CORRESPONDENCE
CORRESPONDENCE Phi/ilLs MeGinlel/ New York, N.Y. To the Editors: I don't know why John Deedy is so patronizing about Phyllis McGinley's light verse [Mar. 31, 1978]. He was right--her verse...
...If the IRA Provos are crushed before a decent settlement is achieved, the Catholics of the North will once again be abandoned by the leadership in the South, and, as they hunker down and take it, there will be little heard of them and their sufferings on this side of the water...
...The Court sentenced us purely because we broke the law, and offered to withdraw the sentence when we promised to honor the law...
...The federal solution to Ireland's problems offers much in the way of peace a...
...It is easy enough to criticize ~rn Fein for supporting the ~RA, but that does not give /he Irish or British governments the risht to mpqpress the political ideas of Sinn Fein...
...To the Editors: ,Deunond Fisher is to .be commended for his article "Britain's Third Option" [May 26...
...prosperity, but let us atl give credit where it is due, and not allow federal~m to be used as yet another political football and perpetuate the tragedy that is Britain's rule in Ireland...
...We said at Catonsville that the genocide stops here...
...Now, we say the mass suicide stops here...
...If physical freedom is bought only by silence, their we will discard silence and acquire a more precious freedom...
...ANNE PERKINS IRA Prwves Pittsburgh, Pa...
...What is disappointing is that so few ha-ce taken a good look at such a promising proposal..It is also disappointing to see where 1he credit goes for the "federal solution...
...If we are cremated in mass nuclear destruction, we will have the conSOlation of knowing that it was all legal...
...Giving aid to the wrong people is only thg beginning of the problem of the credit...
...To avoid this ban, the bill would funnel aid to people who do not need it, would deny it to those who do need it, and would provide an administrative structure that is so loose that large-scale fraud is a moral certainty...
...They are charming and persuasive but are a smug, selfish, bourgeois crew, totally out of sympathy with the proletarians and activists in the Catholic North...
...To the Editors: On April 25, Judge Owen Lewis of the FederalDistrict Court, Alexandria, Vs., sentenced Esther Cassidy, Ladon Sheats, John Schuchardt and myself to 1 year, 6 months suspended, 2 years probation...
...If we want peace, we will have to stop making war...
...All six of us are from the Jonah House community in Baltimore...
...By using the tax credit mechanism, the Packwood-M[oynihan bill puts the IRS in charge of its administration...
...Ir would almost certainly destroy the already weak chance that the Supreme Court would treat the plan as a. tax provision rather than a grant program...
...In order to buy a small chance that 21 July 1978:478 the Supreme Court will find it constitutional, the aid program is structured in ways that otherwise make no sense...
...In any case, taxing the middle class to pay for benefits to the middle class is not the world's greatest idea...
...We trust that sisters and brothers will awake as the Gospel entreats, and respond in time...
...Since the whole ~'purpose of the credit approach is to reduce the constitutional problem, a, feature that increases it is 100 percent dead...
...But in our view, the law clearly legalizes the criminality of the State...
...Lewis forbade a statement at sentencing...
...Please present the other side of this deadly story...
...The testimony leading to imprisonmerit went thusly: we first shared a litany of repentance--asking God's forgiveness for the main elements of American warmaking, beginning with the new doomsday weapons systems-Trident, cruise missile, Missile X. Then we poured blood on the pillars and floors "of The Pentagon, revealing its bloodletting of over three decades...
...THOMAS KNEIPP ~te/m~' Aid ' Detroit, Mich...
...Two effects are completely predictable...
...Why should a poet not celebrate being married, enjoying her family and living in the suburbs...
...We will not pay for the conspiracies and weapons of this or any government...
...a sizable slice of our income (for war), and silence...
...Had commnn sense and a true interest in the welfare of Ireland allowed Sinn Fein proposals to be aired and considered baok .in 1971, perhaps the violence of abe past eight years---paramilitary and British A~my both---would not .have been necessary...
...But because Sinn Fein supports the IRA their views are virtually banned from the media, although Sinn Fein is a legal party with elected representatives...
...She may not have regretted moving back into the City at the end...
...Your editorial suggested that the credit would have a refundable feature to give aid to persons too poor to be taxpayers, but the political prospects of a refundable feature are nil...
...They are not doing a very good job of running the South, but they and their friends, such as Desmond Fisher, your correspondent, are fat and happy...
...And we scattered ashes, as a symbol of mourning and repentance, and as a warning against a world in nuclear ash...
...Your edi4orial on Northern Ireland, "Peace for Ireland," was of the same kidney...
...It was one village, Larchmont, that she celebrated, and one husband and family that she enjoyed...
...A .federal solution to the "trouble" in | North of Iceland would go far---if not aU the way--to ending the tragic violence and building t just and ,peaceful Ireland...
...Prominent, respectable and stupid Irish Americans will look the other way, but they will be feted in Dublin...
...All this government needs to lead the world to nuclear ruin is an irrelevant vote every four years...
...To the Editors: Your March 3, 1978 editorial, "Extending Aid to Education," supports a cynical and poorly designed plan to provide federal aid to sectarian schools...
...PHILIP BERRIGAN Commonweal: 479...
...Sounds pretty good to this Manhattan dweller...
...Although, as your editorial pointed out, costs have gone up over 70 percent between 1967 and 1975, middle class incomes have gone up at about the same rate during this period...
...Even adding a single line to the tax return is resisted fiercely by those responsible for making the tax laws intelligible to over 100 million Americans...
...It gives aid to upper income families that do not need it and it denies aid to the poor who do...
...To prepare for nuclear suicide is to be guilty of it...
...The motivation for the Packwood.Moynihan tax credit proposal is the constitutional ban on direct aid to church-related elementary and secondary schools...
...To the Editors: Your issue of May 26, 1978 was disturbing to an old and faithful reader...
...First, the aid is given to a/l students, not just those going to parochial schools...
...MICHAEL J. McINTYRE Professor of Law, Wayne State University mm.r u wlu" s J Richmond, Va...
...You have accepted the point of view of the ruling clique in Southern Ireland...
...He was right--her verse is better than James Whitcomb Riley's...
...gave us terms of 1 year and 6 months, despite concurrent dropping of charges for similar civil diSObedience in other Alexandria federal courts, and disregarded Esther Cassidy's first offense status, her pregnancy of three ~ months, and recovery from a serious Easter Sunday auto accident...
...Steinfels on Hiss sounded more Commentary than Commonweal an~ Powers on Nixon sounded like Rabbi Korff...
...Please dig a little deeper...
...The IRA Provns fill a need and have the respect of the oppressed Catholic mass, which cannot be said for John Hume (very influential with you, Kennedy and the rest), who is a decent bourgeois, one of the group who started the whole thing with a cry for civil rights and then were helpless when lan Paisley began to shout and the Protestant thugs began beating and burning...
...First, to the extent that IRS diverts reSOurces to this program, its more important audit and taxpayer assistance functions will suffer...
...Second, since IRS can audit only about 2 percent of returns filed, many persons not entitled to the credit will be unable to resist the temptation to claim it anyway...
...The real reason Miss McGinley didn't publish her verse in Commonweal was not that she didn't like the magazine, but because after working on the Altar Guild, dropping her girls off at the parochial school, and picking up her husband on the 7:02, she wanted :to eai'n some money for her work, and thus sent her poems off to the New Yorker...
...If we are silent, we are making war...
...That thing (Continued on page 478) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued/rom page 451 ) in the North could not go on if the driving power against the establishment therd ~ were merely thugs, however romantic...
...The name of the game in tax administration these days is simplicity...
...MSC, Z.) ct~aJ.es owe~ race Washington D.C...
...Kevin Street Sinn Fein, the only 32-County political organization, sueBested federalism as early as 1971, and it became a part of their social and economi~ program for a united l~eland...
...General aid of $4 billion is questionable in light of other more pressing national problems...
...Second, the Packwood-Moynihan proposal has all the inefficiency that results when taxes are used in place of direct grants...
...Perhaps our impriSOnment--in my case, added to 44 months already served _9 for non-violent resistance---will give weight to this reflection...
...We joined in priSOn Ed Clark, with a similar sentence, and Carl Kabat, OMI, serving a year...
...Rather, we will testify against its waste and madness, simply because the price of silence is unconscionably great...
...It is not feasible for IRS to require the kind of verification on a tax return that an agency with responsibility for administering a direct grant program would build into its disbursement procedures...
...For th~ most part, all that happens is that a portion~ of the burden of financing education is shifted from middle class families to middle class persons withbut children and to middle class elderly persons...
Vol. 105 • July 1978 • No. 14
