ig £rihian aikj Eighty-one years of editorial freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan ClrCLs maXimuS Behind the closed doors of a Regents reeting by lndisay hcNaey 420 Maynard St,.Ann Arbor, Mich. 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. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1971 NIGHT EDITOR: ROBERT SCHREINER Funding college governments STUDENTS VOTED last month to assess- themselves 50 cents per term to fund their respective school and college governments. At the same time, a proposal to in- crease the campus-wide Student Govern- ment Council funding from 25 cents per term to 85 cents per term was narrowly defeated. It thus appears that while stu- dents here do not believe SGC' deserves additional funding to expand its services they do want their several smaller gov- ernments to be able to function. Yet before, the money voted upon can be distributed' to the various govern- ments, Vice President for Academic Af- fairs Allan Smith must approve the re'f- erendum and bring the item to the Re- gents. Smith has discussed the funding matter with the other Executive Officers and the various school and college deans and has met with favorable response, but ,he indicated budgetary problems might hinder its implementation. Since the approved funding amounts to one dollar per year, Smith said it is un- likely the Regents will increase tuition. by that amount. And since administrators have reacted favorably to the proposal, it is not likely that the Regents will vote it down, despite the present tight budget situation. The 13 school and college governments now operating .have been notorious for their lack of energy and effectiveness. Much of their problem, however, stems from acute financfal distress, which would be alleviated by institution of the funding plan. HIIIREE OF the - University's smaller schools-- Architecture & Design (907 students), Natural Resources (819 stu- dents), and Pharmacy (409 students) - have no student. government whatever, leaving over 2,000 students without a student academic governing unit. If fund- ing were available to these units, then they, too, could arrange a student gov- ernment.., It is certainly not possible in any case that these smaller governing bodies would attain the comprehensiveness that could be expected of a larger group, but they could at least attain a stature similar to that of departmental, associations which, now, exist in larger colleges and schools, allying students of similar academic interests. The units which currently have no fi- Sports Staff MORT NOVECK, Sports Editor TERRI POUCHEY .......Contributing Sports Editor BETSY MAHON .. ........Senior Night Editor TERRI FOUCHEY. Contributing Sports Editor SPORTS NIGHT EDITORS: Bill Alterman, Bob An- drews, Sandi Genis, Joel Greer, Elliot Legow, John Papanek, Randy Phillips, Al Shackelford. nancial problems also welcome implemen- tation of the funding proposal because it would enable them to reallocate their present funds. For example, the Law School's student government has a budget of $18,000, half of which derives from pinball machine revenue, and half from a $10 per student fee payable each term. Some of the term fee intake finances pro- grams other than the student govern- ment; this portion, presumably, would be retained, but certainly the set fee could be lowered. Business Administration and Engineer- ing school student governments both re- ceive allocations from their deans; these allocations could be eliminated with the' advent of student funding. MOST OF THE University's schools and colleges have existing student gov- ernments but these units are not finan- cially stable, and depend on meager al- lotments from their deans and executive committees. The programs envisioned by the various student governments - newsletters, sur- veys, course evaluations, complaint serv- ices - do not lend themselves well to ad- ministration funding. It is highly improb- able that the administration of any Uni- versity unit should .want to fund an or- ganization which might work against it. Thus, while the school and college gov- ernments are not primarily political or- ganizations, but rather student service groups with an academic focus, it is in the best interests of both students and administrators that these groups be in- dependently funded by their constitu- encies. And in a broad sense, when students have voted to tax themselves so as to increase the effectiveness of their own governing units, it is hardly reasonable not to comply with this vote. The various schools and colleges stand to benefit, since the allocations now earmarked for student government may be appropriated elsewhere. Further, the University community as a whole stands to benefit from the pres- ence of more effective academic govern- ments. EACH OF the, various units have cer- tain plans for spending their 50 cent allotments. Not all of these ideas are ex- emplary, to be sure, but the need for in- creased funding - preferably from stu- dents - is a very real one. The literery college student government, for example, has no telephone because it "cannot af- ford one. And this situation is in the larg- est college within the University. Thus neither the lackluster perform- ances of some student academic govern- ments nor the comfortable financial po- sitions of some others should be a barrier to implementing the school and college government funding proposal. --ROSE SUE BERSTEIN EVERY MONTH the Regents come to Ann Arbor for two days of meetings- some open to the public and some not. Naturally, the real decisions are made at the closed meetings which are usually held on Thursday evenings in the formidable Inglis House - maintained especially to service those august personages. As a public service to further the con- tinued quest for knowledge, this n e w s- paper now presents a partial transcript of proceedings at the last closed meeting - btained from a "reliable source" in the FBI sense of the word. * * * VOICE A: Our next item to consider is an offer to endow an academic chair./ VOICE B: How much are they giving? VOICE A: Exactly $800,000. VOICE C: I move to accept the gift. VOICE A: Don't you want to know who's giving the money? VOICE C: If it's that much it doesn't make any difference. VOICE D: We've never had an endow- ment like that. I second the motion. VOICE E: Well, Just for formality's sake, who's giving it to us? VOICE A: The donor is the Teamsters Civil Rights League, and they would like to call the chair the Joseph Columbo Professor of Income Tax Analysis. (Ten seconds of silence.) VOICE E: Well, I, ah. . . without mean- ing to slander anyone, this seems a bit unusual. VOICE B: There occurs to me some doubts concerning the source of this en- dowment VOICE C: I don't see that it matters where the money comes from as long as it comes. VOICE E: I'd say in this case there is a considerable possibility that the money we would be accepting was ill-gotten. VOICE C: Why are you so suspicious? We never questioned 'donors before. VOICE B: Our previous donors have all been honest, upright businessmen. VOICE C: I'm sure these donors are busi- nessmen, too. VOICE E: But these donors got their money by exploiting labor, exploiting cus- tomers, selling inferior products at inflated prices, and engaging in cutthroat compe- tition. VOICE C: You might be right, That cer- tainly sounds dishonest. VOICE D: But can we turn down the money just because the donor is a crook? VOICE C: Isn't that discrimination of some sort? VOICE E. I'd say that morally we have to turn it down. VOICE C: Maybe we could get them to change the name of the chair. VOICE B. Now that's an idea. A better name would make them honest. VOICE E: Now why didn't we think of this before? VOICE D: We sure are smart. -Daily=Jim Judkis Inglis House: Closed doors Prosperity: A round the corner? TWO MAJOR events in the last six years have severely shaken the American economy and have led to the current economic crisis. The first great destabilizing fact- or was the decision by the John- son administration to try to hide the cost of the war in Vietnam from the American people. To do this, Johnson -did n o t raise taxes nor did he borrow the money by selling government bonds. Instead, by increasing the supply of money in the economy (only the government can counter- feit legally), inflation was gen- erat'ed between 1965 and 1969. In- flation, through deterioriating pur- chasing power, imposed an invol- untary and unratified tax on the people to pay for the war. Through 1969, the amount of this reduction in the actual earn- ings of working people was ap- proximately 130 to 140 billion dol- lars. Interestingly enough, t h i s was about the cost of the war:; more interestingly the effect of the war and inflation on corpor- ate profits has been, if anything positive. One concludes accordingly that the Johnson regime did in- deed succeed in forcing wage and salary earners to provide from their income the goods that have devastated Vietnam. THE RESPONSE to this policy was the second great destabilizing force in our economic life. Around 1967, working people began to raise wage demands in order to get back some of the "inflation tax" of 1965-1967 as well as to hedge against a continuation of that tax. In the earlier period, govern- ment war expenditures, the in- crease in the money supply, and the fall of real wages (that is, what goods and services can be bought with one's take-home pay) relative to productivity because of the inflation tax led to falling un- employment rates. The new de- verted with changes in. selling terms. quality or The objectives of the NEP are to reduce inflation to * 'to 3.per cent per year and to reduce unem- ployment. It is , more than ob- vious, however, that Nixon is con- cerned only with the inflation prob- lem. The expansionary, employ- ment creating provisions .or both Phases are token measures at best: The acceleration of personal income tax exemptions is not only regressive in its impact' givig larger tax reductions :n higher ir.- come categories), but negligible in magnitude. I Daily-Tom Gottlieb Demonstrators protest 'Nixonomics' in Detroit last September' mands for reasonable real wages increases relative to productivity meant continued inflation - but when the government began to lev- el off its war and defense spend- ing and the rate of increase of the money supply, growing unemploy- ment resulted. The freeze aims at one thing only: turning back this demand by labor for return of the real wages lost through inflation. That is the freeze is an attempt to re- create once more the social condi- tions of the early war period when labor was docile and accept- ed 3 per cent to 5 per cent wage increases in the face of 4 per cent inflation. SINCE LABOR wouldn't volun- tarily assume the economic burd- en of the war, if the regime can now coerce labor into acceptance of the war cost, then inflation shall no longer be necessary. It must be pointed out that the' poorest members of society will suffer the worst consequences of Nixon's "new prosperity." Non- unionized members of the l a b o 1 force without the benefits of or- ganized political pressure and re- presentatives on the Pay Board will fare even worse than organiz- ed labor. Nixon's proposals for wel- fare reform and for revenue shar- ing, as defective as they might be, were postponed and m a n y states are actually cutting wel- fare payments. Federal govern- ment employment and expendi- tures will be cut, but none of the cut will be in defense and war- related categories. The billions of dollars of tax savings to corpora- tions that will result from t h e investment tax credit could fi- nance job training and job crea- tion for the 5.8 million unem- played. Of course, other solutions are possible. For example, the regime. (hardly this one!) might tax away from the plant owners some five per cent of their wealth and use it to pay an indemnity to working people for the losses suffered through inflation. This would also end inflation. PHASE II of the Nixon prgrami sets up "participatory" commit- tees to develop and administer controls on wages and prices. The complete structure is dominated by big business. For example, the pay board is composed of five rep- resentatives of big business, five of labor, and five (supposedly rep- resenting the public. Ostensibly, the basis of govern- ment is protection of public wel- fare, and the goal of public policy should be to develop programs de- signed to serve the public inter- est. One might question the valid. ity of including five representa-' tives of big business, who after all only represent 0s2 per cent of the population (but own over 65 per cent of all privately held corporate stock,. At the very least the so-ca?. 'd public representatives should be" chosen so as to insure that the majority- of the pay board would renresent the interests' of the other 99.8 per cent of the population. However. Nixon has appointed, as "public" representatives, men such as William G. Caples. Caples has been a general attorney frr the Continental Casualty Compa ny a director of Inland Steel Contain- er Corp. and Vice-President of industrial and public relations for Inland Steel Co. in which posi- tirn he was. in charge of c:ntract bargaining for the company against the United Steel Workers Union. He is currently a member of 'he board of directors of Inland Steel Products, and a member of the American Management Association and the National Association of Manufacturers. UNFORTUNATELY, the' op, ra- tive assumption of the Nixon re- gime is that what's good foi- Gen- eral Motors is good for the coan- try. The first major decision of the pay board was to vote 10-5 agairilt labor, to deny retroactive nay n- creases which had already been contracted before the freeze. It is far from certain that te investment tax credit will signi- ficantly stimulate new investment. Even if it does it will be several montls, perhaps a few years, be- fore the effect is felt. And even if new investment is encouraged the employment-cr at- ing effects of that new investment, are highly questionable. Can NEP stem the tide ; of in- flation?That depends primarily on labor. If they refuse to cooper- ate with the Pay Board and i t s wage increase ceiling, then Phase II is doomed. If ,they agree to pay for the war and mounting de- fense costs without complaining, then inflation may be tempered. However, control of inflation in this manner implies a continua- tion of controls indefinitely; once they are removed, inflation will reappear. Controls and regulatory boards do not change the iStitu- tional and structural contradictions of the American economy shich led to inflation and unemployment. ULTIMATELY. CRITICISM of the internal functioping of Nixon's prcgram is secondary to considera- tion of the role which gov nment 'should play in protecting public interests and of the role it does play in protecting business inter- ests. We can have new economic poli- cies and new game plans ;'or years to come. But none will succeed and all will help the rich at the ex- pense of the poor until we have a policy that sis really new; that is, until those who formulate and im- plement government policy realize that there are vast differences be- tween business interests and the public welfare. Letters: Rackham government needs candidates To The Daily: ELECTIONS for the Rackham Stu- dent' Government are now underway. In order to avoid effectively disen- franchising students whl do not have easy access to campus polling places the current Executive Council has 'decided to condtic't the election by mail. Bal- lots will be maed out during the week of December 6, to all currently enrolled Rackham students. This method makes it possible for a far greater constitu- ency than has ever voted in campus elections to make its feelings known. However, the small number of can- didates who have thus far filed for the election is disappointing.. Eight full- term and two half-term seats on the Executive Council must be filled at this election, as well as the offices of President and Vice-President of the Rackham Assembly. There is, perhaps, good reason for graduate student apa- thy toward student governments in general; our experiences with such gov- ernments here has not been very good. But RSG was created to represent Rackham .students and protect their interests-a function which was not performed by either the now-defunct GA or by SGC. ed by the University in teaching, re- search and staff positions. -The RSG is still evaluating an ad- ministration proposal for a new fee structure for doctoral candidates. This proposal is intended to rectify some of the inequities that exist under the pres- 'ent structure, but as it stands may create new ones. This issue and its resolution will affect you both finan- cially and academically. -All of us have heard about and worried about the increasing tightness of the Ph.D job market. This is a problem that cannot be dealt with by any one university. RSG is planning to sponsor a symposium to which speakers, educators and students from all over the country would be invited, to evailuate this trend and its impli- cations for the structure and very fu- ture of graduate education. WITHOUT ACTIVE support from the graduate student body these and other important projects cannot be carried' through. We need your participation in the election to back up our arguments to the University Administration. We need volunteers to help plan and co- ordinate the symposium. Above all, we need candidates for the current elec- tins. nounnI who are willing tn ogive Sinclair To The Daily;: I READ WITH much dismay (Daily, Dec. 1, 1971) that the editorial page is to be opened on a weekly basis to John Sinclair, chairman of the Rainbow Peo- ple's Party. Sinclair's integrity cannot be impugned, nor his extreme brilliance. Certainly his writings are preferable to those outpourings from the bowels of his vastly inferior, highly frenzied com- rades. What is important, however, is that the ideology of Sinclair's group is strikingly similar to the Nazi ideology. The Rainbow Party identifies itself with and glorifies declassed elements in our society. These are the very people who joined Hitler's S.A. (brown-shirts). Intellectually this grouplet has cre- ated a nightmare eclectic of astrology, pop culture, nationalism carried to its logical insanity, and badly digested Marxism. These "romantic numbskulls of the dark forest" (as Trotsky once labeled the Nazis) are worth taking seriously only to the extent that they must be discredited and possibly eventually smashed. They certainly should not be published on a regular basis in The offer a chorus of orchestra of the forces for which Messiah. 20 to 30 and an same number-the Handel conceived Let us for once have the work with- out the fatty deposits that have ac- crued to it over the years. And if such an event were to occur in Ann Arbor (there has been ample precedent for it elsewhere) I would be the first to shout "Hallelujah!" -Jim Toy, Grad. Nov. 30 Conflict To The Daily: A LITTLE MORE than a month ago the Mayor asked the City Attorney to explore the possibility of a court chal- lenge to certain University of Michi- gan property tax exemptions. This seems reasonable, since the University offers housing, food and drink, book- store, etc. in competition with local businesses which do pay property tax. However, it seems to place the Mayor and two councilmen who are also em- ployees of the University in a conflict of interest position. Should persons who hold an office, While strict wage controls will be easy to implement with high wage visibility and employer co- This article was written by a operation, price controls will be group at Michigan State University much harder to police. There wJl including members of the Union be direct government price uper- for Radical Political Economics vision only for a smel number 4o the (largest) corporations, a n d New University Conference and price controls can be easily sub- International Socialists. $EMIP7'U