COMMENT
COMMENT 'Keep them confused' It may be scant comfort to the victims and survivors, but the rest of us can draw useful instruction from being more knowledgeable now — at long last — about the...
...As primary day drew near, Byrne benefited from three strokes of luck...
...See "Born Secret," by Erwin Knoll, in the May issue of The Progressive...
...And some others in the media are also troubled by the notion of a special privilege for the press...
...it introduced bookkeeping, became less flagrant about looting the public treasury ("honest graft" was the way one Daleyite described it), and recruited young college graduates to give it an aura of sophistication...
...f Corruption is likely to taper off a bit — Byrne personally has been described as "pathologically honest...
...And they recognize the reality of 1979, the year of his reversal...
...Keep them confused," said the former President when told in 1953 that residents of southern Utah were worried about fallout from nuclear weapons tests in the nearby Nevada desert...
...But Bilandic was arrogant and overconfident...
...But I.F...
...Small private pools, as an example, meet the needs of swimmers less adequately and create fewer social satisfactions than large, well-maintained public pools...
...Domestic oil production peaked and began to decline in 1970...
...With roads and even elevated tracks uncleared and buses stalled, mass transportation all but collapsed...
...But the journey could well begin with a far more substantial tax on oil profits...
...Foregoing such investment in the name of inflation fighting and fiscal austerity is ignoring that causes have effects...
...The President pleaded for a windfall profits tax because decontrol of oil prices will "further inflate the already large profits of the oil companies...
...They remember the rhetoric of 1976, when candidate Jimmy Carter was unwavering in his support for continued controls...
...Arbitrary and occasionally unfair trade-offs between press freedom and individual rights are likely to plague us until we manage to restructure our concentrated, corporate media...
...I find it a little disquieting that, if this kind of probing can be done by the defense, it should not be done by the plaintiff," Kirkpatrick says...
...Elmer Picket lost his wife and nine other relatives to leukemia...
...For once solar technologies are in place, they run on free fuel...
...The NATO treaty was approved by the Senate in 1950...
...to bargain collectively with unions of police, firefighters, and other city workers...
...Per capita world production has since fallen from 5.34 barrels to 5.20 barrels...
...George, at Camp Desert Rock, at Three Mile Island, and elsewhere, for letting the Government treat public information as though it were its private property...
...Energy policy double-talk The oil companies would be quaking in their boots if all they knew about President Carter's approach to the energy crisis were what he told the public in his last speech...
...The deceptiveness is a chronic condition...
...Mortality studies are beginning to show significantly higher cancer rates among all who lived in the windpaths from the bomb tests Another measure of the price can be seen in the outrage felt by those who now recognize that their trust was betrayed...
...to fire the incumbent police chief, James O'Grady, and replace him with someone outside the ranks from another city...
...It is arguable that the doctrine of libel itself poses a greater threat to the First Amendment than do the procedures used by the courts to adjudicate libel cases...
...It is generally assumed that Chicago's 30,000 patronage jobs, city and county-wide, provide a built-in vote of 300,000 for the machine...
...The answer is that this was no isolated case...
...Such broad remedies are still a long way off...
...The real choice for the American people is not between hardship and adequate future supplies of energy, as Carter suggests...
...She appointed a transition committee which included two respected former aldermen, Leon Despres and Bill Singer...
...Carter's loud laments about windfall oil profits are still no more than rhetoric...
...Decontrol will cost oil users about $17 billion at today's prices, a figure that can only go substantially higher as world oil prices continue to rise...
...He wrote and produced advertising for Byrne and gave her campaign a professional touch...
...Only 7.7 per cent of the total proposed budget for the Department of Energy is allocated to renewable energy sources — solar, wind, hydropower, and bioenergy combined...
...George, Utah, who were never told the facts of life about fallout...
...We can encourage even more rapid development and use of solar power...
...Some changes seem to be in the offing for Chicago: f Money previously diverted to the central district will be channeled to black and brown neighborhoods — not only because they made Byrne's victory possible, but because they now constitute a majority of the city...
...Everyone kissed and made up...
...George, beyond the 1950s, and beyond such things as radioactive fallout...
...Which amendment is it that guarantees freedom of the press...
...Nor is it just the military application of atomic energy that has flourished in secrecy since the dawn of the nuclear age...
...While America's coal reserves are large, a near-consensus has developed among many atmospheric scientists that coal use will have to stop long before most of these reserves are burned because of the adverse effects of rising carbon dioxide levels on world climate...
...On the morning after the debacle, the machine made peace with Jane Byrne, and she made peace with the machine...
...The oil companies know full well that President Carter's unwillingness to make decontrol contingent on a windfall profits tax only reduces the likelihood of such a tax...
...For more than half a century, with short interludes of near-democracy, Chicago has been the model for urban totalitarianism...
...Our military mother church The theory that ours is a nation where church and state are separate appears to have overlooked the fact that the Pentagon is our true national church, its doctrines sacred and its immunity to skepticism invulnerable...
...The policy of public deception in conducting nuclear weapons tests worked for Eisenhower in the 1950s, as it did for Kennedy and Johnson in the 1960s and Nixon, Ford, and Carter in the 1970s...
...On March 27, the OPEC countries raised the world price of oil by $1.20 per barrel...
...And it was not just a deception that came and went...
...Sidney Lens (Sidney Lens, a contributing editor, has long been active in Chicago labor and peace organizations...
...Elimination of wasteful practices along with the development of solar power and other energy technologies would meet the country's real energy needs and create many more jobs than coal or nuclear power...
...Don't say anything about "thermonuclear," "fusion," and "hydrogen," Eisenhower suggested...
...Only one strategy for combatting the rapid rise in energy prices and concomitant depletion of finite fossil fuels holds up under economic analysis that takes more than the here and now into account...
...What that constitutes, as already noted, is a return of Chicago to the United Slates...
...it was also the American soldiers who took part in the weapons tests...
...The New York Times has summarized the official explanations of this paradox, and they are remarkable demonstrations of how impervious to irony an entrenched superstition can become once it has enforced upon us the conquest of reason by faith...
...Its political machines under both Republicans (who faded away during the 1920s) and Democrats were in the tradition of Boss Tweed — heavy-handed, crooked, rooted in the white communities, aligned with big business...
...Such skepticism is the surest innoculation against the manipulations of those who, like Eisenhower and his Atomic Energy Commissioners, and those who have come before and after, would keep the people confused so that policies might proceed undisturbed...
...The very existence of laws penalizing libel and slander can have a chilling effect on a free press and on all social discourse...
...In the euphoria of the moment, she promised a number of good things: to repair and rebuild the neighborhoods...
...Here we are, twenty-eight years later, and Carter has indicated his approval of a $360 million increase in the arms budget to "purchase 145 new helicopters for American troops in Europe...
...The media, like any other powerful segment of society, should not be entitled to broader civil liberties than those enjoyed by the rest of us...
...Also, economic activity generated by labor-intensive renewable energy development will help compensate for any immediate revenue outflows by generating economic growth where and when we need it...
...The President's action shows that the strategy of the oil companies has worked...
...The tentative and the experimental have become the permanent and the sacred, and that condition is so past all debate by now that even the meager prospect of the slowing of the arms race becomes one more excuse for increasing the exactions of our weapons budget...
...A successful solar strategy demands more than simple-minded substitution of solar energy for uranium, coal, or oil...
...The Progressive, currently embroiled in a critically important First Amendment case, cannot accept the view that the press has special rights which others do not have in civil or criminal proceedings...
...Libel suits, even when summarily dismissed, can impose heavy legal costs on a publication or individual — and these costs are disproportionately burdensome for the less powerful or affluent segments of society...
...It was not just the Utah bystanders who were lied to by the designers and testers of atomic bombs...
...COMMENT 'Keep them confused' It may be scant comfort to the victims and survivors, but the rest of us can draw useful instruction from being more knowledgeable now — at long last — about the manner in which Dwight Eisenhower and his Atomic Energy Commissioners protected the "national security" a generation ago...
...In the wake of Harrisburg, the chief executive officer of one of the nation's largest financial institutions said his company would not put another dollar into nuclear power...
...But Daley's son, Richard, a state senator, and the powerful machine Daley had built were able to put their man, Michael Bilandic, into the mayor's seat...
...More than two-thirds of the registered voters turned out — enough to counterbalance the machine's solid 300,000 who come out in any weather...
...Denis Hayes (Denis Hayes is a senior researcher at WorldWatch Institute, Washington, D.C...
...The Administration would have us believe that higher prices, fewer comforts, and energy industry incentives are the answer to the energy crisis...
...New wind in Chicago Jane Byrne's sensational primary victory over Mayor Michael Bilandic, and her subsequent runaway in the regular election against a nondescript Republican, probably mean that Chicago is ready to rejoin the United States...
...the two divisions we were sending to NATO would stay no longer than the time Western Europe needed to train and equip its own troops...
...Government will open up somewhat — as Leon Despres put it, "like the government of Spain" — and there will be a more accommodating atmosphere for "outsiders...
...The energy crisis is as much an outgrowth of the kind of economic order in which we live as of the energy technologies we adopt...
...Less than 5 per cent of the windfall taxes President Carter wants to levy against oil companies would go to develop renewable energy resources...
...The industry is on its last legs," he said...
...But the basic reforms that are needed — full employment, desegregation, decent housing, curtailment of the power of the banks and real estate forces — are still a long way off...
...When Daley died two-and-a-half years ago, there was speculation that the machine might fall apart...
...But the accident at Three Mile Island has dealt a devastating blow to the nuclear industry...
...And it reflects the power of a tight clique of auto, tire, and oil companies to stall all efforts to build an effective mass transit system...
...The coal industry is also running into growing troubles...
...On the other side of the ledger, however, Byrne offered no resistance as machine stalwarts reappointed themselves to key committee posts on the city council, leaving nothing for the eight independents and only slim pickings for ten aldermen who are not mavericks but who have made it clear they can no longer be taken for granted by the machine...
...He forgot that in the 1977 election he had won barely 51 per cent of the vote...
...it was also the flesh and bones of the public consent on which democracy itself ultimately rests...
...And as the energy crisis deepens, we need to look not only at corporate treasuries but at the corporate board rooms which have created the crisis...
...Perhaps more importantly, the new OPEC pricing agreement left all its member countries free to add any premiums "which they deem justifiable in the light of their own circumstances...
...Even if the windfall profits tax is passed, the Carter energy package will induce a further redistribution of income from individual consumers to the corporate giants...
...But the oil companies know better...
...Turning to solar means turning toward an entirely new concept of energy use...
...It reflects the public's lack of control over a corporate structure that wastes resources through shoddy products and planned obsolescence...
...The Administration has ignored its own interdepartmental report, drafted by 130 representatives from thirty agencies and received by the White House last December, which outlined how the United States could obtain 25 to 30 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by the year 2000...
...More than just the flesh and bones of people were sacrificed on the alter of "national security" at St...
...Supreme Court ruled late in April that a journalist may be compelled to answer questions in court as to the beliefs, opinions, and intentions he or she held in preparing a program or article...
...The status quo remained intact — patronage, "honest graft," segregation, police abuses — and Bilandic seemed to have a hold on the mayor's office for life...
...At the time that undervalued prophet, Robert Taft, warned that if we installed American troops in Europe, they might be there draining our treasury for twenty-five years...
...He demanded that the oil companies "use their new incomes to develop energy for America and not to buy department stores and hotels...
...to spruce up the parks...
...It implies decentralization and diversity...
...The present doctrine of libel is symptomatic of the major structural inadequacies of the contemporary media...
...The last bastion of city totalitarianism is about to crumble...
...The widening gap between energy demand and oil production was expected to be filled by nuclear power and coal...
...The temptation to lie is particularly strong in areas such as nuclear weapons and nuclear power, where scientific and technological complexities mask bureaucratic and corporate self-interest...
...The President has now acceded to complete decontrol, which will be implemented fully by September 30, 1981 — with or without any action by Congress on his windfall profits proposal...
...The CBS decision does raise complex questions about the power of the modern media and the best way to protect both individual rights and a free play of ideas...
...The blizzard turned things around for Jane Byrne, who with a borrowed $75,000 campaign fund had been on the trail for almost a year...
...Stone, a journalist wise in the ways of official deception, was not speaking of nuclear energy alone when he said, "Every government is run by liars...
...I felt used," says Elizabeth Catalan of St...
...It was a shattering defeat for Bilandic and forty-nine machine ward committeemen...
...A few broadcast networks and a few newspaper chains now exercise increasing control over the flow of information — and the goal of these media is to maximize profits rather than promote a free exchange of diverse ideas...
...It is time to start transforming the rhetoric into action...
...AMTRAK alone would need several hundred million dollars just to undo the budget cuts already proposed by the Administration...
...Meanwhile, since 1973, growth in world oil production has failed to keep pace with world population growth...
...Yet our economic order makes most of us rely on, and compete for, as many private goods as we can get...
...Now our mother church is the Pentagon, which, at best, can leave behind only helicopters, rusting and waiting to be scrapped...
...The Carter program makes a show of beginning a new direction in energy policy, but what it really does is assure continued control over energy resources by the multinational energy conglomerates...
...America was born on the principles of an Age of Reason in revolt against the superstitions of the Middle Ages, which at least left us cathedrals...
...But, as was bound to happen eventually, the country is now beginning to get an inkling of the price...
...Finally, there was the weather on primary day...
...In 1979, as in 1953, deception is the instinctive refuge of governments whose word is questioned...
...The best that could be said for Daley was that he was often a benevolent dictator, though he was also the brutal despot who unleashed the police during the 1968 Democratic convention and during the riots that followed Martin Luther King's assassination...
...Electricity, the highest and most expensive form of energy, is wasted when used to heat buildings and water in areas where climatic conditions allow for the use of simple solar and wind systems, for instance...
...George...
...His small quarrel with Jane Byrne, consumer sales commissioner, over her charge that he had "greased" a taxi-fare increase — a charge that caused him to fire her — seemed inconsequential...
...Murray Kempton...
...IfThe patronage system will be whittled down appreciably...
...Within this context, solar energy development is increasingly urgent, and it is seen that way by a growing number of citizens and legislators...
...We must not let anything interfere with this series of tests — nothing," said Commissioner Thomas E. Murray...
...Thus, President Carter has genuflected and, in an hour when he pleads for austerity and sacrifice from everyone else, increased the military budget...
...He did not realize that his base was thin, but Jane Byrne understood and decided to challenge him in the primary...
...The suppression of information about the effects of nuclear weapons has been a bedrock e ' governmental policy that continues to this very day...
...One measure of that price is the death rate among the townspeople of St...
...In addition, coal exploitation in the arid Western states requires a great deal of water — a resource that is already diminishing because of overuse...
...In other words, what is fair for one party in a lawsuit should be fair for the other...
...Nonetheless, politics in Chicago will not be quite the same...
...See "The Guineapigs of Camp Desert Rock," on Page 37...
...In a truly free exchange of information and ideas, the credibility of particular sources and press organs would be quickly established...
...There will be competition and fragmentation, discussion and division, and perhaps — in the process — some reforms...
...Daley's style of government was to give the elites in banking, construction, real estate, the labor leadership, and commerce almost everything they wanted, but to starve the neighborhoods and drain money from the poor by one of the most regressive tax systems of any major city...
...Many in the press community have criticized this view, asserting that the press has a special First Amendment right to refuse to answer such questions...
...asked Joseph M. Hendrie, chairman of the Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, successor to the old Atomic Energy Commission, in a conversation taped for posterity during the frantic aftermath of the Three Mile Island debacle...
...The decision evoked prompt and sharp criticism from most — though not all — press groups, which saw it as the latest in a recent series of decisions bound to leave a chilling effect on press freedom...
...But the crisis, like the President's response to it, is symptomatic of fundamental inequalities and contradictions in the political and economic system...
...Nothing they say should be believed...
...Estimates differ as to exactly how much of this amount would be recouped by a windfall profits tax, but with the inevitable exemptions, complications, and definitions, the tax could yield as little as $2 billion for the Government...
...See "Corporate Meltdown," on Page 12...
...Well," he said, "I'm against it...
...Now that the facts are coming to light, forced into the open by events — human deaths — that can no longer be ignored or covered up, we may well ask what lessons are to be learned from these revelations of governmental deception...
...None of this, however, brought even a semblance of democracy to the city...
...Rule by superstition and fantasy is a permanent human condition, altering only in form, and generally for the worse...
...Yet within the past few weeks, all our conventional energy choices have taken a buffeting...
...Fiscal conservatives who are reluctant to proceed with solar because of the current climate of austerity need to consider that solar energy provides a long-term hedge against run-away inflation...
...Private lawns in suburban developments are far less desirable in many ways than spacious public parks...
...In such a context, individuals can be severely damaged by an irresponsible press, and those individuals have no recourse except the courts...
...George, whose father died of leukemia...
...We paid a heavy price at St...
...Carter's solar rhetoric "There are solar techniques that are economical right now," President Carter assured the nation in his recent energy message...
...We were conned...
...the other 49 per cent had been shared by four candidates, making Bilandic's victory seem more impressive than it really was...
...This analysis was provided by Pacific News Service...
...That action once again clarified the dependence of the United States upon the whim of a foreign cartel for its principal fuel...
...People have got to learn to live with the facts of life, and part of the facts of life are fallout," said Commissioner Wil-lard F. Libby...
...That strategy consists of canonizing conservation and shifting with due haste to renewable energy sources...
...It requires that energy sources and uses be carefully matched, so that expensive, high-quality energy is not wasted on jobs that do not require it...
...They will seek — and the Administration is encouraging — increased reliance on coal, in which they have a big stake, and continued subsidization of nuclear energy, in which many oil companies are also heavily involved...
...The press's concern should be to extend civil liberties to the broadest possible point for everyone...
...Democratic control and redesign of these areas would save vastly more than the 400,000 barrels a year conserved by such partial measures as mandatory settings of thermostats in public buildings...
...It permitted the Government to build up and perfect a formidable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction...
...The basic long-term solution to the energy crisis will therefore involve a social and economic reorganization that will give America's communities adequate funds to provide the kind of public goods which can improve the quality of our lives...
...Clayton Kirkpatrick, editor of the Chicago Tribune, has pointed out that when a newspaper is charged with libel, its reporters can be put on the stand to swear that they harbored no malice when they wrote the article in dispute...
...Justice Byron White, speaking for the Court's six-man majority, argued that courts have traditionally admitted evidence about a defendant's state of mind when this seemed relevant to a case, and noted that "the rules are applicable to the press and other defendants alike...
...The city was a disaster area: Most side streets (except those where key politicians lived) were closed, and most main streets were down to one or one-and-a-half lanes...
...As the Reverend Jesse Jackson noted, "The machine has not changed, it just has a new driver...
...Energy policy and the energy budget remain dominated by the choices that gave rise to our current predicament...
...The deception is part of a pattern that reaches beyond St...
...As the deception continues, the price can only go up...
...Libel: a better remedy In a libel case involving CBS News, the U.S...
...It reflects massive energy extravagance in such industries as aluminum and petrochemical production, which are energy-intensive and have been subsidized by private utility pricing policies...
...The patronage workers who operate sanitation services and snow removal are inept at anything but mobilizing the vote...
...But despite the rapidly increasing cost of oil and the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, the Administration's commitment to solar remains rhetorical...
...Secretary of State Dean Acheson replied that such alarms were fantasies...
...The First Amendment would be most secure if one could argue that any publication or individual should have the right to say anything, however grossly false...
...First was the blizzard of 1979 — about six feet of snow and mountains of drifts, combined with weeks of sub-freezing weather...
...after months of miserable weather, it was the most beautiful day of the year...
...But the Second City is not headed for a revolution...
...The appropriate remedy to the inevitable abuses of this right would be provided not through the courts but by prompt refutation through other segments of the media, which would leave perpetrators of gross falsehoods far more damaged than their victims...
...He would, he indicated, be surprised if our manpower commitments to NATO extended beyond five years...
...But the blizzard itself would not have been enough...
...Once in the courts, it seems difficult to deny that both plaintiff and defendant should enjoy the same rights vouchsafed the rest of us...
...fThe business community will still exercise its clout in City Hall, but there may be a redistribution of power between various sectors of business...
...Nuclear power, the technological offspring of the atomic bomb, has been equally shielded from public scrutiny by systematic secrecy and deception, as witnessed by the recent near-disaster at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania...
...We are told, for example, that the Administration must obey its commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to "bolster military spending 3 per cent a year above the inflation rate...
...These are laudable goals, but the size of the fund assures that none will be seriously pursued...
...Despite already high profits, they have slowed the pace of exploration and stopped building new refineries — knowing that the resulting shortages would impel the Administration to give in to their demands...
...Early in January Don Rose, a long-time peace activist who had done public relations for the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, joined Byrne's team and, in effect, took over the operation...
...But Byrne is personally conservative, and she will not turn her back on the elites with whom Daley worked so closely...
...The Administration proposes to use this money to create an Energy Security Fund which would finance research in new energy options, build mass transit, study new conservation techniques, and provide rebates to consumers most hurt by the increase in oil prices...
...After 1955, when Richard J. Daley was elected mayor for the first time, the machine was modernized...
Vol. 43 • June 1979 • No. 6
