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EDITOR'S REPORT
Review Of Status Of Boat Building Plan Is Needed

WE HAVE NO DESIRE to do anyone or anything an injustice.

For that reason, we'd like to reopen the question of the use of the old railroad freight station at the end of Copeland for a boat building instruction class and boat building.

THE CITY COUNCIL voted 4-3 last Monday night to permit the use of the structure providing the deficiencies listed by the building inspector were met, with the exception of the sprinkler system.

In reviewing these deficiencies, we stated editorially that ignoring or over-riding the recommendations of the building inspector could jeopardize our class 3 fire rating, and also questioned whether all safety factors had been reviewed.

THE SCHOOL OFFICIALS had already indicated that they would not permit the adult education class to move into the structure until all deficiencies had been met.

Pete Pracchia, instructor of the boat building adult education group, has indicated that unless he can get permission to use the building, the classes will end.

WE HAVE CAREFULLY reviewed the list of deficiencies listed by the building inspector. We have discussed them with Pracchia, and he brings forth some cogent arguments that deserve airing.

It is obvious that an impasse or sorts has developed on the building. Even though the Council has authorized the use of the building, the school board has refused their approval until the deficiencies are met.

LET'S REVIEW THEM carefully.

The report of the building inspector does raise some questions regarding its application in the entirety to this structure.

The first deficiency cites the need for a sprinkling system and says, "The floor area is approximately 14,000 square feet which requires a sprinkler system."

This is not correct, we are told. The building is shown as 80 by 126 interior space, or just over 10,000 square feet.

IT IS PRACCHIA'S contention that regulations would require that buildings in excess of 8,000 square feet in Fire Zone 2 require a sprinkler system. He contends, also, that of the interior space which amounts actually to 9,795 square feet, some 882 square feet is old office space that will be used by the boat-building class for instruction only. This, he says, would leave 8,913 square feet of space to be used for practical application of boat building by construction of boats.

He contends that for the small amount of floor space over the 8,000 square feet qualification, some 913 square feet, a sprinkler system is unnecessary.

He also contends that the structure is a safe, sound building with adequate exits and fire protection.

HE DOES NOT QUARREL with the need to rewire or to replace the broken windows.

On the matter of "providing a restroom" as the deficiency report lists, Pracchia maintains that there is a restroom in the building that is more than adequate and that it merely requires some clean-up. The building report does intimate that no restroom is present while Pracchia maintains there is.

THERE ARE SEVERAL deficiency points which Pracchia maintains have nothing to do with building safety, and we are inclined to agree.

One of the 15 deficiencies lists: "Provide parking and landscaping." Another requires "The building needs painting very badly."

While these two points are desirable from the standpoint of esthetics, Pracchia's contention that they have nothing to do with the utility or the safety of the building appear valid.

ON THE QUESTION of the condition of the platforms that surround the building, Pracchia has inquired as to why it was necessary to list portions of the platform in three separate deficiencies.

It is true that the report does list the platform at the rear of the building as point 8, the platform on the north side as point 9, and the platform on the south side as apart of item 6.

This does seem strange, unless it is a sloppily written report. However, it did serve to fatten the deficiencies to a total of 15 in number.

THE MATTER OF the platforms, Pracchia points out, is out of his hands. This is a matter for the railroad company, he stated. Also, Pracchia indicated to us that he does not intend to use the platforms, which are for railroad loading and unloading purposes.

HE ALSO QUESTIONED the matter of repairing the roof. "There are no leaks," he maintained, adding that it had been checked by a reliable roofer who could not see why it needs repairing.

On the question of replacing the facia, Pracchia maintains that about the only place that the facia needs repairing is where a sign had been formerly hung and had subsequently been taken down.

ONE OTHER POINT which he raised and which appears to have some validity is that the items relating to the heating facility in the building have been listed as three separate items whereas they are in reality but a single item.

They are listed as "replacing a heater, checking the chimney flue and testing the gas piping for proper pressure."

He contends they could have been listed as one item but instead were listed as three separate items.

Again, on this point, we would have to agree that his views have some validity.

WE HAVE NOT changed our views that all proper safety requirements must be met, and that the recommendations of the building inspector should be respected if we're not to jeopardize our fire rating.

However, sufficient doubts have been raised in our minds about some portions of the deficiency list to warrant a complete review of them, one by one as to whether they are legitimately deficiencies in safety factors of the structure.

BEFORE A VALUABLE program has to be abandoned, it might be well for school officials and council members to review this deficiency list with a careful eye, remembering that it is not to be used as a commercial venture, but one of adult instruction and practical application.

AS WE BEGAN, we have no desire to do or support an injustice, and it does appear at this point that a complete review of the situation is in proper order, before the program has to be abandoned for lack of quarters.
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– Viewpoints –
6——Argus-Courier——Friday, March 15, 1968
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[[Image – line drawing of the smiling face and short hair of the while, male columnist]]
[[underlined]] Holmes Alexander [[/underlined]]

It's Negro Who Must Change

WASHINGTON, D. C. – The typical city rioter is better educated than most of his neighbors. He is proud of his race, which is Negro. His most intense grievance is the presence of the police. He is a hater of whites, and of his well-to-do black neighbors. He is a separatist, a believer in Black Power, a non-believer in One Society.

These are extracts taken from the Summary of the Report of the Kerner Commission on Civil Disorders. They do not coincide at all with the most strongly-worded and most widely-quoted findings of the Commission. They are part of the Report, an important part, and they are at odds with the now-familiar language which finds that "white racism is essentially responsible" for the riots, and that "the primary goal must be a single society."

The Report itself is voluminous and the Summary is a catchall of selected indictment, over-simplification and stupendous social planning. The make-up of the Commission was such that it was predestined to bring forth a preconceived document. It is a document that reflects the historical idealism of such institutions as the League of Nations, the United Nations, in short, One Worldism. It rejects by omission all the experience that is contrary to these utopian concepts.

The Report assumes that No Man Is an Island, whereas science and common knowledge tells us that Every Man Is an Island, and a very mysterious one. The Summary comes down hard for a social monolith, whereas the way of life is that of irrepressible nationalism, parochial, individualism and jealously-guarded customs, faiths, ambitions and preferences of association.

This is a Report by an appointive group which has no responsibility for carrying out its recommendations. Thus it is bound to differ, and it does, from findings on the same subject by elective and professional investigators.

For example, the Kerner Commission's account of the Newark riot says the "rock-throwing . . . was the work of youngsters," that "the only shot fired" in the beginning was by a nervous young guardsman at an imaginary sniper and that "nevertheless" there were soon two columns of guardsman and state troopers firing at a housing project where "they believed were snipers." Newark's Mayor Addonizio gave a different version. He told the Commission last August that "police restraint, which had been the policy, was no longer an option." And he added:

"The first reality to face . . . is that rioting has acquired a kind of legitimacy . . . is a turn in American life that must be rebuffed and rebuffed sharply."

The Commission finds the Cambridge (Md.) riot triggered by white people, but the Cambridge police chief was on the spot and saw it just the other way. The Kerner Commission finds no "organized plan" in the 1967 disturbances, but the McClellan committee finds a lot of planning. The Kerner Commission calls for massive increase in all the anti-poverty programs, but Congress has not found these programs to be either penurious or very productive.

Much that the Kerner Report sets forth is beyond dispute, but is also sadly stale. It is no revelation for the country to be told that its Negro population is deficient in education,employment and income. But the conclusions drawn, the philosophy evolved and the remedies set forth are unacceptable in logic, and therefore ineffectual.

The white majority has already done so much to alleviate the Negro misfortunes that it cannot be expected to receive the chastisement of this Report with equanimity. It's hard to believe that 11 intelligent persons would recommend that America change itself to accommodate the Negro minority.

It's the Negro, of course, who must change if he's to live happily in the American environment


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[[underlined]] Ray Cromley [[/underlined]]
India, Pakistan Cool To U.S.

Standing on this disputed land, cause of the 1965 India-Pakistan war, one wonders if it had not been better for the United States to have spent more effort and ingenuity in solving international disputes and less money supplying arms that one friend might use against another.

Remembering the 1965 war with India, the Pakistani fear U.S. arms supplied to India for defense against Red China may be used by New Delhi in a future war with Pakistan. The Pakistani find it difficult to forgive us for this.

U.S. arms sent to the Pakistani for defense against Red China were used to fight the Indians in 1965. This won us no friends in New Delhi.

The Kashmir question has been festering for almost two decades. Most of the inhabitants are Pakistani; most of the area is ruled by India. The United Nations has been ineffective in finding a solution.

The Pakistani and Indians are also at loggerheads about water from rivers that run from India into East Pakistan.

Pakistani officials say Indian water diversion projects on the upper regions of some of these rivers may make farming difficult in one-sixth of East Pakistan.

So long as these great sores--Kashmir and the East Pakistan river problems--remain unhealed, U.S. aid to India is regarded with suspicion by the Pakistani.

For Pakistan these days is more worried about India's troops than those of any other country. Her top military men believe Red China is at present unable to invade Pakistan.

These India-Pakistan problems are an open invitation for Red Chinese meddling.

When the Pakistan armies were fighting the Indians, the Pakistani gave the Red Chinese credit for holding a crucial number of Indian units to the India-Red China border.

"These units might have enabled the Indians to overcome us," says one Pakistan general. "Naturally, we are grateful.

"We were allied to you. We were close. We were even stronger than you in our hatred of communism. Yet you gave arms to our enemies."

If the United States could persuade the Cambodian and South Vietnamese governments to demarcate and mutually guarantee their common borders, it is likely there would be more Cambodian co-operation in this war.

If the United States over the past decade had put more work into solving the problems of the Arab refugees, in securing international agreement on free passage through major straits and canals and in getting Egyptian-Israeli agreement on permanent borders, the recent Israeli-Egyptian war might have been prevented.

The borders between India and Red China have not been accurately defined or agreed on. This gives Peiping a chance to threaten India.

If the United States,through third parties, could secure agreement on this border's exact route, India would not be so dependent on Russian arms.

The United States recently has moved in the right direction by cutting back on the supply of arms to friends who might use these weapons against each other.  But we haven't taken the necessary second step——more effort in settling bitter disagreements.

[[underlined]] Ed LeBreton [[/underlined]]
Income Tax Boost Proposal On Dead Center

WASHINGTON (AP) — After a torrent of words, pro and con, President Johnson's proposal for an income tax increase remains on dead center in the House Ways and Means Committee.

But forces are building up that could jar it into motion through a reluctant Congress.

Chairman Wilbur D. Mills, who can count on solid support from his Ways and Means Committee, repeatedly in recent weeks has listed two conditions under which he might take the 10 per cent surtax proposal out of the drawer:

— An unmistakable surge of inflation threatening a runaway,
— A sharp step-up in money needs for the Vietnam fighting.

The second is the one that seems more likely to develop soon.

Capitol Hill is betting it will be asked to appropriate for some degree of U. S. manpower buildup in Vietnam—whether it is the 200,000 additional troops that have been the subject of furious speculation or a much smaller number.

And apart from any U.S. build-up, a big bill is expected for replacement and upgrading of equipment for allied forces as well as those of this country.

In combination with even a modest increase in U.S. manpower commitment, such a expenditure would jump the prospective deficit so far beyond the $20 billion mark that the basically conservative objectors to a surtax on Ways and Means probably would bow to the demand for additional revenues.

The administration so far has tried to make its case for the surtax almost entirely on economic grounds, arguing the danger of inflation and the shaking of confidence abroad in the dollar. Such arguments lack the impact that a straight appeal for a war tax would have.

There have been some contradictions among the economic indicators and the economists, and while the majority of economic experts seem to favor the tax, they are not unanimous.

There is room to argue whether the inflation already being experienced is demand inflation — supposedly most vulnerable to a tax soaking up purchase power — or administered or cost-push inflation relatively immune to such a remedy.

As for the argument that willingness to pass the tax bill is a test of the United States' sincerity in getting its international payments in order, one member snorted:

"Can you imagine me going before the House and saying we have to pass this tax bill because European bankers say we do?"

If it has been a deliberate administration policy to try not to emphasize the Vietnam war while arguing for more revenues, that policy will be scrapped whenever the time comes for congressional leaders to persuade their colleagues to cast tax-raising votes they will have to explain at home in an election year.
— — —
James Marlow, who usually writes this column, is ill.

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OLIPHANT
© 1968 THE DENVER POST
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES SYNDICATE
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TIMELY QUOTES

I think this is the last year for the Viet Cong.
— South Vietnam President Thieu.

Time only makes you older and wiser.  Time and reality.
— Sen. Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., on why he is supporting a stronger civil rights bill than one he opposed in 1966.

In my view, the question is not whether the United States is sick. The question is rather whether so great a country, so complex, so numerous, caught up in immense changes, can preserve its democratic traditions — whether so many people can be a free people, and whether so great a power can remain a reasonable power.
—Novelist Saul Bellow.

If our graduate schools suffer irreparable harm and our society loses a generation of scientists, teachers, jurists, poets and philosophers, history will record this era not as that of the Great Society, but as the Sick Society.
— Rep. Theodore R. Kupferman, R-N.Y., on ending graduate students draft deferments.

Riots are as old as mankind. They are the antithesis of humaneness, intelligence, faith and charity which are the hope of civilization.
— Attorney-General Ramsey Clark.


[[underlined]] Don Oakley [[/underlined]]
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Stability Of Free

When George Washington warned against foreign entanglements in his farewell address, he meant political entanglements, nothing else.

Even as he spoke, Yankee merchant ships were plowing the seas, carrying cargoes to and bringing them back from every corner of the globe. Americans were never business isolationists.

It was the imperatives of trade, not politics, that sent Commodore Matthew Perry to wedge open Japan's closed door in 1854. It was the same desire for trade that involved a Navy flotilla in a little-known shooting scrape with the Hermit Kingdom of Korea in 1871.

Americans heeded Washington's words well until two World Wars changed the world, and the United States, beyond anything the first president could have conceived.  It would be the irony of ironies if now, when the United States has a political stake in anything that happens in the smallest country in the most remote part of the globe, a new kind of isolationism — economic isolationism — arose in place of the old.

The burial costs of the old isolationism have been high, and they will not end in our time, it takes billions to maintain divisions of troops in Europe and Asia and other scattered points, to operate a worldwide fleet, to fight a war in Vietnam. Our balance of trade surplus is not enough to pay for it.

Yet, in our efforts to stem the outflow of gold, we may be embarking on a course that could endanger that very surplus and turn a serious problem into a crisis. At the least, curbs on tourism and business investment abroad and campaigns against imports could have highly undesirable consequences.

Already European travel authorities are reporting a decline in American tourists. One airline had seven charter flights canceled in a recent month.

Whether this will really save the United States any money is highly problematical, for foreign carriers spend a healthy portion of their U.S.-generated revenues right in this country for aircraft, parts, payrolls and services.

Elsewhere, a bill has been introduced in the Massachusetts General Assembly that would restrict all procurement for public works in the commonwealth to U.S. goods.

The Ohio House of Representatives has passed a resolution urging Congress to establish a quota system on foreign steel. Although the steel import problem would exist whether or not the United States was losing gold, widespread support for protective legislation for this and other products reflects the growing neo-isolationism.

Other countries need a favorable balance as much as we do. Other countries can pass restrictive laws, encourage buy-French, buy-Swedish, buy-Japanese, buy-anything-but-American campaigns.

It is unlikely that they will. It is more likely they will do everything they can do to help the United States maintain fiscal strength, for on it their own strength ultimately depends.

But if for short-run gain we inadvertently place in jeopardy the economies of our allies and friends in the long run, what then becomes of the stability of the free world we have committed ourselves to defend? What would the cost be then?