Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 6

Decatur, Illinou, Wednesday, May 25, 1977 DECATUR HERALD Americans Either Ignore or Are Hostile to Third World Economic Order Badly Needed-but Unattainable Welfare Payment Level a Disgrace New World EDITOR'S NOTE Peter G. Peterson, who was Secretary of Commerce in 1972 and 1973, is chairman of Lehman Brothers, Inc. This article is adapted from an essay circulated to the concern's clients. By Peter G. Peterson A currently faddish, if acrimonious, acronym is NIEO New International Economic Order.

It may seem faintly totalitarian or conspiratorial, but has become the accepted way to describe what is badly needed, and, as of now, unattainable. Why needed? For one thing, because the vast international aid undertakings of the last decade have, by any reckoning, failed; more than 25 per cent of the world's people still lead desperate, hopeless and deteriorating lives. Why unattainable? Because most Americans either don't care or are hostile to the third world, while leaders of countries there may care greatly but also appear increasingly hostile. To our ears, these leaders stridently demand "compensation," "retri- today's worldwide annual official aid. Even if we could supply this much grain, who would or even could pay for it( And what would a drain of that magnitude do to domestic grain prices, not to mention the political reverberations? (We must find areas of joint gain that is, by increasing their production they eat better and we pay less at the supermarket.) Experts say (they hope) this extreme poverty could be ended in 15 years by an additional annual Investment of $10 billion or thereabouts.

But given present attitudes, that is a gloomy figure indeed, until one confronts the gloomiest statistic of all: This year the world will spend one twentieth of its gross product on arms: $300 billion. The economics-aware American doesn't look only at these statistics. When he thinks about the third world with anything but impatience or anger, he is likely to reflect that, rich as we are in resources, we now import over two-thirds of our requirement of seven major minerals bauxite, chromium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, tin and tungsten from third- ernments definition of poverty. Of the people receiving welfare in Illinois in December, 1976. 70.167 were aged, blind or disabled.

Of the 773,245 people on Aid to Families with Dependent Children, 565,240 were children. 88 percent of them were taken care of by their mother. 87 percent of these mothers could not leave the home because they had to watch over an incapacitated person or a child under the age of six. Only the general assistance program, with 69,970 recipients, was primarily given to able adults. Most Welfare recipients are helpless and in need.

And to say that the finances of the state are more important than the needs of its citizens is somewhat fallacious, too. Hospitals recently got an increase. Nursing homes are world sources, and we import over 30 per cent of 13 out of 15 major raw materials. Our exports to the third world in 1975 were valued at $28.5 billion, which makes the third world as large an export market as Europe and Japan combined. About 40 per cent of our imports and exports in-v 1 these less-developed countries.

And our private bankers never forget that by the end of 1976 nearly $50 billion was owed them by underdeveloped countries. (Orderly debt service is another joint gain to our banking structure, the advantages are obvious; and regular payments make these countries better risks for future and broader credits.) There is also a long list of political issues to which the cooperation of developing countries is central, among them nuclear proliferation, population growth, pollution, terrorism, hijacking, narcotics traffic and the law of the seas. In addition, an underlying sense of discontent and inferiority infects political issues in the Mideast and Africa. We may not be entirely comfortable linking these various economic and political issues but we can be sure the devel oping countries will do so, and so will the Soviet Union. In this connection, we have an enormous comparative advantage vis-a-vis our Soviet rival, not only in human rights but also in the products, technology and markets we can offer.

Yet, whatever the benefits, whatever our advantage, and whatever rhetorical exuberance we may choose to name our latest foreign aid effort, whether "The Revolution of Rising Expectations" or "Reaching the Take-Off Point," something is clearly wrong when there are more desperate people after our efforts than before. More programs, more poverty. No won-der President Carter has raised the blunt question asked also by others: "Why should the poor in the rich countries help the rich in the poor countries?" It is this question that has brought us to our present attitude. In a recent private survey of 13 spending priorities in the United States, foreign aid ranked 13th, placing even behind increased salaries for our public officials, hardly a spending proposal that caught fire with our taxpayers. likely to get an increase soon.

The recipients come last their lobby is weak and they lack the economic means to make campaign contributions to candidates for governor and the legislature. Welfare recipients many of them children and the disabled in this state are suffering under their current payment rates. It's no secret that $356 a month is not enough to support a family of five. You don't have to be a welfare recipient to think that kind of payment level is a disgrace. Judge Them As Humans, Lawmakers IT'S EASY to think in extremes about politicians.

Actually, they're neither altogether virtuous nor vicious. They're people with strengths and weaknesses like other people. Take the members of the Illinois house. Usually they are thought of in their official capacities what bills they support, what statements they make, what positions they take. They should be judged on that basis, but they should also be seen as human beings with tempers, vanities and exhaustion points.

Sometimes they make angelic sounding statements simply to sound angelic. Sometimes they make illogical sounding statements out of anger or frustration. Other times they get tired and begin to lose their air of dignity. We should trust them as much as we trust any other person with an important job and a dozen diversions no more and no less. Spain Set to Sculpt Block of Democracy THOUFHTFUL people of nil classes should lx? disturbed that welfare recipients in 11-linois have not rwcivoi a cost of living iivtwais in tluvo years, i The Illinois House last week defeated a proposal to give them a five percent Increase.

The arguments of fertxl against the proposal were: Welfare recipients could work and don't deserve more money. The state can't afford a rate increase. A relatively few people who don't deserve welfare get it, no doubt. In some ways, the biggest profiteers, however, are not recipients, but rather providers of welfare health services. In any case, most welfare recipients simply do not have enough to live on, with benefits falling below the federal gov Fresh Ideas FRESH IDEAS are few and far between.

It's to their credit that Rep. James Edgar, R-Charleston and Rep. Virgil Wikoff R-Champaign, proposed one in the Illinois legislature this year. Their proposal: to allow localities to fund their schools with income taxes as well as property taxes. Property taxes often have little correlation to wealth.

The proposal will go info a 6tudy committee until next year. The study committee can Exchange Table Elderly Need Washington Post When spring breaks forth with warm sunshine not everyone is beckoned into the streets and parks of the city. The elderly often remain barricaded in their homes and apartments, restrained from taking advantage of -what the rest of us take for granted. And for good reason: Increasingly, police reports mention brutal attacks on older people. Unsafe streets and parks are just one more of the many burdens on those who grow old.

The elderly are often the victims of the sadiisitdc and the cowardly, as witness the fact that old women are more subject to- street attack than old men. elderly are more vulnerable than any other group of elderly people, with the sad result that those who can least afford to be the victims of crime often bear its heaviest physical and material burdens. One study of the crime against the elderly in Washington several years ago concluded that the city's elderly, poor are "a depressed underclass particularly vulnerable to crime, easy victims unable to move out of the. high-crime area." So, they are trapped in the neighborhood and in their homes, fearful of even going to the grocery for food they need, let alone to the park to admire a tulip or a cherry blossom. When people think of remedies for crime, they tend to think of the police and the courts.

To the degree that these I plN6 PESTS Welcome work on problems that the proposal raises. One is the need to ensure enough money for good schools throughout Illinois. Another is to provide for an equitable system statewide for ensuring equal educational opportunity for each child, which means meshing the proposal with current school aid formula. Despite the problems, in a year in which many politicians are talking in circles about taxes and the things they must buy, it is refreshing "to see some legislators trying to attack a serious problem with imagination. Escorts instruments of order are defective for all other parts of society, they are doubly so in the case of the old.

If they have been victimized, the elderly are hesitant to complain because they fear retaliation from their assailants, especially if the assailants are young people who may be in and cut of the hands of the juvenile authoritite in very short order. Furthermore, older people with no money find it hard to get to and from the courthouse, where they may be required to go several times in connection with a single complaint. What, then, should we think of doing? There are already a couple of steps that have helped. The single most useful recent innovation has been the electronic funis transfer system under which elderly people can receive Social Security and other government checks directly in their bank accounts. But in most cases they still have to get to the grocery store and perhaps the dry cleaners, to -say nothing of getting fresh air and sunshine.

New York has revived an old idea that deserves attention here and every place that finds it has this problem. The idea is to get youngsters who are interested in volunteering for social service to come after school and accompany elderly persons on walks through the neighborhood. The development of youth escorts might become a way the rest of society could show that it cares what happens to people who grow old. i "redistribution," "sovereignty" over resources, and "national control" over private investment in a Charter of Economic -Rights and Duties of States. These pronouncements (to us) contain an irksome assyrnmetry, whereby "we" are assigned the duties while "they" acquire the rights.

About one billion people live in extreme poverty in the third world, with only a $20 increase in total annual income over the last ten years. Sixty-two per cent are illiterate; their average life expectancy is 50 years, with an infant mortality eight times ours. For one out of every two people, nutrition is below acceptable standards. Thus, without a massive increase in available food, how can there be a New International Economic Order? For if people are starving, there will be no order at all. Still, these poorest countries invest only 3 per cent of their group national product in agriculture.

And if current food trends con-tinue through 1986, these countries will have to import over $20 billion of grain alone at current prices more than in Minnesota, 215,000 in Wisconsin. Has election day legislation in these states spawned vote fraud? The answer appears to be no, although Republican officials are unanimous in stating that the system is wide open to abuse. In 1976 there were no convictions for vote fraud in any of the five states, prompting Minnesota secretary of state Joan Growe, a Democrat, to comment: "There is nothing we would like better than to prosecute someone, and to hold them up as an example. But we haven't found anyone." But critics claim these five states are not typical of the nation as a whole. None are heavily industrial, none have large minority-group populations; none has a history of fraud un-der previous rules.

Other places might not have the same experience when they use the system. Republicans admit that fraud was minimal in 1976, but they wonder how long elections can be kept relatively clean with the relaxed registration. "It shouldn't be that easy," said Maine Republican state chairman John Linnell about his state's law. "It needs to be tightened up. All you have to do now is walk in and register." Has election day registration increased voter participation? It apparently has, but not by the 10 percentage points that Vice President Mondale has predicted for the Carter plan.

Comparing 1972 and 1976 figures, the turnout increase last year in the five states varied loo bwJ we cant take Concorde wtfh ik Republicans See Registration Plan as Blueprint for Fraud NEA-London Economist News Service On June 15, Spaniards will do something none of them under the age of 62 has done before: vote to chose their government in a free general election. Within 18 months of Franco's death, the arid political desert he left has been irrigated by his successors into a land flowering with free expression, free parties and now free elections. Patches Spain's old authoritarianism remain: the police have not yet adapted themselves to the restraints of a. democratic society; the government is still the editor of Spain's radio and television news; King Juan Carlos has powers (to nominate senators, to "choose prime ministers) that go beyond those of other constitutional monarchs. But if the election is held fairly, the rough block of a democratic system will have been hewn, and it will be up to the new parliament to shape and polish it.

In a crowd of unfamiliar people, voters look for faces and parties they have seen before. More than 150 parties with a bewildering variety of similar sounding labels will together be putting up 6,000 candidates for the 557 seats in the two-chamber parliament. Four parties lead the field. On the far right, Manuel Frags runs the Popular Alliance, a group of bankers and former Francoist ministers. The party is rich, has been campaigning since it was formed in October, and is expected to win up to 20 per cent of the vote.

The prime minister, Adolfo Suarez, leads the Center Democratic Alliance, a collection of people calling themselves conservatives, liberals, Christian democrats and social democrats, Suarez's great popularity, and the appeal of the center, could win ham 30 to 40 per cent. On the left, the support and financial backing Europe's Socialist parties have lifted the Socialist Worker party, under the youthful Felipe Gonzalez, out of the gaggle of competing Socialist parties. He is expected to win more than 20 per cent, with another 10 per cent divided among his rivals. Money, historical appeal and hard clandestine legwork among Spain's industrial workers may give Spain's Communist parry a fourth place with about 10 per cent of the vote. With the backing of the king, who spotted his talent and promoted him from-the shadows, Suarez has brought about a transformation that has no historical precedent.

Spain's Communist leader, Santiago Car-rillo, used to argue that history proves that no authoritarian government will ever voluntarily dismantle itself. But Car-rillo's scientific faith in history was proved wrong and he himself has had to back down from the complete break with Franco's successor that he had once advocated. The support that Suarez gets from the king, the successor appointed by Franco, deprives the conservative Spanish army of a legitimate pretext for in-tervening. His rapid concessions to liberal demands disarm the democratic opposition. But Suarez's greatest success has been to keep bloodshed to a minimum.

He can convincingly ask the Spaniards to be allowed to finish the job he has begun so promisingly. A strong center may still be indispensable to the survival of democratic Spain. Its chief danger remains the army, whose senior commanders live uncomfortably with democracy. But generals like to come to power bringing order to chaos, acclaimed by sighs of popular relief. No chaos now.

There might be danger if Fraga's Popular Alliance emerged with anything like a claim to head the government. Fraga thinks that the Communist party should not have been legalized; does not believe in devolution of power to Spain's regions; and thinks Suarez has gone too far in a democratic direction. Fraga's intransigence on all three issues could produce an explosion on the left. At which the army might step in on Fraga's side. Socialists and Communists are privately reconciled to the idea of Suarez continuing in office.

Their sights are set on a second general election next year which they think Suarez will have to hold after the constituent assembly which is what this parliament will effectively be has done its work. The left-wing parties hope to pick up a lot of votes then from a government that will have had to take unpopular decisions. Consider the tasks of Spain's next prime minister. He will have to perfect a permanent democratic constitution. He will have to steer between the army's intolerance to anything that threatens Spain's unity, and the autonomist demands of the regions.

Hardest of all, he will have to check Spain's sliding economy. With inflation close to 30 per cent and an ever-widening trade gap, the government can cocoon the Spanish people no longer. The next administration will have to introduce the wage restraint and cuts in living standards. If Suarez succeeds himself as prime minister after June, he will have the advantage of the democratic mandate he lacked before. He may be emboldened to take decisions unpopular with both the army and the trade unions.

But it will be hard for him to keep together the diffuse coalition of parties he leads. There is no reason why the center in Spain should fare better than it has in France or Italy except that with the army still barely reconciled to democracy, Spanish democrats just have to be centrists for now. Timely Quote "I could get by on my boy-next-door charm for a long time at home. But over there, after about 10 minutes someone I'd be talking to would have a look in his eye that said, 'Yes, but who are you?" I used to be dishonest, too eager to please. Now I say what I think more." Actor Richard Chamberlain, crediting the English with forcing him to grow up.

Looking Backward 25 Years Ago 1952 Decatur's standing in the U.S. in matters of population, income and buying power is told in Sales Management magazine's survey of buying power published this month. Motorists just don't get stuck in Maroa streets. Every street in front of a residence or business firm has an all weather, blacktop surface. About 40 prizes have been offered for the Decatur Humane Society's pet show and contest Sunday at the YMCA annex.

IN AN EDITORIAL we said: Miss Davida McCaslin, for 45 years a member of the English Department faculty at Millikin University, will retire at the end of this college year after a distinguished career as a teacher. Prof. McCaslin was and is widely known in her field. She was honored last week by her associates on the Millikin faculty. The Millikin Alumni Association is raising a fund of to provide an annual scholarship to be named in her honor.

It is impossible to calculate the total influence of a good teacher because that influence is a sort of chain reaction. Miss McCaslin's students have become teachers, writers, clergymen and ell variety of professional men and women who have passed along some of the cultural values, the good counsel, the appreciation of good literature and the good English usage which they learned from their teacher and friend, Miss McCaslin. All honor to Millikin's Most Gracious Lady. May she have in retirement many years of leisure to find pleasure in her books, her friends and the knowledge of a work well done. The Old Paragrapher The Old Paragrapher feels every one of his years when he hears his son, the youngest child, indulge in nostalgic reminiscences.

Amy Carter's tree house on the White House grounds is not very high in the air. Indeed, it might harmonize well with the skyline of Plains, Ga. By Rhodes Cook Congressional Quarterly Washington Jimmy Carter's lobbyists hope simplified voter registration will do nationally what it has done in the five states that already have started using it increase turnout and bring some new Democratic votes to the polls without any substantial voter fraud. The presidential turnout fell below 55 per cent last year for the first time since 1948. The White House believes its registration plan could bring that up to 65 per cent in 1980.

An increase that big probably would help Carter, if he runs again. Of the 17 states where turnout went up in 1976, Carter carried 13. Carter would permit anyone with acceptable identification to vote on election day, even if he has not registered before. Administration sources say the system would cost about $50-million to implement every two years. Some Republicans insist the plan is a blueprint for fraud.

"It's a shame Mayor Daley died," says Rep. Bill Frenzel "He would have loved this bill." The five states that use some form of election day registration are Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maine, Oregon and North" Dakota. Minnesota and Wisconsin served as the prime models for the Carter proposal. Both had sizable election day registration last year: 454,000 voters from only 0.6 per cent In Oregon to 4.1 per cent in Maine. At the same time, the national turnout dropped 1 per cent.

Opponents say that the states with election day registration have always had high turnout rates, and that recent national surveys of non-voters have found that most fail to participate for reasons other than dif-ficult registration requirements. His election day registration helped the Democrats? Yes, particularly at the local level. Since enactment of election day registration earlier in the decade, the Democrats have gained strength in both houses of legislatures in Maine, Minnesota and Wisconsin and in the Oregon Senate. "We attribute part of our increase to better participation," said Ruth Kane, associated chairman of the Minnesota Democratic Farmer Labor Party. "Low turnout hurts Democrats.

Republicans are as aware of that as we are. But how to' react has been a problem for the Republicans. Not wanting to be portrayed as obstructionists if they oppose efforts to increase voter participation, GOP leaders have focused their opposition on the fraud question. "Republicans put themselves in a bad light whenever we place ourselves as a obstacle for people to said the executive director of the Wis-c i Republican Party, George Innes. "We would be wise to accept election day registration and should work to tighten up the procedure." "I've just learned that MY WIFE traded me for an undisclosed amount of cash and a player to be named later!".