COMMENT
COMMENT Voodoo Revisited When Ronald Reagan took to the airwaves late in September to explain the "second phase" of his economic program to the American people, he delivered his first truly...
...For once, there was none of the red-baiting that has been a favorite AFL-CIO pastime since the advent of the Cold War...
...The CIA has used this and other examples to pressure Congress for exemption from press and public scrutiny...
...If an increasingly disenchanted Congress refuses to go along with his latest round of budget cuts and other patch-up efforts, we can expect to see the President on television in a few months, blaming the Congress and the Democrats for everything that has gone wrong...
...It's just that there's a principle involved here...
...Most speakers contented themselves with insipid criticism of Pentagon "waste"—if they alluded to the arms race at all...
...The energetic organizing effort that went into the Washington rally was devoted to transportation and logistics—not to drafting a progressive political agenda that would unite the demonstrators and others in a broad, continuing political effort...
...It makes you wonder what the country's coming to...
...the regular strikebreakers types and all that . . . and then they're gonna beat the [obscenity] out of some of these people In the same transcript, Haldeman commerited on some film footage of anti-war demonstrators: "Fortunately, they're all just really bad lookin' people...
...By October 1, when the Federal Government entered its new fiscal year and the national debt slid gracefully past the one-trillion-dollar mark, the securities markets here and abroad were floundering...
...labor movement took a long step toward re-creating the drive and determination it once possessed...
...Once again, the real secret that the Government seems determined to protect is that there is no secret...
...What solution did Solidarity Day offer to the steelworkers in Kellogg...
...Unreconstructed Nixon apologists insist that every President behaves (more or less) the way he did...
...Few have cared to point out that Welch was mistakenly identified by the magazine as CIA station chief in Peru, and that, at a time of strong anti-CIA feeling in Greece, he was living in a house widely known to belong to the local CIA chief...
...Deprived of domestic markets, the managers of capital ¦seek overseas investments—and to protect their interests, prod the likes of Al Haig and Caspar Weinberger into armed mischief on every continent...
...The real virtue of "secrecy" lies in protecting the CIA and its activities from public discussion and debate...
...Boland himself voted against it after wording which tied guilt to "intention to impair . . . foreign intelligence activities" was expanded to include those who merely "had reason to believe" their disclosures would harm the CIA...
...What's wrong with all this...
...The system is caught in contradictions that can neither be resolved nor readily ignored: We cannot continue to pursue the course of empire abroad without paying the astronomic costs of military adventurism...
...It is reasonable to assume that the economy would be in approximately the same degree of difficulty—probably not much less serious, certainly not much more—if it were still governed by the old Keynesian precepts as it is under Reagan's "supply-side" fantasies...
...Their findings have been sufficiently disquieting to send them scrambling for more information...
...Other labor leaders denounced the Reagan Administration's domestic spending cuts, but offered no alternative economic program of their own...
...High interest rates push up the Federal deficit still more, while feeding inflation...
...What is needed now is a serious effort to make solidarity last beyond September 19...
...but the exposure of holes in the agency's cloak of secrecy...
...The ostensible rationale for the Intelligence Identities Protection Act was provided by the December 1975 assassination of Richard Welch, CIA station chief in Athens, after his name was published in CounterSpy magazine...
...Shortly after word leaked out that George and Barbara Bush had raised $124,700 in private, tax-deductible donations to redecorate the Vice President's official residence, they called off the fund drive...
...Because our Presidents insist on promising economic miracles, they wind up being held responsible for economic fiascos...
...What neither the political nor the business leadership will acknowledge is that the "free market" that haunts their dreams has nothing to do with reality—and that a stable economy cannot be created by hitting, somehow, on the right combination of fiscal and monetary gimmickry...
...And it would, indeed, require a severe recession to bring inflation under control in an economy which leaves the power to set prices in the hands of powerful domestic and international cartels...
...If, on the other hand, Congress caves in to the White House once again, Reagan will have to mount a more imaginative hunt for scapegoats...
...He said—and he probably believed—that his hodge-podge of tax breaks for the rich, deregulation of industry, tight money, domestic spending cutbacks, and military spending increases, would create jobs, curb inflation, and reduce interest rates...
...Inflation and high interest rates put houses, automobiles, and other major consumer goods beyond the reach of many buyers...
...But without an attempt to formulate a long-range program that represents a genuine and distinct alternative to the Reagan Administration's atavistic attitudes, Solidarity Day will remain a mere one-day wonder...
...Crocks in tti...
...COMMENT Voodoo Revisited When Ronald Reagan took to the airwaves late in September to explain the "second phase" of his economic program to the American people, he delivered his first truly "Presidential" speech: He sounded, that is, like a politician in trouble...
...There's no, there's no, uh, semblance of respectability," which prompted Nixon to ask, "Aren't trie Chicago Seven all Jews...
...The Supreme Court, after all, has already affirmed the Government's right to exercise prior restraint over criticism of foreign policy by upholding the State Department's revocation of former CIA agent Philip Agee's passport...
...It was clear from public response to the President's "second phase" speech that his credibility and the credibility of his voodoo economics have passed their peak...
...Solidarity Forever When organizers of the September 19 Solidarity Day rally succeeded in bringing more than a quarter million demonstrators to Washington, the U.S...
...We have already witnessed the unusual spectacle of Republican stalwarts muttering about the "disloyalty" of Wall Street...
...And Haldeman replied, "Sure...
...There was no resort to nice euphemism, no attempt to disguise—even from themselves—their criminal proclivities...
...But for the rest of his time in Washington, it will be his crisis, and he will have to try to cope with it...
...Bush finds $125,000 a sufficient amount to refurbish the rooms," said the Vice President's press secretary, Peter Teeley...
...As more of us come to grasp these realities, it will become possible to lay the groundwork for transcending our current impasse, moving not to some new form of quackery but to an economic system that puts people first...
...As if to prove it, a "reunion" concert by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, held the same evening in New York's Central Park, drew more than a half million...
...Who would want the Vice President of the United States to sleep in a sagging bed under a leaky roof...
...In the transcript disclosed by The Times on September 24, it was the President who talked about enlisting "thugs" from the Teamsters' union—"guys who'll go in and knock their heads off...
...What does continue to astonish is the blunt candor of the language used by Nixon and his staff in their taped White House discussions...
...But ultimately, securing judicial sanction for the bill should not be a problem...
...Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter had all appeared on television at one point or another in their inept Administrations to offer excuses and alibis for the failure of their economic policies...
...If the NRC concerns were valid, they indicated, the reactors would blink out as quickly as candles in a hurricane...
...Rarely has there been so forthright an effort to smother dissent about intelligence policy...
...Yet Solidarity Day provided ample evidence of the problems as well as the prospects confronting organized labor and the largely disorganized Left in the United States...
...Times of economic disarray and political frustration always pose serious dangers to the democratic process...
...Fortunately, there will also be the $51,700 for repairs and new Vice Presidential furnishings proposed in the Federal budget for fiscal 1982...
...They show, once again, the need for more Diablo-style demonstrations at installations across the country...
...to operate such costly facilities if there were any chance of an accident, they said, would simply be bad business...
...With passage of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act all but assured, the agency is already pushing the House Intelligence Committee to undermine the First Amendment still further...
...What program did Solidarity Day bring into being to curb the power of multinational corporations, to pursue a policy of disarmament, and to promote public initiatives in energy, health, and transportation...
...But their advice was to raise taxes and make further budget cuts—a program designed to curb inflation by bringing on a severe recession...
...In the months and years to come, we are likely to see intensified attempts at putting the blame on labor, on environmentalists, on the Left, perhaps on a new breed of "subversives...
...HndearWaU For months now, staff members of the Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have been worriedly studying the nation's forty-six pressurized water reactors...
...To prove that everything was running with silken smoothness 'at their plants, they pointed out that vast amounts of money are invested in each...
...On that score, Solidarity Day was a flop...
...It requires no Ph.D...
...For once, the feminist agenda and the concerns of minorities were prominently represented at a labor function...
...But the inherent contradiction lies elsewhere—in shielding from public scrutiny the actions of an agency that has constantly engaged in conduct that the people would forbid—if they knew about it...
...But Reagan's particularly zany set of economic prescriptions—which Vice President Bush aptly called "voodoo economics" in the heat of last year's Republican primary campaign—is almost beside the point...
...Those costs are a major factor in Federal budget deficits, which keep Treasury borrowing high and therefore drive up interest rates...
...They seemed to assume that they—and the rest of us— could forge a "new politics" merely by rehashing a defense of traditional welfare programs, food stamps, and environmental regulations...
...OSHA regulations, one union official said, seem less important "when you start playing with a guy's [sic] livelihood...
...Murderers...
...What answer did it provide for those Americans who wonder why our society can't provide jobs for all without demanding that we sacrifice health or safety or the environment...
...There was an element of truth in The Wall Street Journal's carping editorial comment on the event: "It is no great trick to turn out a quarter million people these days...
...Now it was Reagan's turn to place the blame almost everywhere except where it belongs...
...This is what sets Nixon apart from his predecessors and successors1—the reckless assumption that there was no way he could get caught...
...in political economy to perceive that our economic system, with its obsessive commitment to profit, is less and less capable of meeting basic human needs...
...According to NRC estimates, it is the site of one of the half-dozen weakest reactor vessels in the nation...
...To set such goals would obviously offend some union leaders—and, for that matter, leave some of the rank and file disaffected, too...
...They have a point: Similarly seamy conversations may be taking place in the White House at this very moment...
...That money came from another privately raised, tax deductible fund—$822,641 in all, much of it contributed by oil entrepreneurs...
...The industry delights in talking about the vast sums of money invested in nuclear power...
...The labor leadership's most outspoken critic of military spending, President William Win-pisinger of the Machinists, was not even given a place on the program...
...Furthermore, according to Chuck Fager in recent articles in the Bay Guardian and In These Times, the CIA already knew Welch was on shaky ground and "repeatedly urged [him] to find other housing...
...Over at the White House, meanwhile, the Reagans have laid out $209,508 for a new set of Presidential chinaware...
...That scapegoats will be required seems beyond doubt...
...The tests showed that radiation is making the thick walls that surround the uranium cores of these reactors brittle, and is doing so much more quickly than anyone had anticipated...
...It could crack, lose cooling water, "and eventually you'd have a meltdown," added NRC safety director Thomas Murley...
...The demonstrators in Washington sentimentally sang Solidarity Forever...
...It has long been understood that no violation of legitimacy was too gross to be committed or at INX'VIVIENNEFLESHER least encouraged by Nixon and his henchmen...
...The financial commitment provides an all-purpose argument—for starting up plants that have been delayed by safety concerns, for firing up inoperative plants...
...The configuration is a spiral—but a descending one...
...The Intelligence Identities Protection Act is obviously not in tune with the First Amendment, and a few members of the INX / CHARLES WALLER House refused to support it because they believed it could not pass constitutional muster...
...In recent decades, under the moribund leadership of the late George Meany, the AFL-CIO eschewed Washington protests and confined itself to lobbying and favorseeking among politicians...
...It is likely, too, that we will see unprecedented pressures for Government planning—not from the Left but from influential voices in the business sector...
...It does not belong in the White House...
...The crisis began long before Ronald Reagan entered the White House, and it is likely to persist long after he is gone...
...The Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which would provide up to ten years' imprisonment for revealing the identity of a covert U.S...
...The bill would even make it a crime to divulge information that has already been made public...
...America's aggressive, imperialist foreign policy went unaddressed at the rally...
...Even after all these years of Watergate-related exposures, one can be taken aback by the arrogance of it all—the total confidence, even as the tapes were rolling, that none of these sordid conspiracies would ever come to light...
...Just as news of the weakening reactor vessels came to light, demonstrators at the Diablo Canyon site in California were facing the formidable $2.3 billion argument for that reactor...
...Surely the donors to the "private" Presidential and Vice Presidential residential funds are not buying influence: Would Reagan and Bush be hostile to the oil industry if it weren't for the contributions...
...Haldeman, were talking about recruiting "thugs" to attack anti-war demonstrators back in May of 1971...
...Mrs...
...Thugs in High Places Though The New York Times played the story on its front page, it comes as no great surprise at this late date to learn that Richard M. Nixon and his top White House aide, H.R...
...Agee was declared a national security risk after identifying several spies and suggesting, in 1979, that the United States exchange CIA files on Iran for hostages...
...Who would want the President to gobble his jellybeans off chipped five-and-dime dishes...
...And if there is a tax loss to the Treasury, it certainly is small potatoes compared to all the other dodges and loopholes...
...Now at least some labor leaders seem to have rediscovered the importance of grass-roots organizing and coalition-building in pursuit of political goals...
...See No Evil The Ninety-seventh Congress is well on its way toward endorsing and enforcing a longstanding CIA maxim: What you don't know won't hurt you...
...Reagan's mistake was to inflate hopes of a quick, painless fix...
...But of this we can be sure: No other President will ever leave incriminating tapes and transcripts to be published in The New York Times...
...The bill was originally sponsored by House Intelligence Committee chairman Edward P. Boland, Massachusetts Democrat, to keep the Washington-based Covert Action Information Bulletin from identifying the spies whose names can readily be found in such public documents as State Department biographical registers...
...Predictably, utility officials were not crazy about that idea...
...What outrages the CIA establishment is not the exposure of spies, per se...
...OM Values, Apt...
...So rapidly are the walls weakening at thirteen reactors of this type, Murley said, that some of them may have to be shut down within one year...
...And they also offer a good starting point—San Cle-mente, 200-odd miles down the coast from Diablo Canyon...
...Director William J. Casey has called for legislation that would give the CIA blanket exemption from the Freedom of Information Act, arguing, "There are inherent contradictions in applying a statute designed to secure openness in government to agencies whose work is necessarily secret...
...The NRC's latest findings are bound to put new momentum into the anti-nuclear movement...
...But they also present opportunities...
...Many of the traditional conservatives in the business community—including Federal Reserve Chairman Paul A. Volcker—made little attempt to conceal their lack of confidence in the Reagan program...
...Congress obliged earlier this year by quickly giving the President virtually everything he wanted—and in no time at all it was obvious that it wouldn't work...
...Not much, really...
...agent, swept through the House in September and seems certain, at this writing, to clear the Senate...
...The workers wanted to preserve their jobs— even though they knew easing the lead regulations would jeopardize their health...
...We hate to see able-bodied Americans—folks perfectly capable of fending for themselves—relying on handouts from Government and private charity...
...For once, there was no pathetic pretense that the salvation of labor depends on the election of one or another leftover Democratic Party hack...
...A brittle reactor vessel would not behave the way eight-inch-thick steel ought to, warned NRC engineer Demetrios L. Bas-dekos, but "as a glass jar" under sudden changes in temperature and pressure...
...A recent incident in Kellogg, Idaho, helps demonstrate the utter inadequacy of the old liberal nostrums: Some 1,500 steel-workers there petitioned the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to relax rules designed to safeguard them from the hazards of lead pollution...
...The kind of Government intervention they will encourage may include price and wage controls, allocation of credit and scarce resources, "channeling" of labor into designated industries and jobs—all done not to create a better life but to truss up the rate of profits...
Vol. 45 • November 1981 • No. 11
