Banner Graphic, Volume 14, Number 277, Greencastle, Putnam County, 30 July 1984 — Page 2

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The Putnam County Banner-Graphic, July 30,1984

Politicking left up to Congress SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) - President Reagan is tending to ranch chores at his vacation hideway, leaving politicking to Republicans in Congress who hope to force Democrats to vote on several sensitive issues during their current three-week session. At his news conference last week and in paid political television advertisements, the president blamed House Democrats for stalling on six pieces of legislation he wants passed before the November election. The bills range from an anti-crime package and a balanced-budget amendment to tuition tax credits. One of the measures, which would allow religious student groups to use public high schools for meetings, was passed by Congress last week. It will be signed by Reagan, probably this week. The president and White House aides are trying to portray the matter as a test of the “new realism,” the campaign theme of Democratic challenger Walter F. Mondale. In his campaign advertisements, Reagan called on Mondale and his running mate, Rep. Geraldine A. Ferraro, D-N.Y., to convince House Speaker Thomas bp. O’Neill to bring the items up for a vote. “They can exercise that leadership,” the president said in the political commercial. He said the pending legislation “seems a perfect test of whether the Democrats are concerned about reducing deficits, rewarding work and thrift and making our cities and neighborhoods safer and increasing personal liberties throughout our land.” Four years ago, as he was seeking the presidency, Reagan promised to balance the federal budget. But the deficit is currently soaring near S2OO billion a year. Reagan favors a constitutional amendment calling for, but not exactly requiring, a balanced budget. All of the legislation in question provides Reagan with campaign themes in his reelection bid. The president arrived in California on Saturday to formally open the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Then he flew by helicopter to his isolated ranch in the Santa Inez Mountains to begin his 18day vacation. While Mondale hits the campaign trail in the South, the president intends to remain completely out of the public eye until Aug. 13. At that point, he will return to Los Angeles to prepare for the private wedding of his daughter, Patti Davis, the next day. Reagan returns to Washington on Aug. 15 for a few days before heading to the Republican National Convention in Dallas, stopping en route to campaign. The House is expected to follow the Senate’s lead this week and g ve quick approval to legislation guaranteeing Social Security recipients a cost-of-living increase on Jan. 1,1985, even if the rate of inflation remains below the 3 percent trigger for automatic inflation adjustments. One of the other measu es would allow non-working spouses without incomes to set aside $2,000 a year, instead of the current $250, in a tax-free Individual Retirement Account a measure rejected in Congress earlier this year.

Soviets insisting arms talks are still blocked

MOSCOW (AP) The Soviet Union maintained its hard line today that space weapons talks w ; th the United States are “impossible” and made no public response to a U.S. diplomatic note that specifically agreed to such discussions in September. The only comment from the major Soviet media on the issue this morning was a two-sentence statement on Radio Moscow referring to Sunday’s television appearance by U.S. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. “The American administration is deliberately blocking the talks proposed by the Soviet Union to prevent the militarization of outer space,” Radio Moscow said. “In an ABC television in-

Ban ner-Graphic "It Waves For All" USPS 142-020 Conjolidatlon of The Daily Bannar Established 18S0 Tha Harald The Dally Qraphlc Established 1883 Telephone 653-5151 Published daily except Sundays and holidays by LuMar Newspapers. Inc. at 100 North Jackson St.. Qreencsstle, Indiana 48135. Entered In the Post Office at Qreencsstle, Indiana, aa 2nd class mall matter under Act of March 7,1878. Subscription Rates Per Week, by carrier M.lO Per Month, by motor route ‘4.95 Mall Subscription Rates R.R. In Rest of Rest of Putnam County Indiana U.S.A. 3 Months ‘15.75 ‘IB.OO ‘17.25 8 Months ‘30.30 ‘30.80 ‘34.50 1 Year >59.80 >60.80 >69.00 Mall subscriptions payable In advance . . not accepted In town and where motor route service la available. Member of the Associated Press The Associated Press la entitled exclusively to the use for republlcatlon of all the local news printed In this newspaper

V 'I '/ M Pt J) 1 ■

It's all green and wrinkled, but to the Internal Revenue Service it's still $1,300. That's the amount the IRS said Don Barnes of Richland, Miss., owed. Barnes delivered the sum in wadded-up $1 bills to the IRS office at

1-65 billboard boom worries state's officials SEYMOUR, Ind. (AP) - State officials aren't sure what action to take to eradicate a boom of possibly illegal billboards along Interstate 65 in southern Indiana. It’s been two years since the state received a letter from the Federal Highway Administration, complaining about the number and condition of billboards in Jackson and Scott count es along the interstate. The Highway Beautification Act, which went into effect in 1965, provides that 10 percent of federal highway funding can be withheld from a state that does not comply with “effective control” of billboards and signs along interstates. But Donald B. Gordon, manager of the state Department of Highways’ appraisal section, said local zoning boards are skirting the law, and state officials don’t know what can be done about the problem. “What has haphened in those counties is that those county zoning boards have seen fit to strip zone areas along the interstate to either commercial or industrial purposes, which allows for outdoor advertising,” said Gordon. “At this time we don’t know whethe we have any control over the county zoning boards,” he said. Gordon met last week with a deputy attorney general to try to determine what can be done.

terview,... Weinberger has repeated views which virtually make the talks impossible.” There has been no mention in the Soviet media of a diplomatic note that State Department spokeswoman Anita Stockman said Saturday was sent to Moscow, explicitly agreeing to discuss anti-satellite and other space weapons. “We have accepted the Soviet proposal,” the U.S. announcement said. “We are serious about substantive talks in Vienna. We are prepared to go there and talk about outer space, including antisatellite weapons, and we have no preconditions.” The Soviet view that the talks are im-

Last Marines leaving Lebanon

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) The last U.S. Marine combat unit in Lebanon began its pullout at dawn today, preparing to join 2,000 members of their amphibious unit who have been waiting in warships offshore since February. The Marines, who started the pullout by floating three armed amphibious vehicles out to the flotilla, belong to a combat unit of 90 to 100 men stationed in west Beirut to guard the seaside U.S. Embassy. The entire unit is expected to transferred to the five offshore ships by Tuesday, according to Western sources who asked not to be identified, and their guard duties at the embassy will be assumed by a Marine security detachment which reports to the U.S. State Department. Simultaneously, U.S. Embassy personnel will finish moving from the seaside building to a heavily guarded and blockaded smaller compound 500 yards

Jackson as a protest to what he believes is a lack of rights in dealing with the IRS. Barnes also gave the agency the shirt off his back in another symbolic protest move. (AP Wirephoto).

world

Convict con men

Inmates' postal scheme spreads from Phoenix to Michigan City

PHOENIX, Ariz. (AP) A scheme to persuade innocent bystanders to cash phony money orders for convict pen pals hit two additional Arizona people last week, authorities say. And postal inspectors say the scheme is spreading to prisons throughout the nation as word spreads among convicts as to the relative ease of carrying it out. Postal Inspector Charles Tillman of Memphis, Tenn., coordinating a nationwide investigation of the scam by the Postal Inspection Service, said inmates at the Mississippi Department of Corrections in Parchman, Miss., and at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, have written more than $1.3 million in phony U.S. Postal Service money orders during the past two years. Tillman said the scam now has spread to state-prison systems in Tennessee, the Carolinas and Oregon. He was unable to provide the total amount in phony money

possible was reinforced in a meeting Friday between Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko and former U.S. Sen. George McGovern. The former South Dakota senator, who was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972, told reporters Saturday that during his talk with Gromyko, “We discussed the latest offer from the United States on the talks proposed for September in Vienna. Gromyko said he doesn’t expect the talks to take place. He seemed convinced there would be no talks.” But the Soviet minister’s remarks were made before Ms. Stockman announced the State Department overture Saturday. In his television appearance, Wein-

away in west Beirut and to an annex in east Beirut where most embassy personnel will live. In addition to the 15-Marine security detachment which all U.S. embassies have, the new diplomatic quarters will be guarded by a Lebanese unit recruited from among local militiamen Druse and Shiite Moslams in the west and Christians in the east. The British Embassy, which shared the seaside compound with the United States, moved to another building in west Beirut last week. U.S. officials said earlier that once the embassy had moved from the conspicuous compound on the seafront, the Marine amphibious unit would not be needed and take up other duties, eventually returning to the United States. All but the guard unit have been aboard the ships since the main Marine force was pulled out in February following the breakdown of U.S.

orders written by prisoners since the scheme started about four years ago. Postal Inspector John S. Nurczyk, Jr. of Phoenix said the latest Arizona victims are a Mesa woman who cashed $4,000 worth of the forged money orders and a Phoenix man who cashed about $2,300 worth. The Mesa woman had an additional $2,900 in forged orders she had not yet cashed, Nurczyk said. The woman contacted postal authorities after a neighbor told her of reading a newspaper account of the scam on Wednesday, Nurczyk said. He said the woman, who is in her 50s and lives by herself, had mailed her name to a “lonely hearts” organization in Canada. The woman’s name subsequently was placed in a publication called “Cupid’s Destiny,” which carries names of people desiring penpals. The name was picked up from that publication by an inmate in the prison in

berger had said, “We will go to Vienna, but we are not going to Vienna kowtowing to, or capitulating to Soviet demands and preconditions. “We’ll talk about all the things they want to talk about,...” he said. “But we will insist also on talking about the things we want to talk about the reduction of nuclear missiles.” The Soviets have said that the talks, tentatively scheduled to begin Sept. 18 in Vienna, must be limited to space weapons. The Soviets walked out of nuclear arms reduction discussions in Geneva last year after NATO countries began deploying U.S.-built missiles in Western Europe to counter Soviet nuclear missiles.

peacemaking efforts. During the period when the main Marine force was ashore between September 1982 and the February pullout a total of 265 Marines and other U.S. servicemen were killed, including 241 in the truckbombing of the Marine post at Beirut airport in October 1983. The pullout came hours after Druse and Sunni Moslem militiamen battled with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades in the streets of West Beirut before they were stopped by the Lebanese army. Police reported two killed, including a civil defense worker, and 15 wounded, 10 of them civilians. The battle in Beirut erupted about noon in Sakiet el-Janzir, a middle class neighborhood of high-rise apartment buildings a few hundred yards from the main Hamra shopping district.

Anti-porn ordinance gets court challenge

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - A city ordinance that has attracted nationwide publicity for seeking to combat pornography by considering it a form of sexual discrimination undergoes its first court challenge this week. U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker was scheduled to begin hearing arguments today on the ordinance’s constitutionality. Because the lawyers for both sides have already submitted lengthy written arguments and evidence, today’s hearing, which was scheduled to begin at 10 a.m., was not expected to last more than a few hours. The ordinance, which has not yet gone into effect, allows women and others offended by pornography to seek civil damages and a court order that a publication or movie be banned. Minneapolis drafted a similar ordinance last year, which was vetoed by that city’s mayor in January. City officials say the ordinance is needed because of evidence linking continued exposure to pornography to rape, child abuse, prostitution and other crimes. But the American Booksellers Association as to freedom of speech. They have called it “incomprehensible,” “vague” and a classic example of prior restraint. Critics claim that if the ordinance takes effect, it could result in the banning of such' books as John Updike’s recently published “The Witches of Eastwick,” Voltaire’s classic “Candide” and Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple,” which won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction. They contend it could encompass movies like “10,” “Body Heat” and “Dressed to Kill.” “If the city of Paris had had the Indianapolis ordinance when Manet displayed his ‘Luncheon on the Grass’ in 1863, Manet, rather than being harangued in public for scandalizing the art world, may have been sued for damages,” the plaintiffs wrote in a brief. “Luncheon,” a classic of French im-

Pa chman, who began corresponding with the woman, Nurczyk said. He said the convict wrote to the woman that he wound up in prison because he fell asleep at the wheel of a car and was involved in a fatal auto accident. The convict said he needed her to cash the money orders for him so he could hire an attorney to gain his release. Nurczyk said the second Arizona victim to come to light last week is a Phoenix man whose brother is incarcerated at the Indiana state prison at Michigan City. Postal inspectors declined to release the names of the Mesa woman and Phoenix man, stating that they will not be prosecuted for their roles in the scam. The Postal Service reported earlier last week that a Sun City woman had cashed $2,000 in phony money orders from a Parchman inmate, and an Arizona State University student cashed SI,OOO in money orders. It said SI,BOO of the cash given to the Sun City woman was recovered after a

lowa town itching to take big bite out of annual mosquito problem

RICEVILLE, lowa (AP) Hundreds of townspeople itching to get even with a certain needle-nosed nuisance stepped into their backyards and, on cue, aimed a haze of insecticide at the mosquitoes making their summer miserable. A tornado-warning siren wailing Sunday night was the signal that spelled doom for the blood-sucking pests that leave behind an itchy bump in a usually impossible-to-reach spot. The “Mosquito Shoot-out” was organized by M.E. Messersmith, editor of the Riceville Recorder newspaper, who said that in addition to letting off a lot of insecticide the event was a chance for people to let off a little steam. “It’s just one of those cases where the whole town united to get something done and had fun with it,” Messersmith said. “I think everyone was looking forward to hearing that siren blow.” When the call to arms came at precisely 7 p.m., men, women and children wielding 16-ounce cans of spray lined the streets and scurried around shrubbery, filling the air with a deadly mist they hoped would take the bite out of the annual mosquito problem. Cans of Raid Yard Guard were distributed free by Boy Scouts last week to each household and residents were asked to hold their fire until the

pressionism, portrayed a nude woman picnicking with two fully clothed men. It exemplifies a situation that the plaintiffs claim could fit one of the ordinance’s necessary criteria: “a scenario of degredation .. in a context that makes these conditions sexual.” City officials, however, make an important distinction in their arguments for the ordinance. They say the law does not violate the First Amendment because, according to its definition, pornography is not speech. It is not the idea of subordinating women; it is the actual practice of subordinating women. The city also denies that the law is vague or overbroad, citing a list of criteria that need to be met for a complaint to be justified. The ordinance provides for judicial review, and the city maintains that the ordinance would never take in the numerous books or movies the plaintiffs contend are threatened. Among the most forceful speakers for the ordinance is Linda Marchiano, who as “Linda Lovelace,” turned the X-rated movie “Deep Throat” into a box office success and an invitation to community disgust. Ms. Marchiano will not appear at the hearing, but she did submit a friend-of-the-court brief in which she tells of being abducted by a pimp, beaten, tortured and forced at gunpoint to have sex with a dog. It was only under hypnosis, she says, that she was able to perform the sexual acts that made her famous. Judge Barker has been asked to review evidence of pornography bought at adult bookstores in Indianapolis, including films of explicit sexual activity and magazines in which women are beaten and seem to enjoy being raped. According to studies used by the city, prolonged exposure to this type of material can make the viewers “see a female victim of rape as significantly less injured, as a more worthless individual and as more responsible for her own sexual assault.” Pornography is sex discrimination, city officials say.

postal clerk who cashed the money orders noticed they had been altered. The other three victims cashed the money orders at banks. Nurczyk said the banks are attempting to recover the cash from the victims. Tillman, the Memphis inspector coordinating the investigation nationally, said that is one of the more vicious aspects of the racket that banks can demand money from people who cash the money orders to make up for the losses. Tillman said convicts at the prison in Mississippi have written about $850,000 in phony money orders since Oct. 1,1982. “We’ve had an individual who has cashed around $27,000 of them a Canadian resident,” he said. He said the scheme seems to have started at the Mississippi prison and spread. Postal inspectors said many of the perpetrators are lifers or others serving long prison sentences.

siren blew, so as to better catch the insects by surprise. Half of the 31 cases of the insecticide were donated by the manufacturer. The City Council and Community Club provided S3OO to purchase the remainder so that each of the town’s 365 households would have a can. The excess money was used to supply food and beverage at a picnic for all townspeople just before the siren blew. Messersmith estimated that as many as 600 of this northeastern lowa town’s 919 residents attended the picnic. “I know that we planned enough food for 700,” he said, “and we almost ran out.” People at the picnic, clad in brightly colored mosquito hunting attire, eagerly anticipated the spraying. “We’re going to do some shootin’ here pretty soon,” said Bill Stevenson. After the siren blew all that could be heard was the hiss of spray leaving carts and stalking its prey. Fred and Emily Elwood attacked their backyard bushes and neighbors up and down the street could be seen doing likewise. Families set up lawn chairs and gathered in groups to watch the battle. After 10 minutes the hunters disappeared into their houses and all that remained was a thin mist and empty cans.