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WE LL I
NOT INTE
GINEERIt
A U.S. N/
Slouch
by Jim Earle
‘‘Not only did I not get any studying done, but I forgot my
books and notes and left them at home. ”
Opinion
Carter’s coal stand puzzling
Sam Church Jr., president of the United Mine Workers,
and 20,000 of his unemployed members are perplexed by
the Carter Administration’s position on increased use of
coal.
The miners say they could produce another 100 million
tons of coal a year if the Administration would let them. That
would put a sizable dent in the nation’s energy shortage.
There’s good reason for the miners’ confusion. While the
Administration has made conversion of coal a top priority of
its energy program, it has failed to take the steps necessary
to allow use of coal.
At some point, the Carter Administration is going to have
to take the politically difficult step of siding with its in
creased use against the environmental extremists.
To continue to scream about an energy crisis while ignor
ing one major way to ease it, is, as Church and his miners
say, puzzling.
Tulsa World
the small society
by Brickman
WIF£/ KlPS/
THE=
Washington Star Syndicate, Inc
3-16
The Battalion
U S P S 045 360
LETTERS POLICY MEMBER
LctUrs hi the editor should not exceed 3()0 uords and are Ti'\as Picss Association
subject to he,nu rut to that length or less if tanner The Soothssosl journalism < .on«ross
editorial staff reserves the right to edit such letUrs and does Editor Rov Bragg
not guarantee to publish arm letter. Each letter must he A • . r-* w rr -.1* i
Sinned, dun, the address of the uriter and lid a tele,,hone Associate Editor Keith Taylor
number for verification News Editor Rusty Cawley
Address ioms,,ondenee to Lettirs to the Editor. The Asst. News Editor Karen Cornelison
Battalion. Boom 216, Reed McDonald Building. College Copy Editor Dillard Stone
station. Texas ,,H43 Sports Editor Mike Burrichter
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tising Services Inc . Ness York ( its (.illcasco and lais
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City Editor Louie Arthur
, Campus Editor Diane Blake
Hie Battalion is published Mondas thriniKli Fridas Inini 1
September through Mas except during exam and holidas Staff Writers Nancy Andersen,
seriods and the summer when it is published on Tuesday Tricia Bnmliart, AllgeliqUC Copeland,
hrough Thursday. Laura Cortez, Meril Edwards,
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Opinions expressed in The Battalion are
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as a university and community newspaper.
Editorial policy is determined by the editor.
The Battalion
Texas A&M University
VlEWPOtXr
Tuesday
Federal government
tension
bordering on the ridie u | 0
By DONALD LAMBRO
United Press International
William Howard was earning $22,695 a
year as a government accountant in 1968.
But over the next 4V4 years, without receiv
ing a promotion, his salary shot up by 54
percent to $34,971.
The cost of living rate during this same
period rose by only 22 percent.
Despite his rising wealth, Howard de
cided on his 50th birthday to “retire” from
his Internal Revenue Service job, take his
pension, and resume work in the private
sector where he now earns $40,000 a year.
Had he remained in his federal job, at his
same Grade 15 level, he would today be
earning $50,112 a year — all because of a
highly complicated formula called “pay
comparability” upon which government
pay scales are based. Yet his story doesn’t
end here.
Over the next 414 years his Civil Service
retirement checks, which began at $1,922 a
month, rose to $3,075 a month.
Hard as it may be to believe, Howard is
now getting 63 percent more under his
government retirement pension than he
received when he was working for Uncle
Sam in 1968.
This of course is why many federal white
collar workers are electing to leave federal
service, because they know they can rela
tively quickly make more in retirement
than they can by staying in government.
One white collar worker at the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration,
where there has been a rash of early retire
ments, said, “With pay raises the way they
are now, I figure I can eventually make
more under my pension, through cost-of-
living adjustments, than I now earn by
working. ”
US
ll
KNAV/r, IT'S Time
FOR MY COST or
UVINO T/AX IM CREASE/
■PAYER
Surprisingly, all of this — even though
he is a prime beneficiary — infuriates Wil
liam Howard, who has been writing angry
letters to federal officials from President
Carter on down, charging that government
pay and pensions are too high.
Federal pay nows costs taxpayers $80
billion a year, up from $63 billion just four
years ago. Annual federal civil service pen
sion costs will be nearly $100 billion this
year.
Howard, who is a certified public
accountant, says the chief culprit is the gov
ernment s “comparability law which ap
plies a complex system of curves, ratios,
special weighting, and other mathematical
refinements intended to keep federal em
ployes abreast of their counterparts in the
private sector.
But instead of fairly arriving at a fair rate
of compensation, Howard charges the
Bureau of Labor Statistics’ comparability
formula is being “skillfully, deliberately,
and corruptly (figured) in a manner to de
fraud the taxpayers of billions annually in
excessive pay to federal workers.
He further argues that his salary and
those of his colleagues in the bureaucracy
would have risen far less if federal compen
sation were based on a survey of “average
pay for comparable private sector jobs.
The rise in his retirement checks, Ho
ward argues, is also off-kilter, due primarily
to the comparability formula as well as to
excessive cost-of-living increases based on
the Consumer Price Index which he says
“exaggerates the inflation rate.”
In a letter to Janet Norwood, chief of the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, whose pay com
parability and CPI surveys are used to fi
gure pay hikes and cost-of-living pension
adjustments, Howard acknowledges he
and millions of other government workers
and retirees are lucky to have this protec
tion against the ravages of inflation.
But he argues “it isn’t fair” to the tax
payers. "This is unjust enrichment,” he
says. “We are being unjustly rewarded by a
transfer of payments from the working sec
tor, which in most cases is forced to absorb
the real rate of inflation.
Government studies c
Howard’s criticism consider!
One General Accounting (I
found "federal blue collar wj
exceed local prevailing rales.)
government at a competitiveli
the labor market.”
Other studies haveconcluc
federal white collar pay and
combined, a large nuraberd
making more than theircounlij
vate industry.
Bill Howard say he realizes!
government retirees hisisali
on the subject, "but someonell
out on what’s happening.
Freeze on Iranian assets in U. S,
has frightened Arab investors
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
United Press International
KUWAIT — Arab moneymen say their
biggest worry today is not Afghanistan, in
flation or the price of oil. It is “The Freeze. ”
Last Nov. 14 President Carter froze $8
billion worth of Iranian assets held in U.S.
banks. The unusual move was intended to
block Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini from
withdrawing Iran’s dollars from U.S. insti
tutions and to help force the release of
Iran’s American captives.
But the freeze had a chilling effect far
beyond Iranian investors. It gave rise to
apprehension in Arab financial circles that
will haunt American bankers long after the
last hostage is freed in Tehran.
“I think this was the stupidest act ever
committed, ” said Ahmed al-Duaij, director
of the Kuwait Real Estate Consortium, the
biggest real estate development company
in the Arab world.
Overstatement perhaps, but characteris
tic of the anger, sense of betrayal and deep-
seated anxiety in the Arab financial com
munity since November.
Secretary G. William Miller that Arab in
vestors had no cause for worry in this “once
only and never again” action, suspicion is
firmly implanted.
“Confidence in banking is like virginity, ”
said Duaij. “You can only lose it once.
“The administration has introduced an
element of uncertainty, said Abdlatif al-
Hamad, head of the billion-dollar Kuwait
Fund for Arab Economic Development.
“This is going to be a nagging fear forever
and ever. Nobody will ever forget it.
Arab confidence also was shaken by the
manner in which America’s largest banking
institutions swooped overnight to attach
Iranian assets after Khomeini s govern
ment technically defaulted on its loans.
Arab Gulf moneymen saw the freeze as a
rash, ill-conceived grandstand play, ex
ecuted without proper consideration of its
impact on other foreign investors. It may
have quenched a momentary American
thirst for revenge, but it also caused Arabs
with dollars invested in the United States
to wonder: “Will we be next?”
Despite assurances by U.S. Treasury
With its dollar deposits frozen, Iran
could not pay interest on some loans even
though, as the banks knew, Iran’s total
assets of $10 billion more than covered its
commercial obligations.
“The specter of all those big name banks
— Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Mor
gan Guaranty, respected names in the Arab
world — climbing over one another to grab
Iranian assets, that was something truly
unseemly,” said Duaij.
which flies no flag, has become even more
attractive to Arab buyers recently and they
have been actively buying.
“People aren t so confident any more,
said Nasir alNuwais, managing director of
the Abu Dhabi Fund for Arab Economic
Development. “Instead of sending their
money straight to America, some people
are thinking of channeling it through Swiss
hanks.
“Who is getting the benefit? The Swiss.
Maybe the Americans will now get a small
share instead of a big share. This is because
of the insecurity.
“All kinds of people are coming down
here with ideas for us on how to invest
through the Swiss, said one Abu Dhabi
banker. “They want us to establish dummy
companies in Switzerland, to manage and
promote our money from there in the name
of a Swiss corporation.
As a result, he said, Arab financiers are
“slowly and quietly” diverting capital from
the American market.
“They have to,” Duaij said. “How else
can you explain the recent strength of (Brit
ish) sterling?”
Investment sources in the Gulf said gold,
“The Americans will never freeze the
assets of a Swiss company. ”
If Arab investors seem excessively jit
tery, it is because they believe they often
are lumped together with Iranians in the
American media and they think relations
between the United States and the Arab
world could explode, as they did in 1973.
Similar reasoning leadsn
predict the freeze will reinfoifl
among exporters to reduce o
duction rather than pileupesce
American banks.
“The price the United Slatfili
the freeze is far greater than#|
might have achieved,” argi
Hamad. “It accomplished n
“If there is a far-fetchedh
this might be to makesometftj
ing countries more attractive)]
ment than they otherwise i
said.
“Now when I equate thej*
across the hoard, a countryII
comes as good an investmentnj
The commercial considerate*
and so are the institutions,
The Bank of Brazil isintM
ory as the Bank of Americaa«l|
professional. So if the j
equal, why not put my mo«]
think this will be oneofthc®
term impacts of the freeze."
No one expects a mass es)
dollar investments from Hi]
Freeze or no freeze, America^
attractions. But Middle 1
“Who can say there won t be another
Arab-Israel war?” asked Duaij. “And who
can say that if there is another war, the
Arabs will not want to use the oil weapon
again? And if we do, what will happen to
our assets in the United States?”
seem unanimous on onepointlj
never be the same.
Qatar Oil and Finance Minil
Abdul Aziz bin Khalifa al-TW
many in the Gulf when he lol[
“Surely a sour taste has bee
mouth.”
SI
THOTZ
By Doug Grah
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