Comment
Under Old Management In attempting to make sense out of Ronald Reagan's contradictory comments on Central America at his July 26 press conference, some mass media analysts suggested that the...
...It isn't just that his approach is totally in accord with the Reagan Administration's intentions, but also that he is determined to keep the American people from having any voice in policy decisions—including the decision to wage war...
...The falling domino approach to Latin COMMENT America is no more plausible than was the Domino Theory of the 1950s and 1960s as it applied to Southeast Asia...
...A stupid man's words can be rendered even more eloquent if he has seen the opponent's debate briefing book...
...Indeed, only fifteen young men—public resisters—have been indicted in the past year...
...substantial merchandise discounts...
...Why put U.S...
...Ma-caulay wrote in 1839, in Gladstone on Church and State...
...Public worry about AIDS has provided a new pretext for distrusting and despising homosexuals...
...In other words, dissenters ought to shut up...
...It takes no crystal ball to see that in a few short years all of Latin America may be caught up in revolutionary turmoil...
...More than the CIA and Pentagon machinations in the region, more than the hundreds of millions of dollars being squandered on military assistance to shore up corrupt and repressive regimes, more than the menacing moves against the Sandinistas, appointment of the Kissinger Commission signals the true intent of U.S...
...can be expected to sign a blank check for U.S...
...The Government, meanwhile, is redoubling its rather ineffective efforts to snare draft resisters by more direct means...
...He may be very ill-informed respecting a question...
...But a surer way is to cut off his food...
...Congress would long ago have turned the klieg lights on scores of witnesses...
...The common bond of interest is a firm determination to achieve peace through industrial preparINX/BOB DAHM edness," says the Association's pitch...
...Everybody Out of the Pool The public swimming pool in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was drained after members of a gay rights organization rented it recently for a public party...
...Supreme Court until it hears arguments in the fall term...
...and if he is a man of talents, of tact, and of intrepidity, he soon finds that, even under such circumstances, it is possible to speak successfully...
...Sidney Lens writes from Nicaragua (Page 14) that if the Sandinistas were left free to develop their program without U.S...
...To qualify, individuals must pay cash and "certify that I am a citizen of the United States...
...Residents expressed concern that the water might have been contaminated by AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome), so the director of the parks department ordered the pool emptied and disinfected, "to be on the safe side...
...I predict that in the 1990s we will be out trying to build nuclear power plants," declared John McKetta, keynote speaker at the recent annual meeting of the Northwest Public Power Association, of which WPPSS is a member...
...The incident was hardly an isolated one...
...This year's response may be a case of mass procrastination, as Selective Service maintains, but we suspect it reflects a growing conviction among young people that the Reagan Administration's aggressive policies threaten a war they wish no part of...
...Department of Education, must stop distributing financial aid to male students who do not certify that they have registered for the draft...
...A Ghastly Affair If any more evidence is needed to demonstrate that the Reagan Administration is hellbent on the annihilation of humanity, it is supplied by the recent Senate vote approving money for nerve gas production...
...The Washington Public Power Supply System, which once hoped to build five reactors, recently defaulted on $2.25 billion in bonds, the largest municipal default in U.S...
...but speak he must...
...history...
...Small wonder that many residents of the Pacific Northwest refer to WPPSS as "Whoops...
...The risks in Central America are high and getting higher every day, but ultimately there are even bigger stakes involved...
...Blame is not to be laid solely at the doorstep of the White House and the Republican Party...
...at Georgetown University...
...The Administration's solution to ballooning deficits is to cut off aid to the poor...
...Government is pushing ahead with the development of nerve gas bombs...
...The Selective Service System says it recently mailed out 70,000 warning letters to suspected nonregistrants, and the Justice Department says it will go ahead with prosecutions in the wake of a favorable Federal appeals court decision handed down in July...
...Kissinger himself has made no effort to conceal his contempt for the people of Latin America and his conviction that their destiny should be determined by the United States...
...Faulty The costs of nuclear power have come home to roost—right in the hair of one of the nation's most ambitious atomic enterprises...
...But a local newspaper, the Tulsa World, defended the move as "reasonable—if not as a health measure, at least as a way to allay public fear...
...And the White House can now do so, in some circumstances, under the pretense of social research...
...If any question at all remained on either of these points, it was surely laid to rest when the President appointed a "bipartisan" commission headed by the ineffable Henry Kissinger to advise him on Central America...
...Under Old Management In attempting to make sense out of Ronald Reagan's contradictory comments on Central America at his July 26 press conference, some mass media analysts suggested that the President had assigned himself an unmanageable task: On the one hand, he felt it necessary to assure the people of the United States that his Administration was not about to blunder into a Vietnam-style military misadventure...
...Thus, the decision will not, by itself, prevent Congress from vesting what amount to legislative powers in agencies shielded from public scrutiny and accountability...
...Will the United States dispatch its troops and weapons in a costly, brutal, and ultimately doomed attempt to arrange the world to suit Washington's purposes, or will it come to terms with rising demands for autonomy and justice everywhere in the Third World...
...Other programs affected by the rule include Supplemental Security Income, Head Start, and Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment...
...policy toward Central America into the hands of this "manager" and manipulator...
...The executive branch, unchecked by the legislators, has seized this license to disrupt the affairs of Vietnam, the Dominican Republic, Iran, and other nations...
...intervention in Korea, Congress has routinely relinquished its authority over matters of war and peace to the President...
...But the hackneyed poker analogy could not hide the ugly truth: It is the United States that is escalating the arms race to new and dizzying heights...
...Before the rule was promulgated, "experiments" of this sort had to be scrutinized by institutional review boards, bodies of at least five individuals from diverse backgrounds who could invite testimony on proposed projects...
...In contrast, the Government claims a 98.7 per cent registration rate for the three previous years...
...The registration-assistance law, named the Solomon Amendment for its sponsor in Congress, New York Representative Gerald Solomon, forces young men to incriminate themselves and ignores their right to due process...
...Researchers still do not know how the fatal and as yet incurable disease is transmitted, but they do know that more than 70 per cent of its victims are gay men...
...But nothing could be further from the truth...
...Since the U.S...
...It has allowed regulatory decisions to be made in the halls of the bureaucracy, where they are most likely to be influenced by the regulated...
...Today, it is clear that Congress must reassert its constitutional authority over war—and silence the White House...
...By the same token, there's no need to intensify the U.S...
...A surge of resistance to the present push toward war is urgently needed...
...What made Reagan's rhetorical contortions so pathetic was that they were wholly superfluous: It's too late to persuade any but the most gullible Americans that their Government's intentions toward Central America are peaceful and benign...
...Since the criminal justice system could not possibly handle an estimated 400,000 violators (the Selective Service System's own conservative figure), the Government will continue its efforts to intimidate the defiant by prosecuting the most outspoken...
...If we cannot manage Central America," he said only a few months ago, "it will be impossible to convince threatened nations in the Persian Gulf and in other places that we know how to manage the global equilibrium...
...Fortunately, the Administration's callous subterfuge has not gone unnoticed: The Children's Defense Fund in Washington, D.C., is on the lookout for proposed "research" that would "reduce or dilute public benefits, make it harder to obtain benefits, or attach new benefit requirements...
...A Glenn-Reagan contest would add new meaning to the old political saw: to the winner, the spoils...
...The Supreme Court's decision should cause Congress to reassess its past quiescence and cowardice...
...But it is Kissinger's top billing that most clearly gives the game away...
...While Ronald Reagan shook his big stick at Central America, where were the elected representatives who, under the Constitution, have the exclusive power to declare war and "make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces...
...harassment, they might well fashion a revolutionary showcase...
...INX / BOB GALE All the usual pretexts and sophistries were carted out in the Senate: We were told that the nation needs nerve gas bombs as chips in disarmament negotiations, that we must deal from a position of strength, not weakness...
...Yes, Virginia, there really is a military-industrial complex...
...And it has let an imperial President run dangerously amok...
...The specter of Vietnamese Communists storming La-guna Beach is no more hallucinogenic than the prospect of Chilean Communists pouring through the Alamo...
...they harbor no doubt that Washington is prepared to do its worst...
...Such a response is needed now...
...military aid to El Salvador, and intensified "covert" assistance to the so-called contras attempting to overthrow the Nicaraguan government...
...Such people are routinely considered "outsiders" by society—targets of hostility and discrimination...
...As a result of the ruling, Congress must squarely assume responsibility for such issues as declaring war and regulating corporate behavior, or lose all real power in these areas...
...As Federal District Judge Donald Al-sop observed when he declared the provision unconstitutional, the law "determines guilt and inflicts punishment on an identifiable group based on the past act of nonregistration without the protections of a judicial trial...
...That they hid from their moral and constitutional responsibility should not surprise us...
...But dissent—vocal, vigorous, and highly visible—is of utmost importance...
...Members of the ADPA board of directors are certainly in a position to contribute to—and benefit from—preparedness...
...And Mary Helen Spooner reports from Chile (Page 24) that the U.S.-backed regime of General Augusto Pinochet is tottering on the brink of collapse...
...To David Stockman and his ilk, starving the needy is just an experimental diet...
...The Reagan Administration lobbied heavily for Senate passage of a $130 million nerve gas expenditure, and Vice President George Bush cast the deciding vote...
...It may teach us that the only thing really different about the "outsiders" is the way they are treated by the rest of us...
...Some folks never learn...
...But the Health and Human Services Department removed the review procedure because it is ostensibly "burdensome to state and local agencies and to other entities participating in demonstration projects...
...Let Congress Be Congress Where was Congress...
...According to a recent mailing of the Foundation, "Congress must investigate KGB links with nuclear freeze" because Kremlin influences are "as simple as A-B-C," or maybe R-E-D...
...Students, eighteen-year-olds, the "undraftable," women—all can teach Washington a lesson in peace...
...In other emergencies—and AIDS is a medical emergency—disparate interests COMMENT have come together to protect the common interest...
...Solomon's Poor Judgment As of September 1, thousands of Americans are no longer fully protected by the Constitution...
...By relying on legislative vetoes, Congress has evaded its duty to write fundamental (and detailed) law...
...Unfortunately, Alsop's June injunction against enforcement of the Solomon Amendment was stayed by the U.S...
...The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, established by Congress in 1974 after disclosures of abuses of human subjects in Federally funded research programs, has found that such board review is the "primary mechanism" for ensuring that the rights of experimentees are protected...
...INX / RANDY JONES It is a panel that consists of unreconstructed Cold Warriors who have never questioned the desirability of imposing a Pax Americana on the rest of the world...
...individual retirement account plan"—and the magazine National Defense...
...According to the Fund, the new rule means "millions of welfare recipients, many of them children, will no longer be protected against unsafe 'research' on the benefits they need to survive...
...The likes of AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland, former Democratic Party Chairman Robert Strauss, Boston University President John Silber, and former Texas Governor William Clements Jr...
...The parks director admitted his decision "may have been an overreaction...
...On that day colleges and universities, under orders from the U.S...
...all his notions about it may be vague and inaccurate...
...The Foundation pamphlet, designed to look like a classified Government document, contains the following smoking gun: "Twenty-six days after Leonid Brezhnev called for a nuclear freeze the first national conference of the American nuclear freeze movement was held in Washington, D.C...
...Science with a Vengeance "If a man's overweight, you may solve the problem by persuading him to cut down eating," David Stockman, the White House budget wizard, once reasoned...
...they represent such military contractors as Hughes Aircraft, Boeing, Litton Industries, Rockwell International, General Dynamics, Honeywell, and Grumman Aerospace...
...He denounced the Soviets, the Cubans, and the Nicaraguans for intervening in the affairs of other nations even while treating Central America as if it were (as Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger recently asserted) part of the continental United States...
...In the future, as the calls for a "nonpartisan industrial policy" build to a crescendo, Congress must not be allowed to pass the buck to unelected policymakers...
...Now is the time to hold the line against the discredited old doctrines of Kissinger and Reagan...
...The Administration contends that "experiments" involving benefits are not biomedical or behavioral in nature, and therefore do not need to be overseen by a disinterested party...
...military maneuvers in the region, stepped up U.S...
...Confronted with that dilemma, Reagan's only recourse lay in Orwellian New-speak: War is peace...
...The Justices did not, however, address the right of Congress to delegate rule-making authority to executive agencies in the first place...
...On the other hand, Reagan wanted to keep the pressure on the revolutionaries of Central America, and especially the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, by warning that his Administration stood ready to commit more money, more "advisers," and if necessary more weapons and other resources to the cause of counterrevolution...
...After his appointment to head Reagan's commission, Kissinger told reporters he believed it was "imperative that we avoid the bitter debates that characterized the Vietnam period...
...And there are still unreconstructed red-baiters of 1950s vintage to poison the national dialogue on the crucial issue of war and peace...
...The Leadership Foundation is not alone, of course, in its efforts to frighten Americans away from a growing peace movement...
...They say it with a chuckle these days, as if to dispute the former director of the power system who maintained that "Whoops" is "not a very nice way to refer to the largest nuclear construction project of all time...
...But though it's fallen on dim times, the energy establishment has no plans to pull the plug on Ready Kilowatt...
...Stockman and his boss, President Reagan, think the Federal budget is fat with social spending because poor people crave welfare assistance...
...For the first time since 1969, the U.S...
...Public fear of the disease has been exploited and raised to the level of hysteria by some of the media as well as such right-wing groups as Jerry FalwelFs Moral Majority—all at the expense of homosexuals, who have the most to fear from AIDS...
...With the grotesquely premature Presidential campaigns already under way, Glenn has quickly established his own claim to the warmonger vote...
...As a Chairmen's Advisor you will receive an unusually impressive sculptured brass plaque on hand rubbed walnut with your name engraved...
...For once they give their candy to the others, members of Congress can't ask for it back...
...policy...
...A Washington State Supreme Court decision had left WPPSS holding an unwieldy bag of debt on its two canceled nuclear units...
...That great patriot, family man, astronaut, and Democratic Presidential hopeful, John Glenn, supported the bill along with thirteen other Senators of his party...
...Your annual dues will be $1,000 for Chairmen's Advisor, $500 for Senior Advisor, $250 for Special Advisor or $ 100 for State Advisor," the brochure notes...
...Members of Congress—and many in the peace movement—are lamenting that the President's hand has been freed, and that there is little Congress can do now to maintain the peace...
...recent public opinion polls show that more and more Americans are convinced that such criminal folly is exactly what the Reaganites have in mind...
...Decisions to be made within the next few months about Central America may set the pattern for decades to come...
...threats against revolutionary forces and regimes in the region...
...But it does not take a great deal of imagination to visualize the dire medical and behavioral consequences that will be suffered by persons who have had their Medicaid, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or Developmental Disabilities Act payments reduced—or cut off...
...AIDS has tragically underscored such prejudices...
...The President uttered a few words of obligatory praise for the Contadora group of Latin American nations, which had just proposed demilitarization of Central America, even while announcing and defending U.S...
...Of those required to register in 1983, 80 per cent have done so at this writing...
...Congress moved to limit Presidential powers to wage undeclared war only when it could no longer ignore deafening opposition to the Vietnam tragedy...
...intervention in whatever amount the Administration deems appropriate...
...In an account of the part played by the United States in the overthrow of the Chilean government of Salvador Allende, the late Laurence Stern wrote: "For all of Kissinger's vaunted rationalism in matters of great-power relations, his recorded opinions on Third World realities have been consistently disastrous whether they pertained to Bangladesh, Cuba, Nguyen Van Thieu, or Salvador Allende...
...It is apparently Kissinger's view that Third World events should always tilt toward the interests of great-power diplomacy...
...The world-view that the former Secretary of State will bring to his latest Government assignment was summed up in an article published almost ten years ago in The Progressive...
...The rest seem to be mainly Haitians, drug addicts, and hemophiliacs...
...The Coalition for Peace Through Strength warns in its latest appeal that "the horrid possibilities of Soviet 'nuclear terrorism'" should persuade all recipients of the mailing to join the Coalition's newly formed Congressional Advisory Board...
...Two others have been put on hold indefinitely...
...Echoing the theme of "peace through strength" is the American Defense Preparedness Association, purveyor of "low-cost insurance programs...
...if the fifth is completed, it will be years late and billions of dollars over budget...
...That works every time...
...The Supreme Court's decision took only one thing away from Congress: the opportunity to retain a veto over those issues which it glibly passes off to the executive branch or professional bureaucracy...
...Supreme Court has ruled that legislative vetoes, such as the War Powers Act, are unconstitutional...
...Fellow Travelers The Leadership Foundation, a Washington-based organization "for God, for country, for family," found what the FBI couldn't: Soviet agents in the nuclear freeze movement...
...Good thing the conference wasn't held at Harvard University nineteen days after Brezhnev's remarks...
...Most such studies, the Department acknowledged in the Federal Register, "could be construed as reducing benefits in one way or another...
...What drives the ADPA...
...An obscure rule issued this spring by the Department of Health and Human Services exempts from regulatory oversight "research and demonstration projects" involving many Federal welfare and benefit programs...
...The Court declared unconstitutional those statutory provisions that allow one or both houses of Congress to block actions of the President or a Federal agency...
...the result was the War Powers Act of 1973...
...A House-Senate conference committee is expected to authorize funds for nerve gas weapons, but the actual appropriation will not come to a vote until the fall, and the Senate could reverse itself then...
...Lightweightgate "A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read," T.B...
...For now, male students who need financial assistance are faced with a tough decision: They can register and fuel the war machine, lie and defy the law, or lose their aid and possibly their education...
...Two articles in this issue of The Progressive point to the long-term implications of Reagan's menacing hemispheric moves...
...Even the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, hardly a staunch guardian of subject rights, protested that the rule could create medical risks...
...Now the U.S...
Vol. 47 • September 1983 • No. 9
