4
Wednesday. April 4.1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
On the Same Track
At this early date, the political topography of the coming American bicentennial-cum-election year lies shrouded in morning mists. Although charting the terrain may be premature, definite signs of concerted movement are visible beneath.
With the certainty of the crews who drove from opposite ends to lay the first transcontinental rails, Richard Nixon and John Connally headed for a historic spot where a golden spike will nail home the 1976 Presidential route.
Consider Nixon's approach, replete with a recent evening of chauvinism-at-home in the White House.
The playing of "When You're Runnin' Down the Country, You're Walkin' on the Fightin' Side of Me" hardly typifies traditional White musical fare, but it was in harmony with the Nixon orchstration.
Further, Nixon's stands on amnesty, on POWs, on palace scandals and on other questions of treatment of "nonteam" versus "team" players may indeed tempt one to term his approach "representative reactionism," barring the previous selection of a stronger epithet.
Consider Connally's avowed concern with internationalism.
Whereas Nixon attributes continuing social problems to unsuccessful past domestic programs and dissension, Connally hits out
hardest at domestic problems with a broad economic base and attributes them in large measure to unforest past international policies.
Connally argued while in Lawrence that domestic problems had peaked in the '60s and that the tide had begun to turn only when Phase I price and wage controls were instituted in 1971.
Besides complimenting Nixon's domestic economic policies in substance, Connally suggested that Nixon's political steps in the foreign arena were taken in astute advanceance of a new international reality.
Connally thus has put himself in a highly defensive position as an attorney, reformer without rising great controversy on domestic social policy
The point at issue here is not whether Nixon or Connally has taken the more effective tactical or strategic political approach. The point is one of possible long-range mutual interests neatly dovetailing.
Connally may publicly discount the worth of party labels, but he's left no doubt whose team he's played on in the past. He seems to be saying it is in fact the game itself that matters for the moment and the future.
For now, it appears that Nixon the shandygaff while Connally plays the shaman.
—C. C. Caldwell
WASHINGTON-These are dramatic times in Washington, full of intrigue, derring-do and swordplay. The white House and White House compete, dominate the daily news. No one has been paying much attention to the Supreme Court, but a perceptive historian, looking for the story that truly matters, has marched the marmite halls of First Street.
With every week that passes, it becomes more evident that Richard Nixon is succeeding in one of his great endeavors. With the nomination of Warren Burger as president, Warren, Nixon set out four years ago this spring, deliberately and purposefully to change the direction of our fundamental law. As this term of court nears its halfway point, our opinions change down, that change no longer can be doubted.
Nixon's four appointees—Burger, Blackmun, Powell and Rehquist—have not formed an absolutely monolithic block. In cases of relatively less imminent danger among themselves. But in the big cases, the cases that turn on the great prot points of the Warren
Superficially, at least, the facts were not in doubt. One school student was poor in real estate values, who paid $356 per pupil; a wealthy suburban district was receiving Walmart's attention getting "earn protection"?
Such disparities, of course, are not confined to San Antonio or to Texas. In virtually every city and state across the nation, where real estate taxation is the principal support of public education, the same picture obtains. The state's 2013 tax case, San Antonio case began in California, where plaintiff John A. Serrano gave his name to a
We saw this most clearly on March 21, when the Court divided 5-4 on the issue of school finance, Like so many cases in the Warren years, the case presented a question arising out of the Fourteenth Amendment. That amendment says that no state may punish persons who its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Four Horsemen Dominate Court
James J. Kilpatrick
legal doctrine holding that such inequalities violate the Fourteenth Amendment.
years, the four horsemen are holding firmly to the one concept that Nixon has sought to restore. The one concept of judicial restraint.
But on March 21, in a superbly reasoned opinion by Justice Lewis Powell, the four Nixon appointees (joined by Justice Clarence Thomas) and the Serrano doctrine. The Fourteenth Amendment, in the majority's view, never was intended to guarantee a perfect equality in public services. The Court rejected that not being deemed an obligation; they were receiving the same teacher-salary scale, provided throughout the state. The natural inequalities of wealth in our society, the majority concluded, could be nullified by court decree.
In a passionate dissent, Jillary Thurgood Marshall denounced the majority opinion as "an idolatry of the people in the mainstream of recent state and federal court decisions." Marshall, Douglas, Brennan and White were eager to pursue the old activist line; they wanted a new position that would tear旧 institutions down and raise new landmarks up.
But when the dust had settled.
Powell's cool restraint emerged as clearly the better and wiser course of law.
The majority, applying old rules of constitutional construction, had no doubt of its own merit. But beyond this, as Pell observed in his final paragraph, the practical consequences that would have resulted from upholding the Serrano doctrine must right the wisdom of the traditional limitations on this Court's function."
"We are unwilling," he wrote, "to assume for ourselves a level of wisdom superior to that of legislators, scholars and educational authorities in 49 states; while they the alternatives proposed are now recently conceived and nowhere yet tested."
"The consideration and initiation of fundamental reforms with respect to state taxation and education," he wrote, "are matters reserved for the legislative processes of the various states, and we do no attempt to interfere with federalism and separation of powers by staying our hand." (4) 1972 Star Wars Studios, Inc.
Jack Anderson
WASHINGTON—it's not true that words don't hurt. The CBS television network has canceled its presentation of "Sticks and
A Meeting in Mitchell's Office
WASHINGTON — Watergate defendant James McCord asserts that the bugging of the committee was planned secretly in Atty, Gen. John Mitchell's Department of Justice office by Mitchell, White House counsel John Dean Carr and Rex Gaddison, Gordon Liddy and Jeb Magruder.
The Undoing of 'Sticks and Bones
McCord has given a written memo to this effect to the Senate committee probing the Watergate scandal. Quoting Liddy, the stold McCord, who served as secretary of state, sets dates of the date of meeting in 1972—while Mitchell was still attorney general.
McCord reports in a two-page initialized document: "John Dean, Jeb Magruder, Gordon Liddy and John Mitchell in 1F7. 1972 met in Mitchell's office at the department of Justice and held the first
In his memo for the Senate dated March 26, McCord says Liddy gave him considerable advice on his work. The Department of Justice, meeting.
will show uncomfortable parallels between the dramatics personae and living Americans. Nothing like MacBird or even a
As Liddy recounted it to McCord, the crucial meeting was "set up for one particular day, and reset and reset for a day or so later."
formal discussion of bugging and related operations.
McCord's carefully-worded memo says he believed Liddy was planning to send or hand-carry the plans "to someone in the White House. I do not know to whom he took it."
Sure, they can do an occasional Shakespeare provided that the director doesn't play games that
"Liddy had planned for the meeting very carefully and had drafted in longhand budget figures for various items of expense, and had discussed them and certain details of the overall plan," she wrote (who) reportedly set up the meeting with Mitchell.
The play isn't a political allegory on how the Nixon administration does treat the returning soldier, although reports from our veterans' hospitals suggest it could be. But the problem is that we think CBScedes to White House pressure to keep this drama off the air. They will regard it as but one more sign of a growing political control of television, and will, therefore, fail to recognize that even without a Nixon administration inside constraints on this medium are enormous and constant.
The real wonder of the episode is that CBS ever dared to come close to putting this play on the air. I contess to some bias here as one who's been moonlighting for several years, but the fact remains that serious drama was chased off television a long, time ago. That the network would hire Joseph Papp, the most creative and energetic theatrical producer, to mount "Sticks and Bones" number of other productions, indicates a landable, if obtuse, understanding of television's role. Apparently the guys in the CBS board room haven't given up until they can get away with broadcasting contemporary work of artistic merit.
Bones," a play of dramatic savagery about a veteran from Vietnam who comes home to a family that discards him, drives him to suicide and throws his body out with the garbage.
highly political Macbeth would be tolerated. Even a classic writer like Ibsen would have to be handled with great care not to provoke. The same holds true for Shaw or such fluffy pieces as "Of Witness." Even that had to be watered down when it was put on last fall.
McCord's statement says Laddy spent about $7,000 to have four-by-four feet charts drawn up for the meeting.
Clowns have always been able to get away with more than tragedians so a show like "All in the Family" can become very popular. Yet Archie Bunker is just unrealistic enough to allow disidentification. Even with his long-shaired son-in-law he is not particularly good at it, rather a slightly obsolete figure with his Goodwill Industries furniture, a figure from the past who never did live.
Nicholas von Hoffman
TV dramas, like Paddy Chayefsky's "Marty," appeared first on television then in the movies. He was no more tenable Tennessee Williams coming into the living rooms of the South.
was its replacement by the movies as the most compelling medium of entertainment. It was then the movies 'turn to suffer the same constraints until rescued by television.
The suppression of the best in the most powerful mass medium is neither new nor particularly American. The ancient Romans never permitted the depiction of a slave as part of the only thing that freed the Western theater from what has happened to "Sticks and Bones"
agencies from obtaining essential information from the Pentagon so the aircraft could be properly certified and insured.
Only a society with a great deal more self-confidence than ours could stand the disruption of high school students, people who were seriously debating a couple of years ago whether a few thousand school kids who wear jeans and seldom wear shirts are going to government. We live frightened by the notion that our country will unglue itself and blow up like an exploding star, when in reality from an overly stable rigidity.
So we ask television to reinforce our unity and find new ways to strengthen our sacred national symbols, although they're too strong as it is. "Sticks and Bones" would have upset those who not only want to watch each POW come off the plane and
Drama of substance left television just about the time the lower-middle-class could afford television sets. Upper-middle-incomeers a certain limited contact with disturbing ideas, symbols and emotions, but lower down on our status ladder the pressure to tell people exactly what they hear is close to irresistible.
After our story appeared, the Pentagon acted quickly to correct this oversight. The Pentagon has assured dup. to the agency that it will provide all available records on the surplus aircarry. Now, it's up to the Federal Aviation Administration, which has stalled the police agencies in the past, to ensure no new logjams develop.
cheer, but who grow furious at the minority of us who regard this pitter-patter of military feet across the red carpet as an overdone, jingosie, lachrymose, political charade.
five, plus Llddy and former White House aide Hound W hurt have been convicted in the case. He now telling his story to the Senate.
We recently reported that hundreds of surplus military helicopters were sitting idly by in storage while police agencies around the country were paying through the nose for new police vehicles. A bureaucratic logjam in Washington was prohibiting police
Yet Nixon's people complain that TV station owners don't oversee what the networks send them for broadcasting on their screens, but they can dramatically ways like this. They are forever meeting with the networks and exerting their force so that the national digestive tract be served only cream of potato TV is in their hands; your own.
But what tells us the most about the dropping of "Sticks and Bones" is that the government made a call to the brain by line thinking it could turn the TV screen for a couple of brief hours into the mirror of art, and it got slapped down by its own team. They wouldn't put it on the air.
(C)
Washington Post-King Features Syndicate
Mitchell, Magnuder and Dean have all denied any advance knowledge of the bugging.
"The charts were brought in late one afternoon and left in (Liddy's) office on the 4th floor wrapped in brown paper. My impression that they were numerically done," McCord said.
The alleged conspirators gathered in Mitchell's office in the afternoon, as McCord recalled it, and "from what Liddy told me it lasted an hour or more."
Liddy, according to McCord,
said that the discussions at the
department of Justice covered
bugging type operations. No
decisions were made at the
meeting, . . . but the impression
Liddy had, seemed) to be that
operation would be approved.
Within a few days, "Deed told Laddy that a way would have to be worked out to undertake the operation without directly intervening," and that he would have deniability about it at a future date.
"Dean told Liddy at this time for the operation for the would subsequently come to him through other than regular Committee for the Re-Election (of the President) funding mechanisms so that there would be no record of if . . . "
Copyright, 1973,
by United Feature Syndicate, Inc
Liddy said Dean told him "to
"About 30 days after the February meeting in the A.G.S (Attorney General's) office, Liddy told me that the operation 'had been approved.' My son was with this week the approval came from Dean, although this was not specifically stated by Liddy."
A few months later in June, McCord and four Cubans were trapped inside Democratic headquarters by city police. All
destroy the ($7,000) charts but
Laddy said that he had paid so
much for them that he did not
see ... I never saw the
charts.
Readers Respond
Judging from the March 29 kmean column, a little bit of Kafka's rebellion — Kilpatrick, his author, seems to have taken Vijai mitin to “in-turn” in the fight.
Specifically, Kilpatrick praise the Greek military regime for its contributions to higher education: "... they have generously supported professors, new textbooks free tuition and the all rest." B. I suspect that when he was shown the new facilities of the university's industrial studies department in a building, an old hospital, has been condemned by the city a unsafe for occupancy.
Relevant textbooks are nonexistent. Instead, professors prepare ditto materials, and sell
To be sure, it is difficult to correctly assess political events in one's own country where the language and common mentality are familiar. It is nearly impossible to attempt to do the same in a foreign country where the language and political norms are unknown.
I am not sure whether Kilpatrick realizes that the "new professorships" he heard about are replaced with previous ones and that he desirible to the colonels. Most new professors are ex-military personnel who conduct their jobs in conservative reactionaries.
To the Editor:
A Different View of Greece
Yet, the colonel's generosity goes further. Two out of 10 students are plain-clothes policemen, one for dissident students and one is common-law students there are three secretaries responsible for admissions, records, individual programs, advisement, etc. A teacher who works with a picnic must obtain formal approval from the chancellor.
them to students at outrageous prices. Unless students buy these materials, they will fail. The new marketing strategy for propaganda. Only an extraordinarily shrewed newspaperman could discover that even a "Differential text contains propaganda."
The tuition is free. However, students must enroll in, but not attend classes at the institutes that charge tuition and furnish the university with lists of those enrolled. Surprisingly, only a few courses on these lists pass their classes.
Regarding the junia's popularity, Kilkee kicked states, two weeks of tweets around Greece, I did not encounter a single taxi driver, waiter, shop clerk or tavern keeper who opposed the regime "a little too much," Ms. Speaks Greek, or that he interviewed a representative enough sample of English-speaking taxi drivers and tavern workers to be minded. He probably never suspected that he was perceived
as a CIA agent working for the colonists in any wondrous way, and to espouse*? I present a few specifics of the clark situation to offset what I think is his generalities, and thus spare Socrates the agony of turning
John Poulakos Athens, Greece Graduate Student
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