The Mail-Journal, Volume 6, Number 15, Milford, Kosciusko County, 14 May 1969 — Page 9

I i. PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY The Milford Mail (EeL 1888) Syracuae-Wawaaee Journal (Eat 1907) Consolidated Into The Mail-Journal Feb. 15, 1962 DEMOCRATIC ARCHIBALD E. BAUMGARTNER, Editor and Publisher DELLA BAUMGARTNER, Business Manager Box 8 Syracuse, Ind., — 46567

Armed Forces Day

Armed Forces day is Saturday and honors members of the armed forces. It replaces the former air force, army and navy days and is observed by Presidential proclamation. In times like these when the young men of our country are fighting and dying on the battle field we need to be aware of what they are doing for us and take time out of our busy schedules to honor them.

Happy Birthday Mr. Truman

Belated birthday wishes go to Harry S. Truman, 33d president of the United States who celebrated his birthday on May 8. Mr. Truman served as President of this country from 1945 to 1953 taking over the Nation’s top office as World War II was drawing to a close. He ordered the dropping of the atomic bombs that hastened the Japanese surrender, broke the Soviet blockade of West Berlin with an air lift and stemmed the communist invasion of South Korea. His birthplace in Lamar, Mo., is now a state historic sight. Truman grew to manhood in Independence and became a bank clerk before returning to the family farm for 12 years. At 33 he was a very prosperous fanner. As a member of the national guard, he went to France during the first World War. After the war he returned, home to marry his childhood sweetheart Eliza-

Give Them The Facts

It is not a question of IF your child is approached to use drugs, but WHEN he is approached. This was the warning of Willis Roose, who can be classified as an expert on use of drugs. As director of the Drug Division, State Board of Health, he has been in the field of investigation and education of drug use for ten years. His advice to parents and teachers at a meeting of the P. T. 0. here last week was heard by far too few of those whose children either have been or will be approached by a friend or classmate with a supply of bennies or goof balls or some other form of prescription drugs to “try one for kicks.” The apparently harmless sniffing of airplane glue, or household cleaner, or gasoline gives sniffers a pleasant, giddy feeling while collecting poisons in their vital organs. This is the sort of thing parents and teachers should explain to their teenage children. It is, as Roose said, not to try to teach them fear of drugs, but respect for drugs and

CAPITOL COMMENTS '•*9 With SENATOR i i VANCE hartke/|, / ijff v Indiana

Medicare Must Include Eye, Hearing And Dental Care

Now is the time to meet the real needs of our citizens who too often are the real forgotten Americans of this nation; the elderly. Recently, I introduced legislation to include examina-

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EDITORIALS

tions and treatment for eye, hearing and dental ailments under Medicare; legislation which would help more than 470,000 elderly in Indiana. My bill also would provide

If you know a young man or a young woman who is serving in one of the branches of the armed services why not remember them on Saturday. It’s a good time to write that long over due letter and maybe even pack a box of cookies or some other treat for them. And, by all means fly your flag on Saturday in honor of all the men and women who are serving to keep America free.

beth Virginia (“Bess”) Wallace. They will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in the near future. In 1922 he was elected to his first position as administrator of Jackson county. In 1934 he became a Senator and pledged support to Roosevelt. Ten years later he became Roosevelt’s vice president and upon the death of FDR he became Chief Executive. In 1948 he was elected to serve again as President. He retired to Independence, Mo., in 1953 where he has published three volumes of memoirs and is working on his fourth book. He has also seen the creation of the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. The Trumans live a happy and peaceful life behind the secure gates of their Missouri home and we do wish them the best of everything as they prepare to celebrate their golden anniversary in June.

what they can do to the human body. Used medically, and as prescribed, drugs are effective and safe. Used promiscuously and for kicks, drugs can cause permanent damage, personality deviations and death. As Roose said, in effect, you can’t win ’em all. Human beings have been dealing with drugs for centuries. It’s big business and there are big, respectable, money-making people who are allowing kids to buy the “pills” and telling them they are harmless. And some kids will continue to believe the peddlers. i We won’t gjet the kids’ attention on this matter if We haven’t been talking to them and listening to them on other subjects. But we must try. We must try to educate them to the facts and then trust them and trust ourselves as parents and teachers that we have put it to them in such away they will believe us when we tell it like it is. — The Zionsville Times

eyeglasses, hearing aids and dentures without increasing the monthly voluntary payment. As a member of the important Senate Finance Committee, I realize only too well that because of a quirk in the Medicare law, these three areas of health care which are considerably important to the elderly have been excluded. Hearing aids are luxury, out of the reach of many elderly persons and dental and eye care almost is neglected completely. Benefits would be derived by more than four million elderly persons who are hard of heading; 700,000 with impaired vision and untold numbers who need, but have not received dental care. The Public Health Service has reported that the need for eye, hearing and dental care is more common to people over 65 than any other age group. The Department of -Health, Education and Welfare estimates the cost of the increased aid under Medicare at SSOO million for dental care, SIOO million for hearing and $l5O million for eye care. To pay for the increased cost, my bill would double the Federal contribution to the Medicare program. Now the government matches the $4 monthly payment by each elderly person. Under the new formula, the elderly person will ccntinue to pay $4 a month and the government SB. As a member of the Special Senate Committee on Aging, I hope to be able to focus attention on this long neglected need.

MAY FLOWERS fMI»

Know Your Indiana Law By JOHN J. DILLON Attorney at Law

This is a public service article explaining provisions of Indiana law in general terms.

Usury is a term that has been in legal deep freeze for a long, long time. Usury is charging more for the use of money than the Legislature has said js permissable. It has long been public policy in the states of the union to put an upper limit on the amount of interest that can be charged for a loan. The basic Indiana law goes back to 1879 when the Legislature put a maximum of eight per cent (8 per cent) on charges for the use of money. For years usury has been a dead issue to lawyers for money has been plentiful and competi-

Special Report From Washington

WASHINGTON - The $20,000 fee which Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas temporarily accepted from the Wolfson Foundation has raised the question of how far a federal judge should go in practicing law. It also has raised questions as to how far the Nixon administration helped Life magazine with its investigation of the man whom President Johnson previously had nominated to be Chief Justice. On the first question, newspaperman all over the country have been telephoning Joseph Borkin, a former Justice Department attorney, to get his opinion on whether Fortas did cr did not violate any law. Borkin is the author of the book “The Corrupt Judge,” which deals with judicial malfunctions. He has told them that, generally speaking, the law is not very clear regarding judicial conflicts of interest. Title 28 of the criminal code makes it a misdemeanor, but not a felony, for a federal judge to practice law on the side. However, Justice Fortas, though he kept the Wolfson fee for 11 mcnths before returning it, denies that he gave Wolfson any legal advice or services. Rep. Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, intends to make an investigation of the Fortas matter, but probably will find that no law was violated, though there may be glave questions raised regarding the ethics of Fcrtas’s conduct. And the Celler hearings may well result in a clear-cut law by which every member of the Supreme Court and every other federal judge will be required to file an annual report for public inspection on all outside income he has received from any source.

Usury!

tion has kept the interest rates low in all areas of our country. Our bustling economy during and since World War II has created a “soft” money market making money available at low costs. Now, however, our economy has turned around and money is in extremely short supply. Large corporations needing operating money, and not being bound by our usury law, are competing in the market place for loan dollars. The net result of this has been to drive our basic interest rates perilously close to the usury rate. Even such secure loans as

Meanwhile, we can report there also is considerable debate among Washington lawyers over the Justice Department’s action in suddenly calling a grand jury to investigate the tactics of the former Fortas law firm in its defense of the Donovan Steel and Wire Company of Toledo in 1967. two years earlier, when he became a member of the Supreme Ccurt, but the publicity about the grand jury investigation coinciding with the Wolfson fee controversy may harass him. The timing of the calling of the grand jury is seen by many lawyers as having all the earmarks of political persecution, since the case had resulted in eventual conviction cf the company, and was obtained by Fred Vinson, Jr., son of a former Chief Justice, while he was head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department under President Johnson. In addition, lawyers say a very fine point of law is involved in the Justice Department’s complaint and legal scholars could debate it backwards and forwards. Yet the federal grand jury will have to render a decision on this fine point of law in determining whether there’s enough evidence to bring any charges against Fortas’s former law firm. POISON GAS DANGER WITH THE ARMY now wanting to ship 21 trainloads of deadly poison gas left over from World War II across the nation, more facts are leaking' out on the strange death of 6,000 sheep in Skull Valley, Utah, a year ago. We can report that a jet fighter, flying at an extremely high altitude over the Dugway Proving Grounds on March 13, 1963, released some V-X nerve gas.

those secured by FHA insured mortgages on real estate are passing the seven per cent (7 per cent) interest mark. For this reason everyone in the financial world is looking toward their state usury laws. While the Legislature has made special provisions for higher interest rates in certain cases such as small loans, there has been a great reluctance to exceed the eight per cent simple interest level in Indiana. It should be pointed out that dodges such as “points” or “discounts” or any other name used to circumvent the usury law are not legal. The maximum simple interest rate in Indiana is still eight per cent (8 per cent) and if anyone tries to charge you more, you should immediately consult your lawyer.

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Chemical warfare experts insisted the plane was so high that the gas couldn’t harm life on the ground. Nevertheless, 6,000 sheep and 1,700 cows grazing below keeled over, their muscles tied in knots. The nerve gas had paralyzed the nerve that relaxes contracted muscles. As a result, the animals were strangled by their own muscles. The news leaked out about the 6,000 sheep, but nothing was said about the 1,700 cows. The Army has never even admitted that nerve gas was responsible for the' death of the sheep. Nevertheless, the Army quietly paid the owners nearly $400,000 and the dead animals were buried by bulldozer. But the most startling fact, carefully suppressed, is that traces of the nerve gas still linger in the desolate place that had been appropriately named Skull Valley. DIVISION IN VIET NAM THE WHITE HOUSE staff is bitterly divided over proposals to start bringing our Gls home from Viet Nam this year. Henry Kissinger, me President’s security adviser, is strongly opposed to reducing our troops unless the North Vietnamese agree to a corresponding reduction. But other White House aides argue that American troops can be withdrawn progressively as fast as South Vietnamese units are ready to replace them. One aide who takes this view is Ken Belieu, former Under Secretary of the Navy, who is as well informed on military matters as Kissinger. In public, President Nixon has been following Kissinger’s advice

fßayh-Lines A FROM WASHINGTON

Bayh Has Bill Against Mailing Obscene Materials

— The growing permissiveness in our society has caused increasing concern among the citizenry regarding just how far the exploitation of sex, will be permitted to go. It has gone so far that it even invades the privacy of American homes. I have received numerous letters from my constituents complaining that their children are being subjected to smut through the television and the mail. An individual can turn off his television set but he can’t turn off the mail. Today I am introducing a bill to turn off pornographic mail — to put an end to the unsolicited mailing of obscene literature. It is not right that American families be subjected to such smut, and filth as is being mailed to them today. My bill would prohibit the mailing of obscene materials to persons who are minors as defined by state law. Under the present federal law a minor residing in New York, a state which now forbids the sale of pornography to minors, can still receive this r material through the mails. \ Also under "the provisions of this bill, dealers in mail order pornography (as described by the New York Code) would first have to send a card to the addressee informing him that his name was on their mailing lists to receive pornographic material. If the addressee was not a minor, and if he desired to receive such materials, he could return the card and the advertisements would then be sent to him. Failure to return the card

KEEP WINDSHIELD WIPERS V II Ml INM COHDITIOH!

would automatically remove the addressee from the mailing lists. A fine of $50,000 or five years would be imposed upon the dealer if he failed to comply with this ruling. A third provision of the bill would provide for the removal of one’s name from a mailing list much in the same way as now provided by the pandering act. This could permit an individual, who is receiving material and who decides later that he no longer wants it, to remove his name from the company’s mailing list. Unfortunately this bill cannot totally prohibit the use of the mails for the distribution of other questionable material lx--cause the Supreme Court in all probability would interpret such action as a violation of the Constitutional safeguards of free speech and free press. My bill is designed to protect the individual’s right of privacy .and permits him to keep his home free from an unwanted irsvasion of pornographic advertisements and materials which are offensive to him and his family. It seems to me that Congress has a responsibility to see that the federal mails are not used for the peddling of smut. I believe that this bill is a reasonable and workable approach to protecting the American public from being exposed to unsolicited smut. Other procedures which have been suggested have been ineffective or unconstitutional. Too long have the dealers of pornography hidden behind the protection of the First Amendment.

By DREW PEARSON And JACK ANDERSON

and declaring there are no plans for a troop withdrawal this year. The President doesn’t want to undermine his negotiators in Paris by taking away their bargaining power. But, in private, he has indicated that he will order an unilateral withdrawal once he is convinced that the South Vietnamese can fill the gap. He has told advisers very definitely that his first priority is to end the Viet NarrTwar and that he is moving toward that goal in careful stages. NEW NUCLEAR THREAT THERE’S SOME discouraging news regarding the danger of spreading nuclear war. For years the United States has taken extreme measures to disscourage the development of a centrifuge process for producing fissionable material for nuclear weapons. The idea was to discourage poor nations from making H-bombs at a low cost. To this end, American laboratories were flatly forbidden to work on the process except under strict, secret government supervision. All references to the process were censored out of every atomic energy report. When West Germany,, Holland and other idlied nations discovered the process, they were pressured by Washington to keep the discovery secret. Now, however, the cat is out of the bag. Britain, Holland and West Germany have decided to peol their resources and develop the process together. They plan to build two centrifuge plants, one in Britain, the other in Holland, to make fissionable material for H-bombs. This means another highly dangerous expansion of the chances of nuclear war.