-i This the Way 1 This photograph of strip mining operations in Belmont County is a dramatic and compelling argument, we think. for strong controls on strip mining in Ohio. wya Legislation has been introduced in the Ohio General Assembly that would require strip miners to restore the land to its original 'contours after coal is extracted, and to save the topsoil or equivalently productive soil so that it may be replaced on top. These two requirements are essential if meaningful land restoration is to be achieved 'in Ohio. Nothing less will heal the ugly wounds left by stripping operations and restore the land to economic productivity as woodland or farm land.
It is right that strip miners be required to leave the land in the condition they found Ohioans Want on top. it. It is possible to do so, and at relatively little cost. Pennsylvania has shown it can be done. If land restoration works in Pennsylvania, it can work in Ohio.
All Ohioans, and not just those unfortunates who must live with the scars of strip mining in southeastern and eastern Ohio, should insist on land restoration. Their Land Unrestored land is unproductive land and becomes an economic burden on all of the state's taxpayers. We urge our readers to join us in demanding that strip miners be required to restore the land they work so that it may become productive again and an asset to Ohio. Write Rep. Kenneth B.
Creasy, R-18, STRIP MINING -attitttimn 5. UNRECLAIMED LAND The Return of the Dinosaur to Look? Plain Dealer Aerial Photo (Norbert J. Yassanye) Delaware, at the Statehouse, Columbus, 0., 43215. He is chairman of the House Environmental and Natural Resources Committee and heads a subcommittee now considering strip mine legislation. Send along a clipping of this photo, or the half-page version of it that appeared in The Plain Dealer Sunday.
It's worth a thousand words. THE PLAIN DEALER Ohio's Largest Newspaper THOMAS VAIL, Publisher and Editor F. WILLIAM DUGAN WILLIAM M. WARE Vice President and Gencral Manager Executive Editor Not paid circulation Daily 404,165 for SI.N March months 31,1971 ended Sunday 521,984 As filed with the Audit Burean of Circulations. subiect to audit Page 2-8 Cleveland, Ohio Tuesday, June 15, 1971 "Opportunity for Youth to Serve A lot of thought has been applied to the problem of how this money-short urban area provide summer recreation activities A thousands of children.
What has emerged teas a solution to the problem holds promise benefit to givers as well as receivers in volunteer program. The givers will be the thousand or more youths and young adults whose help is needed to make a "Peoples' idea work. The receivers will be at least 5.000 children between the ages of 8 and 14 who, without an activities program, would face the prospect of a dull and dreary summer. "Peoples' is all interesting project in that it emphasizes that people can make parks for children any. where.
The volunteers, each assigned to meet with a group of four, five or six children several days a week, will go where they are needed where the children are. There is an element of informality in the program, but there is nothing haphazard about it. It is sponsored by Volunteers in Progress (VIP), a civic agency, and is funded by the Cleveland Foundation. It will be operated through the Cleveland Recreation Department. Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland State University and Cuyahoga Community College will participate in training the volunteer group leaders.
The program is designed to respond to requests for help from neighborhood citizens' groups, churches and other agencies and to" solicit material help from businessmen and civic organizations. In such a design an improved relationship of diverse elements within the city might be fostered. There is good potential, too, in the close relationship of the volunteers and the children they lead. The children can learn from their leaders and from the camping. hiking.
game and entertainment activities the leadors plan for them. The volunteers in turn call learn from the children. This opportunity for young people to volunteer service to the community is an exceptional one. The program's sponsors want to extend it beyond the summer season. Hopefully, the children's and the volunteers' experiences will encourage them to do so.
Merit in Mills' Revenue Sharing President Nixon's revenue sharing plan may be dead. but a meritorious alternative is taking shape. in the House Ways and Means Committee that would provide the cities with badly needed financial aid. Architect of the substitute is Rep. Wilbur D.
Mills. chairman of the committee. He is adamantly opposed to the Nixon plan, which would share $5 billion in federal revenues with cities and states, and had announced he would hold hearings on it only in order to kill it. But Mills also had promised that Congress would not forget the cities, and would come up with a program to bring them reliet. Ic appears now to be delivering on his promise.
His substitute. which would provide Playoff Rule Congratulations are in order to Bedford's Tom Weiskopf not only for winning the Kemper Open Golf Tournament, but for also asserting that the method by which he won should be changed. Weiskopf won his first tournament vietory in three years by defeating three in a sudden-death playoff after all had tied for first place at the end of regulaton play. Along with the losers, Weiskopf said that professional golf rules should determined be changed so that a playoff is not by a possible fluke shot on one hole. They contended that a nine-hole or 18-hole playoff was a fairer method of deciding a close contest, a position with which we can only agree.
READERS' FORUM Deplores 'Mob Bowling Green Rule' at BGSU At Bowling Green State University the ROTC review was interrupted by a mob that swarmed out on the marching field. The cadets had been ordered to "keep their cool" no matter what. They gave up their rights and returned to quarters. What completely amazes an observer is that in the interim, not one group, organization or newspaper has noted what was lost on the BGSU campus. This review was before the presif dent of the university, authorized and planned for There has been no hue and cry at'the loss of the cadets' civil rights.
Are these rights available only to the antiestablishment or perhaps only to mobs of 100 or more? Who is so blind they cannot see this same mob deciding they will not tolerate Christianity? This same mob can march on your church and so intimidate you into disbanding. They may take a dislike to Elks, Masons, American Legion, Girl Scouts, Catholics, capitalists, or politicians. The law abiding and obedient need more than courage to stop the mob. We are not trained in taking the law into our own hands. When the authorities are, too frightened or too cautious to control a mob -who will protect you? One of them pleaded guilty and was fined $25 it costs $50 to litter MRS.
MARY JANE PARKER 302 N. Enterprise Avenue, Quotable Quote FRANK SINATRA, at his farewell performance before going into retirement: "I have plans for things I want to do -like meeting some girls and building another house somewhere." is JAMES J. KILPATRICK Supreme Court Upholds Justice Felix Frankfurter around $3.5 billion in grants to the cities, but not the states, could break the deadlock be- and health services. The Nixon plan would have shared federal revenue with no strings attached. Mills and others objected.
with reason we think. that it would be unwise to give lower governments a free hand in spending money they do not have to raise. Another major difference is that revenue sharing under the Nixon plan would be permanent, and in the substitute only temporary. lasting perhaps three to five years. This would give cities the immediate relief they need while allowing Congress more time to work out a better long-range solution to the financial problems of cities and states.
Though all details of the Mills substitute have not been revealed, it offers the outline of an acceptable compromise. We hope it is viewed favorably by other congressional leaders and the administration. tween the administration and the Mills committee. At least, both are now aiming in the WASHINGTON Looking same direction. preme Court's opinions last Though states are left out in the substi- of reapportionment cases, one tute.
Mills points out that federal assump- paraphrase Wordsworth's tion of a greater share of welfare costs, a trophe to Milton: Felix, the welfare reform program Frankfurter! Thou provision earlier by his committee, would shouldst be living at this of with considerable relief. hour. approved provide the states It is a phenomenal His substitute answers the major con- thing. It is a judicial vergressional objection to the Nixon plan by sion of the king's horses retaining in Congress control over the and the king's men, who spending of the money. The Mills plan marched up the hill and would require that the money be spent only back down again.
More for purposes specified in the legislation. than nine years ago, in such as police and fire protection, sanitation of the most brilliant over the Suweek in a batch is minded to famous apos- KILPATRICK dissenting opinions of his long career, Justice Frankfurter clearly perceived the folly of the course on which his brothers had embarked. If there is some quiet chamber in the Great Hereafter, set aside for judges who have passed the final bar, Frankfurter must be smiling there today. 'The whole bizarre parade began on March 26, 1962, in Baker vs. Carr, the Tennessee case.
when the Supreme Court ruled for the first time that inequality among voting districts is a justiciable issue. That was the start of "one man, one vote." Justice Brennan wrote the court's majority opinion: Justice Clark. concurring, whooped it up for judicial supremacy. THE TENNESSEE CASE was toe-inthe-water. "No one," said Clark, "contends that mathematical equality among voters is required by the Equal Protection Clause." A year later, when Justice Douglas spoke for the court in Gray vs.
Sanders, the king's men had climbed a little higher. In February of 1964. when Justice Black wrote Wesberry vs. Sanders, they reached the plateau of "as nearly as practicable." On June 15, 1964, the court exploded with a burst of energy. This time it was Chief Justice Warren, asserting hoity-toity that "legislators represent people, not trees or acres.
Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests." In cases from Alabama, Colorado. Maryland, Delaware and New York, the court held that legislative districts must be defined on one standard only-one person, 0110 vote. Yet even at this stage, "mathematical nicety is not a constitutional requirement." The troops had farther still to go. Just two years ago, on April 7, 1969, they reached the summit. In cases from New York and Missouri, Brennan laid down the ultimately doctrinaire rule: Legislatures must in good faith seek "precise mathematical equality." THERE WERE MUTINOUS members of the band: Frankfurter, of course: Harlan.
at every step of the way; Stewart and Fortas in cases from Texas and Missouri; even Clark in the Colorado decision. But by and large, the court was driven by what Harlan last week described as "deep personal commitments by some members to the principles of pure majoritarian democracy." At the cost of common sense and sound constitutional construction, the court's egalitarian ideologues were determined to have their way. No more. Last week the court with Brennan sputtering all the way marched back down again. In the old draconian days, ac majority might have been mustered to impose immediate redistricting, by judicial fiat, upon foot-dragging Arizona.
But not now. In a case from Rockland County, New York, Justice Marshall of all people agreed that "long tradition" could justify a spread from perfect equality. In other equal protection cases from Indiana and West Virginia, the court retreated from the untenable positions that unreason once would have compelled a majority to hold. Ar -r HARLAN COULD NOT resist a rebel yell of triumph. The several decisions, he said, amounted to an implicit rejection of the old majoritarianism.
The court at last was emerging from "the haze of slogans and numerology" which had obscured its vision. The Indiana decision alone "is nothing short of a complete vindication of Mr. Justice Frankfurter's warning 10 years ago." Last week's four opinions may also be viewed as further evidence of the court's new direction under Chief Justice Burger. The chief justice was at his best in renotincing pure democracy in the West Virginia case; and he had Justice Blackmun with him all the way. All in all, it was one of the court's better days of this term.
It's a pity that Frankfurter, who retired in 1962 and died in 1965, couldn't have been around to enjoy it. 1971, Washington Star Syndicate 1.
