OPINION
Page 4
Reagan stays
Saturday, April 9, 1983
loyal to
The Michigan Daily
embattled aides
By Helen Thomas
WASHINGTON - President Reagan is
known as a ". loyalist" to his appointees.
He sticks with them until the die is cast and
he can no longer lend his support to a losing
cause. But even then he has yet to admit a
mistake in his appointments. And he often finds
another government sinecure for those who fall
by the wayside.
IN THE CASE of his predecessor, Jimmy Car-
ter, all allegations, right or wrong, seemed to
rub off on his White House. His aides were a
closely knit group. They had made the long
march with him from Georgia and they were a
family.
But then they could be counted on one hand:
chief of staff Hamilton Jordan, press secretary
Jody Powell, and before he was forced to
resign, budget director Bert Lance.
Allegations against Lance for his banking
practices, Billy Carter's personal problems
and Libyan connections, and the troubles of Dr.
Peter Bourne, his drug abuse expert, added to
Carter's woes.
THROUGHOUT his presidency, Carter had
to contend with one shoe falling after another
under the relentless spotlight and publicity at-
tending the allegations.
The bad luck followed him in his close
relationships with family and staffers.
Not so for Reagan, who manages to escape
any taint when the activities of some of his ap-
pointees come into question. And yet many
more of them have had troubles in public ser-
vice.
ALTHOUGH the Reagan White House laid
down the controversial policies for the En-
vironmental Protection Agency - particularly
in terms of dealing with business with a lighter
hand on matters of pollution and toxic wastes
- the president has not been faulted for the
fate that has befallen former EPA Ad-
ministrator Anne Gorsuch Burford, and
several other top-level assistants.
One of them, Rita Lavelle, director of the
forced to resign their positions in the agency
moved over to the Energy Department where
they were given jobs as consultants. One aide
described the department as a "dumping
ground" for EPA staffers who had been eased
out.
Among the several appointees who have been
subjected to public scrutiny are most recently
Thomas Reed, who held the post of assistant for
national security affairs, although he allegedly
profited from inside information on a stock
trade.
AMONG others forced out of the White House
was former national security adviser Richard
Allen for accepting a $1,000 from a Japanese
magazine that had been granted an interview
with Nancy Reagan. Allen was added to the
Foreign Intelligence Advisory panel, and he
has become the foreign policy expert on the
Republican National Committee.
Publicity has also focused on William Casey
for failing to disclose his holdings and comply
with other financial regulations before he
became CIA director.
Former Reagan aide Dennis LeBlanc, who
earns $58,500 a year as director of the National
Telecommunications Office in the Commerce
Department, still accompanies the president
on his trips to his mountaintop ranch near San-
ta Barbara, Calif., to help Reagan chop wood
and clear brush.
IN MOST cases, Reagan has lashed outO
against the critics and has strongly defended
his appointees as victims.
He told Burford that she could leave with her
"head high," and since then has said he never
would have asked her to leave the agency. He
also blamed environmental "extremists" for
the upheaval at EPA and quipped that they
would like to turn the White House into a
"bird's nest."
In short, Reagan fights back and is loathe to
drop anyone until his top White House aides tell
him the handwriting is on the wall and he has to@
cut his losses.
In such cases, his aloofness and detached
style of governing serves him in good stead.
Thomas is UPI's White House reporter.
Reagan: A loyalist to the end
toxic wastes division, was fired under a cloud
of allegations.
At least two of the EPA assistants who were
-r
11
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
Sinclair
al
Vol. XCIII, No. 150
420 Maynard St.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board
Blunders with toxic wastes
I
THILE TOXIC wastes pose one of
the nation's worst environmental
and health threats, American com-
panies are insisting that new
regulations and restrictions be based
only on hard scientific facts. But the
only fact scientists know about most of
these chemicals is that they don't know
enough, consequently regulations are
still being set too loosely.
That situation is readily apparent in
Michigan's relationship with Dow
Chemical Co. State officials have
known since 1978 that Dow's chemical
dumping in the Tittabawassee and
Saginaw Rivers probably posed
s ignificant dangers to both the en-
vironment and human health, but has
done very little to study the problem.
Admittedly, the state has not had
funds to adequately study the problem
and the Environmental Protection
Agency has been too disinterested to
help. But even under the suspected
danger, state officials gave Dow per-
mission to increase its discharge of
four suspected cancer-causing
chemicals into the Tittabawassee
River nearly 17 times less than a year
ago.
The relaxation of the rules was har-
dly based on solid scientific evidence
and the sheer size of the increase was
unjustified. Nevertheless, the move is
indicative of the way both state and
federal agencies go about regulating
toxic waste dumping.
Too often state and federal
regulations are set too weak or not at
all because scientists just haven't
amassed the data to prove absolutely a
health hazard exists. By the time the
danger is established, it's too late -
the chemicals have already con-
taminated wildlife and leaked into
ground water supplies.
It makes much more sense to put
stric.t regulations on chemicals with
proven potential to pose health and en-
vironmental risks. Such restrictions
should bear more heavily on cor-
porations than human lives. In any
case, the federal Clean Water Act calls
for the elimination of all water
pol ution, not the gratuitous granting of
permission to increase toxic
discharges.-
0
0
LETTERS TO THE DAILY:
Petitioners forget the First Amendment.
-
"UEYoUE NOT EETTIN6 A JOB,~TYOU 'RE
GETTING C FR I6A BETTER CAS O RAVNSMEAL'
f -
y
~(/ A~,f.
To the Daily:
Have the anti-Daily petitioners
ever heard of the First Amen-
dment? Note how all of these do-
gooders are attemptingato make
an independent newspaper cry
"uncle." Suggestion: If you don't
like the Daily, then don't buy it!
Encourage people to boycott it;
boycott its advertisers; start a
rival paper (ask the folks at the
Michigan Review, for instance).
But don't attempt to intimidate a
free press by "making the Daily
admit to acts of irresponsible
journalism."
When the PTA and Jerry
Falwell start drives to get
Daily
needs responsibility
television to own up to its
"promotion" of "immoral"
values, a lot of these self-
professed liberals scream about
the free press. What's the dif-
ference here? Are some people's
values more relevant than
others? Are some parts of a free
press more important than
others?
I'm no fan of the-Daily. I'll ad-
mit to having been deeply offen-
ded by them this
term-especially when SCRAP
was slandered by a front-page lie
donated by PIRGIM (the story
about SCRAP's supposed link to
the College Republicans). But
this story and the others cited,
while not good journalism, can
never justify the stated goals of
the current petition drive.
If any paper really angers me,
it's the MSA News. After all, the
Daily is only marginally sub-
sidized by us-it's our choice to
buy it or not. The MSA News is
completely paid for out of our
tuition fees. Anyone who has
bothered to read the MSA News
knows it's become a mouthpiece
for the Progressive Student Net-
work and other radical statists in
the University political arena.
Yet nobody has bothered to com-
plain at all about this piece of lef-
tist trash. I guess it depends on
whose ox is gored.
A petition complaining about
the Daily's journalism is
marginally accepted to those of
us who still believe in the Bill of
Rights. However, a petition
whose stated goal is the indirect
suppression of the press, even a
sensationalized press, isO
dangerous. -Steve Angelotti
April 3
To the Daily:
The zeal with which the Daily
has gone about offending almost
every segment of the University
community is remarkable.
Perhaps the students who are
now the editors of the Daily are
under the mistaken impression
that in order to have news
coverage that is hard-hitting, it
must somehow be controversial
and offend some campus or
ethnic group. Controversy is fine,
but the Daily's complete insen-
sitivity to maligning people is
not.
I was delighted to read in the
Daily ("MSA calls Daily
irresponsible," Daily, March 30)
today that a group of students is
organizing a petition drive to
pressure the Daily's editors to
practice more responsibility in
their newspaper. Until the editors
begin to listen, however, the only
thing that those of us who have
been attacked by the Daily (and
those of us who will be attacked in
the future) can do is sign the
petition and hope that the Daily
regains the sense of respon-
sibility it had until the past couple
of months.
-Marc Elsah
March 30
Infirmary cut unfair
Paranoia.c sensitivities
To the Daily:
With all the budget cuts going
on, it is hard to keep track of
which school or program is under
what review. But a little known
facility that provides a great ser-
vice to the University community
was arbitrarily eliminated for
next year, without undergoing a
review process of any kind.
The facility I am speaking of is
the University Health Service's
infirmary, a place where studen-
ts who are too sick for the dorms
but not sick enough for the
hospital can stay and be taken
rma r fWithnttthis facility.
questionable is not only the
secretiveness with which the
whole affair was conducted.
What is also bad is that because
every student pays a sizeable
sum of money each semester t
receive benefits from the Univer-
sity's Health Service, the studen-
ts should be entitled to have some
input into the decisions that af-
fect the Health Service. Instead,
the students were not even
notified of any decision being
made at all.
It is impossible in times of
fiscal crisis to avoid budget cuts
in various areas nf the shnn1 hut
To the Daily:
I . bet the KKK and the
American Nazi Party have had a
great big laugh these past few
weeks. They don't have to go
around telling us how much they
hate us, we're already convinced
that evervonn hates us. The Jews
took to ally the blacks and Jews
fifteen years ago.
Then again, maybe we should
stop being paranoid and realize
that we've just been insensitive to
others and oversensitive our-
selves. I'm not suggesting that
we let dnwn all nur defnense ht
i