Editorials
Contents Volume CVI, Number 9 commonweal Correspondence 258 ...
...Though Proposition 13 expressed a Publisher: Edward S. Skillin complaint against distant bureaucracy, it will in fact increase federal revenues (since deductions for real-estate taxes will drop) and state power over schooling and public Commonweal, A Review of Public Affairs, Litera- services, and of course it will increase the relative power of landlords and propertyture and the Arts, is published biweekly, except owning corporations...
...And so the That is why the "tax revolt" has turned to Washington, balanced budgeteers begin to complicate their proposal with encouraged by sophisticated advertising campaigns and various escape hatches-a balanced budget in all years of 3 thorough-going lobbying...
...The state systems are even worse...
...ecumenism...
...Such a regimen would possibly force mercy of corporations and capital that threaten to go politicians to be candid and responsible about what they were elsewhere...
...It ment of human rights...
...Only the federal government expansion...
...Raymond A. Schroth individuals steadily increased...
...Walter Heller recently reminded the public of the sizable deficits run between 1959 and A PERSONAL PAPACY 1965-with an inflation rate of slightly more than 1 percent a It has been two months since the appearance of Redemptor year...
...measured by the pain felt Our man at the U.N.: Richard C. Hottelet 274 when shelling out on April 14 or when examining the deductions from the weekly paycheck, almost any sum might be considered "too much...
...and collegiality...
...Not much, apparently...
...The general belief is that increasingly hard-earned dollars out of security...
...Behind the issue of taxes and budget is, as Humanae Vitae and the general melancholy of Pope Paul's always, the issue of power...
...Nor will the kind of budget cuts envisioned by most of Hominis, Pope John Paul II's encyclical...
...The same channeling is now at work on the national level in monthly Christmas-New Year's and July and Au- the furor over a balanced budget amendment and other legislative variations on the gust, by Commonweal Publishing Co., 232 Madi- same theme...
...coupling of the balanced budget with a guarantee of full But the real problem with the balanced budget furor is its employment, or other schemes that might match limits on effective channeling of political concern in the...
...high deficits and high inflation is simply not there...
...A glance at other their votes to various private bureaucracies they control even measures of federal growth, like numbers employed, supports less...
...For this, the somehow, there has to be a kind of Proption we are headed inescapably for na- Justice Department has announced that it osition 13 in favor of sanity, pulling our tional bankruptcy in the name of national will do nothing...
...Fundamen- position on celibacy but also because some question the tally this is an effort to repair an oversight of the Founding amount of consultation and information that preceded it...
...Though the tax revolt began in the states, it has been then we might welcome a Great Debate...
...The bulk will go to out-of-state and local Staff...
...Contents Volume CVI, Number 9 commonweal Correspondence 258 •mull...
...The country had better think twice...
...More central, however, is its focus not on the Redemptor Hominis expresses an intergratod personal vischurch per se but on Christ and, in the mystery of the Incarna- ion...
...hook and big business which knows where its real interests lie...
...Sure, vidual outrages have been turning up ments he has taken with him...
...Nothing...
...author also had some unflattering things idiocy, however, the prize item in that Brecht, for instance...
...The Pope endorses no political formulas contains a strong commitment to three themes of Vatican II: but insists on the Christian call to faithful service and on the open, though tempered, discussion in the church...
...Simply separate capital outlays and current expenditures, convention assembled and went to work...
...The federal government is the only latter years, many American Catholics immediately reforce capable of limiting the power of giant corporations, bounded to place great hope on the clearly extraordinary indiwhich are like the rest of us in thinking that problems can best vidual who is Karol Wotyla...
...Even so...
...and indeed some critics of U.S...
...There is certainly no reason to do so...
...Thanks to such regressive measures as Good as Gold: Raymond A. Schroth 284 the sales tax, in 47 out of 50 states a family earning $5,000 a year will have to pay a A Year at the Catholic Worker/Confessions greater percentage of its income in state and local taxes than a family,eaming of a Catholic Worker: Michael True 285 $50,000 a year...
...At another level, it may planning," the very accomplishments of humankind turn back be exactly what will establish a new kind of papal authority inn against their creators...
...Frank Snepp was a handling of the two cases, so close to- no farther away than the neighborhood CIA man in Saigon during the last days of gether, does make you wonder what meeting of the PTA-after all, they're the American adventure there...
...was, as was the letter, an intensely personal document, the sort The various proposals to restrict federal expenditure to some that elicits reflection rather than controversy...
...expenditures-as in a slumping economy or a war...
...The fact remains that Americans have a lighter tax burden than the citizens of almost all other indusBooks trialized nations, a number of which manage to provide both a better range of social Sophie's Choice: Larzer Ziff 277 services and a steadier economy than the U.S...
...foreign, $39...
...On top of this, there are special situations like the Editorial Assistant: Anne Robertson California real estate boom that sent the assessed value of homes sky high in a few Columnists: John Garvey, Frank Getlein, years, often doubling real estate taxes and prompting the reaction that led, absent Abigail McCarthy, Thomas Powers Movies: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...anti-fiction revisited: OUR BALANCE Janet Groth 269 Television: Philip Tertian 272 A MERICANs have every right to be angry about their taxes, but not for the Screen: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...Linda F. Kayler, Harriette Balsky Advertising Manager: Ruth E. Taylor corporations and apartment-house owners...
...What Ameridecreased by over two-thirds since 1946...
...Unlike the Pope's Holy Thursday letter that value in the fight against inflation, although what is symbolism reaffirmed the Latin rite's commitment to priestly celibacy, to others can be a precious hold on survival for the most the encyclical had no immediate administrative implication...
...and enormity...
...Bert Brecht...
...Editorials 259 Safe against Brecht: Frank Getlein 261 Sol .mi;'Awe ~~ SALT sellers: Peter Kovler 262 '&'&'sV r The state of American fiction: All in the family: Jonathan Yardley 265 Between the best-sellers and the groves: Martin Green 266 LOSING Personal relations and public themes: George W. Hunt 267 Fiction vs...
...Over the same Executive Editor Peter Steinfels years, the proportion of taxes paid by corporations has declined and that paid by Associate Editor...
...well tain), Desmond Fisher (Dublin), Alain known that of the $7 billion tax cutback resulting from Proposition 13, homeowners Woodrow (Paris) will get a little less than $2 billion...
...For John Paul II, this dignity is Holy Thursday letter comes to mind-may conflict with the threatened by the way in which, without "rational and honest Pope's institutional responsibilities...
...If a real examination as do states with constitutional balanced-budget restrictions, of the role of government and its powers of taxation was or eliminate the federal grants to states and municipalities (so underway, if a full range of alternative proposals had the vehemently crying for fiscal stringency) and-presto!-the public's ear-we are thinking of Tom Hayden's provocative federal government would have its balanced budget today...
...It is Fathers by writing today's capitalism into the Constitution...
...any corrective move by the California legislature, to Proposition 13...
...Right urity "secrets" were revealed, except Were they serious...
...and Canada, $20...
...But Americans have a right not only A Private Choice: Robert G. Hoyt 278 to complain about what they get for their money, but about the unfair way in which the burden of paying it is distributed...
...All these manifestations of our Martin took the documents in order to the hands of the national security freaks national security madness have been write a book defending himself against who will cheerfully spend everything the around for some time, but it does seem charges he anticipated in a book by country can produce in pursuit of the that in the last couple of months indi- Henry Kissinger based on secret docu- phantom goal of total security...
...Likewise the link between...
...In theory anyway, the social services and government initiatives liberals have traditionally favored are as 11 May 1979: 259 possible under balanced budgets as unbalanced ones, the only be solved their own way but unlike the rest of us in having vast difference being that the taxes to pay for them must be forth- resources at their disposal for doing this...
...The response has the balanced budgeteers-and by an administration trying to been muted, though not at all disapproving...
...10016...
...They were serious...
...Certainly they'd be happy to-have done, every with increasing speed...
...But we need even remains that as a percentage of the gross national product, the further tax cuts, comes the reply, echoing what the oil comnational debt has decreased significantly in recent years (and panies have said about their remarkable profits...
...Yearly subscriptions, U.S...
...them is the sheer cost for the sheer total had fallen all over itself in Vietnam...
...wrong direc- government with limits on corporate size and independencetion...
...The states are at the coming immediately...
...Thirto report about Ambassador Graham permanent story recently has been the teen years and nothing...
...The For connoisseurs of national security lack of results...
...The letter, like fixed percentage of the gross national product or limit in- the first reports on the Pope's visit to Puebla, has inspired a creases in spending to the rise in GNP do not even have the new outburst of nervousness, partially because of the definite redeeming features of the balanced budget idea...
...Single copy, $1...
...It clear that despite a resignation to a papacy that seemed distant would set up a barrier to any desire to alter the economy from their lives, brought on by the disappointment of democratically...
...However nice it would be ity, decrease inflation...
...Human dignity is threatened by the an age when people will not honor the keys of Peter because disparity between rich societies and poor and by the curtail- they can fetter but because they can liberate...
...The federal tax system "is a disgrace to the Albert Camus: Wallace Fowlie 248 human race," declared a well-known amnesiac when he ran for president a few Ground Fog and Night: Robert Phillips 282 years ago...
...But what dently if not on purpose-the only way to carelessly left them in an unlocked car, in about the taxpayers who paid for all this save it, fellows,-and that if by some violation of another law, and thus al- nonsense...
...The artist was in prosecuted, that freedom of the press is Meanwhile, Graham Martin himself good shape...
...Special two-year rate: the end-all of government policy, that it often looks as if they oppose balanced $35...
...He got out President Carter had in mind when he discussing handicapped children-but and wrote a book pointing out in some talked about identical treatment for the offence of the security maniacs that detail what was widely known even small-time crooks and "big shot" will finally turn the Republic against without detail, namely that the Agency crooks...
...That the vehicle for this developpercent real growth, or a balanced budget except in cases of ment should be a proposed constitutional convention, one "national emergency...
...uniting power of the Eucharist...
...now, this minute, national security is en- the long-public one of CIA ineptitude...
...this picture...
...security is national security...
...His wife used to amuse hercurtailed, that the country lives in the left Saigon with a trunkful of secret, sen- self dictating recipes from a Polish cookserious risk of blowing itself up acci- sitive documents, in violation of law, book into her tapped telephone...
...It's impossible to define "too much" in the abstract...
...budgets on principle...
...Just a jackknife has Macheath, the greatest danger to national been used in the book, no national sec- dear, and he keeps it out of sight...
...By now it is...
...Now the papers report no such results, not to pay out all that interest on the national debt, the fact outside of another loss to the Treasury...
...surrounded by uncertainties about its proper form and legitiBeyond this, there is the less obvious problem that a "ba- mate scope of action, is all the more disturbing...
...Between the mid-'50s and the mid-'70s, the percentage of an Staff average family income going for taxes doubled...
...one must sympathize with anyone's felt time they got the chance-trample on the There was a matched pair of cases that need to defend himself from Kissingerian Bill of Rights in defense against the godtell us a lot we wish weren't true about attack, but still the Justice Department's less atheists of the Kremlin who may be national security...
...blessed with the FBI...
...As things stand, the aimed at Washington by state legislators happy to get off the whole exercise tends toward very dangerous mischief...
...Do we pay too much in taxes...
...Trench-coated Martin's conduct before and during the news that for 13 years the FBI kept an eye agents slithering into basement monitorgrand exit...
...Sometime, somewhere, miracle we do escape national incinera- lowed them to be stolen...
...if the family had earned four times Editor James O'Gara as much, its tax burden would have increased at only half that rate...
...Commonweal: 260 In this sense, the encyclical merits their careful reading...
...foreign, $22...
...A Questions arise not about the freedom of suring that criminals walk the street not compliant judge ruled viciously against the artist-or anyone else in a society even brought to trial let alone vigorously the author and the case is now on appeal...
...It is easy to cut them off at the pass-have anything more than symbolic understand why...
...making them the ruin they are today, 11 May 1979: 261...
...defense industry and wealth, competing against one another to the spending are entertaining the fond notion that a balanced- point that no one wins but the large firms and corporate leaders budget requirement would enforce some limits on Pentagon who enjoy these concessions...
...At one level, such a personal approach-and again the tion, on human dignity...
...The The federal deficit is neither the monster the budgeteers make same arguments were heard then: it would unleash productivit nor the key to all our inflation ills...
...The Justice Department on Bertolt Brecht, the late, great play- ing stations, subverting the mails and brought suit, even while admitting no wright...
...273 reasons that are commonly given...
...Show me duh vay to duh next vhiskey bar...
...No amount of lanced budget" is subject to matters of definition, and redefini- pre-convention theorizing would be definitive once such a tion...
...Surabaya Johnny...
...Oh, don't ask vy, Oh don't AT LAST rr is clear beyond denial: classified documents of any kind had ask vy...
...Rising social security taxes are another regressive levy that has increased the burden on average income households at twice the rate it has affected high income brackets...
...Poetry: John Fandel But Proposition 13 illustrates how thoroughly the American taxpayer's revolt Correspondents: Brian Wicker (Great Bri- against unfairness is being channeled into further unfairness...
...It vulnerable members of our society...
...The federal debt has cans are being asked is to switch their "taxes" from an run far behind the increase in private and corporate debt, and of all-too-distant federal bureaucracy they barely control through course behind the growth in the economy...
...The obvious problem is that "immediately" may (and with the growth of multinationals, sometimes not even not be the best time to raise taxes for necessary the federal government) can match this power...
...O.K., granted the FBI are now and Of several minds: Frank Getlein always have been a bunch of idiots, scared stiff at the prospect of the Red Menace worming its way into America the Beautiful disguised as medical insurSAFE AGAINST BRECHT ance, a living wage or other Commie THE REAL THREAT TO NATIONAL SEC= plots...
...son Ave., New York, N.Y...
...Telephone: Liberals have had to spend so much time arguing that balancing the budget is not (212) MU 3-2042...
...Six months ago, the capital-gains tax was reduced...
...almost all the states now offer tax breaks to attract spending money for...
Vol. 106 • May 1979 • No. 9
