Seventy-sixth Year EDITft AND MANAGPD ZY STUDENTS OF THE U'NIVERSJTY OF MICH-IGAN atNDERt ALiTHI-OttTY OF OA P.O IN C0tPI l0&L OF STUDENT PUBLIJCATIONS Clearing Up the Power Controversy - A 4 toPre re,420 MAYNARD 'T.. AN,,Aisox l cii. NEws Pi-roNF: 764-0552 Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. ISDAY, JANUARY 6,1966 NIGHT EDITOR: HARVEY WASSERMAN HighkwayReSeb' Institute: C OuPor Boondoggle? By ROGER RAPOPORT WHEN I WROTE an article last October 23 about the re- lationship between Regent Eugene Power's University Microfilms and the University it was clear that a considerable amount of contro- versy would result. So I was not really bothered when I heard some time later that several members of the fac- ulty were spreading a rumor that Eugene Power was my uncle. Nor was I really dismayed to read in Publisher's Weekly, the book industry's trade magazine, that a University Microfilms exe- cutive had branded my story as "irresponsible journalism . . . a collection of half truths." BUT THE SURPRISE came in a letter charging me with with- holding information from a De- cember 8 story ("Disclose UMI Contracts"), because I allegedly wanted Power "to hang." Regent Power is not my uncle. My stories have not been irrespon- sible half truths. I do not want Regent Power to hang--or leave- or anything else The charges of "irresponsible reporting" by the company execu- tive are particularly interesting. Two days before the first story was published it was read ver- batim to Regent Power. At that time he was given-and exercised -the perrogative of changing any and all statements attributed to him. In addition, several other parts of the story were clarified or deleted, at his request. THE LATEST CHARGE is that The Daily article on December 8 used the phrase, "minor business relationships," and then failed to report that only $9.35 could be considered conflict of interest. In reality the criticism over the $9.35 is based on the un- informed statement of an assis- tant in the auditor general's of- fice to the effect that the entire conflict of interest was over $9.35. This was published in a wire- service story. In reality Albert Lea, the per- son who conducted the investiga- tion, was never consulted by the press. ,HIS REPORT states that the minor conflict of interest was over the fact that the University had two contracts with Univer- sity Microfilms for microfilming business school publications. A state law forbids a Regent to have contracts with the University. The $9.35 was merely the amount of royalty payments made by University Microfilms to the University on the two contracts. But the conflict was not over the money, be it $9 or $9,090, but merely over the existence of il- legal contracts. As the auditor's report indicat- ed, and The Daily reported, the two contracts constituted minor business relationships. NONETHELESS THE ethical questions raised here were ap- parently significant to the audi- tor and certainly they should be of concern to the University. In addition, the auditor's re- port raised questions about a versity Microflims from the Uni- special discount received by Uni- versity's photoduplication service. A letter in the Dec. 13 Ann Arbor News said, "If University Microfilms has anything other than an arm's length relationship with the University. that relation- ship should be corrected." This is all anyone at The Daily has ever sought. In an October 23 editorial accompanying the orig- inal artidle it was suggested that Power "has an obligation to seek the opinion of the Michigan at- torney general on business prac- tices his firm has instituted since he became a Regent in 1956." Advice has been sought and the relationships are being corrected. SINCE HE BEGAN his pros- perous company, Power has con- tinually used resources at the Uni- versity. The privileges extended to University Microfilms are clear- ly unrelated to any kind of graft. Rather they have been extended out of a benevolent negligence. because of his substantial con- tributions material to both the University and the academic world. Those business privileges he en- joyed went unquestioned for too long a time. When the questions were asked, Power responded by seeking an investigation which has now been completed and analyzed by independent legal counsel. It is now known that certain recom- mendations have been made for changes in Power's business re- lationships with the University. Several of the changes deal with questions originally raised by The Daily-the microfilming of doc- toral theses, for example. In about two weeks the Michi- gan Attorney General will release his opinion and then the Regents will consider the problems that should have been solved long ago. Furthermore the state Legisla- ture's subcommittee on higher education plans to propose new legislation on conflict of interest as an outgrowth of this investiga- tion. True, it is unfortunate that the situation had to be resolved after it was brought to the attention of the public. But it is only the neg- ligence of those involved which is to blame for that. HOPEFULLY the situation will be cleared up quickly, and that will be the end of it. '0 Pro.. Whk PRESIDENT Harlan Hatcher and Vice-Presidents A. Geoffrey Norman, Wilbur Pierpont and Michael Radock Coaxed the auto companies Into under- writing a $10 million highway safety re- search institute for the University, they succeeded in pulling off quite a coup. ' The automobile has to a large extent both 'eated our modern world and been its 0 rg. On the one hand trucks and autgs move the goods and people neces- sary to sustain our great urban busi- ness centers which the first Model T trucks helped to complete. On the other hand, roads and parking facilities have strangled many otherwise lovely cities and suburbs, traffic deaths have taken a shameful toll of life and autos have been a major contributor to smog and other forms of air pollution. While there has been widespread rec- ognition of these problems, and even some excellent though restricted research deal- ing with some of them, there has never been a concerted study of their common cause-the unbridled expansion of auto travel and of the auto market. It has been the sort of problem that everyone knows about and, therefore, no one does anything about. THE AUTOMOBILE has become such an entrenched segment of American. life that it has remained barely unexam- ined. Many significant facts have been unearthed about the auto in this larger; context-it has been in many cases con- structed almost purposely inadequately (to keep sales up and costs down); its continued existence depends upon the rapid turnover in the new car market; most people feel a strong psychological identification with their car; driving has a strong psychological appeal through its speed and ease-but they have never been analyzed in relation to one another or in relation to their meaning for society generally. If administered properly, the auto grant can help to ease this ignorance. Secre- tary of State James M. Hare is wrong if he contends that it cannot. It is true that if the auto companies had given $10 million to the safety insti- tute at Michigan State University, some answers to research would have been produced soonerBut they would not have been th sort of long-range, integrated analyses that the basic problems require and that the University's institute will hopefully produce. Naturally, the source of the grant has also aroused concern. If the auto com- panies have provided the money, how likely is it that the institute will do any research on subjects which may be em- barrassing to those companies, i.e., the kind of research that is often needed? And even if this is done, is there any guarantee that the companies will imple- ment the institute's findings? WITH RESPECT to the first question it is important to emphasize that the $10 million is essentially free money. The auto companies have neither defined the kind nor the extent of research that may be done by the institute; it is operating with absolutely no strings attached. Those who fear the institute will become the kept woman 'of the auto industry are fighting a straw man. It may be true that the auto companies will be under no direct compulsion to abide by the institute's findings. Yet gov- ernment pressure, in the face of growing automobile problems, is rising-witness the recent hearings of the Ribicoff com- mittee on industry practices. Moreover, it has to be realized that while it is possi- ble to argue that the auto companies are not operating in the public interest, but it has never been, possible to define broad questions affecting the automobile care- fully enough to legislate upon them. With the institute's work, such enforcement will be possible for the first time. T TNIVERSITY administrators deserve thanks for a job well done. The new research institute, if kept independent, well-financed and creatively administer- ed, should be an excellent example of Con1 ! " THE $10 MILLION GIFT from the Auto- mobile Manufacturers Association, Ford and General Motors for a highway safety research institute at the Univer- sity is, to say the least, strange. One would suppose the University might have consulted the State Board of Edu- cation before accepting "the largest cor- porate gift ever received by a university for any purpose" (the words of the Uni- versity announcement). Apparently, how-I ever, the University does not find it con- tradictory to accept the gift for a new highway research institute-despite the existence of a functioning highway re- search center at Michigan State Univer- sity--while continuingto claim that MSU should not develop a medical school be- cause of the existence of its own medical school. Moreover, the University's imposing designation of its center as "systems- oriented" can scarcely obscure the fact, as Secretary of State James Hare points out, that "in by-passing the MSU traffic safety center," the auto industry "effec- tively precludes the answers to questions now needed by the Legislature for at least a three-year period" required to construct a building, recruit staff and put the institute into operation. FINALLY, President Hatcher's state- ments in announcing the grant were so effusive one wonders if they weren't written for him in Detroit. His glowing references to the virtually non-existent "support the (auto) industry long has given to organizations working in the safety field . . . (and) the important work which the industry (itself) has done " are startling in their apparent ig- norance of the event which obviously prompted the auto industry grant: Sena- tors Robert Kennedy (D-NY) and Abra- ham Ribicoff (D-Conn), member and chairman, respectively, of a subcommittee investigating highway safety, made se- vere and telling criticism of the auto in- dustry's lack of concern and action on the whole highway safety question. If the University's activities are inex- plicable, the auto industry's decision is thus less so, but scarcely less question- able. Secretary Hare asked industry rep- resentatives in August to meet with him to work out a program of financial sup- port for research on topics of immediate legislative concern. Although in a Sept. 14 meeting they apparently led him to be- lieve they were interested, the only an- swer Hare got after the meeting, despite an October appeal for an answer, came with the Dec. 17 announcement of the $10 million gift. THE NEW YORK TIMES reported Sun- day that the automobile industry had approached the University with a pro- posal for a center-not the other way around, as the University's announce- ment said. Since then it has been learn- ed that, initially, the automobile indus- try opposed including automotive design as a topic of inquiry for the center. It also appears that the auto manufactur- ers approached only the University about a safety research institute. But although it is silly to attack such a generous gift, one may well wonder about the enthusiasm of the auto com- panies for it and its immediate-and ul- timate-contribution to highway safety. THE AUTO INDUSTRY'S sudden devel- opment of interest in traffic safety after the hearings of the Ribicoff com- mittee; its refusal to even answer Secre- tary Hare's request; its quiet approach to the University; its by-passing existing traffic safety centers, including one at MSU; its evident acceptance of a three- year delay on research results; its ini- tial opposition to automobile design as a research topic-such evidence, of course, seems to suggest that the automobile companies are attempting to exalt them- selves for a new-found, half-hearted en- thusiasm for traffic safety which ap- pears in reality to be little more than a public relations gambit. Such evidence is, to be sure, only cir- cumstantial. But, Thoreau observed, *1 Johnson-.Vic.tim of Disastrous Counsel 0 Bv WALTER LIPPMANN THERE IS no reason to doubt that the President is sincere in proclaiming to the whole world his desire to negotiate a peace in Viet Nam. But sincerity is not the crux of the matter. The ques- tion is whether he recognizes the strategic realities of the military situation and isprepared to nego- tiate a truce which conforms with them. It cannot be a glorious truce. If the President is not prepared to make his terms of peace con- sistent withethe reality in South- east Asia, he is likely to find that our friends and our adversaries alike regard the whole spectacular business not as the action of a statesman but as the device of a showman. Nevertheless, for the President the peace offensive is a critical turning point. It is not true, as so many suppose, that, if Peking and Hanoi reject the offer to negotiate, the way will therefore be cleared and open for a general escalation of the war. The President ' will find that, while the planes will fly and the troops will march and Congress will vote the money, confidence in his leadership, both at home and abroad, will be deeply weakened unless he has defined his terms of peace. AS SEEN through the murk of Secretary of State Dean Rusk's on and off the record press con- ferences, the Johnson adminis- tration has no firm and clear position on the central issues of the war. I realize that industrious newspapermen have been able to glean a collection of remarks which relate to the central issues-such as, whether we are prepared to leave South Viet Nam under any conditions which are in fact rea- lizable in the foreseeable future and whether we are in fact will- ing to negotiate a truce with the main adversary in the field, the Viet Cong. If these central points have been clarified by Averell Harri- man and the other emissaries, a great deal will have been accom- plished. If they have not been clarified, the effort is not suf- ficiently serious to comport with the dignity of a great power. For a power like the United States cannot lose face by liquidating a miserable war. But it can lose face by fooling around with it. Mr. Johnson knows that he is in a very grave crisis, For as he admitted in his year-end remarks, his great domestic accomplish- ments are jeopardized by his "fail- ure" to achieve peace in Viet Nam. It is worse than that. He is on the verge of making the kind of ruinous historical mistake which the.Athenians made when they attacked Syracuse, which Napoleon and Hitler made when they attacked Russia. He is on the verge of engaging this country in a war which can grow into a great war lasting. for many years and promising no rational solution. THE PRESIDENT is in this predicament mainly because he has t1t himself be persuaded by very bad,advice. The bad advice has been 'the argument that the expansion of Chinese communism will be halted or quickened by the outcome of the fighting in South Viet Nam. The notion that revolutionary wars can be stopped by fighting it out in South Viet Nam has been the cherished illusion of the President's two principal advisers. Both Rusk and Robert McNamara have committed themselves to the fallacy that South Viet Nam is Today Tomo rrow By WALTER LIPPMANN the Armageddon of the conflict with communism. This misconceived yar has in fact boomeranged. Its effect has been quite the opposite from what it was supposed to be. The coun- try has been told that,by proving our determination and our will- ingness to fight, we are arousing resistance to the expansion of Chinese communism. But are we? If China is to be contained it will have to be done not only by the United States, but by the containing powers of Asia: namely, Pakistan, India, Japan and the Soviet Union. Yet not one of these great powers of Asia is aligned with us. Quite the contrary. Our Vien- namese actions have driven the most powerful of all the contain- ing states, the Soviet Union, into open opposition to us and, if we escalate enough, will drive it into some kind of military opposition. CERTAINLY it is essential that Communist China be contained until its revolutionary ardors have cooled and she has settled down to peaceable coexistence. But a serious policy of containing China would begin with a realization that China is a continental land power in Asia, and if she is to be contained it will have to be done primarily by the great pow- ers of Asia, not be the United States alone. What is more, a serious policy for containing China would re- spect the basic geographical facts -that China is a land power and we are a sea power, that China is an elephant and we are a whale. During the past year or so China has had many failures and one conspicuous success. Geography was the determining factor in all of them. The Chinese failed in Africa, which is across the ocean and too far away. She outbluffed herself against India, which is also in fact too far away. She had a hu- miliating setback in Indonesia. which is separated from China by blue water and is not within her reach. China's one success has been that the greatest sea power has become bogged down in the morass of Indochina and would now be tut to it to mount a counter- revolutionary effort anywhere else tn this turbulent world. It is no wonder then that Chita will do all that' she can to prevent us from extricating ourselves from the morass. (c),1965, The Washington Post Co. *1 "Remember What We're Fighting For, Boy - Freedom For Fverybody To Conform" New York Shows Urban Money Drought By BRUCE WASSERSTEIN MUST THE American city wal- low in crime, dirt, slums and poverty? Is it ungovernable? Although money is not a pan- acea forproblems of urban areas, it helps. And most American cities cannot provide adequate services to their population be- cause of insufficient funds. It is apparent that in the long run there will be a need for ad- justment of the tax system of the nation so that enough of the revenue which flows into national and state coffers from the urban areas will be fed back to the cities. In the meantime however, the city must be able to improvise viable forms of raising additional revenue on its own in addition to the insufficient state and federal appropriations it currently gets. CURRENTLY New York City is in the midst of a drastic fiscal crisis which may very well thwart Mayor John V. Lindsay's attempt to get "the city moving again." Former Mayor Robert Wagner tried to get off-track betting pass- ed but failed. It is unlikely that the measure can be implemented in the near future. If the Empire City with all its resources cannot get moving, be- cause of a lack of a sound revenue base, the future looks rather dis- mal for urban areas as a whole. Republican comet Lindsay faces the alternatives of either reduc- ing city servicesto the population drastically after he claimed in his campaign that present services are inadequate or raising money from sources within the city. Despite his attempt to reorgan- ize the city's vast bureacracy, Lindsay will not be able to cut enough corners to stave off fiscal have their points but it is clear that on balance some would be much better than others: 0 A major bond issue would be rather unlikely and could prove disastrous. One of the basic causes of the fiscal crisis In New York has been the traditional policy of spend now, pay later. A bond issue would just aggravate the situation in the long run, and besides would prove to be uneconomical since the interest rate on New York City bonds has risen with the growth of pessimism for the city's fiscal outlook. It is apparent that a more fundamental remedy to the situation is needed. f Nobody wants higher taxes, but they will most likely be the solution Lindsay will use to get more revenue. The problems here is that each type of tax usedby Lindsay will undoubtedly have reprecussions that will influence the future growth of the city. LINDSAY MAY either use high- er real estate taxes or install a city income tax. Each of. these devices has its unique pitfalls. An increase in real 'estate taxes. for example, could upset the eco- nomic stability of New York. As was pointed out in the Herald Tribune series "New York: A City in Crisis" the high cost of rent in the city forces many industries to locate in the suburbs. New York cannot affordato continue to lose jobs this way and un- doubtedly higher real estate taxes will be passed on to lessees by pro- perty owners. Another effect will be that the middle class which ownes private homes in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, will also be nudged to move to the But if the taxes result inemigira- tion from New York by corpora- tions and the middle class the result will be more unemployment, less municipal stability and even- tually a heavier tax burden on the working man. AN INCOME TAX also has its drawbacks. The main question with it is, of course, how progres- sive should it be? Ideally it ought to tax the rich and extend the funds in welfare to the needy. Unfortunately it is impractical for New York. If the income tax is too steep the rich will simply move from Fifth Avenue to Scars- dale. The trick is to devise a tax rate which will be progressive enough to fill the city's coffers, yet not so steep as to force the wealthy to flee. On the other hand, there have been proposals that the city's in- come tax be not only applicable to residents of New York City but also to everyone who works there, regardless of where they live. This proposal is sound since it would tap millions of dollars of tax rev- enue from commuters who work in the city. However there is still the possibility that companies and families would decide to locate in other parts of the country becaust of the tax imposed on workers in New York. Yet the deleterious effects of such a tax would be lower than other forms of taxa- tion since the probability of mass emigration from the metropolitan area is low. * Devices such as city con- trolled gambling and lotteries might be one of the best ways to raise additional revenue, but op- position to such methods by people who have attacked their "im- moral" nature has been strong. Such morality arguments are spe- cious since the city already spon- sors betting on horses within the racetracks. It seems hard to be- liege that the morality of the issue changes when betting is held outside the track's walls. Such methods of finance have been very successful in other places such as New Hampshire and England. Furthermore city supported gambling and lotteries wouldrdo a great deal to destroy number and bookie rackets- which provide a power base for crime syndicates. REPUBLICAN LINDSAY is hop- ing that a reapportioned. legisla- ture will be more benevol nt in its appropriations to the city than the old legislature which was. dom- inated by representatives ofup- state New York. He is also hoping that the establishment of the de- partment of urban affairs at the national level will result in higher federal appropriations to solve ur- ban problems. However because of the war in Viet Nam on the na- tional level and a tight fiscal pic- ture on the state level it is clear that these sources will not pro- vide enough 'revenue to bail New York out from its present crisis. His best solution to the problem would be to legalize city con- trolled offtrack betting and lot- teries. Since -the probability of using this solution is low, a pro- gressive income tax on all people who work in the city seems to be the most viable alternative. a Schutze's Corner: Auto Safety The automobile industry decided recently to get to the bottom of the traffic safety issue by giving ten million dollars to the Univer- sity of Michigan for research into such intriguing questions as "the driving behavior of alcoholics while sober." The director of the new safety research project may find himself engaged in many conversations similar to the one below. "What's the matter now. Phil- lawn. There must be something we can do." "Well, we tried depriving them of booze as you suggested, sir, and they drank up our entire supply of antifreeze." "DON'T PUT THAT in your re- port. Philby. The automakers wouldn't like it if the consumers started demanding vodka in their radiators. You'll remember the motto of our project: don't dis- and tell all of their friends that the university of Michigan is the best thing since Alcoholics Anony- mous. In fact, drunks have started pouring in from all over the coun- try to take the U of M cure. They even call this place Hatcher's Haven." "Well, I'mi afraid we'll just have to learn to live with it. I realize how difficult it must be for you to live in a sea of inebriety. I only hope it isn't' affecting you