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Monday, September 13, 1971
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Legalize Marijuana
The time has come to legalize marijuana.
America can no longer afford to alienate its youth, destroy their faith in our legal authority and system of justice, and create hopeless boggles in our courts. For that is what the attempted ban on abortion has caused; and this ban has caused more: it has shaken our society to its very roots.
We must face facts. It is highly unlikely—no matter what legal methods are employed—that marijuana usage will stop in this country. In a few years, it has become the most popular perception-altering substance in use. Zig Zag's business is better than ever before, and no slowdown is in sight.
Consider, for example, the dismal failure of President Nixon's Operation Intercept. Consider the effect Vern Miller's numerous early-morning busts has had on Kansas drug traffic. Prices have been driven up slightly, and much paranoia has been instilled in the deo-smoking public, but not much else has happened. People smoking grass now will most likely continue to do so for the rest of their lives.
Our youth have been alienated by marijuana laws they consider unjust and oppressive. Policemen are now pigs' and james are now 'blind fireman' and another single set of laws has caused more to destroy faith in our government.
Another disadvantage of the marijuana ban is that it forces users to go to underground markets where other, more dangerous drugs (skag, heroin) are available.
So why continue the senseless persistence of marijuana smokers? Vern anler says he does so because it is against the law, and he enforces the letter of the law. Others tell us marijuana smoking could be harmful to our physical and mental health—but little real evidence has been turned up to prove that assertion.
Vern will stop his marijuana purge when the weed is legalized. And if, if marjuana smoking is harmful to one's health, then it should be treated as a medical problem not a legal one.
There would be several advantages to marijuana legalization as well as eliminating disadvantages the ban has caused.
It would be an excellent source of tax revenue, for one. More importantly, the quality and availability of the weed could be more effectively controlled. Adaptation of current liquor laws to marijuana would not be difficult, and the controls could work.
Yes, the time has come. Advantages of legalization far outweigh any good that would come from continuation of its ban.
—Pat Malone
Mansfield Amendment
"We have foolishly assumed that the war was too complicated to be trusted to the people's forum—the Congress of the United States. The result has been the cruellest, the most barbaric, and the most stupid war in our national history. And every Senator in this chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave. This chamber reeks of blood! Every Senator here is partly responsible for that human wreckage at Wake Forest and Bethesda Naval Base and all across our country. We are not only killing people or allowing them about bugging out or national honor or courage. It doesn't take any courage at all for a Congressman or a Senator or a President to wrap himself in the flag and say we're staying in Vietnam. Because it isn't our blood that is being shed."
Senator George McGovern, on the floor of the United States Senate
★
2P
On June 22, sixty-one United States Senators voted for the "Mansfield Amendment" to the draft extension bill.
Since the House had made no such provision in the original bill, it had to be reconsidered by a House-Senate conference committee.
This addendum calls for the total withdrawal of United States troops from Vietnam within nine months with the provision that American POWs were released before then.
Five of the seven Senate conferences the original Mansfield languages.
Starting today, the Senate begins
consideration of the committee
resolutions.
That committee was made up of 16 senior members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees. Those men, completely disregarding their clear majority in the Senate, emassees the amendment beyond recognition.
If the Senate votes to reject the recommendations as a whole, they can then vote to send the bill back to a new conference, instructing Senate conferences to stand by the Mansfield Amendment.
As a result, the heart of the provision, the nine-month delineal, was removed. Furthermore, the court ordered that it be lowered the force of law.
Perhaps the Indochinese war has caused more divisiveness among the people of our nation than any other issue in recent history.
But within the last year,
But within the last year,
dearness to a union to Asah-i do bring
dearness to a union to Asah-i do bring
our guns, our bombs and our young men home.
On Jan. 31, a Gallup poll showed that 73 per cent of the American people want all U.S. troops brought home from Indochina by the end of
It isn't often that Americans have shown such unity of opinion par- terned by their politics.
Despite these clear signs from a majority of the people and their representatives in the Senate, there are still those politicians, most notable among them Richard Nixon, who see the American experience in Vietnam as a noble undertaking. These people talk of peace but prolong the war. They do not support the Mansfield Amendment.
Therefore, it is imperative that we make an all out effort to secure passage of the Mansfield Amendment.
Last Thursday, in an address to a joint session of Congress, broadcast across the nation, President Nixon said that the United States needed in a "separation of peace."
Write to your senators. If you are a Kansan, commend James Pearson for his original vote favoring the amendment and ask him to sustain it. Implore Bob Dole to look beyond his role as Nixon's Senate Sheriff, and ask him to witness the desires of his constituency.
He called for a restoration of the American Spirit, a united effort of the American people to solve human problems in a peaceful world.
S six hours later, Walter Cronkite told the nation that 1,987 died in Indochina during the week before. —Wike Moffet
Garry Wills
Our Economic Shadow-boxing
Nixon cannot get really tough on the unions because he does not understand their corporations. He cannot bail out Lombard while torpeding the US government.
Garry Wills' nationally
national magazine,
this page from time to time.
He is a frequent contributor
to national magazines and
magazine sites.
Our two-party system is praised because it offers some measure of choice within a large country. In economic terms, this means that Republicans have been the party of business, as Democrats are more interested in each pick what it can of the other party's constituency (or ownership own). By all rules of the game, the balance off a mild blow to the other guys with mild rebukes to your own guys. This spurs an interest in the true impartiality of thorough reform. That is the price of being part of the party politics of consensus, and the game may be worth the price—but at least we should not fool ourselves about the exact results.
Because Nixon will not
freeze, and claim the "Nixonismes" are onesided—that is the set routine of every game. Everyone knows that game by now: You call the other guy a robber, while you are trying to rob him—and he
The unions have, in their inglorious recent days, helped break small businesses and big corporations and lasting contract settlements.
"control" business, he is forced to control prices, as an indirect and inefficient way of controlling customers' wages). There is a touchy awareness that nobody's turf may be very much infrared on. For example, if the other's turf means, in effect, that George Meany is as good a friend to the corporation heads as Sue Sure, George will call for a profit
with long-term pension (and
other) benefits, you need big
stable companies to guarantee
your contracts, ones that will be
around for a long time and can
handle the high wages from high
profit sources.
The annual staged struggle of the unions and big companies "against" each other is actually a victory for the small competitor—and against the public. Government, the only force large enough to stand over—against these two on behalf of all workers with them, pulled into the contest from one or other side of our political charade (Democrats charging to the "rescue" of publicubs to that of business).
The dynamics of this process were visible in the debate over federal under-writing for the Lockecked company. We were old to Washington should have the jobs that company offers—i.e., big government should, out of its vast resources, prop up big
business so that it can guarantee contracts for big labor. This rescue operation becomes, in turn, an argument for making sure that government retains its authority to be called on in such times of need.
The tacit complicity of all three agents in this process explains the peripheral nature of Nixon's economic readjustment, and the tension between the companies and the unions, any more than between Democrats and Republicans. Division of spolits, not over how they are gained. They each address themselves to the same question—how perplexate the situation of large interlocking powers?
Real conflict, should it ever arise, will be between these powers and all the people left out of their arrangements, ignored or bought off, placed or not even considered worth placation.
COPYRIGHT, 1971, UNIVER SAL PRESS SYNDICATE
Liberation News Service
General Motors Exposed
GM's 794,000 employees are equivalent to just one-tenth of one per cent of China's population. They constitute a full third of China's GNP
DETROIT (LNS)—General Motors is the 18th largest country in the world in terms of economic power. Its gross national product is larger than that of Argentina. It is more dependent on Switzerland, Denmark or Venezuela.
In terms of gross receipts, GM is the fifth largest government in the world, larger than West Germany, Japan or Canada.
CM, directly and indirectly,
accounts for nearly 1 out of 12
jobs in the United States through
control of the auto industry and
many of the industries which rely
on the automobile for their existence.
Yet this awesome power is in
the hands of a small core of men (no women are on the Board or in top management) unrestrained internally by a small minority of GM stockholders. (11 per cent of GM's stockholder base) from the GM stock.
The Board of Directors of General Motors is a small clique which controls $27 billion (1989) worth of the world's GNP through its subsidiaries, dealers, durables, and munitions. These same men are also directors of 14 different financial institutions (including Chase Manhattan Bank, the New York National Bank, as well as the Royal Bank of Canada), 77 different corporate bodies (including U.S. Steel; Armco Steel, Cummings Steel; GAMBLE & Gamble, and Polaroid), and 7 insurance companies (including
GM is in private hands, uncontrolled by the public. It has been criticized for the anti-trust division, the Federal Trade Commission, and Securities and Exchange Commission in only 3 of 17 ant-trust cases in the last 40 years. This has had no effect on GM—the company control over GM's operations.
John Hancock and Metropolitan Life).
In controlling the prices of all automobiles in the U.S., GSM consistently makes a profit more than double the national average.
In 1965, GM's prices were lower than the price of each automobile it sold by $428 and still after taxes, make profits equal the average profit of automobiles.
Readers Respond
Park Benches Wanted
To the Editor:
I'm sitting on an airconditioner grating in front of Numenaker College wondering why there aren't any park benches at KU. There seems to be a definite need for them. Witness the mounds of wood and stone from which we learn classes. (Are they there during classes too. I wonder.)
What park benches there are are substantial concrete varieties (i.e. dedicated or donated by the community) most have been strategically
Is there a public spritized citizen in our midst who will get up on the lawn long enough to bring this project to fruition? Come on Sen-Ex, come on OD. Don't you see anyone? Before the snow wows you see this spring, let's solve this sorely neglected problem.
placed to catch the afternoon sun, which is so charming here in Kansas this time of year.
GM spends nearly $500 million (25 per cent of the price of a new car) in style changes, and then adds more money to dollars a year more (or $30 per car) to convince the consumer that the newer model is better and worth the extra cost. In 1969 GM spent about $700 million on pollution research and control.
—Kevin Condon Lawrence senior
GM's top executives see a continual expansion of car production in the 70's. Instead of balancing the balanced transportation system in the United States, GM insists on the dominance of the privately owned Chrysler and Astrabridge. GM ignores the results of the pollution of our urban spaces by cars themselves. Says GM Chairman Roche: "America's mobile smartphone isn't over. Instead, it has matured into a marriage."
By Sokoloff
Griff and the Unicorn
Nixon's new economic policy promises to raise GM's profits even more. With federal excise taxes rising, GM will receive a new 10 per cent import tax on foreign cars (as well as other goods) there will be a greater demand for American made vehicles. GM is also planning to increase and profits will go up. These new profits will stay in the pockets of GM's elite because the wage-price freeze prevents the unions from bargaining for incomes.
As early as 1963 GM had excess profits so great that it had accumulated 2.3 billion dollars in liquidus surplus assets, an amount that would be equivalent to valuation of 18 of the 50 states. The Wall Street Journal surmised that GM was "saving up to buy the federal government." With its immense economic and political power, it really does not need to.
What does GM do with its great corporate power?
"Copyright 1971, David Sokoloff.
(Ed. Note: Liberation News Service is a New York-based collective of radical journalists that publishes news packets to the Kansas Media Project to use their LNS packet.)
As a bastion of the militar,
industrial complex, GM produces
M-16 rifles, launchers for the
US Marines, 8 mm gun, 81 mm, 20 mm
projectiles and bomb parts, self-propelled
howitzers, parts for military
tactical vehicles (the OH-58 performing
the main observation role in Asia's
Perhaps the clearest expression of GM's attitude toward employees is that he plant manager, GM South Africa) remark: "I wouldn't say these people don't have any interest in the job that they behave is very limited."
GM's racial policy at home and abroad records their record of militarism. Out of the 12,500 GM's employed in 1982 it is owned by blacks. There are no blacks or women in top management positions. In apartheid South Africa, GM's employment policy is matched to the local needs. The startling rate for Africans or Coloureds at the GM engine plant is 52 cents an hour, or $33 a month-$1 below the South African Government's poverty datum line for an African family.
jungle war) and for aircraft (like the A-7-one of the most effective planes performing the close air support role in S.E. Asia) and for use in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and throughout the world.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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Published at the University of Kansas daily during the academic year except holidays and examination periods. May be used by students a year later. Revised at the University of Kansas. Kan. 6044. Services, services and employment advertisement offered to all students without regard to color, creed or national origin may not necessarily be accepted. Published at the State Board of Regents.
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