Comment
COMMENT Now That We Understand A scene in the documentary film The War at Home shows a college professor in animated debate with a State Department official sent from Washington to a Midwestern...
...Not to be outdone, several Senate Republicans floated their own idea of a jobs program concentrating on repair of roads and bridges...
...Whatever the purpose, workers need have no knowledge they're being analyzed...
...The Democrats' mortgage proposal also has all the earmarks of a corporate bail-out...
...Please Type or Print Clearly The only warning may be some fine print at the bottom of a job application form: "The information on this form may be used in any way deemed appropriate...
...But most handwriting consultants are not psychologists...
...It should be clearly understood that programs of this sort would not suffice to revive the U.S...
...The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission states only that the practice has not been validated as a nondiscriminatory personnel test...
...Be sure to tune in to the 1984 political Olympics, brought to you by your favorite brew...
...A new housing subsidy will surely have a long life span because it will have the backing of a powerful lobby...
...But even as we welcome the growing parallel with Vietnam, we must also remember the bitter lesson from that era: The fighting eventually stopped, but there was no end to the larger war of which Vietnam was just a symptom—the fight for U.S...
...That Nixon-like appendage, "that I am aware of," is revealing: The police chief doesn't quite know and doesn't quite care what the Constitution says...
...The Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidate lost to Republican incumbent Arne Carlson, who scored 55 per cent of the vote...
...The evidence turns out to consist of articles in such Cold War fan magazines as Reader's Digest, Commentary, and American Spectator...
...Paul Wellstone's bid for state auditor in Minnesota was a tougher proposition...
...Government, saying the Atomic Energy Commission deliberately concealed evidence, pressured witnesses, and engaged in deceitful conduct in a 1956 trial over whether thousands of sheep died from radioactive fallout from its Nevada weapons tests...
...The earlier study, known as the Rasmussen Report, is characterized by Daniel Ford of the Union of Concerned Scientists in a series of New Yorker articles as a blatant attempt to protect the nuclear industry by minimizing the consequences of major accidents...
...Nuclear Regulatory Commission, on the basis of a new study by San-dia National Laboratories, learns that an atomic power plant accident could cause thirty times more early deaths (100,000) and twenty times more property damage ($300 billion) than were estimated by its previous reactor safety study...
...In the absence of alternative means of transportation, most of us will have little choice but to drive and pay this regressive tax...
...Business use of graphic analysis is not limited to the hiring process...
...You may be skeptical, and for good reason, but more and more employers are not, and they consider graphic analysis valid whether provided by a consultant self-trained with the help of a few books or by a psychologist who has a professional degree...
...If lawmakers were to enact a program to equip workers with substantive skills and long-term jobs, helping to reduce the economic burdens carried by all Americans, the jobs issue might conceivably serve as a springboard for creative politics...
...COMMENT Now That We Understand A scene in the documentary film The War at Home shows a college professor in animated debate with a State Department official sent from Washington to a Midwestern campus to explain why U.S...
...But the pending plans are ill conceived, for they would merely perpetuate old economic problems for short-term political gains...
...We all understand that the Government wants to build more nuclear weapons...
...And the investigations of the mid-1970s, in Congress and the media, seem to have imparted a false sense of security: The spooks are thought to have reformed, and the sporadic press accounts of more recent abuses are written off as aberrations or as the transgressions of overzealous officials...
...I think he fooled the voters," Lysen said...
...A self-described populist, Hightower hopes to beef up Texas farmers' share of the international agriculture market and give them a louder voice in the nation's capital...
...Not coincidentally, fixing up the roads will prove a boon to the auto manufacturers...
...victory" over any adversary...
...If only Americans really understood the Reagan Administration's strategic concepts, U.S...
...Former Secretary of Energy James Edwards put it plainly enough in a speech last summer: "War is hell and I hope we never get into another one...
...Senate hopeful King Lysen says he'll be returning to private life after twelve years in Washington state politics...
...Jim Hightower, a former Texas Observer editor, won big in his race to become Texas state agriculture commissioner, trouncing Republican Fred Thornberry by capturing 62 per cent of the vote...
...There's a very slim chance that anything meaningful will be released," says Sobel...
...In the long run, both the Republican plan and the Democratic one may backfire on their sponsors...
...H President Reagan goes on the offensive for his nuclear weapons buildup by claiming to have come up with "evidence" that "foreign agents" are manipulating domestic opposition to the arms race...
...Their concern is understandable—and so is the exploitation of that concern by some whose interest lies in undermining civil liberties...
...As a result of the ensuant outcry, the CIA agreed to sever its domestic ties at once...
...The Catholic bishops did not need a letter from William Clark to enlighten them on the fundamentals of U.S...
...He voted for the Reagan economic package but ran against Reagan...
...As was the case fifteen years ago when the Government tried to silence critics of the Vietnam war, lies and smears are not likely to reverse the public distrust that is setting in, or to preserve the crumbling edifice of a failed policy...
...2. That's the Reagan Administration goal—peace through strength...
...It's kind of strange," notes USSA President Janice Fine...
...It's a game of Big Brother that's open to everyone except, of course, those employees who don't even know their future may hinge on the way they dot an / or cross a t...
...According to a New York Times/CBS poll, almost half the voters in November blamed past Democratic policies for the sorry state of the economy...
...New York clinical psychiatrist Harry Teltscher claimed in a recent Wall Street Journal article that graphic analysis "can be an excellent tool, provided it's done by a properly trained psychologist...
...There's a familiar ring to Rowny's explanation that just a few thousand more land-based missiles are needed to even things up so that real nuclear weapons reductions can begin—and his failure to mention other aspects of the arms race in which the United States holds a commanding lead...
...Presumption of Guilt Second only to economic distress, Americans worry about crime...
...A Federal program of low-interest loans to households for energy audits and insulation could then provide years of employment for the conservation workers...
...Federal grants could be extended to local agencies for training of an energy conservation corps...
...USSA is the successor to the National Student Association (NSA), the organization that made headlines in 1967 by acknowledging its dependence on CIA funds...
...arms control negotiator Edward L. Rowny remarked a few weeks ago, they would immediately abandon the nuclear weapons freeze movement...
...intelligence agencies...
...Nor is there any government regulation on how handwriting tests may be used by employers...
...Reagan and influential members of Congress are backing such a move, the first Federal gas tax increase in twenty-four years...
...The more the Government explains its latest harebrained weapons scheme—the "dense" deployment of the new MX missile—the more Americans see that the Administration is engaged in a search for a first-strike capability that will assure U.S...
...We can't be content with "Vietnamiza-tion" of the nuclear arms race...
...And long-range programs would stimulate public discussion of more imaginative ways to intervene in the economy...
...They said their plan would create jobs in areas of high unemployment by pumping funds into public works projects—bridge, sewer, and road repairs, and rehabilitation of public buildings...
...He went on to explain that the Administration first wants to eliminate the Soviet Union's advantage in size and number of land-based missiles, and then intends to negotiate arms reductions...
...The Band-Aid Solutions Shortly after they had divined the November elections as a mandate to reverse President Reagan's economic course, House Democrats unveiled their proposed Federal jobs program...
...By cheapening the very meaning of politics, they help ensure our continuing subservience to bureaucratic manipulation by the elites that hold sway in our society...
...troops were in Vietnam...
...Lysen termed his defeat "disappointing" and speculated that Washington voters, "having lived on porkbarrel politics, were afraid of losing that clout" purportedly carried by Jackson...
...And because they understand so clearly what the Government is up to, the bishops are in the throes of a profound reappraisal of their church's position on this issue...
...In fact, the proposals being debated in Washington are under consideration only because they create no long-term employment...
...Something like that seems to be happening, at long last, to the nuclear arms race...
...The growing public understanding of the perils of our present policy will prove to be shallow, short-lived, and ultimately of no avail unless it encompasses a genuine readiness for full nuclear disarmament, for dismemberment of the system that produces nuclear arms, and for reconstruction to prevent a recurrence...
...In Alabama, Don Siegelman was easily reelected secretary of state, as expected...
...In either case, you may be providing a prospective employer with far more information than you intended to give, because a growing number of companies now hire handwriting consultants to scrutinize applications and prepare psychological fitness reports based solely on penmanship...
...These workers could learn skills associated with insulating and refitting homes for alternative energy systems...
...they compile a laundry list of attitudes, feelings, vulnerabilities—the kind of information you would share only with intimates or a professional therapist...
...But if we're going to get into a war, I want to come out No...
...In fact, virtually anyone can hang out a shingle: No licensing or proficiency requirements exist...
...For most of the media, an election is a major sporting event—not quite as colorful or significant as the Superbowl, but close...
...Another down-ballot Texas candidate, Ann Richards, swept aside her Republican opponent by a similar margin in the race for state treasurer...
...They also made provision to stimulate home-building by subsidized mortgages...
...Clearly the mass media, on which we all must depend to some extent, have lost all sense of politics as the way we pursue the common purposes that shape our lives...
...that way, they pose no threat to the private interests that profit off the same work...
...The passage of time and the shift in political winds have dulled most people's wariness of the spy agencies...
...On CBS, Dan Rather assured us that a close race in Virginia had gone "into sudden-death overtime...
...We can take heart, too, from the certain knowledge that more and more Americans, as they come to understand it, are withdrawing their support from the mindless nuclear buildup...
...More political cynicism will be bred by a flawed jobs program...
...Elsewhere on the dial, pundits babbled about races that still might cheer "Republican rooters...
...Whether or not USSA prevails in its uphill court battle, the case has already demonstrated that the intelligence agencies did not cease trampling on the Constitution in the mid-1970s...
...The Sporting Life Christopher Lasch, writing last summer in democracy, observed that one reason for diminishing participation in electoral politics is that "the welfare state has turned the citizen into a client...
...Today, that inquiry seems long ago and far away—part of an era when the public's mood was sobered by Watergate and other crimes in high places...
...Politicians, law-enforcement officers, and members of the judiciary have all seized on the opportunity to attack such precepts as habeas corpus, the right to counsel, freedom from illegal search and seizure, and the presumption of innocence...
...So far, CIA lawyers have persuaded a Federal judge that the Agency should not be forced to release more than a handful of its 3,500 or so documents concerning the NSA and USSA...
...The repressed subconscious has free rein to divulge a person's real feelings...
...Well-stone's populist challenge came up $10,000 short in the weeks before the election, forcing him to cancel a television campaign...
...nuclear deterrence doctrine...
...What's new—and what was made abundantly clear in forty-nine state and local nuclear weapons freeze ref-erendums last fall—is that most people no longer agree...
...On every hand, new evidence feeds the growing public perception that the official version of nuclear reality can no longer be believed: H A judge in Utah vacates his earlier decision in favor of the U.S...
...Creative solutions are not in the offing, though...
...The chief distributed photographs of the eight so that a police officer who spotted any of them could immediately call a special telephone number...
...It would also be easy to imagine Federal investments in the expansion of mass transit systems...
...The student groups have never been threats to national security, of course...
...If only more of us had faith in our leaders' devotion to the pursuit of peace through strength, President Reagan himself said in his televised address to the nation just before Thanksgiving, the White House mail would not be cluttered with all those letters from children worried about nuclear holocaust...
...They understand quite clearly that the purpose is to maintain peace and other cherished values by threatening nuclear violence...
...He went on to explain that the purpose of threatening nuclear annihilation is to "preserve the values we cherish...
...That was the year USSA initiated its Freedom of Information Act request...
...Then-NSA President Eugene Groves's revelation triggered disclosures of many similar covert CIA links to domestic organizations...
...economy, nor would they provide work to every unemployed person...
...But neither the Democratic nor the Republican scheme is likely to ease the economic paralysis that continues to grip the country...
...Working Americans who will be called on to pay for job measures by their taxes will recognize the flim-flam: No permanent employment will be created...
...However, the candidate says his name-recognition problem in November won't keep him out of politics...
...Furthermore, another slapdash public works effort will intensify the negative image many Americans already have of all Government programs...
...As we come to understand the nuclear danger all the better, we must also understand the equal danger of settling for half-measures—for "freezes" that do no more than freeze, for "arms control" agreements that do not deal with the fundamental causes of the arms race, for cosmetic solutions that touch only the surface...
...In the physical act of writing," Stoller says, "the subconscious has an opportunity to express itself without censorship or restraint by the conscious mind...
...The newspaper or magazine once called a "party organ"—the role this publication played, for example, for the Progressive Party early in this century—has vanished into history, supplanted by the half-minute advertising spot...
...military doctrine...
...But, as part of an effort to obtain all CIA files on the Agency's relationship to the NSA, USSA recently discovered that the Agency watched over—and possibly used—the organizations until as late as 1979...
...The major parties have no interest in challenging the auto, housing, and energy industries...
...The former antiwar activist wants to reform Alabama's outdated election laws...
...It is as if Americans had tired of listening to explanations from the Government and were looking for a way out of a policy that no longer works...
...Lysen's independent candidacy was demolished by Democratic incumbent Henry Jackson, who walked away with 68 per cent of the vote...
...Did we hear someone say the Democrats were a good second-half ball club...
...The case has also reemphasized the importance of protecting the Freedom of Information Act from current Reagan Administration attempts to gut it...
...In the mid-1970s, it came as no great surprise to have a panel headed by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller reveal that the CIA maintained files on 300,000 American individuals and organizations...
...Instead, they will continue to insist that Band-Aids are the treatment of choice for gaping wounds...
...Someone should remind him of a maxim often invoked by police officers: "Ignorance of the law is no excuse...
...H The U.S...
...No one fails to grasp the official line that building more weapons is the best way to end the nuclear arms race...
...We were meeting with Jimmy Carter all along and helping to sponsor legislation...
...The housing industry already benefits from a more than generous Government subsidy: Mortgage interest is tax-deductible...
...Others, including Robert Scheer, author of With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush and Nuclear War, a penetrating new look at Reagan's strategic doctrine, suggest that an additional purpose is to force the Soviet Union, already strained from the arms race as is the United States, to spend itself into exhaustion...
...The public has heard that story since the earliest days of the atomic age, tens of thousands of warheads ago...
...it neither approves nor disapproves of handwriting analysis as a testing method, but cautions that when used, it must be in compliance with the Commission's uniform guidelines...
...One factor in that important trend is the kind of coverage the mass media give to election campaigns...
...U.S...
...If only the National Conference of Catholic Bishops had not committed a "fundamental misreading" of American nuclear weapons policy, said the President's national security adviser, William Clark, the bishops would not now be questioning the very basis of U.S...
...You seem to think the problem is that we don't understand the policy, and all that's really needed is for you to explain it to us," the professor says...
...They are self-trained, relying on books, workshops, or correspondence courses in graphology...
...Wisconsin graphologist William Stoller, a consultant who has more than seventy clients, reports that many companies also use handwriting analysis to evaluate employees under consideration for promotion or other personnel action...
...Fine says she is dismayed that "even under liberal administrations this [spying] went on...
...that cynicism made for limited Democratic Congressional gains and only a slight increase in voter turnout during the worst recession of the postwar period...
...Along with Richards and Hightower, Texas progressives were voted into the offices of attorney general and land commissioner...
...There is talk of a'Hightower gubernatorial run, but the new agriculture commissioner isn't confirming the rumors...
...Such harassment is common in Moscow or Warsaw, in Buenos Aires or Rio de Janeiro...
...Indeed, USSA only found out about the Agency's Carter-era spying through an index to the classified documents...
...The CIA, FBI, National Security Agency, and their lesser known kin continue, in fact, deliberately to subvert the rights of Americans...
...indeed, Democratic Governor Rudy Perpich is reported to be considering Wellstone for an appointment...
...Roads need to be made safe, of course, and housing must be built...
...We can draw enormous satisfaction from the fact that the effort to revive Mc-Carthyism isn't working...
...In 1976, the Church committee said it had "given serious consideration" to prohibiting all forms of covert CIA activity within the United States...
...Richards has been active in the women's movement, and her victory over Allen Clark has been attributed, in part, to the wide support she received from women...
...What you don't seem to realize is that we do understand the policy—and that's why we're protesting...
...Whatever their scale, measures to repair the nation's infrastructure provide no permanent jobs...
...They are more likely to encourage the denial of public consent...
...It comes down to how much they have to put on the public record to justify their withholding documents from disclosure...
...The bill will probably be footed directly by consumers by way of a five-cent increase in the Federal gasoline tax...
...Bridge and street repair programs sustain the private automobile, a mode of transportation that has exacted a heavy toll—and not just in highway casualties— from individuals and the entire nation...
...In the United States, however, the Fourth Amendment ostensibly protects Minneapolis residents and the rest of us from being shadowed and tailed by agents of the state...
...Barbara Harding, a Boston graphic analyst whose clientele has increased 400 per cent in just the past three years, attributes employers' growing interest in graphology to high unemployment...
...But handwriting analysts don't limit themselves to identifying a specific trait...
...Winners and Also-rans Five candidates who promised to shake up the body politic were profiled in The Progressive's October issue...
...The Republicans decided to go for pump-priming because porkbarrel initiatives—long the strong suit of Democrats—are good politics these days...
...And the more they know about it, the less they like it...
...But in this Age of Reagan, a former CIA chief occupies the nation's second-highest office...
...But as was the case with Vietnam, it is increasingly clear that with every new official explanation, Americans are coming to understand the Government's nuclear weapons policy all too well...
...Congress certainly should look at that possibility again...
...As it turned out, three of the hopefuls succeeded in their bids for state office and two were defeated...
...Siegelman was not only the incumbent, but he faced no Republican challenger...
...The larger war goes on, unsoftened, unabated, barely even touched by the political changes that brought American troops home...
...Television coverage last election night was rife with examples...
...But they could reduce energy costs—a burden every one of us must bear...
...the group's lawyer, David Sobel, says "there's no reason" to believe the CIA stopped its surveillance in 1979...
...Certainly fewer and fewer of us feel any sense of direct involvement in the political process...
...Though there has been little research on the validity of penmanship as a key to character, handwriting experts assert their judgments are 78 to 95 per cent accurate...
...This, combined with the enormous post-World War II public expenditures on highway construction, has led to suburban sprawl— which, in turn, has cut into the tax base of the central cities...
...A lawsuit filed by the United States Student Association (USSA) serves as a fresh reminder...
...Or, perhaps, a newspaper employment ad may request a handwritten reply...
...under current law, the employer decides whether to tell them...
...But both perceptions are wrong...
...As soon as unemployment drops to a level "acceptable" to the politicians, Congress will cut the makeshift programs...
...Letter Sweaters and Spies It has been almost seven years since the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, headed by Frank Church of Idaho, released its voluminous report detailing the abuses of U.S...
...The massive votes for a nuclear weapons freeze, the agonizing reappraisals by Catholics and other religious communities, the stiffening resistance in Congress and the country to the MX and other outlandishly dangerous and expensive weapons systems, the growing articulation of the link between Pentagon spending and domestic hard times, and the steady rise in public apprehension over nuclear annihilation, all suggest a nation in the process of making up its mind—and withdrawing its consent...
...But their lobbying on behalf of student financial aid, their work for campus civil rights, and especially USSA's opposition to the draft probably qualified them for surveillance...
...political and economic domination throughout the Third World...
...In Minneapolis, Police Chief Anthony Bouza has displayed extraordinary indifference to due process by drawing up a "target eight" list of persons most likely to commit crimes—based on their past run-ins with the law—and ordering his officers to keep an eye on these individuals...
...Companies can afford to be selective in hiring, and are looking for ways to get a fix not only on applicants' job skills but on their psychological and emotional makeup as well...
...1, not No...
...The understanding of that one individual, multiplied several million times, eventually eroded public support for the war and brought it to an end...
...These guidelines permit testing to determine whether an applicant possesses a psychological trait necessary to a specific job-leadership ability, for example...
...Bouza insists his insidious system "doesn't violate any constitutional rules that I am aware of...
Vol. 47 • January 1983 • No. 1
