just a song in the wind
Where's the sandbox, Susie?
Seventy-eight years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students of the University of Michigan
~by jim Iheck.- .......
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News Phone: 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.
SATURDAY, MAY 17, 1969
NIGHT EDITOR: MARTIN A. HIRSCHMAN
i
Congress should
clean its own house first
IN THE WAKE OF the Fortas resigna-
tion "congressional double standard"
has justifiably become a popular catch-
phrase.
Portas' indiscretion pales beside the fi-
nancial shenanigans of several legislators
who were so quick to point the accusing
finger.
Fortas resigned under congressional
pressure for accepting a $20,000 legal con-
sultant fee from a firm later investigated
or selling unregistered securities. Fortas
faced the additional embarrassment of
an impeachment motion which could be
introduced by any member of self-right-
eous congressmen if he chose to fight it
out.
CLEARLY FORTAS was foolish at best
to risk creation of a conflict of inter-
est which could incriminate him at any
time. But the puritanical outcry to purge
the. corruption in our midst hypocritically
ignored numerous and more substantial
financial alliances of legislators and out-
side business interests.
No fewer than 92 of the 435 representa-
tives in Congress are officers, directors,
or stockholders in banks or other finan-
cial institutions. Eighty-seven have ties
Marahity play
LEST WE FORGET, amidst the brouhaha
created by Mr. Nixon's peace offensive
(or offensive peace), theIABM still dwells
among us.
Yesterday, the Senate Foreign Rela-
tions Disarmament Subcommittee staged
its own dramatic confrontation between
two seers of science, Edward Teller, de-
veloper of the hydrogen bomb and de-
fender of the Safeguard, and Jerome
Wiesner, adviser to former Presidents
Kennedy and Johnson and good guy.
Unfortunately Defense Secretary Mel-
vin "King" Laird could not have planned
the' hearing better. The two scientists
disagreed violently on deployment of the
missile system and effectively cancelled
out each other's testimony.
This means, in considering the systems,
congressmen will have no recourse to
science; they will have to make a moral
decision. Oh dear.
with law firms and 61 more are stock-
holders in companies with major defense
contracts.
At last count ten congressmen with di-
rect connections to banks and other fi-
nancial institutions sit on the House
Banking and Currency Committee and six
on the House Ways and Means Commit-
tee.
Rep. Alphonzo Bell of California owns
the $12 million Bell Petroleum Company.
Yet the House ethic panel didn't see fit
for him to reveal this on the form he
filed in compliance with the House dis-
closure bill.
TE DISCLOSURE LAWS of Congress
were written during t h e celebrated
Dodd case. However, they merely report
honorariums, contributions, and certain
other financial reports; the latter aren't
open for public inspection.
Currently senators and representatives
are not required to list all their invest-
ments and outside business interests. The
disclosure law is obviously meaningless.
The Fortas resignation coupled with
Chief Justice Warren's retirement in
June, will radically a 1 t e r the political
complexion of the court. The President
will undoubtedly appoint two conserva-
tives in their stead. The present c o u r t
notable, and among conservatives notor-
ious for its liberalism, will revert to its
traditional pre-Warren conservatism.
Fortas' resignation can be valuable on-
ly if Congress turns its reforming tenta-
cles inward and investigates conflicts of
interest among its own members.
YET THERE IS NO immediate sign this
w i 11 happen. Yesterday Wright Pat-
man, chairman of the House Banking and
Currency Committee, attacked Treasury
Secretary David Kennedy's alleged t i e s
with the bank he originally headed. Rep.
H. R. Gross has retalliated partisan-fash-
ion by expressing the fervent hope the
House Judiciary Committee would inves-
tigate Justice William O. Douglas.
Whether Congress will ever get around
to enforcing a stronger disclosure law and
eliminating conflicts of interests among
its own members remains to be seen. The
advise from many experts is don't hold
your breath.
- TOBE LEV
PERHAPS REVOLUTION is already here.
The growth of violence is so expected
and so feared and grows so slowly that we
may be hesitant to call our state of affairs
revolution. But who will give another name
to the situation on the Madison and Ber-
keley campuses were the number injured
in a 24-hour period of intense battle is al-
most twice that usually killed and injured
in battlefront situations in Vietnam. If it
is not revolution, what is it?
Everyone seems to want to answer that
question, but our language apparently is
too primitive to supply an appropriate
aphorism for our confused beliefs. No, it
is not really revolution, because while rev-
olution is borne of discontent, it is carried
by issues, causes and alternatives to op-
pression. There are many students who will
fight the War, the draft and a capitalistic
system viod of humanism. But the students
3 who fight in Berkeley and Wisconsin fight
with confusion and malcontent - fight
without any valid cause or viable concern.
except that of police brutality.
AND THE POLICE deserve no better
name is Madison and Berkeley than vicious
pigs. They are hostile and sadistic; they
are maniacs when they begin spraying in-
discriminate areas with lethal pepper gas
or, drag arbitrarily "longhairs" from the
dormitories in order that their billy clubs
can be used. This is deplorable. It is
facistic and frightening and those who now
pretend to disbelieve that this horrid con-
dition exists with the police are but
maniacs themselves.
But the police have guns and billy clubs
and the students have nothing but pride.
We have reached a situation where is
doesn't matter anymore who is right or
wrong. As horrible as it sounds, the country
has given its support to the militarism of
the police. The fact that the Berkeley
police can act so animal-like and brutal
and that all they receive in criticism is the
applause of one Ronald Reagan is beyond
belief but confirms the horrible state of
affairs. Thus, when such out and out
violence begins to decide the fate of issues
and stands, then logic is displaced for
who has the hardest piece of wood or the
pistol with the longest range. It becomes
extremely difficult now not to call for
massive retaliation, massive rock-throwing
and window-breaking and head-smashing.
BUT THAT'S ALL it would be: rock-
throwing, window-breaking and occasional
head-smashing. The police have rifles, gas
and armor and most importantly and so
tragically, they have the implied if not ex-
plicit mandates of those middle class citi-
zens who compose the majority.
THUS IT IS PURE folly to resort to
violence. It is imposible to win. Beyond the
question of whether it is justified when
compared to the cause it carries, it has no
purpose. It is useless, in vain; the students
are mice compared to the power of the
police and the disdainful illogic of the
populace. And to suppose somehow that
students could collect an arsenal adequate
to at least forestall complete repression
is ludicrous.
This is not to say this country can;be
renovated enough to adequately support
the ideals of the student. It may be that
total social revolution is necessary.
But the use of violence is a carefully
prescriped medicine for a chronic social
problem. Its use must be precded by a con-
cise analysis of why it should be used. With
every but this country becomes more totali-
tarian. Therefore, the results of the viol-
ence must at least bring to a stalemate the
forces of totalitarian repression. The sus-
tenance of violence . used in Berkeley to
defend Peoples Park and used in Madison
to fortify several blocks of streets waste
lives and action and politics on trite issues
and threatens to end whatever headway-if
any-has been made towards alleviating
the broader social ills.
RIGHT NOW it is difficult for any col-
lege journalist or student government of-
ficial to go to Madison. Police there are
delighted to greet those . carrying suit-
cases with pre-arranged warrants arresting
the traveler for crossing state lines to in-
cite to riot. The bond is $10,000. Students
for a Democratic Society (SDS) was
ridiculously raided under the most absurd
of pretences this week and five of its major
members clamped into jail and no doubt
will soon be behind bars for longer than
the time necessary to raise the ludicrous
bail sum. The Justice Department, it is
rumored, now has 400 indictments for
major campus radicals under the Rap
Brown Act. State universities such as those
in Indiana are raising tuition to levels
several years ago that would have been
considered discriminatory. State legisla-
tures, most particularly in California and
'4
Wisconsin, have passed laws repressing
any student activism of any form. The
Supreme Court is now susceptible to the
ultra-conservative majority President Rich-
ard Nixon will no doubt institute.
All this is factual and it is beyond reason
to delude oneself what temporary resist-
ance will lead to massive resistance and
that liberation is just beyond the horizon.
THERE IS NO student party. There is
no cohesion between campuses. There is
little cooperation between student groups,
SDS, as unscrupulous as it is disorganized,
is splintering into nothingness. There is
nothing left but a repressive government
and frenzied, splintered, individual stu-
dents. Students do not have the support
of outside groups such as labor or teach-
ers. While they are undoubtedly not alone
in their discontent and frustration, they
are alone in their tacties.
Students must develop interaction, co-
hesion and communication. The necessary
transformation of this student movement
into a viable tool for change cannot come
until we have. these three traits.
If this is ignored, and violence embraced
irationally, any hope of change in any
form will be squelched by the government
as it tends more and more to the dog-
matic, silent and fortified stronghold of
facistic repression.
IT MAY BE possible to argue that this
is what we really want anyway - that
once everyone in the nation becomes cog-
nizant of repression, liberation will be pos-
sible. But this is worthwhile at most only as
. a last resort, when all the available alter-
natives are exhausted. And its risk is pre-
dicated on the sometimes unreliable his-
toric assumption that people do not remain
oppressed for very long.
If the issues right now were ones di-
rectly of succinct and fascistic repression,
perhaps then it could be said there is no
time to examine possible alternatives. But
the issues that are causing fighting in
the streets are trite, forlorn and amazingly
silly. In Madison the issue was whether or
not student could have a party in the
street. Ir Berkeley it was whether students
could hold a park they had built. Granted,
both these "symptoms" have roots in ques-
tions of property and society's right vis-a-
vis property owner. But the issues at hand
are. the ones right now relevant. For the
roots of these trite situations can be dealt
with as part of other social inequities on
broader and more substantive scales.
THERE ARE REAL iproblems that ex-
tend beyond the Peoples Park and the
Miflin St. area. There are problems of
welfare, of economic inequality and auto-
cratic politics. And why now do we begin
to ignore the War-and racism? Is it because
our analyses were so shallow they could
not solicit our perseverance?
There is no purpose in trying to confront
the cops at Peoples' Park. The repression
as the state of California clicks one notch
closer to facism if for no other reason
than it has condoned police brutality
one more time-this repression is far
greater than the repression of not being
able to have a park.
STUDENTS SHOULD TEMPER once
again and perhaps once too many times
again their frustration and anxieties. They
need not work within the system, but they
need most of all solidarity and unity and
communication. How all this will come
about in time to save ourselves seems to
beg a miracle. But if it doesn't everything
looks quite grim.
4IA
I
Two new star
By LORNA CHEROT
GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS on the federal, state and municipal
level furrow their brows and express verbal dismay over "our
deteriorating urban centers."
And our cities continue to deteriorate.
A major obstacle in their reincarnation is the lack of under-
standing between the people and the mayor, the mayor and the
governor, the governor and the presidential executives, and be-
tween the executives ahd the President.
A case in point is the recent conference between President
Nixon, HUD Secretary Romney and the big city mayors. In
characteristic form, Mr. Nixon
displayed political astuteness
and sincere concern by re- Lorna
ducing federal assistance to the
cities. Ch erot
Unfortunately when most of-
ficials use the phrase "deterior-
ating urban centers" they are using euphemistically to gloss over
the human problem, which is the real issue. The problem of the
poor, the problem of the minorities are phrases that can be 'used
interchangeably with "deteriorating urban centers."
THE MOST TRAGIC aspect of the urban problem is that the
mayor is often rebuffed by the governor. At best the governors
concern themselves with changing the corporation tax to prevent
mass exodus of industry to other states with more favorable tax
Washington and New
York
systems. The issues of adequate housing, community control of
schools, air pollution, crime and suburban migratory patterns are
left to the mayors to solve-even though the state has the final
decision.
Two examples are the relation between New York City and
the New York state legislature and between Washington D.C. and
Congress.
New York City has a population of eight million while the
state has only a total of 16 million. The state imposes a six per
cent sales tax only two per cent cent of which goes to the city.
With the aid of public hearings where community residents,
school board officials, and representatives of the teachers' union
made recommendations, Mayor Lindsay drew up a decentraliza-
tion plan. The State Board of Regents also submitted a plan. A
group of upstate legislators dissatisfied with both plans formulated
their own, and all three are currently under debate in Albany.
When the state cuts aid to city schools, it jeopardizes the
quality of New York's city college, which is free and the finest in
the nation. College administrators cannot admit a new freshman
class, nor can they implement a comprehensive course in Afro
and Hispanic studies.
THE STATE ALSO cuts out welfare appropriations and fi-
nancial assistance to city hospitals. In fact the state allocates only
57 cents out of every state dollar to be used for social services, to
be distributed among all the cities and townships. If New York
City were to be the only beneficiary that contribution would be
but a mere dxop in the bucket.
All of this does not make Lindsay's job any easier, and much
of it can be viewed as a direct slap at New York's poor, black and
Puerto Rican minorities. But Lindsay has promised the city more
aid from the state and federal government. Lindsay cannot hope
to keep the people of Harlem, Manhattan's Lower East Side, Bed-
ford Stuyvesant, Spanish Harlem, and Corona soothed with empty
promises.
TTnfortunately the state legislature is insulated from' the
brunt of the city's anger.
A resident of New York City whose average net income is
between $6,000 and $10,000 pays $40 plus one per cent tax on
all income in excess of $6,000. Yet he must also pay the state
either $160 plus a five per cent on all income in excess of $5,000,
or $260 and a tax of six per cent on all income in excess of $7,000.
NEW YORK'S MAYORS since the Walker adminstration in
the early 30's have been pleading for more home rule-without
effect.
City residents are tired of suffering these injustices, and they
cost units, city officials opted to build it in an all-white suburban
area. There was considerable protest on the excuse it was too far
from central means of transportation and shopping centers.
Yet city o f f i c i a 1 s ordered the construction crews to
begin work. But the Department of Housing and Urban Develop-
ment would not release the funds it had set aside for the project,
on the pretext of studying it further. Finally city officials raised
the full amount and the city ordered construction of the housing
units.
It is not fair that the will of the citizens of Washington
should be subject to Congressional approval-especially since its
members do not live in the district but in the suburbs of Virginia
and Maryland. What this amounts to is slavery, Twentieth Cen-
tury style.
The idea of New York city seceeding from the state and ap-
plying for statehood is not absurd. In 1863 the western section
of Virginia petitioned President Abraham Lincoln to confer state-
hood on that section because it felt its will was being ignored.
The western section did not want to join the Confederacy.
LINCOLN OBLIGED and the state of West Virginia stayed in
the Union. New York City is in a similar position. The state has
continually ignored its populace and their needs.
Both New York City and Washington D.C. have sufficient
population and experience at self government. Statehood therefore
should not be denied to them.
,r
O fr
A'tp
"Speaking of non-negotiable demands,
what's new with the SDS . Y
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Right from the tongue of Ar
A9
To the Editor:
WHO ASKED Martin Hirschman
to apoligize for anything, ex-
cept perhaps his condescending
vapidness in his column "No, No.
NO." Christ, in reading it over
again these incredible phrases
drool out from the page and I ask
myself, incredulous, did he really
SAYthat? Anyone who, at the
age of 20. defines himself as an
'apologist for the radicals," or who
can claim radicalism as the em-
PLEASE, MARTY, write an-
other column once you create your
"formidable liberal left" and let
us know about it. Hopefully, it will
be in the New York Post, after you
take over from or turn into James
Wechsler.
"Every traditional is merely a
mature radical' says Hirschman
righteously. What a piece of horse-
shit! "WE ARE ALL IMMA-
TURE," then, by Hirschman's 45-
year-old rhetorical s p e w i n g s.
oposite sides. POWER TO THE
PEOPLE.
-Kenneth Kelley
Editor, The Ann Arbor Argus
May 14
Commercial bugaboo
To the Editor:
IT SEEMS we can't get away
from commercials these days.
The specialization now-a-days
seems to be the soft sell. It is a
rarity, however. when a sponsor
"Shaw Whitney" obligingly stood
up, loudly protesting that he -had
a deferment.
Math 473 is not a literature
course. However, I fail to see the
amusement, the propriety, or even
the place of such sickly melo-
drama in any course. A sad com-
mentary on the present state of
affairs if we must conclude from
this that someone thinks we are
so mindless as to be unable to form
our own opinions.
g