-11wp^ga^pefledet.a*^llle. N.Cnmtay.

October *,M77

Lifdsaver For Municipalities

Once again communities of this area are receiving Powell BUI allocations from the state.

These funds are oUiected the state throu^ the gnnUn tax and distributed by formula to municipalities for local street work.

GreenvUle received the largest amount in the Pltt-Martin-Green Counties area at $404,838.97. In Pitt County towns receiving funds were; Ayden, $54,948.16; Bethel, $24,831.95; Falkland, $1,358.99; FarmvUle, $66,615.19; Fountain, $6,654.06; Grifton, $32,565.72; Grimesland, $5,797.76; Simpson, $6,120.72; Winterville, $26,912.82.

Snow Hill received $17,505.18; Williamston, $83,654.39 and Robersonvilie, $30,396.62.

The formula for distribution of the funds is based

on 75 percent population and 25 pen^t non-state system local street mUeage.

The funds can be used for maintenance, construction and reconstruction of local streets.

A total of $32,015,470.78 wUl be distributed to North Carolina municipalities under the program.

The Powell Bill program has been a lifesaver for the states municipalities in carrying out street improvement programs since it was instituted.

With the soaring costs of construction the municipalities even now are having trouble keeping up with needed street improvements and meaintenance. Without the state Powell Bill funds the situation would be virtually hopeless for most incorporated communities.

Reasonable Use For School Facilities

County Commissioners Chairman Charles Gaskins last week said the county government is talking to school officials about use of school facilities for developing a recreational program.

THIS AFTERNOON

We hope those talks are progressing. The county needs an adequate program of recreation for rural citizens.

Porn Fight Moves Slowly

ByBOXNOBUTT

RALEIGH - North Carolina is the pornography capital of the South, says State Senator Beverly Lake, Jr., D-Wake,

Pornography in North Carolina has been shown to be an operation of organized crime ... organized crime in New York . . . Sicilian surname groups in New York, whether of the Mafia-type organization or not. It can unquestionably be traced, says Wake County District Attorney Burley Mitchell, also chairman of the N.C. Crime Commission.

With those two alarming comments, Lake and Mitchell acknowledge that the groundwork is now being built for a test of the anti-pornography laws passed by the 1977 session of the General Assembly, now adjourned.

Mitchells contention that organized crime is involved is based on positive evidence available from federal and state law enforcement agencies, and from his own study of conditions in the state.

NoEvidoKe

'.Lakes description of the

enormity of the situation in this state is not founded on hard evidence, he concedes, but while admitting he could not defend the claim in a courtroom, he is nonetheless convinced from talks with federal agents that it is true.

Action is presently moving ahead on two fronts although slowly and quietly:

Various district attorneys are gathering specific information about specific pornography outlets which will be targeted for prosecution under the new law. That evidence of what kinds of material is sold, displayed, or shown in movies and the volume of business will be an essential part of the cases which will ultimately be taken to court.

Maneuvering is underway to test the Constitutionality of the law. A group of pornography operators have taken that issue straight to a federal court in hopes to strike down the state law before it is even enforced.

Mitchell thinks that is a mistake. He would prefer that the law be enforced first, tried out in State courts, then taken up to the federal so a

clearcut final definition would be achieved.

Both Mitchell and Lake believe the law can be upheld. At its heart is the provision for law proclaiming pictures (still or moving) and paraphernalia obscene, penalties for peddling such, and a means of closing up the shop.

BOX

NOBLITT

Constitution

This, both men agree, keeps the issue well away from concern over First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and press.

I do think we have reached a point where we will never see the written word declared obscene ... no likelihood, Mitchell says.

Lake thinks the law adequately meets the concerns of people legitimately fearing intrusion into their activites: librarians, for instance, who feared censorship; theater owners who

worried they might be closed for a scene in an otherwise good movie.

We feel the law has sufficient safeguards to protect the legitimate concerns . . But the law ai.so has to be effective, and if it were so filled with restraints in order to satisfy Constitutionality arguments as to be ineffective, then it would be a waste of time and effort, Lake feels.

Mitchell also thinks the la\y takes the matter out ol Constitutional concerns, and into the area of legislating morality. You can legislate morality ... you should legislate morality... you can change the goals and values of society through civil and criminal law, he notes.

The anti-pornography battle, Mitchell believes, is based on the premise that repetition leads to learned behavior: that "repetitious exposure to aberrant sexual behavior will cause some to acquire that habit. TV violence has something to do with increased violence among juveniles ... We have to assume some harmful effect from exposure to obscenity.

THE INSIDE REPORT

Labor And The Russians

By ROWLAND EVANS and ROBERT NOVAK

WASHINGTON - Leadership of the United Auto Workers (UAW) honored four visiting trade unionists from the Soviet Union not l(Hig after turning away a leading Soviet dissi-^nt. pointing up a deep ideological cleavage in the American labor movement.

On Sept. 28, four members of Soviet trade unions lun-died with UAW brass at Solidarity House, the unions headquarters in Detroit. About two weeks earlier, UAW leaders could not find time to see Ukrainian dissident Leonid Plyushch. A respected mathematician expelled from the Soviet Union

in 1976 after four years imprisonment, Plyushch now lives in Paris and was making an American tour.

The UAWs position is directly opposite to AFL-CIO George Meanys and complicates the auto unions possible return to the AFL-CIO. 'The Carter, administration authorized visas for Communist trade unionists over the objections of Meany, who considers Soviet labor leaders as mere government stooges. Meany has championed exiles from Communist oppression, and AFL-CIO officials helped Plyushch with his itinerary.

The four visiting Russians, labelled as ordinary workers but obviously handpicked by

the KGB, began their U.S. trip in (3iicago SqX. 23 singing the praises of life in the Soviet Union. We work very hard and are very well paid, declared coalminer Andrei Gatsenko, adding that miners make more than doctors and can retire with half pay at age 50.

AFL-CIO headquarters naturally was not informed of the itinerary which had been arranged by an outfit called Trade Unions for Action and Democracy (TUAD) - formed in 1970 in close collaboration with the U.S. Communist party. The visiting Russians were met in Chicago by UAW regional officials and visited Steelworkers Local 1033 (wliich is in the satrapy ol Steelworkers maverick leader Ed Sadlowski).

Sadlowskis lieutenants arranged for the Soviets to lay a wreath at a plaque commemorating the 1937 massacre in Chicago of Rqiublic Steel Co. employes seeking to organize a union. To anti-Communists at AFL-CIO headquarters, identification of KGB piqjpets with bona fide trade union martyrs borders on

sacrilege. From Chicago, the Russians went to Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and New York meeting such anti-Meany unionists as the mine workers and meatcut-ters.

Emil Mazey, UAW secretary-treasurer, told us his union long has favored visits from Soviet trade unionists because the only way you can relax the cold war is to establish relations between people. As for the Detroit visit of the dissident Plyushch, Mazey told us, I wasnt able to meet him for lack of time. However, he was distinctly unenthusiastic about Ukrainian nationalists (separating the Ukraine from Russia would be like trying to unscramble an egg) and suggested a solution was for them to "leave the country.

UAW reunion with the AFXCIO whUe Em Mazey and George Meany still hold hifpi positions has always generated skepticism. Their conflicting views on visitors from Russia shows why. BLUMENTHALAND BUSINESS Rising fears by big (Continued on page 6)

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Strength For Today

THE CAT AND THE PUPPY

A family had a cat which had just given birth to kittens. Then someone gave this family a piwy The puppy was lonely and tried to make friends with the cat and her brood. But every time he came near, the cat arched her back and snarled andi^t.

One day the cats head got scratched and she was not ible to reach the wound with her tongue. While she moaned in pain the piq>py came over to her and began to lick the scratch.

The wotuxi soon healed

' MfS 5N0<Arf

By JAMES J. KILPATRICK

Farms See Hard Times

HASTINGS, NEBR, -Here in the Midwest, com and wheat farmers are suffering from an old agrarian ailment: The best of times and the worst of times turn out to be all the same thing. Nebraska growers have tremendous crops this year and theyre losing their shirts.

It is an immemorial custom, to be sure, for farmers to complain of hard times. Farming would not be farming any other way. But ,the grumbling this autumn is louder than usual. Inflationary forces have pushed

up the price of everything the farmer has to buy; the inexorable laws of supply and demand have pushed down the price of what he sells. Scores of mariginal farmers are giving up. On a recent Sunday, the Omaha World-Herald carried six columns of classified ads under the heading of farms for sale. Farming is just about everything out here. All day long and well into the twilight, farm machines, like dinosaurs, crawl clumsily across the chocolate fields. The beasts devour the dead com, spitting silage from

Other Editors Say: Nitpicking

(Greensboro Daily News)

State officials are right to seek a court injunction blocking a proposed $2.7 million cutoff in federal Medicaid funds. North Carolinas transgressions, in this instance, are minor. The wrangling between state officials and the Department of Health, Ekiucation and Welfare on this issue tells more about the inadequacy of federal regulations than the quality of health care for the poor in North Carolina.

Heres what has happened so far. HEW has ordered funding cutoffs for North Carolina and 21 other states for failure to perform annual inspections of nursing homes serving Medicaid patients. It sounds pretty bad until you look at the facts. Actually, during the auditing period in question, state in^iectors reviewed all but four of the states 239 nursing and intermediate care facilities. And those four were subsequently reviewed within 30 days of the deadline. That hardly qualifies as the kind of gross neglect youd think a $2.7 million cutoff would be designed to penalize.

HEW Secretary Joseph Califano says he doesnt like the confrontation, but has no choice because of the rigidity of regulations governing nursing Home inspections. Members of both houses of Congress, including, Greensboro Rep. Richardson Preyer, have been working to change the law to allow more flexibility. A postponement of the cutoff to October 1 was obtained. But the deadline passed this week with no legislative relief in sight. The state had no choice but to seek and win a temporary injunction blocking the cutoff from Federal District Judge Franklin T. Dupree.

Presumably, some resolution of this problem will eventually be worked out. It is hardly the essence of humane policy to snatch away federal dollars which subsidize care the states elderly poor otherwise could not afford. At the same time, no one would suggest that the government ought not to impose standards and accountability on the uses of federal health care money by the states.

What is needed is a system which upholds nursing care standards, but which exacts financial penalties only in cases of clear abuse. So far, nothing has occurred in this matter to alter Governor Hunts earlier characterization of it as an example of the kind of petty nitpicking and harassment that threatens to destroy the credibility of the federal government.

their Icmg ungainly necks; their yellow headlight eyes search the dark land. For men and machines, farming is a task that knows no end.

In most years the task is financially rewarding. This year the figures tell a different story. It costs a Nebraska farmer from $1.50 to $3, depending upon various factors, to produce a bushel of com. The University of Nebraska says $2.10 is a fair average. But the average price received by the farmer is headed toward $1.23. With every bushel he produces, he goes a little deeper in the hole.

The sun and the rain were too good to the farmer this season. Nebraskas average com yield in 1976 was 83 bushels an acre. This year it increased to an even 100. The farmer who got 8,300 bushels off his 100-acre spread in 1976 got 10,000 bushels in 1977, but he raised no cries of jubilation. The 76 cn^ was worth $18,500; the 77 crop may have a market value ol $12,300. Meanwhile, the price of all those dinosaur machines keeps going up.

There is talk of a general strike, but few persons take the talk seriously. A couple of thousand disgruntled growers went to Pueblo, Colo., a few weeks ago to give Agriculture Secretary Bob Bergland a hard time. Bergiand had some warm sympathy for them, and some cool advice also: Forget the strike talk. He wants Midwestern growers to reduce their production in 1978, and to store the grain they cant sell now. This too will pass.

The country radio stations crackle with gloomy predictions. A senate senator says one of every ten N^raska farms will be sold a year hence. The paper carry ads for farm auctions in Hastings, Norfolk, Atkinson, Wayne and Grand Island. When these topics get exhausted, a hailstorm or a few tornadoes come along. Country living aint no sweet-smellin bed of new-mown hay.

Yet the wonderful thing ((kmtinued on page 6)

Quiet

Cattle

Exodus

By NIKKI FINKE Associated Press Writer UNITED NATIONS, NY. (AP) Like neighborhood chums scratinizing the new boy on the block, ambassadors in the tightly knit U.N. community gave President Carter a close inspection and liked what they saw.

A number of diplmate gave Carter high marks during his visit to the headquarters of the (Ckmtinued on page 6)40 Years Ago Today

October 6,1937 Six hits, four bases on balls and an error in the sixth inning netted the New York Yankees seven runs and victory in the opening game of the World Series held in Yankee Stadium. A home run by Tony Lazzeri in the eighth inning brought the Yankees total score to eight.

The game was witnessed by a crowd of approximately 60,0(X).

The League of Nations assembly warned Japan of the possibility of international action unless she agrees to a peaceful nine-power pact settlement of the CSiina conflict.

The assembly unanimously approved resolutions condoning the warning, but Poland and Siam abstained from voting. But their attitude did not prevent the unamlty because states which abstain from voting are considered absent under Geneva practices.

Women were declared eligible to serve on North Carolina juries as ruled by Attorney General A. A. F. Seawell.

In a short letter Seawell said: You will see that I am of the opinion that women are eligible for services on juries in this state without further legislation.

Single-Family House Growing

and the cat and the puppy became fast friends. When the piq>py became big the cat often slept curled ig) against him. And it appeared that the dog would not move until the cat waked W>-

If cats and dogs can be friends in this manner, so can we. Actually it should be easier becuase we can com-mtmicate together. As Jesus said, Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, that ye may be children of your Father in heaven. Rcanbedone.-by Elisha DougUw

ByJOHNCUNNIFF AP Business Analyst NEW YORK (AP) - Uttle seems to stand in the way of the homebuyers desire for a single-family house on its own plot not money or energy prices or attempts by builders to change Americas living habits.

The typical new house is still the conventional one-story, three-bedroom plan, but it now has two baths and is growing larger in other areas too. It is likely to have a fireplace and central air conditioning, and almost certainly a dishwasher.

All this despite an energy shortage that causes operating costs to be higher, and soaring purchase prices that preclude ownership by some families unless they borrow from parents to meet the down payment.

It isnt the first time that homebuyers have asserted themselves against what might be considered the better judgment of others. Planners and builders have tried cluster housing (small nioLs. shared green areas).

co-ops and condominiums, modular units, no-frill housing and more.

As real estate agents note, young couples supposedly more attuned to change often seek conventional homes similar to those in which they grew up or to which their parents aspired ... only bigger and better. A study of Census Bureau material by the National Association of Realtors shows that the average size, speculatively built house in 1976 was 1,690 square feet, compared with 1,535 feet in 1971.

Fifty-nine per cent of the units had at least one fireplace, versus 34 per cent five years earlier, even though the detailed hand labor involved added greatly to the total cost.

Fifty-three per ceit of the speculative homes (those bililt on expectation of sale rather than to order) am-tained central air conditioning, compared with only 38 per cent in 1971, when energy costs were much lower.

More than 70 ner cent of

houses had two bathrooms, against about 50 per cent five years ago. And 78 per cent were equipped with dishwashers against only 48 per cent in 1971.

Despite the strong market for new and better homes, a rate that now seems to assure some 1.9 million starts for the year, an even stronger market exists in sales of existing or used homes.

For the secwid year in a row, sales of such unite will pass the three-million-mark, and might even reach 3.5 million units, an unprecedented figure.

It is this trend that perhaps suggests some change in the attitude of homebuyers, in that a good deal of existing housing is urban, whereas new single-family homes are usually built on suburban or semisuburban lots.

Urban buyers apparently have heeded nobodys advice but their own, recognizing that such units, even if abandoned, often represent better buys than new housing. Accommodations often are larger, construction sturdier.

Sewers and water connections exist, as do transportation and other amenities.

Recognizing the absurdity of abandoning such housing and sensitive to criticisms that money is being transferred from such areas to suburbia savings and loan associations this week urged a new national urban housing policy.

The U.S. League of Savings Associations, whose 4,461 member savings and loan associations are the primary source of mortgage money, said more emphasis on rehabilitation and less on new construction is needed.

Despite their affinity for what is termed the conventional new home, a good many young buyers already seem to have that idea, and they are asserting themselves in rehabilitation projects, whenever they can get mortgages.

Such housing, of course, was the conventional housing long before the suburbs and the conventional new hmne.