t sie Mir$rni Dati Eighty-one years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich. News Phone: 764-05521 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.