wtgtal
Eighty-Seven Years of Editorial Freedom
420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, M1 48109
Wednesday, January 19, 1977 News Phone: 764-0552
Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan
Sorensen's withdrawal: Sad
The corporate
mayors of NYC
THEODORE SORENSEN will not be
the new director of the CIA, and
that is too bad. Through the cloudy
days of the Carter transition, Soren-
sen's nomination shone brightly. Now,
the . light has been extinguished by
hard-line senators who apparently
employed Sorensen's use of classified
Kennedy administration documents
as an excuse to throw his name out
of the ring.
Several members of the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence -
Republicans and Democrats - raised
objections to Sorensen's admission
that he used a big batch of Kenne-
dy documents to write his 1964 book
"Kennedy." A few of those documents
were "classified." This, they say, was
improper.
Some senators also were uneasy
with Sorensen's request, when he was
younger, for placement in noncom-
bative military service.
FINALLY, SORENSEN is a brilli-
ant liberal who is likely to shake
things up at the CIA and run things
there as they have never been run
before.
Sorensen pulled out on Monday,{
saying he wanted to save the Car-
ter administration the hassle. In so
doing he showed more class than the
committee, but we wish he had stuck
it out.
Ted Sorensen's head is the kind
the CIA needs. Time after time, we
have called for reorganization of the
intelligence agency with a kind eye
to the independent outsider, the man
or woman who was not constricted
by a lifetime in the dark world of
international intelligence. These sorts
have led only to domestic intelligence
and impenetrable secrecy.
CARTER WAS WISE to nominate
Sorensen, a tested man with the
brains and toughness to find out
what was what in the CIA. Not every
Cabinet level nominee has to be an
expert in his or her field; indeed,
it is sometimes to be hoped that they
be relatively unencumbered with such
expertise. It can make for stubborn-
ness and narrowness of vision. What
the CIA needed was a fair-minded
administrator, not a spy.
What is more, we consider Soren-
sen's pacifist leanings to be entirely
in his favor. He defended himself
Tuesday by saying his "preference
for personal nonviolence to inhibit
in any way my advice to the Presi-
dent on the military and otherk op-
tions.. ." That is good enough for
us. Sorensen's abhorrence of violence
makes his position only stronger.
Perhaps he acted somewhat too
freely with the Kennedy documents.
But it should be pointed out that he
used them, not to conceal the truth,
but to write a book.
Now Carter must choose someone
else. We hope he picks someone with
everything Ted Sorensen had. We be-
lieve the Senate should be deeply in-
volved in matters such as this, but
this committee made a sad mistake.
Gun control needed, now
By GREGORY STAPLE
First of two parts
PUBLIC DISCUSSIONS of the fiscal crisis of New
York City often assume that the interests of the
city as a legal entity are coincident with the needs of
working people who constitute a majority of the city's
residents. This confusion can be traced in part to a
failure to recognize that what is popularly known as
New York City is really a changing array of govern-
mental corporations. The most important of these quasi-
Ipublic corporations (apart from the municipal corpora-
tion that is New York City) are, the Municipal Assist-
ance Corporation for the City of New York-M.A.C., the
Emergency Financial Control Board-E.F.C.B., the New
York City Stabilization Reserve Corporation-S.R.C.,
the Metropolitan Transportation Authority-M.T.A., and
the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Rec-
ognition of this reality means that political activists
shouldnalso consider challenging the austeritya thatis
being enforced by these corporations with tactics nor-
mally used by porporate lawyers in protecting stock-
holders who have been defrauded or who have watched
helplessly as their corporation's assets were wasted by
the officers or directors of the corporation.
Quite apart from the legal merits of this approach to
thinking about the fiscal problems of New York City,
it provides a fruitful way to distinguish tre "residual"
political interests of the city's residents in self govern-
ment and municipal services from the "preferred"
legal interests of the city's creditors and private coun-
sel in maintaining the liquidity of the quasi-public
corporations involved. Separating these interests is the
first step in avoiding the conservative rhetoric of
austerity. The second step is to identify clearly those
principles that advance the political interests of the
majority 4in order to judge effectively the merits of
proposals to "solve" the city's fiscal problems. Failure
to do this has played a large part in the growing, yet
gratuitous, deference to the city's legal saviors (i.e. the
"resourceful" banker Felix Rohatyn; the "selfless"
trustees of the municipal employee pension funds). The
third step is to determine whether specific legal mech-
anisms exist for allowing citizen ("stockholders") of
New York to hold the corporate directors involved ac-
countable to the principles-that have been identified.
THE REMAINDER of this essay discusses this ques-
tion in the context of the following majoritarian prin-
ciples: (1) democratic allocation of capital for munici-
pal governments, (2) the sovereign power of state gov-'
ernments to protect the health, safety and welfare of
city residents, (3) the fiduciary responsibility of persons
in a position of public trust.
The Moratorium Act of 1975
The decision last November by New York State's
Court of Appeals that the NYC Emergency Moratorium
Act of 1975 violated the state constitution provides a
useful vehicle to approach the basic issues posed above.
The case involved a suit by the Flushing National Bank
of Queens on behalf of itself and all other holders of
Federal governime
hires more India:
By ROBERT McLAUGHLIN
Pacific News Service
THE RISE OF the Indian movement has not been with
feet on the federal government, which has moved ag
to bring members of the new Indian bar into its Interior
tice Departments.
In 1973 Kent Frizzell, then solicitor of the Departme
Interior for Indian Affairs, negotiated and signed the a
ending the Wounded Knee confrontation-a role requiring
visits to the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.
Frizzell "came out of it with a profound conviction
government hadn't been handling Indian matters right
wanted to do something about it," according to Reid C
one of the men who organized the Native American Rig
WHAT HE DID was recruit Chambers and give him a
sion specifically to advocate for the tribes-meaning
often oppose other government agencies like the Bureau
mation and the Bureau of Land Management in decisio
the Interior secretary.
Chambers, who left Interior this fall to return to pri
tice, says he usually found something that called for le
when he visited a res'ervation. "Yesterday wouldn't matte
if it were over," he said. "But the same techniques, the
source robberies that occurred in the nineteenth century
pect to the Indian land base, are occuring today with ri
Indian water rights, for example.
"It's the job of the government as trustee to prot
rights and to see that such things don't happen."
THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT has taken similar st
yers working on a major Indian education case were
when Justice, which was defending the Bureau of Indiar
and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare ag,
tribes, also filed a brief supporting the Indian position.
"Split briefs" like this have now been filed in six case
four that have been decided, the courts have adopted ti
position every time.
ANOTHER SIGNIFICANT development was Attorney
Edward Levi's 1975 creation of a nine-man Indian Resou:
tion within Justice's Land and Natural Resources Divisior
cases brought by the federal government on behalf of the
With a new Attorney General and Interior Secretary i
Carter administration, however, the situation could cha
when the American Indian Policy Review commission sul
final report to Congress this spring, sweeping changes cc
from the legislature.
you are
a University
short term notes affected by the Moratorium Act. The
Act, which was part of a $6.8 billion plan to cover the
city's financial needs until fiscal 1978, suspended re-
payment of principal for three years on $1.6 billion of
city notes maturing between December 11, 1975 and
March 12, 1976. Noteholders were given the option,
however, of "swapping" their securities for ten year
M.A.C. bonds that paid roughly eight per cent interest.
The Court of Appeals agreed with Flushling (revers-
ing both lower courts that considered the) case) and
held that the Moratorium Act permitted the city to
ignore its pledge of full faith and credit ;to punctually
pay the notes when due. Thus, the court was led. to the
conclusion that the spirit and letter of the state consti-
tutional provision barring a city from contracting in-
debtedness without pledging its full faith and credit
for the payment of the debt was violated. By resting
its decision squarely on a construction of New York
State's constitution, the court avoided several federal
constitutional issues that were raised by Flushing. This
means that review by the U.S. Supreme Court is
effectively precluded.
THE LONE DISSENT by Judge Cooke attacked the
majority's decision to intervene in the legislature's
determination. Judge Cooke argued that legislation in
the area of economic regulation is traditionally accord-
ed a strong presumption of constitutionality which can
only be rebutted by a showing that the statute is un-
constitutional beyond a reasonable doubt. Judge Cooke
maintained that the+ majority failed to make such'-a
showing and therefor the court had no business over-
turning the legislature's finding. This is an important
point because the extraordinary sessions of the state
legislature which established M.A.C. and later passed
the Moratorium Act implicitly recognized that munici-
pal corporations should not be left to meet their needs
for capital by competing intthe marketplace like private
corporations.
City officials are also learning that they can not have
the benefits of a corporate existence without being held
accountable to the same principles of financial manage-
ment that private executives must follow. Because of
the adverse impact that running a city like a corpora-
tion has on its residents an increasing number of people
are beginning to see that it is anomalous to require
local governments to compete with G.M., I.T.T. and
Miller's Widgets Inc. to meet the capital needs of their
residents. A moment's reflection should show why this
is so.
The basic services that political entities provide are
qualitatively different from private corporations. And
although private corporations can and do provide mu-
nicipal services (i.e. garbage disposal, transportation,
electricity, etc.) the ability of city residents to control
the provision of most goods produced by private cor-
porations is fundamentally different from their ability
to control the provision of municipal services. While
laissez faire economic theory may maintain that con-
nt I
sumers are sovereign in the marketplace, it does not
hold that consumers themselves have the legal right to
control directly the marketing and investment decisions
of a private corporation. Yet state constitutions and city
charters traditionally provide -that the people them-
selves have the legal right to control precisely these
decisions of their local governments. Thus, to make the
generation of capital for municipal governments depend
on the investment decisions of the private sector is to-
systematically replace popular sovereignty with an
unelected corporate government.
Toward the Democratic Allocation
of Capital for Cities
The alternative is not merely a matter of changing
the legal status of municipal corporations by amending
state constitutions. Even if city governments were not
legally cast in a corporate mold the underlying capital
requirements of urban residents would still exist. Sat-
isfaction of that need requires a change' from a pre-
dominantly public allocation of capital (through politi-
cal institutions). Thus, the Tather arbitrary distinction
tbat presently exists between whether the public or
private sector provides a given service would be re-
placed by a distinction between those needs whose sat-
isfaction society believes should be controlled by politi-
cal decisions and those which should be subject to pri-
vate decisions-regardless of which sector presently
controls resources that meet each n'eed.
OF COURSE, a system for the, democratic allocation
of capital for urban areas is a long way off as anyone
who has followed the fight against "redlining" can
attest. Nevertheless, several measures that ostensibly
seek to preserve the political sovereignty of municipal
governments by helping them meet their capital needs
haverbeen advanced in recent years. They range from
federal guarantees of state and local indebtedness to
urban development banks to the direct purchase of
municipal debt instruments by the Federal 'Reserve
system. At the state level "Big M.A.C." is the best
known vehicle for capital assistance.
One of the central contentions of this essay is that all
of these proposals should be judged by the extent to
which they advance the political sovereignty of urban
residents to control the investments decisions that af-
fect their lives.
By that standard M.A.C. is clearly a failure. At the
federal level one must be particularly careful in apply-
ing this yardstick. The main reason is that any sort of
development bank that is established will probably be
capitalized by private lenders. Thus, the politics of
austerity may simply be removed from the local
level with the resulting cutbacks in social services
being implemented by political entities that are even
less accountable to urban residents.
Tomorrow: The police power of the state.
Gregory Staple, a New York state resident, is a Uni-
versity law student and a member of the National
Lawyers Guild.
AST WEDNESDAY Malcolm Smith
was shot to death by two De-
troit police officers-he was 16 years
old.
Smith was out driving when po-
lice claim they mistook his passen-
ger, Kevin McClung, for a Jackson
State Prison escapee. When the offi-
cers attempted to pull his car over,
Smith, who didn't have his license
with him and was driving a borrowed
car, became scared and tried to evade
the officers. In the ensuing chase, in
which Smith ran into the officers
car, the young Highland Park youth
was shot and, killed.
McClung claims that he jumped
out of the car while it was still mov-
ing, and that after the car stopped,
the officers walked up to the door
and "shot Malcolm in cold blood."
He also charged that the officers used
racial slurs (both Smith and McClung
are black).
THE POLICE tell the story differ-,
ently, saying that they fired a flurry
of shots during the chase in an at-
tempt to stop the car, and that one
of them hit Smith.
We don't know which-account is
accurate, and we won't until the in-
vestigation into the affair is complete.
But either way Malcolm Smith will
still be innocent, and he will still
be dead.
If the police were only trying to
stop the car, why couldn't they fire
at the tires? And if they aren't ac-
curate marksmen then why are they
permitted to roam the streets with
a deadly weapon they can't control?
Last year an Ann Arbor youth, Ricky
Bullock, was killed "accidentally" by
police, and now it happens in De-
troit.
How many innocent people will
have to die before we realize just how
dangerous guns are, no matter who
is wielding them? The time has come
to ban all handguns - both from po-
lice and from private citizens. Eng-
land's police officers aren't allowed to
carry guns, and their crime rate is
lower than ours. Let's put an end to
all accidental shootings before it's too
late. Too bad it's already too late for
Malcolm Smith.
General amn
exercise fo
"011, NO," YOU SAY, "not another warmed-
over exercise in righteous indignation or,
w ;e, demographics-made-easy!" Well, be of
good cheer. I'm of at least six or seven minds
myself about amnesty, and further baffled by
the preponderance of antireason which topples
most of the commentary I've read recently.
When I first encountered the topic, a gen-
eral amnesty was but one element of a longish
list of demands recited by war resisters: a part
of the litany, somewhere near the bottom of the
agenda along with reconstruction aid for Viet-
nam. As the years wore on, the other demands
were accomplished, in most instances without
the cooperation of the U.S. government. Even
the World Bank and International Monetary Fund
finally decided to fork over coin for rebuild-
ing Indochina. So now amnesty is the only re-
maining goal, and it can only be realized by
an American president (since Congress might
drink to it, but not vote for it).
THE CARTER AMNESTY PACKAGE is lum-
py and bland, but I could probably live with it..
What I find especially distressing is the reflex-
ive "compassionate" attitude that amnesty is
some sort of emotional CARE package for those
"poor, misguided, downtrodden, etc." dodgers,
deserters, and less-than-honorably-discharged vet-
erans. Nothing could be further from the truth.
A general amnesty, for them, is simple justice.
But most of the men who consciously resisted
esty a moral
or the U.S.
By Marnie Heyn
the military have, along with their families and
friends, made their own peace with a treacher-
ous, unjust World.
The rest of the country, though, needs to go
through imnesty as a moral exercise: shake
hands, swallow pride, ignore face, go the sec-
ond mile, all that. I do not mean to suggest that
Americans lack compassion. I watched with
something between exaltation and horror as my
fellow citizens cheerfully integrated umpteen
thousands of Vietnamese refugees into their
lives (ignoring the orphan black market and
the noxious propaganda that created many of
those refugees). Open .hearts and open homes
littered the landscape. But, surely, if there is
room here for Marshal Ky and Thieu and all
the rest of those thugs, there is room for mild-
mannered garage mechanics who lead double
lives as pacifists - not to mention jobless vets,
the hungry, the homeless, the disenfranchised,
our own domestic "wretched refuse."
CAUTION: THERE IS a real and important
distinction between renouncing differences and
ignoring the pathology of those differences. There
are still important insights to be gathered about
Vietnam. But perhaps once a general amnesty
has been declared, the learning can be historical
rather than hysterical. For the present, Carter
and Congress seem determined not to fight un-
declared, wars.
Marnie Heyn is a former Editorial Direc-
tor who loves North American . ethnic
cuisine, even beets.
Street name discrimination
A RECENT CENSUS of North Cam-
pus and ,Central Campus street
names has revealed a flagrant ex-
ample of the nastiest kind of dis-
crimination, the kind which acknowl-
edges fine achievements by part of
a group and neglects the rest. Un-
even recognition practices, when ap-
plied to outstanding student athletes,
can lead to alienation, pouting, and
even serious drinking habits. This is
an inequity which must be remedied.
In one small stretch of pavement,
on North Campus, we find Hubbard
TODAY'S STAFF:
NEWS: Susan Ades, George Lobsenz,
Jenny Miller, Mike Norton, Liz Sla-
vik, Pauline Toole, Margaret Yao.
EDIT PAGE: Steve Kursman, Jon Pan-
Photography Stuff
Pauline L.ubens ............Chief Photographer
Brad Benjamin............Staff Photographer
Alan lilInsky ............... Staff Photographer
Scott Eccker.Staff Photographer
Andy reeberg..Staff Photographer
Street, Baxter Street, and Green
Street. Thompson Street nestles close
to the bosom of the Diag. But where
is Robinson Street, or Grote Street,
or Britt Avenue? Come to think of it,
there must be a Jones Street some-
where in this asphalt jungle, and
State could become Staton with very
little emedation. There could even be
a specially-designated Lillard block
of Huron Street. On Cender, On Fer-
tig, On Sims and On Young! Yea bas-
ketball!
sius, Ken Parsigion.
ARTS PAGE: Lois Josimovich, Karen
Paul, Mike Taylor.
PHOTO TECHNICIAN: Chris Schneid-
er.
David Harlan ................ Finance Manager
Don Simpson..........Sales Manager
Pete Peterson .......... Advertising Coordinator
Cassie St. Clair .......... Circulation Manager
Beth Stratford ... Circulation Director
Weather Porecasters
Mark Andrews..................Mike Gifford
Sports Staff
Bill Stieg......................sports Editor
Rich Lerner......... Eecutive Sports Editor
Andy Glazer .... "....... Managing Sports Editor
Rick Bonino. ........Associate Sports Editor
NIGHT EDITORS: Tom Cameron, Enid Goldman,
professor you
must read this
The Daily's Editorial Page has long been
open to students to air their views, and many
students have taken the opportunity to write
articles for us. However, very few professors
have written for the page. I know there are
nlenty of nrofs out there with some valuable
~'Tc) RVA\-17zx. W MA
{ (,LOOMF~1 G R~
I