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Tuesday, December 3.1974
University Dally Kansan
OPINION
EVER GET THE FEELING YOU'RE BEING HAD?
Nader influence continues to embarrass big business
Ralph Nader's Tax Reform Research Group recently forced the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to reveal documents activist organizations investigated by the Special Service Staff, a secret intelligence-gathering arm of the IRS. The documents show that, repeatedly public denials by the IRS for service Staff was set up as an intelligence-gathering unit as a
KANSAN analysis
direct result of White House influence in the summer of 1969.
Although Nader himself seems to be in the news less and less frequency, the above is a shift from his previous fluence continues to irritate and embarrass big government and big business. For eight years there has been wide disagreement about him. Some regard him as an earnest, effective reformer; others think he is not effective andogue who is bent on destroying the free enterprise system.
Nader's emergence into the public eye in 1966 was made possible by two events. The first was a press conference of "Unsafe at Any Speed," an attack on General Motors' rearengine Corvair and on the whole
The old man has gone. Don Fambrough has resigned. But his influence on the University of Kansas football program will remain for many years to come.
Fambrough announced his resignation this morning, citing an issue with the team's half of this fall's football season.
Fambrough's Jayhawks had been pegged as one of the nation's top teams, a serious challenger for the Big Eight championship. Living up to the bling the 'Hawks scored four in their first five games, including a breathtaking victory over national powerhouse Texas A&M.
Then the season fell apart. There was a loss to Nebraska, which was at best disappointing, and
Fambrough mark made on KU
feeling of having read it all somewhere before." Some critics carped at small errors in the profiles of the congressmen and senators, but Ramparts said the profiles contained "solid, generally accurate, information."
And from there things got worse. Kansas lost the last six games and finished last in the Big Eight.
KANSAN editorial
then one to Iowa State, which was at least demoralizing.
But the 'Hawks' bad season wasn't the only thing that prompted Fambrough's resignation. It was lack of support within the athletic corporation that really cost him his job.
Nader's report "Small-on-Safety," which alleged that the Volkswagen Beetle was "the most dangerous car sold in America" and which United States today," was refuted by Road and Track. Road and Track examined the statistics in the Nader report and discovered that "Small-on-Safety" had been selective in its evidence, for example, the reported statistics from Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory tests to show that the Beetle's interior was more dangerous than any other car's interior, but not to the laboratory's verdict; "Overall, the structural integrity of the
Fambrough was a member of the old regimen He had been handpicked by former Athletic Draft team member Fambrough had been working on the coaching staff for almost a quarter of a century before that.
car industry for neglecting safety in automobile design. The second was the revelation, in 1966, that GM had put detectives on Nader's tail to get something on him.
The ensuing uproar played an important part in the passage of that year's National Traffic and Motor Safety Act. The act empowered the secretary of transport to set federal laws for the automobile industry and provided for recall notifications to purchasers of cars having built-in defects.
Don Fambrough, in essence, was the entire old regime. He was KU's football program. Period.
There is no doubt that Nader has played an important part in strengthening or initiating federal consumer laws. Laws require companies to include the Natural Gas Pipe Line Safety Act, the Radiation Control for Health and Safety Act, the Wholesome Meat Act, the Consumer Product Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the
Now he's gone, just as all of Wade Stinson's former assistant athletic directors are gone now, or at least given new titles.
The saddest part is that the average KU football fan will think Fambrough's resignation will improve KU's football teams. Quite the contrary. It just furthers the University's image as a frequent change of head coaches. And no one now head coach with any national stature works in the UM now, not after he has seen coach after coach leave before his contract expired.
And this change of coaches only hurt KU's quality in another way. A coach must be well established at his school if he is to run an efficient, winning football program. Witness Arse隋吉 at Notre Dame, Woody Hayes at Ohio State, Joe Paterno at Penn State.
Fambrough, at least, had an air of continuity that most other head coaches at KU haven't had. He helped there for many, many years. He helped recruit thousands of players, many of them top-notch.
When, in the next few days, you hear Don Fambrough blamed for all KU's football woes, ask his critics if they also blame him for turning around the slump Pepper Rodgers let Kansas get into, for getting Kansas to the Liberty bowl last season and for layingayers on the UPI All-Conference team and for many other such future superstars as Laverne Smith and Bill Campfield and Kurt Knout and Nolan Cromwell.
Eric Meyer Editor
Public should pay lawyers' fees
"Equality before the law" is a catchy little phrase, as nothing more than a catchy little phrase, as nothing more than a catchy little phrase.
I suspect that most Americans see through the "equality before the law" fiction, especially since former President Richard M. Nixon's pardon. But even if Nixon were behind bars,
KANSAN
"equality before the law" still would be one of
the biggest jokes in American legal mythology.
If you confine your frame of reference to people who have a yearly income of more than $50,000, then "equality before the law" may take on a semblance of reality. But when you bring a middle-income person into the picture, "equality before the law" becomes a farce.
Once we have removed the private for-hire lawyer from the courtroom, we should establish Legal Aid and Public Defender offices for everyone. These offices should be staffed by professionals who have been trained as rigorously as physicians.
The greatest obstacle to free legal services is the private for-hire lawyer. The United States should follow our European friends and kick the court's lawyer and his bag of legal tricks out of the courts. The mercenary lawyers are largely responsible for the wreckage of our judicial system today.
The American Bar Association has estimated that 10 per cent of Americans can afford legal services and that another 20 per cent are poor enough to qualify for government-subsidized programs. This leaves 70 per cent of Americans who can afford only limited legal services.
To remedy this situation, many middle-class groups are turning toward legal insurance. The arrival of legal insurance represents an attempt to protect themselves, that is inherently discriminatory and wasteful.
What we really need is legal reform, not legal insurance. Legal services should be equally available to everyone. For this to come about, legal services must be free to everyone.
Steve Lewis Contributing Writer
We get incredibly poor results from our judicial system today considering the tremendous amount of money that is invested in it by private and public sources. If justice, not vicinity, is the main goal of courtroom practitioners, then much improved. Too many Americans think our judicial process is sacred, and the private for-hire lawyers are glad most Americans think that way.
Some regard him as an earnest, effective reformer; others think he's an ambitious demagogue who is bent on destroying the free enterprise system.
Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, the Consumer Protection Agency Act and the Consumer Product Safety Act.
The theme behind all of Nader's activities, as Thomas Whiteside said in an October lecture, is to "keep up with the New Yorker, is the "urgent necessity for individual and collective citizen action against corporate and governmental practices" to exercise responsibility."
didn't pass the laws, Congress did. Nader himself has admitted that the laws he has backed have not always lived up to his expectations, even when they made it through Congress without any important alterations.
In pursuit of this theme, Nader has assembled a sizeable organization. It is a core of about fifty fulltime people, most of them young lawyers and researchers, that constitutes the Center for Study of Law founded in 1989; the Corpse Accountability Research Group, which he founded in 1971 and Public Citizen, Inc., also founded in 1971.
Branch organizations of the Center for Study of Responsive Law include the Small Claims Study Group, the Retired Tax Reform Research Group and the Freedom of Information Clearing House. In addition, student groups-Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs)—are now organized in 18 states. These groups offer university fees and are staffed by volunteers and paid help.
Nader's efforts haven't focused entirely on big business. In 1968, Nader assigned his first study group of student workers to observe the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and study group was used to create an agency in decay. One result of the study group's report on the FTC was former President Richard M. Nixon's decision to do something about the agency. The "something" included an extensive change in the staff of the FTC, improvements in the office, and the appointment of Miles W. Kirkpatrick, an antitrust lawyer, to the FTC.
After the report on the FTC was released, Nader assigned groups to study the operations of the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Justice, and the National Air Pollution Control Administration and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. In all cases, the study groups found that the agencies, supposedly operating inside acting instead as shields behind which special interests exerted control.
Although there may be some aspects of Nader's crusades that are open to criticism, his work has also been reproach. His work schedule has been described as a "Washington legend": 18 to 20 hours a day, 365 days a year, no girl friends, no girls friends, no girl friends, no girls friends, no girl friends, no girls friends, no girl friends, no girls friends, no girl friends, no girls friends, no girl
Not all of Nader's projects have been stunning successes. A study that resulted in the reelection of Nader in 1972 and profiles of 480 congressmen and senators up for re-election in 1972 was hastily composed. As the March 1074 vote on a bill to amend Congress?" "It evokes a
Volkswagen compartment area appears to be maintained as well as that in any other car."
Perhaps the most serious attack on Nader's credibility involved the book that made him famous, "Unsafe at Any Point" in frontation with GM, Nader demanded that the Department of Transportation conduct tests on the Corvair to expose GM's own faults, his own tests had shown the car to be. In March 1973, a Senate subcommittee found no evidence that GM had surprised any of its own test results, which案 brought against the Corvair.
Some of Nader's critics have said that some of the laws that Nader has backed in Congress are so weak or so poorly enforced that they have had little or no effect on corporate accountability. Nader's supporters have replied that Nader
To date, no one has dug up any dark secrets about Nader. The New Republic magazine has tried. In its Sept. 2, 1972 issue, the Times magazine Young, a reporter for the Journal of Commerce, entitled "A Chink in Nader's Armor?" The article said that Nader had been "strangely remiss" in not backing no-fault automobile accidents and Congress, and implied that this was in some way connected to a $10,000 donation made by the American Trial Lawyers Association to Nader's auto safety work. The Trial Lawyers association had been vigorously lobbying against no-fault insurance.
Nader's response was immediate. Upon reading the article, he called a New York Times reporter and guaranteed that the New Republican would issue a retraction. On Sept. 23, he issued a statement that said that the article "did not state nor should it properly be inferred that Ralph Nader's position on no-fault insurance had been determined by a grant solicited by the Center for Auto Law Trials University Association, and which was later refused by the auto safety center."
Nader is not like some energetic people, who set higher standards for themselves than for the people around them. When asked how long a working relationship might be engaged on his projects, Nader said he thought that "a hundred hours would be perfect."
Over the years, Nader has built up a reputation as part monk, part hardback and part machine. William Grieder of the Washington Post thinks that Nader may be mellowing: "I was struck by how relaxed he seemed about himself and his work, yet the less mature, less singledom about his own correctness, with a nice trace of self-deprecating humor."
For the future, Nader seems to be focusing on political reform. His most recent projects included campaign financing reform, a federal bill that would require Archibald Cox's firing was illegal, a lawsuit challenging Nixon's gift of his vice-presidential papers to the National Archives, the preparation of material that would be used against Nixon, and the action against the IRS mentioned at the beginning of this article.
The attribution rate for Nader's older, more experienced, staffers is high. The Center for Study of Responsive Law, for example, started with five well-qualified associates. Now only one other team, Robertson, III, remains. Others, like Gary Sellers, had to find other ways to express their idealism. Sellers, who led Nader's campaign against death in the coal mines, got tired of 3 a.m. telephone calls, or calling them after 11 a.m. after it 11 p.m. After the Nader would often call at one minute until 11 and talk for hours.
It is possible that, in the long run, Nader will be more important as a legendary figure of the 20th century. Though Nader isn't in the news as much as he used to be, his presence is still felt by people like the federal car safety official who said: "Nader has us dead." And we know that he's out there somewhere, stalking the streets—and probably reading all our memos—is galvanizing, constantly as ourselves, as ours, and as Nader think about this decision?"
Glenn Meyer Contributing Writer
To the Editor:
There is something definitely wrong with a department that fails to relieve a student of the perpetual anxiety gnawing at him over the state of his automobile.
to refresh a few memories,
the title of the agency is
the University of Kansas Security
Hospital. Has it forgotten who it is?
So far this semester, 1,855 persons have filled the pockets of this department with $17.50 each, which, we were assured, in a parking space and the security of a Residence Hall Zone.
After the first incident, I expressed my dismay to KU administrators, the Lawrence police and the campus police. Traffic and Security made no objection to the area and thus discourage the perpetration of crimes by the local bar patrons.
This past month alone, two of the 20 times I tried to drive my car, I found it sabotaged.
Reader's wrath descends on campus police, vandals
Lately, there seems to be a slight problem with security in the Alumni Place lot, which serves the scholarship halls.
I know I am speaking for other scholarship hall residents when I express my anger after discovering twice in the past three weeks that our cars had been vandalized.
There seems to be a deplorable discrepancy between what security is, and what it should be.
During November, school hall residents will be alternated with a musical alterations as smashed dows, antennas bait and sawed
The vandals offered a finishing touch one time when they themselves to all the ornamental stereo equipment in a car.
off, rear view mirrors yanked from the windshield and glove compartments ransacked.
One particularly puzzling aspect of this vandalism is that only cars that have Alumni Place stickers and that are parked behind the Wagon Wheel are victimized.
Vehicles illegally parked
alongside my car are mysteriously left unharmed and unticketed.
Traffic and Security, why don't you post a sign saying that these illegally parked cars will be towed away at the owners' premises? Then, patrol the area as you are supposed to—once every hour.
As for the vandals of Alumni Place, why don't you quit this ridiculously immature behavior?
Virginia Aeschleman
Hoisington Freshman
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