Comment

...A competitive market economy is inherently unstable, and some larger firms can be more efficient...

...And the government then has to borrow more money and pay more—at the higher interest rates—to get it...

...A lower court upheld the practice in early 1964, but the Supreme Court overturned this decision later the same year...

...Of course mergers are attractive to corporate executives—but they are not neces-sarily beneficial to the rest of us...

...economy...

...Such assurances have been given before, by other Administrations...

...The goal of public policy should not be to pre-vent bigness—a quixotic good at best—but to ensure that bigness is used to meet social needs rather than to create artificial short-ages and boost private profits...

...He has been depicted as the financier and arch-plotter of global terrorism, and a recent Newsweek cover suggested he was "the most dangerous man in the world...

...Con-gressional silence is not to be equated with Congressional disapproval," wrote Chief Justice Warren E. Burger...

...Still, there is good reason to question the widely held liberal belief that antitrust laws must be strictly enforced...

...For the Left, welfare poses an acute dilemma: Surely the cruel cuts inflicted on the poorest must be resisted, but welfare and social service activists must also broaden their focus to encompass Reagan cuts in such programs as Trade Relocation Assist-ance and unemployment compensation...

...One way out of this Catch-22 dilemma would be for the government to pull the r?g out from under unemployed workers by cutting off all unemployment compensation...

...The peoples of all Western industrial states have come to ex-pect some level of social security as protection from the vagaries of large-scale economies over which they have no control...

...Many unionized workers have been induced to see cuts in welfare spending as about the only way they can cut their own tax bills...

...Like many others before him— particularly alleged Communists in the 1950s—Philip Agee was denied due process and lost the right to travel without ever be-ing convicted of a crime in a court of law...

...They conveyed their concern to President Reagan—and someone leaked it to the press...

...He is, i n fact, widely believed to engage in precisely the sort of activities that are the CIA's Standard stock in trade...

...Lee was remarking on a phenomenon discovered by many of us who needed our summer baseball "fix...

...Du Bois because, Du Bois wrote later, "I would criticize the United States for its attitude toward American Ne-groes...

...In the context of the CIA's incorrigibil-ity, the debate over William Casey's qualifications to serve as director is a silly diversion...

...And the new conglomerates have shown a high de-gree of effectiveness in resisting labor or-ganizing efforts...

...Government efforts to bring back an older free-market competition through some combination of cuts in social programs and high interest rates can only sueeeed—if they can sueeeed at all— through repression of those groups who feel the shoe pinching and expect relief from the government...

...In few countries are those expectations higher than in Great Britain—as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher well knows...

...In the first quarter of this year, U.S...

...Agee appealed the action, and two lower Federal courts ruled in his favor...

...Still, welfare reform is clearly a popul?r cause among many unionized industrial workers who have concluded from their own frustrating experience with unfulfilling jobs that work is a form of punishment that all Citizens must be Willing to bear...

...In such a business environment, building new productive capacity tends to appear far more risky than buying an existing Company...

...Con-sequently, she has ended up on an economic seesaw: As high interest rates cost people their Jobs, the jobless in turn cost the government an estimated 3,500 pounds annually in lost revenue and unemployment payments per worker...

...Merger Madness The current bidding war for Conoco and other large corporate plums is only the most visible part of a major business trend in America: the drive to amass size and power by means of mergers rather than new corporate investment...

...The question is not who should run that unsavory show, but how to shut it down...

...While she has attempted to eure Britain's economic woes with high interest rates and some reduetion of government spending, Thatcher has known better than to cut into basic social security programs such as unemployment compensation...

...But despite their lack of contact with reality, "welfare reform" proposals come up again and again...

...While the press has speculated that the Reagan Administration's relaxed attitude toward antitrust enforcement has played a role in the current merger wave, the causes run much deeper...

...Larger firms have more influence over Government policy: They can threaten to lay off workers or move Jobs abroad unless they get the tax favors or reg-ulatory exemptions they want...

...It is played—in a skilled and entertaining fashion—by athletes at all levels right in our own backyards...

...Presumably the United States, while it exists as a nation, will maintain an intelligence agency of some sort...

...COMMENT The CIA: Incorrigible The dispute over CIA Director William J. Casey's fitness to hold that exalted office has, almost coincidentally, turned up new evidence that the agency is still in business at the same old stand...

...In any five-year period, about one-fifth of all American families will be on welfare at some point, though the average welfare family receives benefits to-taling less than $1,000 a year...

...That would be quite bad enough, but in fact the Agee decision reaches much further: Its inevita-ble consequence will be to inhibit free speech here at home, lest we run the risk of a future denial to travel abroad...

...Chief Justice Burger, The Wall Street Journal reported, "raised the possibility that Americans mightn't have free speech rights when they are abroad...

...Like Ronald Reagan's, they were an-nounced with much fanfare, then faded...

...After all the disclo-sures of crimes committed in the past at home and abroad, after Congressional in-vestigations, pledges of reform, new rules, and purges of tainted personnel, the CIA of 1981 is essentially the same agency that sponsored the Bay of Pigs invasion and gave the Mafia a contract to "terminate" Fidel Castro...

...Despite business rhetoric, corporate leadership tends to abhor genuine competition...

...Amidst all this, a few members of the House Select Committee on Intelligence let it be known that they had been briefed on a CIA plan to "destabilize" and ultimately topple the regime of the Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi...

...spy Operations, it was only when he suggested that the United States swap CIA files on Iran for hostages that the State Department decided he had gone too far...

...in fact, what the spooks light-heartedly call "dirty tricks" have repeatedly been shown to in-terfere with the serious business of intelligence gathering...

...But armed with a 1966 regulation of dubi-ous constitutionality, the State Department convicted him of "causing or [being] likely to cause serious damage" to national security or foreign policy...

...Government, the Supreme Court has finally capitulated to long-standing Executive branch efforts to curtail the travel of dissidents...

...To re-ceive their Cuban Journals, subscribers must now register with the Treasury Department, explaining why they want to see the publications...

...Agee acknowledges that his is "an alternative definition of national security"— one that depends on freedom rather than repression, on alignment with liberation movements rather than with colonial exploitation...

...The contraband: Cuban publications, which since May have been blocked by cus-toms agents at their point of entry into the United States...

...Thus, inflation becomes harder to contain...

...That is the problem with our incorrigible CIA: It is a terrorist Organization in design, purpose, and execution, and if the American people ever decide that they don't want their Government engaging in the business of terrorism, they will have to begin by dismantling the CIA...

...It had been invoked only once prior to 1979, and had never been put to constitutional test...

...Baseball, we learned, exists not merely on television and in distant big-city ball parks...

...Home Game Whatever its adverse consequences, the major league baseball players' strike be-stowed at least one unanticipated benefit on Americans this summer...

...it prefers a secure, profitable environment...

...Thus the new conservatism threatens to add a dangerous political cost to its heavy economic burdens...

...But he pointed out that travel from the United States to Cuba has continued during the embargo...

...The freedom to travel, the Court held, is part of the liberty guaranteed to Ameri-cans...

...the flow of dollars to the island has hardly dried up...

...The change is in-tended to reduce welfare costs and to give welfare reeipients the kind of "training and self-esteem" that will integrate them into the regul?r work force...

...Yankee, Stay Home In 1979, then-Secretary of State Cyrus Vance revoked the passport of former Central Intelligence Agency agent Philip Agee...

...In 1951, the State Department revoked the passport of famed author W.E.B...

...In 1958 he got his passport back after the Supreme Court ruled that Congress had not authorized the Secretary of State to bar passports for "beliefs and associations...

...Americans who share his vision now stand in jeopardy of losing not only their freedom of movement but also their freedom of speech...

...Though Agee had been writing and speak-ing publicly for several years about U.S...

...The Treasury Department ordered the halt, citing the cobwebby Trad-ing with the Enemy Act of 1913, which em-powers the Government to bar trade with certain foreign countries during national emergencies...

...These cuts are designed to enlarge the ranks of poor industrial workers and thus under-cut the wages and bargaining power of unionized workers...

...Thus government officials help keep interest rates high, and consequently boost private-sector unemployment...

...Government...

...Until we manage to build effective coalitions around such broad concerns, "welfare reform," however ineffective, will, like the poor, always be with us...

...People are on welfare not be-cause they are deficient, but because our economy increasingly fails to provide an adequate number of Jobs that pay a living wage...

...The CIA's role in all of this would, of course, be hidden...

...Every dollar spent on mergers is money that cannot be used for new capital projects...

...Welf?re Reform' Forever All but lost in the uproar over the Reagan Administration's budget and tax-cut pro-posals have been the President's notions of "welfare reform...

...If welfare is kept as tight, demean-ing, and tough as possible, such enterprises can keep their wage bills low and their profits high...

...Only a full-employment economy can give labor the power to negotiate adequate pay and a human work environment...

...In an environment of economic decline and inflation, firms grope for strategies that will allow them to cope—though the Solutions may often aggravate our broader economic Problems...

...In reply, he noted that he had just been driving through Lebanon, New Hampshire, and had stopped to watch a little league game...

...In ruling that the State Department can deny passports to those who are likely to speak out against the policies of the U.S...

...The "emergency" in this case is America's nineteen-year-old trade embargo against Cuba...

...Congress will be asked to require all "able-bodied" welfare reeipients who have no children under the age of six to work for their benefits...

...The members of Congress were alarmed—especially since they suspected that the CIA's scheme en-compassed a plot to assassinate Qaddafi...

...Cubon Contraband At about the time the Supreme Court was telling Philip Agee where he could not go, the Treasury Department was telling some 30,000 Americans what they could not read...

...The issue is not money, but thoughts, and who is allowed to think them...

...Congress, they maintained, had never em-powered the State Department to revoke passports on national security-foreign policy grounds...

...they are adults who must depend on welfare to Supplement seasonal low-wage Jobs...

...They are meaningless...

...It is unnerving to speculate on the future uses of their names by an Administration that has already shown itself Willing to res-urrect the most decrepit devices to quash dissent...

...As Lee pointed out in the same interview, many of the participants are excellent players who simply aren't lucky enough to make the major leagues...

...In taking that position, the Court defied its own precedents...

...Perhaps the greatest fallacy surrounding welfare reform schemes is that they can serve to funnel recipients into the regul?r labor market...

...In an economy that operates as ours does now, mergers offer significant advan-tages...

...The problem is that such proposals are based on false assumptions about who is on welfare and why...

...Government—and of many others, too...

...Once the word was out, it was necessary, of course, for the White House to disavow the CIA plan and to declare that the Administration "does not condone the assassination of foreign leaders or the overthrow of foreign governments by the U.S...

...Workers then would be all too likely to question the valid-ity of the entire economic order and the government that Supports it...

...What difference does it make whether the Job is held by an honest man or a crook, by a genius or a fool, when the agency itself is primarily a criminal enterprise...

...The grotesque merger competitions we are witnessing today provide an instructive ex-ample of the most offensive misuse of scarce economic resources—and illustrate why the System must be changed...

...Jimmy Carter, and Richard Nixon be-fore him, had similar notions of welfare reform...

...It has shown itself Willing to oblige an Administration obsessed with the view that "national security" rests in military strength...

...But the Supreme Court, while agreeing that no legislation explicitly autho-rized passport revocation, said Congress had permitted the Executive branch wide latitude on matters of foreign travel...

...Little league, Babe Ruth league, College, legion, and sand lot ball still go on all over the country...

...Brilfliifi (otdi-H Modern capitalist economies have bought the tolerance of workers with the promise of security: Whenever the System produces times that are too hard, the government Steps in with first aid...

...The 1966 regulation cited in re-straining Agee was the outgrowth of this ongoing tug-of-war between Executive and Judicial branches of the Government...

...H?gel resigned, but it tran-spired that Casey, too, had been involved in business practices that were—well, ques-tionable...

...unions must address the ways in which a pool of poor seasonal workers helps create conditions that depress wages and power on the shop floor throughout the U.S...

...Furthermore, inflation makes the costs of new facilities unpredictable, whereas assets of existing firms have re-cently been undervalued by investors...

...Only greater public control over how profits are rein-vested can ensure achievement of that goal...

...Only when workers have fashioned an economy in which a sufficient number of re-munerative and fulfilling jobs is always available can the mean politics of "welfare reform" be ended once and for all...

...No great power—no small power, for that matter—can be expected to forego the business of spying...

...Bill Lee, a pitcher for the Montreal Expos, alluded to it when he was asked, during the strike, whether it was "killing baseball...

...But that would plunge Britain into a 1930s-style depression...

...The government would be able to maintain its control only by authoritarian measures...

...The idea, sup-posedly, is not to let any American money into enemy hands," explained Harold A. Mayerson, a lawyer who is preparing litiga-tion against the Treasury Department on behalf of hundreds of subscribers...

...Some prominent Senators, in-cluding conservative stalwart Barry Goldwater, called for Casey's scalp, while President Reagan pledged "f?ll confidence in Mr...

...Thatcher's response to the recent riots in Britain's inner cities is an early warning of what could happen on a larger scale there and elsewhere...

...What the CIA apparently had in mind was a gradually escalating campaign against Qaddafi, beginning with Propaganda de-signed to embarrass him, moving on to the establishment of a rival government, and culminating in "domestic" insurrection and guerrilla war...

...No one would dispute that Colonel Qaddafi is a thorn in the side of the U.S...

...i But the political effects of mergers are the most ominous...

...The Casey controversy began with ques-tions about the director's judgment in ap-pointing Max H?gel, an ultraconservative businessman accused of improper stock dealings, as director of the CIA's clandes-tine Operations...

...While the strike lasted, fans obviously took a greater interest in baseball played right at home...

...Not "reforming" it, or regulating it, or subjecting it to "guidelines," or investigating it, but putting it out of business...

...It is good to see that the game can be enjoyed witho'ut the hype of network television or the h?stle of corporate club owners...

...Not surprisingly, Thatcher's first response to the riots was to gloss over economic causes and instead ban larger gatherings and demand swift "justice"—an erosion of civil liberties...

...The Reagan Administration is surely deluded if it believes forcing recipients to INX/HANDY JONES work at low wages as Cafeteria help, school crossing guards, and park attendants will provide the training needed to launch indi-viduals on more profitable careers in the private sector...

...corporations spent a record $17.5 billion on mergers...

...Similarly...

...Sales, employment, and growth have been severely limited in recent years...

...The merger movement confirms the innerem instability of our economic System...

...Service industries, fast food chains, many retail outlets, and giant agribusiness concerns all have an interest ia preserving a pool of poor workers who have no choice but to work for extremely low wages...

...Corporate mergers make large corporations even larger, enabling them to keep prices high in spite of declining demand...

...But there is no requirement, in law or in practical necessity, for such an agency to engage in international gangsterism...

...However, within a few years the State Department had revived its test of "beliefs and associations," the non-Communist oath requirement...

...It was a famili?r pattern: With only slight Variation, it had been followed in Iran, in Guatemala, in Chile, and elsewhere...

...Mergers absorb funds that could better be used to develop renewable energy sources or build modern mass-transit Systems...

...Recent studies have reaffirmed that most welfare recipients are not members of a permanent class of idle misfits and cheats...