t
sie Mir$rni Dati
Eighty-one years of editorial freedom
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Editorials printed in The Michigan Daily express the individual opinions of staff writers
ur the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 25, 1972
NIGHT EDITOR: A LAN LENHOFF
Nixon's national priorities
"N PRESIDENT NIXON announced
his $246 billion budget for the coming
fiscal year yesterday, he may have dis-
durbed some of his conservative support-
ers who are upset with deficit spending,
Nixon's apparent approval of some far-
reaching social welfare legislation, and
his year-old call for a "new American
revolution."
But if what they really fear is change,
they needn't worry.
There is no provision in Nixon's bud-
get for any fundamental challenge to
the major problems of American society
or through redirection of priorities. In-
stead, the President pressed the need for
Congressional action on three gradually
stagnating proposals; revenue sharing,
departmental reorganization, and welfare
reform.
None of these programs, however, con-
stitute a sufficient commitment to com-
batting the distressing social ills that
plague the nation's cities and rural areas.
They are tactical redistributions of exist-
ing programs, government functions that
do not evidence an acknowledgement of
the real breadth of change needed.
REVENUE SHARING, put simply, would
allocate to the states funds that pre-
viously were spent by the federal gov-
ernment. Besides the nebulous degree of
new "power to the people" the plan would
generate, it would also effectively re-
move much control of the funds from
Washington.
The restructuring plan, shuffling
around cabinet level departments, could
possibly make the federal administration
more efficient, but in itself represents no
thrust at solving festering social prob-
lems.
The minimum family income plan, re-
placing the national welfare system, is a
truly progressive idea. But the adminis-
tration, with its proposed $2,400 base in-
come, remains unwilling to commit the
funds that could make the minimum
family income a realistic means of pro-
viding a decent existence for millions of
families.
An acceptance of the magnitude of
the cities' problems and the need for na-
tional health care, and an alternative to
the welfare system would require a mas-
sive turnaround in federal spending pri-
orities and a significant boost in corpor-
ate taxes.
' The Nixon administration has inno-
vated in one respect though. Nixon has
combined the largest spending deficit
since 1945 with the highest level of un-
employment since 1967. His economic ad-
visers overestimated the prospects for the
current year and tax credits for business
reduced tax revenues.
THE BASIC TONE of federal expendi-
tures goes unchanged in the proposed
budget. Yesterday, the President pointed
proudly to a larger allocation to Health
Education and Welfare than Defense for
the first time ever. This, however, is a re-
sult of a projected social security increase
and a rising number of recipients, rather
than a coordinated drive for real health,
education and welfare.
The defense budget is slated for ,an in-
crease, despite the "winding down" of
the war, with millions slated for high
speed nuclear attack submarines, and up
to a billion dollars for a nuclear aircraft
carrier.
Military aid is only statistically down
$200 million, as it appears in the new
budget, since it is more than made up for
with hikes in economic assistance to gov-
ernments that will use it to release their
own funds for military hardware pro-
grams.
Environmental programs would receive
a moderate boost in funding but mostly
in areas such as canal digging, dam build-
ing and environmental observation, like
the Weather Bureau - no major change
in the scanty support for improving the
cities or controlling pesticides, radiation,
solid wastes, noise, and air pollution.
SINCE HIS inauguration in 1969, P.resi-
dent Nixon has flirted with a series
of new press images and governmental
word games. The budget message is Nix-
on. More Nixon. The new Nixon. The old
Nixon. Who cares? Nixon about when "the
new prosperity takes hold." Nixon about
the "move toward termination of Ameri-
can combat involvement in Vietnam."
-ARTHUR LERNER
The Pro
By JONATHAN MILLER
Facts are nothing.
-Robert de Grimston,
A BITTER northerly whipped down State
St. Thursday afternoon sending the dust
of the city smashing into the faces of
winter-weary homeward bound commuters.
The threat of snow hung in the air. The
thermometer was taking a plunge. It might
be a typical January afternoon. But look
closer. There outside Wagner's is Sister
Carmel, scurrying up and down the side-
walk like a beetle, dressed in a crazy
black hooded cape and knee high jack-
boots, a silver cross around her neck,
a bunch of magazines under her arm.
Sister Carmel. Beautiful, darkreyed brown
hair flying over her shoulder, her cape
blowing behind her like a Dragoon's, what
could certainly pass for love in the pupils
of her intensely staring eyes. Wow.
And over there, rapping with a tall blonde
boy outside Follett's is Brother Barnabus.
Across the street talking with a girl is
Brother Jethra. A ways down the blck,
by Discount Records, stands Sister Leah,
talking animatedly at two blacks, who keep
walking. All of them dressed in these zany
black uniforms, darting back and forth
like hard working 'Galens tagmen, stop-
ping, preaching, rapping, cajoling, heisting
a buck seventy-five from a housewife here,
a buck seventy-five from a freshman there.
Fraternity brothers and freaks, madams
and misters, cops and clerics. "We're from
a group called The Process, have you heard
of it?"
Humanity is doomed. If we are a part
of humanity, in sympathy with human-
ity, we are doomed. - Robert de Grim-
ston.
* * *
At the barber shop in Nickel's arcade a
man was telling how he didn't like it at
all. "I'm not having them kookies out-
side my store" he said, "there ought to
be a law against it. First its the Com-
munists and now its them damn satan-
ists."
"The way I see, there's nothing you can
do," says another man, "but I'm glad
they're not scaring my customers away."
Man, make no mistake. The world is
not your footstool but your grave . . .
the lie is upon you, around you and
within you, and unconsciously y o u
grovel in the blindness of its all em-
bracing aura. And fear is your master.
-Robert de Grimston.
Crab-like, Sister Leah bobbed over the
sidewalk looking like a black-painted der-
vish. Backwards, forwards, sideways, sidl-
ing up to passersby, catching hold of her
plastic bag of magazines. Sister Leah is
the youngest member of The Process visit-
ing party, 18-years-old, but soon, she says
19. Down from her home in the Rockies
to the life of a travelling saleswoman for
The Process.
"I only joined three months ago and I've
only been a messenger a week," she told
me. "I made it last Saturday and they've
kept me going ever since. It's very inter-
esting how The Process draws you in this
way. I never really intended to get mixed
up in this, I just wanted to see what was
going on. But then I started coming around,
developing a positive attitude, an accept-
cess:
In an age of many kookie cults, Robert (le Grimston's 'Process' pro*
vides a retreat for many young people who've tried everything else.
And with only a mite over 27-years to go before D-for-Doomsday, Pro.
cesseans seem remuarkably cheerful . .
time is running out. In fact, to be specific,
there's only a mite over 27 years to go
before Satan comes, but that's ok because
that's what everyone in The Process has
been waiting for, for after Satan c o m e s
Death, and after death Christ but its really
the death that Processeans find fascinat-
ing.
There is not much time.The distant
rumblings that are heralds of the
End have become a mighty roar clo$-
ing in about us, piercing our eardrums
and causing the very earth to quake
beneath our feet, so that very soon,
even the blindest, the numbest, most
oblivious of us, will no longer be able
to shut out the sound of it. By then
the whole world will be stricken by
the sound of its o w n approaching
doom. Every man will gaze with horror'
at his fellow man, and see his own
fear reflected back to him.
-Robert de Grimston.
Brother Jethra is the O.P. of the gang.
An O.P., in Process parlance, is an "out-
ther Barnabus was talkative but not very
informative, especially about himself.
On the street he is a fervent preacher,
stopping and talking with passerbys for
what seems like hours. It was he who
marched into the office of the campus
newspaper demanding to see the editor.
"We want you to do a story about us,"
he said.
If it hadn't been for the ab:upt arrival
of four members of The Process Church
Of The Final Judgement here last. week,
Ann Arborites might have contented them-
selves with the comforting thought that,
in reality, The Process was no more than
the fevered fantasy of a frustrated Kilgore
Trout.
But if The Process is a dream, its an
extremely vivid one which doesn't go away
when you open your eyes, and the memory
of the four wierd clericks in their long
black capes will not easily fade, for the
memory of The Process is a haunting one.
"Am I being persecuted by Proces-
seans? A couple of years ago I'd never
heard of The Process or Processeans.
I
Waiting for
The
End
Replied Broher Barnabus, simply, "their
positivity and negativity."
"But Ann Arbor's a very positive town,"
interjected Sister Carmel.
I asked her to explain further.
"Well, its not negative," she said.
Very elusive.
But of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, thou shalt nt eat of it:
for in the day that thou eatest thereof
'thou shalt surely die, - Genesis 2:17
** * *
Process, n., & v.t. 1. Progress, course,
esp. in - of construction etc., being
constructed etc., in - of time, as time
on; course of action, proceeding, esp.
method of operation in manufacture,
printing, photography, etc.; naturalor
involuntary operation, SERIES OF
CHANGES.
-The Concise Oxford Dictionary.
GETTING IT ON at The Process got to
be the common practice for the.kids at the
American School in London in the Spring
and the Summer of 1969. Down into the
basement of the tall masonic house on Bal-
four Place, around the corner from the
U.S. Embassy, into the ' red plush dingy
lit hole for five shilling peanut butter sand-
wiches and cokes and seven shilling packs
of Sobranie Black Russian. British kids
didn't have that kind of money. Then across
Park Lane into' the park and break up
tha chunk of hash and get stoed before
getting on the number 13 bus and going
home to daddy diplomats flat in St. John's
Wood.
Down the white staircase past the pic-
teres of the Alsatian dogs at XTUL and the
pictures of Robert de Grimston and a book-
stand selling As It Is and The Ultimate Sin
by Robert de Grimston and the payphone,
(probably tapped) and The Process sym-
bols everywhere, sort of cross-like, a hybrid
swastika and iron cross.
That's before the kids parents got wind
of what was going on. Maybe it was the
FBI men from the Embassy or the CIA
men from the London office off Covent
Garden that first relayed word of what was
happening in the basement at Balfour
Place to the anxious diplomatic and mili-
tary families of the expatriate American
community in London. Or maybe it wa an
enterprising reporter with the Sunday Ex-
press.
IN ANY EVENT, The Process became
the target of a merciless campaign by the
more sensationalistic elements of the Brit-
ish Press. Headlines screamed a b o u t
"brainwashing" and "kidnaping" and for a
time it looked as if The Process, 1Ii k e
Scientology, could become the subject of
an official government ban,.
It never came to that, however. Process
leaders seemed to get the message from
the press - get out or we'll throw you
out - and the threats did not seem idle;
lots of Processeans held U.S. passports;
The Process cleared out by the end of
1970. Even XTUL, pronounced "sehtool
the Mexican outpostkof The Process that
$
4
+R
Robert de Grimston
side Processean." That means he does not
live in the Chapter House like the others.
But he is no less dedicated. Black-haired,
mustachioed, goateed, Brother Jethra, 23-
years-old, joined the Process two years ago.
"The Process is the constant reaching out-
wards for a goal," he says. "As we get
to, as we achieve one goal, we see ano-
PESC: Deservng improvement
LAST WEEK'S decision to allow the Pro-
gram for Educational and Social
Change (PESO) to continue its open au-
diting policy could be taken to indicate
that the University has finally recog-
niSed a commitment to the community
which surrounds it and supports its pro-
grams.
But more likely, however, literary col-
lege Dean Frank Rhodes and Vice Presi-
dent for Academic Affairs Allan Smith
realize that participation in PESC classes
--despite PESC's good intentions - is
by and large limited to University stu-
dents who have tired of the dull, unin-
spired fare often passed off as education.
Community members have not flocked in
great numbers to reap the benefits of a
liberal university's attempts at reform;
they should not, in fact, have been ex-
pected to do so.
It should be pointed out though, that
PESOC is working to make its courses more
attractive to those outside the University.
Certain already existing courses-like
John Sinclair's on prisons and Hank Bry-
ant's and Charlie Thomas' "community
course" have surmounted the barriers of
traditional educational approaches as
well as time conflicts. These two courses,
and a. growing number of other PESC
classes meet after working hours. Still,
the threat that the University faces an
inundation of outsiders is certainly a
small one.
MViEANWHILE, officials have announced
that they plan to investigate the
credits to be granted through PESC, pre-
sumably because PESC credits may prove
Editorial Staff
to be less satisfactory than credits grant-
ed through conventionally styled courses.
It is this latter pronouncement which
should arouse concern through the Uni-
versity community. Merely allowing a
small group of outsiders to sit in on Uni-
versity classes will not significantly
change the University's admissions and
fees structures, and the University knows
this. But, granting students' credit for
performing non - traditional academic
tasks does pose a threat-a threat to old
fashioned concepts of education.
Thus it is important that PESC and
concerned members of the community
do not view the University's decision to
allow open auditing as any sort of con-
cession. And, at the same time, those
who care about real educational change
must continue to work to render PESC
credits as meaningful and acceptable as
any other credits granted here.
-ROSE SUE BERSTEIN
academic f reedom
ALL THOSE who value the principle of
free speech - especially in the uni-
versity setting - should be disheartened
by the recent turn of events at Stan-
ford University. There, by a vote of its
board of trustees, Stanford dismissed
a faculty member because of his political
beliefs.
English instructor H. Bruce Franklin
was tenured and was the subject of no
complaints about his academic duties.
His only fault, it seems, is that he often
strongly voiced his objection on political
matters and was a Communist.
Bruce had "fomented" violence on
Stanford's campus last winter, the facul-
tv and trustees agreed. But Bruce not
"Often Fear crashes into the consciousness of a being. The
being fells him, knows him, and runs again even further into
ignorance and the lie. And the being shuts its eyes and shuts
its mind and hides its stricken head. And Fear passes once
more into the back of its mind and continues his work in a
sphere where he can operate without disturbance, and drive
the being slowly but inexorably, and quite unconsciously
toward its doom." -Robert de Grimston.
Now, wherever I go, there you are;
Rome, Paris, London, Berlin and New
York. As well as Munich, Manchester,
Boston and Brussles. I'm haunted daily
by black cloaked figures preaching the
unity of Christ and Satan, and nightly
by the same black cloaked brethren
broadcasting the end of the world. Am I
slowly losing my sanity, or are you
really there? And if you are really
there, where were you two years ago
in all your millions? My next stop is
Tokyo, and I wonder, will you be there
too - please?"
-A reader's letter in On Death.
Processeans would say that's because
people are scared of them. That's the rea,
son the press picks on them, especially the
English press. That's the reason people
avoid them, and cross over to the other
side of the street, and stammer. "I'm sor-
ry, I have no money," before they'd even
been asked for any.
"People find us threatening," Brother
Barnabus tells me. "And ' that's because
the truth is threatening. Anything that's
dynamic and packs a punch people will
find threatening in certain ways. We're
helping people to find out things they don't
want to find out."
Man is the servant of fear, whom he
worships with greater reverence than
any GOD. - Robert de Grimston.
"What," I asked, "exactly do you tell
people about themselves that they don't
want to find out, that they find so threaten-
ing?"
4~
ance of what I was. My parents thought
I was a witch."
"As
Sister
forth
you give, so
Carmel as
down State
shall you receive," says
she hurries back and
St. "Do you want to
help," she asks, turning aside and confront-
ing a ruddy-faced speech prof. It takes only
a minute to sell him on the idea that
he wanted a copy of "On Death," T h e
Process magazine. Carnel stuffed his two
bills into her black purse, returned a quar-
ter, and scuttled up the sidewalk once more.
Its hard work being a minister of The Pro-
cess Church Of The Final Judgement, and
ther one, so we're always in The Process
of going from one to another." Turning to
a potential customer Brother Jethra waves
his stack of magazines and says. "b u y
one, its the best magazine in the whole
world."
Civilization: (See Suffocation.)
-The Process Dictionary of Dying.
Brother Barnabus, 29-years-old, is leader
of the pack. A Process "Prophet," one step
higher up the hierachy than the minister
status of Sister Carmel and two higher
than the simple messenger classification
of Sister Carmel and Brother Jethra, Bro-
had been the target of newspaper stories
claiming the kidnaping to there of a daugh-
ter of a high ranking government official,
was abandoned amidst the paranoia. There
was an exodus of Processeans to America.
IN AMERICA there was always the first
amendment. And besides, America has
kookie religions aplenty - no one would
ever notice another one. And it wasn't that
what The Process was up to was really
all that mcch worse than the ;goings on in
The Church of England. It was that, well,
The Process was somehow scary - too dif-
ferent for the British -- and somehow ir-
reverent. People who talk about not one
but four Gods are treated suspiciously in A
country with an established church.