Viewpoint
The Battalion Monday
Texas A&M University September 11, 1978
Andy’s talking again
Again, we wonder what makes U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young think
and speak the way he does.
In a little-publicized speech in the Dominican Republican, Young told a
group of U.S. Peace Corps workers that a “mood of isolationism ’ back
home keeps people from volunteering for service.
“We complain that there are Cubans in African,” Young said. “There are
20,000 Cubans in Africa doing the kind of things you are doing.” He said the
U.S. has 6,000 Peace Corps workers around the world and that “we ought
to have 50,000.”
To compare U.S. Peace Corps workers with Cuban revolutionaries in
Africa is absurd.
Omaha World-Herald
Red tape strangling U.S
By JOHN F. SIMS
UPI Business Writer
NEW YORK — Ground beef is a simple foodstuff. It
wouldn’t seem to need much regulating.
The next time you eat some, bear in mind the follow
ing: a recent one-year study of the federal, state and
local regulations covering production and distribution
of ground beef revealed that there were 200 statutes,
41,000 regulations and 110,000 court cases involving
ground beef.
The cost to the consumer was estimated to be 4.3
cents per pound.
The consumer always pays the bill for government
regulation: he pays twice, paying for government
through taxes and then again at the supermarkets and
stores.
Howard W. Blauvelt, chairman of Continental Oil
Co., told a meeting of the American Institute of Chem
ical Engineers that we also pay in other ways.
“To the direct cost of administration and compliance
must be added the indirect cost of stifled initiatives,
reduced productivity and misdirected capital flows,
he said. “These consequences of federal regulation are
more subtle and harder to measure, but they may be
far more costly to society than the direct effects.
G. David Hughes, professor of business administra
tion at the University of North Carolina, wrote of these
other costs:
“There are the psychological costs of anxiety and
frustration associated with overlapping organizations,
duplications of information required, insensitive gov
ernment officials and incomprehensible instructions.
There is the social cost of the misallocation of resources
to the regulatory process rather than to programs.”
Several universities now are studying regulation, try
ing to quantify the hidden^Cosjs.
•Putting a dollar cost o;ft regulation as difficult enough.
The Joint Economic COmmitt'ee bf‘Congress said
federal safety and environmental regulations this year
added $666 to the price of a new car. The price of a new
home increased between $1,500 and $2,500 because of
federal, state and local regulations, according to its
study.
The Commission on Federal Paperwork estimates
federal paperwork costs $100 billion a year, or about
$500 per person.
The Center for the Study of American Business of
Washington University at St. Louis, Mo., put the total
cost of government regulations at $65.4 billion a year
— almost $1,200 for each family in America.
Blauvelt, citing other studies, said the total cost of
government regulation will rise 57 percent from 1976
to nearly $103 billion for fiscal 1979.
Obviously some regulation is necessary. Even the
most virulent of business objectors admits to the need
for some controls.
Dow Chemical in 1975 began calculating the cost of
various forms of government regulation, categorizing
them as appropriate, questionable or excessive. In
1976, it calculated, total cost of regulations was $186
million, up 27 percent from 1975.
Paperwork in 1976 alone cost the company more
than $20 million.
But of the $186 million total, Dow judged that only
$103 million was “appropriate. The remaining $83
million, up 38 percent from the 1975 figure, was spent
on complying with “questionable ’ or “excessive’ regu
lation.
There is not a single legal business pursuit that is not
governed by some kind of federal, state or local gov
ernment regulation.
Henry Ford II, chairman of the automobile com
pany, said earlier this year: “As I look at our country
today, I see a powerful but uncertain and unsteady
giant being trussed up in a growing web of rules and
regulations to the point where it can no longer exert its
strength freely and effectively .
“Maybe it’s only a coincidence that the recent period
of rapidly-rising government spending and roughshod
regulation also has been a period of high unemploy
ment, slow productivity improvement, slow growth in
personal income, soaring government deficits and un
precedented peacetime inflation. But 1 don’t believe
it’s a coincidence at all',
.“Despite a mounting record of failure and frustra
tion, our leaders have failed to grasp the fact that too
much government inevitably leads to economic delay.
Koppers Corp., in its annual report, rather coyly
invented a mythical "academic to say what Koppers
feels about relations with government.
“Ah, the agencies,” says the mythical dean. “They
have a life of their own and have a penchant — if I may
borrow a phrase — for “fixing things that ain’t broke.’
“They are especially good at drawing the noose of
regulation ever more tightly around the corporate
. businesses
neck, calling for that last ounce of compliance which
sends costs out of sight without much improving per
formance. ”
Every industry has its own horror story about what it
considers excessive regulation.
Like two regulatory agencies in the construction in
dustry. One decreed that a bulldozer on a construction
site should have a bell to warn workers when it was
reversing. The other ordered all workers on construc
tion sites should wear ear covers to shut out the noise of
the bulldozer and, presumably, its bell.
Criticism recently has concentrated on the Depart
ment of Energy, the fastest growing of the regulatory
agencies. Energy regulation, Blauvelt said, is “a
textbook case of regulatory momentum, inefficiencies
and undue costs for consumers.
President Carter promised to cut red tape and his
spokesmen say that while in office he lias reduced fed
eral paperwork by 12 percent
Reducing controls in the airline industry certainly
has improved rates for passengers and increased com
petition. And the Occupational Safety and Health Ad
ministration has repealed 1,100 of its 10,000-odd rides. .
But Washington contains 87 federal offices that regu
late business and they still churn out new rules and
explanations daily.
Philip H. Abelson, editor of Science magazine,
wrote: “We have created a regulatory machine that is
unmanageable by the president and his cabinet offi
cers.
Businessmen, when they go along with the idea of
regulation at all, usually suggest that the best way is for
government to make it worthwhile for industry to com
ply.
David Mahoney, chairman and chief executive of
ficer of the advertising arm of Norton Simon Inc.,
urged industry activism. ....
“First we have to use the channels already available
— such as communication with customers, employees,
stockholders and suppliers, he told the annual meet
ing of the American Association of Advertising Agen
cies.
“There is nothing more effective in dealing with gov
ernment officials than the power of communications
from constituents back home — the voters.
“But don’t go to Washington as supplicants or advo
cates — go as militants demanding equal rights for the
free enterprise system,” he said.
The law almost everybody’s breaking
By JOSEPH GAMBARDELLO
United Press International
NEW YORK — Hundreds of colleges,
clubs and fraternal and veterans organiza
tions across the country are breaking a
federal law everytime they use music for a
dance, concert or other public perfor
mance.
They could be fined anywhere from
$250 to $10,000 for each violation, which
means each song.
The violations stem from the 1976
Copyright Act, which took effect in
January and which says those groups must
purchase a license that guarantees com
posers royalties for their work.
But despite the violations, the organiza
tions need not worry that their next social
will be raided by a bunch of gun-toting
G-Men.
“We re not looking to trap anybody,”
said Ed Cramer, president of Broadcast
Music Inc., one of three organizations the
new law authorizes to issue licenses on
behalf of copyright owners.
Cramer, a copyright lawyer, said the
new law effects groups that were previ
ously exempt under the old copyright law,
which dated from 1909.
BMI, like its competitor, the American
Society of Composers, Authors and Pub
lishers (ASCAP), is in business to protect
and collect royalties for artists. BMI repre
sents about 50,000 artists, among them
such contemporary music writers as Barry
Manilow, the Bee Gees, Neil Sedaka and
Paul Anka.
Under the 1909 law there were two 28-
year terms during which the work was pro
tected, Cramer said.
“Under the new law, it exists for the life
of the author and 50 years after his death,”
he said.
Most musical royalties — 85 percent —
come from the broadcasting industry,
“which pay us so much a year based on
their advertising revenue,” Cramer said.
That was not changed by the new law.
The major changes, he said, involved
the way the law related to juke boxes and
so-called non-profit public performances,
which were exempt between 1909 and
January 1.
For juke boxes, the owners have to ob
tain an $8-a-year license from the govern
ment. But, said Cramer, of the estimated
500,000 juke boxes in the country, “three
out of four are not licensed, even though
royalties from each box “amounts to
peanuts for the individual song writer.
But, what he called “a significant in
equity under the old law was that non
profit institutions — colleges, private
clubs, church groups, veterans and frater
nal organizations — did not have to pay
royalties for music they used.
“Every supplier of goods and services to
non-profit organizations got paid. The
telephone company, the electric company,
the musicians. They (composers) should
not be forced to subsidize music for non
profit purposes,” Cramer said.
After all, he said, most composers are
not as commercially successful as the Bee
Gees and Paul Anka and depend on
their royalties for a living.
“There are composers out there whose
works are not going to be in the top 40,
whose principal exposure is in the non-
Letters to the editor
Editor:
How can a court of law pretend that the
“lady” who murdered her own unborn
child with a knitting needle is “innocent ”?
(Battalion, Sept. 1978.) They knew she
murdered her own unborn child and she
should be in prison. If she was insane she
sould be confined to an institution for the
criminally insane.
“Temporary insanity” is a cop-out. That
plea in effect removes any sense of per
sonal responsibility for her action. She lit
erally got away with murder.
Ray Quinn
Say howdy
Editor:
Howdy, Aggies! Since many of you don’t
seem to know, that is a tradition here at
A&M. Aggies are supposed to greet other
Aggies with a friendly “Howdy!”. That is
something which makes the atmosphere
profit area. And it is these people who
need it the most who will benefit from the
law,” Cramer said.
The composers he was talking about
were those — like BMI s 17 Pulitzer Prize
winners — whose works are used by “col
leges, universities, city symphony orches
tras and so forth.
BMI has reached an agreement through
a national college organization by which
each university pays cents for each
full-time student to “cover all music dues
— including college radio stations — ex
cept for special concerts, Cramer said.
But, he said, many colleges have not come
through.
Li censes for clubs, organizations and
other non-profit groups would depend
primarily on how much they budget for
music each year.
“A group using minimal music would
probably only have to pay about $2 a
week,” he said.
“We are trying to convince these people
that not only as a matter of law they have
to pay, but that morally they should be
paying because they’re using somebody’s
product. Next time you hear a song ask:
How does a composer get paid?”
murder’
on this campus so different from about
every other college campus in the nation.
But in order for this tradition to con
tinue, in order to keep A&M unique,
everyone must uphold it. So, when you
start walking around on campus, try to ex
change some “Howdys,” to uphold a great
Aggie tradition.
Cathy O’Connor, ’80
Correction
The caption on the “Double Vis
ion” photograph in the Thursday,
Sept. 1 Battalion incorrectly iden
tified the student pictured studying
in the Memorial Student Center as
Mark Gidlow. The student should
have been identified as Charles
Dunlap.
The Battalion regrets the error.
Slouch by Jim Earle
“IT’S PRETTY TOUGH TAKING MY BUMPER OFF WHEN I PARK,
BUT YOU CAN BET I WON’T LOSE MY PARKING STICKER THAT
WAY!”
It S still
Top of the News
Campus
A&M United Fund Drive begins
The 1978-79 Texas A&M University United Fund Drive begins
today with a meeting at 4 p.m. in Room 301 Rudder Tower. The
campus drive is on behalf of Bryan-Brazos County United Way and
College Station United Fund. The 90-day university campaign will be
aimed mainly at faculty and staff, said Chuck Cargill, campus drive
chairman. A second phase of the drive will involve on-campus
students.
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Former UT student on trial for kilim
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The capital murder trial of a 27-year-old former University of Texas
student accused of killing a police officer last May is scheduled to
begin today in Austin. David Lee Powell is accused of killing Ralph
Ablanedo with an automatic rifle on May 18 after the police officer
had stopped a car in which Powell was a passenger. Travis Count)
Sheriff Raymond Frank said the defendant has told at least one other
jail inmate that if he is found guilty, he "won’t be around for the
sentencing. The sheriff said he interpreted that message as a possi
ble suicide threat and would "take necessary precautions.”
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GOP approves 1980 primary
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Texas voters will get a say in the selection of the Republican
nominee for president in 1980 even if the Legislature and Democratic
Party do not want to hold presidential primaries in the state. The
Republican State Convention voted unanimously Saturday to conduct
a primary in 1980 and to select Texas delegates to the national GOP
nominating convention of the basis of that popular vote.
MON
Nation
High eyes to monitor pollution
The space agency is preparing two advanced satellites for back-to-
back launchings from California this month to expand the nations
watch over pollution and the weather. One of the spacecraft,
scheduled for launch Friday, is primarily equipped to give
meteorologists a better idea of what is happening in Earth’s atmos
phere and above it. The other satellite is the first designed to monitor
man-made and natural pollutants in the air above us, including gases
that may be a threat to the globe’s vital ozone radiation screen 15
miles high. It is scheduled to take off Sept. 18 on a smaller Delta
rocket.
Miss America first from Virginia
Kylene Barker, a 22-year-old business administration studentfrom
Galax. Va., was crowned Miss America for 1979 in the 58th annual
pageant Saturday night. The blue-eyed blonde from Virginia — the
first from her state to win the crown — said she couldn’t believe the
news and that her life woidd become more complicated now. The
graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University said
she intends to go ahead with her original plans to earn her masters
degree in business administration and open a ladies’ apparel shop.
N
World
Cuban mission to UN bombed
Classi
Anti-Castro terrorists slipped past a 24-hour police guard at the
Cuban mission to the United Nations Saturday and planted a power-
fid time bomb that slightly injured three men, including a policeman
and mission guard.The bomb planted in the mission doorway blew
out scores of windows in posh townhouses on the East Side block. At
8:50 a.m., an hour after the explosion, a caller to United Press Inter
national said the bombing was carried out by the right-wing terrorist
group of Cuban exiles. Omega 7, which has claimed responsibility for
a number of bombings, mostly in the New York area.
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ig of the
Military attacked in Nicaragua
Shooting broke out in Managua, Nicaragua, and provincial cities
Saturday night in what appeared to be a coordinated attack on milit
ary vehicles and installations. There were reports of heavy fighting
and casualties from several parts of the capital and from three cities in
the interior. The attacks broke a period of relative calm in the trou
bled Central American nation, where a general strike aimed at forc
ing the resignation of President Anastasio Somoza Debayle was in its
16th day.
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The Ro
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Iranian troops shoot demonstrators
Steel-helmeted troops fired into crowds of demonstrators in
Tehran, Iran, for the second straight day Saturday and the army
imposed press censorship, arresting dozens of journalists and opposi
tion leaders as violent anti-shah protests continued despite martial
law. The official government toll for demonstrations earlier in the
week stood at 59 dead and 205 wounded. But cemetery officials and
those who took the dead to their gravesites Saturday put the number
of dead at more than 250.
Weather
Mostly cloudy with showers and thundershowers. High in the
mid-80s and low in the low 70s. Southeasterly wind at 10 to
15 mph. Probability of rain 50% for today, 30% for tonight
and tomorrow.
4
The Battalion
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Address correspondence to Letters to the Editor. The
Battalion, Room 216, Reed McDonald Building, College
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Texas Press Association
Southwest Journalism Congress
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Editor Kind)
Managing Editor LizV
Assistant Managing Editor.,KarenK'
Sports Editor David IK I
City Editor JamieM I
Campus Editor Andy
News Editors Carolyn Bl® 5
Debbie Parsons
Editorial Director L# 1
Leschper Jr.
Cartoonist DougGr
Staff Writers . . . .Mark Patterson, Ai
Vails, Scott Pendleton, -
Petty, Michelle Scudder,
Marilyn Faulkenberry
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
Regents. The Battalion is a non-profit
supporting enterprise operated b]
as a university and communitij imW *
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1
Editorial policy is determined bj th? ^ .