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Viewpoint
The Battauon Tuesday
Texas A&M University June 13, 1978
What’s another radio station worth?
It could have been an old-time Hollywood
movie script.
The noble new enterprise, destined for great
things, is suddenly threatened by economic disas
ter. Things look grim. There’s no money.
There seems nothing left to do but wait for the
banker to come and foreclose on the of homes
tead.
But wait. At the last moment the stern banker
softens. “Well, maybe there is a way, if you’re
willing to work hard and earn your keep...”
Praise the lord, salvation is at hand.
There was something of that aura surrounding
University President Jarvis Miller’s “last-minute”
announcement Friday that the University will go
50-50 with local supporters of KAMU-FM to con
tinue operating the public radio station for
another year.
But disregarding the theatrics, it was the right
decision. KAMU-FM has earned a place among
Brazos VAlley radio stations, offering music and
programming that local commercial stations do
not. It’s also earned a audience all its own, an
audience of people who’d rather listen to classical
music and jazz than Mick Jagger, Andy Gibb or
Tom T. Hall.
And now the station can and must earn its keep
as well. Other public broadcasting stations earn
income, in the form of donations, from their audi
ences in much the same way commercial stations
earn advertising revenue based on their audi
ences. Without an audience, neither survives.
So KAMU-FM will have to prove how good it
is. What’s it worth to listeners? Will they pay for
the privilege of having it there whenever they
turn on their radio? The next year will tell.
It’s time for all you KAMU-FM listeners to cast
your votes for the station, the votes which bear
George Washington’s picture. L R I
Some doubts about Proposition 13
By ARNOLD SAWISLAK
United Press International
WASHINGTON — Things I doubt will
happen:
1. That the state of California and all its
subdivisions will go out of business as the
result of the Proposition 13 tax cut.
The measure California voters approved
last week certainly is going to cause some
major readjustments in the financing, staf
fing and services of state and local gov
ern nient.
But painful as that may be to govern
ment officials and employees in terms of
job conditions and to citizens in terms of
programs they have come to expect, it
Washington Window
seems unlikely that California will “drop
dead, to quote the solution to New York
City’s financial woes never uttered by
Gerald Ford. For one thing, the state has a
surplus of more than $3 billion and that
could help localities over part of the
bumps.
As for the apocalyptic predictions of
Proposition 13’s impact, it should be re
called that when the Constitution was
amended in 1913 to authorize a federal in
come tax, the end of capitalism and eco
nomic growth was forecast. When the fed
eral minimum wage law passed and every
time since that it has been increased pre
dictions of massive unemployment fol
lowed. And, when California slapped
tough exhaust controls on new cars sold in
the state, there were statements that the
industry would have to simply quit doing
business there.
2. That the passage of Proposition 13 is
the opening volley of a taxpayers’ revolt
that will end of Big Government all across
the United States.
California’s example may be emulated
in some other states and localities, but it
will take more to dismantle the gigantic
structure of government in this country.
It would be foolish to downgrade the
California vote. But before any lessons can
be taken from it, the public’s reaction to
the changes it will cause must be seen.
If Californians who voted for Proposi
tion 13 thought its only effect would be to
throw the loafers out of government jobs,
there may be a surprised reaction when
some of the services they want from the
government disappear. The next interest
ing development to watch for is public re
sponse to cutbacks in garbage collection,
elimination of high school football or slow
police response to trouble calls. Even if
such services are already inadequate, it is
not exactly logical to believe they will im
prove with less money to pay for them.
3. That politicians all over the country
will respond to the California vote by
pledging to cut government spending
wholesale.
Some candidates surely will attempt to
arouse the spirit of taxpayer revolt that ap
peared in California and some will be
elected. But not all candidates will be
under the same gun. It should be remem
bered Proposition 13 was not the child of
politicians; it was a measure forced on
government officials by outsiders. And not
all states have the process that permits
citizens to take law-making into their own
hands through initiative and referendum.
Further, there is another deeply im
bedded impulse besides tax cutting in
American politics — the temptation to
promise solutions to problems of special
interests, whether they be disadvantaged
or affluent. Like Lyndon Johnson in the
mid-1960s, most politicians suffer from the
illusion that they can make everyone
happy — provide both "guns and butter
— and be reelected happily ever after.
The ironies of George Wallace
By DAVID S. BRODER
WASINGTON—Of all the politicians of
our time who did not become President,
the two with the greatest influence were
pfobably Hubert H. Humphrey and
George G. Wallace. Humphrey is dead
and Wallace has gone to the sidelines,
dropping out of the U.S. Senate race in
Alabama before it had fairly begun.
One has to say what is obvious: The real
George Wallace, the uncrippled battler,
would never have quit such a contest. It
may have been, as his critics say, that Wal
lace’s time was past in Alabama. But they
cannot prove that theory on the evidence
that the crippled, near-deaf, divorced
Wallace of 1978 declined to drag himself
through another campaign.
IN HIS PRIME, he was something else.
He shared with Humphrey a vitality, a
zest for combat, a gift for overstatement
that somehow made others seem drab,
even when they were defeating him.
But there was nothing of the “happy
warrior” in Wallace. His was a sinister,
even intimidating power, harnessed in
those early years to the most primitive,
malevolent emotion in our land: the fear of
another race.
When I first encountered him in na
tional politics — at Butler University field-
house in Indianapolis during the 1964
primaries—he seemed just a curiosity,
windmilling away against the onrushing
tide of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.”
But four years later, Wallace was no
laughing matter. Rereading a report I
wrote on a Wallace rally in Hammond,
Ind." in the summer of 1966, I remember
the chill of fear one felt when Wallace de
scribed how he would deal with the anti
war demonstrators if he were President: “I
would have me an attorney general that
would drag them in by their long hair
and....” The crowd was screaming so
loudly in the high school gym that the last
words had to be imagined.
IN 1972, after four more years of war
and unrest, of high prices and stiff taxes,
the Wallace crowds were even bigger. He
was getting semi-serious about winning
the presidency, restraining his racial
rhetoric, letting sly humor substitute for
inflammatory threats.
I remember a double-header rally in
Flint, Mich., just before he was shot, a
night when he filled the hall twice, the
overflow crowds waiting patiently outside
for their turn to receive the message.
He talked that night about how the
point-headed liberals would never put a
young thug in jail, because they knew (and
here his tone was oh-so-mincing) that the
only reason he was bad was “he hadn’t got
his broccoli when he was a boy.” This
pointy-head laughed along with everyone
else.
Offstage, he came to enjoy his comba
tive friendships with the reporters for the
“liberal Eastern press and television” he
so regularly denounced.
He told us these last two years that he
was a man ahead of his time, that the other
politicians are saying today what he was
denounced for saying ten years ago. For
tunately, this is not entirely true. Wallace
had played the politics of racial an
tagonism, while others, wiser and more
humane, upheld the cause of justice.
BUT HE WAS ahead of the game in
other ways. Before Ronald Reagan and
others discovered the trick, Wallace be
came the first full-time, non-stop, self-
sufficient, perpetual presidential candi
date, showing others the advantage of hav
ing a campaign organization always in
readiness. Before Watergate tainted big-
money contributions, he showed how to
sustain a movement on thousands of small
gifts. He was the godfather of direct-mail
fundraising.
His slogan, “Send Them a Message,”
capsulized the anti-establishment rhetoric
of alienated age. It was borrowed—but not
improved on—by others aiming to ad
vance their own ideological and personal
causes. He was, in all these ways and
more, a trailblazer.
He flatters himself to think that he
^aved the way for another southerner,
Jimmy Carter, to reach the White House.
His graciousness toward Carter after his
own defeat is widely admired among the
White House southerners who grew up
despising Wallace’s appeals to racial hate.
“The irony,” Hamilton Jordan said, the
day after Wallace’s retirement, “is that we
really played off him. We told the voters in
Florida, it was time to send a President to
Washington, not just a message. ”
THERE IS MORE to it than that. Wal
lace was immensely useful to Carter in
other ways. Carter raised much of his early
money from liberals who had no earthly
reason to support him except his confident
assertion that he could beat Wallace in the
Florida primary and thus spare the party
from that threat. And only because there
was a Wallace to beat did Carter gain his
stature as the front-runner for the Demo
cratic nomination.
Wallace asked little of Carter in return.
In fact, said Jordan, adding an ironic foot
note to this curious saga, “The only time
Wallace has called me since we’ve been
here was on behalf of a black businessman
in Alabama who was having a terrible
problem with one of the agencies. He said,
I know how close the President feels to
black people and I know he wouldn’t want
anything as unfair as this to happen.’
That’s all he ever asked for. ”
(c) 1978, The Washington Post
Hill hits issues, Clements attacks personality
By EDWARD A. FULTON
United Press International
POINTBLANK — Democratic gover
nor candidate John Hill chose to discuss
the issues, but Republican nominee Bill
Clements found time to make a personal
attack on the attorney general.
Hill and Clements had their first face-
to-face confrontation of the campaign dur
ing the weekend in a one-hour debate at
the Texas UPI Editors Association conven
tion at Waterwood Resort in Southeast
Texas.
“Mr. Hill has a record in the attorney
general s office of a bloated bureaucracy,”
Clements said. “He is typical of the
bureaucrat in Austin who talks about tax
reform and gives us higher taxes.
"I doubt if he knows the difference be
tween zero base budgeting or the 10 to 12
other systems. I do. We have ample reve
nue. It’s a question of how we spend it.
“He’s the politician, I’m the busi
nessman,” Clements said.
Both candidates, however, agreed eco
nomic issues would dominate the cam-
FEEM
paign — especially tax procedures.
Hill said the attorney general’s office
budget increased by providing increased
services which paid for themselves outside
the state budget.
Hill said he supported new administra
tion of the property tax system to achieve
reform and would meet with legislative
leaders this week to discuss specific
changes he supports, including taxing farm
property on its production value rather
than on sale value.
“Have we become bloated? Maybe
there will be some areas where we will
need some increases. We must admit that
to be honest,” Hill said. “Now is the time
for hard work, not political rhetoric.
“Overall, I can and will cut spending.
The tax dollar will be stretched to the
maximum. I have no sympathy for
freeloaders or loafers. I like hard work.”
After the debate. Hill met with Presi
dent Carter’s energy chief James
Schlesinger in Austin to discuss Hill’s op
position to provisions of the adminis
tration’s energy bill.
Clements said there was nothing in the
Carter energy package that he could sup
port.
“Mr. Hill is the root cause of our energy
problems,” Clements said. “I remember
when he was strutting like a peacock work
ing for the election of Mr. Carter.”
Both candidates said Texas needs strong
civil rights legislation to protect citizens in
Letter to the editor
Editor:
I am referring to the picture captioned
‘Must’ve been that high-octane gas...’ at
the bottom of page 1 of The Battalion
Monday, June 7. The write-up reads, “A
College Station fireman looks over the
foreign car that’s engine burst into flames
etc. ” This must be an oversight on the part
of editorial staff. I really can’t believe that
anyone with a working knowledge of the
by Doug Graham
the custody of police and to protect law
enforcement agencies.
Referring to several recent instances of
prisoners dying while in police custody.
Hill said, “We need to indicate to our
people and to the nation that we are con
cerned in this area and have moved to ad
dress this problem.”
Englishmen
English language would make such a
grotesque blunder. And this is all the
more remarkable in the light of the at
titude of the authorities of this University
to foreign applicants.
One is led to believe that the native stu
dents are superior in their use of the
English language to foreign students, both
graduates and undergraduates, from
English-speaking countries, many of
whom have had to pass exams in English
set by renowned British institutions. Yet
many of these students are humiliated by
being compelled to write such absurd
exams as the ‘Proficiency in English Test,’
as a prerequisite to registration at Texas
A&M.
— Lennox Applewhaite
Editor’s note: Believe it or not, jour
nalism majors are required to take an
English proficiency test of sorts before
entering the communications department
too, and we still goof sometimes. We
humbly admit our error.
Of English and
Top of the News
State
Drifting craft rammed by tanker
An 18-foot pleasure craft that had broken its anchor line and drifted
into the Houston Ship Channel was rammed Sunday by a 710-footoil
tanker. Two men were killed and two others were injured. Deputies
said the survivors told them an anchor line broke and their small boat
drif ted into the path of the Montpelier Victory while those aboard the
small craft struggled unsuccessfully to start its engine.
New
Hill discusses energy proposals
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Federal energy chief James Schlesinger went to Austin to discuss
energy proposals, and Attorney General John Hill told him Texas
wants more influence on national policies. Hill also said he impressed
on Schlesinger that he believed strongly in coal conversion for elec
trical production and asked the energy czar to work toward lowering
utility bills for Texans.
TA
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Voting close on pari-mutuel betting
The Texas Horseracing Association officials are not discouraged by
last month’s referendum in which Texans voted against legalizing race
track betting. Douglas A. McCrary of Calvert, association chairman,
called a Capitol news conference Friday and said latest figures he has
indicate 702,666 voters favored pari-mutuel betting and 734,791 op
posed it in the referendum.
Children drown in motel pool
Two children died Sunday in Garland hospitals from injuries re
ceived in an unsuccessful attempt to save their grandfather from
drowning in a motel swimming pool. Police in the Dallas suburb said
Thedore Lee Fithian, 53, a two-year resident of the motel, appar
ently struck the side of the pool Saturday night while swimming and
was knocked unconscious. His grandchildren, Lisa Gossett, 9, and
Harold Gossett Jr., 7, of Royce City, Texas, apparently went in to try
to save him.
Nation
Son of Sam sentenced
“Son of Sam” murderer David Berkowitz was sentenced Mondayto
serve 25 years to life in prison for the .44-caliber nighttime ambush
murders of six young New Yorkers. Berkowitz was subdued and
quiet, in contrast to his previous appearance for sentencing. But a
spectator began screaming at him after the sentence was handed
down for the last of the “Son of Sam victims, 20-year-old Stacy
Moskowitz. “Berkowitz, you’re going to burn!” shouted spectator
Daniel Carrique, a close friend of Moskowitz.
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Convicts escape in plane
Three inmates, including two convicted of first-degree murder ina
gangland-style slaying, escaped from jail in Omaha Monday, overpo
wered an airport attendant and fled in a twin engine plane. The plane
was last seen headed south. It had enough fuel for at least a five-hour
flight, authorities said. The inmates are facing possible death sen
tences for their conviction by a district court jury last month in two
1975 contract slayings.
Mysterious satellite launched
The weekend launch of a military satellite under the tightest secu
rity measures ever seen at the Cape Canaveral still remains a mys
tery. The Air Force won t budge on providing any information about
Saturday’s launch of a classified military payload. A spokesman would
say only that a powerful Titan 3-C had been used as the booster
rocket. And no explanation has been made of the extraordinary secu
rity measures — which included Air Force commandoes on standby
and perimeter patrols by attack-trained guard dogs in addition to the
regular guards. It was the second secret satellite launch in 64 days.
Shooting investigation opened
Lousiana state police Sunday shot and killed a teen-ager in West
Monroe they said ran over a state trooper with a stolen car. The
trooper rolled over the top of the car and suffered only minor injuries.
The Ouachita Parish district attorney s office and sheriffs department
were investigating the shooting of the teen-ager, Jerry L. Smith, 16,
of West Monroe.
World
Soviets accuse U.S. of spying
In a counterattack to U.S. charges of Soviet electronic bugging of
the U.S. Embassy, the Soviet press said Monday an embassy official
was caught last summer delivering spy equipment under a Moscow
bridge and was responsible for passing on poisons that killed an inno
cent Soviet man. The story in the government newspaper Izvestia
followed warnings last week that the Soviet Union would reveal cases
of American spying in Moscow if the United States did not refrain
from pressing the issue of a hug found in the U.S. Embassy May 25.
Nuclear device detonated
The Soviet Union has exploded a powerful underground nuclear
device measuring 6.8 on the Richter Scale, an Uppsala Seismological
Institute spokesman says. The spokesman said the explosion Sunday
was located in the Semipalatinsk area of the Soviet Union in eastern
Khazakstan. The Soviet Union’s two main nuclear testing areas are in
the region. “It is one of the most powerful detonations ever recorded
in this area,” a spokesman said. “This explosion is in a class of its own.
Weather
Partly cloudy and hot today and Wednesday. Cool and partly
cloudy tonight. High today mid-90s, low tonight low 70s. High
tomorrow mid-90s. Winds from the east at 10-15 mph de
creasing to less than 5 mph tonight. Little or no variation in
temperature through Saturday with no significant shower ac
tivity through this period.
The Battalion
Opinions expressed in The Battalion are those of the
editor or of the writer of the article and are not necessarily
those of the University administration or the Board of Re
gents. The Battalion is a non-profit, self-supporting
enterprise operated by students as a university and com
munity newspaper. Editorial policy is determined by the
editor.
LETTERS POLICY
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subject to being cut to that length or less if longer. The
editorial staff reserves the right to edit such letters and does
not guarantee to publish any letter. Each letter must be
signed, show the address of the writer and list a telephone
number for verification.
Address correspondence to Letters to the Editor, The
Battalion, Room 216, Reed McDonald Building, College
Station, Texas 77843.
Mail subscriptions are $16.75 per semester; $33 25^
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Reed McDonald Building, College Station, Texas
United Press International is entitled exclusively to^
use for reproduction of all news dispatches credited to 11
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Second-Class postage paid at College Station, TX 77$
MEMBER
Texas Press Association
Southwest Journalism Congress
Represented nationally by National Educational Adver
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Angeles.
Editor DebbyKre^
Sports Editor Davit
News Editor Lee Roy Leschped
Campus Editor FlaviaKn^
Photo Editor PatOMi^
Copyeditor Sarah
The Battalion is published Monday through Friday from
. September through May except during exam and holiday
periods and the summer, when it is published on Tuesday
through Thursday.
Student Publications Board: Bob G. Rogers, Chain ri£ '
Joe Arredondo, Dr. Gary Halter, Dr. Charles McCa^
Dr. Clinton A. Phillips, Rebel Rice. Directdr of Stv^
Publications: Donald C. Johnson.