Public Forum Of Spending Cuts, Pets, Humanity

The Daily Reflector, Greenville, N.C Sunday, February 28,1982A-5

George

Gallup

POLL

To the editor:

Everyone has an inner desire and need (or love - affection and hi^i regard of at least one other human being. There are many unfortunate people who feel the sting of lack of affection from early childhood on. Much of what in older people appears to be degenerative disease is in fact functional disease, resulting from lonesomeness, futility, despair and sadness that have become the closest companions of their nights and days. Freud said man wants most of all to be loved; Adler, to be significant; Jung, security. All are valid. Man is complex and needs many things

Another basic need of mankind is creative expression, whether its the child building with blocks, the housewife making curtains, the financier planning a new hold corporation, the girl writing poetry, the carpenter building a house. All have the satisfying feeling that, out of raw materials, they are creating something new. But more importantly, there is in everyone the need to feel that he and his efforts are being appreciated - appreciated by those for whom we strive. Often a man may leave a perfectly good position because he feels his efforts are not properly appreciated. Consider the unthanked homemaker, the unthanked oldster. Appreciate your child, but dont spoil him.

'The need for new experiences is important. Dull, monotonous routine develops unpleasant emotions and functional disease. Take that trip, if its no more than to the market. So many people lose every vestige of self-esteem. They look upon themselves as failures in every respect. There is nothing more to do, no worth, no importance, no ability, no judgment, no future, no past except guilt and failure. What can we do? 1. Receive love of others. 2. Have security. 3. Exercise creative expression in work, hobbies. 4. Receive recognition of any of your fellow men. 5. Have new experiences. 5. Have self-esteem. Remember You are just as good as I am, and we are just as good as they are, God bless them!

Mrs. Beatrice C. Maye

Greenville

By MAXWELL GLEN and CODY SHEARERUnity?

WASHINGTON - Ifs been over a year since 52 eager young Republicans arrived here to act as Ronald Reagans guerrillas in his revolution against government excesses.

Dominated by true believers, the GOP House freshmen (average age, 42) were Reagans biggest boosters during con-gressiol battles over the presidents tax and budget proposals.

We pressured senior members to make the hard decisions recalled Rep. Judd Gregg, a 35-year-ld former lawyer from New Hampshire. It wasnt going to be business as usual.

But paranoia has beset Reagans robots. To their dismay, the national economy hasnt lived up to the presidents promises; meanwhile, Reagan now proposes both higher budget deficits and deeper cuts in social programs.

For many of the freshmen, its as if their fleet-footed quarterback is running toward the wrong goal. Accordingly, they are finding it sensible to line up as far away from Reagan as possible, if only to avoid serious iniury. The GOPs unity has been shattered.

On one side of the disjointed field are such frosh as Rep. Lawrence J. DeNardis, a gypsy moth from Connecticut. Like other Republicans from Northern and urban districts, hes seeing his House membership jeopardized by damage from the economic program he endorsed last summer. Now DeNardis wants to cut into Reagans defense prqiosals, add more money to certain social programs and repeal some of last years tax giveaways to business.

We cant support the presidents budget as proposed, DeNardis recently told the Baltimore Sun. If he puts it in terms of take it or leave it,' about 25 of us are going to leave it.

Lurking on the other side of the field are the true believers, who are most horrified by the size of the projected 1983 federal deficit. How can balanced-budget advocates look anything but foolish when their inspirational guru doesnt seem to take budget deficits seriously anymore?

Rep. Denny Smith, a newspaper publisher from Oregon, has so far provided the purists with an alternative. Hes prompted 11 other House Republicans (not all of whom are first-termers) to sign a Feb. 5 letter urging Reagan to freeze spending levels for all federal programs including defense at 19f|2 levels. Such a proposal is simplistic, Smith conceded, but you need to keep it that way to pass Congress.

Smith wont deny the political expediency of such an alternative. When he could be one of the estimated 40 House Republicans unseated.in November, Smith knows that loyalty to the president is a sometime thing. Smiths constituents sent him to Washington to do something about interest rates, and he, at least, aims to keep his promises.

According to Rep. Gregg, many GOP freshmen have no choice but to strike out on their own. We went to the wall and didnt ask for anything in return, he said. Then, we saw that the administration took us for granted. Now were being put on a limb, and the limb is being cut. The White Houses lack of sympathy is leaving them embittered: A meeting with Reagans staff two weeks ago turned into a shouting match, said Gregg.

Had Gregg and the gang not swallowed Reagans program so readily last summer, we might sympathize with their disillusionment. Yet they might have expected such blinded me-tooism in 1981 to catch up with them eventually. By wiping their hands of yesterdays simplemindedness today, they only risk appearing opportunistic or spineless, or both.

We wont underestimate the difficulty Republicans had in challenging Reagan wisdom last year. Yet it may be too much to maintain political consistency when it mi^t mean giving up, among other congressional perks, subsidized parking, meals and haircuts, athletic facilities, foreign junkets and a listing in the Green Book of Washingtons most eligible par-tygoers. In their first term, freemen have also won themselves a $10,000 automatic tax deduction on their $60,662.50 salary as well as higher limits on earnings from outside speeches and awards.

Perhaps it just takes time for the realities of congressional life to impress a rookie. But a year after their arrival, the simpleminded guerrillas are proving to be just another motley crop of self-serving politicians.

Copyright 1982 Feild Enterprises, Inc.John Cunniff

Totheeditori

I am concerned about the effects of some proposed federal funding cuts in President Reagans 1983 budget on the quality of education in the Greenville City Schools. Two federally subsidized programs affecting many Greenville students ar authorized under PL 94-192, the law requiring education of handicapped children, and Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the title and law providing remedial reading and mathematics instruction for 1,200 of Greenvilles 4,900 students.

Currently, there is a federal allotment of $205 per handicapped child provided to public schools to help defray the cost of federally required special education services. Two years ago, the per-handicapped-child federal allotment was over $300. The proposed federal cut in overall PL 94-142 funds IS from $900 million to $846 million.

If the $205 allotment per handicapped child is cut, the funding loss to Greenville will be significant since the number and percentage of handicapped children in Greenville is rising at a rate greater than the number of students lost annually due to a declining enrollment. Last year, in order to continue to meet PL 94-142 requirements as well as to serve all children. The Greenville School administrators eliminated three professional and eight aide positiqns from Greenvilles program for exceptional children.

The ESEA Title I funds serve over one-fifth of Greenvilles students through remedial reading and mathematics instruction. The remedial reading program for first graders was eliminated last year because of Title I cuts. Projected Title I cuts are 23 percent to 50 percent, depending on which budget line item one attempts to interpret in terms of direct aid to children.

Citizens who share my concerns about the effects of these proposed federal funding cuts on all Greenville City School children should contact Senators Jesee Helms and John East and Congressman Walter Jones in Washington immediatelv. Mary C. Guy 304 Ravenwood Drive Greenville

Totheeditor;

In reference to the letter concerning people who hit animals and fail to stop to find the owner. I realize, also, that a person should tr\ to find the owner of any animal that he might run over; however, the owners of these animals should attempt to keep their pets off the streets In March 1981, my girlfriend and 1 were nearly killed when our car overtimed while trying to avoid hitting someones beloved pet. If someone sees an animal run down on purpose, please notify the authorities at once. Also, if someone sees an animal wandering on the streets; please call the animal control officers. The roads are made for cars, not animals. Your call might save the animals life and also the life of some compassionate soul who might otherwise die while trying to avoid someones beloved pet.

DougRoberson

Rt. 2, Greenville

Totheeditor:

Oh, say can you see Wart' The star-spangled banner is missing! Yes, 1 proudly hailed it (and many others) until an unexpected "visitor, perhaps in the terror of the night, no longer wanted it to catch the gleam of the mornings first beam at our home. I hope that star-spangled banner yet waves, nevertheless. "O'er the land of the free (my sweet America), and the home of the brave, which is sometimes daring.

Thank you. just the same. Congressman Walter Jones, for arranging three years ago to get me the broad stripes and bright stars which had flown over the capital city! Just before Christmas, 1 proudly displayed it to replace the the faded one 1 had flown too long'

Praise the Pow'r that hath made " the person who took it and in God may we both trust, forever and ever!

JeanieC. Whitehurst GreenvilleNoel Yancey

Interesting People

Looking back on nearly half a century of news reporting, one of the highlights has to be the five days I spent at Nags Head in December 1953 covering the 50th anniversary of the Wright Brothers first flight.

One of the cliches about newspapering is the saying that You meet such interesting people That was certainly true of the group which assembled at a Nags Head hotel for the airplanes 50th birthday party.

These ranged from Leontine Wri^t Jameson, a neice of the two Dayton. Ohio, bicycle mechanics who taught the world to fly, to Brig. Gen. Frank P. Lahm (Ret.), who became the nations first military pilot after taking lessons from the Wrights.

Mrs. Jameson told of flying with her uncle Orville Wright in 1911 after she had written him saying her ambition was to be the first little girl in the world to fly.

She told reporters that the Wright family had so much faith in the abilities of their kinsmen and was so certain they would succeed that the family members were not even particularly excited when the word came on Dec. 17, 1903, that Orville Wright had flown their flimsy cloth and wooden craft with its primitive gasoline engine a distance of 120 feet in 12 seconds.

Mrs. Jameson firmly squelched the claim of a Dayton citizen that the Wrights first powered flight occured near Dayton some time before the 1903 flight at Kill Devil Hills, near Kitty Hawk. The man told reporters he had seen the brothers fly near Dayton at an earlier date.

I think he was confused, she said. He may have seen one of the later flights and became mixed up about the dates.

One of the tidbits of news that I learned at the celebration and duly reported was that Wilbur Wright had actually flown the Kitty Hawk the first time on Dec. 14, 1903 - three days before they claimed to have made the epochal first flight. Wilbur, who had won a toss for the honor of making the first flight, actually got the Kitty Hawk off the ground for 34 seconds that day. But that was not good enough for the Wrights.

You can put an engine on a bam door and make it go into the air. The real problem, the real achievement, is to keep it there, under control, he explained afterward. The Kitty Hawk was slightly damaged in that first try, and the brothers did not complete the repairs until Dec. 17 when they made four flights. First Orville took the Kitty Hawk aloft for 12 seconds, and finally Wilbur flew it 852 feet in 59 seconds.

None of the participants or witnesses to the first fli^t lived to attend that 50th anniversary celebration, but the widows of two coastguardsmen. who assisted the Wrights at times and

were present for the tirst flight, did attend. Mrs. Adam Ethridge Swindell, widow of Adam Etheridge, told reporters of w^atching the brothers in their earlier flight attempts and gl ider experiments from her home nearby.

We all thought how foolish they were, she said.

Although generals and admirals, U.S. senators and congressmen and state officials joined airmen for the celebration, the thing that thrilled the crowd of 5,000 that braved the frigid weather to attend, was an awe-inspiring air show that might easily have drawn a crowd of 50,000 if it had been staged in a metropolitan area on a summer day.

The notables definitely played second fiddle to the myriads of aircraft and the men who flew them. From helicopters to sleek supersonic fighters, from a 1912 model open cockpit pusher tv^pe plane to a B-47 Stratojet bomber, to a 60-passenger airliner which had just set a new coast-to-coast speed record, the planes roared over .the 60-foot granite pylon erected on Kill Devil Hill to honor the Wrights,

A high spot of the show came at 12:15 p.m. when a British Canberra jet photo-reconnaissance plane dipped its wings over the Wright .Memorial. Its crew members had breakfast in Ireland. But the most spectacular show of the day was staged by the Thunderbirds, the Air Forces precision fliying team. The four pilots put on a nerve-tingling act with their 550-mph Thunderjets executing hair-raising maneuvers with the planes flying only five feet apart in a diamond formation.

The sleek new planes did not completely steal the show, however. They had to share the spotlight with Billy Parker of Bartlesville. Okla. Parker, cold and red-cheeked and chomping on an unlighted cigar, took off in the bitter wind in his 1912 homemade pusher plane-the nearest thing to the Wrights plane then flying - and did a re-enactment of the first flight. He circled his craft around the markers which show where Orville and Wilbur made their flights.

At a luncheon which followed the airshow, Fred C. Kelly, a biographer of the WrighLs. posed a tantalizing if. He recalled that he had once asked Orville Wright if he and Wilbur had ever become discouraged during their aviation experiments. Orville replied that they had. It was in 1901, but it was not related to problems in aerodynamics.

It was the mosquitoes, Orville told Kelly. He explained that mosquitoes were so bad that year that he and Wilbur nearly decided, more than once, to return home.

What if they had gone home Kelly asked, What would it have meant to the future course of aviation? He left the question unanswered.

It's A Big Ambition

NEW YORK (AP) - Cheer up. In case you may have lost sight of it in the tumult, the economic goal of the Reagan administration is to return the economy to a motivated, innovative, productive private sector ...

... A sector that produces the goods and provides the services that will enable you to enjoy more health and wealth at relatively less cost, and with little need to cut into your neighbors share.

A big ambition. Indeed a vast ideal in view of the economic drift of 50 years, an ideal that occasionally elicits cynicism from those who view themselves as adrift in a small lifeboat in a big and stormy sea.

But, yes, there may be some small signs on the horizon. William Dunkelberg, a Purdue University economist and small-business consultant, thinks he has spotted a little speck out

there, and he thinks it will grow.

Dunkelberg believes that a leaner, more efficient and more competitive economy could be developing, one in which people are more alert, more attentive to business, less wasteful, more willing to do more with less.

The professor, who interprets responses to quarterly surveys by the Federation of Independent Business, a 500,000-member organization, says he has found revealing figures in first-quarter 1982 results.

Two records were set: The greatest number of respcMxlents who said they had lowered prices from the previous quarter, and the lowest number who said they had posted higher prices. And something of the same sort was found in the January consumer price index, which rose only 3.5 percent.

Obviously, said Dunkelberg, there is

more downward flexibility than we might have thought. Despite complaints that it couldnt be done, he said, businesses have managed to cut some more. Efficiency is up.

The consequences of it are intriquing, as Dunkelberg explained.

A lot of people said that ^wth projections for 1982 couldnt be realized, he said, alluding to the widespread belief that the big fecteral deficit would sop up capital ne^ed for expansion by business. But, he said, this might be offset by business and labor learning to do iTM}re with less. In other, words, by being more productive.

Productivity is almost a synonym for efficiency. If business costs fall, for example, production is obtained at lower per unit costs. And already, Dunkelberg notes, production prices have been .falling.

The mood of both business and labor will help. Business is leaner and meaner, he observes. Business people are much more careful: On top of this, he continues, there have been major changes in work rules and compensation. Labor, he notes, has made major concessions.

And then there is the tax cut, the impact of which has not been fully felt and which would seem to have growing impact later in the year. That too should help make the private sector stronger and productive

Finally, Dunkelberg points out, if you look at a typical recovei7 it is almost aways accompanied by increased productivity. Greater productivity, he suggests, is in the very nature of economic recovery.

PRINCETON, N J - Despite the deepening recession. President Reagan's popularity has leveled off, with 47 percent in the latest survey approving of his job performance, not significantly changed from his approval ratings since early December

Three key factors may have helped stabilize the presidents overall popularity rating in recent weeks from the much higher levels of last summer

(1) There is continuing high public regard for President Reagan as a person: 70 percent of Americans now approve of Reagan, the man, close to the 73 percent rec'orded in November and not far below the 78 percent favorable assessment in the first Gallup test, last July

(2) Reagan gets relatively high marks for his handling of national defense and our relations with the Soviet Union 55 per cent now approve of the presidents handling of national defense, while 49 percent approve of his conduct of r ir relations with the Soviets.

(3) Although Reagans ratings for dealing w.th the nation's economy, inflation and unemployment are far tielow his earlier scores, the precipitous declines sufferiHl since last summer have leveled out

Ratings Below Most Of Predecessors .Although the presidents overall approval rating has held

steady in recent weeks, it is close to the score given ('arter at a

similar period and below those of three other elected predecessors, Richard Nixon. John Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower.

Here are the ratings given the five most recent elected presidents in February of their second year in office Presidental Approval Ratings (February, Second Year i

Reagan................. 47%

Carter............................ 49

Nixon , ...................... ......... .....60

Kennedy................ ........... 78

Eisenhower.......... , . 69

.AVERAGE..........................................61

Following is the question asked to measure public attitudes toward the presidents overall performance Do you approve or disapprove of the way Ronald Reagan is handling his job as president

Here is a selected trend:

Reagan Approval Ratings Overall

Approve

Disapprove

No

opinion

LATEST (Feb. 5-81

47%

43%

10%

Jan. 22-25...............

.-........47

.42

11

Jan 8-11................

.........49

40

11

December 1981.........

.........49 .

41

10

November...............

........>4

37

. 9

October................

35

9

29

11

July....................

29

11

June...................

.........59

29

12

Mav....................

.........68

21

11

April...................

.........67

18

15

March................,

......... 60

24

16

Februarv ..............

.........55

18

27

A comparison of the public's early 1981 ratings of Reagan's handling of specific problems with those accorded him in the latest survey shows much greater losses on economic issues than on those associated with national defense and foreign affairs, as showTi below:

Reagan Handling Of Specific Problems I Percent approval i

March

Point

1981

Latest

change

Economic conditions

......56%

38%

18

Inflation ................

.....' ,. ,56

37

19

Unemplovment

40

27

13

National defense.......

64

55

9

Relations with U.S.S.R

......,58

49

9

Foreign policy...........

.......53

44

9

Following are highlights of the trends for each of these assessments: ,

Presidential Approval Ratings Economic Conditions:

No

Approve

Disapprove

opinion

LATEST (Feb. 5-8).........

38%

53%

9%

Jan. 8-11....................

41

51'

8

December 1981.............

41

50

9

November................

40

50

10

October....................

44

47 '

9

June.......................

51

40

9,

April:......................

60.

29

11

March.....................

56

32

12

Inflation:

Approve

Disapprove

NO

opinion

LATEST (Feb. 5-81.........

37%

53%

10%

Jan. 8-11....................

53

10

October...................

42

48

10

June.....................

53

35

12

April......................

,58

28

14

March............... .....

56

30

14

Unemployment.

Yr

Approve

Disapprove

No

opinion

LATEST (Feb 5-8).........

27%

63%

10%

January...................

26

63

11

October 1981................

33

53

14

June.......................

30

40

21

April......................

43

34

23

March.....................

40

37

23

National Defense:

Approve

No

Disapprove opinion

LATEST (Feb, 5-8).........

55%

34%

11%

October 1981................

61

28

11

June.................

57

26

17

March....................

64

20

16

Relations with Soviet Union:

Approve

No

Disapprove (pinion

LATEST(Feb 5-8).........

.....49%

33%

18%

January......... ........

47

33

20

October 1981................

* 25

22

June......................

48

25

27

April.......................

56

17

27

March.....................

58

19

23

Foreign Policy :

Approve

No

Disapprove opinion

LATEST (Feb. 5-8).....

44%

38%

18%

October 1981................

56

29

15

March...................

53

29

18

Following is the question asked to measure attitudes toward Reagan, the man:

Apart from whether you approve or disapprove of the way Reagan is handling his job as president, what od you think of Reagan as a person? Would you say you approve or disapprove of him?

Here is the trend:

Reagan as a Person:

No

Approve Disa[q)rove opinion

LATEST (Feb. 5-8) ...........70% 20% 10%

November 1981 ..................73 17 10

July... ...................78 13 9

The results reported today are based on personal interviews with 1,547 adults, 18 and older, conducted im more than 300 scientifically-selected localities across the nation during the period Feb. 5-8.

For results based on a sample of this size, one can say with 95 percent confidence thgt the error attributable to sampling and other random effects could be three percentage points in either direction.

Copyright 1982 Field Enterprises, Inc.