Thi M~JL. 5fte Sfrl$9an DaiIg Eighty-Five Years of Editorial Freedom Edited and managed by students at the University of Michigan Friday, September 12, 1975 News Phone: 764-0552 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mi. 48104 The rich get richer . 0 MK.. 1L. X55.. APWf3VAL. NriAV/WfM' c. NEI \ -niei - D"htbli~mrs REP- NE~' )\ lR AINf MthHY FRI~fJDj APF13VAL~ PRESIDENT Ford registered anoth- er triumph in his continuing bat- tle with Congress Wednesday when the Senate failed to override his veto of a six-month extension to the Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act (EPAA). Unfortunately, the Sen- ate vote was no victory for the Amer- ican consumer who will suffer the inflationary and recessionary reper- cussions of this flex of economic and political muscle by the American oil industry. The expiration of the EPAA will permit the immediate decontrol of the price of "old" domestic oil (pro- duced before December 1972-ap- proximately 60 per cent of total United States consumption), sending the price of a barrel of oil from its present controlled price of $5.25 to the current world price of $13.25, an amount set arbitrarily by the Organ- ization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). President Ford justifies this seemingly exorbitant price rise by claiming that decontrol will provide capital incentive for do- mestic oil companies to explore and drill in the U.S., thereby lessening American dependence on foreign oil. The President also feels that his decontrol program, by prohibiting the Congress from exercising any authority over oil prices, will allow "free market forces" to determine the real price of the commod- ity. This, of course, is inconsistent 'Put simply, the relaxation of oil price controls means that the rich will get strong- er, and the poor will become weaker. The hope of any economic recovery in the near future will be shattered to the detriment of all Amer. icans, except, of course, those who own substanta interests in the oil industry.' with Ford's overall economic philoso- phy which stresses the virtues of un- restricted free enterprise and scorns the excessive economic Intervention of past administrations. Unrestricted 'free enterprise' TN HIS oil policy, Mr. Ford displays first, his remarkable ability to safeguard the economic well-being of the American oil industry; second, a rather naive view of the structure of the petroleum business in this coun- try; and third, his blatant Insensitiv- ity to the needs of the American con- sumer, especially those of the middle and lower income brackets. The con- tention that the existing profit mar- gins of Shell, Exxon, Ashland, etc. are not sufficient to stimulate ade- quate production is dubious to say the least. The major oil companies have been enjoying a period of unprece- dented high profits in the past few years and yet domestic oil produc- tion has steadily decreased. Conse- quently, none can guarantee that still higher profits will promote the industry to seek and find more oil in the United States. Ford's celebrated return to the free market in oil is economically unreal- istic simply because the oligopolistic structure of the industry (i.e., a small number of firms controlling the market) has destroyed any trace of economic competition in the pric- ing of oil. The elimination of all gov- ernment controls on petroleum will give the major companies license to ma ninulate prices at will. The American economy will be suscentible riot only to the political nower plays of foreign oil magnates. but also to the insatiable financial huneer of domestic oil cornorations, who have nroved in the past to have e minimaim of public gonsciousness in the marketnlace. The price of the ration's most integral nroduct will he dictated by a vroun of peonle mo- tivated solely by personal acquisitive- A boost for Big Oil THE SHOCKING effects of higher oil p r I c e s will reverberate throughout the entire American economy. The Library of Congress' Research Service has estimated that the cost of gasoline at the pump could rise between 15-20 cents per gallon. The overall cost of living could increase 2 per cent, if not more. Six hundred thousand work- ers could be added to the already huge unemployment rolls. These disasterous effects of decontrol will be felt most quickly and most severe- ly by working Americans whose lives have already been damaged by the nation's poor economic health and the Ford administration's Ill-conceiv- ed economic policies. Some will be forced out of work, and those who re- tain their jobs will spend a large proportion of their paychecks on the Put simply, the relaxation of oil price controls means that the rich will get richer and stronger, and the poor will become poorer and weaker. The hope of any economic recovery in the near future will be shattered to the detriment of all Americans; except, of course, those who own substantial interests in the oil indus- try. As President Ford's decontrol pro- gram is implemented, the seven or eight major oil companies will con- tinue to tighten their grip on the in- dustry itself and to concentrate and increase their power within the American economy. Though many people in Washington are consider- ing proposals to ease the shock of immediate decontrol through grad- ual implementation or taxing the "windfall profits" of the companies, most have conceded a complete polit- ical victory to President Ford and Big Oil, a victory that insures their unchallengeable control over oil policy. The effort of many concerned members of Congress to limit the power of the oil corporations via price controls has proved fruitless. However, this does not mean that the country should submit passively to the whims of the major oil com- panies. If anything, the present situ- ation calls for a major national evaluation of an industry whose un- restrained actions affect the day-to- day lives of almost every American. 'rJIS SHOULD con be confined to stop-gap measures such as price controls, but should reach to a com- prehensive examination of the pre- sent nature of the industry and pos- sible policies for future limitation of its enormous political and economic power. Snitting the pie Such an evaluation has been un- dertaken by Sen. Birch Bayh (D- Ind.), whose conclusions represent a dynamic-although for the pres- ent utopic - alternative to the pres- ent system of oil exploration, produc- tion, distribution, and retailing. Bayh contends that the root evil of the oil dilemma is the degree of "verti- cal integration" that marks the structure of the oil industry. (Verti- cal integration being the complete control, from the time when the oil is yet to be discovered to the mo- ment when, as gasoline, it is pump- ed into an automobile, that the com- nanles hold over every facet of the process). Legislation has been introduced to attack this vertical integration by limiting oil companies to participa- tion in only one aspect of the oil business: either exploration, drilling, refining, or one of the others. This would serve to disperse economic clout among hundreds of firms with- in the oil industry, making it more competitive an dthus less capable of exercising dictatorial control over the price of oil. Realistically, Sen. Bayh's propos- als have little possibility of evenI serious consideration by the 94th1 Congress, much less passage or im- plementation by the existing execu- tive branch. Nevertheless, they do indicate an innovative mode of 41n.--441.1^+s~t~c~ 'n nnn 4, - + ;H5. RA ( Vt- tP~fxU u L A~S ornflat ' :..HalSyndi rr r aiiwwa. wr R w r Surveillance law still on By PETER DALE SCOTT BERKELEY, Cal., Sept. 8 (PNS) - An obscure law that made possible major govern- ment scandals including mas- sive Army spying at the 1968 and 1972 Democratic conven- tions and the secret White House slush fund of Richard Nixon, is still on the books. It's called PL 90-331. Passed as an emergencyreso- lution within hours of the death of Robert F. Kennedy on June 6, 1968, PL 90-331 immediately authorized the Secret Service to protect all presidential candi- dates and paid for security ar- rangements at the Kennedy fu- neral. But the real kicker was that it empowered the Secret Service to command. the resources of other departments and agencies of the federal government in the performance of these duties. In theory, PL 90-331 put much of the federal apparatus at the beck and call of a relatively tiny government agency. As a result, the following hap- pened: * A domestic war room in the Pentagon, set up on the heels of the Martin Luther King assas- sination in April 1968, became fully operational two days after PL 90-331 was passed. Then known as the Directorate for Civil Defense Disturbance and Operations, today the war room is called the Directorate of Mil- itary Support. PL 90-331 also vastly expand- ed the swapping of intelligence information between the Army and the Secret Service under the Civil Disturbance Informa- tion Collection Plan. In fact, this exchange had been going on informally ever since the Warren Commission recom- mended it in the wake of the "In 1972, Secret Ser- vice agents assigned to protect Govern George provided Mc- re- ports on the involve- ment of alleged com- munist sympathizers in McGovern 's cam- paign to presidential advisor John Dean." !ooks exhaust fan - "in order to pro- vide additional security." As time went on, additionalre- quests for items ranging from den windows to. ornamental brass lanterns came directly from the President's personal representatives and were duly ratified by the Secret Service under PL 90-331. Since PL 90-331 was passed, two waves of sensational reve- lations have hit the public 'con- cerning government violations of citizens' rights. First the Ar- my spying scandal in 1970, and then Watergate. Yet Congress has failed to take any action on the law that made much of this possible. The two Senate committees which spearheaded congression- al investigations into both scan- days, the Ervin Committee on Army Surveillance Operations, and the Select Committee on Watergate, failed to call wit- nesses from the Scret Service. And neither of the two commit- tee reports made reference to PL 90-331 itself. As a result, PL 90-331 remains in force. In theory, its deliber- ately vague language could still be used by an unscrupulous ex- ecutive to marshal the resources of federal agencies in domestic surveillance and security opera- tions. Last time it was the Ar- my. Next time it could be the Post Office. Peter Dale Scott is a pro- fessor of English at the Uni- versity of California and au- thor of many books on covert politics. Copyrigbt Pacific News Service, 1975. McGovern Dean John F. Kennedy assassination. The Plan itself had been set up in May 1968, following King's murder, and in anticipation of violent anti-war demonstrations at the Democratic Convention that August. " Under orders from the War RoomdDirectorate, plain-clothes Army agents moved in en masse on the 1968 Democratic Conven- tion in Chicago, infiltrating the MrcCa rth yi t e and anti-war forces, mingling with delegates on the convention floor, report- edly intercepting telephone mes- sages from McCarthy's cam- paign headquarters. As Secret Service spokesman John W. Warner explained to members of the press after the Army spying scandals broke in 1970, the Secret Service had borrowed the military agents to furnish protection under PL 90- 331. 0 In 1972, Secret Service agents assigned under PL 90-331 to pro- tect presidential c a n d i d a t e George McGovern provided re- ports on the involvement of al- leged communist sympathizers in McGovern's campaign to White House presidential advis- er John Dean. Dean later told Senate Watergate Committee members that he passed the in- formation to Charles Colson, who then tried to have it pub- lished. 9 From 1969 to 1974, the Nixon Administration, largely through Secret Service requests, tripled the size of the White House staff by drawing on the personnel, and budgets, of other agencies. Total cost of the expanded staff, according to one Office of Management and Budget (OMB) official: $100 million yearly. But the fact is that nobody really knew. Because of PL 90-331, the costs of the staff were hidden in the budgets of a wide array of federal agencies and did not ap- pear in the White House budget itself. In 1974, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, three House committees reported how PL 90- 331 had been used as a justifi- cation for the $17gmillion spent by the federal government on Richard Nixon's properties at San Clemente and Key Bis- cayne. The General Services Administration had assisted the Secret Service by supplying such equipment as a fireplace Letters to The Dailv muscle To The Daily: The following letter was sent to Leonard Woodcock, President of UAW-International, after ob- serving proceedings of the last three membership meetings of the UAW Local 2001 (University of Michigan Clericals Union): We expected that the Univer- sity of Michigan would offer us as sparse and poor a package as they possibly could. It would be in their interests, of course, to do so. We expected that our Bargain- ing Committee would make mis- takes, and not come up to our greatest expectations. They are, after all, new at this sort of thing. We did not expect that the UAW would sell out to the Uni- versity of Michigan in the inter- est of gaining an agency shop. We understand the need for an agency shop, but we are also aware that since it costs the University nothing to have one, it need not have been the prime moving force in the negotiations of the contract. After all, that's what the whole gig is about - the cost to the University of Michigan. SOMEWHERE ALONG the line, the UAW seems to have lost sight of its essential goals and become top-heavy, and for- gotten that they are the human beings they represent, and these human beings have to live with the contracts they negotiate, and hence should have a say in their own destinies. Idealistic, per- haps, but if we hadn't felt that way, the union would never have been brought to the Uni- versity. You didn't tell us when we were fighting to bring the union onto campus, that anyone who did not agree with the Bargain- ing Committee or Carolyn For- est (the absolute despot the in- ternationalappointed to "guide" us), would either not be recog- nized at membership meetings or would have the power in the microphones cut so they could not be heard. This is not exact- ly democracy in action. Already your people have started writing by-laws for us. There has never been a commit- tee elected by the membership to write the by-laws, but "the International knows best." ALREADY, THE Bargaining Committee has chosen offices they plan to run for, and the salaries they expect to gain. All :. The Lighter Side i Prep class of '75: Taking the low roadj ^'.ram°.c4.i .;iYmF.4Dick W est d By DICK WEST WASHINGTON UPI - All that recent muttering about the younger generation going to the bow-wows apparently was wasted breath. Statistics now at hand credit today's high school students with an academic attainment that scholar for centuries have striven for in vain. Today's students have managed to improve their grades while at the same time absorbing less knowledge. According to the College Entrance Examination Board, last spring'shigh school graduates who took college entrance exams scored 10 points lower in verbal skills and 8 points lower in math than the class of '74. It was the 12th straight annual decline and the biggest single drop on record. TO THE UNTRAINED eye, this report might seem to corrobo- rate suspicions that the modern adolescent mind is not the sharply honed mental instrument it was when you and I were young, Mag- gie. But sit tight for another statistical jolt. According to other figures, those selfsame seniors who did so poorly on their "collegeboards" graduated with higher high school grade averages than the 1974 graduates. Like the lower college entrance test scores, the higher grade averages followed a recent trend. Thus high school education ap- pears to have established a definite pattern of better grades with less learning. If that suggests that instructional standards are slipping in public schools, perish the thought. Any of the teachers now on srike will tell you what a grand job they are doing. IT MEANS, RATHER, if we old grads but admit it, that to- day's students are more intelligent than we were. I'll be frank to say I was never smart enough to improve my grades while lowering my informational input. To the contrary, the less I learned in class the more likely my report card to drop below the Plimsoll line. Hoping to find out more about this heartening new develop- ment, I called in an official of the National Education Associa- tion -d akd how i+ tnme to rtass- "Evnmnle is mtill irnortant in the learning process, and to- dnv's hih srhool kids are consumers as well as students," the offiriesl-rooind. c "T'lsee nrafit4 inrreasP while the aility of the merchan- di'e d-terirates. Thev see Prices beine raised as the size of the nnckaL, esrinks They see service decline as service costs esca- Woodcock .*.".,v,:.::{9.. .* . *"S..*.*.*.*.,...*...... . s ***4.,* . . . . . . . . . .."}:";{%: ,.; ::? i" .: ........... }:;:;:;::}.....". . Contact your reps- Sen. Phillip Hart (Dem), Rm 253, Old Senate Bldg., Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C. 20515. Sen. Robert Griffin (Rep), Rm 353, Old Senate Bldg., Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C. 20515. Al 1). .. . r----n,. w.- anitn that needs to be done is to write the salaries into the by-laws that have been written for us, but, without benefit of an elected committee. But, "the Interna- tional knows best." We could have lived with a poor package. We cauld have accepted our Bargaining Committee's mis- takes and recognized that they made an effort. But, we cannot live with a union that does not care enough about its membership to allow them to dissent nor to be heard should they choose to disagree. Meanwhile, the clericals at the University walk a tightrope -on the one hand is an admin- istration that basks in the vic- tory of an economic triumph gained through the negotiations; on the other, a union that has -:aninari vitnr inthn tev.