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Wednesday, April 10, 1974
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN commu Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Resignation Quandary
Those who are calling for President Nixon's resignation are of two types—those who support Nixon and those who do not. The arguments for resignation presented by both sides are essentially the same. Resignation, they say, has little value out of an unpleasant situation for the nation as a whole as well as for Nixon.
The Nixon supporters, such as Sen. James Buckley, C-N.Y., base their argument on the grounds that resignation would serve "the greater interest of the nation." Nixon's opponents have an additional reason for favoring resignation: they want him out of office and the process of impeachment doesn't assure that result. Buckley's arguments for resignation carry the most force because of their thoughtfulness and Buckley's high regard for Nixon.
Buckley argues for resignation on the grounds that impeachment would have disruptive effects on the nation. The Senate, Buckley says, "would become a twentieth century Roman Colosseum, as the performers are thrown to the electronic lions. The most sordid dregs up by the Watergate miners would inflame the passions of the domestic audience and provoke the guffaws, prurient curiosity or amazement of the outside world."
Buckley's fear of impeachment is quite reasonable. If Nixon is tried and convicted by the Senate, there is reason to believe that his supporters would persist in believing that Nixon had been railroaded. If Nixon is
acquitted, his opponents would probably consider it a cover up. The debate would continue regardless of the verdict.
In spite of these considerations, Nixon's resignation would not be a satisfactory conclusion to the Watergate scandal. Although ideological fanatics probably will never be convinced by facts that don't support their pet theories, the majority of them are capable of weighing the evidence reasonably. Resignation would deprive the people of the opportunity to hear the facts and decide the issue.
Furthermore, Nixon's resignation wouldn't strengthen the faith of the American people in their institutions. If extraordinary means, such as resignation, must be found to handle extraordinary circumstances, some persons will question the efficacy of our system and consider allowing the impeachment process to follow its constitutional course would show the American people that the system is viable.
Finally, Americans must consider the effect of their actions on future generations. To allow the question of guilt or innocence to go unanswered, as resignation probably would do, would leave doubts to gnaw at our collective conscience and provide fuel for future ideological fires. The impeachment process offers the best chance of clearing up the Watergate scandal to the satisfaction of present and future Americans.
—John Bender
By SEN. EDMUND S. MUSKIE
D-MAINE
Special to the Los Angeles Times
Muskie Urges Congressional TV
"Good morning, Mr. Phelps. These are the names of the $35 members of Congress. Less than half the people in the country know which ones speak for them. Only two percent of all members of Congress are doing. Fewer than one out of three trusts them very far. A total of 42 per cent believe that most elected officials do not trust their colleagues. Three-quarters believe that special interests get more from the government than ordinary people do. And, by every measurement of public opinion, the fewest confidence in their political leadership.
"Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find new ways for government to communicate with people, so that contact can strengthen public confidence."
No television script writer is ever going to write such an opening sequence for an adventure thriller. Nevertheless, the risk of writing a screenplay with confidence in our system is at least partly caused by a collapse of communication between the government and the governed. Last ingesting remedy for that crisis must be written so that reopen the dialog between the two.
Not long ago I testified before the Joint Committee on Congressional Operations about the inadequacy of traditional means for maintaining contact between officials and their constituents. I asked the committee to seriously study the idea that candidates should cover floor debates but also engage in public-affairs broadcasting on its own.
congressional debates would either bore the public or encourage oratorical grand-standing by ambilists politicians—or both. I said that because TV is operated congresionally operated TV service—I said that I could estimate its cost but that it would be more expensive than the price we now pay for public ignorance.
Both proposals are controversial. At the hearing, some committee members exasperated, saying they do not know.
IT IS OBVIOUS that such ignorance is costly. A Loa Harris public opinion survey, conducted last fall for the Senate subcommittee on intergovernmental relations, found that 48 percent of Americans from existing public and private institutions and their abiding confidence that government can be made to work. The survey also indicated that many Americans are willing to get involved in the affairs of their community, state and nation.
The problem is how to encourage that public participation. Part of the answer, it
Scandals Plague Religious Empire
By STEVEN W. LEWIS
Kansas Staff Reporter
Thirty-five dissident ministers of Herbert W. Armstrong's fundamentalist religious empire, the Worldwide Church of God, met in Washington with Associate Church of God. The new church appears to be the culmination of many centuries of opposition within Armstrong's $8,000-member church.
order to line their pockets with money.
Evidence of dissent within Armstrong's 40-year-old empire, which is larger than the church, has led to organizations combined, became public late in February, when six deputy ministers released a 12-page statement accusing the Church's leaders of wastiness and neglect.
WITHIN A WEEK, 20 ministers were accused of dissolality to the church and were fired, and all Worldwide Church Sabbath services for March 2 were cancelled.
The dissidents' statement accused Garner Tear Armstrong, Herbert's 44-year-old son and gloom-and-doom spokesman for the White House misconduct. It also accused Herbert himself of wasfully stealing members' records from his dictatorial control over church doctrine.
The Armstrongs have refused to comment specifically to the charges. Their speeches, however, have attempted to provide evidence of their dissidents of manufacturing grievances in
IN AN APRIL 5 World Tomorrow broadcast over New Orleans' radio station WWL, Garner Ted accused the press of sensationalizing the dispute.
"I have never seen such sensationalization of something in my entire life," Garner Ted said. "It's another good example of the way people like to try to wash linen in front of the entire world. We have this attitude that by exposing real or imagined problems of other people, we can be able to find solutions that have been done that to the White House."
For example, in the February 1974 issue of Good News, an Armstrong magazine, writes that you know I know and my father knows, that you have worked and loved about the Work to which we have all dedicated our lives. . . But you don't need to know about anyone's sins—in or out of the
**BREHREN, LET'S forsake gossip and talebearing. Let's abandon and burial all stories of others' alleged sins. Let's speak to hear and to steal from evil about our brethren.**
It is clear from Garner Ted's commentary as well as from the church's publications, that Herbert and Garner Ted were among the first Nixon and his spokesman, Ronald Ziegler.
In the March 1974 issue of Good News, a royal Worldwide church minister pleaded with his congregation to change their diets.
"As long as God allows officials to remain in office, citizens are obligated to respect their offices and remain subject to their authority. No matter how corrupt government figures may be . . . it is God's ultimate responsibility to deal with them.
sexual misconduct on the part of Garner Ted is supported by past events. In January 1972, Garner Ted was mysteriously expelled from the church by Herbert, who wrote to insiders that his son was "in the bonds of Satan."
"Since it is God who has set them in office," the minister continued, "it is 'his responsibility to remove them.' . . . It is a citizen's duty to submit patiently to public officials, not condemning or reacting violently against the obvious faults inherent in human leadership. . . .
After four months in exile, Garner Ted
"As long as God allows officials to remain in office, citizens are obligated to respect their offices and remain subject to their authority."
"That gives no one the license or right to accuse, condemn, or malign—either physically or verbally—the human enemy" *then* "concluded this Armstrong apodized.*
Time magazine has said Garner Ted's Watergate-like defense is an attempt to invoke divine executive privilege in the press. The pressure on the press for reporting his alleged misconduct isn't original either. The pressure on him to reinquish his position as successor to his predecessor is much stronger.
THE DISSIDENTS'ACCUSATION of
Environmental Law Often Broken
That is the dull wording of the law, but its message to the government was clear: no
The Washington Post
By COLMAN McCARTHY
WASHINGTON--Among those who watch government lawlessness—in all its shadings, not merely the loud blacks and whites of Watergate—many believe that the Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is regularly and most casually broken laws.
Government abuse of this law is worth studying in detail because it suggests that the criminal law breaking isn't confined to those who recidivists the mugger, robbers and other repeaters supposedly hardened in their youth. It could be an official offices of the praised and promoted.
The National Environmental Policy Act was passed in 1968. The relevant part of the law asked that officials draft a statement that would tell of the environmental impact and environmental effects that couldn't be worked out, other methods of action, the relationship between local short-term uses and long-term productivity and any irreversible commitments of resources that would be carried out.
more headlining pollution, no more leaping without looking. The law intended that officials provide information to the citizens, enabling the latter to displace an act if the former is unlawful.
THESE ARE ONES who may be more dangerous than the street criminals because, instead of stealing our wallets and our cars, they are making off with a national treasure that no insurance company can replace; the public's trust in government.
AT ITS ESSENCE, what NEPA does is detail the consequences of bad policy. It shows who will be the real victims of federal irresponsibility. A common federal issue is to call them "environmentalists" a code word for antiforee enterprise.
**THIS LAW HAD** a handson sendoff. On Jan. 1, 1970, the President said, "It is particularly fitting that my first official act in this new decade is to approve the law that will govern the year later it was as if the law didn't exist. Sen. Philip A. Hart, D-Mich., wrote to the President complaining that "time and again the agencies have ignored the provisions" of NEPA. Cited abuses of the law by the Federal Power Commission, the Department of Transportation, the Engineers, HEW, HUD, the Commerce Department, the Civil Aeronautics Board and the Tennessee Valley Authority. As an example of illegality, Hart told of the Federal Power Commission's licensing H of the railroad and not once filing an impact statement.
repeated, admitting to church elites, "he hinned against God, His church . . . and the wife God gave me." He immediately resumed his TV-radio broadcasts for the Worldwide Church, whose revenues had significantly while his slick-talk was absent.
Thus, a Midwestern farm family whose livelihood is threatened by strip mining, or Western ranchers whose water would be diverted by oil shale destruction, or fishermen whose jobs would be lost by a refinery's pollution or drilling in the fishing grounds—suddenly, if these citizens dare to produce productive members of the free enterprise system and are dismissed as "environmentalists."
“THE ABUSES,” said one lawyer who has watched NEPA, “Now take the form less of ignoring it than of weak compliance. For example, an agency will make its own attorney fill a paper statement that falls to another firm of comments of those critical of the action.”
Another lawyer said, "The courts look at the thick, 1,000-page statement and are impressed by the agencies' hard work and sincerity. Actually, it is another evasion."
COMPLAINTS AGAINST Herbert's doctrinal inflexibility and lavish spending of church money also were verified last month by two Worldwide Church vice presidents, who have since been requested by Herbert to remain in leave of absence from their church duties.
seems to me, is to let people know what is going on and what those goings-on mean to them. The Harris figures indicated that most people currently lack that knowledge.
The evidence suggests that Hart's letter was ignored. Now, nearly four years later, a consensus of several non-governmental lawyers says the law is still widely abused.
"What the government fears," says Joseph Browder of Washington's Environmental Policy Center, "is that NEPA forces disclosures, not just about the environment, but also about strip mining of the West, for example, disclosures about how much wildlife will be destroyed or air and water polluted isn't so threatening to the government as how much land will be taken out of production. The economy will not region's economy, not just its ecology."
The two vice presidents gave reporters a statement that said that Garner Ted himself had agonized over Herbert's "dictatorial double rules" that were "out of the dark ages."
Perhaps the most amazing fact yet about EPA's isn’t that it has been broken so often, but that it has been used officials recently discussed ways of getting it presents a new twist in government lawlessness: weakening a law that was more than weakly obeyed in the first place.
The two vice presidents also said Garner Ted had agreed with them that Herbert wasted millions of dollars on "paintings, art and decorating," said the jewelry, bric-a-brac, and the like."
Herbert's often bizarre doctrines require the observance of Old Testament laws and holidays. He doesn't tolerate divorce and incest, but he also eats and eating bacon is considered a sin.
Those who benefit most from existing means of contact between officials and the public are the well-to-do and the well-educated. The lack of how government operates receive the least information. Television news is the primary source of knowledge about public affairs for 65 per cent of the people, and that depends onises as income and education levels drop.
THE SENIOR ARMSTRONG owns a jet airplane, three cadillacs, three homes and a Rolls-Royce. Moreover, he has built three posh but unaccredited 'Ambassador Colleges', where he educates his disciples. This month a $10 million concert hall will be opened at the Pasadena campus. Herbert is the co-founder of Aurora for opening night at a cost of, $500,000.
tithing church members, who sometimes must dish out 30 per cent of their incomes to the poor.
The church's estimated income is $55 million annually, most of which comes from
MEANWHILE, AN estimated 3,000 persons have switched from Armstrongism to the new Associated Church of God, which lacks a dictatorial central authority. In a letter to his loyal ministers, Herbert Armstrong decried those who called for democracy within the church, saying that Armstrong was "the very opposite of God's way."
THE WHITE HOUSE made this discovery a long time ago, and presidents have followed with great success to reach the people in their voices speaking in a chorus of contradictory voices, can't expect to have similar impact or ability to obtain similar exposure of its activities.
Those facts argue strongly for two conclusions: traditional avenues of communication are inadequate, and television is most influential way to restore contact.
Herbert has promised his two dissident vice presidents that he will devote himself to the war.
Also in a letter last month, Garner Terd blamed his church's problems on a "demonic influence" that desperately atterted him, so seething to divide, confuse and dissuade the flock.
If all this seems familiar, it is probably because the Worldwide Church of God, proclaimed by Herbert Armstrong as God's true church, has so many similarities to the Nixon administration, complete with its own Watergate.
I don't think such exposure will reveal the members of Congress collectively to be argumentative, long-winded or irresponsible. Some of us are guilty of those failings as a result of adulthood, but I am always impressed by how they rise above our natural weaknesses.
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Since our mark-up sessions (the committee meetings where legislation is drafted) were opened to the press and the public, my experience has been that outsiders looking over our shoulders have had a healthy influence.
BUT SUCH PROBLEMS shouldn't preclude at least a modest beginning. Perhaps a series of monthly Congress meetings, mark-up sessions and floor debates on significant legislation, could be presented in documentary fashion. To round out such broadcasts—assuming the Senate would now instituted would carry them—a panel of Senators, Congressmen and executive-branch experts sponsoring and opposing a bill under study should be contacted to their toll-free telephone calls about their work.
THE OPEN MARK-UPS I have attended on executive privilege, budget reform and procurement policy bills, for instance, have been involved in the case. However, our work was given little or no press coverage—perhaps because conflicts were resolved instead of accented. Noise, I often feel, makes news. Important decisions are made, but more attention than important issues.
Because Congress can't always rely on the press to present an informative and reasonably complete account of its activities, let alone to reach the widest audience. I do not believe Congress has to explore ways to present its work directly to the people.
The idea of a congressional Television network isn't without its technical and economic costs, and involve huge investment and operating costs in concept and would put added pressure on limited airways. Then the implication of increased revenue have to be overcome through performance.
Perhaps the idea of a branch of government publicizing itself sounds too much like Big Brother and 1984. Beyond that, perhaps the public would be bored instead of engaged. Perhaps, too, people would prefer to watch rurrals of "Mission: Impossible." Because it is supposed to refuse to try out new means of communication, we will be hurt further by old ones which, the evidence indicates, simply don't work.
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