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Newspaper Archive of
Shelton Mason County Journal
Shelton, Washington
May 15, 1975     Shelton Mason County Journal
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May 15, 1975
 
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/PETE 15 A,'FI-I,( ID IN CAMBODIA The worst legislative session in the state's history? Probably. If anyone claims he can find a connection between what is going on in Olympia at the moment and the general welfare of the citizens of Washington, he must be eating and drinking from the same ,fouled trough as the legislators. A House and Senate leadership which told the people its continuing session concept would shorten and improve regular sessions is now presiding over the longest and most unproductive session on record. The optimistic boasts of four months ago about the computer system which would burp fiscal miracles at the push of a button are now ancient history. Computers do not make decisions; computers provide figures. And when the persons who are provided with the figures are unable or unwilling to make decisions the instant statistics are useless. Not everyone, however, is unhappy with this marathon session. The beneficiaries of the ripoffs perpetrated during the past four months are satisfied. The highway lobby is happy that it has been given ample money to spread more asphalt and concrete at a time when every indicator points to the need to replace a large portion of automobile travel with efficient public transportation. The small loan companies are pleased with the House-approved expansion of their 12-to-36%-interest vise on citizens who are shown the door at stuffier lending institutions. The private utilities will be ecstatic if the ripoff they guided through the House escapes the Senate. Then there is Wally Miller, beneficiary of the most blatant ripoff of the session, which was engineered last week by House Speaker Leonard Sawyer and Senate Majority Leader August Mardesich. Several weeks ago, when hordes of teachers, students and parents invaded Olympia to pressure legislators into providing relief from special school levies, the Legislature asked State Superintendent of Public Instruction Frank Brouillet for a definition of a basic education. That was an obvious starting point lot any evaluation of the state's responsibility for school financing. Brouillet, a former legislator who is now paid to come up with answers to questions such as this, produced a typical legislator's answer. That's a tough question to answer, he told his former colleagues; you just give us the money for schools and we'll decide how it is to be spent. The administrator of a $1 billion-plus budget to educate the state's children could not define a basic education. liacredible? h o. Par for the course. in Brouillet's files is a copy of a report on special levies made in 1970 to answer that very question. The Special Levy Study Commission, authorized by the Legislature, spent a year and a half and $395,000 to produce its report. Following Brouillet's non-answer, Sawyer and Mardesich hired the aforementioned Wally Miller on a personal contract of $250,000 to go over the same ground covered by the 1970 committee. Yes, gentle reader, this is the worst session in history. And your money is paying for it and its crop of ripoffs. • Editor, The Journal: Some kind soul sent me your column of March 27. It was funny. Funny. Funny. 1 laughed. And laughed and laughed. My husband was an editor for many years. He was an editor when ! entered junior high school. People tell me two things about him: He was one of the best, and he was a dirty old man (for marrying a child like me). He also thinks your column is funny. He now is the western representative of King Features. Washington is part of his territory. You are one of his prey, although he does not normally call on weeklies. 1 am going with him this summer. He plans to visit Washington. He says he will take both of us to lunch if you can go. Here's the best part. He will pay. And he won't try to sell you anything. Which of my articles did you see? Some editors agree with my conclusions. Some do not. Vidura, the editor and publisher of India, has a version in its current issue. Gannett Newspapers has duplicated it and. distributed it among their editorial departments. Gannett is very big. 1 am pleased. Professor Harlan Stensaas of Washington State does not agree. 1 am sad - but ! cannot change the statistics. The part of your newspaper sent to me consisted of two columns on page 4. Just below your column was one by Joseph C. Harsch. He works for the Christian Science Monitor. My husband says the Monitor is one of the finest newspapers in the world. He says all its writers are tops. He says the Monitor has told its reporters to hold their sentences to 15 words average. He says they are to avoid words longer than three syllables. In columns one and two of page 4 he has 17 complete sentences. They contain 245 words. That's 14.4 words per sentence. Of the 245 words, only three have more than three syllables. They are disintegration, expensively and abandonment. Would you hire Joseph Harsch? I hope you will have lunch with us. It will be fun. You can have a banana with your cereal. Please let us know. Carolyn Clark Relley La Joila, California By ROBERT C. CUMMINGS Of all the money spent on education, school administration costs have received more criticism from both the Legislature and the public than any other one item. But at least one legislator has had some words in their defense. Representative Edward Luders, a legislator from Spokane, said court decisions declaring every child between ages six and 18 is entitled to an education have made it impossible to expel unruly students. Attempts to do so have not only been • unsuccessful, but have resulted in expensive court costs and attorney's fees, which are charged to administration. Security Costs Money, Too Compelled to keep such students in school has made it necessary for some school districts to hire 24-hour security guards, also charged to administrative costs. Still vandalism continues and insurance premiums rise as a result, adding als0 to maintenance costs. Though sympathetic to this situation, numerous lawrqakers remain unmoved on this point. Any legislation providing for special levy relief is pretty certain to include some proviso restricting the amount which may be spent on administration. Long Study For Moratorium A bill to impose a five-year moratorium on construction of any additional nuclear-fired energy plants could be subjected to a study for almost as extended as the proposed moratorium. Representative A. A. Adams, Tacoma, chairman of the Social and Health Services Committee which has the bill, has assigned the study to a subcommittee headed by William J. S. Day, D-Spokane, who is known to "make haste slowly." Other Democrats named to the subcommittee include Elmer Jastad, Morton; Mary Kay Becker, Bellingham; and Adams. Republican members are Ire G reengo, Seattle, and Earl F. Tilly, Wenatchee. Not more than two of the subcommittee members could be classed as environmental-oriented. it Won't Go Away A proposed 12 percent excise tax on corporation profits, HB 673, has been buried in the House Ways and Means Committee, but it isn't dead yet. The measure, sponsored by Charles Moon, D-Snohomish, received a "do pass" recommendation from the, Revenue Committee, but he concedes it lacks the votes.to get out of Ways and Means. Another Way To Go The schools' financial crunch provided the measure with enough stealfi to get it out of the first committee. But the certainty that the measure, if passed, would be tied up for a year or more in court challenges, caused many of its supporters to back away. But on file in the Secretary of State's office is Initiative 314, which is identical to HB 673. Prohibited by the public disclosure law from campaigning personally in behalf of Initiative 314, Moon is counting on support from various groups, though a similar .initiative failed to make the ballot on a previous try. Moon had expected backing from the Washington Education Association, but it failed to materialize. ~M~j~l~llll~l~l~ll~l~lll~lll~ll~l~l~ll~lllllllll~l~l~l~l~l~l~l~l~ll~l~lllll~ By DAVE AVERILL It is not true that all politicians complain about newspapers. Stand one of them up in front of an audience of editors or publishers, and he will deliver 30 minutes of praise. A free press is a bulwark. Keep at it, fellows. Then he will go home and rinse out his mouth with Lavoris. , Look, count yourself glad that the press and the politician are natural enemies. If a bunch of rascals like that ever got together and lined up on the same side, everybody would be in trouble. When you do run into a statesman in his natural condition, grumbling about the newspapers, it is instructive to consider what kind of newspapers we would get if we let politicians do their own editing. By happy chance, a publication already exists that shows what the result might be. It is the Congressional Record. The Congressional Record is a massive monument to political vanity that costs the taxpayers millions of dollars every year. Because a member of Congress can change his mind after making a speech, calling back the very words he has uttered, the Congressional R cord is full of inaccuracies. Because everyone enjoys seeing his own words in print, it is full of fluff. It can be boring beyond belief, with page after page of trivia. The Congressional Record has no regard for the truth. It will aid any congressman in presenting the fiction that he is hard at work, making speeches on the floor of the House, when in fact he may be thousands of miles away. Unblinkingly, it prints obvious lies. It's bad. It's even worse than the newspapers. Editor's Note: The following is a sample of the material printed in the Congressional Record. "Mr. ESCH" is Representative Marvin L. Esch, Micigan Republican. The item appeared in the Record on February 27, 1975. Mr. ESCH. Mr. Speaker, easily the most serious problem m the United States today is the state of the economy, and the problems all of us are having coping with rampant inflation. Our many distinguished economic advisers have met on numerous occasions to determine policies which might alleviate these ills, and many consumer groups and private individuals have taken upon themselves the burden of seeking solutions to our economic woes. 1 would like to take a moment to share with you the text of a letter which I recently presented to members of the Huron Valley Girl Scout Council of Michigan for their efforts in combating inflation in a most unique lash ion : Huron Valley Girl Scout Council Dear Friends: I wish to take this opportunity to commend the members of the Huron Valley Girl Scout Council for their initiative in maintaining the 1974 price of Girl Scout cookies in the face era 1975 price rise. While other Councils throughout the United States have bowed to a 25-cent increase in price, the Scouts in our area have decided to do their part in fighting inflation by setting the goal of selling 25% more cookies than last year at last year's price. While the chief topic of conversations in Washington and throughout the country has been the state of the economy, our local Girl Scouts have decided to do something besides just talk. I am proud to be able to commend them for their determination and drive to not only help themselves and their organization by selling cookies, but to do so in a manner that is an inspiration to us all. Sincerely, Marvin L. Esch ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~H~~~~~~~~~i~H~~~~~i~~ Page 4 - Shelton-Mason County Journal - Thursday, May 15, 1975 Editor, The Journal: In 1973 I spent six months as a volunteer role-play coordinator at Western State Hospital on the sexual psychopath program. What I observed during that internship produced in me an eager faith in what has come to be known as "rehabilitation." The rationale upon which the sexual psychopath program ts based assumes the innate potential of its inmates, and the result is an almost tangible positivism among the staff and its charges. Members of the staff are generally insightful, aware individuals who purposefully stand beside the inmates to face the common adversary which they recognize to be the infinite complexity of life. In addition to viewing the inmates as individual offenders, the staff is able to see them as byproducts of a disturbed and confused society, and it is this very awareness which brings about in the staff a sense of moral responsibility toward the inmates and a stake in their future. The staff and the inmates work together, and the result is a dynamic, creative and stimulating gestalt that feeds back to everyone involved. There is no cleady defined division between the staff and the inmates inasmuch as everyone is striving toward the common goal of adjustment. The staff helps the inmates to discover innate strengths and to develop living skills which will allow them to cope with their everyday existence. Faced with the integrity of that program for six months I came to believe that the State of Washington was facing the problems of criminality rationally and progressively. After six months at Washington Corrections Center in Shelton I have discovered to my dismay that the program in which i participated at Western State Hospital was not in any way representative of the corrections system at large. What I have witnessed here at Washington Corrections Center appears to me in many ways to be opposite to what 1 witnessed in Steilacoom. The strong sense of "we" which was so constructive at Western State Hospital is replaced here in Shelton by an equally strong sense of "we versus they." The population within the barbed wire is divided absolutely into "staff" and "inmates," the institutional rationale revolves around "good we and bad they," and the inmates themselves are the enemy. The evolution of this overview is certainly a natural phenomenon, for it is little more than yet another manifestation of that all too familiar attitude which has evolved into "good white and bad black." "good Aryans and bad Jews," "good cowboys and bad Indians,''and "good Christians and bad Saracens" since the dawn of ethnocentrism. It is, however, the more disheartening to one who has seen a program in a state institution that functions successfully without it. The system of corrections w h i ch results from so rigidly judgmental a rationale is ineffective by its very nature. Socially conscious employees invariably flee in despair after a length of time that is directly proportionate to the strength of their ideals. In order to function within the present system at Washington Corrections Center one eventually must declare one's position or leave the field. Those employees who refuse to stand apart and above the inmates by declaring themselves socially, morally and intellectually superior figuratively have signed their resignations. In the interim between the "signing" of the figurative and the submission of the real resignation, such employees are necessarily forced into a group that is isolated from the dynamics of the institution. At Washington Corrections Center attention is focused upon a rigid social structure represented by job titles and arbitrary labels underlaid by the aforesaid we-they syndrome. Injudicious hiring practices have created an indestructible core of fearful, insensitive staff members whose very existence gave rise to and is perpetuating the negative atmosphere within the institution. The few fringe individuals who genuinely are concerned about the inmates are forced every day to defend their compassion, and they are maligned and derided by the remainder of the staff. The result is low morale, bickering and gossiping, and an almost universal lack of pride in employment. Staff members are hostile to one another and the inevitable result is an atmosphere of hostility from which the hapless prisoner must attempt unsuccessfully to glean a positive sense of self. Within this milieu the prisoner, in the words of the "State of Washington Philosophy sexual psychopath short of p¢ imperfections maY ensured its demise. the program the unity of involved in it. The people psychopath together toward a and to assail a giant time, misfortune people at Washingt°n~ Center are at several unconscious 0: significant issues, of Corrections," is expected "... perceive the giant. to maximize his opportunity to Until the staff~ become a productive, constructive member of society...," and to execute "... an early return to responsible citizen participation employing a pattern of behavior which is both rewarding to the individual and acceptable to the society." This discussion of the Western State Hospital sexual psychopath program and Washington Corrections Center is not intended to suggest that one is all right and the other all wrong. There is little doubt that the Corrections Center above its own unified staff inmates to problems, it will dismally in its "correct." The is a product of the fear that prejudice, and that an institution prejudice will all. Editor, The Journal: I have a question and response to two letters published in the Journal May 1, 1975. - First to J. Westlund. You and many like you feel drugs are "your business." Your attitude seems to be, leave us alone to do our own thing. That might be fine if one, your thing was not illegal and two, if it didn't affect others. You seem to feel it only affects yourselves. afraid that as a and parent, restriction are my child's Second, to Demand hares evident in every There is a very the X-rated movies : Don't go if you them. As the has a full house Answer this for me, please. If movies. All are it only affects you, where are the 18 years of age. drugs coming from that are (shown by a full available in the schools, even the family movies, he grade schools? If it only affects you, where are the children, who come from families that have no idea what the difference between marijuana and LSD or amphetamines~ and barbituates,is, " getting their drugs? Maybe from people like you or more possibly, and as likely from your children who see their parents with it so feel there is no wrong. I enjoyed your letter; it was very well written. However, I am more. I don't care movies generally have seen some movies with an , times when" aft~ much. However does with this The point supply is demand. Editor, The Journal: In response to your article, "Civil Services Practices of Sheriff Questioned." In October 1974, l took a Civil Service test for jailer, Mason County Jail; two positions available; six applicants. Results of test - four failed, two passed. The type of Civil Service test - 3 hours length, rookie patrolman, larger city, Midwest. Categories of questions - logic and reasoning, memory, attitude and a few others. The test was given by Warren Knutzen. I spent the total three hours taking the test and rereading test questions that I had doubts about whether l had answered correctly. Have you ev the woods or and smelled wonder if Warren has the test results to show them to other people that It has been of the already a parl don't know time, but it Well anyway, if driving by notice a maybe they plumbers. Mack McGi I have a friend who took one karate lesson and boards. With his cast. .~aul Dean in The A motorist, filling out an accident report form, out of a parking space, and by the time I backed what was coming, it already had." (Charlie Wadsworth Gauging in.qation's bite: A Minneapolis man ate at and noticed that a "poor boy" sandwich now costs Mailing Address: Box 430, Shelton, Wa. 98584 Published at 227 West Cota Street, Shelton, Washington 98584, weekly. Second-class postage paid at Shelton, SUBSCRIPTION RATES: $6.00 per year in in advance -- Outside Mason E~)ITOR AND PUBLISHER ...............