r Eighty-Seven Years of Editorial Freedom 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Snowbound in New Mexico Wednesday, February 2, 1977 News Phone: 764-0552 Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan Congressional conscience could curtail cash cabals, SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE Tip O'- meribers were timid almost to the Neilland some other representa- point of silence. Why? Wild later said tives with integrity have turned their he had given money to every mem- eyes to the grave problem of Con- ber of the committee but chairman gressional accountability. With the Sam Ervin. subcommittee on financial account- This is how deep and insidious ability's recommendation of a strong the danger is. The new plan to com- new ethics code, Congress has moved bat it seems barely enough. Accord- to thwart the poison that eats at ing to. Fred Wertheimer, vice-presi- its own insides, dent of Common Cause, "This is a tough package that does the job. It's The situation is paradoxical, of for real. It's comprehensive. It deals course; the proposed bill will be op- with the major problem areas, the posed by many representatives who hidden underground." We hope ,so. benefit from undisclosed private in- But the bill will soon hit the House come, some of it shady. But it is floor, where diluting amendments such income, taken without ethical may steal its potency. considerations, which threatens to And there are problems. Congress- strip Congress of the power and pres- man Morris Udall (D-Ariz.) said that tige its members seek so hungrily. the bill, by limiting honorarium fees Representatives and senators must for speeches but ignoring representa- realize that most of the nation is tives' stock holdings, favors rich rep- either laughing or shitting in their resentatives and puts the screws to direction. The republic is based upon the poor ones. Though the bill pro- some measure of faith in the repre- vides for diclosure of stock holdings, sentative system, and the utter con- it can do nothing to cut them back: tempt with which most citizens re- Without such a curb, 'corporate fi- gard office-holders is about to ruin nance is fairly certain to keep a whatever faith there is left. hand on the strings of congressional influence. NEAR THE END of the Senate Wa- N tergate hearings in 1973, Claude O THE HOUSE DEMOCRATS who Wild, Jr., Gulf Oil's chief lobbyist, have created the bill, we say: good came before the committee. A man job, but make it better. To the Sen- intimately familiar with the role of ate, we urge the same course. It corporate money in government sat should have been taken earlier, but before them, and the committee it must be taken now. D t DiXon's derogatory dig demands direct dismissal By JEFFREY SELBST First of two parts CLAUDIA AND I pulled into Amarillo, Texas, at about 4:00 in the afternoon. We were just passing through, and my first impression was that it wasn't much of a town. My second impression merely con- firmed the first. We were doing our best to avoid the much-dreaded impending blizard. Everyone saw it coming, and had warned us in dire tones. This was the second day of our driving trip - a headlong dash to California. The first night had been spent outside of Kansas City with my brother. He'd had his fun, smirking about the 70 degree weather that had preceded us by about a week and a half. But since we left Michigan, skies had been clear, and we were getting cocky. Our plans that day were to get to Alburquerque by nightfall. Not an unreasonable expectation, consid- ering the miles and all. Amarillo to us was one of those mile-marking towns. It was a sold, breezy afternoon, but skies were calm. EVERYTHING went fine for about, ten miles; we were buzing along, listening to the tapes we had recorded before the trip, whentsuddenly - very sud- denly - the snow started to fall. And fall. And fall. I was getting a litle panicked, but Claudia was taking it all rather well. She was sleeping. But the Macks and the semis were blowing us off the road. Also they kicked snow up onto the windshield and made dit difficult to see. After two hours of this, I was ready to null over and wait it'out. But then the skies cleared again, and the snow was gone. This was the Texas I always wanted to see - sagebrush! Doggies! Tacky litle towns with weather beaten porches - Auntie M doing her knitting outside. That was Texas,.I / SHADES OF EARL BUTZ! At a 'recent appearance before an industry group, Federal Trade Com- missioner Paul Dixon called consum- er advocate Ralph Nader "a son of a bitch and a dirty Arab." I That he called Nader a "son of a bitch" is not important. It shows only that he is a childish inarticu- late, and possesses a noticeable tem- per. But Dixon's remark about Na- der's ethnic background is inexcus- able. The last President allowed his ag- (J47t 4 Editorial Staff Co-Editors-in-Chief ANN MARIE LIPINSKI..............JIM TOBIN KEN PARSIGIAN .............Editorial Director Managing Editors JAY LEVIN, GEORGE LOBSENZ, MIKE NORTON, MARGARET YAO LOIS JOSIMOVICH........... Art Editor Magazine Editors SUSAN ADES..............ELAINE FLETCHER Photography Staff, PAULINE LUBENS ..........Chief Photographer ALAN BILINSKY ................. Picture Editor BRAD BENJAMIN.......... Staff Photographer ANDY FREEBERG..........Staff Photographer CHRISTINA SCHNEIDER .... Staff Photographer Sports Staff Bill Stieg . ............... ....... Sports Editor Rich Lerner ...Executive Sports Editor Andy Glazer........... Managing Sports Editor Rick Bonino.Associate Sports Editor NIGHT EDITORS: Tom Cameron, Enid Goldman, Kathy Henneghan, Scott Lewis, Rick Maddock, Bob Miller, John Niemeyer, Mark Whitney. STAFF WRITERS: Leslie Brown, Tom Cameron, Ernie Dunbar, Henry Engelhardt, Rob Evan, Jeff Frank, Cindy Gatziolis, Enid Goldman, Mike Halpin, Kathy Henneghan, Geoff Larcom, Scott Lewis, Don MacLachlan, Rick Maddock, Brian Martin, Bob Miller, Brian Miller, Billy Neff, John Niemeyer, Eric Olson, Dan Perrin, Dave Renbarger, Pat Rode, Cub Schwartz, Errol Shifman, Tom Shine, Jamie Turner, Mark Whitney, Greg Zott. Business Staff Deborah Dreyfuss . ........... Business Manager Kathleen Mulhern ... Assistant Adv. Coordinator David Harlan ...............Finance iManager Don Simpson ..................Sales Manager Pete Peterson ..........,Advertising Coordinator Cassle St. Clair ............Circulation Manager Beth Stratiord............Circulation Director riculture secretary to slur the blacks, and his head of the joint chiefs of staff to slander the Jews, now it ap- pears that Jimmy Carter - the man who promised to be a new type of leader - is willing to let this same type of bigotry go unpunished. Carter called for the ouster ofdbothj Earl Butz and' Gen. Brown when he was just a candidate for the presi- dency, so why hasn't he taken thej appropriate actions now that he oc- cupies the' Oval Office? The answer is that our new Presi- dent, like so,,many other Americans, is either indifferent or hostile to- ward Arabs. Because of this country's stand on the Mid-east situation, Arabs havej gotten a bad name. The Jews arej an oppressed people and not to be slandered, the'blacks are an oppres- sed people and not to be slurred, yet the Arabs are the bad guys so some- how it's alright if they are the butt of some derogatory remark. What kind of perversion of logic is that? Racism is racism regardless of the ethnic group involved, and Dixon's remark is unpardonable. Presently, we are seeking a peaceful solution to the Mid-east situation, yet how can we expect the Arab nations to believe that our motives are moral and honest when we allow such bla- tant bigotry in our federal govern- ment to go unpunished? That a man like Dixon is permit- ted to slander Ralph Nader - a cru- sader for the right of all people - and remain in office is an indica- tion of nothing less than a total insensitivity to the Arab people on the part of the present adIpinistra- tion. It is Jimmy Carter's duty to dismiss Dixon as swiftly as possible, and it Is the duty of the American people to recognize racism for the ugly monster that it is, no matter which race is involved, BUT NOT FOR long. We stopped to gas up in a little town ca'led Tucumcari. N.M., at a quaintlittle truck s op. The proprietor looked about 110. I pulled up to the pumn - now, granted it was a bitter cold evening, but he didn't make a move. So I got out of the car. went into the station, and asked him to fill up the car. Relucantly he followed me outside. When he was finished, he came up to the window with a windshield rag. "Clean your headlights, sir?" he quavered. I blinked. "What?" But he was already gone. I must say, he polished them to gleaming glory. I still couldn't see out the windshield. Strange na- tive customs. Unfortunatelv, it had bepn'n to snow again rather gent- ly. Not so you'd notice. We started to drive; Claudia was at the wheel. I PUT THE tape recorder on. Which promptly died. So we put the car radio on. A fairly good idea, be- case i+ would have weather reports. only we couldn't find any. Besides, we didn't need any. Slowly every vestige of navebent disanneared beneath the car, to be replaced by a solid sheet of snow and ice. We debated the wis- dom of ,j"st pulling over at the next exit and finding a no'el. But we though+ that the snow might disappear again, as after Amarillo, but we were fooled. A sign by the road: "Elevation: 9,441 feet." It was clearly getting treacherous now, but there were no side exits with gas sta'ions. We couldn't even get off to turn around. Well, I thought grimly, this is a blizzard. CLAUDIA SAID brightly, "At least it'll be worse at home." (It was - this was the second week of January.) In the meantime, the snow wasn't letting up. We progressed along at 25 or 30 miles per hour for some time, and then it happened. The road had two steep drops on either side, a semi came jackknifing up beside us, we' lost the road- "DOWNSHIFT!" I hollered from the back seat. Claudia jammed her foot on the break as she did so-- and that was it - across the road, back, across again, down - now near the brink, across the highway - out of control- We came to a shuddering halt in a snowbank. Claudia froze. The car was stalled and the radio was off. Very quiet. We sat watching the snowflakes go through the black. "People can't freeze to death .in a car, can they?" she asked. I shrugged. "I don't see why not."p SOMEHOW I coaxed the car back to life. I took over the wheel, and vowed to turn off at the next gas station I saw. It was about three minutes to eight. There was an exit sign pointing. to a virtually non- existent town of Mulagro, where there was a gas sta- tion/souvenir shop/snack bar. We pulled off, as Claudia said, "At least to get coffee." When we entered the coffee shop, giggling madly, I noticed a number of people milling about. Pface does a hell of a business, I whispered. We got coffee, and asked the proprietress how far to the next motel. "Moriarity," she said. "44 miles." "44 MORE MILES of this?" I couldn't believe it. "Oh, don't worry," one man said. "You couldn't do it if you wanted to. State's closed off the highway in front of us altogether. That's when I noticed that several had unrolled sleep- ing bags on the floor. A world around. Another denim-dressed man came through the door behind me. "Road's just been closed back Texas way," he announced as he stomped his snow-covered feet. Snowbound in Milagro, New Mexico. What a treat. WE SETTLED in, brought blankets and pillows from the car - I got a very bad novel that I had been wanting to start, Claudia got her knitting - and we sat on the floor. There was a family on its way to Los Angeles next to us. The lady was sitting glumly, smoking cigaretfe after cigarette, while her three blonde children were sitting peacefully on the floor. This had been their first driving trip out to see family in Pennsylvania over Christmas. How long had she been here, I asked. Since five-thirty.- A blonde bearded college-type youth was sitting near- by. From Hammond, Indiana, he was on his way to the University of Arizona at Tempe. A two-day drive; spent the night before in a town outside Oklahoma City; very amusing, he said, the town hadn't even yet hit the 60's - drive-in res'aurant girls on roller skates - Since 3 p.m. Almost wiped his car out, too. Same stretch of road. The souvenir shop's walls were lined with schlock goodies. Fake Aztec style scissors, engraved plaques with the "sayings that Middle America loves best" on them, cribbage boards, shot glasses with wooden trays, Bible covers with pictures of Christ on them. I just wanted to scream. AN AESTHETE from Long Beach, Calif. spoke up. "Isn't this too much?" he said. "Snowbound? Truck stop? Niew Mexico, It's Inge. That's what! Bus stop!" "How true," said the lady from L.A. "And I'm Marilyn Monroe." There was a phone booth about a hundred yards outside the door, so to relieve some of the boredom, I tried to call home. No one was home. Claudia called home, and found out that the New Mexico weather was on the news. I called a friend in Ann Arbor. The 11 o'clock news was on and Stephen told me that San Francisco - our ultimate destina'ion - had just been hit by earth- quakes. ) "Calm down, you sound hysterical," he counseled. "I'M ON TOP of a mountain in New Mexico with no place to go but down, the snow is drifting to four feet everywhere, it's cold, and I may be in this truck stop for the next two weeks. DO YOU EXPECT ME TO BE RATIONAL?" We did get out, of course. Around midnight, the roads were pronounced hazardous but passable, and we took off for Albuquerque. At 30 miles per hour, we made it at about 3 o'clock. We stopped at a Howard Johnson's. As Claudia sat waiting in the dining room for our lumpen pancakes to arrive, I went to talk to the motel desk clerk - a rude, pimply young man who had more maps than brains. "DO YOU MEAN you want to leave here?" he asked in response to my queries. "Well," I said pleasantly, "I'm going to." Pause. "How long until the road through Flagstaff is clear?" "Oh, you couldn't even think about leaving until four p.m. tomorrow," he said, "but Flagstaff won't be clear for days. If it's chilly here," (a safe assumption, I conceded), "then it'll be colder than snot in Flag- staff!" he laughed uproariously. Noting my failure, t1 smile, he said, pityingly, "You're from back East, aren't you?" The snow was piling higher. NEXT: EATEN BY CANNABALISTIC MEXICAN BANDITS. PERSPECTIVTE By W. L. SCHELLER "THE PARTICIPATING STATES will respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion. Within this framework the participating states will recognize and respect the freedom of the individual to profess and practice alone or in community with others, religion or be- lief acting in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience." - Helsinki Aug. 1, 1975 These tw paragraphs are taken from the human rights section of the "Helsinki agree- ment." This summer a conference will be held in Belgrade, Yugoslavia to review and evalu- ate progress made since that agreement was signed in 1975. Currently purges and repres- sion are taking place in East Germany, the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia against peo- ple in those countries who believe the docu- ment their leaders signed. East Germany has been waging a cam- paign against those who are now seeking emi- gration to the west. East Germans have be- come increasingly dissatisfied with their cap- tivity behind the Berlin wall. One of their'most recent ploys was to station police outside the West German diplomatic mission in 'East Ber- lin. There they checked the identity cards of all who wanted to enter the building. East Germans were told that they were not allowed to enter and sent away. THE SOVIET UNION continues to wage it's campaign against dissidents within Rus- sia. On Tuesday, January twenty-fifth Andre Sakharov was given a stern warning by the Soviet authorities. Sakharov, noted physicist and father of the Russian hydrogen bomb, had implicated the KGB, the Russian secret police, in the bombing of a Moscow subway. The au- thorities have been trying to blame the bomb- ings on dissidents. According to Amnesty In- ternational at least 90 dissidentsdhave been con- victed since the Helsinki accord. By far the greatest current purge going on in eastern Europe is in Czechoslovakia. A few weeks ago a petition for human rights, titled "Charter 77," was .signed by several prominent Czechs and published in the west. Almost im- mediately a campaign against the signers went into affect. One man Pavel Kohout, whose play ."Poor Murderer" recently completed a run on broadway, was arrested and his apartment searcheq in the presence of a reporter for "The New York Times." Kohout's wife had been drag- ged into a police car and taen away that morning. Current rumor has it that Czecho- slovakia may begin expelling some of it's diTsi- dents, These actions are hardly in keeping with ... the freedom of the individual to profess ... in accordance with the dictates of his own con- science." It is difficult to imagine any more blatent violations of that agreement than what is taking place in these three countries. This is but a brief sketch of what has been going on recently behind the iron curtain. One of the most important questions placed be- fore the Carter Administration is that dealing with the direction of our foreign policy. Car- ter has issued two statements on the subject of these purges, but as yet there have been no constructive results. The people of eastern Europe must not be forgotten in our foreign policy, nor should we jeopardize all that we've worked for in detente. In my next two col- umns I hope to look a bit deeper into what is transpiring there and what course United States policy toward eastern Europe should take. CarterpadnDobedsrmntn i oBy CAROLE QUATTRO privileged usually submitted only to. oth'er inj ustice against the people he TIMMY CARTER claims to be a man of the people, and it would be re- freshing if this proved true. That is why the president's recent amnesty proposal is such a dissappointment. During the campaign, Carter prom- ised a blanket amnesty "for those who violated the - Selective Service laws." Under this plan, those who failed to register, submit for induc- tion, or fled the country to avoid the draft would be granted complete am- nesty. Men who deserted the armed forces after enlistment or induction, however, would not be treated so gently. Desertion cases, said Carter, "should be handled on an individual basis in accordance with our nation's system of military justice." In essence, deserters would not be given a fair chance at receiving a pardon at all, since it is unlikely the military would be understanding or lenient in the matter. WHAT MAKES THE 'evader' and 'deserter' distinction even more un- discover their abhorrance to the war later. The difference here is merely timing - both evaders and desert- ers were protesting a war now con- sidered an atrocity. Because the evaders were more aware and better equipped into re- sisting the draft whereas the poor did not have' the access, the presi- dent is allowing them to return.1 HE IS IN FACT perpetrating an- claims to represent. By the pardon, Carter is saying that the day has arrived to admit our mistakes of the Vietnam con- flict. Yet, why doesn't he make the am- nesty complete; why not end this bleak reminder now, instead of al- lowing just one more injustice to drag on as a consequence of that war? Letters should be typed and limited to 400 words. The Daily reserves the right to edit letters for length and grammar. .9 Editorial positions represent a consensus of The Daily Editorial staff. l 11 -_...r. ..... ..- . .4 Contact your reps k *°