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Fridav, March 29, 1974
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comme
Editorialists, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Grade Panic Hits KU
If anything's erupting here at the University of Kansas it's peace and quiet. The days of moratoriums, sit-ins, protest marches and firebombings, when attending classes and studying were almost extracurricular activities for many, seem to be gone for good.
Now studying is the main event, and competition for grades has driven out the counter-culture of only a few years ago.
This trend can be seen and measured as well as felt. The only people carrying signs these days are gospel-shouting evangelists. Bulletin boards are almost void of notices about rallies or activist activities. Students still lounge around on the lawns between classes, but usually with book or pen in hand.
A recent National Observer article reported that college librarians said usage of reference materials and other library services had increased by nearly 50 per cent in the past couple of years.
Students have always lied, cheated, stolen and given up sleep for good grades but they do deserve it. Students who desperate. Grades have become
This return to the books and the accompanying grade panic are only a part of the changing scene. It is part of students' attempts to "get over" their fear of school; they had not accomplished much by activism so they drew inward.
increasingly important these days because jobs are scarce, and only the best students get hired. Grades also often dictate who is admitted to professional and graduate schools and who is not.
Students now seem to be caught in a period of exaggerated self-concern. Somehow, they must strike a balance somewhere between pragmatism and withdrawal. In many cases, the world—not in revolutionary reform and not within ourselves, but somewhere in between.
A movie now showing in Lawrence, "The Paper Chase," describes the grade mill students are in; how it can destroy their lives or how it can grind them into unquestioning, unsympathetic automakers on the job. How could a Harvard law student, but the same theme could be used to describe the existence of KU business majors.
Bunny Miller
Insuring Kidnaps
"Kidnap Insurance Available" read advertisements in the newspapers of the wealthy suburbs of Detroit. Lloyd's of London insurance company was offering a policy to the residents of the wealthy suburbs in which many executives of the three major automakers live.
The offer read in part: "Now, for the man who appears to have everything—a new kind of insurance has come into existence, instigated by the current rash of kidnappings."
For years, the U.S. insurance companies have offered insurance for ransom and extortion. But they have kept it quiet to prevent would-be kidnapers from assuming a guaranteed ransom.
The open advertising by Lloyd's is a reflection of the pervasiveness of kidnapping, the latest fashion in criminal activity. And Lloyd's of London's attempt to capitalize on the recent rash of kidnappings is an indication of how society adjusts to the criminal activity that seems to defy reason as well as other inhibitors.
Vietnam, Watergate, the hijacking of airplanes and terrorist bombings are all calamities that seem to inexorably come and go, unimpeded by legal restraint. They include acts for a time and must be accepted.
Some hard-line law and order proponents have argued that the best way to deter these crimes is to make the already stiff penalties even stiffer. They have proposed, for example, that the death penalty be reinstated to deter potential kidnappings.
This implies the faulty notion that there is some logic behind the crime and its activity, reasonable would avoid such a matter who the penalty, and a man
man who was inhibited by authority would be deterred by the life imprisonment penalty for kidnapping.
There is no doubt, though, that there is a pattern to the series of fashionable crimes. There have always been hijackings of some sort. But for a short while hijackings became more common, and then they became publicized and then they became even more common. Terrorist activity, especially in Northern Ireland and the Middle East, seemed to take the place of hijacking as the fashionable crime and was soon replaced by kidnappings.
The situation poses an onerous dilemma for the press. Publicity is an important factor in the development of fashionable crime. The publicity the criminal element gets, no matter how negative, does not alter its overall activity by merely placing the idea in susceptible minds. Yet the press cannot ignore the kidnappings of famous persons.
The press must either risk endangering the public by exposure of the activity or deprive the public of important information.
Certainly the Lloyd's of London's open advertising is an unnecessary intrusion into a tragic situation. It encourages further criminal activity.
There is no easy solution to this problem. A grim fact of life is that one person or group of persons in almost any situation can gain some advantage, such as with a weapon, and manipulate the lives of others.
It is the kind of adversity that seems inevitable and can only be minimized by the elimination of violence—and be borne with dignity.
Bill Gibson
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Little Men Pay; Politicians Evade
Tax Loopholes
BY EMNEST CONINE
The Los Angeles Times
Rep. Wilbur D. Mills, D-Ark., as chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, probably knows more about tax loopholes than does any other politician in America. But he told television interviewers the other day that, in order to get a Casesi S wife, he doesn't even take the恳请 deduction to which he is entitled.
The disclosure no doubt made Milla a leading candidate for village idiot among most of his fellow politicians. But if this debate had not gone elsewhere, exception among men in public life, President Nixon wouldn't be teetering on the edge of impaction, and incumbents of both parties wouldn't be looking so closely at the problem in big red letters. "thorn them all out!"
Mr. Nixon's own adventures in tax avoidance are by now well known. Thanks in great part to a mammoth deduction for donation of his "private" papers to the National Archives, the federal income taxes on an adjusted gross income of more than $1.2 million from 1969
through 1972. In two of those years, the president's tax bill actually came to less than $1,000—about what a working stuff making $7,500 or $8,500 would pay.
THERE IS NO QUESTION that the revelation has hurt Mr. Nixon, perhaps fatally. A lot of people were willing to admit that Mr. Nixon could be the president's people only got caught doing what all politicians do anyway. But they are incensed by the discovery that their president has been sitting in the majesty of the Senate around for ways to bear the tax collection.
It can turn out, however, that the
Ductocrats are in a very poor position to
capture them.
Whereas Mr. Nixon took $75,000 in deductions for the donation of his papers to the National Archives, Lyndon B. Johnson is now alleged to have claimed deductions of at least $10 million, and possibly $29 million, for the donation of his papers.
It also turns out that former vice president Hubert H. Humphrey and former Governor Edmund G. Brown of California substantially reduced their federal taxes
THERE SEEMS TO BE no question that the Humphrey and Brown donations were made before this particular tax loophole was closed; their deductions were therefore reduced. But if he missed the deadline and therefore owes more than $300,000 in back taxes.
through use of the same tax provision, which has since been repealed.
Arthur Bleich, the president's tax accountant, is still convinced that Mr. Nikson's tax returns conformed strictly to the law. But he says he unsuccessfully tried to warn the president that it would be unwise to claim all the deductions in any event.
Blech explained that he habitually advises clients in the $200,000-a-year-and-up bracket to pay taxes of at least 10 per cent of their incentives whether they have to or not.
EVEN 10 PER CENT is a ludicrously low tax burden for anybody making that kind of money. But Mr. Nixon, of course, is by no means the only person in his paid considerably less in some years.
In California, for example, San Francisco Mayor Joseph L. Alato confirmed in
Griff and the Unicorn
November that he paid no federal income taxes in 1970, 1971 and 1972. William M. Roth paid no federal income taxes from 1962 through 1985. Both men are presently seeking the Democratic nomination for governor.
In Congress are those like Sen. Frank Church, D-Hda., who paid almost 32 million in 1972 income in taxes. But they were not the only ones to Reid, D-N.Y., who according to published accounts, paid less than six per cent in taxes on a 1972收入 of about $124,000.
THE CURRENT ISSUE of Fortune carries a not-unfriendly profile of Stewart R. Molt, General Motors owners and political angel. He gave generously to the presidential efforts of Sen. Eugene McCarthy in 1988 and Sen. George McGovern recently he financed "The Offenses of Richard Koehler—a book-length brief prepared by four Washington lawyers that calls for the impeachment of the president.
But to quote Fortune, "Mott is volubly proud of the fact that, with an annual income ranging between $500,000 and $1.5 million over the last three years, he wound up paying no federal taxes for 1971 and 1972 and will have only a small bill, if any, for the next three years." In fact that quite a few Americans are upset about millions who don't, pay taxes."
All in all, the Treasury Department reports that 402 Americans with incomes over $100,000 of 1972 paid not a cent of taxes. Other taxes. Overseas taxes. Pay considerably less than their fair share.
It was a far cry from the explosive tension that surrounded Berrigan's arrest in 1987. He was an avid golfer.
When the question is raised, most tax avoiders—whether businessmen, politicians or run-of-the-mill coupon clippers—respond that they have done nothing wrong, that they only took advantage of taxes in the tax code. Both, the California businessman-credited specifically calls for tax reform so that and other people of similar means won't be able to get away with such stuff in the future.
bv Sokoloff
Berrigans Continue War Protests
MAYBE SOMEDAY Congress will actually get around to writing minimum-tax legislation.
Meanwhile, there is something especially revolting about affluent politicians and wealthy contributors who are full of enthusiasm for government spending and want to encourage more money pay the freight while they seek out every conceivable tax loophole in the books.
"It's a deeply felt experience by those of who still protest," Berrigan said. Unless we resist, we become one of those who short things like the NSA through silence.
Anybody looking for reasons for the turned-off, cynical attitude of the American people toward their elected representatives needn't look much further than that.
WASHINGTON- Phillip F. Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister Barrigan are still marching and dramatizing their protests against war by slushing blood over symbols of the "American war machine." But, in these items of peaceful campuses and museums, many of the students are no longer certain that the protest tactics of the 1960s are accumulating anything.
By JIM LANDERS
"The very idea of building a mass movement again to protest war is absurd," says Berrigan, an ex-convict and excommunicated priest. "It's only your most dedicated, most purified through arrests and arrests that keep going. The movement was a question still stumming. There are only pockets of resistance now where that survives."
"I sometimes wonder whether I might be more useful in jail," he said, recalling his release from prison 14 months ago after serving three years for convictions stemming from his protests of the Vietnam war. "I assume you have to thrive out with others."
On Friday, the Berghani marched with 21 other demonstrators up to the entrance of the National Security Agency (NSA) at FT. Meade, Md., and拍紧 about a gallon of blood over a wooden cross. A platoon of military policemen stood silently before the men they arrested three of them when they crossed the picket line of soldiers.
BERRIGRAN SMILED after the arrests.
"We can leave now," he told the group,
whose members stood chatting with a group
of other members, wondering
what would happen next.
records, and even further removed from the national attention which focused on the ex-Jospehite priest and his brother, Rev. Daniel Berrigan, for their roles in the draft record burnings of the "Catsville 9" and the conspiracy charges of plotting to kidnap Henry Kissinger that led to the trial of the "Harrisburg Seven" in 1972.
Berrigan, 49, says he is now a "full-time peace worker" and travels with his wife and a few associates between New York and Washington. Working with the "pockets of resistance" he describes--moving from one dramatized protest to the next.
HE SAYS HE plans to stay in Maryland, living in a home in Baltimore where the Berrigs regularly meet with anti-war activists.
"Being this close to Washington is like working at the heart of the lion—or, more appropriately, the lower bowels of the beast," he says.
The Berrigans drew public attention last
He acknowledges that the rallies where thousands of supporters cheered him and his brother, then fugitives wanted by the FBL belong to an era that has passed.
summer after Mrs. Berrigan was arrested in a Glen Burdie, Md., department store for shoplifting. She pleaded guilty to the charge and was fired and nut on probation.
"I THINK IT was inevitable that those times should pass," he said. "I think Dan and I are still struggling now with the question of where can we be of the most use in keeping the spirit of non-violent resistance to war alive.
"The public is more prepared to accept you as someone on the lecture circuit giving your manager 25 per cent of the take," he said. "I had bawking agents tell me I had to be in a year doing lots of screening and being fat in my own way, That's no answer."
BERRIGRAN RETURNS to his favorite theme of the 1970s.
"There are only a few people, purified by suffering and arrests, who are living the pragmatics of nonviolent resistance to the war machine," he says.
With his wife, a former catholic nun to whom he was secretly married in 1969, Berrigan is the leading figure in a series of weekly protests between Baltimore and Washington during the Catholic season of lent.
Friday's march on NSA headquarters was a small demonstration with the same tactics used by Berrigan in the 1960s to his protests against violence and warfare.
THE DEMONSTRATORS charged that NSA coordinated the overthrow of Salvador Allende, the marxist president of Chile who was toppled by a military coup and committed suicide last year, and that NSA surveillance and electronics activities built the "electronic air war" of B-52 bombings over Indochina.
Polls Not Factor in Impeachment
By WILLIAM RASPBERRY
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON—To listen to his remarks, you'd think Richard Nixon is about to be driven out of office because he has taken over the White House.
Wouldn't it be terrible, he keeps asking, if a president should be forced to abdicate whenever he's down in the polls? He asked it again in his Houston news conference Tuesday night. Then he gave an example of just how terrible it would be:
"You recall (in December 1972) that I found it necessary, because of the breakdown in negotiations in Paris with the North Vietnamese, to order the bombing on military targets in North Vietnam . . . The bombing began. We lost planes."
"And at that time, I can assure that not only my friends but many others who had supported the actions that I had taken to attempt to bring the war in Vietnam to an honorable conclusion criticized, and criticized very strongly what I had done . . .
"THE DAY AFTER Christmas, some of my closest advisers felt that because a poll that they had taken privately indicated that I had dropped 20 points in the polls since the bombing began, that I should consider stopping it."
Well, naturally he didn't stop it, and naturally the result was, as he tells it, dramatic success. Then:
"Now, I want future presidents to be able to make hard decisions, even though they think they may be unpopular, even though they think they may bring them down in the polls, even though they may think they may bring them criticism from the Congress which could result in demands that he resign or be impeached.
GRANTED THAT the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong was a hard decision, that it was profoundly unpopular and that the president was stuck with it. What does that have to do with the present situation?
I don't recall that anybody even mentioned the words "resignation" or "impeachment" as even his hardcore sup-
surely he is not suggesting that he faces impeachment now because of his tough, unpopular decisions. Even in the wake of the precipitous 20-point drop in the popularity that he alluded to, the governor proposed was that he stop the bomber that produced the drop.
porters are doing now. He had made a tough, unpopular decision, and he paid for it in the polls.
Now try to make the analogy to 1974. He's down in the polls, all right, but as a result of what controversial policy? What print media would it be if it were a political party?
THE TOUGH, UNPOPULAR decisions by Mr. Nikon or his aides that have pressured the polls, and quivering on evidence include:
—The decision that it is better to continue to cover up high-level involvement in the Watergate scandal than to let the truth come
—the decision that it was better to collect an enormous campaign war chest in laundered cash than to disclose it and how to do so.
*
—re decision to time the milk producers' pricing break in such a way as to raise suspicions of a political payoff for political campaigns.
—The decision to play funny games with his real estate transactions and taxes.
The decision to justify a half-million-dollar personal income tax deduction with a back-dated deed.
—The decision to withhold tape recordings and other evidence of possible White House wrongdoing followed by the decision to render up incomplete recordings with convenient gaps followed by a new recording in the panel of experts declared the gags had to be deliberate erasures.
THESE ARE HARDLY the sort of tough decisions that need to be preserved for future presidents. The talk of future presidents, in fact, seems little more than an attempt to blur the distinction between presidency and Richard Nixon, in order to save Richard Nixon.
or it is the incumbent, not the office, who is in trouble. The trouble comes not from the polls but from the fact that he has presided over an administration of unprecedented corruption and an American people did believe him when said: "I am not a crook."