The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, May 10, 1983 - Page 3
Blanchard announces jobs bill
Iieju ofua 1 et unions anb . ey isue comiies
LfANSING (U1 ) Gov. James
Blanchard - saying Michigan cannot
sit back and await a promised recover-
y - unveiled to a cheering Legislature
yesterday an economic program expec-
ted to create 80,00 jobs this summer.
Blanchard was interrupted by ap-
plause more than 20 times while
outlining to a joint session of the
Legislature, and a statewide radio and
television audience, his plan for a $75
million youth jobs program and a
public works effort fueled by $300
million in state bonds.
IT IS substantially more ambitious
than many had expected and received
expressions of support from
Republicans and Democrats.
Blanchard said, "We should keep our
committment to our young people and
our workers - to invest in their skills,
Blanchard their education and their training - to
... pulls for education equip them to hold the jobs of today and
Nuclear game
the joas of the zest century.
"The across-the-board increase in
support for education in my budget is a
down-payment on this committment -
for it reverses the dangerous trend of
decay and neglect of the past few years
in Michigan's educational system.
HOWEVER, the drive for strong cen-
tral coordination of higher education in
Michigan got poor grades from some
college officials attending a special
day-long seminar in the capital yester-
day.
Wayne State University President
David Adamany was especially out-
spoken, calling it "a diversionary side
issue from gross underfunding of
higher education in Michigan."
Adamany was one of several
speakers who addressed the seminar,
called Impact of Coordination in Higher
unions and key legislative committees.
THE Legislature and Blanchard
currently are considering a number of
proposals for studying higher education
in Michigan. Some feel the study could
lead to closing one or two of the state's
smaller colleges.
Proponents see coordination as a
means of saving money by avoiding
duplication and overlap in academic
programs.
The present Michigan system
Adamany said, is "better than it's
given credit for."
THE STATE'S system remains in the
top quarter in the nation for access and
quality, even though its funding is in the
bottom quarter, he said.
The independence of Michigan's
colleges, he suggested, "helps explain
the suess Michioan has had in very
(Continued from Page 1)
nuclear arms at the top of the presiden-
tial campaign agenda.
At Minot Air Force Base headquar-
ters in North Dakota, Jake Jaques sighs
when asked about "the freeze."
"I don't think people understand it. If
we had a freeze we wouldn't be able to
build the MX. We'd freeze ourselves in-
to inferiority," said the cool, dark-
haired colonel.
"I'm disturbed by what I see. We're
working here with 20-year-old weapons
systems, but the Soviets keep
developing new systems."
IN MINOT, at the Pentagon, in
Europe's capitals, in the Kremlin, the
nuclear debate will grow more shrill as
1983 wears on.
The outcome of the debate, and
especially of the superpower
negotiations in Geneva, could well set
the course of World politics for the rest
of the century.
Up and down the honeycomb
corridors of the Pentagon, men and
women are busy planning for the war
they hope will never come.
IN THE 27 months of the Reagan
presidency, the United States has em-
barked on the biggest peacetime
military buildup in its history.
The program, heavy with new
missiles, submarines and bombers for
the nuclear force, would cost $1.5
trillion over five years. It has a dual
goal: meeting what is seen as a
dangerous Soviet military challenge,
and giving the United States
"leverage" to use on the Soviet Union
at the arms-control bargaining table.
Some U.S. strategists contend their
counterparts in Moscow believe the
Soviet Union can fight and win a
nuclear war.
"PEOPLE just don't understand,
from a strategic-targetting point of
view, how very powerful their land-
based missile force is," said Ronald
Lehman, a deputy assistant defense
secretary who is among those chiefly
responsible for U.S. strategic policy.
In two decades of rapid military
growth, the Soviet Union has drawn
even with the United States-and some
say passed it - in strategic nuclear
power.
The newest, "fourth-generation"
Soviet intercontinental ballistic
missiles are about as accurate as the
best the Americans have - the
Minuteman III. And the huge Soviet SS-
18's 10 warheads are packed with five
times the Minuteman's nuclear
devastation - at least five megatons,
the equivalent of 5 million tons of TNT.
BUT TO the war "scenarists" in the
Kremlin, U.S. capabilities may be just
as intimidating.
The Soviets stack most of the nuclear
chips on land-based missiles. But the
United States has built a versatile
valanced nuclear arsenal, a "triad" of
land-based ICBMs, submarine-laun-
ched missiles and heavy long-range
bombers.
"On balance," President Reagan
concluded last year, "the Soviet Union
does have a definite margin of
superiority."
MANY SPECIALISTS disagree,
saying "superiority" is a meaningless
word when each side stocks enough
warheads to annihilate the other
several times over.
But those whose job it is to ponder
such things - the "nuclear war
priesthood," as they have been called
- are concerned about one frailty in the
U.S. armor: the potential for a Soviet
"first strike."
"The Soviet Union has enough
missiles, with enough warheads, with
enough yield, with enough accuracy, to
destroy our Minuteman missiles in
their silos," was how Lehman summed
up the problem in an interview.
MANY ANALYSTS say the Soviet
leadership would never risk a first
strike. But the theoretical potential
remains, and the Reagan ad-
ministration is grappling with the
quandary in two ways, at the
negotiating table and in the military
budget.
In the Geneva negotiations, the
opening U.S. proposal would slash the
Soviet advantage in land-based
missiles.
It calls for reducing both sides'
missile-launched warheads by about
one-third to 5,000, and for settinga limit
of 2,500 on the number of land-based
warheads.
MATCH-UPS of deadly but
perishable weapons could force the
superpowers to put their missile launch
crews on hair-trigger alert, hyper-
sensitive in times of international
crisis.
In the same way, Reagan's "vision of
the future" speech March 23, calling for
development of an advanced anti-
missile defense, shows how technology
can swiftly upset global balances.
Deploying such a system would open a
new track in the arms race, a defensive
competition that arms controllers have
long sought to suppress.
Education, which was sponsored by the
state Education Department, faculty See BLANCHARD, Page 10
haunts players
In Washington, Reagan's Democratic what you have to do in this business,
opponents accuse him of a wrong- you have to be thinking, 'Where will this
headed approach to arms control, or of all take us?' "
the ulterior motive of seeking untram- At the moment, it is taking the United
meled military superiority. States and its newest class of weapons
"The real issue is, how do you main- to the heart of Europe. And the climax
tain the deterrent over the years," will come not in years, but in months.
Lehman asked. "I'm constantly
thinking 10 years down the road. That's Thursday: West Germany as the
center of nuclear terror.
An appleaaay...fruits
Apples are only some of the farm-fresh fruits and vegetables available at
Ann Arbor's farmers' market on Detroit Street near Kerrytown Market. It is
now open Wednesday and Saturday from 7 a.m.-3 p.m.