Letters
LETTERS Senator Bayh received $3,000 from "the fund that Ashland set up to purchase public men. ..." The implication of Kempton's comment was that Senator Bayh has sold out to Ashland Oil Company....
...The Commission would be required to "submit detailed reports on the status of each industry studied, including a detailed program for legislative and executive action...
...The Vietnam Reconciliation Act, backed by The Progressive in the November issue, would help achieve this goal, and deserves the support of all...
...Governing the new nation would be difficult if the society remained divided...
...Big Business, which already controls our government and our lives, is now controlling our intake by giving us what passes for food in a pretty, befrilled Easter egg concoction which inside" is nothing but hot air, noxious gases, and dangerous chemicals...
...Kempton went on to suggest that Ashland was not affected by the bill because Oil and the Third World William Tabb's article, "Peace, Power, and Petroleum," on the world petroleum situation—political as well as economic— (The Progressive, November 1975) calls to mind the recent public paddling Ambassador Daniel Moynihan gave the more militant Third World countries at the U.N...
...If Dr...
...What you sneer at and dismiss as "trickle down" is actually manna from heaven, the best hope for the human race...
...In fact, the $3,000 Kempten referred to was a publicly reported and recorded personal contribution to Senator Bayh's 1968 campaign for re-election by an employe of Ashland Oil Company...
...As with the kings of old, those who are "on top" frequently proclaim loudly to the world that whatever success they have had in "landing on top" is due solely to their own efforts and to the "lightness of things...
...Glenn E. Weisfeld Chicago, Illinois Udallon Monopoly In your October editorial, "A Second Revolution," you toss a lasso around all the "Democratic Presidential hopefuls" and burn the same brand on them...
...Are they justified in protesting the cost to them in suffering and starvation because of their participation in this race—participation over which they have no control...
...Eight years later, Senator Bayh learned, along with the public, that Ashland had surreptitiously furnished corporate funds to some of its employes to reimburse them for contributions to political campaigns...
...Well, the people of Virginia and the other states succeeded...
...If their listeners are strongly of a religious persuasion, then the winners in the race of life do not fail to include that they are of "God's chosen few...
...Kempten was clearly in error when he wrote that Senator Bayh's bill to break up the vertical integration of the oil companies would not affect Ashland Oil Company, and he was clearly in error in suggesting that Ashland was omitted from the list of affected companies because Senator Bayh received $3,000 from Ashland...
...When I contacted Kempten to call the errors to his attention, he admitted that he had not bothered to check his facts regarding the contents of the Bayh bill and admitted that he could think of no candidate for national office who would not have accepted the $3,000 personal contribution in 1968...
...Thomas Burke San Francisco, California Facts on Bayh's Oil Bill In a recent issue of The Progressive you reprinted a CBS Radio commentary by Murray Kempton in which Kempton inaccurately stated that Senator Birch Bayh's bill to break up the vertical integration of major oil companies would affect only the eight largest companies and would not impact upon Ashland Oil Company...
...Bill M. Wise Press Secretary to Senator Birch Bayh Washington, D.C...
...Margaret Mozzanini Portland, Oregon...
...I have difficulty imagining what you people think made this nation so great and wealthy compared to the rest of the world...
...Sex differences represent specialization and complementaries...
...Representative Morris K. Udall has proposed several bold new approaches to reverse the march of monopoly...
...In fact, Senator Bayh's bill would affect a total of twenty-two major integrated companies, including Ashland...
...One of our firebrand patriots, Patrick Henry, realized this, and attempted to help correct it...
...General Assembly...
...One third Rebel, one third Tory, and one third Neutral were the choices of the Americans...
...This new law asked the people of Virginia to forget the divisions of the recent past, and join together in a reconciliation that would bring forth a new united society...
...Hania W. Ris's on Chinese women...
...You make a special point about their avoidance of a meaningful program to combat the plague of monopoly...
...This is no panacea for the mess monopoly has made and is making of our economy, but it is a bold beginning to assemble the facts for action...
...We must reject the politics of division of the Nixon-Ford axis, and work for a political solution that will help bring this divided nation together...
...However, one cannot escape the conclusion that the Third World countries are the victims of this race...
...Udall is making many other approaches to the problem of monopoly, and The Progressive would do well to analyze them, however critically, instead of merely including him among others who have said or done little in this vital field...
...After his election to the legislature of the state of Virginia, he successfully achieved the passage of a bill of "Oblivion and Reconciliation...
...Furthermore, those women laborers who cannot keep up with the men might better turn their talents to, say, embroidery...
...To ensure the economic hegemony of the United States in the world, the principal concern has been to "keep ahead" of Germany and Japan, which, among others, are snapping at the heels of the United States in the everlasting competition for leadership...
...actor in the current economic squeeze play...
...It is painful to read article after article by people of obvious intellectual powers who are blind to truth and reality, apparently because they have adopted an "ideology," become "true believers," and thus lost all ability to see or consider facts that do not fit into their "revealed" view of the world...
...In the preceding paragraph, however, she labeled as an example of "sex bias" the fact that women are regarded as better than men at hand-embroidery, a bias which she claims accounts for the greater proportion of Chinese women workers in an embroidery factory...
...And we must also...
...Since men and women evolved in unison as a single species, we are sure to find that one sex's special aptitude is merely the reciprocal of the other's, such as strength and dexterity...
...E. V.T.Lima Forest City, North Carolina Sex Differences Reconciliation During the American Revolutionary War considerable stress had occurred within the population because of divided loyalties...
...Ris reported that rural laborers are compensated in proportion to their physical strength, a policy by which "many women are penalized...
...In certain occupations a 50:50 sex ratio seems arbitrary and unrealistic...
...This stress remained after the war was over...
...My emphasis...
...But to a mind not befogged by myth, it is obvious that it was the free enterprise system—yes, that dirty word, capitalism— which stimulates and permits innovation, resulting in continual increases in productivity, the sole source of higher living standards, and the only hope for man to be free, both politically and economically...
...If we look for the beauty and utility of these combinations, we won't have to deny their existence and yet we will never again be deluded into believing in the general superiority of one sex over the other...
...They had been castigating the United States as the principal I enjoyed every piece in the November issue, especially Dr...
...The studies would range into the very strongholds of monopoly: "chemical and drugs, electric machinery and equipment, electronic computing and communication equipment, energy, iron and steel, motor vehicles, nonferrous metals, and the food industry...
...One apparent contradiction in her article troubles me, however...
...Ris believes that the wages of women laborers should be corrected as a consequence of their relative lack of strength...
...Ris can acknowledge that men are generally stronger than women, why can't she conceive of women as more dexterous than men, on the average...
...In describing the economic benefits to the United States of not resisting the rise of the price of petroleum above $4.50 a barrel, Tabb reasoned that the Administration knows that the higher price will ensure the retention of the United States' position of world leadership...
...But his violates the principle of equal pay for equal work...
...One instance: On July 16 he introduced a bill which could establish the Competition Review Commission, charged with conducting a comprehensive study of all laws and regulations "which have a significant impact on competition, including but not limited to the antitrust laws and exceptions to the antitrust laws, the patent laws, the internal revenue laws and regulations, the National Labor Relations Act regulatory policies, and Federal contracting and bidding practices...
...I believe you are not fully informed of the facts...
...Having just finished this excellent expose of what the food manufacturing industry is doing to us, it would seem the users of these products should stage a revolution, not apathetically pick out and pay the astronomical price for what is a synthetic substitution for the real thing...
...Sam Buckley Dolphin Tavern New York, New York Capitalism Only Hope After reading your magazine for several months, I have decided not to renew my subscription, not simply because I disagree with your socialist bias and your total hostility to a free market, but because of your complete lack of objectivity...
...I marvel at the intellectual processes that permit you to look at our country today, see "monopolies" everywhere (that do not exist), decry the evils of monopoly, and then propose at every turn'' socialism,'' which is simply one giant monopoly...
...JohnS.Pierson Indian River, Michigan Fake Food I was keenly interested in Jim Hightower's article, "Fake Food is the Future," in the September issue...
Vol. 40 • January 1976 • No. 1
