l4e 3fidiigan Dait
Eighty years of editorial freedom
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
why then this restlessness?
The speech that Agnew never gave
by t ari gannes
*!
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 nofed in all reprints.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1970
NIGHT EDITOR: ROBERT KRAFTOWITZ
The UAW and workers
(EDITOR'S NOTE: The transcript
of this speech was found by Wash-
ington, D.C. sanitation workers.
Whether or not it will be delivered
remains to be seen.)
"AS EVERYONE KNOWS by
now, the White House will
establish a new presidential com-
mission this week to investigate
the proliferation of presidential
commissions in the past few
years.
"According to the most care-
fully researched statistics, there
are over 200 presidential commis-
sions, costing upwards of $100
million per year, which are slow-
ly but surely disecting all the de-
viances from the American way
in an effort to root out incon-
sistency from our lives. President
Nixon alone, h a s commissioned
more than 40 of these prestigious
groups during- his short but vo-
latile tenure as President and
spokesman for the American Way.
"Lately however, a disturbing
question has been .wracking the
best brains of the White House
staff. Despite the most careful re-
search in selecting members for
presidential commissions, recent
facts indicate that a disturbingly
subversive element has infiltrated
the cores of the latest commission
reports.
"GONE ARE THE reassuring
days of the likes of the Warren
Commission, which, in the face of
mounting uncertainity, officially
dispelled any doubts concerning
the assassination of President
Kennedy. Those were t h e days,
when the Administration's state-
ments were accepted at face val-
ue. However, recently completed
research by the President's staff
indicates that subversives may
have infected reports with fester-
ing wounds as early as 1968 when
the Kerner Commission Report, in
contradiction to everything any
grade school child knows about
America, condemned our society
as racist.
"Following the well-known pat-
tern of subversive agitation, once
an entry is made into the red-
blooded bloodstream of the Amer-
ican body politics, the cancer be-
comes increasingly difficult to
suppress. Short of drastic, incis-
ive measures, which can cut out
the rotten apples and insure that
the American pie remains sweet
and pure, death to freedom and
liberty, as we know it, could soon
follow.
"By the time the reliable ele-
ments within the administration
could regroup their forces, a num-
ber of presidential commission re-
ports had already slipped past the
surgeons scalpal: In the past few
months, presidential commissions
have advocated nothing less than
the dismantling of the finely wov-
en social fabric which shields our
people from the winds of terror.
These crimson-hearted subver-
sives, gaining respectability under
the wings of presidential commis-
sions have called for the legaliza-
tion of marijuana drug, and porn-
ographic filth, condemned our
men in b 1 u e and criticized the
outsppken speeches of the very
leaders of our nation.
"FORTUNATELY for our peo-
ple, America's most important
leaders - our Presidents - have
successfully seen through t h e
subversive's ruse. Lyndon Baines
Johnson and Richard Milhous
Nixon managed to pull the red-
hot coals out of the fire at the
last minute. And to this date, first
Johnson and now Nixon have eith-
er ignored or repudiated e v e r y
suspicious recommendation o f
these tainted commissions.
"Nonetheless, our Presidents'
valiant action represents only a
partial setback to the disease. Un-
less their initative is maintained,
we could lose our grasp from the
edge of the well we have so des-
perately tried to pull out from.
"IT IS WITH THIS introduc-
tion, gentlemen, that I am proud
to present tonight's guest . . .
Ogden Baden may not be w e 11
known to some of you, but let me
reassure you of his character with
a brief description of his back-
ground.
"Born in the heartland of our
nation, Ogden Baden is thorough-
ly versed in the lingo of commis-
sion reports. In addition, he has
built an impressive record of ex-
posing the tainted elements in our
nation's institutions. As early as
high school, Ogden cracked rings
of students and teachers, who
were systematically destroying the
moral of the school by criticizing
the educational principles which
have produced the greatest men
of our time.
"Later at a large Midwestern
university, Ogden ruthlessly ex-
i7'
K
4 t
posed a gang of freaks who had
infiltrated the cheering squad
and nearly overthrew the finely
honed discipline of his school's
football team.
"It was only natural, in 1954,
that Ogden took a leading role in
rolling back the evil spirits from
the very brink of what would have
meant the end of freedom on the
face of the earth.
"PRESIDENT NIXON has not
forgotten Ogden Baden's brilliant
contributions to the safety of our
society. ! And it was with this
knowledge that the President has
appointed Ogden Baden as chair-
man of the President's Commis-
sion to Investigate Presidential
Commissions.
"Gentlemen, may I present you
Mr. Baden.
Ralph's Market:
The end has come
THE UAW STRIKE has provided a
cause for, a few so-called radicals
who apparently view the walk-off as
a blow against capitalism or some sort
of revolutionary action. These people
certainly have a right to support the
UAW, but to think of it as a progres-
sive force in society is to not think at
all.
The most common complaint among
workers, according to people who have
worked in auto factories, is the nerve-
wracking monotony of performing a
repetitious ta s k at breakneck' speed
for eight or more hours a day. Along
with this general complaint go specif-
ics which vary from factory to factory
and include items s u c h as stiffling
heat, and faulty equipment and tools.
Because of t h e horrendous working
conditions, many workers look u p o n
their jobs as a virtual hell to which
- they ave been condemned for a third
of each day.
AND YET, the UAW does not demand
any improvement in the conditions
under which its members labor, but
instead demands higher wages, as if
enough money w i11 compensate for
working year after year at a job and
hating every minute of it.
No one will deny that workers are
much better off with the UAW than
they would be without it. In fact, it is
because of the UAW that autoworkers
enjoy a financially lucrative niche.
among the ranks of labor. However,
the case still remains that the UAW
at present is not doing all it could do
in terms of making positive changes in
society as relates to the automobile '-i
dustry.
The UAW is in an ideal position to
force the auto manufacturers to take,
positive action toward producing a pol-
lution-free engine. By demanding that'
such engines be developed and put in-
to production immediately, the auto-
workers would be benefitting society as
well as themselves. And a pollution-
free automobile immediately is not an
impossibility. C o n s u m e r advocates
have shown that both Ford and GM
could h a v e developed practical elec-
tric cars by 1970 if they had continued
research Which was in progress in 1967.
Another area where the UAW could
pressure the automakers is in the saf-
ety and durability of cars. Although
the automakers have reluctantly insti-
tuted various changes in the last few
years to make cars safer, there is still
a long way to go. Producing more dur-
able cars would mean designing them
so a 10 mph collision does not produce
$500 worth of damage.
THE UAW COULD also demand that
any increased costs to the company
of a union settlement be taken out of
company profits instead of being pass-
ed on to the consumer.
There are many progressive direc-,
tions which a large, powerful union
like the UAW could take. However, they
choose to avoid sensitive areas, with
the resulting situation of a large,
greedy union facing a large g r e e d y
corporation, and whoever loses the
fight deserves everything they get.
-LINDSAY CHANEY
By DANIEL ZWERDLING
Daily Magazine Editor
WE ALL WEEP a bit for Ralph's market, once open
seven days a week until midnight but now closed
forever. Ralph sold the only fresh bagels and lox in town
on Sundays. His milk undercut supermarket milk, on cold
October weekends he stacked highpriced apple cider
jugs on the front stoop, and for a picnic in the Arb on
Sunday everyone went to Ralph's for cheese, usually dry
and outrageously expensive, and a reasonably priced big
loaf of pumpernickel or rye.
For emergency boxes of cereal, eggs, a bag of rice or a
can of Mexican tamales, Ralph's couldn't be beat for
convenience and seeing your next-door neighbor. "We
did have high prices," says Ralph Bolhouse, the owner,
"it was the convenience and the service."
Why should one of Ann Arbor's most successful in-
stitutions (at Packard and State since 1958), a miniature
food kingdom which held every student south of Hill St.
in the palm of its hand, close its doors and sell out? The
way Ralph tells it, the hazards of the profession brought
him down: three major cash register thefts in just three
months since the spring, $15,000 in "merchandise shrink-
age" (shoplifting) during the past year alone. Radicals
got to him, too: after Ralph turned a black shoplifter
over to police, the Argus called him a racist, and some
"types of people who seemed like they might be White
Panthers," although he's not at all sure they were
Panthers, told Ralph they were going to "get him."
THAT'S NOT THE WHOLE reason Ralph went out
of business. The City and County Environmental Health
Department shut him down. When Ralph applied in
May for the annual grocery health inspection license,
health department inspectors told him the store was so
far below code that he couldn't open without making
major renovations.
Inspectors feared that all of his refrigeration equip-
ment, the meat counter, the dairy shelves, the frozen
food compartments, were all either so old or so dirty or
so hard to clean that they couldn't maintain proper
temperatures. One grocery store owner who has looked
at Ralph's says "he has five freezer units which aren't
worth a damn." Ralph's walls, floor and ceiling all vio-
lated health codes. Inspectors say the wood floors attract
filth, and the peeling walls and ceiling pose potential
sanitatioin hazards to fresh vegetables and meat lying
exposed on the counters.
THIS YEAR ISN'T the first time the health depart-
ment has found Ralph's below code. "He's had problems
who's interested that before buying the store they should
make changes in the floor, cover it with tile or linoleum.
That's the only terribly immediate thing. The long-range
projects are covering the walls and the ceiling."
No big equipment problem, Ralph says. "We 'had a
meat counter that didn't maintain the temperature as
well as it should"-intuition told you, looking at the
crusty meats-"so we had some adjustments made. Then
the doors of the meat counter were inoperable, so we
just got a whole new one," Ralph says. "All the other
equipment works fine."
UNLESS YOU KNOW the food business inside out
and inspect the place upside down, it's hard to find out
exactly what's wrong with. Ralph's, or any other food
store. Public health officials, whose job is to protect the
public, keep their inspection files hidden from the public.
They won't show them unless the owner of the establish-
ment gives his permission.
That means if you're buying a grocery, and the
owner'isn't anxious to tell you all the standing violations
(he has no such obligation'under law), the health depart-
ment won't tell you otherwise. So you buy the place,
apply for a operating license, and only then find out the
store will take another $20,000 before health officials will
let you open it. "That does happen from time to time,"
says health inspector Johnson.
The same goes for restaurants. Some restaurants in
Ann Arbor have such wretched sanitary conditions, says
Johnson, that the city must inspect them at least 10
times each year to doublecheck old violations and-to issue
new ones. But the public that buys the food will never
find out. The files aren't closed by law, only by the de-
partment's fiefdom policy. Johnson insists anyway that
all files are for the public record. "If a court issues a
subpoena, we will turn over the files. That's where the
public can view them."
THAT'S WHAT LIES BEHIND all the visits to
Ralph's, and now our nostalgia: his late hours, interesting
food stocks, shriveled tomatoes, high prices, and'below
code shabby walls and floor and ceiling and refrigeration
equipment. Ralph has been asking about $32,000 for the
store, and says another $5,000 should put it in fine shape.
One prospective buyer estimates the renovation costs
are closer to $20,000; total expenses for the grocery will
run "at least $50,000," he says.
One group looking at Ralph wants to turn it into
a groovy market with stereo rock and weird posters.
Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware.
every year since he's opened," Barry Johnson of the
Environmental Health Department told me. "The major
.problems (such as refrigeration equipment) have devel-
oped only the past one and a half years. Some problems
Ralph would fix; some things Ralph just didn't pay any
attention to. Now the building has gotten to the point
where he refuses - well, maybe I shouldn't say
refuses-where Ralph just doesn't want to correct cer-
tain items."
If you're thinking about buying the market, Ralph
will tell you it's in pretty good shape. "I've told everyone
0p
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Are Chicanos second-class students?
To the Editor:-
BEING FULLY AWARE of the
problems with which the Univer-
sity has encumbered itself for
the last century, I propose that a
further stumbling block not be
added to those which already exist.
This stumbling block occurred
during the registration procedures
last week when I and five (5)
other Chicanos went through the
lines in the gymnasium. The sta-
tion which sorts out students
who are "foreign" and U.S. citi-
zens made a grave assault on the
Chicano in the U.S. when those
people who were manning station
8 insisted that we be funneled into
station 8, i.e. the international
student station. We are cognizant
of the fact that we comprise only
2 percent of the total U.S. popu-
lation, that we are only 11 per
cent of the Southwestern U.S.
population, but how much longer
are we to tolerate the second-
class role of the hyphenated and
sity of Michigan at Ann Ar-
bor. I thought that only the
Southwest U.S. felt that I was a
forei'gner, but,it seems that my
assumption was incorrect.
I am bitterly disappointed to
find that Chicanos keep on being
"baggage" this far from the racist
Southwest. My people were h e r e
long before the Anglo-Saxon
hordes started descending on the
truly "free" America and will con-
tinue to live here regardless of any
encroachments made on the Chi-
cano in the future.
-Ruben G. Zamorano
Sept 9
Training academy
To the Editor:
EVEN IN THESE DAYS when
the hue and cry is for law and
order it is incomprehensible that
the County Board of Commission-
ers should, in a number of ways,
erties and no black men have been
appointed.
Funding for the academy will
come largely from Federal "Safe
Streets" money which resulted
from the Kerner Report and the
Presidential Commission on
Crime. These and other high lev-
el reports stress the need for dras-
tic redirection of police training
and techniques. There can be no
injection of new ideas or values
by the Advisory Board as appoint-
ed.
MEANWHILE, two commission-
ers have dismissed, out of hand,
consideration of a set of demands
from Blacks United f o r Liberty
and Justice (BULJ). Some of
these demands may not be so rea-
sonable but others deserve o u r
gravest consideration. The ques-
tion of the rules that should gov-
ern the use of deadly force against
citizens, for example, is being ser-
iously debated in the highest law
enforcement circles of our land.
Such questions cannot. be shruga-
by Bill barnes headlined "Drastic
changes are needed to save
America" is rather delusory. Prof.
Ackley's only mention is: "( . .
'the well-behaved do advance, even
if the genuises do not' - a senti-
ment which Gardner Ackley seems
to share wholeheartedly).'' There
is no further reference to Ackley,
nor any justification to Barnes'
contention.
Also, in Eric Siegel's c o l u m n
"On this and that" of the same
issue, he erroneously states that
Elroy Face won 18 games in 1960
and the three Pirate losses in that
season's Series were 16-3, 12-0,
and 16-0. Face was 18-1 in 1959
and won far less games in Pitts-
burgh's pennant year, while the
latter shutout to Whitey Ford was
10-0, six runs less thanSiegel had
attributed to the Yankees.
-Ira E. Hoffman "73
Sept.12
(last fall semester I was out hav-
ing a baby) I am not permitted
to use the library. Not enough that
I was enrolled last winter and will
be this fall; not enough that
studying for prelims requires the
facilities of the library which my
fees help to support. The library,
Dean Hays' office, and President
Fleming's office all say'that if
they break a rule for one they will
have to break it for all.
I submit that this is definitely
one of the times when a rule
should be broken. To deny a grad-
uate student the use of the library
at a critical time in her studies
is a breach of common sense and
fairness.
I would hope that the people
responsible for making such in-
flexible standards will reconsider
when the next student in my pre-
dicament comes along.
-Jo Shuchat, Grad
4
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