San Bernardino Sun, 1 May 1984 — Page 12

GERALD A. BEAN Publisher 9 WAYNE C. SARGENT Editor ORAGE QUARLES III Advertising Director MERREL STAFFORD Production Director ROBERT EMSIEK Circulation Director LARRY WALCUTT Controller BEVERLY RICHARDSON Personnel Director 'III J RICHARD S. KIMBALL Editorial Page Editor 399 D Street, San Bernardino, Calif. 92401 jack andorson 889-9666

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Tuesday,

Phil Gibson's efforts forged modern, efficient court system Although his name was hardly a household word, Phil S. Gibson had about as much effect on molding current-day California government as any single individual. In the nearly quarter-century he served as chief justice of the California Supreme Court Gibson who died this past weekend at 95 showed a remarkable talent, not only as a jurist, but as a court administrator. Some of Gibson's successes were attributable to the times in w hich he served. When Gov. Culbert L. Olson took office in January 1939, he appointed Gibson as state finance director. Seven months later, Olson named Gibson as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. In June 1940, Gibson was elevated to the chief justice's job. During most of those years, the membership of the court, which included such unusually gifted jurists as Roger J. Traynor, remained relatively static. The justices developed a sound working relationship that helped make the court of that era the most respected state high court in the nation. World War II, the post-war aftermath, the lull of the 1950s and the acceleration of social consciousness of the early 19f0s marked amazing shifts in public attitudes. The California court under Gibson demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt to those developments. Gibson's guidance kept the court on a reasoned, balanced course. Perhaps Gibson's most remarkable accomplishments were in court administration. California's Judicial Council had existed since 1926, but it was Gibson who brought it to the maturity of its powers. Early in the 1940s, Gibson began using innovative techniques to streamline court procedures to make them more efficient. This work also went beyond the court system. Beginning in 1943, the Judicial Council under his chairmanship surveyed the procedures of all state administrative agencies. It set up patterns of administrative procedure for the licensing of state-regulated professions from accountants and barbers to physicians and bedding inspectors. Its recommendations became a pattern followed by other states. In 1947, the Judicial Council undertook a project that resulted in the most sweeping reforms ever to take place in the California judiciary. It made a survey of the work performed by all the state's trial courts. In 1949, it presented a plan to the Legislature for the complete overhaul of these courts. This proposal, which was adopted, simplified the court structure by reducing the number and kinds of lower courts. It eliminated duplication and classified the nature of work to be performed by each kind of court. Under Gibson, the Judicial Council carefully examined all aspects of courts' procedures and sought to make them more uniform and more efficient. Gibson took charge of a judicial system that had grown w illy-nilly through random events and brought to it systematic order and logical arrangement, making it the envy of the nation in its time. Gibson had a unique gift of being able to organize the talents of those around him into efforts that rose to unusual heights of constructive productivity. All too few Californians have recognized Gibson's worth. He was one of the titanic figures in the state's 20th century history. Smith's costly message Now that he is in the twilight days of office, the bills are trickling in for Attorney General William French Smith's 23day trip around the world in 1982 to campaign for greater drug control efforts. So far, the tape on the adding machine shows costs of more than $683,727. The tab still is running, and even that figure does not include salaries or hotel charges for 16 Justice Department officials and 11 FBI agents who went along, nor any of the expenses for six officials from the State Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Immigration and Naturalization Service. The figure also leaves out all the costs of preparing for the trip, except for the cost of four advance trips around the world, three by a consultant and one by Smith's spokesman, Tom DeCair. We are pleased Smith has taken a hard line against the drug traffic. It lies at the base of some of the most severe social problems that confront our nation today. Still, when we see the threadbare resources that all too often are available to the narcotics officers in our hometowns, w e cannot escape thinking the money used by Smith on his international jaunt could better have been used to combat the evils of drugs back home on Main Street. The party, which left Washington Oct. 19, 1982, stopped in Los Angeies; Tokyo; Hong Kong; Bangkok; Chiang Mai, Thailand; Islamabad; Peshawar, Pakistan; Cairo; Paris and Rome. In two more recent trips, one to Latin America and the other to Spain. Italy and Morocco, Smith scaled dow n the size of his traveling party and used a Coast Guard jet considerably smaller and cheaper than the military version of a Boeing 707 which was used on the world tour. Smith has said these travels w ere essential to convincing foreign officials how seriously the United States views their efforts to stop drug trafficking. There must be a more economical w ay to get the message across. This is one trait taxpayers will not miss when Mr. Smith goes away from Washington.

May 1, 1981

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ATLANTA Disease, at least as it is commonly understood, is just a bit of the business of the Centers for Disease Control, CDC, which are comprehensively concerned with promoting health. That task is taking it in surprising directions and demonstrating how government can save by spending. CDC's budget may be the most effective $300 million the government spends, because the return on investment in public health is often huge. For example, the total amount the United States spent in years of worldwide campaigning to eradicate smallpox is now saved by the United States every three months, because there is no longer any spending to immunize the population against that disease. Dr. James Mason, director, says CDC's task is risk assessment rather than risk management. But the tasks tend to merge because assessment involves gathering and disseminating information, and Americans today are keenly responsive to health information. Reports of one episode of botulism were sufficient to destroy a soup company (Bon Vivant). Ask from a safe distance beef and bacon producers if Americans have altered their eating habits in response to reports about cholesterol and nitrates. Habits also will change because of the American Cancer Society's new anti-cancer lewis he US. must BOSTON Last month, near the end of his struggle with cancer, former Sen. Frank Church made a passionate appeal to his country to learn to live with revolution in the Third World. Writing in The Washington Post, he said the habit of seeing communism behind every change and of opposing change by force had done terrible damage to U.S. interests. I thought of Church's words as we learned more about the CIA war on Nicaragua. For the new disclosures gave dramatic emphasis to a vignette that he offered as a human example of the misunderstanding that bedevils our policy in Central America. The story w as about Henry Kissinger and his commission on that policy. The Kissinger commission visited Managua and met Sandinista leaders last Oct. 15. By all reports it was a bristling occasion. The commissioners found the Nicaraguans truculent. The occasion was evidently useful to Kissinger in pushing the commission to the conclusion that U.S. national security is threatened in Central America. Church looked at what must have been the feelings of the Nicaraguans that day. They had defeated the U.S.-supported Somoza dictatorship. Now they faced U.S.supported "contras" who were trying to overthrow them. They saw Kissinger as a destabilizer of

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goorgo f will WW, a poBtkal columnist for the Washington Fast, has served at an editor of the Notional Review and was awarded the Pulitzer Prix for commentary m 1977.

diet which stresses high-fiber foods. Thirty years ago there was no scientific proof of something that everyone rational now recognizes: The connection between smoking and certain health hazards. Establishing that connection had a huge ripple effect. It started people thinking about the behavioral component of health problems and asking, "What else am I doing that is dumb?" Substantial enhancements of public health could be achieved immediately without new medical technologies. The application of existing knowledge would suffice. The annual number of cancer deaths (450,000 in 1984) could be halved by the end of the century if today's best treatments were used in all hospitals and if by 1990 even half of the 33 million smokers quit. Forty-five-year-olds who do not smoke, who use alchohol moderately, exercise, avoid obesity and use seat belts are going to live an average of 11 years longer than 45-year-olds who violate those rules. It is reasonable for CDC to be seeking predictive patterns and warning symptoms for occurrences not commonly thought of as public-health problems. One is homicides, the fourth leading cause of premature death and the second among persons 15-24. An

anthony lewis has been a New York Times editorial columnist since 1969. Before that was a reporter in the Times Washington bureau and chief of its London bureau. He has received the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

adjust to Third World

the Allende government in Chile, and his commission as a facade for the contras' campaign. Just five days before the meeting, on Oct. 10, the contras had blown up 3 million gallons of fuel in an attack on the Nicaraguan port of Corinto. "Is it any wonder," Church asked, "that there was no meeting of minds?" No, and there would have been even less w onder if we had know n then what we do now. For we have learned that the sabotage raid on Corinto Oct. 10 was directed by the CIA. The point is not that the Sandinistas are gentle souls; they hardly could be. Revolutions are not usually, as Church said, "romantic or pleasant." but they happen. And the question is whether the United States will do better for itself by trying to get along with the forces of economic and social change or by fighting them. Recent history provides one powerfully illuminating example of that choice and its effects on America. The example is the People's Republic of C hina. For 30 years American governments refused to accept the Chinese Revolution. They excoriated what they called Red China. They parachuted CIA agents into the country- They kept the People's Republic out of the United Nations. They fought the Vietnam War to hold back the Red Chinese hordes. Then one day Richard Nixon

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other is suicide, which since 1955 has tripled among 15 to 24-year-olds and now is the third leading cause of death in that group. A third is child abuse. But if it still puzzles you that CDC has a Violence Epidemiology Branch, consider the following. In 1969 a Stanford psychologist purposely abandoned two automobiles, without license plates and with their hoods up, one on a street in affluent Palo Alto, the other in the Bronx. The car in the Bronx was attacked within 10 minutes, first by a father, mother and young son who took the radiator and battery. Within 24 hours it had been stripped of all valuable parts. Then pointless violence began windows smashed, upholstery ripped. The Palo Alto car was untouched for a week. Then the psychologist dealt it a few blows with a sledge hammer. Within hours the car was upside down, utterly destroyed by vandals. In Palo Alto and the Bronx the vandals were well-dressed, mostly white, and were what are called "respectable." The lesson seems to be that neglected property and disorderly behavior can be somehow infectious. Together they produce contagion. Notice the language of disease, and a new meaning of the phrase "social disease." changed his mind. He decided that American interests would be better served by getting along with the People's Republic and so would his political interests. He began a process that Jimmy Carter carried on to normal diplomatic relations with Peking, and on to political cooperation in the world. Even President Reagan, for all his fulminations against the People's Republic, has apparently got the message that we do better by relating to it than by fighting it. Communism also turned out not to be a winning ideology in Asia. Despite the outcome of the Vietnam War, the momentum today is with the capitalist areas of the region: Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore. The lesson is plain enough. In dealing with revolutionary governments, the strength of the United States does not lie in war, covert or otherwise. It lies in the open economy and the open society. What is so puzzling about our inability to accept the fact of revolutionary changes in the Third World is that we so obviously harm ourselves. The self-defeating fear is not new, but the Reagan administration has carried it to new extremes. Some of us yearn, with Frank Church, for the day "we stop trying to repress the irrepressible and exchange our unreasonable fear of communism for a rekindled faith in freedom."

Plugging a medical loophole WASHINGTON Doctors who lose their licenses for professional misconduct in one state can resume practice in another and continue to get Medicare-Medicaid payments thanks to a loophole in the laws governing these federally funded programs. If the doctors' state licenses were lifted for misconduct not related to Medicare-Medicaid, the federal government is powerless to cut off their reimbursements under these programs when they practice medicine in other states. Sen. John Heinz, R-Pa., and the inspector-general for the Health and Human Services Department, Richard Kusserow, are trying to plug this loophole in the MedicareMedicaid laws. The best evidence of these abuses is contained in a draft report by the General Accounting Office. This takes up the cases of 328 doctors who lost their licenses in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania between 1977 and 1982 for offenses ranging from sexual assault to drug trafficking, malpractice, immoral conduct and alcohol abuse. But they didn't cheat on their Medicare-Medicaid claims, so 39 of them continued to be paid by the federal government when they hung out their shingles in other states. Senate files give these examples of the loophole at work: Dr. Mehmet Kusun Kasal lost his Michigan license in 1980 for indiscriminate drug prescriptions, sexual harassment of a patient and an employee, and failure to meet minimum medical standards. Kasal had a Florida license, and collected $9,238 in Medicare funds there for 1982-83. He also holds a West Virginia license. Dr. Robert Frank Schmunk surrendered his Michigan license in 1976 after being cited by state authorities for performing sexual acts with patients. He moved to Wyoming, where between 1980 and last year he got $4,500 in Medicare-Medicaid fees. Schmunk was also indicted in a case involving a , patient's death, which was attributed to his prescription practices. The case is pending. Dr. Timothy L. Stern, an anesthesiologist, surrendered his Michigan license in 1980 and moved to New York after being cited for writing improper prescriptions. Six months later, New York authorities charged him with similar misconduct, yet he retained his license to practice there. Since his arrival in New York, he has billed Medicare for $156,273 and received more than $90,000 of it. Dr. Preston W. Ports' Michigan license was revoked in 1978 when a state board found him mentally unfit to practice. He had received $10,676 in Medicare-Medicaid funds for the previous three years. Ports moved to New York and drew $1,798 in federal funds from 1979 to 1982 before state authorities finally lifted his license for gross incompetence. DUBIOUS DEAL: The Reagan administration is determined to sell Conrail, the governmentowned rail freight system, just as it is showing a healthy profit. And there is troubling evidence that the taxpayers would get gypped on the deal. Since 1976, more than $7.5 billion in public funds have been pumped into Conrail, and the investment is finally beginning to pay off. Last year Conrail posted a $300 million profit, and in the first quarter of this year, traditionally a slow period, profits were $90 million. Despite this turnaround, the Transportation Department has put Conrail up for bids and the favored purchaser is the Alleghany Corp. The company includes remnants of the Penn Central Corp., whose mismanagement helped drive the rail system into the ground in the first place. Alleghany has offered $1 billion for Conrail, but industry analysts say that with tax credits and other accounting considerations, the offer actually amounts to about half that figure. This means that Alleghany would recoup its entire investment within a year or two an incredible bargain at taxpayers' expense.

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