Viewpoint
The Battalion Monday
Texas A&M University March 20, 1978
Shortages show nuclear need
If any more evidence were needed, this winter has provided an object
lesson in why we need more nuclear power plants in the United States.
First we had successive waves of rain, sleet and snow in much of the
country, causing wet coal piles to freeze and making it difficult to generate
electricity.
Now we have severe or potentially severe power shortages in the Mid
western states caused by an enduring coal strike.
Thus it is a abundantly clear that coal, like oil, is not always a reliable
source of energy. Nuclear power, on the other hand, is generally unaffected
by blizzards, strikes, or embargoes of any kind.
The Edison Electric Institute reports, for example, that Duke Power in
North Carolina has been saving 23,222 tons of coal a day by drawing one-
third of its electricity from three nuclear plants. As much as 62 percent of the
power generated in New England comes from nuclear plants; more than 40
percent of the power in the Chicago area. A nuclear plant at Shippingport is
supplying Pittsburgh with 23 percent of its power during the coal strike
instead of the usual 10 percent. Other nuclear plants are helping to funnel
emergency power into coal-short states like Ohio and Indiana.
Trouble is, only 13 percent of the nation’s electricity comes from nuclear
power. There simply isn’t enough nuclear capacity to cushion the impact of a
long coal strike or an oil embargo.
Energy experts theorize about drawing 50 percent of power from nuclear
plants by the turn of the century. But unless the nuclear industry gets more
public support there won’t even be a smattering of new nuclear plants
by then.
It now takes 10 to 12 years of cutting through red tape to put a nuclear
power plant in operation.
President Carter has been saying for months he wants to shorten the
process to six or seven years by approving construction sites in advance and
cutting out some of the regulation duplication.
" WE CAN STOP WORRM' ABOUT RUNMN'OUTTX FUEL, JMUY...TRIS STUFF BURNSBETTER'N COAL! “
So far, though, the president hasn’t come up with legislation to carry out
his promises. Which just shows again how quick we are to talk about new
nuclear power plants — and how slow we are to actually build them.
Scripps-Howard
Behind the ideologies and issues
By ARNOLD SAWISLAK
United Press International
WASHINGTON-CBS and The New
York Times are out with a new poll that
shows 42 percent of Americans identify
themselves as conservatives, a 10 percent
increase since 1964.
That finding, which also showed 27 per
cent of the 1,599 adults polled in the mid
dle of the road politically and 23 percent as
liberal, would seem to verify reports that
conservatism is enjoying a rebirth in this
country.
Until you read the rest of the poll.
The pollsters also asked the same people
a series of specific questions about issues.
The answers seemed to pose the question
“With conservatives like that, who needs
liberals?”
In responses -from conservatives only,
the pollsters found:
—79 percent believed the government
ought to help people get doctor and hospi
tal care at low cost.
—70 percent believed the federal gov
ernment should see to it that everyone
who wants to work gets a job.
Washington Window
—A majority favored government re
strictions on the sale of handguns.
—Two-to-one majorities favored , sex
educations in the schools and government
imposition and enforcement of safety
standards for industry. At the same time,
two-thirds of the same conservatives said
the government had gone too far in regu
lating business and mterfE‘riiig ; ^lW;ff%e'!
enterprise.
The most specific issue conflicts the poll
found were on government-paid abortions
for poor women and the unrestricted sale
of marijuana. Liberals favored both, con
servatives opposed them.
These findings are not really surprising.
Public opinion surveys for years have dis
closed major gaps betweent the ideological
labels people adopt and the opinions that
are supposed to go with those labels.
Perhaps the best contemporary example
of that phenomenom is the division of
opinion on the Panama Canal treaties.
Conservatives like Ronald Reagan and
Sens. Jesse Helms and Bob Dole oppose
the treaties, but conservatives like
William Buckley and John Wayne favor
them.
And as for any assumption that liberals
■ autoriifttit-fdly fHvor what conservatives op
pose, the CBS-Times poll found that 42
percent of those who called themselves
liberal opposed the treaties and 38 percent
approved of them.
Perhaps what is most needed now from
the pollsters are some in-depth studies of
what conservative and liberal means to the
people they use in their opinion surveys.
The CBS-Times poll tried to get at that
question by asking what was the biggest
difference between liberals and conserva
tives. It found 17 percent thought the dif
ference was “money, spending, eco
nomics,” and 17 percent thought it was
“personality characteristics.” No other an
swer got more than 7 percent — except
“don’t know-no opinion” at 45 percent.
That last figure might help explain
another in the poll: between 1972 and
1978, the number of Americans who re
plied “not sure” when asked to identify
their political ideology dmibifd-from AtO’
8 percent.
.. . . » - ■
What did Carter know, and when?
By WILLIAM RASPBERRY
WASHINGTON — As with Nixon and
Watergate, the intriguing question for
Jimmy Carter in the David Marston affair
is not merely: What did the President
know and when did he know it? It is also:
What should the President have admitted,
and when should he have admitted it.?
Fortunately for President Carter, there
is plenty of important news to take our
attention away from Marston: the
economy, the Middle East, the miners’
strike, the canal treaties.
But not much front-page attention was
paid to Watergate, either, during the early
months, except for Carl Bernstein and Bob
Woodard. And there remains the possiblil-
ity that Carter, like Nixon, could find him
self mixed up in some needless
obstruction-of-justice situation.
Thus the question: What should the
president have admitted, and when should
he admitted it?
The question presupposes that he al
ready had failed to do what he should have
done last November when he first got the
call from Rep. Joshua Eilberg (D-Pa.) urg
ing him to “expedite” the replacement of
Marston, the Republican U.S. attorney in
Philadelphia. It’s clear, in retrospect, that
the president should have found out why
Eilberg was so interested in getting rid of
Marston before he passed that request
along to Attorney General Griffin Bell.
Letters to the editor
Had he done that, Carter might have
discovered that Eilberg was a probable
target of a Marston investigation, in which
case he doubtless would have stayed clear
of the whole mess.
Commentary
But having made the initial error, what
should he have admitted, and when? Any
hope that he wouldn’t have to admit any
thing at all was dashed when, at his Jan. 12
news conference, he was asked why he
was dumping Marston.
He tried to finesse his response with a
remark that he has “only recently learned
about the U.S. attorney named
Marston...one of hundreds of U.S. attor
neys in the country. ” The message he ap
parently hoped to convey was that while
Marston’s removal in favor of a yet-
unnamed successor might not have been
in strict keeping with his campaign pledge
to keep such appointments out of politics,
it was, at worst, a routine political matter.
But as he conceded after reporters re
fused to let go, the “only recently” remark
was misleading. He had known about
Marston even before Eilberg’s November
call and had talked to Attorney Bell about
the matter.
What more should he have conceded,
and when? *
“Look,” Carter might have said, if it
were true, “When Eilberg asked me to
expedite Marston’s removal, I had no idea
that Eilberg himself was a possible target
of a Marston investigation. I’d better not
say any more just now until I have a
chance to look at the whole matter in view
of the questions you have raised. ”
But it wasn’t true. He did say at that
Jan. 12 news conference that “as far as any
investigation of members of Congress,
however, I am not familiar with that at all
and it was not mentioned to me.”
That wasn t true, either, as Carter ad
mitted in a statement — the “Shaheen re
port” — during a subsequent in-house Jus
tice Department inquiry. What he said
then was that he had learned that Eilberg
“was of investigative interest a few min
utes before the Jan. 12 news conference,
when congressional liaison Frank Moore
told him.
Having virtually admitted that he lied in
his Jan. 12 statement, perhaps that was the
time to make a clean breast. He didn’t and
the thing rolls on; we discover that the
Shaheen report itself was doctored before
its public release, excised of those portions
that either made Marston look good or
gave evidence of prior White House
knowledge of what was going on.
Now suppose it turns out that Eilberg
was in more serious trouble than Carter
even imagined; Wouldn’t that set the pres
ident up as having contributed, suc
cessfully or otherwise, to an attempted
obstruction of justice?
We shouldn’t forget that what did Nixon
in was not that he participated in, or even
that he knew about, the Watergate break-
in. What got him was his participation in
the after-the-fact attempt to cover it up.
The problem for Nixon was that there
never seemed to be an appropriate time to
come clean, after he had made the initial
bad judgment. Even with the benefit of
hindsight, I cannot say with any assurance
when he should have made a clean breast
of things. A few days after the break-in?
Just after his reelection? Ten months later
when James McCord started to sing?
And so with Carter. The fact that he,
presumably, has not particular interest in
what happens to Eilberg is beside the
point. The danger for him is that his origi
nal lack of candor, which he has so far
found no appropriate time to correct,
could ensnarl him in an obstruction of jus
tice.
What should he has admitted, and when
should he have admitted it? Is now too
late?
(c) 1978, The Washington Post
Pari-mutuel betting slipped onto ballot
Editor:
I am categorically opposed to pari
mutuel betting in Texas. No matter what
you call it, it is legalized gambling. Horse
racing in Texas is currently legal; betting
on horse racing is not.
The gamblers are trying to slip it up on
an unsuspecting public. By asking, “Are
you in favor of horse racing?” they have
distorted the issue. The real issue is: “Are
you in favor of legalized gambling?”
I am against legalized gambling because
it brings suffering to people who can least
afford to lose. It preys on human weak
ness, tempting many persons to gamble
away their pay checks. Also, it attracts the
criminal element to the state.
So don t let the gamblers give you a
snow job. Do not support attempts to
legalize pari-mutuel gambling in Texas.
— Natalie Ornish,
Dallas, Texas
Top of the News^
Campus
Twenty-one arrested for drugs
Undercover investigations in Bryan-College Station have resulted
in 80 drug charges against 41 persons, the Associated Press reported
Friday. Twenty-one of those charged had heen arrested Friday, saida
spokesman for the Department of Public Safety. The DPS said three
women and 18 men were arrrested Wednesday night and jailed in
lieu of bonds totaling $545,000, according to the AP article. Indict
ments returned by the Brazos County grand jury named 29 persons,
and the other 12 were named in warrants from nearby Travis,
Brazoria, Burleson and Roberson counties, the story said. Police rec
ords show that several Texas A&M University students were among
those arrested.
Marine council meets at Ai?M
The 20-member Texas A&M University Marine Advisory Council
will hold its first meeting here tomorrow in the Memorial Student
Center. Dr. Robert B. Abel, assistant vice president for marine pro
grams, said the Council’s initial meeting will include overviews o(
Texas A&M’s shrimp marieulture and coastal studies programs, as
well as discussions of scientific information processing and marine
sciences curricula. Texas A&M President Dr. Jarvis E. Miller will
welcome the group in the morning.
State
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Fires that in some places were so intense that they moved through
the air like whirlwinds of red flame charred thousands of acres of dry
Texas brush and timber land during the weekend. At least six major
fires, all driven by winds up to 40 mph, were reported in northern
and north eastern parts of the state but there were no reports of
injuries. “So far we have heen lucky,” said Graham fireman David
Hooper. “We’ve had no injuries and no homes have been burned.
Hooper said the strong winds and low humidity kept fires in that area
going from about noon Saturday to late Sunday before they could be
brought under control. In Graham and other areas all-night patrols
were set up to watch for new outbreaks. More than 2,100 acres ofa
Boy Scout camp near Athens, burned Saturday and Sunday. And in
Throckmorton County, about 75 miles southwest of Wichita Falls,
100 firemen were needed to control a major blaze. Smoke from a
16-mile long wall of flame could be seen in Weatherford, about 90
miles to the southeast.
Nation
Connally presidential hopeful?
Former Texas Gov. John Connally has decided to delay any decla
ration on his political plans, but is suggesting he might feel at home in
a crowd of GOP presidential hopefuls. “I frankly don’t want to ap
proach a decision time yet, ’ Connally said Sunday on ABC’s “Issues
and Answers’ program in Washington. “A year from now I suspect 1
will have made my decision. Right after the elections in November-
-the aiext two or three months after that—I’m going to seriously think
about what I want to do. If I decide to run, and I might, then fm
going to announce.” Connally said at the moment the party should
concentrate on electing Republican congressmen, governors and
state legislators and he indicated he would make himself available to
help in those campaigns. After that, he said he would consider a bid
for the presidency even though “there may be a dozen of us” seeking
the GOP nomination. He said he was undaunted by the prospect of
challenging either former President Gerald Ford or Ronald
although conceding them to be tough opponents.
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Miners ponder new contract
Striking coal miners pondered a new contract proposal today with
little of the bitter rhetoric that heralded their 2-1 rejection of its
predecessor. With the crippling walkout in its 105th day, financial
wounds festered with desperation for many of them, and many said
they will opt for a return to the pits when the new pact comes up
Friday for a ratification vote. “I voted for the first contract because I
have to go back to work, and I’ll vote for the contract this week for the
same reason,” said Virginia miner Walker Raines. “I had about
$3,000 when the strike started in December. Now I’m down to less
than $500.
World
Incumbents win in France
President Valery Giscard d’Estaing’s ruling coalition in Paris today
won France’s legislative elections, turning back a leftist bid for office
that would have put Communists in the Cabinet for the first time in
31 years. With all 491 election districts reporting early today, the
incumbents won 291 seats compared with 200 for the Socialist-
Communist opposition. Sunday’s voting was a runoff election from
the preceding weekend. It could only be welcome news for the U.S.
State Department, which had viewed the prospect of Communists in
the French Cabinet with unconcealed foreboding. Communists last
served in the French government from 1945 to 1947.
Weather
Mostly cloudy this morning becoming partly cloudy this af
ternoon and tonight. High today low 80s, low tonight near 60
Winds from the southeast at 10-20 mph. Partly cloudy with
continued dry weather and warm temperatures through Fri
day.
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Managing Editor Mary Alice
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1