Letter from a Whig

...This statement was prompted by two recent public opinion polls...

...This resulted in the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946...

...Such a majority vote required that a quorum be present and that a roll-call vote would be taken...

...Mills has had almost total control over all economic-related legisIation, including health insurance, foreign trade, and taxation...

...Another change would be to divide the Education and Labor Committee into two committees...

...In March of 1973 secret committee meetings were further curtailed when Congress adopted H.R...

...To illustrate the point...

...Reorganize, of course...

...Such tests are obviously discriminatory, catering as they do to the peculiar abilities of the living...

...A special committee, known as the Select committee on Committees (under the chairmanship of Missouri Democrat, Richard Boiling), has recently come up with a proposal to structurally reorganize the present 21 standing and 125 subcommitby C. Bascom Slemp tees of the House of Representatives...

...House members would like to see the House Foreign Affairs Commi~ raised to the prominence of its Senate counterpart and the reorganizational proposal represents an effort to accomplish that goal...

...This has been one committee which has been domin a t e d by liberal congressmen, but one which has also perennially foiled to attract conservative members because of a "graveyard syndrome...

...Other changes would include reorganizing the Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee and renaming it the Commerce and Health Committee...

...But Thursday was it...

...Quite clearly, if that is so, the congressional member himself should do likewise...

...The few resident radicals occasionally agonize that UGA students fall below national norms in such essential aspects of the collegiate Zeitgeist as _9 organizing civil rights marches...

...The Act also required the As a result Sidney Scheuer, the Chairpublication of all committee roll-call votes, man of the National Committee for an It further provided that all committee Effective Congress, has argued that instihearings would be open to the public, "ex- tutional changes notwithstanding: '~ne cept when the committee by majority vote determines otherwise...

...The final step in my conversion came out...

...On Thursday, March 7, 1974, Georgia earned a paragraph (well, maybe a footnote) in the Handbook of College Madness...

...Overlapping jurisdiction has consistently handicapped and delayed the passage of legislation...

...Illustrative of committee jurisdictional problems is legislation which would facilitate the construction of oil superports...

...House Republicans, for example, select their ranking minority members by secret ballot on each nominee submitted by its committee on committees...

...The committee has Mills...

...participating in group sex...

...The House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs would be redesignated the Committee on Energy and Environment and it would assume the authority for most of the legislation in those two areas...

...The Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (the newest of the twenty-one standing committees) would assume responsibility for elections and campaign finance...

...Under the Bolling proposal Ways and Means would lose its jurisdiction over foreign trade (which would go to the Foreign Affairs Committee) and health insurance (which would go to a new committee on Commerce and Health...

...Classical and streaking...

...After some nasty incidents on previous days (tear gas and mace used by the Athens police on spectators, rocks and beer bottles used by spectators on the police), the university administration capitulated...

...The results of these polls serve to illustrate that if Watergate has eroded the stature of the Presidency, Congress' continuing inertia and unwillingness to assert itself has also threatened the Constitutional Trinity...

...Perhaps employers might be induced to accept an autopsy instead of the conventional physical...

...The House Committee on Administration was apparently extensively involved in matters of national security and defamation of character because it held eighteen meetings, none of which were open to the public, and it took no votes to close its sessions...

...The House Democrats also now permit the Party Caucus to consider separately each recommendation by their committee on committees...

...For many, in contrast, the structural reforms of the committees do not go far enough...

...The major revisions in committee jurisdictional assignments would be to curtail the all-powerful czarship of Ways and Means Committee Chairman, Wilbur their all-powerful roles...

...Blessed with a balmy climate, this state often witnesses an early advent of what William F. Buckley, Jr...

...The seniority system has already seen major modifications during the last two sessions of Congress...

...A secret vote on any chairman can also be obtained at the request of ten members...

...proposed reducing the number of standing Needless to say, the curtailment of fiefHouse committes by exactly one, although doms and empires produced an outcry from three committees would be abolished (Mer- the chairmen who would be stripped of chant Marine and Fisheries, Internal Security, and Post Office and Civil Service...

...And again, in 1970, a legislative reorganization was passed...

...disbelieving in God...

...Activists should organize a Deceased Citizens' League, named, perhaps, The Dead Hand, to dramatize the political plight of the discontinued, to point out, for instance, such abuses as requiring job applicants to submit to a phys~al examination...

...George F. Babbitt would love it here...

...Others, however, believe that if the Bolling proposals are accepted by the House of Representatives (and that still remains questionable) an era of postwar congressional giants will come to an end...

...This coordinated political activity should build to a crescendo, a cataclysmic climax of activism, specifically: the Dead Persons' March on Washington...

...Structural .reform in itanswer to our political crisis depends on the quality of the individuals who make up the legislative branch...

...It does not require heroism...

...Thus far in the Ninety-third Congress, six Senate, six House, and a number of joint committees have conducted a wide variety of hearings on energy problems...

...Three House committees (Interior, Public Works, and Merchant Marine and Fisheries) held hearings on the subject of oil superports...

...And then he added the immortal words: something else...

...In addition to its present responsibility for the Highway Trust Fund, the Public Works Committee would also assume responsibility for mass transit (currently with Banking and Currency), railway transportation, and civil aviation (currently with Commerce), as well as most of the responsibilities now held by Merchant Marine and Fisheries...

...Other perennial reform issues in Congress have been the seniority system and committee secrecy...

...Mills also argued that much of the jurisdictional reshuffling could result The Alternative May 1 9 7 4 1 5 in Congress' inability to initiate certain kinds of legislation...

...It does not call for collective action...

...But despite these various reorganizations Congress has still found itself incapable of dealing with some of its most basic tasks, including the raising and spending of the tax dollar and now the energy crisis...

...It does not even demand determined nibbling at a dragon...

...Now Athens is a nice, sleepy Southern university town...

...The Appropriations Committee reported nineteen meetings, but only one was open to the public, and the House Ways and Means Committee held forty closed and twenty-four open meetings...

...0 Stephen R. Maloney Streaking: A Revisionist View THE TWESTY-TWO thousand students at the University of Georgia are basically a conservative group...

...And if that is to be the case, come election time there can be only one course of action, and that is to throw the '~uggers" out...

...Hughes Rudd of CBS news chided streakers, albeit more literately, predicting that thumb-sucking would be big in 1976...

...Presumably these acceptable values do not include a proper reverence for the English language...

...Somebody needs to bring us back to our senses and stop this cock-eyed thing...

...The areas for the commi~s on Agriculture, Foreign Affairs, and Government Operations would also be expanded...

...tee hearings...

...V1 Letter from a Whig Congressional Reorganization ('~ASHINGTON)---In a letter to his colleagues, a GOP congressman recently wrote: "There are some Democrats who are stating that the President has lost the confidence of the people and shouldresign...

...Merchant Marine and Fisheries and Interior were able to come to agreement on a common bill, but Public Works would not compromise...

...If public whim is to be the barometer for determining the course of political action, if we are to go the course of Fourth Republic France with Mr...

...For one day (March 7) the campus would serve as a sanctuary for streakers...

...But the Congress has a curious disinclination to do SO...

...One leader of the BSU pronounced streaking a "conspiracy" to distract people from the grievances of blacks...

...As a result both commi~s passed bills, but the House Committee on Rules (unwilling to antagonize either commi~) has refused to grant a rule for either commit2ee's bill...

...During the Ninety-second Congress over 350 bills and 30 resolutions covering the entire spectrum of fuels and energy-related issues were introduced, but no legislation came to the floor of the House for consideration...

...Again, this committee would assume the jurisdiction implied in the name and lose its energy, transportation, and environmental role...

...The Government Operations Committee would also gain high visibility by incorporating the responsibilities now held by Post Office and Civil Service...

...They, like the illegal liquor establishments that flourished before the city went wet, are good for business...

...At any rate, pressure must be exerted on all employers to hire the inanimate...

...Our administrators have learned the essential lesson of survival: talk tough and then give up...

...After another big University of South Carolina "streak," their president showed that he could use words as sloppily as Representative Floyd: "It is time for the exhibitionist students and their cheering supporters of thousands to lay aside this flaunting of modesty and return to acceptable values...

...As a result of this legislation almost 80 percent of all committee hearings were held in public in 1973...

...Less than two decades later (1965), Congress found it necessary once again to initiate reform proceedings...

...Ten thousand posthumous patriots wading in the Reflecting Pool...

...The Public Works Committee would be renamed the Public Works and Transportation Committee...

...After the Reorganization ACt of 1970, the House of Representatives authorized radio and television coverage of House commit- self can consequently accomplish little...

...advocating amnesty for all...

...he would probably be elected mayor...

...and voting for George McGovern...

...About this time I decided there must be something essentially healthy about which was, "Oh woe is us...

...Nevertheless, the committee's recommendations are significant...

...After all, with all the boobs Christian society was doomed, he indicated, against it, the phenomenon could not be all Other opponents of the Big Streak came bad...

...Although there hasn't been much of the latter lately...

...In a Sindlinger Company poll Congress received a positive rating of only 25.7 percent (2.1 percent excellent, 23 percent good), as compared to a negative rating of 69 percent (47 percent fair, 22 percent poor, and 4.8 percent no opinion...

...Wilbur Mills argued that the separation of taxes from benefits would "lead to potentially disastrous consequences, both for the beneficiaries and for responsible fiscal policy...

...Oh Freud, wouldst thou were living now and still compiling thy catalogues...

...Not even a federal marshall could bust George Washington or Robert Frost or General Grant...

...In 1946 Congress undertook its first major effort in reorganization...

...Similarly, political commentator Elizabeth Drew has charged that regardless of how Congress may talk in its orotund fashion, it has lacked the seriousness of intent necessary to assert its constitutional responsibilities: "Congressional oversight of the executive is a function that is clearly within the grasp of Congress...

...shouting down conservative speakers...

...The legislation can consequently not come before the House of Representatives for consideration...

...The strongest and best organized group on campus, in fact, is n0t~ Gay Liberation but Campus Crusade for Christ...

...But to date only fuel allocation and conservation measures (with the possible exception of the Alaskan pipeline bill) have been decided upon...

...When the public was asked to rate Congress in specific areas (including its handling of Watergate, impeachment, the economy, energy, and inspiring confidence in government)the results were even more negative, ranging from 72 to 88 percent...

...Nixon, then the Congress (controlled by the Democrats as it is) must set the same standard for itself...

...But all that is "changed, changed utterly," as Yeats said in '~Easter 1916," his poem about the great transformation brought about in the Irish people by the Easter Rebellion...

...Just think of it...

...But not all committees have abided b y the resolution...

...This resolution provided that all committee hearings be open to the public unless a majority of the members voted to close a session because of national security, or the possible defamation of character...

...The present mayor did not approve of streaking, although he has managed to suffer the existence of several locally famous brothels for decades...

...Posters went up all over town encouraging students to break the national record, which was assessed rather arbitrarily as 500 streakers--the number that had cavorted earlier in the week at the University of South Carolina...

...The Black Student Union at Georgia, which had been doing its own things, like disrupting a speech by Nobel Prize winner William Schockley, found streakers to be bad nudes...

...Similarly, a poll by Louis Harris revealed a negative rating of 69 percent for Congress, as compared to a positive rating of 21 percent, and 10 percent not sure...

...James "Sloppy" Floyd, a Georgia state when a dear, hard-working lady at the legislator, spoke in the great tradition of university spoke to me confidentially...

...Thus, the question has once again arisen, what can Congress do...

...In the popular mind, of course, Georgia is not number one in anything, save the number of obese deputy sheriffs and the production of moonshine whiskey...

...favoring abortion on demand...

...Well, the mayor issued various public statements, the essence of %Ve're just sitting idly'by and letting this ridiculous thing go on...

...That some reorganization is needed is a point that finds no contention in Congress...

...Excitement rose on the campus...

...SO, you might ask, how on God's green earth did the University of Georgia become the Streaking Capital of the Western World...

...Almost exclusively males, they gathered in groups of two or three, donned their ski masks (every such object Senator Claghorn: '~Even if we have to exin this snowless state has now been sold, poll a thousand students at the University my informants claim), raced around, and of Georgia to get rid of this, we should do titillated the locals...

...Theretofore it could only be done en bloc...

...It does demand an interest in doing the job, and in making the appropriate arrangements...

...The Bolling Committee's recommendations are the culmination of one year of hearings and debate...

...She 16 The Alternative May 1974...

...calls the "silly season"--spring Warm weather and the reports of the decriminalization of exhibitionism in other places had brought out local streakers...

...These critics argue that the "supercommittees" (Ways and Means, Rules, and Appropriations) still retain far too much power...