Sewuty-Third Year EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDEISJ OF THE UNIEtsiTY OF M:HGAN - UNDN AUTUORAY O BOARD IN CONTOL, , STUDENT PUU2A-ION Where Oinions Araee~ STUDENT P LwjC&TJONs BLDG., ANN AI.iot, MICHT., PHONE No 2-3241 Truth Will Prevail" "Would You Repeat That, Sir? The Afternoon Bomb Explosion Jarred The Microphone A Little" LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Harris' Remarks Out of Context ditorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints. )AY, SEPTEMBER 28, 1963 NIGHT EDITOR: GAIL EVANS Zp Code: Playing the Numbers Game g,.' s" '= ' _ 011%r EOPLE OF AMERICA UNITE! The Amal- gamated Conspiracy of All-Number Pushers is at it again. This time they have enlisted no less an organization than the United States Post Office Department, and the result is so ridiculous that it is a bit unsettling. In the pronounced interest of efficiency (a ludicrous term when associated with the Post Office), there has been inflicted on the long- suffering American people the latest in faceless automation-the Zip Code. ESIGNED TO EXPEDITE mail sorting and increase correspondence errors, the Zip Code breaks the nation down in many thou- sands of tiny postal zones, each with a separate number. The idea of the whole thing is that the correspondent is supposed to put down his Zip Code number after the return address as well as the ZC number for the addressee. This re- putedly will speed up delivery, though one fails to see how. BUT REGARDLESS of what the new all- number nonsense is supposed to do, it should be resisted with all vigor and violence. Do Not--repeat-do not use the Zip Code. Do N'ot-repeat-do not use all-number dialing. These' two innovations, to mention a minute number of the existing and proposed total, are simply steps along the road to making this country one big IBM machine. Consider the many, many numbers we are practically forced to maintain now: There's your telephone number, which includes an area code of three digits and an individual number if seven digits; there's your Zip Code of five digits; there's your driver's license number, your selective service number your social secur- ity number, your bank account number, your bicycle license number, your student enrollment number, your record club account number, your house number, your license plate number, your voting registration number, your local taxation number, your state taxation number, your fed- eral taxation number, .to mention a few (in other words, this paragraph looks long enough to be impressive). NOW QUITE OBVIOUSLY this just plain - has got to stop. A free people in a free (?) nation cannot reasonably be expected to re- member all those numbers. Progress FOR THE FIRST TIME a Negro girl will guide rushees through the University's all-white sororities and a white-rush counsellor will as- sist girls interested in the two Negro houses. This decision to exchange rush counsellors is a progressive and valuable move on the part of Panhellenic Association. It is about time that the associate sorori- ties on the campus be Included in the regularly scheduled sorority activities. nE FACT that the Negro houses have been in the background of sorority activities is partly their own fault for not asserting them- selves and partly the fault of the other 22 houses on campus which mave not gone out of their way to see to it that all 24 sororities on this campus participate equally. Hopefully, this is the first step in bringing the two associate members into closer contact with the entire system. -G. EVANS Arbitrar THE SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY campus had been in an uproar for a week. The Congress of Racial Equality was organizing protest demonstrations over discrimination in urban renewal construction; sound trucks had been blaring messages at the campus urging students to picket; other students who, according to the Syracuse Daily Orange, "claimed to represent CORE" had "entered classrooms asking for followers and picketers durng class time." The campus had responded. There were 60 arrests in six days. Fifty one students and nine faculty members wre charged with trespassing as they willfully broke the law by crossing work lines. THE ADMINISTRATION decided that it was time to crack down. Administrations as a general rule seem to value order over every Published at 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Michigan. Owner-Board in Control of Student Publications, 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor. Bond or stockholders-none. Average press run-6500. One solution might well be to rise up and insist that all these potential IBM machines get together and assign the same number to the same person, so that each person would have one number and one number only. However, that would defeat the whole all- number conspiracy, which is to confuse the people sufficiently so that they will stop an- noying the agency involved. For example, the' phone company hopes to get enough digits tacked onto your phone number so that dialing will become a traumatic process somewhat akin to filling out an income tax form. In this way, you will make longer phone calls due to the fact that you want to say everything you can in order to avoid the horrors of dialing again in the event you forget something. Now since the telephone rates seem to be calculated on the basis of a geo- metrical progression, it is obvious why the phone company favors many numbers. AS FOR the post office, the same principle applies. The principle is that ifaddressing a letter becomes complicated enough, the people will band together, save up all family correspondence for a month or so, send the whole mess parcel post (at those astronomical rates), and without a return address so the post office can dump the whole thing in the dead letter office and claim you used an in- sufficient address (like you forgot to put down the color of the house). And this brings us to another point. If you think these fine bureaucratic agencies had trouble getting your name right, wait until you observe them trying to get your number right. You see, if your name is Smith, and it should happen to be misspelled Smyth, that isn't terribly hard to track down. But if your Zip Code is 94134 and your friend sent the letter to 94143, how would you begin to guess what happened? NOW THE POST OFFICE and the phone company and others will claim that the Zip Code and the All-Number calling are used in addition to ,the present information, so there's a double check. But let us 'not forget the local examples of the Ann Arbor Bank and the University, where you can't cash a check without your account number, no matter how well you spell your name, or where you can't fill out a form without your student number, regardless if you know everything else. So there's nothing to do but trek back to your abode and dig that number out. (That's right; you unearth your bank account number and put it down on the University form. Then you wonder what happened to your grades.) So the course for freedom-loving Americans is clear. Resist this number business completely. Refuse to use the Zip Code; arrogantly inform the operator your number is NOrmandy 2- 3241 and when she tells the long distance operator it is 6623241, correct her. Sell the Ann Arbor 'Bank if they want your account number on your check (which incidentally is written In Swahili or something), they can just put it there themselves. If the post office wants your Zip Code, tell the mailman to look it up. rfHIS AND ONLY THIS will break the bureaucrats, and this is why: You see there is one thing they don't like about an all, number system-using it. -MICHAEL HARRAH y Action other consideration, and the one at Syracuse is certainly no exception. Vice-President Eric H. Faigle announced Sunday night that any student arrested or detained by police in such demonstrations would be immediately placed on "disciplinary probation." At Syracuse, "pro" is when they really mean business: it is the step just before they throw you out. Syracuse has to worry about its public image too. The move had the desired effect. There have been no more sound trucks, no more classroom interruptions, and no more arrests. The dem- onstrations have been considerably more or- derly. 9VJHE ORDER was not without its price. Voices of the American Association of University Professors, and the 4merican Civil Liberties Union have been raised to protest the tactic, and rightly so. It is questionable whether the university has any right to impose this kind of double jeopardy on the student, whereby he is punished twice for the same "crime." Even if one concedes this point on the archaic principle of paternalism, the fact still remains that under these circumstances arrest is not enough of a guilt criterion to merit the To the Editor: I AGREE with reader Le Clare that the remarks attributed to me in The Daily last Thursday were in extremely poor taste and shocking. I do not believe my ac- tual testimony before SGC ,was shocking; The Daily's incomplete coverage of what I said and its use of quotes out of context gave a very different picture to the reader than the one I left with SGC. In particular, I did not im- pugn the competence of any at- torney, although The Daily story suggests the contrary. However, I was guilty of poor taste, and I would appreciate The Daily carrying my public apology to Attorney Laurence Smith for my statement casting doubt on his. good faith in raising certain ob- jections to proposed SGC pro- cedures. I should have picked my words with more care and said that his ideas of what due process re- quires in this context-particularly his idea SGC must furnish trial by jury before imposing with- drawal of recognition-strikes me as wholly groundless. I stated to SGC my detailed rea- sons for believing that further SGC delay in response to At- torney Smith's criticisms would be unwise. I regret The Daily omitted these reasons in its news story. -Prof. Robert J. Harris Law School (EDITOR'S NOTE: The editors re- gret, any distress that may have been caused to Mr. Smith or Prof. Harris by any misunderstanding of Prof. Harris' remarks which could be attributed to the report that ap- peared In The Daily.) Folk Phonies ... To the Editor: ONE OF THE LESS lovely aspects of the cuirent folk craze is the presence of camp-fol- lowers ,known as commercial singers. IBy current folksingers' definitions, a commercial singer is a fifth-rate nightclub singer who has bought a guitar and jumped on the folk music bandwagon by singing old and watered-down songs in jazzed up style, often with new, slicked up words. Those who remember the taping of the television program "Hoote- nanny" here and remember the incredible falseness with which those songs were presented may be surprised to learn that worse things can be done. Probably the worse example going is the movie "Hootenanny Hoot." INTRIGUED BY the short but descriptive review in The Daily, I wasted an afternoon finding out whether or not the movie was as bad as the reviewer suggested. It, was worse. It takes more than a guitar to make a folksinger and it takes more than a simple 1-2-3-4 beat to make a folksong. Of all the commercial slick singers I've ever listened to (and the Panhellenic concert of two weeks ago featured a crop of them), these were the worst. Flashy instrumental pyro- technics, inane words, crudely obvious' staging, slick harmony and lecherously saccharine grins at the camera marked the progress of this miserable film. * * * FORTUNATELY, University students have far better taste than the moviemakers. Although this film was obviously intended to take advantage of a craze which has University students holding three campus hootenannies a. week, the scripwriters overlooked the fact that folk music fans soon lose their ear for pop music trash and develop both a taste for hon- est folksongs and a sharp eye for commercial phonies. The movie has fallen flat on its celluloid face and departs to make room for a situation comedy. Good thing too. If the film had stayed another day, the Michigan The- atre might well have been picketed by local folk music fans and out- raged members of the campus Folklore Society. -Leslie Fish, '66 'i I x ?i _ ' -,. wrEs a os'r- g \ FISCAL REFORM PLANS: Do We Need a Tax Overhaul? I (EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the last in a series of articles investigating Gov. George Romney's proposed fis- cal reform program.) By STEVEN HALLER NOW THAT Gov. George Rom- ney has made his fiscal re- form program a matter of pub- lic record, the Legislature has be- come the object of rapt attention on the part of the state and the nation alike. The major reason for this phenomenon is not so much the fact that Romney has conceiv- ed a new tax structure, but rather that he has done so at a time when the state is doing quite well with what it has. For two years now, Michigan's all-important automobile industry has been booming, and the nuis- ance tax package has contributed to the favorable picture. Under the circumstances, Romney's plan to impose a system of statewide in- come taxes will undoubtedly fall 7tn a number of deaf ears among he public and legislators alike. ROMNEY POINTED OUT to the Legislature that "the fiscal year which closed June 30 produced state general fund revenue which was. $62.2 million more than gen- eral fund spending for the same 12-month period." This fortunate turn of events cut the standing deficit of $85.6 million down to only $23 million, and the sum con- ceivably could be reduced even more in the next fiscal year. Says Romney, "This huge deficit reduction)is a tribute to the Mich- igan Legislature in two ways. The Legislature in 1962 enacted addi- tional taxes, which provided the bulk of new state revenue permit.. ting such a large reduction in the deficit. The Legislature then re- fused to appropriate beyond its means, and thus achieved a single- year surplus in recognition of the fact that nothing damages a state's fiscal reputation more than a huge, nagging deficit." IN VIEW of the state's fiscal po- sition, many legislators in both parties have questioned Romney's motives in attempting to overhaul a structure which is bringing such a high yield. The answer lies in the governor's slogan, "Tax re- form without tax increase - for jobs and justice." Romney's avow- ed goal is a fiscal program that will be more equitable and yet one which will not achieve such equity at the price of a higher tax bur- den. To attain this goal, the governor has mentioned several steps which might be taken to realize "genuine fiscal reform, which includes both spending reform and tax reform." ROMNEY'S PLANS for tax re- form have been covered in some detail in preceding articles of this series. Briefly, he would have a statewide income tax, with separ- ate levies for individuals, corpora- tions, and financial institutions; he would lower the level of busi- ness taxation otherwise by' repeal of the business activities tax and ravicinn flf % 'la nn.nn rnn - some strides in this area since the day that he thought the only way he could cut down in executive of- fice costs was to use a standard car instead of a limousine. The first move Romney took was to work with the Budget Division toward reducing its tentative rec- ommendations by 10 per. cent. Romney notes that "despite the limited time at our disposal, we largely accomplished this objective in our proposed budget. For the first time in several years, the governor actually recommended lesp spending than the Legisla- tu'e finally approved." * * * NOW THE GOVERNOR is em- barked on an even more far- reaching program of economy on the state level. Seven accountants and financial management experts were recruited to form a "task force on expenditure manage- ment." Romneycalls the results so far "encouraging," but much of the planning is still in the formative stage. Among several examples of what has been accomplished thus far, he cites the case of one state agen- cy employing 65 persons. Romney's task force found that 15 positions could be eliminated "without af- fecting the level of service." He continues, "Study of another division in another agency, with 55 positions involved, indicates six are not needed for present activi- ties. Preliminary reports in other agencies also promise economies. * * * "IT HAS BEEN SLOW going in these first reviews of positions and activities, because task force per- sonnel have been writing the man- uals and training regular state employes in their techniques of position analysis. But now that it's under way, the program will move faster; and in time, every agency and department of government will be given work simplification analysis." The task force also recommend- ed both a data processing unit "to make more efficient use of the data processing equipment ' now used." The unit would also recom- mend an overall plan for centraliz- ed and more efficient use of state equipment. Studies are also being made con- cerning revising state-operated re- tail liquor store operations and warehousing methods, reducing state costs in printing, insurance and communications, and inspect- ing the current inventory control program. * * * ROMNEY'S PLANS for econo- mizing will not be readily accepted by everyone, and those who will lose out in the rush to save the state money will undoubtedly be. the first to kick up a fuss. Nor will the governor's plans raise his pres- tige much where taxes are con-. cerned, since some people will have their taxes raised at the same time that others are lowered. This is to be expected, but it cannot be helped. Wthout going into lengthy nit- picking, one could readily accept the bulk of Romney's fiscal pro- gram if he realizes that it is nec- essary and that it should be done now, before the state's financial situation worsens. By eliminating those "featherbedding" practices which still exist within the struc- ture of the state government, Romney will greatly reduce the cost of running the state, which means that the taxpayers will ben- efit as well. * * * AT THE SAME TIME, Romney's tax plan, if accepted by the Leg- islature, will go a long way to- ward equalizing the tax burden from taxpayer to taxpayer. With certain modifications, mentioned earler in the series, the governor's reform program is a good one. To- gether, the, two concepts-making the tax burden equitable and econ- omizing within the state govern- mental structure-should have little trouble in living up to the governor's slogan. As Romney has said, the program will provide "tax reform without tax increase"; and hopefully his goals of "jobs and justice" will indeed be the end result. TODAY AND TOMORROW: Perkpheral Issues By WALTER LIPPMANN SO THAT WE shall not expect too much or value too little the partial test ban treaty, we must, I believe, ask why this agreement, which has been suggested so often before, became at last, feasible. What has been the/ primary rea- son? Not the pollution of the air by fallout. The danger of that has been known for years. Not the Soviet quarrel with Red China. For while that could conceivably explain why Moscow became will- ing to agree with us, it does not explain why Washington became willing to agree with Moscow. Not a sudden realization after the confrontation on Cuba that war must be avoided, though it is true that what it was like to stand on the brink has not been forgotten in Moscow and in Washington. These and many other reasons have, no doubt, played a contribut- ing part in the decision on both sides to sign the partial test ban treaty. But the primary reason has been, I submit, that a preponder- ant scientific opinion has devel- oped on both sides that continued, testing in the atmosphere could almost certainly not produce a de- cisive breakthrough in the nuclear race. There' is a dissenting minor- ity, led by Dr. Teller in this coun- try and reflected in the negative votes in the Senate, which con- tinues to believe that a break- through can be made if enough atmospheric tests are conducted. And there is reason to believe that in the Soviet military establish- ment there are Russian counter- parts to Dr. Teller. But the two. governments, having heard the Teller case argued by scientists, have rejected it, and that is the decisive reason why they nego- tiated this treaty. * * ,* TO BE SURE, our responsible officials have been careful not to go on record publicly that a break- through to an anti-missile missile is virtually impossible. But they could not have supported the test ban had they not become convinc- ed by the large majority of Amer- ican experts and disinterested scientists that the absolute weapon cannot be produced by continued testing in the atmosphere. No doubt Dr. Teller is a for- midable man to overrule. He would not have been overruled if the weight of opinion opposed to it were not overwhelmingly formid- able. For if there were any real chance of achieving the absolute tveapon, the risks of not testing would be absolutely enormous. The government would not have taken such risks. What is more, we ;must not forget that Mr. Khrushchev would not have taken such risks. * *i Antarctic continent, and is, so the President now proposes, to go on to a number of cooperative enter- prises, of which the most spec- tacular is 'the exploration of the moon. The whole series leaves aside the vital issues of the cold war and proceeds to deal with issues that, while not vital, are unnecessarily competitive a n d irritating. A SETTLEMENT of the cold war, which extends to all the con- tinents, is not in sight. The cold war will smolderon for genera- tions. But what has happened in very/ recent times is that the vital issues between the Soviet Union and the Atlantic community - which arise chiefly from the par- tition of Europe, the partition of Germany, and the partition of Berlin-are being defused. That is to say, neither side Is expecting to settle the issues by nuclear weapons. That is a great deal better than if they expected these issues to be such that they could be solved only by nuclear weapons. By dealing with the peripheral issues - Antarctica, atmospheric tests, going to the moon--it will not become harder, and it may be- come easier, to deal with the vital central issues. Just this week, the Secretary General of the Gaullist party in France told the Council of Europe meeting in Strasbourg that "Europe must be careful not to become the victim of this close- ness" between the United States and the Soviet Union. Monsieur Baumel need not worry-too much about the closeness. He is having a nightmare induced by reading too much European history and too little American history when he imagines Khrushchev and Ken- nedy sitting down to impose a settlement on Europe. EVEN IF WE wanted to make a deal behind the backs of our Ger- man and French allies, we could not make one. We have many faults, heaven only knows, but how to play Machiavelli or Tal- leyrand or Richelieu. is not in :the American educational curriculum. (c) 1963, The washington Post Co. Farmers WHAT DO farmers want? They want Washington bureaucrats to untie their hands and quit tell- ing them how to run their farmus. They are proud of the fact that they produce more food and fiber per man than any other farmers ig history. They feel that government got them into the mess they're in, and therefore should help them get out. Also believing that, Sens. Bourke Hickenlooper, George D. Aiken, &linton Anderson and / I I I "Picketing! Demonstrations! Government Meddling! I Don't Know What This Country Is Coming To" ^ Q ON rr * 4 K ~ I 1