recognition and much of the work on his own time. Other officers have had to work under the same conditions or give up completely on investigative work. It is time Greencastle faced up to this responsibility with a detective force. J.H. Greencastle

courage readers to permit publication of their names, requests for use of initials will be honored in most cases. Letters containing personal attacks on individuals, libelous statements or profanity will not be published. Ail letters are subject to editing, although such will be held to a minimum and the intent of a letter will not be altered. Send your letters to: Letters to the Editor, The Banner Graphic, P. O. Box 509, Greencastle, Indiana 46135.

the Banner-Graphic or its individual employees.

plays in Peoria not in Peoria 111., but in Peoria, Hill County. Texas. The district, which meanders from the southern suburbs of Dallas to the Woodlands development north of Houston, is generally considered a Democratic district in state and local politics. But Democrats have sounded a pessimistic note about their chances of knocking off the highly visible Gramm during such a short campaign. “He wouldn't have done this (switch parties, resign and run in a special election as a Republican) unless the polls showed him with a better-than-even chance,” Republican pollster V. Lance Tarrance of Houston said. "I would think Phil Gramm doesn’t do anything unless it is well thought out,” said Tarrance, who conducted a postelection survey for the conservative Gramm in 1982. Tarrance said his poll shows 32 percent of the district residents are Republican voters, 22 percent are ticket splitters, 15

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the United States Congress” asking that Walter “Polochak” not be sent back to the Soviet Union. That there is no such person as Walter “Polochak" does not much trouble Pimm. “Action by Congress is Walter’s only chance,” he says in the letter. BUT IN FACT, Congress is not Walter’s only chance. In fact, it is not even Walter’s best chance. The courts are. Pimm says he wants hundreds of thousands of letters sent to Congress “to save this boy’s life.” “It will cost thousands to continue this emergency petition drive and to put enough pressure on Congress to act,” Pimm says. “Your check for SSOO or even $250 would make me extremely grateful.

No set plan for curbing deficit

Reagan handing Democrats an opportunity

By TOM WICKER c. 198:5 N.Y. Times NEW YORK roundabout answers at his last news conference are a guide to budgetary policy, they suggest that he will not seek new taxes or cut military spending significantly but will attack the budget deficit with further reductions in social spending. That puts him 33 and 1-3 percent on the right track. But with this president, it’s not easy to know when his ideology is speaking, to be overcome later by the more pragmatic pleas of his advisers, or whether in Senator Laxalt’s phrase he is already “very close to set in concrete.” So proceed with caution: —Will he ask for a tax increase? “It's a common rule and an accepted fact that increasing taxes is not the way out of a recession.” —Will he reduce military spending? “If it can be cut. it will be cut. But ... not if it means reducing our ability below the level at which we can declare ourselves safe.” —Will he “stretch out” military spending? “Well, we have looked at such things

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percent are “weak” Democrats and 32 percent are Straight-Democrat voters. “(Democratic Gov.-elect Mark) White carried all the rural counties (against Republican Bill Clements in 1982), but the district has a tendency to be a good ticketsplitting district,” Tarrance said. Seventy-two percent of the registered voters consider themselves conservative, 10 percent moderate and 18 percent liberal, making the district "about 10 percent more conservative than the rest of the state,” Tarrance said. And minority registered voters represent only 10 percent of the district. Tarrancesaid. Of the 11 mainly rural counties, Ronald Reagan carried only four counties against President Jimmy Carter in 1980. But in the populous Dallas, Montgomery and Brazos counties, Reagan easily defeated Carter. Reagan carried the entire district with almost 55 percent of the vote, and Clements received 47.7 percent against Democrat John Hill in the 1978 guber-

“If you can send SIOO or $25 or $lO it might make the difference between freedom and slavery for Walter. ” The YAF is not a fly-by-night outfit. It has been around for more than 20 years and claims a membership of 90,000 in 650 local chapters. But I was very surprised to hear it was raising money for Walter. WALTER’S LAWYERS not only are representing him for free, but they have spent thousands out of their own pockets. And they have never attempted any real fund-raising to get their money back. But here comes the YAF, who has done nothing for Walter, asking people for dough. I called Pimm and asked him some questions: Is the YAF working with Walter’s lawyers? “Yes,” said Pimm. “No,” said Henry Holzer, one of Walter’s lawyers, when I called him. Is the YAF supported by Walter’s lawyers in this effort? “Oh, yes,” said Pimm. “No,” said Holzer. ARE THE LAWYERS happy about what Pimm is doing? “Yes,” said Pimm. “Holzer is thrilled. He is very enthusiastic.” “I am neither thrilled nor enthusiastic,”

Roger Simon

Wicker

and we’ll continue to look. As I say, we’re looking at everything. ” —Will he seek more cuts in social spending? “Now you’ve got a deficit. You want to cut it down, obviously, you’ve got to spend less.” After the first of those answers, everything is downhill. But Reagan amplified his apparent unwillingness to raise taxes by the sensible observation that “the real answer to the deficit is recovery of the economy ... We want (the deficit) reduced.

natorial election, said Chet Upham, the state Republican Party chairman. Bob Slagle, the state Democratic Party chairman, says the district is 56 percent Democratic. Gramm acknowledged the district is more Democratic than Republican. "Of all the 801 l Weevil districts (in Texas), my district voted the lowest percentage for Reagan,” he said. 801 l Weevil is the term for conservative Democrats from the South. But Gramm said the Tarrance poll showed strong support for Reagan and his economic policies and for Gramm’s support of Reaganomics. While Gramm said he was advised by some national GOP political experts not to run in a special election. Democrats say he goes into the special election with advantages: Name identification. Before the latest wave of intense national publicity, Gramm’s name ID in the district was already at 90 percent.

said Holzer. “We are not sponsoring this or endorsing this. We have nothing to do with this.” Walter's other lawyer, Julian Kulas, said: “I was flabbergasted when I first learned of this. I don’t like the whole tone of the letter. I don’t see any reason to raise money this way. And I don’t really know what they are going to do with the money or for Walter.” So I asked Pimm to tell me precisely what he was doing for Walter. “We have sent out a couple of hundred thousand mailings,” Pimm told me. “We hope to raise some money.” How much? I asked. Pimm could not tell me. “Usually, you just break even on these things,” he said. “What you get in just covers the cost.” SO WHY DO IT? Why raise money if it is just going to cover the cost of raising money? "Well, hopefully we will make some money,” Pimm said. “Sometimes you make a little.” And how much is this mailing costing? “I don’t know what the costs are," Pimm said. But what is the money being spent on? “We have placed an ad in News World,” Pimm said. “And we hope to place others.” »

But what we must do is get the economy restored on a long-term, permanent basis. And everything we do must be directed toward that.” However this may have been intended, and whatever shape Reagan’s budget takes, Speaker O’Neill’s House Democrats have here an invitation to stop wringing their hands over the deficit and focus on “the recovery of the economy.” In fact, if unemployment were now under 6 percent, the deficit would be 2 percent or less of gross national product, about what it was in fiscail9Bl (compared to the 5.6 percent of GNP projected for 1985). By throwing the economy into recession, moreover, the Federal Reserve Board, with Reagan’s complicity, has reduced the rate of inflation to 4.5 percent and produced ample unused plant capacity at the cost, of course, of 10.8 percent unemployment. Those figures mean that the economy could be sharply stimulated with little immediate risk of rekindling inflation. Short-term increases in the budget deficit could be recovered and the deficit ultimatelyreduced by added tax revenues flowing from economic growth.

Money. Gramm spent SBOO,OOO in the 1982 election, has $206,000 left in the bank and has a steady stream of contributions since his party-switching announcement Martyrdom. According to editorials in newspapers in the district and to comments of many constituents, Gramm was punished wrongly for “standing up for what he believed was right.” The "quick-draw” campaign. Given Gramm’s money and name ID. Democrats say it would be difficult to mount an effective campaign in 30 days. Working against Gramm’s hopes for reelection will be the turncoat tag, political watchers say. And, Gramm said, “the Republican Party in Texas is at a 20-year low period.” One of his challengers, lame-duck state Rep. Dan Kubiak of Rockdale, intends to make use of the two factors working against Gramm. Regardless of the length of the campaign, as Kubiak said, “the eyes of the nation will be on this district. ”

If the name News World doesn’t ring a bell, don’t feel bad. It didn’t ring one for me, either. So I looked it up. THE NEW’S WORLD is published by News World Communications Inc., which has the financial backing of Unification International, a multinational conglomerate affiliated with the Unification Church, which is headed by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. In other words, the News World is put out by theMoonies. The publisher is Bo Hi Pak, a former South Korean army colonel who figured in the congressional investigation of Korean influence buying on Capitol Hill. The YAF’s apparent fondness for Moonie publications is also why Walter’s name is spelled wrong in the mailing. “You will notice that enclosed in our mailing is a news clipping from The Washington Times,” Pimm told me. I noticed. The Washington Times is the Moonie-financed newspaper in Washington, DC. THE CLIPPING was of Walter’s appearance before a congressional subcommittee last July. The story says, among other things, that Walter “wept at the hearing.” I was sitting about six feet from Walter at that hearing and didn't see him shed a

January 11,1983, The Putnam Countv Banner-Graphic

If, therefore, “the real answer” is “recovery of the economy,” the Democrats would be taking the president at his word if they proposed: —Moving the scheduled July 1 tax cut to Jan. 1, a move in which Reagan has expressed interest. —Restoring earlier cuts in food stamps and welfare payments, and increasing the amount and duration of unemployment benefits all putting money quickly into people’s hands. —lncreasing general revenue sharing to the states and municipalities, to maintain or restore local payrolls. —A new version of the most successful CETA programs, employing people while they’re trained and educated to contribute to the economy; this doesn’t seem much different in principle from the job training program Mr. Reagan says he favors. —A public works program focusing on actual needs not the “make-work, deadend” jobs Reagan derides (although they, too, would put money in the hands of people who now have nothing to spend). In a $3 trillion economy, a program of such measures amounting to S3O billion to S4O billion would not be out of line; and it has to be remembered that for every point of reduction in unemployment, the deficit would be reduced by $25 billion to S3O billion (in rising revenues and falling benefit payments). As a practical political matter, Reagan's opposition to most such ideas, as well as fear of the deficit, would force the Democrats to offer partially compensatory budget reductions. The most obvious target is military' spending, cuts in which command more or less bipartisan agreement already. (Reagan’s stated goal, “the level at which we can declare ourselves safe,” really doesn’t exist in the world of nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation.) The Democrats could also offer help in restraining what the president called "the line on the chart that is going up at the steepest pitch” the growth in entitlement programs, including Social Security. Whatever is done necessarily should avoid immediate payroll tax increases or other steps that would counteract measures of stimulation a point on which Reagan and the Republicans seem to agree. But limits on cost-of-living increases after 1983 might well be considered. The president, in short, has defined the problem but seems unwilling to do anything about it. That’s the Democrats' opportunity.

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tear. But more importantly, the story misspells Walter’s name as “Polochak.” “That’s why we misspelled it," Pimm said. “The story misspelled it and we wanted to mail out the story so we decided to misspell it on purpose so we wouldn't disagree with the story.” That may not be the goofiest thing I ever heard, but it comes in a close second. “We later changed our minds,” Pimm said. “And we are now spelling it correctly.” WALTER’S ATTORNEYS don't want to insult anyone who is on the side of their client. But on the other hand, they don't want to embrace fund-raising efforts over which they have no control. “I was pleased that somebody was supporting Walter,” Holzer said. “But I wasn’t pleased they spelled his name wrong. “If they get to the point where they need us or Walter, then we ll become involved But my best guess is this is a harmless effort that is not going anywhere." Pimm says his intentions are entirely honorable. He says he thinks this is a “great project” for YAF. He says that he. personally, is familiar with Walter's case. I ASKED HIM if he had ever met Walter “No,” he said. “But I’d sure like to." If you ever do, Mr. Pimm, try to get his right.

PHILGRAMM Successful switch?

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