Comment

...The President's popularity, and the public appraisal of his performance in office, seem to be sliding with every public opinion poll...

...It was slanted, since most of the women with whom we talked shared our sense of the raw deal their sex has been handed over the years...

...That, it seems to us, is exactly what the Administration's alarums are all about...

...Other causes and commitments had first claim on their time, their energy, their passion...

...Maybe the lesson to draw from the case is not one of winners and losers and precedents, but of society's dependence on after-the-fact legal remedies to product hazards...

...A few months into the second year of the Reagan Administration, it seems to have evaporated...

...After Congress passed the ERA in 1972 and sent it to the states for ratification, approval by the requisite thirty-eight legislatures looked like a sure thing...

...When times are tough, he'd better watch his tongue...

...Joint Chiefs of Staff, have a lot in common...

...With the return to the ocean-as-cesspool approach, we wonder whether the Navy perceives the difference...

...Four years after the Sea Wolfs reactor was dumped, the nuclear-powered Thresher was lost in the western Atlantic, and five years after that another nuclear sub, the Scorpion, vanished off the Azores...

...The new Big Lie is that this country has somehow fallen into a catastrophically inferior position...

...One consequence is likely to be an ever more desperate scramble for corporate dollars—a contest that will be won by those governments willing to provide the greatest inducements to business and impose the heaviest burdens on labor, the poor, the elderly, the overtaxed...

...They supported the ERA, yes, but only in their minds—not in their hearts...

...But women are already continuing the fight on other, more practical fronts...

...As outlined by the President to a less than enthusiastic Congress, the New Federalism would make the states take charge of (and pay for) about forty social, transportation, and community development programs— most notably Food Stamps and Aid to Families with Dependent Children...

...The time to bury the dead seems to be at hand, and the time for some hard reflection, too...

...One of them said, "I believe it is a lack of [military] preparation that will tempt our enemies...

...nuclear strategy is to deter a Soviet first strike, the present arsenal can be diminished by at least 75 per cent—instantly...

...The answer is anybody's guess...

...Reagan set the tone at the outset: We all want peace, he said, and we all want to "lower the level of armaments"—but first the United States has to catch up with the Russians...

...When Reagan speaks of a "window of vulnerability," he's not referring to U.S...

...Even with a whopping damage award, only one woman would have been compensated for her illness, but nothing would have stopped Procter & Gamble—or any other firm—from going after a share of some other market, with some other hot, harmful product...

...The Lie can be challenged on its own terms: The fact is that despite all the foolish talk about U.S...

...Warnings to first offenders have given way to instant and stiff fines—plus court costs...

...But in this spring of 1982, is there something to cheer about in America...

...The central question of the case is this: Can plaintiffs rely (you'll excuse the expression) on the verdict to prove negligence in any of the 400 pending toxic shock suits...

...Why...

...One . . . oh, the hell with it...

...Twenty years later, when the Navy went looking for it, it was nowhere to be found...

...What the New Federalism entails is a transfer of responsibility (and money...

...In the meantime, as the gears of the legal system slowly grind on, new Relys will be introduced...

...Fair Deal...

...As land sites for nuclear waste fill up and new ones meet with more and more public opposition, the oceans may again serve as the U.S...

...But an even more important consideration is the utter irrelevance of talk about superiority or inferiority when each superpower possesses such enormous overkill capacity...

...The other one said, "I'm sometimes concerned that we may not be preparing our leaders and commanders for the inevitable chaos of battle...

...In return, Washington would take full charge of the Medicaid burden now borne by the states...

...Families headed by women have three times the poverty rate of two-parent families...

...Navy is missing a few things...

...We are still a ripping distance from that kind of world...

...We recently took a casual and unscientific ERA poll...

...Their 1920 victory was cause for rejoicing, but any woman who has lost someone to a subsequent war, or who draws the average fifty-nine-cents-on-the-dollar paycheck, knows suffrage missed its rosy promises by a considerable sight...

...Furthermore, if the ocean again becomes the receptacle for U.S...

...Comes now Ronald Reagan with his New Federalism, the answer to our economic disarray...

...Technology will not be a substitute for physical and mental toughness of soldiers and leaders...

...Women who fought for suffrage "scratched out every bit of brag" about their cause, to swipe a phrase from Mark Twain: They used it to promise a future without war, to forecast the arrival of fair wages for women, to herald a society elevated to a higher, "feminine" moral plane...

...It's a neat, simple solution to many of the problems that confront us, and like most neat, simple solutions, it won't work...

...The battle for votes was not only protracted, as Stanton noted, it was also framed in symbolism...

...In 1981, more than two million women were abused by their husbands...

...In fact, I am in favor of fostering it...

...But can you imagine what would happen if similar energies were directed instead toward beefing up protective regulations...

...A stray nuclear reactor...

...we lavish fortunes on lawyers...

...That left both sides half-heartedly claiming victory, and it left product-liability lawyers scratching their heads...

...He was sniveling, almost like . . . Jimmy Carter: "You can't turn on the evening news without seeing that they're going to interview someone else who has lost his job or they're outside the factory that has laid off workers, and so forth...

...The hodgepodge of hokum called Reaganomics stands exposed as a flop, and its peddler as a dope...

...Whatever magic was supposed to be worked by supply-side economics hasn't taken hold yet, and seems less and less likely to take hold...

...New Freedom...

...The unity of their thought is heartening...

...The Navy is, after all, missing a few things...

...strategist would be willing right now to swap our arsenal for the Soviets'—not in land-based or submarine-launched missiles, not in manned bombers...

...We hear echoes of the suffrage crusade in today's ERA effort...

...We can't afford to allow a mood of self-congratulation to divert us from organizing, educating, demonstrating, and marching...

...Every new nuclear weapon, every operating nuclear power plant, is a new assault...

...We're under no obligation to share that lunatic concern...

...and that radioactivity accumulates in the food chain—are not simply arguments for land disposal sites but against the further reckless generation of nuclear waste...

...Both go in for straight talk, as befits battle-tested commanders...

...His counterpart warned that retaliation by his forces would be swift and global, involving all continents in a "decisive armed clash of the two opposing social systems— capitalism and communism.'-' One of them said he favors deterrence over detente and insisted that his country "needs to wake up and make up its mind that there could be a war and to prepare for it...

...What is worth a closer look now is the defection from our own ranks—the refusal of many feminists and others on the Left to dash into the fray for the ERA...

...These minor irritations, are symptoms of a major crisis: Local, county, and state governments are in no position to assume the burdens that the President wants to pass on to them...

...One man complained about the rise of "complacency and elements of pacifism" among his country's youth who, he went on, "think that the strengthening and maintenance of peace does not require any effort on their part...

...Blue-collar workers, union members, Catholics, Jews, Hispanics, the elderly, suburbanites, Congressional Republicans, Wall Street brokers—name the group and you'll find it is repudiating Reagan and his policies...

...Both are patriots...

...that leaks tend to become concentrated, on the ocean floor, not dispersed in the water...

...Five old subs are ready to be scuttled and eventually up to 100 will need a permanent resting place, according to the Navy...

...The New Federalism isn't new...

...low-level wastes—contaminated laboratory equipment, medical wastes, uranium mining tools, uniforms of nuclear workers, even decommissioned nuclear submarines—it may not be long before the same solution becomes acceptable for the nation's high-level waste, most of which is the product of nuclear weapons production...

...One of them said, "We can be weak and hope for peace or we can be strong and be sure of peace...

...On the contrary, it is actively spreading its military reach around the world...

...The United States, officially at least, stopped dumping nuclear waste at sea in 1970, though some other nations still use the oceans for their radioactive trash...

...A Denver jury convicted Procter & Gamble of negligence in selling Rely, but it did not award a cent to the plaintiff, a young woman who had sought $25 million in damages...

...It makes gruesome sense: Profits will offset any likely damages...

...vulnerability to Soviet retaliation...

...vulnerability to a Soviet first strike, but to U.S...

...What's happened to the grim Shift-to-the-Right that supposedly seized America in the fall of 1980...

...Now, the Environmental Protection Agency has drafted proposals to lift the U.S...

...And times are tough, there's no doubt about that...

...Each recently got a few things off his beme-dalled chest—the marshal in a nifty new pamphlet, Always Ready to Defend the Fatherland, the general in a New York Times interview...

...Instead, we have continuing economic disarray, nuclear missile-rattling directed against the Soviets, and preparations for military adventures...

...And it isn't really Federalism but the opposite—a shedding of Federal responsibility...

...The people aren't buying any of it— that's the big news...

...We know our enemy...

...But a lot of Americans live in South Succotash these days, and they are not eager to forgive and forget...

...The ERA, as elusive now as suffrage seemed in Stanton's heyday, has also been a symbolic fight, and that may help explain the ERA apathy we sense on the Left...

...New Frontier...

...The reactor was lifted out of the nuclear submarine Sea Wo//in 1959 and junked 120 miles off the coast of Maryland...

...It certainly wasn't the cheery, bouncy, genial Ronald Reagan we all know and love...

...August 1914 The world's two top warriors, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, Chief of Staff of the Soviet armed forces, and General John W. Vessey Jr., President Reagan's nominee for the chairmanship of the U.S...

...The other one said that before the outbreak of the war, many people in the antifascist countries "considered defense appropriations sufficient—or too high...

...The Bis lie The President's March 31 news conference, his first staged during television prime time, was the occasion for unveiling the official response to the worldwide uprising against the nuclear arms race...

...We felt, though, that the mere fact of their feminism added weight to their answers...

...Every poll showed a substantial majority favoring the amendment, and a number of states already have equal rights provisions in their constitutions...

...Young women seeking contraceptives at Federally funded clinics may soon be reported to Mom and Dad...

...To be sure, there's much political work to be done before the widespread disillusionment with Reagan can be converted into a positive politics of peace and social progress...

...But it is a fragile reed upon which to build defense policy...

...People know an equal rights amendment cannot guarantee equality any more than a suffrage amendment could...

...His opposite number said the other side is dangerous and has no interest whatsoever in curbing the arms race...

...Such belated fixes make for cold comfort, as the Rely case shows...

...Hardly had he spoken when it came to him that he'd made an awful mistake, and he scrambled to recover...

...Both worry about growing numbers of pantywaists and . . . and pacifists among the young at home...

...More than symbolic gestures, too...

...Both are veterans of the war against Hitler...

...When things are going well, the President can afford an occasional self-revealing lapse...

...We have no other responsible option than to make realistic preparations for war...

...We have a Congress eager to throw away abortion rights, and a President who thinks equality is fine, as long as we don't make a policy out of it...

...Nothing too big, you understand...

...In the end, we hope to come up with some neat, pocket-sized piece of justice...

...Hie Navy's Unfathomable Nuclear Dump The U.S...

...Requiem for the EM It's almost summertime, and for women the living is uneasy...

...inferiority," no U.S...

...Square Deal...

...Environmentalists argue that there has been little monitoring of the fifty ocean sites where the United States dumped almost 90,000 barrels of low-level radioactive waste between 1946 and 1970, and that new dumping should not be permitted until those dumps are adequately studied...

...New Deal...

...We spend a lot of time in the courts...

...Most of all, it's an empty diversion designed to create the illusion of Government action...

...One of them said that in World War II his country's ground forces suffered needlessly in the early going because of lag-gardly weapons research and development...

...If, on the other hand, Washington wants to achieve a first-strike potential of its own—without risking effective Soviet retaliation—it clearly has a way to go...

...It can be argued that thanks to the Reagan Administration's exertions, more Americans than ever before understand something is wrong with Government policy at home and abroad...

...The past decade has brought them within a hair's breadth of ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment— closer than any time since the measure was first brought before Congress in 1923...

...If the ERA goes down the tubes this summer, women will lose a symbol, and an important one...

...And a couple of nuclear subs...

...The trouble with it is that state and local governments are already reeling in the wake of the first round of Reagan budget cuts...

...In fact, all of those activities are more important than ever, and more likely to achieve results...

...Is it news that some fella out in South Succotash someplace has just been laid off, that he should be interviewed nationwide...

...The other said the adversary had "a clearly defined aggressive character" and that "even a cursory analysis of the evolution of [the opposing side's] strategic concepts shows that they are all founded on the idea of nuclear war" against his country...

...Many of our Presidents have found a short, snappy bit of sloganeering to describe what they proposed to do for us...

...What Else bHew...

...even the slogan itself is a Nixon retread...

...If we lived in a society where constitutional amendments would make us all equal, we would not need an ERA in the first place...

...It will just bring our problems closer to home...

...Great Society...

...she said in 1900, "and like all things too long postponed now gets on everybody's nerves...

...If the aim of U.S...

...One example—a throwback to the Great Depression—is local reliance on speed traps and parking fines to boost revenues...

...Every bit hurts...

...You bet there is...

...Unreliable Redress No one seems to know what to make of the verdict handed down in March in the first lawsuit over Rely tampons and toxic shock syndrome...

...Evidence from EPA research done in the mid-1970s shows that many of the fifty-five-gallon drums are leaking, raising fears that radiation may be entering the food chain, since so many of the ocean dumps are close to the coastal waters where most edible sea life is found...

...But now the Navy wants to send more nuclear submarines to the depths, this time not by accident...

...In some parts of the winter-buffeted North, property owners discovered in recent months that municipalities were suddenly eager to levy fines for failure to shovel walks...

...The arguments against ocean dumping—that even stainless steel and concrete cannot withstand the tremendous corrosive power of sea water...

...I'm not opposed to good will," one of them said...

...More words from Stanton, whose discouragement and hope seem so much like our own: "Lifting woman into her rightful place in the scale of being is the mightiest revolution the world has yet known, and it may be that more than half a century is needed to accomplish this...

...Many Americans have, in fact, directly felt the effects of the state and local budget pinch...

...nuclear cesspool...

...But absent a miracle, those years of effort will go down the drain on June 30—and miracles are rare these days...

...Officials are eyeing a spot off the coast of California, north of San Francisco, for the underwater graveyard...

...Last year, Admiral Hyman Rickover, since retired as custodian of the nuclear fleet, said the builders of nuclear subs "don't care if they manufacture horse turds or submarines...

...Perhaps a comment by Elizabeth Cady Stanton sheds some light, frank words from a woman who had by that time put fifty-two years into the fight for women's suffrage: "Our movement is belated...

...Says something about the brotherhood of man...

...So what went wrong...

...The Mormons, the Moral Majority, the Eagle Forum, most Republicans, the business interests that stand to lose so much by giving women their due—the familiar anti-ERA hit squads need no further description or denunciation here...