Comment
COMMENT Chicago Says It's Had Enough The stunning victory of Harold Washington in Chicago's Democratic mayoral primary was an event of much more than local import. It proclaimed that Americans are...
...A nightmare...
...The result is a decline in health— especially in a recessionary period when disposable income is already stretched thin...
...Barely two months later, he slipped word to Congressional Democrats that a $4.3 billion jobs bill would suit him fine...
...The Banks on the Brink Michael Moffitt, describing the international banking crisis in a recent issue of The Progressive ("Global Banking Goes for Broke," February), ended his article on a solemn note, warning that a financial collapse "could dry up the international flow of money, contribute to the slowdown in world trade and economic growth, and send unemployment rates even higher...
...Efforts by state and Federal agencies to contain this process have been ineffective so far...
...According to the Children's Defense Fund, 239 community health centers—28 per cent of the nation's total—have been forced to shut down or curtail operations because of Federal budget reductions...
...But as Carter, Reagan, Burford, and Lavelle have shown, carefully drafted legislation and a well-conceived regulatory agency mean little if the top levels of government are determined to cave in to industry...
...Reaganomics Kills These statistics are not damned lies: H In some areas of Detroit, the infant death rate—thirty-three for every 1,000 live births—matches the infant death rate in Honduras...
...Indeed, the jury did...
...For their generosity, the Democrats will be able to sign their names to jobs legislation, and perhaps win a few votes...
...Every Which Way But Laos Three cheers for that man among men, Clint Eastwood...
...Households across America were treated to scenes of East Germans staging a show of their own military strength— complete with goose-stepping soldiers...
...Along with a handful of liberal and radical whites, including members of the Citizens' Party and the Democratic Socialists of America, they prevailed...
...taxpayers...
...Your attorney protests the attempt to link you with the concept of violent retaliation, the clear insinuation that jurors hearing your case might need special protection...
...The strong temptation, of course, is to say, let the bankers stew in their own juice...
...Lavelle herself had served as director of communications for one of the major dumpers covered by the agreement...
...the wind is blowing our way...
...The ensuing turmoil would wreak havoc on larger banks, too, and cause a general credit crunch...
...Initiatives in those directions would threaten the medical and business establishments, of course, and are not likely to be suggested by the Administration...
...There was a crusading spirit among these young people: They packed election rallies, rang doorbells, paraded, sang, and plastered the city with posters...
...In his Winds of War commentary, Will used footage from Nazi rallies and scenes from Masterpiece Theater to compare his hero, Ronald Reagan, with Winston Churchill, single-handedly resisting aggression and defying the umbrella-wielding appeas-ers...
...When Daley died in 1976, he was succeeded by a machine hack named Michael Bilandic, who was then upset by insurgent Jane Byrne...
...The Democrats nodded their eager consent, letting Reagan turn a sow's ear into a political silk purse...
...One hardly needs statistics to charge the Administration with callous indifference to human needs...
...Before the trial begins, even before the first prospective juror is questioned, the prosecutor puts an unusual request to the judge: He wants the names of the jurors kept secret so they can reach their verdict uninfluenced by the organization's "proven record of violent criminal conduct...
...He wasn't talking about a remote, hypothetical case...
...Now Byrne has been upset by Washington, a black member of the House of Representatives, who also won without the help of a huge campaign fund or an established organization...
...Ill-gotten Gains At Ronald Reagan's age, one might expect the President to pay special attention to the needs of the elderly...
...But as we revel in the spectacle of another righteous Republican Administration stuck in a mess of its own making, let's bear in mind that EPA was far from shiny-clean when Jimmy Carter's appointees ruled the roost...
...He will probably dismantle the old Daley machine that dispensed favors to Chicago's power elites and left the poor to fester in misery...
...Grand juries have long been prone to prosecutorial abuse...
...The Democrats, like the Republicans, apparently still believe that a few strategically placed sutures can heal the economy...
...Your position is that the Government is engaging in a political witch hunt and you want no part in it...
...Such was the hoopla surrounding the dramatization of Herman Wouk's The Winds of War, sure to become the version of World War II etched into many viewers' minds...
...Of course—and exactly what happened a few weeks ago in the courtroom of Federal District Judge Charles P. Sifton in Brooklyn, New York...
...Perhaps they are just condemned to offer up political commentary in the mass media...
...The Democrats will still be suffering from that delusion long after the current bipartisan fever has worn off...
...Most people see a physician because they have real health problems...
...The Carter Administration's sorry enforcement record persuaded environmentalists to press Congress for enactment of the Superfund law that requires chemical companies to chip in on the costs of mopping up their own toxic spills...
...Verdict First, Trial After Picture yourself on trial for criminal contempt of court for refusing to divulge information about a political organization suspected by the Federal Government of committing acts of violence...
...Kaufman says he has evidence to "show criminal activities at the behest of the White House or polluters...
...But what about those who twist and contort history to suit their own purposes...
...Men who are laid off suffer "a loss of self-identity," the authors of a recent study noted—and that pain sometimes leads to suicide...
...It clings precariously to its status as America's second city, and will probably fall behind Los Angeles in the ne*t census...
...The magnum farce ended like most Eastwood films, in ignominy...
...She had neither money nor constituency but capitalized on the rebellious mood of the Chicago electorate...
...Why should we care about Citibank's troubles, or Chase Manhattan's...
...Without a bail-out, some Third World borrowers will surely go into default...
...See you in El Salvador...
...But what distinguishes this case from others was the Government's willingness to go beyond the grand jury and ensnare the court itself in its web of intimidation...
...The Foul Smell of Excess What a delightful time to be in Washington...
...Though the Government may not plan ahead, hospitals do...
...Facing a smaller market, hospitals will apparently step up their efforts to hustle more expensive services to those who can afford, say, a $1,000 CAT scan...
...But her grateful boss, Ronald Reagan, says she has a "splendid record" in office, and he's right: She has acted in strict accord with the Reagan philosophy...
...In recent weeks the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been scrambling frantically to come up with big bucks to shore up commercial banks that have overextended themselves in foolhardy lending to shaky Third World economies...
...In Chicago politics, a de facto one-term rule has applied since the death of Richard J. Daley...
...So what does $4.3 billion do for you...
...Will Mayor Washington be able to erase poverty in a single city...
...There were other scandals, including racist appeals by Byrne associates...
...It quickly became apparent, though, that this extraordinary display of historical perspective was an ideal vehicle for promoting a new and improved Cold War...
...The Administration's proposals could, in fact, ultimately cause health care outlays to rise...
...And in this case, as on too few other occasions in the past, five defendants declared that their political associations were none of the Government's business...
...We can insist that overseas loans be governed by public regulation and subjected to public scrutiny...
...However, if their ability to pay is impaired, many may forego treatment for conditions which do not seem acute but which could become serious...
...Nationally and locally, angry and frustrated voters are retiring the leaders they elected only yesterday on promises of solving the problems left behind by those they had elected the day before...
...He will oust the machine parasites from their protected jobs, curb Chicago's notorious police brutality, and bring an aura of sorely needed honesty and accountability to city rule...
...The banks and the IMF have come begging...
...Let Congress wrangle over possession of EPA documents...
...Real savings and improved health will be achieved when communities—the consumers of medical care—decide hospital priorities and control the conditions that most significantly affect health: food, the environment, working conditions...
...Among the good, the bad, and the grotesque in this B-grade affair was Dirty Harry's buddy, William Shatner, of Star Trek fame, who pitched in $10,000, reportedly for an option to portray Gritz in a Hollywood epic...
...Washington easily won four debates with his primary opponents, Mayor Bryne and State's Attorney Richard M. Daley, son of the late mayor...
...Certainly not...
...But the core issue of the campaign was poverty...
...It proclaimed that Americans are fed up with the way things are, and until they see a change for the better they will turn incumbent politicians out of office...
...The cherry blossoms aren't out yet, but there's nothing like a Republican scandal to get the juices flowing and distract attention from such gloomy matters as the prospect of nuclear devastation or the opening of the 1984 Presidential race...
...the crisis is here now...
...But these figures add up to an often overlooked reality: Those abstract debates over Federal funding priorities can literally be matters of life and death...
...He stands at the left of the Congressional Black Caucus, with Representatives John Conyers of Michigan and Ron Dellums of California...
...I'd write memos back...
...Lavelle is taking the heat for most of these questionable actions, but some EPA officials say she's just the fall guy...
...And what makes that even more appalling is Judge Sifton's ready acquiescence...
...He forked over a fistful of dollars—$30,000 to be exact—to former Green Beret Lieutenant James G. (Bo) Gritz for a daring mission into the jungles of Laos in search of U.S...
...But forget about show biz, boys...
...She has authority over the agency...
...Young black activists registered 90,000 new black voters and brought out a record black vote...
...At best, Mayor Washington will ease some of the city's pain...
...The Third World countries, deprived of credit, would curtail their imports of U.S...
...He has been outspoken in opposition to the arms race and in support of humane domestic legislation...
...1f Manipulation of elections by backpe-daling on toxic waste cleanup...
...Thanks to Rita Lavelle, the Reagan theory of regulation has been stripped down to its bare essentials...
...What's wrong with that perfectly reasonable response is that whether or not the bankers learn their lesson, we'll wind up bearing the costs—and if the IMF's rescue effort fails, those costs may be far higher than $9 billion to U.S...
...Bored with dumping on Ed Asner and fed up with the way military chores were being handled by Pentagon pansies, Eastwood, it recently came to light, outfitted his own troops...
...1A policy of letting companies see evidence that might later be used against them in litigation...
...But it was George Will, leading contender for the title of Old Tory among the pundits, who made the most of the opportunity...
...It's not fair for the Administration to make her the scapegoat," claims Hugh Kaufman, who is no friend of hers...
...she knows or is supposed to know the kinds of offers being made and the deals struck...
...She raised $10 million—more than has ever been spent in any American local election—by putting the arm on hundreds of entrepreneurs and corporations that do business with the city...
...One Laotian guerrilla recruited by True Gritz was killed and one American wounded when the soldiers of fortune were ferreted out by Laotian government troops...
...An opportunity to equate the Warsaw Pact with the Wehrmacht was, apparently, just too good to pass up...
...In their lust for profits, the bankers made reckless loans to countries that now can barely manage to scrape up the interest due on their debts...
...In the 1970s, it lost 330,000 inhabitants, 200,000 jobs, 60,000 housing units...
...The Administration believes lower demand will mean lower prices: Its rationale for limiting third-party payment mechanisms such as Medicare and tax-deductible health insurance is that consumers will curtail their purchases if they must bear part of the cost...
...If we can't avoid giving them a handout, we can tell them to clean up their act...
...She accurately reflects the Reagan credo—dump on 'em—and she would simply be replaced by a less visible, less detestable bureaucrat pursuing the same policies and cutting the same foul deals, only this time perhaps finding a less obtrusive way to go about it...
...Banks wouldn't have the assets to cover their own debts, let alone to lend cash around...
...But it was neither his politics nor his forensic skills that gave him the primary victory—and a likely win over his token Republican opponent...
...It's not our absolute objective," said House Democratic Whip Tom Foley, "to have a difference between the two parties...
...Some Reagan associates, including White House aide Edwin Meese and confidant Justin Dart, were found to have close ties to companies in on the soft settlement, and Attorney General William French Smith owned stock in some of them...
...The campaign featured the usual charges and countercharges...
...Hundreds of factories have left or closed down...
...But the inevitable long-term effect would be to reduce still further the access of most Americans to quality health care...
...Today, these programs are being cut, and health indicators show a decline...
...In this case, as in many others through history, witnesses were hauled before the grand jury and compelled to give evidence on pain of indictment for contempt of court...
...Lavelle's clumsy indiscretion, followed by her equally clumsy dismissal, has unearthed some seamy samples of EPA malfeasance: I Consummation of a sweetheart deal with companies dumping toxic waste in California...
...Let them learn their own costly lesson...
...The noxious trail leads up at least to Anne (Gorsuch) Burford, head of the EPA...
...The first victims would be some smaller banks in the United States that are up to their necks in overseas loans...
...But his election should surely serve as a warning to those who preside over our political processes: The patience of Americans is wearing thin...
...11A1 per cent increase in the unemployment rate means some 320 more Americans will commit suicide in the course of a year...
...But the judge upholds the request, and the anonymous jury—to no one's great surprise—goes on to find you guilty...
...The Republicans, in turn, will be able to trot out the jobs package should a zealous Democrat accuse them of ignoring the unemployed...
...Taxing health insurance and reducing Medicare outlays would cut Government spending in the short run...
...But recent Administration proposals to hold the line on health care costs demonstrate indifference to old people—and to all others who depend on regular medical attention...
...Once again, it seems, the Democrats have been bitten by the bipartisan bug...
...Washington and the young Daley (who finished third) accused Byrne of trying to buy the election...
...It was the Carter people who put toxic waste detection on the skids, ordered the same Hugh Kaufman to stop snooping around hazardous dump sites, and then demoted him from his post of chief investigator...
...Although the budget axe has fallen most heavily on programs serving women and children, men have hardly been spared by White House economic policy...
...Washington is, by all reports, a politician who has more insight than most into the causes of urban corrosion...
...In the Carter Administration, it was much more gentlepersonly," says Kaufman (who, incidentally, wins the prize for using the most cumbersome nonsexist word yet devised...
...The Reagan plan represents neoclassical economics gone mad: It categorizes health care as just another commodity to be purchased with "discretionary" income...
...it has seized an opportunity to spread the blame around in the name of "compromise...
...The unemployed themselves, however, will find little of value in whatever legislation is finally hammered out in the heat of bipartisan lovemaking...
...In national politics, no President since Dwight Eisenhower has served two full terms...
...Twelve men and women identified only by numbers, ostensibly as protection against reprisal, found five defendants guilty of criminal contempt for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating bombings for which the FALN, a Puerto Rican independence group, had claimed responsibility...
...Why should we bail the banks out now with public funds...
...But for now, we can just sit back and enjoy the burlesque...
...It is also recommending that the Federal Government tax those employer contributions to employee medical insurance plans that exceed an annual $840 per individual or $2,100 per family...
...that's a procedure bankers ought to be able to understand...
...One out of five Chicagoans lives below the poverty level, and thirty-five of the city's seventy-five neighborhoods are run down almost beyond redemption...
...It could be the Communist Party, the Catholic Church, or your neighborhood PTA...
...In fact, Kaufman is suing Lavelle for trying to harass him out of his job in the EPA's toxic waste department...
...The five defendants are appealing this misbegotten conviction by anonymous jurors...
...But they were pathetically eager to come to terms with the Republican Administration...
...But America's urban problems are rooted elsewhere—as other black mayors of large cities have discovered...
...To be sure, the Democrats had their little quibble: They promised they would still seek an additional $1 billion—peanuts in any Federal budget—and they may yet succeed...
...For our part, we'll stick by Burford in her time of need...
...The employment plan is based on the faulty assumption that, in the words of the House Democrats' program for the 1980s, "free-market capitalism...
...The suggested techniques include long lines, cash deposits, burdensome paperwork, and separate, crowded waiting rooms for the poor...
...The rest of us may not...
...So we can't just spit at the bankers...
...With the complicity of the Reagan Administration, the medical establishment will stay quite healthy...
...The former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official in charge of toxic waste disposal was fired for formulating the golden rule of Reaganism and reducing it to writing: "The primary constituents of this Administration" are none other than—you guessed it—"the business community...
...The real inflator of health costs is a system in which hospitals compete for doctors and patients by offering the latest and most expensive equipment—whether or not the communities they serve really need the high technology...
...Washington won because blacks, who constitute 40 per cent of the city's population, were desperate for jobs and a sense of identity...
...remains the first and best hope for long-term growth and jobs...
...Party to a Snow Job Last December, Ronald Reagan vowed that he would veto a $5.4 billion jobs bill approved by the House of Representatives in its lame-duck session...
...Business Week writer Gene Koretz recently spelled out the official reasoning: "When companies offer free or low-cost comprehensive health insurance, consumers are encouraged to seek more health care than they might need...
...As business and consumer loans dried up, factories would close and workers would be laid off...
...goods, dealing another blow to American labor...
...We can reject those IMF policies that do not diminish but perpetuate Third World dependency—corporate exploitation of indigenous economies, curbs on domestic welfare spending, encouragement of repressive regimes...
...And in the process the jury and the prosecutor and Judge Sifton also sent a message to the public—that this one court, at least, was willing to be the handmaiden of the prosecution in intimidating American citizens...
...The White House is proposing that Medicare be restructured and the elderly forced to pay $30 a day for hospital care— up to a maximum of $2,500...
...But before we part with our $9 billion, we can impose some terms...
...The Administration's schemes threaten to reduce public expenditures by reducing the availability of essential services...
...It's true, of course, that those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it...
...What to do...
...No definite links can be established, the article noted, but "the health of mothers and their babies, particularly among the poor, began to improve when Medicaid and other health programs were enacted in the mid-1960s...
...phantom prisoners of war...
...taxpayers would kick in about $9 billion of the IMF's projected $50 billion expansion...
...Here's hoping a higher court will put an end to these innovative abuses before they become widespread...
...It takes $20 billion of Government jobs creation programs to drop the [unemployment] rate by one percentage point," notes Representative Les Aspin, Wisconsin Democrat...
...The startling infant mortality statistic was reported by The New York Times in an article that suggested there may be a link between the Reagan Administration's social spending cuts and rising mortality rates...
...It is a pork barrel," the President said at the time...
...II Destruction of documents under subpoena by several House committees investigating the agency, and purging of records, notes, and memos from EPA's computer bank...
...Let The New York Times call for Burford's dismissal...
...You're just too damn good at real-life adventure to devote any more time to play-acting...
...Lacking any serious alternative to the Administration's economic muddling, the loyal opposition has decided not to oppose...
...Indeed, "there is a consistent positive relationship between unemployment for men and their suicide rates," reported economists Morton Schapiro and and Dennis A. Ahlburg...
...Anticipating more "customers" who can't pay, an American Hospital Association official recently advised hospital administrators to refine their methods for excluding indigents...
...The general counsel would prepare memos that would try to trap me...
...Chicago is the United States in microcosm, a city in decline...
...What $4.3 billion does is convey the impression, however fleeting, that somebody in Washington is doing something about unemployment...
...We asked the jury to send a message to the FALN, and we think it did," bragged the prosecutor, James D. Harmon Jr...
...The network news departments, sensing a natural tie-in, went all out in their own Third Reich reminiscences...
...The Winds of Warriors All the elements for success were there: a best-selling war novel transformed into television's latest mini-series, timed to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Hitler's rise to power...
...Splashed on the cover of Time, profiled in USA Today, boosted by Washington Post coverage— Madison Avenue couldn't have come up with a better publicity campaign...
Vol. 47 • April 1983 • No. 4
