Viewpoint
The Battalion Wednesday
Texas A&M University March 28, 1979
Women to have last say
Like most Americans, we never professed to understand Iran. Just when we
thought we understood a little of what was going on behind the scenes, we
discovered that Khomeini was not actually in control of his own revolution.
Then, just last week we discover another revolution within the revolution:
Women! We should have known.
They staged a gigantic demonstration in downtown Tehran to protect Kho
meini’s order that women abandon Western-style clothing and go back to the
traditional long robe, the chador.
These women of Iran, many of whom had fought against the Shah’s army, were
now telling Khomeini that he couldn’t push them around. They want the freedom
to choose their own dress. They also want equal rights on the job, in politics and in
society.
Their message, if we read it correctly, is that they want no part of dictatorship,
whether it be by an emperor or a high priest.
We’d like to make just one prediction:
Khomeini will be unable to defeat the women, even though they are an army
without guns in a nation ruled by rifles.
Pawtucket (R.I.) Evening Times
Senators take action
on own inflation ills
By STEVE GERSTEL
United Press International
WASHINGTON — A salary of $57,500
plus a potential $8,625 in moonlighting
sounds like a decent enough annual in
come. Most could struggle through the
year on that.
Not, however, members of the U.S. Se
nate who apparently cannot make ends
meet on that sum in these days of spiraling
inflation.
Blithely ignoring President Carter’s
suggestion that wage increases should be
held to 7 percent this year, the Senate
voted its members a 200 percent boost in
allowable outside earned income.
Translated, that means $25,000 in hon-
orariums instead of $8,625 for speeches,
C ommentary
lectures and all other permissible kinds of
outside earned income.
Whether the increase is justified or not
is debatable. Good points can be made on
both sides.
But the way the Senate went about rais
ing the income of its members — as it al
ways does in this politically sensitive area
— earns no one a chapter in any version of
“Profiles in Courage.”
The idea, spawned in the fertile minds
of Sens. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Pat
rick Moynihan, D-N.Y., was cleared with
Senate leaders who gave them the go-
ahead and their backing.
What Stevens and Moynihan proposed
was to postpone the effective date of the
$8,625 ceiling — adopted last year as part
of a wide-ranging ethics code — from Jan.
1, 1979, to Jan. 1, 1983.
In the early evening hours of Wednes
day, March 7, Stevens and Moynihan
teamed to introduce their resolution. Byrd
ruled that the vote would come around the
middle of the day, Thursday.
Although three senators spoke against
the change, there was — to no one’s sur
prise — no demand for a rollcall vote.
As a result, any senator can tell an irate
constituent that he was against the in
crease all along. After all, who can prove
him wrong.
The method used to put through the
change disclosed a certain lack of courage
but there is a hollow sound to the pious
statements of some senators that they
would have fought it to the bitter had they
only known.
The Congressional Record, available to
every senator on that Thursday morning,
contained verbatim the remarks of Stevens
and Moynihan. The four-page digest
which is at the end of the Record, specifi
cally stated that the vote would come no
later than 12:30 p.m.
It is hard to believe that a senator or a
member of his staff — no matter how busy
— can ignore the Digest which lets him
know what is going on in the Senate that
day.
If that actually was the case, there are a
number of senators who should clean
house and get a new staff. One should be
assigned to read the Digest.
Far more refreshing were the remarks
of Senate Republican leader Howard
Baker who was out of town on that day but
told reporters on his return, “I would have
voted for it and I commend Senators Ste
vens and Moynihan.”
He freely acknowledged talking it over
with Moynihan and Stevens and added,
“It is far better to let them earn income
from sources outside the government. I
support what was done.”
Asked if he also was comfortable with
the method used to rush the change
through the Senate, Baker said, “Yes, I
support that too.”
Speaker Thomas O’Neill and House
Democratic leader Jim Wright have as
sured reporters that no such thing could or
is going to happen in the House which is
still stuck with the lower ceiling.
But there are those who believe that if
senators don’t get too much heat, mem
bers of the House will soon want a shot at a
little moonlighting. After all, they have
been hit by inflation, too.
Carter’s ‘derring-do’ makes it — barely
Help yourself
later by helping
wildlife live now
By MIKE TEWES
National Wildlife Week is 42 years old
with the 1979 observance, March 18-24.
The 1979 Wildlife Week theme, “Con
serve Our Wildlife,” states a need that is
just as pressing today as when Wildlife
Week began in 1938 — perhaps more so.
The 1938 National Wildlife Restoration
Week (as it was then called) featured a
poster showing a bird soaring above a bar-
Readers Forum
ren, desolate landscape as if looking in
vain for a place to light. “Where To Now?”
the poster asks forlornly.
It was a commentary on destruction of
habitat. This is still the biggest problem
facing wildlife — the loss of habitat. Solv
ing it would be the best thing we could do
to conserve our wildlife.
Conservation means planning for the fu
ture, knowing the needs of man and
wildlife and working to make sure those
needs are met. It means making wise use
of our natural resources. Wildlife conser
vation means research and study to learn
the needs of animals. It means using this
knowledge to manage our land to benefit
man and animal so there will always be an
abundance of wildlife.
If anyone is equipped for that task, it is
the wildlife manager. He may be a re
searcher, biologist, refuge chief, state fish
and game officer, or similar specialist. He
knows how to help wildlife, how to im
prove habitat, how to help an endangered
species survive, even how if necessary to
reduce an animal population that has
grown too large for its food supply to
handle.
Everyone who cares about wildlife has a
concern for conservation and wildlife man
agement. Protecting habitat — the places
where animals can find food, water and
living space — is the key to healthy
wildlife populations.
Look around where you live. Can more
be done to improve habitat? Talk to local
officials or any professor in the wildlife de
partment about what you can do to help.
Habitat protection conserves wildlife.
Mike Tewes is a senior wildlife and
fisheries science major from Odem,
Texas.
By DAVID S. BRODER
WASHINGTON — With a modesty
that Henry Kissinger would not even try
to affect. President Carter is accepting his
well-earned praise for bringing Egypt and
Israel to the point of signing a peace
treaty.
The feeling in the country is rather like
the one you get at the circus in the climac
tic moment of the death-defying routine of
the Flying Carambas. The show has just
released his grip on the wrists of his
trapeze-swinging partner and is flying
through space. He seems certain to crash
to the floor, 60 feet below, when suddenly
his “catcher” swoops down on the other
trapeze, locks onto his wrists, and swings
him up to safety.
Jimmy Carter has become a diplomatic
Man on the Flying Trapeze. And if your
first thought is, “Thank God he made it —
thank God that Sadat caught him just
when Begin let go,” then your next though
has to be: “What the dickens was the Pres
ident of the United States doing out there
in mid-air anyhow?”
The answer — offered neither in justifi
cation nor in criticism — is that he was
fulfilling the national fantasy of what
passes for world leadership in an age of Big
Top politics.
The act has been building for almost
three decades, since Dwight D.
Eisenhower, the war-hero President, an
nounced as the main plank of his foreign
policy, “I shall go to Korea.”
Most of the Presidents who followed
him had trouble mastering the timing of
this acrobatic summitry, but Kissinger,
who always acted as though he were Pres
ident for External Affairs, brought high
flying, international finagling to new
heights.
Kissinger always said he wanted to “in
stitutionalize” his concepts of world order,
but what Kissinger really did was heighten
the public’s craving for diplomatic
derring-do.
The same Jimmy Carter, who as a cam
paigner derided Kissinger’s “Lone
Ranger” style of diplomacy, has now ec
lipsed the old master of that art. And that
is probably the most convincing proof that
this is the only kind of leadership now
available to American Presidents.
It is as obvious as anything can be that
the tactics Carter used in the Middle East
were a desperate invention. They were in
total contradiction to all the engineering
analogies on which he nominally had built
his approach to leadership. Careful prepa
ration, strong institutional support, fail
safe mechanisms — none of these was pos
sible on this daring venture.
Instead, Carter put the functional lead
ership of the executive branch of the
American government aboard an airplane,
and then bounced between foreign capi
tals on a mission whose substance, whose
limits and whose prospects were, literally,
unknown to anyone outside that small
metallic capsule.
There was no safety net for this act. Had
Carter slipped the grip of either Begin or
Sadat, there would have been a ghastly
injury to his presidency and the country.
But this is how leaders, in our atomistic
politics, are driven to behave, for they find
no other way to accomplish their ends —
or win their fickle public’s praise.
Not for them the slow, frustrating effort
to mobilize public opinion, or inveigle the
bureaucracies and leadership elites to
bring an issue to the point of resolution.
That is not their style — or their talent.
Having come to power as self-propelled,
individual political entrepreneurs, such
leaders like to advertise the fact that they
are outsiders to the political, governmen
tal and dipomatic establishment. In office,
they quickly find it in their interest to es
cape those establishment bonds and deal
directly with their counterparts in other
lands.
Carter first smelled the smell of the
greasepaint and heard the roar of the
crowd when he descended from Camp
David. He anticipated it again (and was
somewhat disappointed) when he revealed
the secret of his negotiations with Teng for
recognition of China. And now he is savor
ing it again after the shuttle-for-peace.
It is truly fly-now-pay-later leadership,
with Congress and the country learning
after the fact exactly what has been traded
and what has been committed.
But there is no point in complaining
about it. That is precisely the kind of lead
ership we will have in a political system
that relies on individual derring-do from
nomination to election to on-the-job per
formance.
Just hope the Man on the Flying
Trapeze doesn’t slip.
(c) 1979, The Washington Post Company
Readers’ Forum
Guest viewpoints, in addition to
Letters to the Editor, are welcome.
All pieces submitted to Readers’
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Fetters to the Editor
Feathered friends fine, noisemakers not
Editor:
I prefer birds, and whatever “mess”
they may cause, to the high-pitched
mechanical sounds and recurrent “cannon
booms” used to “frighten them away.”
The birds belong to my world; the ob
noxious mechanical devices used to
frighten them do not.
—Steven F. Philipp
graduate student
Grads qualified?
Editor:
It is impossible for me to understand
how Dr. W. David Maxwell, dean of the
College of Liberal Arts, has the nerve to
question the qualifications of ministers
with graduate degrees who teach religion
for college credit.
Six of my 15 hours of economics were
taught not be Ph.D.s, but by graduate
students who were wasting both their time
and that of the students.
They lacked the degrees which Dr.
Maxwell considers so crucial, and obvi
ously had never been instructed in how to
effectively teach.
Perhaps the College of Liberal Arts no
longer uses graduate students as instruc
tors, since evidently they do not meet the
Dean’s standards ...
—April Blaker Rayborn, ’77
graduate student
Top of the News
CAMPUS
J:
Moody work nearly complete
Construction on the two-story Moody College classroom andlabora ]
tory building could be completed as early as April 15, almost)
months ahead of schedule, report college officials. Gary Merkel, aq
sociate director of the Moody College Physical Plant, says the buildintl
will become the new headquarters for the college’s administration, tkB
fiscal offices, the Marine Engineering Department and portions oftbr
General Academics Department and Biology Department. The ne»l
building is located on Pelican Island.
STATE
Clements signs bill for deep port
a 1c
tivt
Gov. Bill Clements signed a bill into law Tuesday in Austin increas j fert
ing state support for the Deepwater Port Authority. The bill, whidB /
caused considerable controversy in the House, appropriates a totaloi tioi
$2.4 million to the port authority. The money is to be used toobf»® ^
federal license and begin administration of a deepwater port neai ley
Galveston. froi
Mo
NATION
He;
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<■
Slayer of boy gets death penalty
g0(
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crit
Housewife Linda May Burnett, convicted of shooting a 2-year-oldM|
boy who was abducted and slain with his parents last summer, receiveJ^H
the death penalty in Beaumont Tuesday, becoming the only womanoiMif
Texas Death Row. Burnett, 31, was indicted along with boyfrieniME
Ovide Jopseph Dugas, 32, who is awaiting trial. Dugas allegedliMH
masterminded the killing of five people last July 1 in WoodwariHff
Okla., out of anger about his divorce from a member of the boysHB"
family.
fee
-
Space shuttle trip delayed again tj
The space shuttle Columbia took off Tuesday from Edwards AiH
Force Base for a brief piggyback test flight over the California deseit^B
but weather conditions may again delay its trip to Florida. ThetestH
flight had been questionable because of a heavy rainstorm during tit Rap
night, but skies cleared sufficiently before dawn to allow it to getundeientei
way. A NASA spokesman, Ralph Jackson, said weather conditionsttlist,
the east of California were less than favorable and the shuttle-craffiappe
two-day trip to Florida may be postponed. The Columbia is boltedatofkke v
a Boeing 747 for its trip to Florida. kid r<
ity P(
lirs d
afety
Six hurt in Jersey refinery blast ^
Six Exxon oil refinery workers were injured Tuesday in a processiniP 1 e '
unit fire and explosion in Linden, N. J., that jolted residents sleep ‘ a P’ s
in homes up to four miles away. Flames and smoke shot hundredsoft oras ‘
feet into the night sky from the burning 90-foot processing unit, partf
a 1,500 acre refinery complex near the Goethals Bridge that connecIflSU
New York’s Staten Island and Elizabeth, N. J. The cause of the fire«r at P
not immediately known. At least six of the estimated 100 workers0!| oma '
duty in various parts of the complex were injured, a company spokes!
man said. Two were hurt seriously enough to require hospitalizatiml
Firemen managed to prevent the flames from spreading from tlej
burning processing unit to nearby oil storage tanks at the plant.
WORLD
86 killed in fierce Iran fighting
At least 86 persons were killed in 38 hours of fierce fighting that put
the Kurdish-dominated Iranian city of Sanandaj under siege Tuesday
The Kurds are demanding automony from the government of Ayatol
lah Khomeini. Chief spokesman for the government, Abbas Amir-
Entzam, said the government was determined to crush the in-1
surgency. Fighting began when Kurdish tribesmen were refused am
munition for an arsenal of smuggled weapons that were characteristic]
of the area even under the Shah’s regime.
Hanoi quiet on Chinese talks offer
Radio Hanoi broadcasts monitored in Bangkok, Thailand, cele
brated a Vietnamese “victory” over the Chinese Tuesday, but failedto
mention China’s offer to hold peace talks. The Chinese offered,
Monday, to open talks next Wednesday, in Hanoi. Earlier Vietnam
suggested talks begin Friday in Hanoi or at the border. Western
intelligence sources said Chinese forces appeared to have completed
their withdrawal, but remained inside some territory claimed by
Vietnam. The Vietnam News Agency said that as of last Saturday,
Chinese forces retained control of 22 villages and rural areas up to 9.5
miles inside Vietnam. Hanoi also accused the Chinese of moving new
border markers half a mile further into Vietnam than they should be.
WEATHER
Cloudy and mild with a chance of thundershowers. High
today 70 and a low of 60 with wind moving S.E. at 10-15
mph. 60% chance of rain decreasing to a 20% Thursday.
The Battalion
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