COMMENT
COMMENT Carter's crisis — and ours President Carter's peculiar performance in July — his abrupt cancellation of his major energy speech, his ten days of mysterious mountain-top musings, his purge...
...Safety through secrecy Mindful of the hazards of an expanding nuclear power industry, the Federal Government is taking steps to protect the public from such dangers as the sabotage of nuclear facilities and the theft of nuclear materials that could be used to threaten vast segments of the population...
...Farewell, partner "He may be an S.O.B., but he's our S.O.B.," Franklin D. Roosevelt once said of the father of Anastasio Somoza, the Nicaraguan dictator whose downfall, at long last, has brought the hope of freedom to that long-suffering country...
...Furthermore, the bill would relieve the NRC of the obligation to disclose what it knows about the strengths and weaknesses of the safeguards program, a requirement currently imposed by the Freedom of Information Act...
...The Carter program is not a prescription for conservation or renewable energy sources...
...The "crisis of confidence" to which Carter repeatedly made reference was genuine enough — but its essence was not, as he implied, that Americans had lost confidence in themselves, but that they had lost confidence in him and his Administration...
...There would be penalties for disclosing "sensitive" information about the industry's most hazardous features, just as there now are penalties for disclosing "secret/restricted data" about the military aspects of atomic energy...
...The abuses were intensified — not diminished — after the police chief promised they would cease...
...Oil companies already own about half of U.S...
...It should be recognized, further, that "private" organizations that intrude in the lives of citizens and consumers are not really private...
...Again, he is incapable of recognizing its dimensions...
...In a unanimous decision handed down in mid-July, a three-judge panel of the Appeals Court held that former President Nixon and his principal aides — including Henry Kissinger — can be compelled to pay thousands of dollars in damages because of their illegal wiretapping of Government officials and journalists...
...Programs have included use of vacant lots for urban farming and continuous energy audits of local buildings to reduce fuel consumption...
...The gasoline obtained in this fashion will be extremely expensive: A small-scale project in South Africa, the only nation presently using this technology, produces gas at about $2.70 a gallon from coal mined at one-third the cost of U.S...
...The principal plaintiff in the wiretapping cases was Morton H. Halperin, a former official of the National Security Council, whose telephones were tapped for twenty-one months by the Nixon Administration...
...energy corporation which would have committed substantial capital to such projects...
...Without such broad reforms, we may expect continued or even intensified abuses of civil liberties by those who place their power and profits above the rights of all...
...Files obtained by the Coalition on Government Spying in Seattle, whose research is summarized in the report, reveal that the police in that city regularly spied on Chicano and Native American groups whose sole "crime" — even according to the police files — was protest against local urban renewal and minority hiring practices...
...Gross national product will decline, lagging economic growth will push the official rate of unemployment up another full percentage point, and the annual inflation rate will reach 10.4 per cent...
...They asked that intelligence agencies, like anyone else, be required to abide by the Constitution...
...Local intelligence units also have established a nationwide quasi-private network through which information about political dissidents is shared...
...The Court also reinstated a damage suit brought by New York Times Washington correspondent Hedrick Smith, whose telephone was tapped for eighty-nine days, and said former Attorney General Mitchell could be sued by members of the Jewish Defense League, whose telephones were tapped by the FBI in 1970 and 1971...
...But instead of taking the logical precaution of insisting that the industry be made reasonably safe before continuing to expand, the U.S...
...Gumshoes, Inc...
...Elimination of these practices will require a greater understanding of what is happening at all levels of government...
...Absent such exigent circumstances, there can be no appeal to powers beyond those enumerated in the Constitution or provided by law...
...The instrument for this is to be an Energy Security Corporation financed by revenue from the windfall profits tax...
...coal and processed without the burdens of environmental protection safeguards...
...Local freedom of information statutes would help raise the level of public awareness...
...in most local communities their activities are neither monitored nor regulated...
...And the President has made clear the Administration's continuing determination to push nuclear power regardless of political obstacles: "Nuclear energy must play an important role in the United States to ensure our energy future...
...Beyond that, Federal and state laws to end such intrusive practices as informer networks and warrantless wiretaps remain a pressing necessity...
...The invitation is on the back cover of this issue...
...it will conserve only the power of established corporate elites...
...He called for environmental safeguards (without examining the corporate momentum to pollute for the sake of profit...
...Former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller proposed a $100 billion U.S...
...William J. Bowers and Dr...
...In those few areas of the country where trains are available, ridership has increased dramatically...
...Bowers comments, "It's hard to commit a robbery convincingly with a barstool...
...He called for reduced inflation and a return to full employment (without recognizing the dynamic that drives Our irrational economy...
...Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has struck a significant blow for freedom at a time when the civil liberties of Americans seem to be under broad assault in many other courts...
...Other deadly weapons A four-year-old gun control law in Massachusetts seems to be proving its merit...
...In these circumstances, it was inevitable that his promises would be betrayed...
...The authors of the study, Dr...
...The centerpiece of the Carter energy program is a commitment to the massive development of synthetic fuels from coal and oil shale...
...Members of Congress took to the floor to speculate aloud about the President's mental health...
...Administration economists have now confirmed what a number of private economists were saying for months: The U.S...
...The board could waive requirements for environmental impact statements and public hearings...
...Hill Bonin, a Gulf Oil lobbyist, has predicted that Federal "front-end money" will assure a prominent oil industry role in synthetic fuel development because project failure would no longer mean "you've got a $l-to-$2 billion white elephant on your hands...
...coal reserves, and the biggest firms have a substantial foothold in the new synthetic fuel technology...
...Commenting on the projections, Lyle Gramley of the Council of Economic Advisers told an interviewer, "Economic policy is going to stay where it is...
...A detailed study by the American Friends Service Committee, "The Police Threat to Political Liberty," reveals that threats to political liberty are even more widespread than the Senate committee suggested in 1976...
...Carter's energy program, produced by the high drama of his retreat to Camp David, is a case in point...
...Despite the rhetorical laments of some Administration economists, Carter has demonstrated little real concern about our present economic state...
...However, the study also reports an increase in the use of what the police call "miscellaneous weapons," as well as a higher number of armed assaults of any kind...
...These forces are aided and abetted by corporate and governmental interests that care little about the niceties of constitutional protection...
...Other defendants, in addition to Nixon, include former Attorney General John N. Mitchell and former White House Chief of Staff H.R...
...Such a program would create more jobs and mitigate the structural causes of inflation...
...If another million Americans are laid off, there are compensating political rewards from the business community...
...Intelligence units of local police departments are the key cog in the surveillance system...
...The problems intensify and the realities grow more grim...
...Bowers also points out, though, that assaults with guns are the kind most likely to be fatal and that a decline in gun use should reduce the number of crimes that become homicidal...
...As with nuclear power, the U.S...
...The Appeals Court upheld a lower court's ruling that the wiretapping ordered by Nixon and his aides was unconstitutional, but added that the trial judge should have awarded more than $1 in nominal damages, and should not have dropped Kissinger as a defendant in the suit...
...Such tactics suggest that the Yankee colossus, long accustomed to special privileges in Central America, rather than heed the lessons of two generations in Nicaragua, would prefer to find itself another S.O.B...
...It illustrates that technologies inherently dangerous to life and limb pose no less a threat to democratic liberties...
...Sooner or later we will have to devise a system of politics that addresses our needs and promises to cope with the realities...
...Agnes is where the Department plans to store the spent fuel rods now piling up at nuclear power plants across the country, where they will later be processed into plutonium to power the next generation of nuclear reactors, and where this future crossroads of the international nuclear fuel cycle will converge with what has already become a center for hydrogen bomb production and nuclear waste storage...
...The unit's stated purpose is to fight against organized crime, but it has served as a clearinghouse for information about the political beliefs of activists...
...It has tried to strengthen the position of the "moderates," who can be expected to work for the blunting of badly needed land reform and redistribution of other forms of economic power...
...That same priority governs the Carter approach to our economic crisis...
...Will it matter...
...No doubt gun lobbyists will pull this bit of information out of context and tuck it into their holsters for future use in the gun-control debate...
...And it seemed likely that Carter himself shared that loss of confidence...
...But in addition to the hardship it brings to working-class Americans, that remedy presents a problem: Ever deeper recessions are needed to make even the slightest dent in inflation...
...The NRC wants the secrecy provisions of the Atomic Energy Act extended to cover "safeguards information" — that is, the designs and specifications for the industry's security systems...
...Writing for the panel, Judge J. Skelly Wright declared that "whatever special powers the President may hold in national security situations must be limited to instances of immediate and grave peril to the nation...
...For almost thirty years the Atomic Energy Commission enjoyed such a monopoly of power and information — and the public Isstill paying thelmvironmental,ftnanciairand political costsr Carter's "solution" will neither solve the present energy crisis nor restore the nation's confidence...
...It sounds like an event worth looking into...
...The most telling aspect of the forecast is its confession of political bankruptcy...
...A two-million-barrel-a-day shale oil industry would require the equivalent of digging and refilling the Panama Canal every day...
...The AFSC report makes it clear that the forces committed to repression of peaceful political dissent are widespread...
...What Jimmy Carter discovered, a little more than halfway through his four-year term, was that he had no answers for the intractable problems confronting this nation and the world...
...Equally disturbing is the report's showing that many private corporations, such as utilities, have contracted with private firms to provide surveillance of citizens' watchdog groups...
...Better to meet Agnes before she meets you...
...Oil company taxes would pay for the project initially, but the industry would derive long-range benefits far in excess of its contribution...
...Confronted with a political and economic structure that simply cannot work, we still put our trust in "leaders" whose commitment is to preserving that structure rather than abandoning it...
...Any security from one danger purchased with our individual rights would be but an illusion, for its price would be those protections against all other threats to our liberty...
...The most important decisions and information will be out of our hands...
...Three years ago a Senate committee reported that Federal intelligence agencies had engaged in systematic surveillance and harassment of peaceful political dissenters...
...Some Administration economists believe even these projections are optimistic and could be worsened by further declines in auto sales or future OPEC price increases...
...These practices have received little national attention, and even when they have become known they have often persisted despite official promises to end the abuses...
...Americans have shown they are willing to change their life style and endure sacrifices if they have the facts and are given some realistic alternatives...
...Because the law makes guns less readily accessible in arguments leading to assaults, Bowers says assailants more frequently appear "to have just reached for a barstool or something...
...It was a reasonable request...
...their activities must be opened up to public scrutiny and control...
...Glenn F. Pierce, speculate that assaults may be increasing because potential offenders know their prey are probably not carrying guns...
...imperialistic forays into Guatemala in 1954, Cuba in 1961, and the Dominican Republic in 1965...
...The cost is not yet clear, but preliminary estimates suggest that at least $100 billion in Federal funds would be needed to produce 2.5 million barrels a day by 1990...
...Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is going at the problem from the other end...
...The mountain labored and brought forth a mouse...
...Voluntary" wage/price guidelines merely stiffened employer resistance to wage increases while failing to slow the upward price spiral...
...The misery of its people and the corruption of its regime made Nicaragua ripe for revolution, but it was not until this year, when Somoza's grip began to loosen, that the United States made an effort to encourage even the most modest reforms...
...The dollar sank again on overseas markets, and the price of gold reached new heights...
...The Washington Star, quoting a Congressional source, has pointed to an obvious problem in that approach: "A lot of what we now know about lax standards of security and lost nuclear materials has come from requests under the Freedom of Information Act...
...These would involve such alternatives as increased funding of public housing (which would ease interest rates), mass transit, and community-controlled health care...
...The report shows that the purposes of this surveillance have largely been the stifling of lawful dissent rather than investigation of crimes...
...Under two generations of Somozas, Nicaragua for forty years was a bastion of U.S...
...It is asking that the public be made safe...
...His popularity, as measured by the public opinion polls, recovered slightly after his delayed energy speech, but then took another dive...
...And despite comforting rhetoric about a solar future, the massive open-ended commitment to nuclear and synthetic fuel will leave little capital for safer, more effective alternatives...
...The disclosure led to demands by the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Friends Service Committee, and others for enactment of legislation to ban such practices...
...Department of Energy is planning a party some time soon for Agnes, also known as the Allied General Nuclear Services plant (AGNS), a huge but little known facility now nearing completion near Barnwell, South Carolina...
...These measures would effectively deprive citizens of the opportunity to participate in energy decisions...
...Carter is not the first to suggest private subsidies for development of synthetic fuels...
...Neither Government nor industry would any longer be accountable to the public — until perhaps too late — for the adequacy of the protective systems...
...It has thus far managed to avoid any form of public accountability...
...But today the Federal intelligence agencies remain unfettered by such requirements...
...Local, state, and Federal agencies, joined by private and quasi-private groups, share information and misinformation on a continuing basis...
...Halperin, who now directs the private Center for National Security Studies, has been assisting The Progressive in its First Amendment fight to publish Howard Morland's article on nuclear secrecy...
...But the NRC's approach to the safeguards problem suffers from an even deeper flaw...
...Here comes Agnes The U.S...
...Foreign capital investment in Nicaragua is small by comparison with other Central American countries — about $ 150 million — but Nicaragua served as a staging-ground for U.S...
...But implementation of these policies would require the Administration to place a higher priority oh social needs...
...Pending in Congress is a bill to protect vulnerable nuclear facilities and materials by withholding information about them...
...Will it be Kennedy, Mondale, Brown, or one of the Republican throwbacks to earlier, simpler times...
...economic and military influence in Central America...
...turned out to be irrelevant when it came to coping with an arms race out of control, an energy crisis beyond quick-fix repair, and an economy in precipitate decline...
...The authors suggest that this has led to the lowest rate of robberies in Massachusetts since 1975...
...All of which has prompted the South Eastern Natural Guard, an organization of concerned citizens based in South Carolina, to schedule a party of their own for Agnes on the last weekend of September...
...Throughout those years the Somoza family accumulated a vast private fortune, draining the country of its wealth and leaving widespread poverty...
...The board would have the right to designate certain projects as critical to the nation and to set strict deadlines for the issuance of Federal, state, and local construction permits...
...In holding the highest officials of the Federal Government personally — and financially — responsible for abuses of the law, and in imposing limits on the sweeping claims of Executive power based on "national security," Judge Wright and his colleagues have spurred new hopes that it may still be possible to hold the Government accountable for some of its transgressions...
...Earlier proposals for synthetic fuel development have been heavily criticized on the grounds that severe environmental risks would be incurred for a costly and improbable return...
...Haldeman...
...The pricing policies of major corporations determine the underlying rate of inflation, and their growing market power means that declines in consumer demand are often met by price increases rather than decreases...
...citizens on grounds of "national security...
...In three related decisions, the Court placed strict limits on Presidential authority to abuse the privacy of U.S...
...Exxon's chairman, Clifton Garvin, says the consensus of business leaders is that "a slight recession is what we need, and this isn't all bad...
...The qualities that brought him to the White House — the country-boy smile, the reborn Christianity, the common sense of an "outsider" who would straighten out the mess created by the "insiders," the pragmatism of a former Navy officer and engineer (Why Not the Best...
...Having seen its guidelines collapse, the Administration will now return to the orthodox inflation remedy invoked by modern capitalism: recession...
...The blame lies less with Carter than with us: We elected him for those irrelevant qualities, and we continue to tolerate (though fewer and fewer of us take an active part in) a system of irrelevant politics...
...The Administration has already pulled some levers, but to no avail...
...These firms in turn often work through informal contacts with state and Federal officials...
...Sooner would be better than later...
...The AFSC report shows that police surveillance and record-keeping for political reasons are practiced on a vast scale...
...Yet Carter is incapable of recognizing these impediments...
...The image was of an Administration in acute disarray — and for once the image seemed to correspond to the reality...
...Use of the Los Angeles-to-San Diego line has exceeded World War II records, and bookings for Amtrak are up 90 per cent over last year...
...COMMENT Carter's crisis — and ours President Carter's peculiar performance in July — his abrupt cancellation of his major energy speech, his ten days of mysterious mountain-top musings, his purge of the Cabinet and White House staff — left Americans perplexed and foreigners befuddled...
...When Carter campaigned for the Presidency, he had no difficulty identifying the issues that troubled Americans...
...If there were any magic levers we could pull we would have pulled them long ago...
...The Massachusetts gun control law mandates one-year imprisonment for unlicensed handgun possession...
...In many cases the practices dated back to the 1930s...
...The primary vehicle for this is the Law Enforcement Intelligence Unit, an organization termed private by its members though it is financed by dues paid by local police departments...
...Bound by the limitations of the status quo, this President — any President — can only fail...
...taxpayer would bear the risks and large corporations would reap the profits...
...The files also indicate a systematic police effort to hinder the organizational efforts of these groups...
...Vastly expanded mining and burning of coal would cause widespread acid rains, which kill fish and wildlife, and lead to possible climatic changes through the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere...
...Similarly, a long-range solution to the energy crisis will require more public participation in a wide range of decisions about energy production and utilization, such as the drain on energy and oil represented by such corporate guzzlers as the plastics and aluminum industries...
...Carter's crisis is described as terminal, and the search for a new savior has begun...
...Exxon, for example, has a $240 million pilot project for converting coal to liquid fuel...
...He called for reduced military spending (without addressing the essential nature of the warfare state...
...The Energy Mobilization Board, coupled with the Nuclear Siting Bill still being pushed by the Administration, would give the Federal Government vast powers to push energy projects...
...A recent study by the Center for Applied Social Research at Northeastern University concludes that gun control is socially desirable because it has significantly decreased the use of guns in assaults, robberies, and murders...
...Giving citizens the information and the resources they need to plan local and regional transportation policy is the best way to lessen their dependence on the automobile...
...Now that the Sandinist revolutionaries have triumphed, the Carter Administration appears determined to keep the new junta on a course favorable to the economic interests of American multinational corporations...
...There are other policy levers which could be pulled to control inflation and unemployment...
...economy is heading into a severe recession in the last half of this year...
...But the Carter program will provide neither the resources nor the opportunity for the comprehensive national and local planning needed if we are to achieve a secure and safe energy future...
...Recessions historically limit the power of unions to seek wage gains...
...He has called for an Energy Mobilization Board to "cut red tape" and speed the development of energy projects...
...A blow lor freedom The U.S...
...James Ridgeway reports in a new book, Energy-Efficient Community Planning, that some local communities are now beginning rudimentary efforts to plan transportation, land use, and farming patterns to maximize energy resources...
...There will be one "crisis of confidence" after another for Americans and their elected Presidents as long as we cling to the notion that a band-aid here, a little patchwork there, will get us past the enormous difficulties we face...
Vol. 43 • September 1979 • No. 9
