Banner Graphic, Volume 15, Number 351, Greencastle, Putnam County, 26 September 1985 — Page 7
opinion
Letter to the Editor Thanks to prosecutor
To the Editor: It is not often that I thank paid political officials. After all, they do elect to run for office. Make no mistake, Del Brewer couldn’t have asked to try two murder trials in neighboring counties. I don’t think we really elected him to devote countless hours to trial preparation or endless hours away from his own
Support tax reform plan
To the Editor: Every taxpayer and family member should be excited and should be writing and calling his congressman to support the president’s proposed tax reform measures as they refer to the family. These proposals would give a $2,000 deduction per family member. A homemaker who wishes to contribute to an IRA in the amount of $2,000 would be allowed to take that as a deduction as working women outside the home can. The overall reduction in the tax rate would be 9 per cent. Mortgage interest and contributions to charity
Cancer mailings confusing
To the Editor: I am prompted to write this letter in the hope of preventing a possible confusion on the part of Putnam County residents. During the spring, and continuing through the summer months, several cancer organizations have sent mailings into the area soliciting contributions. These groups often include in their title such words as “American,” “Society,” “Cancer,” “Reasearch,” “National,” etc. It seems reasonable to assume that they do this in the knowledge that many people will confuse their organization with the American Cancer Society, or at least imply some connection with it: The opportunity for public confusion is obvious. Just to keep the record clear, the American Cancer Society has no affiliation with any other cancer-related, non-profit, fund-raising operation. Its mailing can be identified by its registered “Sword of Hope” symbol. The Indiana Division of the American Cancer Society is not involved with conducting health-related surveys through the mail. Its volunteers carry iden-
Abortion is horribly violent
To the Editor: In reference to the Sept. 16 article concerning the picketing pro-life activists, I would like to speak up for the other side. It seems that our attention is constantly being turned to the acts of socalled violence caused by the pro-life members. The news media is so caught up with what’s going on in the picket lines that we never hear about the violence that is going on in those abortion clinics. Abortion is a horribly violent act. I could go into great detail of the methods used by the abortionist, but that would not serve my purpose now. If the public had a chance to see a film of an actual abortion, they could accurately judge which group truly promotes violence. There are approximately 1.5 million abortions done yearly here in the U.S. with about 8 per cent of that figure done for reasons of rape, incest or illness. The rest are done as a form of birth control. While most pro-choice groups will not admit to using abortion as a means of birth control, you only have to look in the Greencastle Yellow Pages under the heading “Birth Control Information Centers” to find that they do. The words “termination up to twelve weeks” are meant to sound clinically harmless, but the very word “termination” evokes thoughts of violence. When Janet L. Benshoof, director of the Reproductive Freedom Project,
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private practice and family life. So, I wish to thank Del for his blind commitment to justice and serving the citizens of Putnam County. I hope this letter somehow helps compensate him for all his mental anguish and overtime hours. Scott Davis Greencastle
would be deductible as they are presently. In past years the family and individual taxpayer have carried an increasingly heavy burden of federal taxes, 59 to 80 per cent, with corporations paying 23 to 8 per cent. Don’t you think we should vocally support this tax reform? I sure do and I urge you to write or call Congressman John Myers and Senator Richard Lugar and Dan Quayle and tell them so. Barbara Fuson Greencastle
tification when soliciting contributions, and we are prepared to issue receipts. Some local residents who have contributed by mail may receive soliciations by mail from the ASC District 7 office in Terre Haute. Any contributions made through that office are credited to the Putnam County unit. In late August, this newspaper carried a notice of a most unusual and beneficial program offered by Putnam County Hospital. During the month of September, any woman who wishes may receive a mammograph at half of the regular price. This harmless and painless procedure frequently reveals actual**-potential problem areas not otherwise discovered. u Early detection and treatment are crucially important. The local unit of ACS commends the administration and staff of our fine hospital for its generous offer of a valuable service, and urges any local woman-particularly those 50 years of age or above-who has not yet called the hospital for an appointment, to do so before the end of September. Ray Mizer For the Putnam County Unit, American Cancer Society
proclaims the pro-life people to be radicals who “want to impose one moral order on everyone’s life,” she’s correct in one aspect. We believe that the time to think about birth control is before conception takes (dace. After conception, we are dealing with another human being and the right of that unborn baby to have a chance to live. The pro-life movement is speaking up for the rights of the unborn, the mentally or physically handicapped, as well as the aged. We are standing up for everyone’s most precious right-the right to life. As the sanctity of life continues to erode in this country, we all become at risk. The next issue that we will be faced with is euthanasia. In an article appearing in the March 25,1985 edition of the Banner-Graphic, it was stated that seniors are the fastest growing portion of our population. Will the day come when society will expect you to end your life at a certain time so that the others may live more comfortably? Abortion is a life-and-death issue that concerns all. We must stand up now for millions of innocent unborn human beings and dare to be called radical. Now is the time to restore the sanctity of all human life. The life you help to save may be your own. If you want to know how to help, call Tip Hendrixson at 739-6222. Theresa Hendrixson, secretary Putnam/Owen Right-to-Life
Editorial
Greencastle needs its own snorkel truck
When the most destructive fire in Greencastle’s history struck on Oct. 28, 1874, members of the City Council were in Louisville, looking at fire-fighting equipment. Coincidence, yes, but the entire eastern half of the city’s business district lay in smoldering ruins before community awareness could produce concrete action. That’s a 111-year-old lesson that Greencastle must weigh heavily in the wake of Tuesday’s tragic fire that killed a young woman and, for a while, threatened the entire west side of the courthouse square. Had it not been for the Crawfordsville Fire Department’s snorkel truck, which allowed fire fighters to battle the blaze from above, the situation almost certainly would have been much worse. And, as reported in Wednesday’s Banner-Graphic, luck was with us: the snorkel unit was within a few minutes of leaving for repairs at Indianapolis when the call for assistance came from Greencastle. As emphasized by Greencastle Fire Chief Bob Elmore, a snorkel truck immediately on the scene would not have prevented the loss of life that occurred under the circumstances of Tuesday’s fire. But, he added, an aerial unit would have helped to contain the blaze much more quickly. Snorkel units don’t come cheaply. A $300,000 appropriation for an aerial truck was among more than SBOO,OOO trimmed from the fire department budget during City Council action last Aug. 12. Elmore himself termed the equipment “a dream item, something we need, but obviously can’t afford.” Like most other units of local government, the City of Greencastle has many more demands on its resources than it can possibly meet. Only so much revenue is generated by local taxes and that revenue must satisfy a seemingly endless list of expenses. But Tuesday’s fire re-emphasized what we already knew: we need our own aerial fire-fighting equipment to assure maximum protection of life and property. As was almost the case this week, there may come a day when our luck runs out. The immediate question is how best to acquire what we need. Is a used, but reliable, snorkel truck a viable alternative to a new one? Is it possible to merge public and private funds to buy one? These and other questions must be answered, but let’s guard against the complacency that often develops in the weeks and months that follow an event like Tuesday’s fire. Let’s not allow
Farm subsidies: How much should consumers support?
WASHINGTON (AP) Lawmakers considering a sl4l billion, five-year rewrite of the nation’s farm and food policy must decide how much of the burden taxpayers and consumers should be asked to bear to support farm subsidies ranging from milk to peanuts. The question of who should pay for what always is present when Congress debates farm policy, but this year is different. The debate this time takes place against a backdrop of financial depression in some rural areas unlike anything since the 19305. While they do not dispute the hardships on today’s farm, the Reagan administration and some consumer groups contend Congress is poised to help farmers who don’t need aid along with those who do. With the House scheduled to take up the 1985 farm bill today, more than 200 possible amendments to the massive
Teach morals, ethics in public schools?
c. 1985 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK Should the schools teach morals and ethics and, if so, how? President Reagan and William J. Bennett, his secretary of education, have recently accused the schools of being “value neutral,” but their plea for the teaching of moral values has aroused controversy because it was linked to their quest for prayers in the schools. This makes many parents and others nervous because they believe in the wall that separates church and state. But the latest demand that public schools should instruct children on matters of ethics and morals comes from a man within the education establishment who is not suspect of wanting to breach that wall. Bill Honig, California’s superintendent of public instruction, a former corporate lawyer who gave up the law to teach in inner-city schools, attacks value-neutral teaching in his book “Last Chance for Our Children” (Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.; $12.95). As a school reformer, Honig has pushed for higher academic standards for all children. His demand for tougher requirements please educational conservatives, but he recently proved his independent, if not liberal, views by turning down all seventh- and eighth-grade science textbooks submitted to the state for approval because their treatment of evolution had been diluted in an apparent effort to placate fundamentalists who want to give equal time to the Biblical account of creation. Honig said the issue went beyond evolution to the general “dumbing down” of textbooks, using a favorite phrase of former Secretary of Education T.H. Bell. In his book, Honig recalls his surprise at learning that, after making his case for the teaching of moral and
legislation already had been introduced. Some of the most controversial, dealing with dairy and sugar subsidies, were to open the debate. The first test, on whether to keep sugar price supports at their current 18-cent-per-pound level or to reduce them, was regarded as a bellwether of how well the traditional farm coalition will hold together to protect other crop programs. Among other amendments was a move to do away with a proposed farmer referendum on wheat and corn that would institute substantial marketing restrictions along with higher price supports. Another amendment would scrap the peanut program, which grants franchises to farmers to grow a limited quantity of peanuts at a high support price, while another would rescind the Agriculture Committee’s proposed freeze on “target price” income supports. Robert Thompson, the assistant
ethical values before a group of college students, a faculty member called his plea dangerously reactionary and, to undo the damage, assigned a paper on the hazards of the religious-political group Moral Majority taking over the schools. Honig says he thinks “this panicky confusion” of his position on teaching ethics and moral values with an embrace “of the doctrinaire agenda of Bible Belt evangelism” is not at all unusual. There is, he adds, “a difference between those who want group prayer in the public schools (a practice of religion) and those who want moral content in the curriculum (a fundamental purpose of the schools).” The controversy is a hangover from the 19605, when radical students and their adult mentors denounced the teaching of traditional values as autocratic. Some educators turned to the concept of “values clarification”under which pupils discussed various “strategies” of dealing with moral questions, without any agreed-upon base of what is right or wrong. (The topic is also treated in a recent book, “Yes, Virginia, There is Right and Wrong,” by Dr. Kathleen M. Gow.) Honig says he believes that “children are not automatically moral or ethical.” This view clashes with the concept of children as noble savages, whose inherent goodness will emerge if they are protected from society’s corruption. Public sentiment today is in Honig’s corner. In a Gallup Poll last year on the importance of a variety of goals for the public schools, the development of “standards of what is right and wrong,” ranked second, after “the abilitz to speak and write correctly. ” Ethics and morals, Honig warns, are not matters of
Thursday, Sept. 26,1985, The Putnam County Banner Graphic
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the urgency of the situation to diminish. Downtown buildings, university dormitories and classroom buildings, local businesses and industry-no one knows where or when we’ll need a snorkel unit next. But let’s hope we don’t have to count on a lucky circumstance 30 miles away when minutes mean the difference between life and death, survival or destruction.
secretary of agriculture for economics, says the bill’s provision freezing income protection payments is “an extremely blunt instrument” for helping farmers. New department figures show that in the past year, only 17 cenLs of every dollar in income subsidies went to farmers defined as in financial stress because of heavy debt. “All these people who talk about helping low-income farmers are simply missing the mark,” Thompson told reporters Wednesday. House Democrats, who controlled writing of that body’s farm bill draft, have insisted farm income should at least be held constant in any new legislation. As written, the bill contains a virtual fouryear freeze on income support payments, and even liberalizes the subsidies by creating new exemptions from the current $50,000-per-farmer annual payment limit. Rep. Tom Downey, D-N.Y., and Rep.
Willis Gradison, R-Ohio, sent around fivepound bags of sugar to House colleagues on the eve of the voting, with a letter attached arguing that Canadians are paying only half the price Americans bear for the same item in the grocery store. Downey and Gradison will attempt to cut the sup-'* port price by a penny a year over the next three years. The House dairy provision revives an earlier program paying farmers to refrain"* from milk production and taxing all dairy farmers to underwrite the diversion’s cost. It also establishes a new price-support for- * mula that would increase support levels, a move consumer groups argue would be an incentive to produce even more surpluses. Rep. James Olin, D-Va., and House Minority Leader Robert Michel, R-111., will propose a simple cut in the support price instead, with future cuts dependent on the size of the surplus.
personal taste. Abdication of the responsibilty to teachmoral and ethical values, he asserts, “says to children that we adults don’t hold anything sacred.” How is Honig’s goal to be accomplished? The teacher as role model is important, but so are examples within what is taught about “such broad principles as the sanctity of human life, respect for the dignity of the individual, and the importance of the family and personal moral effort.” It includes an understanding of the guarantees of freedom of speech, religion, association, and the press, of equality before the law, of respect for property rights. Values, Honig writes, can be taught through literature. For example, “The Ox Bow Incident,” by Walter van Tilburg Clark, showsthat vigilantes are intolerable in a free society. Honig tells teachers: “Our literature has a way of deflating ideologues and true believers of every stripe.” Are you a laissez-faire capitalist? Then read Frank Norris’s “The Octopus,” and squirm. An unregenerate Bolshevik? Try Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon.” Pacifists should be sure to read “The Diary of Anne Drank” or William Shakespeare’s “Henry V.” And Marine Corps recruits should study Stephen Crane’s “The Red Badge of Courage” or Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front.” But he also warns that “the classroom is not the place for settling adult squabbles.” For instance, he says, children should not be taught that all those who oppose a nuclear freeze are warmongers, nor that all those who favor a woman’s right to an abortion are murderers. In the early grades, he adds, it is best to stick to areas of broadpublic consensus.
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