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Monday, February 11, 1974
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Vern's New Target
Atty. Gen. Vern Miller is riding high again, brandishing the new inquisition powers that were granted to him in the 1972 Kansas
Miller issued 375 subpoenaes to Kansas newspapers and radio stations, demanding disclosure of records of advertising revenues submitted by nationalDOT campaigns of Gov. Robert Docking and Morris Kay.
The inquisition powers are an ominous addition to the weapons of the crusading attorney general. But the target of his investigation wasn't the state's press, bingo players, doe smokers, pornography exhibitors or other maligned minorities.
This time the target was Miller's fellow-Democrat, Gov. Docking. This politically volatile investigation tends to support the theory that Miller enforces the law rigidly, overzealous, but fairly.
The subpoenaes are part of an investigation into the alleged contribution of $30,000 to the Docking campaign in exchange for a $25 million architectural contract for the University of Kansas, Medical Center.
The advertising records of state newspapers and radio stations were subpoenaed to determine whether the content it existed and, if so, how it was spent.
This fishing expedition is typical of Miller's ruthless approach to law enforcement, but at least it is directed against corruption in government, a more legitimate, serious area of crime. This is a notable deviation from Miller's past capers.
The respectability of the state legal system could rise again to a dignified level if the attorney general would quit hiding in car or hide under a sign, or direct his attention toward crimes that genuinely victimize
individuals or the public
The attorney general's office requires a lawyer's, not a policeman's presence. Instead of enforcing every law with reckless obstinance, the attorney general must discriminate between petty and serious crimes and set priorities accordingly.
This involves imaginative recognition of the needs and differences of communities and of the laws which genuinely need to be enforced to prevent crimes that harm unwilling citizens.
Some of the public may be occasionally gluttonous, stoned, obscene or may dabble with any of the Seven Deadly Sins. But such things are moral concerns and are unenforceable. The acceptance of this fact will prevent much grief for all concerned and unclog the court system so that serious crimes can be more easily enforced.
Certainly petty morality laws should be abandoned or at least be given the lowest priority. The way not to solve the problem is to slap the state with such rigid law enforcement that the citizenry finally grows weary of it and insists on changing the laws. The legislative process is too slow and the public hysteria concerning drugs and morality too great for such a method to work.
The Miller investigation into alleged corruption in state government should be encouraged. His critics should make it clear that they are not opposed to law enforcement but recognize that just and necessary laws that prevent one citizen from abusing another should be thoroughly and forthrightly enforced.
The attorney general might then take the demanding responsibility to deal with the need he attentions as dictated by his common sense and imagination.
-Bill Gibson
Demon Ale Menace
The report by beer distributors (Kansan, Feb.5) that beer usage in our town is increasing is truly shocking. How can the people of lawrence passively watch thisImmigration and still call them citizens?
The hard-nosed individualist among us says, "Let them drink beer if they want to, it's their own lives they're ruining." But this
The vast body of common knowledge about the evils of beer drinking is daily being augmented by a growing number of dedicated research scientists.
In this era of beer drinking and building burning, it's a fortunate family that doesn't have a loved one in the house. You go away from the rayears of alcohol.
same person is the one who curses the loudest when some beer-crazed student rapes his daughter or someone else. You can be beer money or sets fire to his dog.
Even if one discounts the crimes of violence caused by habitual beer drinking, the incredible data being accumulated on its relationship to sexual impotency, insanity, birth defects and the like are enough to bring shudders at the sight of a beer truck.
The sad part is that no one ever intends to become a drunk—he only wants a big sip of beer "just to see what it's like."
The time for the authorities to act is 1037 h. For an entire generation is 1057 h. DePastor
—Alan Hurlbut
WASHINGTON—"There will be no recession in the United States of America," said President Nixon in his State of the Union address. An administration economist with whom I had been watching the speech, grimaced and covered his head: He had just been discoursing about the recession the nation faced.
Council of Economic Advisers chairman Herbert Stain not only joins in the disclaimer of a recession—but just to make sure, he wants to redefine it.
The notion that the President could declare a recession out of bounds with the flick of his speech-writer's wrist only added to the problem of unreality evoked by the whole address.
Arthur M. Okun, former economic council chairman, said, "I have a new perfect advance indicator of recession, and that's when Herb Stains starts splitting hairs about the definition. The last time he did this was in 1970."
BY HOBART ROWEN The Washington Post
HIS GLOWING ACCOUNT of a prospering nation, busily at work, leading the other free nations in a quest for peace with Nixon. How did that happen, what country Mr. Nixon was talkful about.
Nixon's Economic Forecast Unreal
It didn't sound much like the United States in 1974, beset with rampant inflation and growing unemployment (already up to $8 a week in October); with an energy crisis; with food
The economic report notes that "we enter 1974 in a condition of high inflation and in the early stages of a slowdown." It goes on to explain that, "the failure of a mild recession while avoiding the word."
ABOVE ALL, the report stresses the question marks that have been thrown into the economic outlook as a result of the energy crisis, uncertainties that could force the administration to be attempting to bail out some of something worse than a mild recession.
"In view of the uncertainties facing us," the economic report says, "It is extremely important to be prepared with fiscal measures to support or restrain the economy if it is clearly running outside the general track described here for 1974.
"The administration is now in the process of preparing for support action. A decision to take such measures would have to be made with great caution, however, in view of the additional supply bottlenecks that might be caused by the energy shortage."
fortunately, the very mild slowdown which we anticipated for 1974 now threatens to be somewhat more pronounced because of the oil embargo, the resulting shortages and the
"We expect, therefore, that during the early part of this year output will rise little if at all, unemployment will rise somewhat and inflation will be high."
SO THE SITUATION is much more touch-and-go than Mr. Nixon wanted us to believe—presumably because a candid evaluation on the TV tube would have helped erase the image he was trying to secure of a successful, productive five years in office.
Even the President's written State of the Union message was candid: "Un-
Mr. Nixon didn't dwell on the failures of his economic policies and forecasts of the past few years. His economic message claimed that last year "the real income of the U.S. households per capita, after taxes, rose by 8.3 per cent, also above our long-term rate."
rms is the kind of slippery statistic with which the President tries to cozy people into thinking that they are better off than they were in 1973. Non-farm workers had actually declined in 1973. The per capital figure cited by the President includes all income, farm and non-farm, dividends, tringe benefits as well as payroll taxes. They take home a pay of the average individual.
The most recent labor department report shows that in 1973, real average weekly
Computer Files Limitation Sought
To be brought back to earth, one has to go no farther than the economic report by the U.S. National Bureau of Standards that document can fairly be said to be more optimistic than some private assessments
The article, actually a syndicated column on the editorial page, had criticized the FBI's new computerized background file on criminals and suspected criminals. Calling it "the most dangerous column" the column raised the spectre of the computer becoming "the dawn of big brother."
"WASHINGTON—Two weeks ago a suburban newspaper publisher in Southern California returned from lunch to find two FBI agents waiting in his office. The agents insisted they had come to discuss an article the newspaper had recently published.
By ROBERT A. JONES The Los Angeles Times
For over an hour the agents attempted to convince the editors of the paper, the
Little Orphan Annie Fading Fast; Columnist Pleads for Euthanasia
price escalation and food shortages again on the horizon; and with little recent prospect
By PAUL RICHARD The Washington Post
Her hairdo is a mess. Her politics, once rightist and righteous, have gone all liberal and squishy. Her head has grown, her hair has crumbled, and she changes size from frape to frange.
earnings were down 1.5 per cent—the effect of an 8.8 per cent increase in consumer prices against a 7.2 per cent increase in average hourly earnings.
Ottoman things have to Little Otman Arnie, Leapin' Lizards, she looks like
The tyke has lost her tart, tough talk and her instinct for adventure. For almost half a century Annie knew the difference between good plain folks and creeps. Now she's hanging out with lobster-eating hippies in a psycheduled bus.
IT WASN'T FDR who caused her troubles, nor kidnappers, commuters, reformers, trade unions nor the graduated income tax.
Sufferin' sunfish!
Annie, once upon a time, had powerful protectors, but she's never faced such peril. Sandy has rescued her. Not have Daddy been to the waterfront or the magic blanket nor the cunning of the asp.
There are plenty of things right about the state of the union, including the fact that it has stood up so well, relatively, despite the challenges posed by the coronavirus for which the President is responsible.
Gray, who created her, wrote her and drew her has been dead since 1968.
A crusty old conservative like Daddy Warbucks, Gray believed in self-reliance, but when he died he left annie in the lurch. The Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate sent an SOS to the people who do comic strips.
Nor has Harold Gray.
Citing money as the reason, Caplin left
Since then, a lot of story men and artists—Henri Arnold, Joe Orlando, Hank Raduta, Bill Williams, Win Mortimer, Phil "Text" Blaisdale, Elliott Caplin, Michael Fleischer and Vic Martin—had meddled in Annie's life. —None of them were given bvines.
Millions read her once. Some sent her flowers when she was sick. Some were outraged by her politics and sent letters to the governor. Another girl, the Washington Post tried to drop the strip in the 1960s, angry Annie fans picketed the paper. But in October, when she stopped appearing in the Sunday comics, few noticed it to notice and there were few complaints.
HAROLD WAGA was the best writer this business ever saw," says Blaisdale, "but he couldn't really draw. Though I had to sweat, he'd actually put it in his fuzzy style and his iicky-pink penwork."
the strip in August. Blaisdell quit in December.
"Have you seen what they have done to Little Orphan Annie?" a Washington cabbie asked a her other day. "She looks like she's been drawn by a vegetable."
The syndicate, still hanging in there, now has hired someone else to do little Orphan Man.
THE UNDERTAKER has been carting off her readers," says Carlin.
Fleisher writes it now and Martin has been doing the drawing. As Annie's fans noticed in December, when his first stirs up the hair, he cannot draw in the style of Harold Grav
'I've asked a lot of people what they think of Jettick's chances,' says Blaidell. "It's hard to tell."
Annie once seemed real to millions of her
Lettick says that his Annie will look more like Gray's "younger, cutter and perhaps a little plumper." His first strip—with his bvline—will appear Wednesday morning.
The syndicate and Lettick are hoping that the little Annie will survive. But it's probable
Anaheim Bulletin, that the column was mistaken.
readers and to Harold Gray. Harold Gray believed.
"Read him," says Lettick. "He'd say things like, 'The only thing wrong with Russian roulette is that not enough Russians play it.' I can't write things like
"They said no intimidation was involved, but the whole point was to convince us not to print stories like that anymore," said Kenneth Grubbs, the paper's editorial page editor. The editors were unconvinced, and the agents left.
SADLY, ONE doesn't get a real picture of the state of the union from the President's address. For the most part, we are served up what Nixon's men want us to believe, like the council's assertion that the "maximum rate" is 49 per cent, or the "approximately" met last year, although the unemployment rate was 4.9 per cent, rather than 4.0 per cent.
Gray made lots of enemies, one suspects on purpose. He said he hated all reformers, and reformers hated him. The Catholic press objected to his "brass-knuckled loyalty," and the New Republic accused him of inserting Paxism into the funnies.
FBI AGENTS have made at least one other visit to people who publicly criticized their computerized files. The other case involved a Massachusetts resident who wrote to Gov. Francis W. Sargent about what of he believed were several abuses.
Nother could Capilln who said, "I love the way he told his stories, but I hate what he told me."
Neither could Fleisher.
Annie and her loyal dog Sandy (art!) minger on forever on the comic page; but if the choice were mine, I'd kill her off—or, as some might have thought, 1924, and start reprinting from scratch.
Officials at the Bureau deny that the actions are intended to squelch such criticism, but the incidents do reveal the seriousness with which the FBI—and other federal agencies—regard the public attitude toward a growing demand that the government's store of background information on individual citizens.
His strips were rarely dull.
Such fears may be difficult to assuage. Relatively minor abuses of data systems can ruin lives, as when the computer wrongly claims that innocent people have committed crimes or, almost as bad, when the machines are fodged suggestion that certain people are less than worthy citizens.
Increasingly, computerized records are being criticized for more subtle reasons, perhaps best expressed by author Donald G. Macrae:
"in all societies . . . men have lived in the interstices of their institutions. They have counted on the mercy of error, ignorance and dishonesty of their fellows and their state. In a world of computers this mercy may not long exist. All our failings and achievements, our credit-worth and our petty delinquencies, are insignificant in the constant resentment of the machine."
Business Advisor . . Mel Adams
Business Manager
David Hornbeck
With the notable exception of Massachusetts, these systems have grown without regard to state or federal regulation. In large part agencies are free to place whatever information they please with whom they see a need for information with whoever they see fit.
IN WASHINGTON a recent count showed there were at least 750 computerized data
systems under government control collecting every kind of personal information from mental illness, drug use, and juvenile delinquency to credit status and criminal activity. The number of data received is too small that no one has yet tried to count them.
After five years in office, the twin economic problems of high inflation and unemployment are still dominant. Mr. Nixon hasn't found the answers, although he's tried gradualism, expansion, controls, and now, seemingly, gradualism all over time. The current worsened by shortages of energy is made on an ad bac basis, day by day. The only thing that is constant is the dose of reassuring rhetoric.
All of that may soon change. In his state of the Union message, President Nixon said "The problem is not simply one of setting up a network of computers in automated data systems) but . . . of limiting the uses to which essentially private information is put and of recognizing the basic proprietary right each company has in information concerning himself."
The administration is expected to follow up the President's message with an extensive bill aimed primarily at the network of state and federal criminal data banks called the National Crime Information Center, currently under control of the FBL.
the unit is the product of several disputes between the Justice Department and other federal agencies, and was eventually disbanded. The unit agencies, principally the Department of Defense, the Small Business Administration, and the Civil Service Commission, would have the right to oppose features of the legislation in Congress.
These agencies objected to their exclusion—along with all other non-criminal agencies—from access to the information stored in the data banks. The bill specifies that only law enforcement groups will be given access unless federal or state statute specifically grants such access to other agencies.
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Case Closed On Robbery In Maryland
The FBI got their men, but nobody will go to jail for bank robbery. The bank got back $400,000 of its money, and the robbers or the robbers had themselves a $147,000 spending, sorry.
An assistant U.S. attorney got a guilty plea from one suspect on a reduced charge, but five of six persons allegedly connected with the heist or will get their freedom, one in part because the prosecutor thought they "to charge him while his buddies got off."
By FRED BARBASH
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON—A $47,000 bank holdup—the largest in Maryland and possibly U.S. history—has been solved and the bank robbers seems content.
A SIXTH SUSPECT pleaded guilty to a reduced charge and received a recommendation of lenency from the federal prosecutor.
The case, which federal investigators describe as "closed," involves the robbery of the Maryland National Bank's Friendship Branch and a $74,000 Airport branch of $47,000 on Sept. 28.
The robbers forced an employee arriving that morning to open the doors. They then deactivated bank alarmes and told tellers before leaving with bills in demonstrations of ten, twenties, fifties and hundreds. The airport is located about 10 miles south of Baltimore and 25 miles north of Washington, between the two cities.
AFTER A FOUR-MONTH FBI investigation, federal prosecutors in Baltimore believed they had found the man responsible, they say they were unsure of their case.
The whereabouts of the money, however, remained locked in the memories of the robbers and their accomplices. To Michael Marr, assistant attorney general for Maryland, the recovery of the cash was important as a "deterterent" to would-be robbers.
To Hilary Caplan, a lawyer for one of the men initially charged with the robbery, the prosecutor was under pressure from the police about its insurance, to find the money.
EARLY FEB. 1, FBI agents dug up about $200,000 on hill near jessup, Md. They located another cache of almost equal size in the Baltimore home of a relative of one of the holdup men. Most of the balance, according to the FBI, was spent.
At any rate, to locate the cash, Marr made a sweeping deal.
In return for an agreement that "individuals who handled the money wouldn't be prosecuted," Marr said, two of the holdup men gave FB1 agents the names of two persons who could lead them to the cash.
Believing the cases to be weak, "I went in with the idea of trying to get a loaf," Marr said in an interview last week. The partial recovery of the money would be a "deterrent" to future would-be robbers, he contended.
Special agent Farrow, of the Baltimore office, wouldn't say how agents knew it was. "He didn't have it," she said.
Marr vigorously denied, as did a spokesman for Maryland National, that the arrest of Mr. Browne was a lie.
A bank spokesman also refused to detail the extent to which it was covered by insurance.
Griff and the Unicorn
by Sokoloff