The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current, July 01, 1981, Image 2

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    Viewpoint
The Battalion
Texas A&M University
Tuesday
July 1, 1981
S
a
Slouch
By Jim Earle
“Remember your plan for making good grades this session:
start out slow, build your momentum and finish strong? It’s
about time to cut loose with your finish!"
Breeder power plants
in to bounce back
beg
By EDWARD ROBY
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The Clinch River
Breeder, a nuclear power project that de
fied President Jimmy Carter’s best efforts
to kill it, is moving forward again despite a
House committee vote to cut off its public
financing.
A $230-million authorization for the
breeder reactor was restored to the 1982
budget last Friday by a House vote on an
.jidministration-backed budgetparing bill.
In May, a coalition of nuclear opponents
and fiscal conservatives on the House Sci
ence and Technology Committee had
approved a measure terminating the breed
er by a razor-close vote. But the Republi
can-led Senate remained committed to the
project, which could cost as much as $3
billion.
The 753 public, cooperative and private
electric utilities systems who have agreed
to pay about 8 percent of the commercial
demonstration project’s cost are the main
proponents of Clinch River, which is to be
built at Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Carter, fearing that a commercial breed
er would lead to commercial nuclear fuel
reprocessing and undermine U.S. efforts to
discourage the worldwide spread of atomic
weapons, sought to withdraw financing on
grounds that the Clinch River design was
outmoded.
The breeder is a nuclear power plant that
creates more fuel than it consumes as it
generates electricity. The most logical fuel
for the breeder is spent fuel recycled from
conventional power reactors, a feature that
has prompted some advocates to call the
breeder an answer to the nuclear waste
issue.
Breeder foes, led by Rep. Claudine
Schneider, R-R.I. in the House, also argue
that scaled-down estimates of electricity
Completion of the project has been re
commended by Congress’ General
Accounting Office and proponents insist
that constant design changes, despite Car
ter’s criticism, make Clinch River the most
advanced breeder concept in the world
today.
the
small society
by Brickman
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)1981 King Features Syndicate. Inc World rights reserved
T- /&>
Warped
Reagan’s views on lawyers
for poor deserve closer look
By DAVID S. BRODER
WASHINGTON — On the same day
that Associate Justice Potter Stewart made
public his decision to step down from the
Supreme Court, the House of Representa
tives passed a measure extending the life of
the Legal Services Corporation which runs
the federally financed program providing
lawyers for the poor. The vote in the House
was 245-137, but that is short of the two-
thirds majority that would be needed to
override the veto presidential counselor
Edwin Meese III has said he would recom
mend to President Reagan.
The fact that the President who does not
see any compelling need for the continua
tion of the Republican-created program of
legal services for the poor is the same Presi
dent who will soon be filling Potter Ste
wart’s “swing seat” on the Supreme Court is
something to give you pause.
Reagan has been hostile to the legal ser
vices program since its beginning in the
Nixon administration. When legal services
lawyers went to court on behalf of impover
ished Californians and won judgements
that the Reagan administration was illegally
denying them their benefits under federal
and state programs, the then-governor was
furious. A compromise of sorts was negoti
ated, but it did not dispel Reagan’s hos
tility.
Now, as President, he is proposing that
the Legal Services Corporation he abo
lished and its funds cut off. Instead of the
staffs of specially trained lawyers now avail
able to help poor people with their prob
lems, the administration is saying that their
legal needs can be met by the states— using
scarce funds from the reduced federal social
services block grant — or by private law
firms doing charitable work. Meese sug
gested at the University of Delaware law
school that taking care of the poor’s legal
problems might provide some good prac
tice and relief from the teduim of the clas
sroom for third-year law students.
The best comments on this brand of
thinking came, not from the bleeding-heart
liberals, but from some of the Republican
members of the House who have intimate
knowledge of the program.
Rep. Tom Railsback of Illinois, who is
about as sentimental as barbed wire,
helped manage the bill in the House. "The
Americans we are talking about, it is fair to
say, are poor,” he remarked. "They repre
sent a disproportionate number of Amer
ican minorities and they represent a dis
proportionate number of America’s elderly
citizens ... The subcommittee. Republicans
and Democrats alike, made this decision
that the 29 million poor Americans should
be able to sit down and discuss their legal
problems with an attorney.”
“Every lawyer in this body,” the Illinois
Republican said, “and in the nation for that
matter, is fully aware of the fact that to
successfully use our system of justice, you
urbai
bedh
iep. .VI, Caldwell Butler of Yirp^J ^
>ub! *' "’'irnsr 1 ’ 1
i
watt
a Te
shoe
with
thosi
I
al of
floot
deny these people their assistance: phec
very same as denying them access t( proft
system of justice. If we do this, thenl H
lieve the consequences may be serkni: mixti
just for the i>oor, but for our entire^ s
of government . ”
Re
Republican as conservative as his m
said: “I remind my colleagues thattbe.^oth
al Services Corporation is a Republic!— m
itiative, which had its earliest beginrfunds
when Lewis Powell, Jr., was preside Be
the American Bar Association in l^plan
Lewis Powell, Jr., is now a justicec inves
Supreme Court ... appointed by a Ren wo 11 *
can President ™ ove
"I share the view Mr. Justice Powei *
pressed ... in August 1976.’ ■given
and quoted him as follows: Equaljcthe i
under law is not merely a caption oithere
facade of the Supreme Court building He
perhaps the most inspiring idealofourfo a b£
ety. It is one of the ends for which ourc8 reen
legal system exists. And central totk a ® c ai
tem is the precept that justice not bednj^ 5 ^
demand and ample uranium supplies make
breeder technology a costly luxury.
“The strategy right now is to fight it in
the Appropriations Committee. You can’t
write a check on an authorization,” said
Janet Huling, a Schneider aide.
“You do all this stuff, you stop it and you
beat it and it keeps coming back, ” she said.
“It’s just like a monster.”
More than $1 billion has already been
spent on Clinch River, which is supposed to
produce 375 megawatts of power for the
Tennessee Valley Authority if it is ever
finished. The design is about 80 percent
complete.
Physicist Hans Bethe and other pro-
nuclear scientists told Congress in June that
“the United States urgently needs the
working experience and trained personnel,
which only an ongoing Clinch River Breed
er Reactor Project can provide.”
need the assistance of an attorney — and to
because of a person’s race, religion u
liefs. Also, it is fundamental thatji
should be the same, in substano
availability, without regard to eaw
status. ”
Ronald Reagan does not understo
accept tht proposition. He almost cert
will use his veto on the legal-service!
And then he will decide who sits a
Supreme Court with men of the dun
of Justice Powell. It is something to poa
It is
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ill
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you H/WL A GRI 'Al
SENSE. OU TIMING,
POTTER...
Several other nations, most notable
France and the Soviet Union, are also ex
perimenting with fast breeder technology.
Wallace Behnke of Chicago’s Common
wealth Edison utility, who heads the breed
er project, argues that the breeder is
needed to augument dwindling uranium
fuel supplies for conventional reactors.
“Current estimates show that U.S. re
serves of reasonably priced uranium pro
vide little margin for further expansion,” he
said. “The breeder will use nuclear fuel 30
to 50 times more efficiently than the pre
sent generation of commercial nuclear pow
er reactors.”
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Inflation or no, RVs are way of /i/r-
By JAMES V. HIGGINS
United Press International
DETROIT — The recreation vehicle indus
try, devastated over the past two years by
high interest rates and gasoline prices, is
beginning to see solid evidence of a sales
recovery.
Firmly believing that the RV lifestyle is
alive and well and just gone temporarily
into hiding, industry executives have
watched anxiously for an upturn for the past
two years.
In April — the latest month for which
statistics are available — shipments of re
creational vehicles from manufacturers to
dealers amounted to approximately 25,000
units, a 75 percent improvement over last
year and the industry’s highest monthly tot
al since May of 1979.
Sales of recreational vehicles — ranging
from small towable trailers to large self-
contained motor homes — declined more
sharply during the past recession than sales
of passenger cars.
By contrast, domestic car sales declined
29 percent in the same period from 9.3
million in 1978 to 6.6 million in 1980.
Now, according to David J. Humphreys,
president and general counsel of the asso
ciation, it appears the rebound will be
much stronger than the small gains auto
makers recently have seen in the passenger
car market.
“We had been saying for more than a
year that there was great pent up demand
for our product and that eventually that
demand would translate into sales," he
said.
Shipments of RVs in the first four months
of 1981 are about 29 percent highe:
last year. There have been predi
overall 1981 shipments will exceed las
by 30 percent.
i
Supplies are good, prices haves
ized and the attitide of our federalgf
merit about energy use for recreationa
poses has improved dramatically,"f
phreys said.
Humphreys said much faith is
placed in the Reagan administration!
nomic policies. Sales of recreational
cles should improve further if theft
budget and tax cuts work to reduce inf
and interest rates, he said.
By Scott McCullar
WEL'RE TALKING T OP AY WITH
REV. DONALD WfLDMOISt,
CHAIRMAN op" THE COALITIOtf
MY COALITION HAS, AS YOU
MAY HAVE HEARP, DECIDED
TO CONTROL WHAT AMERICA
FOR BETTER TV, WHO HAS A
NEW ANNOUNCE MENT
CONCERNING H/S ORGANIZATION.
CAN WATCH ON TV, BUT WILL
FIRST CLEANING IT S
OWN HOUSE ($0 TO speak)..
OUR COALITIONS FIRST ACT
OF CENSORSHIP SfJIL-L 6E
TO CLEAN UP : THE B/BLE?
THERE'S SO MUCH SEX AND
INCEST, SEDUCTIO/V, LUST,
VIOLENCE AND BRUTALITY IN IT...
AFTER ALL, IF WE'RE GOING
TO LIVE BY IT AND PROMOTE
IT ON THE RELIGIOUS NETWORK
TOO, IT SHOULD LIVE UP
TO THE SAME STANDARDS
WE'RE TRYING TO IMPOSE
OTHERS
The Battalion
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