1
Tuesday, April 16, 1974
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN commer Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Loopholes Snag Nixon
Taxpayers who mobbed the Post Office yesterday to meet the April 15 postmark deadline were a queurulous lot with just enough ironical humor to make the situation tolerable.
Most of them simply had procrastinated the unpleasant task of figuring their debt to Uncle Sam. One couple said they had figured, signed and sealed their return but couldn't bear to mail it until about two months later. His dresser as a painful reminder for nearly two months.
Richard Nixon's shady tax history was the source of most of the gibes. One fellow had a copy of the "Examination of President Nixon's Tax Returns for 1969 Through 1972," the Senate-House Taxation Staff's 1,008-page report, which is being sold at stores across the country for $6.50 a copy. He read excerpts from it with a highly ironic inflexion for the benefit of his fellow sufferers.
The report provided great entertainment for the procrastinator.
Among the deductions listed in the report were: $5,391.43 for a masked ball for Tricla Nixon; expenditures for a resurfaced
shuffleboard court at Nixon's property in Key Biscayne; $4,816.84 for a Cabinet Room table which should have been billed to the government in the first place, and such furniture would be built by Nixon's three-hole golf course and cleaning Pat Nixon's rug.
All the President's defenses and the accusations of false reports in the liberal press melted away before the sobering reality of the small totals on the bottom lines of Nixon's 1040s. And his agreement to pay the required $467,000 in back taxes for the four-year period hardly assuaged the travesty of the original returns.
That is why Rep. Wilbur Mills, D-Ark., a good indicator of the attitude of the moderate, Democratic majority predicts that Nixon's downfall will be taxes, not Watergate.
People become especially conscious of what their government is about during tax paying time.
And if the procrastinators at the Post Office are a good indication, they will reserve, public opinion, won't protect him from impeachment.
—Bill Gibson
By LOU CANNON The West London Foot
WASHINGTON - Despite the White House claim that President Nixon is "almost virtually wiped out" by an Internal Revenue Service rulting that cost him $1 billion, President retains pre-presidential papers based on his appraisal at $1.5 million.
Nixon Not Impoverished by IRS
Presumably, that also would apply to taped presidential conversations, which the White House originally said had been made for historical purposes.
Ralph G. Newman, the Chicago appraiser who was hired by Nixon's attorneys to evaluate the papers, valued the entire collection at $2,012,000 in 1989. That included the books that were used for which the President took tax deductions that last week were disallowed by the IRS.
Nixon has far greater assets, though they haven't been calculated, in the papers of his presidency. Those papers presumably will be stored at his offices to sell, or donate as he chooses.
NIXON HIMSELF has given some indications that he regarded the Newman appraisal of his papers as somewhat conservative. He told the Associated Press Managing Editors on Nov. 13 that if the IRS takes away your tax receipts, the papers back and I will pay the tax because I think they are worth more than "hat."
"Since the time of George Washington it has been customary for presidents of the United States to treat their papers as their own personal property," the staff report of the Internal Revenue Taxation said last week. "... The historical precedents taken together with the provisions set forth in the Presidential Libraries Act, suggest that the papers of President Nixon are considered private property rather than public property."
The President didn't get back the papers he donated because of the IRS ruling. However, evidence uncovered by the Joint Committee staff in its investigation of Nixon's tax deductions suggests that the most valuable of his correspondence raised money and undoubted stacks of material that are being stored in the National Archives.
Newman's suggestion, set aside letters from such important historical figures as Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, and Abraham Lincoln.
On Nov. 7, 1969, Newman wrote Nixon that the entire collection of papers, memorabilia and books was worth more than the $2 million appraisal he had given.
Months after Nixon supposedly donated his papers to the National Archives, he, at
"It is my recommendation that certain of the more important letters, which are valuable, considered either as historical documents or autograph manuscripts,
Psychosurgery Criminal
The letters are now held in special storage for the President in a high-security room in the building.
should be removed" from the general files and stored in a special vault, Newman
Psychosurgery, which has been banned by the Vatican and outlawed in the Soviet Union, turns the mental patient into a nonentity. According to Dr. Peter R. Breggin, executive director of the Center for the Study of Psychiatry in Washington, psychosurgery indicates the patient is at an advanced intellectual development and clear-cut individuality. Most psychiatrists are in agreement with Breggin's view.
By JEROME LLOYD Kansas Staff Reporter
Thousands upon thousands of the brain operations were carried out in the United States alone in the '40s and '50s. From the standpoint of the psychosurgery, they brought about two desirable results: They made the patient more aware that they made the patient forever tractable within the hospital setting. But a part of the patient's brain had been destroyed in order to achieve these results. It was the opinion of many psychiatrists—and today it is the opinion of almost all American psychiatrists—that the sacrifice involved too great.
A passion for convenience of management within the social order seems to have become the cornerstone of the society. In one case, a parent, grasp the criminality of psychosurgery, either by observing his ruined victims or by listening to the protests of the many doctors who oppose him. His role as mediator of the tutorner of medicine, not to mention his
Letters Policy
Psychosurgery was developed by Dr. Egas Moniz, a Lisbon neurosurgeon, in 1935. Moniz, not surprisingly, comes across as stone mad in an autobiographical account of his first operation. These few pages of curiously juanty but unfreeing prose will show the medical culture that is early example of the brutal marriage of technology and the fascist mentality.
The increased use of shock treatment and the appearance of tranquilizers in the late '50s briefly brought an end to psychosurgery for mental patients in the United States. But in the middle '60s it reappeared, only to be practiced in night care facilities. The brain are often destroyed by radiation and electricity, as well as by surgery.
The Daily Kannan welcomes letters to the editor of *Space* asking about the double-sided and longer than 150 words. All letters are addressed to the editor in the space according to space *Bimallimba* and the editor's trust provides their name, year and school and position; others must provide their name and number where they can be contacted for further information.
Now psychosurgery is performed, not primarily on psychotic individuals, but on people who are "deviant" or neurotic. It is most frequently carried out on women, difficult prisoners and hyperactive children, some of whom have been under 5 years of age. According to Breggin, many psychosurgery around the country openly advocate the use of psychosurgery for political control. They believe that students with mental illness are more afflicted by brain diseases which they, as psychosurgents, are in a position to cure.
Breggin believes that many psychochronurgees depend upon the absence of informed consent in order to perform psychotherapy. They should choose ignorant convicts who want out of prison, passive female neurotics or children whose indifferent and uneducated parents are harmed.
In the 50s, Freeman introduced transorbital boltomy, a form of psychosurgery that required neither a neurosurgeon nor a neurosurgeon's theater. There, besides being easy to perform, it was cheap. The patient, although a wounded by a neurorupture, was resembled an ice pick thrust through his eye sockets, angulated upward, and swept through his front brain in a ripping arc. The fact that it was a blind operation, with widely varying results, and the fact that at one point the operation had a morphed appearance, could suggest that it was seldom carried out for the convenience of the patient.
Today some psychosurgery stress that they scrupulously avoid destruction in the higher (or learning) centers, such as the front brain, which was always the target in the past. But according to Breggin, the higher centers of the brain are so dependent upon the so-called lower ones that the results of their psychosurgery are applied as a source of psychosurgery still destroy the front brain. Breggin estimates that 600,100 of the brain operations are performed annually in the United States.
absence of empirical values, only clarifies the essentially punitive nature of his function. When he operates, he is probably committing a crime worse than murder.
In the past, patients who were kept conscious during psychosurgery frequently cried out, "I'm dying. You're killing me!" He was very resolute. They precisely what they were saying. A recent victim of psychosurgery, a brilliant young engineer, was reduced to such a paranoid shamble that, in order to avoid further harm, he was covered with newspapers for months.
Scandal Slows Congress
Bv MARY RUSSELL.
WASHINGTON- Is Congress wallowing in Watergate, bogged down by impeachment and dragging its feet on energy crisis legislation?
BY MARY RUSSELL The Washington Post
House Minority Leader John J. Rhodes, R-Ariz., charges that Watergate is "slowing down the work of Congress." He hastens to add that he doesn't think the Democratic leadership is deliberately unstalled legislation, but that it's an "unconscious change" in government, a slowdown in the output of the entire government because of Watergate."
But in enacting major legislation with broad national interest, Congress is running a slow race.
For instance, on the surface, the sheer volume of legislation passed in this second session of the 93rd Congress is far behind that of the 92nd session of the 92nd Congress. So far this year, Congress has received 308 measures passed by March 31, 1977.
IN ENERGY LEGISLATION, the President himself must share the blame, since he vetoed the major item—a comprehensive energy emergency act. But half a dozen other energy items have been going around Congress since last summer.
President Nixon, in a nationwide address during the Senate Watergate hearings last summer, warned that Congress was becoming "mired in Watergate" while criticizing vital to your health and wellbeing is unattended on the congressional calendar."
As of the end of March 1974, the 93rd Congress had sent to the President: Foreign aid and Alaska pipeline, both enacted last year and signed into law. Energy emergency legislation was vetoed, and energy increase awaits presidential action.
Passed by both houses but awaiting conference agreement are three major bills—budget reform, pension reform and an Independent Legal Services Corporation. The House Committee, in subsidies, was reported by conference but was stalled by the House Rules Committee.
Watergate and Watergate-related matters have directly taken up little time in committee and practically no time on the floor. Only the Senate Watergate Committee has spent considerable time on the subject. Investigations into CIA-related
Griff and the Unicorn
by Sokoloff
And finally, if the House Judiciary Committee does recommend impeachment, the debate on the floor will take considerable time. If impeachment is voted by the House, both houses could be further tied up by the Senate trial.
The result then is likely to be a barren year for legislation in Congress. Rather, as for the nation, as a whole, it will be a year of Watergate exorcism, not "wallowing" in Watergate, but facing an issue that's unavoidable.
Democratic strategy has been partisan comments on Watersgate and let the Republican team decide. House, Democrat leaders feel that partisanship must be kept down to avoid dividing Republicans and Democrats on the judicial committee—a division they think would help them win.
matters, the President's spending on his private homes and tax-related matters have been generally conducted by small subcommittees or, in the case of taxes, a joint committee of course, there is the Judiciary Committee's impeachment inquiry.
In assessing the debilitating effect of Watergate on legislation in general, again the blame may belong as much to the President as to Congress.
With the White House staff decimated by Watergate and the White House itself preoccupied, executive agencies have been forced to find themselves with few new proposals or weak White House backing, or pre-emptied by an increasingly powerful Office of Government and Budget—all making Rhoeds a key government has slowed down its output.
IN ADDITION, political analysts predict that this will be a perilous year for all incumbents in Watergate's wake. So everyone who is running as an incumbent as many trips home as possible to shore up
this campaign. Worrying about the home front may have distracted many members of Congress from their legislative duties. They had a bad effect on the Democrats.
Arms Chairman Says He Copes with Peace
BY STEPHEN S. ROSENFELD
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON—Anyone who thinks that national security policy is made by urbane, calculating managerial types at the White House or State or Defense hasn't met Eddie Hebert: Rep. F. Edward Hebert, D-LA., that is, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Hebert is a big easy gentleman who looks like a cross between a grandfather and sister and who sits in his palatial suite in the Rayburn building receiving journalistic coverage in a half a crack while colonists wait meekly, briefcase on knees, in the anteroom outside.
Behind the chairman's desk is a painting of the Two Jima Memorial. On the facing wall is an oil portrait of two girls waiting for their POW father to return from Hanoi. There are plaques from the 19th infantry Brigade, the Reserve Officers Association, the American Ordnance Association, . . . A lHirt is on the wall.
Ensconced in his trophies, Hebert exudes power. He has a way of pointing to the particular chairs where secretaries of Defense sat when they came to call: "Bob, I said ... Jim, I said..." He taps the phone and states, "Anywhere in the world Jim Schlesinger is. I can get him in three minutes. No. two."
Of 8,904 persons who have served in Congress, offers Hebert, who is 72 years old, he is No. 21 in length of service—34 years. His (tax-free) retirement pay would top his take-home. He stays in office, he says—face guileless, arms open—"to serve the people of Louisiana."
JAMES FORESTAL, the first, was the best Secretary of Defense Hebert has known. The worst was Robert McNamara.
"It was a pleasure to whip Rob. He didn't get along with the Congress. He didn't level. He didn't have a sense of humor."
He regards himself as heir to the tradition of former House Armed Services chairmen like Carl Vinson and Mendel Rivers. They had the fortune to serve while the country was at or near war, he observes. He must cope with peace, which means disidents and demonstrations and a committee and Congress rendered by "reform."
Schlesinger he finds quick, deep—and with a sense of humor. He thinks Schlesinger is "still learning" strategy, a fold where the military should set the pace.
"Bricks and mortar." Eddie Hebert goes on, referring to military facilities he has seen come to Louisiana ("I've never asked for anything"), "is the name of the game."
Was a particular naval facility in Louisiana on the Mississippi River really needed? He is asked. He answers, almost prayerfully, "God put the river there. It's the logical
HEBERT TAKES pains to say that he is no patyse for the military. Singlehanded, he declines, he removed the administration's cory request for recompraining military forces.
Now he's girding for a "personal confrontation of Hebert and Nixon" over the President's proposal to open up the Eik's油仓库, supposedly available only for Israel.
In Eddie Hebert sees the world—somewhat starkly—through the special lens of his friends in the Pentagon, then he sees Washington through his own prism of people, congressional procedures and domestic politics. He is, to someone who's met him just once, a member of the United States Congress, an operator and judge of horseflees, and one of the country's most powerful public men.
MARY LIVINGSTON, the assistant archivist for presidential libraries, said in a letter to the New York Times that he had expressed great interest in the general correspondence file when he had visited the archives on Nov. 3, 1989, and had asked him to send letters from various important people.
The joint committee report suggests that because of the speed with which the materials for the 1998 gift were assembled, some of the materials actually donated may not have been as valuable as Newman had thought them to be.
"He said the general correspondence would be a good file to be deeded but said some letters should be retained by the university, and he said. "In particular be wanted to retain communications from President Kennedy, President Johnson, President Hoover, former Vice President Humphrey, J Edgar White, Secretary Warren and the Honorable Sam Rayburn.
"I suggested that correspondence with Martin Luther King also be retained by the Presidents," he said, interesting letters and memoranda in the file on King. Livingston said, Newman was an active member of the church.
The report notes a donation of three boxes of material dealing with former Soviet Premier Khruschev's to the United States and apparently valued at $15,000. Unknown to Newman, the boxes contained only files of old newspaper clippings.
Despite the White House statement that the IRS ruling probably would make a borrower out of Nixon, the White House announced recently that any money donated to help him pay his income tax would be returned.
The comment was a response to various campaigns launched to send money to the President, including one by the chairman of the Republican party in Florida, L. E. (Tommy) Thomas. He said he wanted a million Floridians to mail $1 to the White House and "let the President know you think he is one in a million."
By ROBERT S. ELEGANT The Los Angeles Times
Vietnam Normal,
No Sign of War
MY THO, South Vietnam—Driving down to My Tho, about 40 miles from Saigon, I felt a giant, time-erasing sponge had been drained. A giant, erasing sponge had been drained. The landscape, the scene was almost identical with that I saw when I first took Route 4 to My Tho. It is no wonder that is the gateway to the lower Delta.
Along with most overt signs of war, the manifestations of the hectic prosperity and loss that ensued decades of guerrilla struggle have largely disappeared. The massive American presence had, of course, yielded that byproduct, and now there is no American
Traffic along the main artery through the rice-rich delta has thinned out by at least half-as much because of the gasoline use in the base of the withdrawal of American troops.
The clatter of helicopters and the far-off whine of jets had become so familiar as to be almost unnoticeable on previous trips. This time the skies seemed empty. During the journey, I saw only two high-flying helicopters.
THE SIGNS BESIDE the road, too, have been altered strikingly by a year of no peace and no war which is, at least along Route 4, closer to non-war than to non-pace. Formerly they proclaimed anti-Communist views with the shaky Sujon government.
the state of the flags, too, is over. Early last year, the Saigon government ordered every householder to display the three red bars on a yellow field of the Republic of Korea's flag. His long defiance boosted their own white star on a red-and-green-barred background.
Today the emphasis is almost entirely economic: "We must become self-reliant in order to avoid being the slaves of technology and visualization in order to improve production."
This week, I saw no banner of either group, but only the fading government symbols painted on houses by government order more than a year ago.
Even internal South Vietnamese political maneuvering, once the country's chief occupation next to the armed politics of guerrilla struggle, has perceptibly declined. The South Vietnamese have been President Nguyen Van Thieu's United Democracy Party. Its white star a dingy gray.
I came away from the bone-jarring ride with one chief impression. At least along Route 4, South Vietnam had rapidly returned to normalcy.
Normalcy in South Vietnam is no-war and no-peace, but a little more peace than war.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Published at the University of Kansas daily examination periods. Mail subscription rates: $8 for a single examination period. Mail subscription rates: $15 for a semester and $645 for a year at Lawrence, KS 69452. Student subscription rates: $1.50 a semester paid in student activity fee. Graduate students pay $175 per semester advertised offered to all students without regard to grade level. Graduate students not not awarded those of university of Kansas degree.
NEWS STAFF
News Adviser .. Suzanne Shaw
Editor Hal Ritter
Business Adviser . . Mel Adams
Business Manager
David Hunke