Comment

...Light dt the End of the Pipeline The myth of American "free enterprise," drummed into our heads from earliest infancy and carefully nurtured by the school system, the mass media, and the pronouncements of politicians, is durable and pervasive—but it can be ditched instantly when corporate profits are at stake...

...Vanished Now you see 'em, now you don't...

...The Court's decision, handed down in December, gives judicial sanction to the proposition that, since the Department of Energy and the Pentagon have a policy of refusing to confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons in a given place, therefore they do not exist...

...Certainly it is no news that democracy is but a footnote on CIA and National Security Council balance sheets...

...Supreme Court, it is also the law of the land...

...Due to national security reasons, however, the Navy can neither admit nor deny that it proposes to store nuclear weapons at West Loch...

...Yet paradoxically, the very development of our economy has pushed this supporting apparatus into disrepair...

...Unfortunately, a Democratic Party dependent on corporate financing and vulnerable to corporate power and a Republican Party still trapped in fantasies of free enterprise have neither the means nor the will to envision a better way...

...A few days later he's popping up here and there, apparently carefree if not careless...

...And beyond sanity...

...This intramural squabble is rich in irony but offers little in the way of relief...

...The appeals court's formula was an ingenious attempt to open up one aspect of nuclear weapons policy to public examination without directly challenging the mythology of national security and the classification system...

...The answer to our sagging bridges and rutted roads may lie in implementation of an honest and sensible tax schedule—one which would make corporations pay fairly for the services on which they depend...

...Richard Allen's consulting firm, William Casey's portfolio—they make a good read...

...One reliable estimate is that the pipeline surcharge could add $150 to the average homeowner's yearly gas bill...

...the Jackal...

...Their aspirations were not unique to their country or to their time...

...But where, oh where, are today's John Reeds...

...When the chips are down, as Richard M. Nixon was the first to observe, every American President turns out to be a Keynesian...

...The High Court said it could find nothing in the law about a hypothetical environmental impact statement...

...One day the President, stalked by Muammar Qaddafi's sinister assassination squad, is house-bound, unable even to venture into his own backyard to light the National Christmas Tree...

...It couldn't have been that we found anything leonine in the performance of the reporters covering this silly affair, or, strictly speaking, anything Christian in the behavior of the embattled tea ceremony grafter-cum-National Security Council chief...

...In the textbook capitalism of Milton Friedman and the U.S...

...Suddenly, they're all over the evening news and the morning papers, complete with composite mug-shots and tantalizing references to one of their supposed colleagues, the mysterious Carlos, a.k.a...

...They are fine people...

...Finally, they proposed that the form of the state itself be decided by popular referendum...

...Jim Wright of Texas, the House Democratic leader, led the floor fight for the subsidy, arguing that consumers must pay this price to shield themselves from the buffeting of future oil embargoes...

...But others—including the President himself—apparently have made their peace with deficit spending, now that it's their deficit, and a huge one at that...

...So long as the Administration remains determined to provide tax breaks for the rich while sustaining lunatic levels of military spending, so long as the only alternative seriously discussed is a little less of the same, we will have greater and greater deficits—and continuing inflation...

...The statistics are staggering...

...Despite Washington's best efforts at provocation, the Soviets have maintained, so far, at least a semblance of nonintervention...

...Reliable information on reserves—the kind of information that would allow us to make rational public policy decisions on such matters as future pipelines—is still systematically withheld by the industry...

...Neighborhoods evaporate...

...Did the Polish workers "go too far," as some on the Left have suggested...

...There was precious little twaddle about free enterprise when the Ninety-seventh Congress rushed, toward the end of the recent session, to approve funding legislation for the Alaskan natural gas pipeline...

...Perhaps, in the sense that their demands were bound to be perceived as threatening in Moscow and in their own state's bureaucracy...

...While we would be among the last to rise to the defense of any of these three, it does seem to us that much of the hullabaloo raised about their alleged transgressions is utterly beside the point...

...A good house-cleaning now and then convinces many that our highest leaders are serving the public good...

...City streets, water mains, airports, and jails are much more than public services, allowing townspeople to drive, shop, bathe, cook, fly...

...In recent weeks, even the melodrama of a Libyan assassination squad and the tragedy unfolding in Poland failed to eclipse three grubby tales—Richard Allen's, William Casey's, and Maurice Stans's...

...We know many of them...

...Despite the imposition of martial law, thousands of arrests, and an undetermined number of casualties, leaders of Poland's newly installed military regime continue to insist that the "reforms" achieved by Solidarity will be preserved...

...Sometimes you just have to sit back in visceral admiration for a good job...

...The bankers, it seems, are skeptical about the marketability of higher-priced Alaskan gas...

...Hie to Keynein At least a few Reagan Administration insiders seem to be clinging to the ancient Republican wisdom that large deficits in the Federal budget are a major cause of inflation...

...Difficult though it would be to establish such a schedule, our lost sense of community is the greater problem...

...At times, our friends who traffic so chastely in the sins of others embarrass the hell of out of us...

...The Polish trade unionists, we commented, "seek the kind of economic order that threatens not only the power of political elites in Eastern Europe, but of corporate elites in the West...

...If a plane crash or some other accident were to cause even a non-nuclear explosion at West Loch, the Hawaiians argued, the inevitable dispersal of plutonium dust would create havoc...

...Beyond scrutiny, yes...

...Our journalism is often not much more than televised pillow fights between officials and Mercedes-Benz salesmen and Avon ladies posing as reporters...

...Just as at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, to which Stans has just been appointed, the stimulation and protection of U.S...

...Just as suddenly, they're gone...

...But we have no business telling people that they go too far when they demand control over their own lives...

...That is what makes so odious the professions of sympathy for the beleaguered Poles from Ronald Reagan, Alexander Haig, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, and their ilk: In their cynical eagerness to score Cold War points, they are ready to exploit and demean the significance of the Polish workers' cause...

...Our attitude had nothing to do with sympathy for Allen's politics—please understand...

...Even Ronald Reagan...

...What reporters and editors consistently fail to ask is whether Government policy would be different to any significant extent if the financial affairs of a President's close aides were clean as the proverbial hound's tooth...

...Catholic Action of Hawaii and other peace groups had sued the U.S...

...When it considered the recent giveaway, Congress could, at the very least, have insisted on public access to industry data...

...They are also the underpinnings of the free enterprise system, allowing the economy to go on grinding out profits for large corporations...

...Since the Navy had admitted that West Loch could store nuclear weapons, the appeals court decided, the Navy should prepare an environmental impact statement on the effect of nuclear weapons storage there, whatever its intentions might be...

...Nothing that has happened in the last sixteen months casts doubt on that basic assessment...

...Overturning the decision, the Supreme Court showed equal ingenuity in closing that putative Pandora's box...

...Under pressure from the energy industry, Congress passed a series of giveaways including a "prebilling" scheme that will allow utilities to charge consumers in advance for gas to be delivered at some future time through a pipeline that hasn't been built yet...

...It is the proposal to store nuclear weapons at West Loch that triggers the Navy's obligation to prepare an EIS...

...A recent study conducted by the Council of State Planning Agencies, America in Ruins, documents the fearful decline in the physical integrity of the nation's bridges, streets, sewer lines, parks—the whole "infrastructure" on which our civilization and economy are built...

...Giant corporations can use their economic power— and their political clout—to make sure capital is allocated in accord with their interests...

...More than half of our jails are at least thirty years old and will have to be rebuilt or rehabilitated in this decade...

...What the Polish trade unionists sought was the fulfillment of promises made and betrayed long ago...

...Chamber of Commerce, the market rations scarce capital: When the market has doubts about the soundness of a venture, it denies funding and the project dies stillborn...

...There is a chilling note in the language of Justice Rehnquist's surrender to the nuclear weapons bureaucracy: "Ultimately, whether or not the Navy has complied with NEPA 'to the fullest extent possible' is beyond judicial scrutiny in this case...

...Opposition to the free ride for the Alaskan gas pipeline came from an outmaneu-vered minority of liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans...

...But the Allencaseystans stories do serve one important function...

...They envisioned, in sum, a society the likes of which had never existed in Poland or anywhere else—a free society...

...The apparent excuse for such extortionate financing is that U.S...

...In the real world, it doesn't work that way...

...multinationals...

...Navy to require it to draw up an environmental impact statement on construction of its proposed West Loch weapons storage depot near the approach to the Honolulu International Airport...

...It had to do, instead, with simple revulsion at the lip-smacking pursuit of a wounded buffoon and his family, explained away as an important public errand by our Washington colleagues...

...Small wonder that their government moved, finally, to crush the movement...

...Their demands would be difficult to achieve fully in any society...

...their priority is to understate the gas supply and jack up the price so that they can get rid of their substantial oil glut...

...Thus, in the Supreme Court's view, the simple evoking of "national security" is sufficient to foreclose legislative or judicial review—or even public knowledge—of the potentially catastrophic impact of a Federal agency's actions...

...But they have little to do with the way American foreign and domestic policy is shaped...

...It wouldn't necessarily be confirming the presence of anything...

...If a persuasive case could be made for the Alaska pipeline, more rational and equitable ways of funding it could be found...

...The Navy, which knows all about nuclear weapons accidents, did not challenge that...

...Confluence of Interest There is nothing the news media love more than a good scandal...

...On the contrary, the Polish workers went on to formulate a truly radical program: They demanded a strong voice in the management of their workplaces—and of their nation's economy...

...banks are unwilling to come up with loans of $36 billion to $40 billion that are required to carry the pipeline to completion...

...The Navy appealed...

...In our economic system, conditions that make General Motors, ITT, Exxon, and the rest happy are the foremost goal...

...Our government would have done no less had similar demands been put forward here...

...At the same time, industries pack their bags and move off to more hospitable climates...

...The case attracted wide attention in a world grown increasingly sensitive to the danger of transporting, handling, and storing nuclear weapons—especially after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco stripped the Navy of its "no see 'em" defense...

...The major oil companies, which control about half of the gas reserves, have an interest, of course, in challenging those estimates...

...COMMENT Solidarity End of Act 1 In the fall of 1980, after Polish workers struck key industries and made the first moves toward organizing their Solidarity movement, we observed in these pages that what was happening in Poland was not a counterrevolution but a revolution...

...To say that the West Loch facility is 'nuclear capable' is to say little more than that the Navy has contemplated the possibility that nuclear weapons, of whatever variety, may at some time be stored here...

...The continuing political bankruptcy of the Democratic Party was manifest in the active lobbying of the likes of Walter Mondale and Robert Strauss in behalf of the energy conglomerates...

...Better to pave one's own driveway and set out some tomato plants in the back yard—to accumulate as many private goods and assets as possible, to survive...

...Estimates of current gas reserves accessible by less extravagant means are steadily being revised upwards...

...Not since the days of Hairbreadth Harry Houdini have there been such exciting appearances and disappearances...

...Allencaseystans, whose name has been sullied with charges of wastefraudanda-buse, was merely going about his usual business: the shaping of a foreign policy that best suits the needs of U.S...

...Bombs, Bunkea and Blind Justice If you want to build a storage bunker near a big city, next to a seaport, beside a busy air terminal, or any place where people live and work, there is only one way you can do it without subjecting your proposal to public examination: Fill the bunker with atomic bombs...

...And the emphasis on the superficial failings of the cleaned prevents the media from undertaking even a modest examination of the systematic role of corporate power in political life...

...Such studies are mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires that all Federal agencies, even the military, comply with its provisions "to the fullest extent possible...

...Our cities will need something like $100 billion in the next twenty years to maintain their water systems in their current condition...

...For many years, immunity from public review has been the rule governing storage of nuclear weapons in hundreds of locations COMMENT all over the United States...

...What it relied on in court was a Federal executive order forbidding it from disclosing any information classified secret in the interests of national security...

...there was just a fierce determination to use the Government's power and the people's money to enrich the gas producers, the pipeline companies, and the utilities...

...It is a story to be continued...

...Who wants to vote for new bypasses and parks he or she will never use if the local plant closes...

...For one thing, the Government itself could build it, financing the work progressively through income or corporate taxes rather than regressively through consumer bills...

...Why not treat stories like Allen's as the athletic events they really are...

...Now, thanks to a unanimous decision by the U.S...

...Most are completely housebroken—they send Unicef cards at Christmas, play paddle tennis, and thank green plants more or less regularly...

...To the consternation of more traditional conservatives in Congress, the supply-siders insist there is no need to worry: Their tax cuts will stimulate investment, boost profits, and create new jobs...

...Their banner will certainly be raised again—in Poland and elsewhere...

...Can anyone imagine a movie like Reds made about Sam Donaldson or any of the other pretty people on the evening news...

...Or into our potholes, maybe...

...Nonetheless, given Poland's critical geopolitical importance on the one hand, and its desperate economic straits on the other, it seems unlikely that Solidarity or any genuine successor movement will soon be able to regain the momentum that preceded the crackdown...

...Decline and Fall When Nikita Khrushchev blustered more than two decades ago that capitalists would dig their own graves, he really meant that we in the West—in the United States, particularly—would fall into our own rubble...

...Why did we find ourselves rooting for the Christian rather than the lions whenever Allen appeared on television to protest his innocence in the little matter of the thousand dollars...

...The locations of nuclear weapons are classified...

...Houdini always turned up in the end, and maybe Colonel Qaddafi's hit-men will, too...

...An EIS "need not be prepared simply because a project is contemplated, but only when the project is proposed" wrote Justice William Rehn-quist (emphasis in the original...

...But there is substantial reason to doubt that the pipeline is needed at all...

...But until they do, the suspicion will linger that maybe—just maybe—the Reagan Administration bought a bill of goods and then retailed it, at the usual mark-up, to the pushovers in the press...

...And if rising costs initially made people hesitate to pay for public improvements, this new instability stops them cold...

...from Guatemala to Iran to Chile, corporate profits have always come first...

...That's what we have done, and we say Allen beat the stuffing out of all comers...

...Pillow Fight The trials of Richard Allen are as good a provocation as any for the bullies at The Progressive to throw more rocks at the Washington press corps...

...Jobs disappear...

...But the combination is real and could be our undoing nonetheless...

...When the personal business affairs of a highly placed Government official appear to create a conflict with public obligation, every last detail is likely to be reported and rehashed...

...They called for a free press that would serve their interests...

...As economic growth slows and the cost of building bridges, roads, airports, hospitals, and the like spirals upward, voters naturally balk at bond issues meant to foot the bills...

...interests abroad rule the day...

...It was in a case arising out of Hawaii, home to what may well be the heaviest concentration of nuclear weapons anywhere on Earth (an estimated 3,100 are based on Oahu alone), that the Court elected to take its stand against judicial notice of E = mc2...

...The destitution our economy imposes and the resulting decline in our will to pay for public works may not be quite what Khrushchev—or Marx, or Lenin—had in mind...

...How heavy a blow has been dealt that cause remains unclear as this issue of The Progressive goes to press early in January...