Comment

...One viewer described her dismay at tuning in to the sight of "a trail of blood coming out from a woman being dragged along a road in El Salvador," and said, "I'm not in favor of censorship—I want to know what's going on in the world and I want my children to know...

...These "four principles" spell the end of even the weak and sporadic enforcement of the inadequate environmental statutes we have now...

...Flat, Fashionable and Foolish Suddenly, the "flat-rate" income tax is being widely hailed as an idea whose time has come...

...But there seemed to be no way out...

...Another had a similar plaint: "There's such a thing as imagination...

...The negotiations for a comprehensive test ban were in trouble long before Ronald Reagan entered the White House...

...The safety net for the poor may be in tatters, but the Reagan tax cuts have woven a strong mesh to guard the wealthy against the worst effects of the economic decline...

...The Council report, a model of common sense, rules out a return to amateurism, explaining that the economic investment in college sports is already too great and the "alumni culture" already out of control...

...News directors may feel especially vulnerable to public pressure right now because their shows, more than any others on network television, are losing viewers to cable television...

...There's nothing wrong with taking sports seriously...

...Continuing the status quo, the report says, would mean an inevitable drift towards commercialization and "an increasing credibility gap between the pretenses of the student-athlete model and the realities of money, corruption, and professionaliza-tion...

...Instead, the President and his appointees prefer to hoodwink the public with talk of reasoned trade-offs such as this phony rolled out in the CEQ report: "The relative value of clean air, scenic vistas, agricultural water use, and pristine wilderness areas will be weighed against the economic and national security value of domestic mineral and energy supplies...

...If they are well off, they build tax shelters of dubious legality...

...I went relentlessly on, describing the probable length of time the deceased had been gone and the frequent trips to the window for fresh air on the part of the two men in the box car, and all the while I was casting desperately about in my mind for some quick way to end the story and leave those poor people with whatever remaining pleasure they could find in the steaks...

...A significant difference between the new peace movement and its predecessors is the willingness of many of today's antinuclear activists—priests, physicians, environmentalists, trade unionists, and others—to challenge the seldom-questioned policy of nuclear deterrence, which provides the arms race with its respectable rationale...

...Latter-day Neroes, they backstroke in comfort while the empire around them burns...

...that testing is necessary to make sure weapons still work...

...Every hope...

...A few weeks ago, the Reagan Administration acknowledged, in response to a report in The New York Times, that it had formally called off negotiations with Great Britain and the Soviet Union on a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty...

...You can hear about the number of people who've been shot without having to see their bodies piled in a heap...

...In fact, they treat them with deadly earnestness—and that's all right...

...The academy lost its purity long ago, and the open commercialization of sports will hardly do more damage than the covert exploitation now practiced...

...Such are the policies Anne Gorsuch, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), outlined in the wake of Interior Secretary James Watt's announcement of final approval of offshore oil-leasing plans, the publication of a new EPA study soft-pedaling environmental damage in the Love Canal area, and the release of the Council of Environmental Quality's annual report announcing, in the usual doublespeak, the "four basic principles" upon which the Administration's environmental policy is based...

...But we are free to dismiss their hand-wringing as frivolous and dangerous— dangerous because while they dither about arms control, the unchecked arms race is entering its most ominous phase...

...Ivory tower romanticists may recoil from the Council's suggestion, but reality won't sustain their objections...

...the second, "Allowing the marketplace to work more effectively in environmental protection," means letting big businesses decide where, when, and how much to pollute, and how much money they will spend (or not spend) to clean up after themselves...

...nuclear weapons establishment helps explain why no proposed treaty has been opposed more tenaciously or more successfully...

...Such comments might seem to vindicate viewers who are vexed by pesky refugees and gaunt, homeless children snowing up night after night in their dining rooms...

...These must include not only such economic goals as reconstitution of our irrational health care and transportation systems, but also protection of individual workers, families, and communities against corporate flight and other business decisions contrary to the public interest...

...This is the end of the road for an effort that began about a quarter of a century ago, and that came close to succeeding in the early 1960s, when the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to ban atmospheric testing...

...Proponents of the flat-rate tax hope, says The Wall Street Journal, that it "would reduce the incentives to try to shelter income . . . and would ensure that taxpayers with the same income pay the same amount in taxes...

...A system retaining several tiers of taxation but eliminating most or all deductions might, on the other hand, provide some relief for lower- and middle-class taxpayers...

...Of the 500 people queried, 92 per cent said they objected strenuously to the "blood, gore, and dead-body closeups on TV news...

...A genuinely flat tax rate, exacting the same percentage at every income level, would impose an eVen heavier burden on working-class Americans than they already bear...

...It's about time...

...Interviewees sounded off so long and loud that Consumer Network dished up an opinion of its own: It urged advertisers to think twice before buying time on the news...

...The Sweet Smell of Excess Years ago, when Hal Holbrook first started playing what came to be Mark Twain Tonight...

...Without testing, the industry—and, ultimately, the arms race—would wither and die...

...As the trip drags on and the cheese perfumes the car, the travelers go through desperate antics trying to "modify" what they think is the corpse...

...There is mounting concern among liberals as well as conservatives about the growing numbers of silent tax evaders and tax refusers in our society...

...and the fourth, "Moving environmental decisions closer to the people through decentralization of government responsibility," is just so much veiled talk for palming off enforcement and regulation on the states, where the mettle and resources for the task of protection are more often than not sometime things...

...Holbrook thought it was a good routine until one night he noticed a couple at a front table who had just been served their steaks...

...But the real basis for their adamant resistance to a test ban is simply this: The endless infusions of public money into the nuclear arms race depend on continuous testing...

...On Capitol Hill, scores of legislators are eager to append their names to flat-rate bills...

...But all have hefty scholarships...

...At least under the Council's plan the players would be recognized as the workers they are and paid for their labor...

...Colleges and universities from Podunk to the Ivy League have desperately tried in recent years to sustain the impression that they treat their athletic programs casually...

...On more than one occasion, the Soviets have made it known that they would like to come to terms on a comprehensive test ban...

...It is our cautious, respectable, and sane judgment that anyone who remains cautious, respectable, and sane about the prospect of nuclear annihilation clearly fails to understand the situation...

...Not in this quarter...

...Four Principles for a Filthy Environment It is no news that the Reagan Administration is an unfit guardian of the environment...

...But why do I need to see the dead body...

...Athletes may receive fat under-the-table benefits now, but they are also vulnerable to easy exploitation...

...in every Administration since Eisenhower's, the American nuclear weapons establishment—the Government laboratories, the armed services, and the private contractors—have summoned every bit of clout available to them to make sure that some sort of nuclear weapon testing continued...

...Pool construction fell by 13 per cent during the 1974 recession, but times have changed: Last year, pools were off by only 2 per cent, and orders for 1982 are holding firm...

...The open commercialization of collegiate athletics would probably mean more money for the colleges, obtained by means that seem preferable to luring corporations into the classroom or selling professors to the highest bidder...

...Taxpayers who once abided by the spirit and the letter of the Internal Revenue Code now suspect they have been taken for a ride...

...When they recognize that they are hirelings of a business, not volunteers for a noble cause, college athletes may collectively take more interest in their economic status and the conditions under which they work...

...If violence is the culprit, they might try to put things right by sanitizing the broadcasts...

...Most will never make it to big-time sports and the big rewards...

...What would a flat-rate income tax actually achieve...

...Let's admit that few college athletes will be Bill Bradleys, becoming Rhodes Scholars, star forwards for the New York Knicks, and ultimately U.S...

...The first, "Balancing all the costs and all the benefits of environmental control," means relaxing Federal clean-air and clean-water standards that corporations claim are too costly to meet...

...The American Council of Education, a lobbying and research group representing 1,400 colleges and universities, has issued a report suggesting a way out of the "crisis" in big-time college sports: pay athletes openly, drop the requirement that they be students, and seek contracts with major league teams...

...At the same time, Federal funds for environmental programs are to be cut by 20 per cent in fiscal 1983 as a first step toward eliminating such assistance altogether...

...in a small Greenwich Village nightclub, he sometimes told Twain's story about a man who escorts the body of a friend back to Wisconsin for burial...

...Instead, they openly proclaim policies that will give corporate interests a virtual veto over any air, water, and land use safeguards or regulations that might make the slightest dent in profits...

...What is wrong is the pretense, the deception, the hypocrisy...

...Viewers have a right to complain about titillating brutality, but newscasters have an equal responsibility to show the truth...

...The flat-rate tax is just the latest gimmick advanced by those who have come to see that our present system doesn't work, but who can't bring themselves to face up to the fundamental changes that might restore a sense of commitment and community to American life...

...All that said, we'd like to tell you about a survey conducted in May by a Philadelphia market-research firm, Consumer Network, Inc...

...President Reagan, who once dismissed the notion of a fixed, across-theboard tax percentage with no deductions, now finds it "very tempting...

...The appeal is understandable...

...When universities invite corporations to establish campus research centers and allow them to hire professors for hundreds of thousands of dollars to testify in their behalf, paying athletes and making college teams the farm clubs for the major leagues can hardly be construed as a grave offense against the dignity of higher learning...

...If tax reform—the flat rate or any other scheme—is to restore public faith in the justice of Government, it must be coupled with public policies that advance people's needs and concerns...

...Many of these news shows are grabbers...

...then a passenger boards and puts a package of limburger cheese at one end of the box...

...Like bug and medical commercials, it is especially distressing at dinnertime...

...It has grown worse, not better, since Jimmy Carter called it "a disgrace to the human race...

...actually, they're college athletes—amateur in name, professional in fact...

...if they are out of the economic mainstream, they vanish into the underground economy where tax returns are unknown...

...The Institute's report shows them blithely building pools, even as support for adequate municipal facilities dries up...

...An Honest Buck for Athletes Perhaps a few make it to class more than once a week and maybe a couple come by passing grades honestly and possibly one graduates from time to time...

...They won't even get a decent education...

...If there is any hope of ending the business-as-usual development and production of nuclear weapons, it rests on continuous and mounting pressure for nuclear disarmament, with all the emotionalism and moral fervor that give it life, rather than on efforts to lobotomize the movement and render it cautious, respectable, and sane...

...Nominally, they're college students...

...Some Are Still in the Swim The National Spa and Pool Institute reports that even as housing starts dip toward depression levels, pool starts have been buoyant...

...Those who are pleased to style themselves "the arms control community" are free, of course, to view with dismay the invasion of their closely guarded turf by hordes of unwashed, hysterical idealists...

...When citizens are cast into the role of mere transients, they are hardly motivated to make sacrifices—by paying taxes or in any other way—for the sake of their communities or of future generations...

...To seek the total abolition of nuclear weapons, Professor Gomer warns, "only plays into the hands of the hawks, who will be quick to exploit any openings in their attempts to discredit the arms control movement...

...Like the "balanced budget amendment" and the proposed return to the gold standard, the flat rate tax conjures up images of a Government that is simple and, above all, just, and of an economic order that deserves and receives the loyal support of the citizenry...

...If the Reagan people were sincere in their stated determination to protect the environment more "efficiently," they would insist on holding corporations, not taxpayers or consumers, accountable for the imbalances and hazards the ungoverned pursuit of the dollar creates...

...But, he adds reassuringly, "So far, at least, most of the voices heard publicly have been cautious, respectable, and sane, and there is every hope that these voices will continue to predominate...

...Some top-of-the-line companies even report that demand is up...

...And we must confront them not with caution and respectability, but with the full measure of outrage that the circumstances clearly call for...

...The question of whether news-time violence is brewing more real-life savagery does not seem to be at issue here, as it has been whenever violence in non-news programming is discussed...

...The first danger, writes Professor Robert Gomer of the University of Chicago, one of The Bulletin's directors, is posed by the likes of President Reagan and Senator Henry Jackson—hawks who are trying to sidetrack the peace forces or stop them dead by offering proposals that look like steps toward arms reduction but are actually leaps toward escalation...

...It's real sensationalism...

...Viewers "really hate seeing bloodied bodies and dead faces on the evening news," Consumer Network reported...

...We may cast desperately about for some quick way to end the stories—putting pressure on broadcasters, engaging in consumer boycotts, and the like...

...The indispensability of testing to the U.S...

...But what caught our attention was the other danger—"the even greater danger," in Professor Gomer's words, which must put the peace movement on guard: It comes, he says, "from the other end of the emotional spectrum, namely a takeover by those proposing immediate complete disarmament...

...As I described the odor in the box car, the forks paused awhile in mid-air before completing their journey," he later wrote...

...The question can only be answered in terms of a specific proposal...

...What has everybody in arms instead is simple good taste: The newscasters, like Holbrook, are spoiling people's appetites...

...When the Government cannot manage to sell public land or resources outright to big business at bargain-basement prices, as in its plan to open most of the continental shelf—one billion acres—for oil and gas leasing, it intends to abandon its custodial responsibility by shifting the burden of environmental protection to its poor relations, the states...

...the third, "Continuing global cooperation on environmental issues," sidesteps the issue of corporate and governmental responsibility for the environment with an empty catch-phrase...

...At last, someone has stepped forward, pointed a finger at the emperor, and exclaimed, "But he's not wearing any clothes...

...The chewing became more meditative and the expression on their faces hung somewhere between suspicion and loss of hope...

...Those who reap no benefits from such loopholes will quite properly remain hostile to the system and unwilling to take part in it...

...A spokesman for the Ted Bates advertising agency put it this way: "It's the one area where people can legitimately get their blood and gore...

...Neither caution nor respectability nor Professor Gomer's version of sanity is the quality that in recent months has ignited countless demonstrations, petitions, resolutions, and referendums—all directed not at controlling the arms race but at ending it...

...That the present tax system is both grossly unfair and incredibly complex goes without saying...

...What advocates of tax reform forget is that in our system, the rich must be given "incentives" or they won't invest...

...The groundswell is based as much on fear as on reason—the very reasonable fear that present policies are propelling us all toward a nuclear catastrophe...

...Senators...

...And the intransigence has come almost entirely from our side of the table...

...At the train station, the coffin is first mixed up with a box of rifles...

...It's hard to say what effect that advice will have on advertisers and, in turn, on what we see on the tube...

...The Reagan Administration's open admission that it has abandoned any attempt to reach agreement on a test ban should serve as a useful reminder to the rekindled peace movement in our country: As an essential step toward real peace, we must confront those political and economic interests in our own society that thrive on perpetual preparation for nuclear war...

...On the other hand, not everyone is sure that news-time violence is a turn-off...

...But in the end, knowing that those tactics could lead to non-offending newscasts that tell even less than the broadcasts do now, we have to realize, as Holbrook did, that there is no way out...

...But even if it were possible, by some miracle, to fashion a simplified and genuinely progressive income tax, it could not do much to restore faith in the Government or in the economic order...

...That seems clear enough...

...But it's silly to demand an end to those sights, or to claim that a body count can tell us as much about war as a glimpse of the dead...

...The alienation that is so widespread today won't be dispelled by gimmicks—and gimmicks of the sort Ronald Reagan finds "very tempting" offer the least hope of relief...

...Testing makes it possible to add a constant flow of new, refined, sophisticated weapons to a stockpile that reached lunatic dimensions long ago...

...As if decent air and water' were optional extras in the purchase of economic and national security...

...Where there is no effective public control over investment decisions, tax loopholes, however inequitable, are also inevitable...

...Far from jeopardizing the growing public groundswell against nuclear weapons, the open and unqualified advocacy of total nuclear disarmament is precisely what has brought it to life...

...Of late, Administration officials have hardly bothered to conceal their cavalier contempt for environmental concerns...

...They have advanced familiar and un-persuasive reasons for opposing a comprehensive test ban: that the Soviets might cheat...

...Revulsion is a normal response to much of what goes on around us—and all the more so when the gore is used to lure viewers, when the blood and guts are used to hawk hemorrhoid treatments...