The Michigan Daily - Friday, July 20, 1984 - Page 5
Golden Fleece award enters 10th year
WASHINGTON (AP) - In Greek were "just too cor
mythology, the Golden Fleece was an clear the corporal
armload of ram's wool that Jason had to "separate the w
to snatch from under the eye of a THIS KIND of
sleepless dragon and bring back to Proxmire, either.
Greece. when the Smithso
Sen. William Proxmire has used the
story for 10 years to symbolize what he
considers outstanding examples of W hen
wasteful, ridiculous or ironic gover- $89,000
nment agencies.t
AND IN granting his Golden Fleece tionary
wards he is given to flights of rhetoric tongue,'
and fancy figures of speech to make his
point. expendil
Just his month, for instance, the lag g
Wisconsin Democrat said an advertising l uag(
program of the Federal Crop Insurance
Corp. was "an example of federal $89,000 in public
spending that wasn't proper, came a dictionary of T
cropper, and turned out to be a whop- Mexican tongue,
per." expenditure "doei
Not content with this, he said the language."
program "did not amount to a hill of "I don't know ho
beans." Furthermore, he said, such ex- had in Tzotzil, bu
penditures "run against the grain" of my feelings," he s
most taypayers. He said he did not Here are more
know whether the crop insurance ads mire's prose:
i .F
4
Police investigators gather evidence outside a McDonald
where a gunman went on a rampage Wednesday, killing tw
McDonald's susj
(Continued from Page 3)
on the floor or I'll kill someone,' " San Diego police Lt. Paul
Ybarrondo told a news conference. "And then he killed them
anyway."
"They complied and he proceeded to systematically start
shooting the victims," he said.
The victims ranged in age from 8 months to 74 years.
The investigator said that on the day of the killing, Huberty
took his family with him to traffic court to settle a citation, to
a McDonald's restaurant near the court in northern San
Diego for breakfast, on a family outing at the zoo and then
back to the apartment.
The neighbors said Huberty's wife and a daughter, who
went to the restaurant after the fight, apparently left before
he walked in and opened fire. Another daughter watched the
incident from a neighbor's balcony without ever realizing her
father was responsible for the carnage.
Terry Kelly, an auxiliary deputy with the Stark County
Sheriff's office, worked with Huberty at Babcock & Wilcox
power generating plant in Canton, Ohio. He said Huberty was
bitter about losing his job when the plant closed in October
1982.
"He said that if this was the end of his making a living for
his family, he was going to take everyone with him," Kelly
told The Akron Beacon Journal. "He was always talking
about shooting somebody.
ny to work" but it was
tion had not been able
heat from the chaff."
thing isn't new for
As long ago as 1977,
nian Institution spent
" When President Reagan's inaugural
committee used military personnel to
squire visiting dignitaries around
Washington, he said the committee was
"taking the taxpayers for a ride."
9 When the National Science Foun-
he Smithsonian Institution spent
n public money to produce a dic-
of Tzotzil, an obscure Mexican
Sen. William Proxmire said the
ture 'doesn't make sense in any
money to produce a dation spent $14,000 on a program using
'zotzil, an obscure pigeons to test human economic
the senator said the behavior, he said, "The researchers
n't make sense in any coo while the taypayers get billed."
When the Agriculture Department
ow to say "We've been spent $40,000 on a study linking social
t that about sums up characteristics to food preferences,
aid. Proxmire said it was "guaranteed tc
examples of Prox- cause a mighty case of indigestion for
the noor taxnaver."
it
l
,0
" When the National Endowment for
the Arts gave a $7,000 grant for a sound
and light show at the Wisconsin Capitol,
he said, "While attempting to tune in
and turn on, this project has only turned
off the American taxpayers."
Noting that doctors who had received
student loans were $28.1 million behind
in repaying them, he said, "Paying
these debts istone doctor's prescription
the patient taxpayer should not have to
fill."
Taking the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration to task for spen-
ding $22,700 to plan for art and music in
a future space station, he said, "This
flar note in NASA's symphony leads me
to conclude that NASA itself may be
getting 'spacey'."
" He gave the National Institute of
Education "an F-minus for protecting
the nation's taxpayers but an A-plus for
promoting waste, fraud and abuse" ina
release in which he said the institute
failed to keep tabs properly on a gover-
nment contract.
Seat belt
laws follow
Canadian
precedent
TORONTO (AP) - Canadian of-
ficials credit mandatory seat-belt laws
- in effect here for years but just now
spreading across the border - with
sparing hundreds of lives.
"There's been a considerable
decrease in the number of drivers and
passengers killed," says Orville
Harron, a spokesman for the ministry
of transportation in Ontario. "I would
be inclined to say seat belts are the
major factor."
ON JULY 12, Gov. Mario Cuomo
signed a bill making New York the first
American state in which it will be
illegal to drive or ride in a car without
wearing a seat belt.
Many more states are likely to follow,
spurred by the terms of Transportation
Secretary Elizabeth Dole's decision
July 11 to require auto makers to install
air bagssor automatic seat belts unless
two-thirds of the states enact man-
datory seat-belt laws by April 1989.
Harron, in an interview at the
ministry's suburban offices
overlooking the 12 lanes of Canada's
busiest highway, said resistance to the
seat-belt law has faded in the past eight
years.
"There's still the odd die-hard around
saying we're impinging on their
rights," he said. "People think they're
not endangering anyone else, and they
should have a right to kill themselves."
"It certainly is an infringement of
anyone's rights," said Richard Greene,
manager of traffic safety for the
Canada Safety Council. "You and I and
everybody pay for those things through
our insurance payments."
In Ontario, traffic deaths have drop-
ped from 1,314 in 1975, the last year
before mandatory seat-belts, to 783 in
1982, before rebounding to 830 last year.
Before the law was enacted, studies
showed fewer than 12 percent of drivers
and passengers used seat belts, Greene
said.
Associated Press
's restaurant in San Ysidro, California yesterday morning
enty people and wounding another dozen.
pends advertising
"He says, 'Hey, I got nothing to live for. I got no job or
anything.' "
Kelly described Huberty as a "radical" who worried about
nuclear war and Soviet aggression and as a survivalist who
bought and hoarded "thousands of dollars of food."
"He talked about the end of the world," Kelley said. "He
said he and his family were going to be the only ones left. He
talked about going off into the woods."
Six months ago the family moved to San Ysidro, Calif., 200
yards from the McDonald's restaurant where Huberty
opened fire Wednesday.
McDonald's Corp. yesterday asked advertising outlets
nationwide to delay broadcast of its commercials following
the massacre at the San Ysido restaurant, a company official
said.
"We are shocked and grieved by the tragic incident which
took place yesterday," said spokesman Richard Starmann
from the fast-food chain's suburban Chicago headquarters.
He said company officials would continue meeting in the
coming days to decide what would be done at the San Ysidro
location and when to resume the ad campaign.
Starmann said company officials do not anticipate any
drop in business.
"It was a bizarre, isolated and very tragic incident," he.
said.