Gambling Goes Legit
To the Editors:
Re your article on legitimized gambling [Dec. 6] and specifically state lotteries: the inefficiency of revenue collection is horrendous and the odds for winning are unconscionable. But the worst thing is that this is regressive taxation in its most vicious form.
Every "ticket to a dream" is bought by people unaware that they are paying an unduly heavy price and an unfairly large share of communal needs.
Barbara Glas
Cincinnati
For over 30 years I have gambled on everything from a pin to an elephant and have never won a sausage. I still keep having a go. There is certainly a spice of life in the gambling flutter.
Charles H. Peacock
Shrewsbury, England
You said ". . . the state's [Nevada] 583,000 residents pay no income, sales or inheritance taxes." You are only two-thirds right. Nevadans have been paying a sales tax since 1955.
John J. Sheehan, Executive Director
Department of Taxation
Carson City, Nev.
You missed the point when you belittled gambling revenue as less than 5% of state revenues. The reason legalized wagering is catching on is the ever-increasing costs of government. If you want to know the importance of the money gambling provides, just cut the budget by that amount. The screams would drive a hyena to cover.
Edward J. Powers, Executive Director
State Sweepstakes Commission
Concord, N.H.
Your story on gambling held a strange irony for me, since it was just two weeks ago that my father, a compulsive gambler, committed suicide. I was glad to see that your article dealt in some detail with the small minority of gamblers who have the good sense to participate in treatment programs like Gamblers Anonymous, but I was surprised that you chose not to discuss the huge number of compulsive gamblers like my father, who for some reason are unwilling or unable to seek help for themselves. Compulsive gambling is cruel and self-destructive, unless the addict makes a serious attempt to kick his habit.
(Name Withheld)
New York City
Who Invented Othello?
So, the Japanese have invented the game Othello [Nov. 22]. That's like the Soviets claiming to have invented the electric light bulb.
Back in the early 1930s my aunt, who lived in Manchester, Conn., introduced us to a new game called Bottle Tops, so called because it was played with the pasteboard tops then used on glass milk bottles. They were plain on one side and had the name of the dairy printed on the other. The playing board was a piece of manila paper marked off in 64 squares like a checkerboard. We called it the depression game.
(Mrs.) Elizabeth I. Carter
Poughkeepsie, N. Y.
The "new" Japanese game Othello bears a remarkable resemblance to an English board game called Reversi.
Although the Oriental mind has long been noted for its inventiveness, Mr. Hasegawa's invention seems to prove the old saw: There is nothing new under the sun.
Joanne Blythe
Rangeley, Me.
In your article on the game Othello, Lawyer Mark Weinberg stated that the game leaves him very refreshed. My parents bought Othello for my younger brother's birthday and when I'm finished playing with either my father or older brother, I feel anything but refreshed. Aggravated would have been a better word.
Carin Sweerman
North Hollywood, Calif.
"Gary, You Didn't Do It"
I was the judge presiding at Gary Gilmore's [Nov. 29] first referral to Multnomah County, Ore., juvenile court. My distinct recollection is that then he was eleven or twelve years old. The referral was for extensive school vandalism on a weekend burglary.
His father was at the preliminary hearing on Monday--Gary had been caught in the act. The import of the father's words was "Gary, you didn't do it. Don't let them tell you you did. Don't say a word. Gary, you didn't do it."
The boy quickly learned. Although he was assigned a competent counselor from juvenile court, and was returned on probation to his home, he was soon in trouble again. The trouble was increasingly serious. After a few years, Gary was assaulting fellow prisoners and guards alike, without discernible provocation. After recent events occurred I first learned (and was appalled) that he had been paroled in Utah.
Virgil Langtry
Maupin, Ore.
Prisoners of Fear
Innocent, defenseless, elderly people beaten to death, robbed of their Social Security checks--the only income they have to live on--prisoners in their own homes [Nov. 29]! Isn't it time we stopped feeling sorry for the poor, misguided criminals and started punishing them?
Drew Wilson
Kenosha, Wis.
The Eskimos were kinder to their old ones--a few hours on an ice floe and it was all over.
Lola Jeselowitz
State College, Pa.
Aren't these young black offenders themselves prisoners--and victims--of their wretched environment?
Adil Mustafa Ahmad Khartoum
Chairman Housewife
When TIME at this late date refers to the outgoing Republican national chairman as "an Iowa housewife" [Dec. 6], it might be enough to radicalize even a middle-aged Establishment type like myself. One assumes Ms. Smith reached her high office by sustained work for her party. She could hardly have reached it if her main occupation had been waxing kitchen floors.
Mary R. Sive
Pearl River, N. Y.
High School Sarcasm?
It's curious that Richard Schickel, usually one of your most persuasive writers, seems to lose both his composure and his sense of humor in the face of Paddy Chayefsky's Network [Nov. 29]. Who has a better right to ferociously satirize TV than the man who wrote some of its best original plays? Schickel's lame sign-off, that he is "eager for the writer's first effort in what is surely his true metier--the pamphlet," sounds suspiciously like high school sarcasm. Since when is pamphleteering per se bad manners or bad art in theater or film, with such historic examples as Ibsen, Shaw. Eisenstein and Odets?
Seymour Krim
Taos, N. Mex.
Old Bluffer
I'll bet the Publetter [Dec. 6] writer is a breakfast-eating, Brooks Brothers type. If your man had misspent his youth to better effect he would know that a fourflusher is not a cheater, as the Pub letter alleges, but a poor old bluffer trying to do his best in a stud game with four cards of one suit facing up (that's a four-flush) and nothing but dogmeat in the hole (what he needs for a legitimate flush is five cards of one suit).
Jack Skow
New London, N.H.
Man of the Year
For Man of the Year I nominate Gerald Ford, the President of the U.S. for all that he did in the last two years, and all that he could have done in four more.
Connie King
Fairbank, Iowa
For Man of the Year I nominate Spain's King Juan Carlos. Where else in the world (this year) has one person been more responsible for restoring human and democratic rights?
Edward Solomon
Pittsburgh
I nominate the entire Carter family, from the President-elect to Miz Lillian to Miss Amy, from the future First Lady to the brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins who campaigned for Jimmy and who helped reveal to us the kind of President we'll have.
Harold Straughn
Abilene, Texas
Apparently no one but us Californians knows just what a terrific shellacking Sam Hayakawa gave to John Tunney, made especially memorable by the fact that Sam is old enough (almost) to be John's grandpa!
If S. I. Hayakawa does not deserve to be Man of the Year on TIME'S cover, then I say, there is no political justice left.
Charles L. Skelley Jr.
South Gate, Calif.
Milton Friedman. His economic theories have proved to be painfully true, in England and also in New York City.
Steve Kessler
Washington, D.C.
Mo Udall. He never became embittered and always had a smile and a laugh ready, even after humiliating losses.
Mitchell Sommers
Lancaster, Pa.
Carl Sagan, scientist, philosopher and poet.
Kathryn E. Wildgen
New Orleans
Ronald Reagan.
John Mifflin III
Spokane, Wash.
Ian Smith from Rhodesia.
Dr. H. Sarhan
Ruwi, Oman
Ms. Barbara Walters.
Cynthia O Konek
St. Cloud, Minn.
Basketball's Dave Cowens.
Jeffrey Gardner Haff
Cohoes, N. Y.
If it is up to mass popularity, the choice is inevitable: Da Fonz--Aaaaaaa.
Georg B. Bartley
Oxford, Ohio
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