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Monday. September 18, 1972
University Daily Kansan
Irresponsible Electorate
The revenue sharing bill, Congress' latest bureaucracy addition to the ever-growing federal behemoth, was spawned by the same force that is responsible for making the federal government the frightfully unmanageable bureaucracy that it is. quite simply put, the vote with the rest of the federal bureaucracy, is the product of the electorate's irresponsibility at the local levels of government.
Local government is desititude. It is destitute primarily because of an old American prejudice against government and taxes. Americans have always opposed taxes per se. Indeed, antitaxia stands central in our heritage. As it is with ideology, so it is with politicians, the battle cry in every arena open to the voter, is, "lower taxes—lower taxes!" With the result that in the course of two decades the doctorate, in which blind devotion to lower taxes, has succeeded only in strangling every responsive level of government. Since a democracy depends on responsive government, this is the height of governing irresponsibility.
But the destruction of local, responsive government does not necessarily result in the destruction of all government. On the contrary, as local government weakens, so does its power to restrain the federal government. As our local governments falter from lack of funds, the federal government reaches a new level of independence and begins to assume a new life and character, unrelated to that of the electorate.
The federal government, freed of all restraints except that of its collective conscience, sets out to do
those things that the electorate was too obstinate to do for itself. Unwilling to pay local taxes for pollution control and urban renewal, the electorate pays a congressionally imposed tax, not just for pollution control and urban renewal, but for nationwide pollution control and urban renewal bureaucracies as well. In its case, the electorate would pay only a local tax, the electorate pays not only a federally imposed local tax, but also an administration tax to support the revenue sharing administration.
This is how the bureaucracy has grown. For each of the electorate's irresponsible refusals to act, for each power denied the local governments, Congress has created an office, has assumed the unassigned power and built an administration to wield it. For each service not financed at the local level, the electorate has paid, not just the cost of the service, but the cost of the administration of that service, as well.
Thus as long as Congress acts benevolently in our stead, our cities will survive, though the expense will be greater than it might. So long as we will not tend to our own local needs, the bureaucracy will tend to them for us. But, as many have discovered in recent years, woe be unto the state until aassert control over the federal government. The implements of control—the local governments—have rusted through inactivity.
It is our responsibility, if we truly believe in a government restrained by reason, to resurrect the local government. It is our responsibility. It is time we governed responsibly.
—Robert Ward
Spiro's Press Feud
Jack Anderson
WASHINGTON — A fascinating memo, buried for four years in White House files, indicates a New York Times editorial may have started Vice President Sprow the famous feud with the press.
The editorial, published the last week of the 1968 campaign, accused Agnew of improper dealings with wealthy land specula-
The year before his election as governor of Maryland, charged the Times, he "joined with these businessmen in purchasing a tract of land on the probable site of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. As governor, he approved this route. In response to public criticism, Governor Agnew later sold his share of the company to him, the incarcerated him of lying about the inheritance of some bank stock.
The Times, normally a most reliable and responsible newspaper, got the facts twisted. Actually, Agnew signed away his interest in the land before he elected, directed that to be sold at no profit to himself and, in any case, to Mr. Blake. Nor could the Times prove he had lied about his inheritance.
Sources close to the Vice President tell us his hostility toward the president, who covers he received during the 1968 campaign. The "turning point," agree these sources, was the New York Times' attack upon
“This was the straw that broke Agnew's patience,” recalled a campaign aide. Agnew was stealing over the Times editorial, the aide said, when a message came from the camp. The message, dated October 29, 1968, reached Agnew on the campaign trail in Florida. It
was addressed to his campaign manager, George White, from speechwriter Pat Buchanan.
"You might score some real yardage down in the South with a good blast at the New York Times," Buchanan urged. "Down there they are the essence of the New York, ultra-liberal, left-wing press that has beaten on the South for years. Suggestions:
"2. The Governor then say that the 'Times' is squalling because Richard Nixon norell hole out of the kitchen, so play low-level dirty politics, but they belly-came when they have to pay the price. Then use Truman's quote. "If the editorial board of the New York Times can't stand it, you should leave out of the kitchen." They can dish it out, but they can't take it.
"3. The Governor could needle hell out of them by saying after his blast and demand for an apology that "actually those fellows who write editorials for the Times aren't so bad. They just put their foot in their mouth a little too often."
Agnew is a stubbornly proud man. He struck back at the New York Times, who cudgelled again, as Vice President, against the entire "illegal eastern establishment press." His books were written by Pat Buchanan, who were written by Pat Buchanan.
Nixon. A Nixon campaign aide told us last month's invitation is 'still being considered,' he added. Ovid Davis has urged all members of the Coke family to lobby for their bottling interests during the 1972 congressional campaigns. His daughter, Susan, is a famous Greek orator Pericles whom Davis said lived 2,000 years ago. Davis has amassed congressmen and historians who have lived more than 2,400 years ago.
Despite President Nixon's hard-serve drive for Jewish votes, he has affirmed one of the man-made groups. The New York Board of Rabbis invited both presidential candidates to speak to them. George McGovern responded with a bipartisan endorsement has come back from
Phil and Sue Long of Bellevue, Wash, baffled by the ways of the Internal Revenue Service, asked to see the index of its manual on procedures and policies. The IRS When the IRS wants taxpayers' records, it simply demands them. If the tax lawyer-skips, the IRS slips him with a subpoena. . . Assistant Agriculture Secretary Richard Lyng called us "ridiculous" for criticizing his deficiencies in the tomato growers to put "gassed green" tomatoes, ripened with ethylene gas, on America's tables. Now that the tomato season is here, housewives can compare their own garden tomatoes with products they have been buying from the supermarkets. . .
The Treasury's Fred Hickman recently wrote editors around the country that we were wrong in criticizing the Treasury and auto firms for taking too much time to process their reports, a spokesman of the Administration's "proud" record. Almost nine months have passed, and we're still getting letters from car buyers asking us how they can get a quote for a new car, write to Fred Hickman at the U.S. Treasury Department.
Copyright, 1972. by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
James J. Kilpatrick
Justice Douglas 'Off the Court'
WASHINGTON—Eric Sevairid, the resident punit of CBS, journeyed to Goose Prairie, Wash., in June for a two-hour interview with Dr. Douglas. Their conversation, boiled down to an hour, was aired on September 6. With deference to Sevairid, who has one of the highest batting averages in the game, it was not much of an inference that he made from the sharp disagreement between Douglas and his critics.
The interview failed because Sevaredi never bore down on the hard crunch questions; he served up little but creampuffs and bonbons. In terms of news as distinguished from history, the story of Justice Douglas is not the story of Douglas on the Court, but off the Court. Here Sevaredi did not dig; he barely scratched.
disclosure that he had accepted a lifetime fee from Louis Wolfson. Sevairked asked a soft leading question: "You didn't feel then what Abel Porta did in the Wolf case was even an improptity."
They crept up on the story when the conversation turned to former Justice Abe Fortas, who resigned in part because of the
Douglas answered, "Well, it depends on what you do with your spare time. And I don't think it's anybody's business as long as it works," he said or collide with court duties or create conflicts of interest."
A bit later, Sevareid got around to asking Douglas about "this Parvin Foundation, of which you were an officer I think." Severeid wanted to know why Douglas had resigned from the Foundation if he didn't done anything wrong. Douglas responded by saying that the idea of the Parvin Foundation was written. The Foundation was formed, he said, to effectuall his proposal that potential leaders from Africa and the Middle East be brought to the United States to
receive courses in government. He had resigned when the success of the Foundation made it appear that the work would require more time than he could give to it.
Well, there was a whole lot more to this story. If the questions had been asked by Andrew Alexander and Keith McKnight, the researchers from the Dayton Journal Healthec curious circumstances might have received the national attention they deserve. Alexander and McKnight went into these circumstances in a series of three interviews, met in June, their findings never got far out of Dayton.
The tale goes back to the spring of 1960, when Albert B. Parvin was making a deal to sell his Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas for $4.04 million to a group he founded. Morris Lansburg and Sammy Cohen. A part of the deal involved the payment to mobster Meyer
Lansky of a $200,000 "finder's fee." An agreement to that effect was signed on May 12, 1980.
On July 25, 1960, Parvin got overwhelmed by Douglas's book, "America Challenged." He wrote the Justice a Bashful, barefoot letter: "So moved and impressed was it by its contents that it gave spunk to an idea that has emblazoned with great valor. The upshot was that six months later the Parvin Foundation sprang into being, with Douglas as its $12,000 a year president from February, 1961, to May, 1969.
It was in this period, according to Alexander and McKnight, that Parvin was paying the $200,000 in quarterly installments to Lansky—out of funds diverted from a trust account of the Parvin Foundation. Douglas was ignorant of the whole business. He came to Parvin on the first day of the period, but the possibility seems never to have crossed his mind that Parvin might be buying respectability on the cheap.
This is not a consideration that greatly troubles Justice Douglas in the uses of his spare time. He wrote a couple of articles for Playboy magazine, he told Sesalwata and she told him 18 million youngsters—and they're the minds I'd like to reach." Very well. But the primary reason his byline appeared in Playboy was that Hugh Hefner his Playboy philosophers knew one a bargain when they saw one.
The point is that the public things a Supreme Court Justice does with his spare time are not his own business alone. They are everybody's business. Those activities cannot be viewed simply in terms of court work, court duties, and conflicts of interest. The Court's image is that Court's image—an image that ought not to be bandled about in pious foundations and sex-exploiting magazines.
The Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
(C) 1972
"---AND SO THE TWENTIETH OLYMPICS PASSES INTO HISTORY"
Goodbye to Munich
I was in Munich last week,
with the rest of the world ...
Myself disowning world . . .
shocked disbeliever
commentator
advocate
prophet.
Trying to transcend questions of "blame" and "victimization,"
1 stuffed in my pocket this knowledge:
When the scale of bestiality, savagery,
that truly unameable darkness is finally compiled,
—Christopher Casey Caldwell
Surely it will be measured in tears.
And thus were we all compelled to go home.
tears. Not blood.
Readers Respond
'Sunflower' Misleading
To the Editor:
Knowing well the solid interest and support of the Kansan in the Field Work and Training Project of the School of Social Welfare at the Sunflower Village, it is with some genuinely mixed feelings of both appreciation and regret that I must write this note to you, intending to encourage and add explanation concerning the article titled, "Social Welfare Students Study . . ." and carried on page 8 of the 7.8 issue. This positive interest of the campus newspaper staff in the Village life is both known and appreciated by many residents. This persists. However, there are several errors in detail, mentioned as facts, and in also there was conveyed one misleading impression.
In explanation, perhaps there may have been a very short time available to the reporter prior to submitting her final copy. I did attempt to obtain a look at this, specifically, but had no success. I didn't see anything were not explained clearly. Things moved quickly. No matter what the explanation, the impact was unfortunate.
So, in the interest of both accuracy and of fairness, I would like to correct several items as noted in the article.
In regard to a fact shown within column one of the story, the beginning date of student involvement there was Sept. 18.
Further, looking at paragraph ten, column one, the KU student learns in his working with some Villagers perhaps as a group dissident children and their interest group leader, or as an individual counselor with someone who has come to seek aid with a significant "concern." The developed gradually and do carry increasing significance.
Turning to the fourth paragraph of column two, the majority of the family heads are described as being "migrant workers." It would be much more difficult for these adults as being relatively unskilled in urban-type employments or as low skilled construction-activity workers. These adults, with families, have come to the Village from Western Kansas and moved to Southwest. When the employment there slows, or ceases, the family may well move.
The "new" buildings cited in the final paragraph, are not quite as well as they were greatly, by the work of these Civic Association members.
10
Griff and the Unicorn
Now, to turn to the potentially misleading impression above-mentioned that might have come from the article of the 8th. There seemed to have been an inference that many of the priority needs within the Village experience and the experience of meeting to meet these would have come from a few Villagers and or from the "visiting experts." Actually, hopefully, the opposite was, and is, true. Many Villagers, young and old, male and female, "organized" and not, local educators, counsellors, church leaders, the local health, welfare and other staff, the Village managerial staff, some residents living in DeSoto, Eudora and close by, and others, have been involved intermittently to suggest possibilities and their own challenges. We have been a conscious effort. The dignity and breadth of this conscious and responsible interest and involvement are crucial in our modern Western community. Perhaps we have come a little closer to these in the slow stealth of change and of institutional activity. We hope so. We do thank again the Kanas staff for their interest and support.
Sincerely,
Paul Brotsman
Associate Professor
Social Welfare
By Sokoloff
$ \textcircled{2} $Universal Press Syndicate 1972
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