Image provided by: Morrow County Museum; Heppner, OR
About Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) 1925-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 1, 1973)
Ill I'I'NI lt MiRK.t (.AZETTETIMES. TaunuUy November I. U73 Horse sense lltISTV.JI.K KGW TV reporters who hoped they had stumbled onto another "Watergate" by airing allegations of wrong -doing by the Lake Penljnd Corp on Oct. 22, didn't do their home work very well When their expose-type newscast is stripped of all its innuendo, allegations, surmises, speculation and downright distortion, only two facts energe from that broadcast -there is, as charged, a Lake Penland, and there is. as charged, a Lake Penland Corp Otherw ise. there isn't a word of truth in the w hole sorry mess that has turned into a tempest in a teapot, upset half the state of Oregon, given Gov. McCall a bad case of trauma, overjoyed the advocates of ecology . and cast a cloud upon the integrity of a few Heppner citiens. I will not dignify the KGWTV distortions by repeating the innuendos of "hanky panky " by Lake Penland Corp They have been refuted and shown to be false by the Gazette-Times article of last week and by the one which appears on page t of this issue. Just as it appeared that Judge Paul Jones iwho is obviously the intended scapegoat of the whole affair i had been given a clean bill of health, along comes the Sunday, iKt 28 issue of the Oregonian w herein a staff reporter. Paul Pintanch. writes concerning the Lake Penland affair: ' Jones acknowledged he is owner of all 40 lots at the site Lake Penland' but said the corporation is non-profit and denied he was an officer." Judge Jones, of course, never acknowledged any such thing. He is not and never w as and never w ill be the ow ner of 40 lots at Lake Penland. He is and has been from the beginning the owner of one lot for which he paid three thousand dollars, title to which has not reverted to him as yet So much for the integrity of certain newsmen and certain news media It isn't hard, with these two cases of bad reporting so close to home, to understand why Mr. Nixon might be upset by what reporters choose to write about him. Officials of Lake Penland Corp. have a right to answers to some questions, such as: Who furnished the erroneous information that brought the two KGW-TV reporters to Heppner" Once here, why did not the reporters check into records before "shooting from the hip" in such an irresponsible manner1 Was the story actually written in Portland before the reporters ever got here? Why did Gov. McCall act so impulsively by asking for Judge Jones' withdrawal from a seat on'the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission within a matter of a few hours and without ascertaining the facts? Why was Jones, whose sole involvement in Lake Penland was purchase of a lot. singled out for investigation while officials of Lake Penland Corp. were not? The tw o representatives here for the "informal hearing" may have revealed the crux of the matter by their reaction to t he-manner in which the Lake Penland project was built. The were astounded that 25 businessmen would hand over seventy-five thousand dollars to Orville Cutsforth and not even get a receipt for their money. They didn't know Orville. And they didn't know the 25 businessmen. And they didn't know that people in this section of the country grow to know and have faith in their friends and neighbors of long standing. People east of the Cascades operate in a climate of trust. They believe in open dealing, and they don't write down and tile every "nod of the head" with the County Clerk in the presense of nine w itnesses. Had they followed strict protocol in raising money and proceeding with the dam. they would have been so busy with legal and bureaucratic redtape that the dam would not yet be built. "What did Orville Cutsforth do with the seventy-five thousand dollars?" the two Salem officials wanted to know (and which, strictly speaking, was none of their business i. "He built a dam." they were told. Incredible! A little faith and trust among friends must be something rare in Salem. Sen. Mark Hatfield has mounted a crusade to cut military spending by reducing military appropriations. He believes, and correctly I think, that government spending is the No. 1 cause of inflation. But he proposes to cut tat trom the military budget i which surely exists) without cutting it from other and equally spend-happy departments of the federal government. If the entire military budget were wiped out there could be no great reduction in the rate of inflation, because only 18 per cent of the federal budget goes to the military forces. On the other hand, the Department of Health. Education & Welfare consumes 72 per cent of the budget i if the figures of Howard K. Smith. ABC news commentator, are correct). It would appear to me that a prime target for reduction of spending would be the HEW. with the military taking a lower priority. As long as we have a military strong enough to keep the country free, we can afford the luxury of social programs promoted by HEW. But if the military forces fail and our enemies triumph, there w ill be no HEW and no social programs at all. It is far more desirable to be alive in a free country sampling the joys of unemployment compensation than to be enslaved by a foreign power and put to work in the salt mines. - i ne mjuoie wTfn "people who want to cut budgets is that, pinned down, they don't know what to cut out of a program. Well. I've got a teeny suggestion for HEW. The letters the Gazette-Times has been getting from HEW agencies in Portland come with air mail postage paid. There is no air mail' service between Heppner and anywhere, so why spend 11 cents to do an 8-cent job0 Last week in Eugene. 2.000 parking meters were hooded and shoppers given unlimited parking in the downtown area. Not only have the meters driven shoppers to surburban shopping centers, but now. perhaps too late, downtown Eugene merchants are taxing themselves $235,000 a year to reinstitute the free parking they surrendered years ago because of a sales pitch given by parking meter salesmen, of course) that they would regulate traffic and raise money lor the city As in many other towns and cities, the parking meters have just about destroyed business. There is yet time for Heppner to remove its parking meters before somebody builds a shopping center away from the downtown area and otfer free, unlimited parking. It will be too late, once a shopping center is in. (or downtwon businesses to counter the flow of traffic -and business-- that will flow to such a center. Heppner is well aware that these meters have served their usefulness. They are no longer needed because there is no parking problem. They are a source of irritation and annoyance. They do not return enough money to maintain and repair them They are ugly and unsightly And if (he city council prides itelf on carrying out the wishes of the people, why has H ignored the poll taken by the Gazette Times wherein the people voted 5 to 1 for removal of the meters ? ) mxcm V ) jm ) 1 Click! Somebody out there likes us . (Editor's note: This editorial was written by a Canadian editor and was recently read into the Congressional Record. We think it worthy of repeating at a time when the United States is hard pressed to find one friendly nation among all those she has given aid over the years, i The United States' dollar took another pounding on German. French and British exchange this morning, hitting the lowest point ever known in West Germany. It has declined there by 41 per cent since 1971 and this Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people in all the earth. As long as 60 years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtse. Who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did. They have helped control floods on the Nile the Amazon, the Ganges and the Niger. Today the rich bottomland of the Mississippi is under water and no foreign land has sent a dollar 3 help. Germany, Japan, and to a lesser extent. Britian and Italy, were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of those countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States. When the franc w as in danger of collapsing in 1956, it w as the Americans who propped it up and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it. When distant cities are hit by earthquake is the United States that hurries in to help.. .Managua. Nicaragua, is one of the most recent examples. So far this spring. 59 American Communities have been flattened by tornadoc Nobody has helped. The Marshall Plan, the Truman Policy, all pumped billions upon billions of dollars into discouraged countries, Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent warmongering Americans. I'd like to see just one of those countries hat is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes. Come on, let's hear it! Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar n- the Douglas 10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all international lines except Russia fly American planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy a id you get radios. You talk about German technocracy and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy and vou find men on the moon, not once, but several limes. ..and safelv home again. You talk about scandlas and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, most of them. . .unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from Ma and Pa at home to spend here. When the Americans get out of this bind. . as they will. . who could blame them if they said 'the hell with the rest of the world. Let someone else buy the Israel bonds. Let someone else build or repair foreign dams or design foreign buildings that won't shake apart in earthquakes.' When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name you 5.000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even owing the San 1 rancisco earthquake. Our neighbors have faced it alone and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them kicked around. They w ill come out of this thing w ith their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the ands that are g'oating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of these. But there are many smug, self-righteous Canadians. And finally, the American Red Cross was told at its 48th annual meeting in New Orleans this morning that it was broke. This year's disasters. . .with the year less than half over. . .have taken it all and nobody has helped. Batteries may spark man 's future world by ROBERT t. RADCLIFFE Armed with fresh batteries, man may yet rule the world. This idea comes to mind after a look at what's being called "the revolution in packaged power," or the success in building better batterieS-more powerful, longer-lasting, and smaller, if not always cheaper. The battery builders of America are charged up over tomorrow. They predict: -By the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of small battery powered passenger cars each year replacing gasoline guzz lers on city streets. -In the next four or five years, about one-fourth of all new- wrist watches run by button-size batteries. -For thp near fntoremfltL portable batteries-a discov ery that may date to before Christ --has already made it self indispensable in modern life, the National Geographic Society says. Man is now ready to conquer life's chores with battery powered hair dryers, tooth brushes, fishing lures and cold drink stirrers. Tiny batteries energize surgically implanted pace makers to steady heartbeats, keep pocket-size beacons flashing to pinpoint downed fliers, and tune in the world for the deaf with hidden-in-side-the-ear hearing aids. ' Basically, a battery is merely a device generating electricity from chemical ac tion. The earliest ones--the wet cell type-were heavy, and Miltiary and aerospace e quipment requires miniatur ized dry cell batteries for new integrated circuits, drawing only low currents. Today's cordless electric gadgets are safer than their plug-in counter-parts: Household current is about 1 17 volts, but batteries put out 5 to 15 volts-well below the 25-volt level considered dangerous. Cars use lead-acid bat-teries--43 million went into used cars last year, and 11 million into new cars-costing about $25 each. Lead-acid batteries arrived in 1912 with the invention of the electric starter, soon to end the harvest of broken arms reap ed by the hand crank. Among lhnsi ern kitchens equipped with even more labor-saving gad gets, all rechargeable. Electric power stored in corrosive acid. That's why car batteries once were strapped to running boards or slung underneath. hoping for an electric car are lead-acid battery makers. They toresee a small, two passenger, low-speed, com muter car capable of 75 miles of stop-and-go driving on one battery charge. A run-down battery could be replaced in a few minutes at a neighborhood service station, they say, or recharged at home with household current and a converter. One cost estimate is 1 to 3' 2 cents a mile. Archeologists say they have found electroplated materials 4,000 years old near old Baghdad, and 2,000-yearK)ld batteries-pots with iron rods, copper sheeting, and signs of acid corrosion. Science usually credits It aly's Alessandro Volta with inventing the first primitive batteries about 1800, but shudders at his method of -4estif)g4fecm : He touthetHhe wires to his eyelids and judged the power of the weak currents by the flash appear ing before his eyes. The mail pouch EDITOR. Recently when I attended the American Cancer Society mobile unit in lone. I asked w hy I had not been able to use the unit in Heppner and w as told that one of our local doctors had told them not to come. He gave his reasons as the women of Heppner would not understand that this was not a complete physical examination, but only a PAP smear lest for cancer. I think the women of Heppner are more conscientious and we should be able to decide for ourselves whether or not we should use the "free" facilities I understand a physical examination is terribly important : however, a PAP smear is important by itself in the prevention of uterine cancer, and I think that many more Heppner women would have availed themselves of the "free" facility if the unit had visited here. I hope after this the women s wishes will be the deciding factor MRS. NORMAN CLOW. Heppner Mayor of Hardman lEAI MISTER EDITOR: Does happenings run in cycle, or Is II Ihe reporting of the doings in this world that cU like a broken record ever oncl in a while? This question was studied up one side and d wn the other by fellers at Ihe country store Saturday night. After the discussion It was general Barred. Mister Editor, that news is like wimmen's clothes, li s got lo keep up with the fashions of Ihe day , One season the skirts is all you hear annul, and the next lime you look Ihe gals has fergot wuther skirts Is short or long, but they're all wearing the same wooden sole shoes with big clodhopper heels. The fellers Is convinced that's (he way It rs with news. Fer a solid month, allowed Ed Doolittle, all you can read about in Ihe papers Is Inflation. Hack in Ihe summer we had Ihe Watergate hearings. Ed went on. and Inflation was off somewhere shifting fer itself. First thing you Know somebody has come up with a new disease, and we read about that fer a week. Rut comes the Worli Series and medical research is dead fer the duration Hurricane season alius is cause lo keep the weather on the front page fer a spell, Ed added Lately, said Ed, we've had plenty of new news like same old war between the Arabs and the Jews and Ihe Vice President quitting, and that is what is so puzzling about all the UFOs Ed said people usual see all these flying objects during dog davs when news is slack, but in the lasl couple of months we've'had a flock of UFO sightings all Ihe way from Mississippi to Moscow - and right in the middle of all the other news. Ed said thev really might be sompun to this UFO business after all, if It's going to keep making Ihe papers right along with Agnew. inflation, the Mideast, and Lake Penland. Clem Webster said he had been reading ibnut the strange lights and the spaceships, and he had saw here a perfessor that studies Ihe stars at Northwestern Unis -rsity said flat out the visitors was from another planet. Wh. I s worrying him now, declared Clem, is that all of em wai ts lo visit us, but none of em wants to live here. They've all I k off in a hurrv after a quick look around. Maybe, Clem said, they know somepun we don't. Actual, broke in Bug Hookum, the reported visits of UFOs has been in this country. Hug said he saw by the papers where Russians scientists had reported picking up strange radio "pulses" they figgered was another world trying to git in touch, but they ain't had any visits. So the UFOs don't want to git clost to Russia. Issac Comfodder. that don't have much lo sty at the country store sessions, said that explains they is intelligent life behind them UFOs. Issac said fer his mone Russia ain't even a nice place to visit. Yours truly, MAYOR ROY. W f s f Sweet charity puterized BY LESTER KIYSOLYIVG "Now, ttey qm'f wild men, but neorly. they're Wofergote itnesses'" In 1968. the income of the Christian Childrens Fund, Inc. of Richmond. Va., (CCF) was $10 million. By 1971 that income had more than doubled to $20,578,416. . This remarkable accomplishment had its beginning in advertising placed in church magazines. The ads show large photographs of adorable little girls placed just above such heart-rending captions as: "HUNGER IS ALL SHE HAS EVER KNOWN" As Ihe income mounted over three years, these same appealing photographs of little girls began appearing on TV s well as in such purportedly respectable magazines as lime and Reader's Digest. The little girls now adorn 1 ighway billboards as well. "Why do these ads always use little girls?" asked the Rev. Jerald Huntzinger, a Richmond Methodist minister. His question was of course, rhetorical: For the Rev. Mr. Huntzinger. as advertising manager of CCF, knows full well why. And he says so, in a newsworthy article he wrote for Fund Raising Management magazine: "Because the oersnn most ant lo become a CCF sponsor i$12 per month for a guarantee 'Your child will write to you') has a' well-defined profile: She is 50 years old. her family is grown up, she has a normal residue of guilt. ..Her happiest days were when her babies were in diapers - and now she is just plain lonesome., .Not all CCF's prospective sponsors are going to fit into an exact profile, but if ever ad is slanted for this profile, the people on the fringe of this profile will be most apt to respond. Because, let's face it America, the problems of Ihe woman in middle age are the problems of us all." The handsome young minister also writes in his article (which is enthusiastically entitled $25 MILLION YEAR IN OFFERING AS ALLMEDIA DRIVE SCORES") that: When anyone answers these CCF ads, his name goes into a compuler. which provides an immediate responding letter as well as a follow-up letter 30 days later, if there is no reply. Then the "regular cycle" of what Huntzinger describes as "Mailings professionally created to appear non-professional" includes six additional appeal letters. "When a sponsor gets behind in giving, he receives a series of four computer-written collection letters - Marling with a soft reminder and getting firmer as the series progresses. ..This 'collection' program generates enough back payments each year Ri more than pay for Ihe entire cost oTThTla1flapl'ssTngsiyslem ! " "The technique is direct marketing. . .Ihe ii come has now moved from arithmetic and geometric grow h." Besides the computer, advertising and administrative costs, there is a considerable expense involved in getting all those letters translated so that "your child will write to you." this touching, but expensive technique has been resisted by such respected relief agencies as the American Friends Service Committee in Philadelphia as well as the Catholic Relief Services and Ihe Church World Service ( Protestant ) in New York. These agencies, who keep their overhead at less (han 10 percent, can feed entire villages, promptly, because ihey do not have lo spend time and money looking for photogenic children and translators of their letters. But the Rev. M. Huntzinger's geometric gold mine of computerized children will probably continue to thrive. For the donors to CCF apparently prefer written appreciation from one child, as translated, lo the unheralded satisfaction of feeeding and clothing several children. THir GAZETTE-TIMES MORROW COUNTY'S NEWSPAPER AMreSt: Htppmr, On., t7IM, Tel. S7M7JI. P O Sea 117. TK Htppmr Geiefte was tablMd March 30, IM3 The Heppner Times established Nay. It. It7. CensaJKiated Fee. IS. IU Member: NelHMl NmpMer Attn., Orepeti Newspaper PuttiUieri An. ErMtt V. Jemer Publisher SrMe Ceres P Notour ftp y Speti SUBSCRIPTION RATES IS per year Ml OrepM. U etsemre Smew cap. S certs Mailed smple cap, as cents MmiiMMn efcihaa, S l
