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Monday, October 29.1973
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN commer
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Nixon Deserves Credit
The United States and the Soviet Union, for the first time in memory, voluntarily cooperated during the past two weeks to end the Mideast war. Admittedly, the conclusion wasn't perfect, but it was a step in the right direction. Most of the killing has stopped.
Russia and the United States demonstrated their national maturity by cooperating to find a peaceful settlement to the war. They stopped the fighting without prolonged, massive intervention, either through arms shipments or direct involvement. And they used the United Nations, long an idle body, to prescribe the remedy.
This cooperation was possible only because of Richard Nixon's diligent efforts to bring East and West together. Nixon's bridges have been made and dambo curtains have made the world a much safer place to live in.
In 1972, a group of minor bureaucrats broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee without the President's knowledge or approval, so say all Watergate investigators. Unfortunately, more than a third of the American people don't agree.
But, at home, Nixon faces a contrived crisis. He is in danger of being impaired on trumped-up charges that he allegedly obstructed an A brief examination of recent events will clarify the situation.
The Watergate break-in and the burglary of the office the psychiatrist of Pentagon Papers pirate, Daniel Ellsberg, occurred because the Nixon administration was out of control.
Advisers like John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman controlled access to the President. They—not the ordinary powerful people in the White House.
To prevent future Wategrates, Nixon purged his White House desk he installed a Roosevelt-type system that pitted audited against adviser.
For example, Melvin Laird, domestic adviser, and George Schultz, secretary of the treasury, fought about tax measures.
With this kind of arrangement, Nixon again became all-powerful. Each adviser had to compete for Nixon's favor, not Ehlichman's.
The purges were, therefore, power plays. The latest power play was a reassertion of Presidential independence from Congress, as guaranteed by the Constitution. The President, not Congress, had control over the justice Department, and therefore criminal investigations. But Congress had demanded a special Watergate prosecutor.
Nixon placed prosecutor Archibald Cox in a position from which it would have been impossible for him to continue.
The President ordered Cox to abide an out-of-court sentence reached.
Committee. If Cox had agreed to Nixon's demands, the independent status of the prosecutorial force would have been abolished. Since Cox refused, Nixon had the grounds to fire him.
This shrewd political move was launched on the long Veterans' Day weekend so that there was an automatic cooling-off period before Nixon had to face Congress and fight to regain his Constitutional powers over the Justice Department.
But the media found another opportunity "to kick Nixon around" some more. The press commissioned an allegedly scientific telephone survey of 1,000 persons to measure national opinion. Any statistician would have known the poll was unscientific. But the general public didn't.
Other enterprising television stations and newspapers went further. They publicized the results of man-on-the-street interviews and injected these unrepresentative, ill-conceived opinions into what were supposed to be factual news stories.
From the very beginning, the press—not the public or Congress—initiated the talk of impeachment. Only three or four Congressmen were available for immediate comment. Among them were Sen. McCain, a right-wing antagonist, and several other perennial congressional hotbeds
The effect was epidemic. Sen. Sam Ervin first said he had reached an agreement with Nixon about the tapes. Then he wasn't ever agreed to anything like what had been previously mentioned.
Sen. Daniel Inouye, a member of the Watergate Committee and supposedly an unbiased judge in that capacity, publicly called for Nixon's resignation or impeachment.
People began to believe the media-mothered rumors and to think of impeachment as a serious possibility.
Why do most people want to impeach Nixon? Not because of any improprieties in office. They simply see this as an opportunity to vote three years early. They may have changed their minds since the last election. And it's something the Obama administration has no evidence against, Nixon.
Jurists and constitutional experts say impeachment can't be used for these purposes. Citing a century-old precedent, they say the court wrongdoing" since the last election could justify impeachment.
Reasserting a legal right to
petition is not a gross wrongdoing.
Nixon didn't fire Cox to cover anything. He fired Cox in an at-attack that covered over the bureaucracy so that the watergates wouldn't develop.
Eric Meyer
A Day in the Life
The day after her term paper was due, Imah Discipach (being a typical student) hadn't even thought of a topic.
"I guess I'll go to the Union Bookstore and buy the book the teacher assigned at the beginning of the semester." she said.
"We decided there couldn't possibly be more than 25 people interested in such an egghead course, so we cut the teacher's estimate by 75 per cent. We may get more copies in by late November. You should put your name on the waiting list."
So she got on her motorcycle and sped off to X-zone, but the closest parking space she could find was in O-zone behind Robinson Gymnasium. After two hours of driving around and a half-hour of walking from O-zone to the Union, Discipula finally arrived at the bookstore.
"We've been out of that book since the first week in September," the bookstore clerk said after aolia told him what she needed.
"Yeah, but my term paper was discuiped. Discipula said, "and if I see the body,"
"There's nothing we can do about it," the clerk said. "All those people shouldn't have enrolled in the course. Maybe the library has the book."
The librarian at the information desk was very helpful. She looked up the book in the card catalog and told Discipula where to look on the first floor. But when Discipula got to the first floor, all she found was a sign that read, "These books have been moved to Malott Library."
Discipula hadn't been to the library since her freshman year when she wandered in by mistake, thinking that the library was Allen Field House. But the library was on the way to O-zone where her motorcycle was parked, so she decided to give it a try.
She found the book she wanted in the stacks and waited in line to see it for 45 minutes because the only library she didn't work the computer check out.
So she walked over to Mialott and up six flights of stairs only to discover that she had walked up the wrong stairway and had to go up on the other side in order to get into the library.
When she got back to O-zone she had received a ticket for not having a permit to park, but because she didn't care whether the University withheld her grades, she stuck the ticket under the windshield of the car in the next space and went home to think about a topic.
—Carol Gwinn
Reader Responds
Tall Grass No Place for Feds
To the Editor:
The guest editorial of the Oct. 9 Kansan, "Tall Grass Prairie," was somewhat misleading. The article claims that opponents to the National Park concept" don't understand the meaning of poll indicates, is this the opinion of the majority of people in that district.
Some understanding might be helpful to those supporting the plan, assuming the legitimacy of their specified goals. By that means, all of our benefits honestly beneficial to the people of Kangas.
The first glaring contradiction appears between their stated goals and their proposed means to achieve them. The writer accused Americans of overlooking important goals, and placed too much stress on goals. I think she has also fallen victim.
IN ORDER TO “preserve and save portions of tall grass prairies for scenic, recreational and wildlife,” the proponents suggest that the federal government take it over. It would save taxes, benefit the cattle industry, promote profits of tourism for farmers, provide habitat for grass, of which 20,000 acres is needed for one pair of bald eagles to mate.
For example, just recently the Nixon administration began a substantial expansion of timber cutting on public lands by the Bureau of Forests, the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau
The writer should investigate the history of government's role in land and resource.
of Land Management and the Bureau of Indian Affairs manage 147 million acres of land.
THE SEPT. 28, 1972 Louisville Courier- Journal hit the nail on the head;
'Yet the Nixon administration continues to act as though publicly controlled timber industry should be owned.'
The President calls for more trees to be cut on public lands in order to meet present and future needs, and simply overlooks the Forest Study which shows that one-fifth of the entire harvest on federal lands was left to private land in 1869 on acreage in Pacific Coast states.
THE PRESIDENT ALSO FAILED to mention the billions of board feet floated off to Japan each year, which places an extra burden on domestic resources.
My point is that the federal administration doesn't always serve the public interest, although theoretically one of the major purposes of the federal government is to provide the American people with a sense of security themselves against the excesses of privacy.
Perhaps a more obvious example of the government's "sensitivity" to the value of land and resources is written into the policy toward the Indians. What amounts to a history of genocide患护 on violations of over 300 treaties and you know who lost. Or the Indian share in the concept of "public lands." The Black Mesa project illustrates the conservation policy of exploitation of lands and resources for private interests.
IT SHOULD ALSO BE NOTED that the federal government is already in the process of leasing to corporations mineral rights to 5.5 million acres of privately-owned land, an area about the size of New Hampshire, for as little as $1 per acre.
Turning 60,000 acres of Kansas land over to the government involves an extremely high risk of losing rights, minerals and political control.
As a one farmer stated in the Topeka legislative interim hearings, the real issue deals with the matter of eminent domain. This important point was not considered in 3 articles i.e., the rights of the people viewed power of government or corporate interests.
SECRETARY OF AGRICULTURE Earl Butz expressed well the basic sentiment of the government in these matters, again referring to the timber exploitation:
"We should meet the challenge of doubling our timber-cutting in all our forests, including the national forests, and reducing the environmentalists are shouting about."
Another glaring mistake in the Oct. 9 article is the suggestion that Kansas would profit $10 million annually from the tourist trade.
DOES THE WRITER identify Kansans with the super hot dog chain and mote interests? Does she realize the concentration going on in these interests? Those profits end up in Houston or New York—not with the people of Kansas!
Perhaps she should explain further how Kansans will benefit economically. She
\"FIRED! YOU'RE ALL FIRED!\"
Ever Seen a Cow Fly?
Super-Science Beings Doubtful
Bv GEORGE ALEXANDER
The Los Angeles Times
LOS ANGELES--Imagine that you are sitting quietly at home some evening when suddenly a cow soars out of the blue and falls into your backyard.
Preposterous? Yes. Fantastic? Yes. Unlikely? Yes. But, assuming that it happened, common sense would dictate that common sense explanation for such an unlikely occurrence.
IN A SENSE, this is how nearly all scientists and engineers feel about the current rush of UFO sightings and reports of unexplained skins and claw-like hands. It isn't that they doubt the word of people who claim to have seen light strings in the skies; it's that the word of people that these unusual sights are extraterrestrial under the control of nonhuman creatures.
"People are seeing something; they're not hallucinating," said Dr. William Kaumann, director of the Griffith Observatory here. "It's also clear that they're seeing things for which standard, run-of-the-mill explanations do not suffice. But just because they see something strange in the brain, they don't automatically that the something strange is a vehicle controlled by an alien intelligence. That just doesn't follow."
Phillip Klass, a senior editor with the magazine Aviation Week and Space Technology, has written one book debunking UFO's "UFOs-Identified."
Random House, 1968) and is currently writing a sequel.
For a while, UFOlogists (those who believe the UFO's are controlled vehicles from some other part of the Universe) thought they had such physical evidence. It was during these efforts of magnesium which supposedly came from an exploding UFO in Brazil in 1957.
"THEERE SIMPLY ISN'T a shred of physical evidence after more than 25 years of sightings," he said in a telephone interview. "Quite literally. Not a shred in any of the tens of thousands of UFO sightings that have been reported that you could take from National Academy of Sciences and ask: Have you ever seen its like on Earth?"
Although UFoLOGists the metal was of a purity beyond anything men could achieve (and therefore positive proof of its extraterrestrial origins), subsequent analysis showed it to be more than a little less precious, very much down-to-earth stuff.
**THEN THERE WAS THE circular "footprint" imprinted on Kansas soil in 1971 by an alleged UFO. The marking was there, there, and it would be a sign of some cosmic traveler was questionable.**
One who has questioned its otherworldly origins was Frederic Juveneman, a chemist in New York who published trade magazine columnist who has written skeptically about UFO's. Suggesting that
"we should exhaust all possible natural effects before conjuring up the likes of a super-science civilization," Juveneman proposed that the Kansas marking might have been made by a small meteorite-of-earth and across California the last several nights.
But perhaps the biggest objection raised by scientists against the idea of UFO's as space vehicles under the control of extraterrestrial creatures is the discrepancy between their putative intelligence and their curiously unintelligent behavior.
"They would make their presence known in a more direct, open way than all this business in remote areas, like swamps. And they would not make their observations of us in such a bumblingly half-secret way. If they're that clever, they're not going to go around knocking on car windows. They'd have more class than that."
Such a meteorite, he said, would be heated as it sped down through the Earth's atmosphere, eventually becoming a very hot, electrically charged gas. A shock front would stand in front of the disintegrating meteorite and shape the gas into a torus, or doughnut. Anyone who might be standing in front of this fluid would glow, slowing, circular "thing." In short, a JEQ,
"If these creatures are coming great distances to here," Kaufmann said, "then they must be as advanced over us as we are over the caveman. They must have an enormously developed intelligence, and this has an important consequence."
should also explain the source of federal funding. It's been my understanding that the government gets most of its money from the people.
Finally, I'd like to defend the interests of the people who work on and own the land.
by Sokoloff
Griff and the Unicorn
PERHAPS THE WRITER had more to say when she called the ranchers "cattle herders." Historically, the labor of herdsmens has received a low return.
If farmers and ranchers had been receiving a fair price for their cattle, it could be that the danger of selling to industrial interests, e.g., Mercedes Benz, would be minimized. The increased economy of the state would be an authentic benefit for the people who live and work here.
I'd recommend those interested in preserving the beauties of the state to work with the farmers and ranchers. Our agricultural land-grant college in Manhattan is supposed to help the Kansas conservation of land and resources.
Parties, working with the ranchers and Kansas State, a plan of conservation could be worked out at less cost, and also with a management control of land and resources by the people.
The added problem of federal bureaucracy is all we need to complicate the human development of Kansas as a healthy and good place to live!
Director, Office for Human Development Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas
John Stitz
Retirement Policy Influences Cutbacks Of Federal Workers
By MIKE CAUSEY The Worcester Post
WASHINGTON—The Nixon administration will be able to report unprecedented success in cutting the federal workforce in its new budget, thanks mainly to the $380 million living costs that may prompt as many as 140,000 civil servants to retire this year.
EMPLOYEES WHO RETIRE before Dec. 31 stand to get a minimum 4.7 per cent increase in their annuities. The 4.7 per cent figure is based on the latest Consumer Price Index date (for September). And even that amount will go higher.
December is normally a month of unusually high retirements, as employees quit for income tax and leave payoff purposes. Added to that is the promise of yet more recruited unmarried annuity increase of at least 4.7 per cent for workers who quit by the 31st.
Normally, between 60,000 and 70,000 government workers retire in a year's time. But 1973 has not been a normal year for the bureaucracy in any respect.
First, the Defense Department announced major job cutbacks. Then along came a 6.1 per cent pension bonus for employees who retired before July 1. Then defense and other agencies facing cutbacks got special permission to allow employees to work earlier than the earlier result was a one-month retirement expos of $49,000 last June.
Nixon has signed a bill that, in effect, permits workers to quit before the Dec. 31 deadline and collect all of the anticipated 4.7 billion dollars in payroll taxes for the July bonuses, which was 6.1 per cent.
That bill gives workers who have been thinking about retirement a double in-time, because they will be the year-end time, collect all the January benefits and a portion of last July's increase.
FEDERAL-MILITARY PENSIONS are adjusted on a complicated formula that is tied to the CPI. When it rises 3 per cent over the amount of the last increase, and holds at that level or higher for three consecutive months (in this case August, September and October) pensions are automatically adjusted by that amount. The government has made plans to make up for the time lag in getting the higher annuity checks to emplovers.
The September CPI hit 135.5. That translates into an increase of 3.7 per cent, to which the government will add another 1 per cent. If living costs for October raise the CPI higher, pensions will be raised accordingly.
Whatever the effects of the latest bill, the fact remains that 89,000 people quit last June when the normal retirement figure is around 5,000. With another push this year, point to a record retirement total this year of World War II and postwar employees.
The vacancies will create many promotion opportunities for younger workers, and should ease the impact on jobs that had planned layoffs for next year.
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