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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 15, 1986)
e nse that )r reason. T we even ^ wouldn’t pnie lon» ul.” 8 a member Thomp. ian in the onghorns' ;ainst Ma te in the commend fee plays er Roben ng touch- iw. >y to the i into a ice, who the call, ian. ling room, t, Thomp- vith Akers v assistant •man suj- rhompson n’t under- ’’ Thomp t to what red has a i offensive g to prove Anything one off as ills st n a ;W ) w roll* 1/15/8S- Judge: Mail ban not answer to prison system's problems — Page 6 A&M men cagers to battle Texas for early SWC lead — Page 14 1 ne tsattalion Vol. 82 Mo. 78 USPS 075360 16 pages College Station, Texas Wednesday, January 15, 1985 Libyan jets fighters intercept Navy plane Associated Press WASHINGTON — Two Libyan jet fighters intercepted a U.S. Navy surveillance plane flying over the Mediterranean Sea off Libya on Monday, prompting two American fighters to scramble from the air craft carrier Coral Sea, Reagan ad ministration sources said Tuesday. The Libyan fighters made no threatening moves toward the Navy plane, which was in international air space, and flew back to Libya before the American fighters arrived, said the sources, who declined to be iden tified. Although he refused to provide any details, Defense Secretary Cas par W. Weinberger confirmed the incident late Tuesday when he was briefly interviewed by TV crews. Weinberger said the interception oc curred well outside Libyan waters in the southern Mediterranean. The incident appeared to rep resent the first direct contact be tween U.S. and Libyan military forces since terrorists attacked the airports in Rome and Vienna on Dec. 27, killing 19 people, including five Americans. The United States has accused Li bya of supporting the Palestinian terrorist faction that conducted those attacks and has imposed a vari ety of economic sanctions against the North African country as a result. Student’s plant heist foiled by University Police stakeout Hands Off Nette Garrett (42) of Texas A&M looks for a way to get the ball nearer the goal while Andrea L.loyd (25) of the University of Texas piles on the heat in G. Rollie White Tuesday night. The Lady Aggies lost 73-59. See story page 13. By BRIAN PEARSON Senior Staff Writer An illegal method of home im provement clashed with a University Police stakeout Tuesday when a Texas A&M student was arrested in connection with the attempted theft of 14 potted plants from the Orna mental Horticulture Club Student Greenhouse. Greg Allan Johnson, 23, a resi dent of 1119 Detroit in College Sta tion and a junior landscape architec ture major, was arrested at 1 a.m. Friday, taken to Brazos County Jail and charged with burglary of a building. Burglary of a building is a second- degree felony that carries a fine of up to $10,000 and a two to 20 year prison sentence. Bob Wiatt, director of security and traffic at A&M, said the suspect went to the greenhouse at about midnight, slashed the building’s plastic covering with an x-acto knife, went inside, pulled out 14 potted plants, set them outside the building and then left the area. “He then went to his apartment and asked a girlfriend to accompany him back to the hut (greenhouse), so he could obtain the plants to brighten up his apartment,” Wiatt said. He said Johnson returned to the area and was seen loading the plants onto the bed of his pickup truck by a University Police detective who was on stakeout in the area. Johnson was immediately arrested. Wiatt said Johnson would also be referred to the Department of Stu dent Affairs for further disciplinary action. Johnson’s girlfriend was not charged. Unions seen as tool of organized crime Associated Press WASHINGTON — A blue-rib bon federal commission told Presi dent Reagan Tuesday that orga nized crime is entrenched in America’s marketplace and is in creasingly using labor unions as a tool to obtain monopoly power in key sectors. The President’s Commission on Organized Crime, winding up the first comprehensive investigation of labor and management racketeering since the McClellan hearings three decade^ ago, said consumers “un knowingly pay a surcharge to orga nized crime for a wide range of goods and services,” and that federal enforcement efforts are fragmented and inadequate to stem the tide. Just two days earlier, Reagan, in an article for The New York Times Magazine, wrote that “for the first time in our history, we finally have the mob on the run” and boasted that organized crime convictions had quadrupled since he took office in 1981. But Commission Chairman Irving R. Kaufman, who presented the panel’s report to Reagan at the White House, said, “There has never been a coherent federal strategy to attack organized crime’s corruption of our business institutions and labor organizations.” In a summary released to report ers, the commission criticized pros ecutors who merely “count bodies” — convictions — as a measure of success, and said, “Instead, a new strategy must be developed to bank rupt individual mobsters and to dis courage union officers, employers, and public officials from accommo dating organized crime.” The commission, whose members include Sen. Strom Thurmond, R- S.C., and Rep. Peter W. Rodino, D- N.J., chairman of the Senate and House judiciary committees, said that through domination of certain labor unions in major cities, orga nized crime controls and regulates a number of markets in the construc tion, wholesale and retail meat proc essing, trucking, garbage carting, and waterfront industries. It cited four unions with histories of control or influence by organized crime: The International Brother hood of Teamsters, The Interna tional Longshoremen’s Association, the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union, and the Laborers International Union of North America. The summary did not go into de tail about the alleged racketeering activities of any particular group. The panel said the number of union locals with connections to or ganized crime is a small fraction of the 70,000 labor organizations in the United States, but they represented major units with thousands of mem bers. Through theft, extortion, bribery, price-fixing and restraint of trade, organized crime distorts the cost of doing business, and thus increases prices to consumers and results in lower wages to workers, the report said. Legislative actions recommended by the panel included: • Effectively authorizing the NLRB to ban collective bargaining with an organization controlled by racketeers. • Making deprivation of union rights to dissenters, such as a physi cal beating or denial of access to the hiring half, a felony. Mauro will run for second term By JERRY OSLIN City Editor Citing the accomplishments of the General Land Office and the Texas Veterans Land Board under his ad ministration, Garry Mauro officially announced Tuesday that he is seek ing re-election as Texas’ land com missioner. Mauro was in College Station on the first stop of a 10-day, 24-city campaign swing through Texas. Mauro, a Bryan native and a 1970 Texas A&M graduate, said that dur ing his tenure as land commissioner, the Board has had its most produc tive three-year period in its 40-year history. In those three years, the Board made 16,000 land loans and 26,000 home loans, he said. By enabling more people to buy homes, the Board helped to create 25,000 new construction-related jobs in the state, Mauro said. “The people of Texas can hon estly say that we have the best veter ans program in the country,” he said. Garry Mauro Mauro said that under his lead ership, the GLO squeezed out an in crease in revenues from oil and gas production on state-owned land even though prices had decreased 7 percent over the same period. Mauro attributed the revenue in crease to “hard, aggressive manage ment.” “For the first time in history, we (the land office) audited all our oil wells and came up with about $30 million we didn’t know we had,” he said. The extia state income came from unreported royalties and penalties, he said. In addition to the audit, the GLO, which administers about 22.5 million acres, also collected about $4 million from unauthorized users of state land. “The results of this kind of ag gressive management comes right back to the Texas taxpayers from the Permanent School Fund,” he said. Income from state-owned lands goes to the PSF which helps pay pri mary and secondary education costs. Mauro said the first $145 in each student’s educational costs comes from revenue generated by state- owned lands. Without this revenue, taxpayers would pay an extra 7.2 percent in state taxes and an extra 3.2 percent in local taxes, he said. Mauro added that before he took office, the GLO paid the first $106 in students’ educational costs. Gramm-Rudman cited as couse Expert predicts major tax hike With congressional elections fast approaching, lawmak ers will opt for a “quick and dirty” tax hike to avoid trig gering sweeping spending cuts in popular programs. — Paul R. Huard, vice president of the National Asso ciation of Manufacturers. Associated Press WASHINGTON — As federal of ficials surveyed the impact of an up coming government-w'ide spending cut of nearly 5 percent, one business analyst predicted Tuesday that the law forcing the cuts also will trigger a major tax increase by year’s end — possibly including a consumer tax on gasoline. Paul R. Huard, vice president of the National Association of Man ufacturers, claimed that a tax hike this year is inevitable under the Gramm-Rudman budget-balancing 0190351 Haw. He told a business seminar that the Reagan administration and Con gress would resist any form of tax in crease at first but that Congress would be gripped by paralysis by summer as it struggled unsuccess fully to make additional spending cuts required under the act. With congressional elections fast approaching, lawmakers will opt for a “quick and dirty” tax hike to avoid triggering sweeping spending cuts in popular programs, Huard pre dicted. “The conventional wisdom that you can’t pass a tax increase during an election year is no longer valid,” he said, forecasting higher taxes on businesses and some form of energy tax, probabably “a tax on gasoline at the pump.” His comments came as federal agency heads sought to make sense of a White House announcement that spending cuts of 4.3 percent in all domestic programs and 4.9 per cent for the military will be required on March 1 under the Gramm-Rud man law. Department officials generally said calculations on what the cut backs would mean for Americans who benefit from various federal programs would not be known spe cifically until later in the week. Congress, however, exempted roughly $23.6 billion in specific ben efit programs administered by the Labor Department, according to de partment officials. Among them are the $22.4 billion Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund, $834 million in black lung dis ability payments and the $211 mil lion federal program that guar antees payments of private pension benefits. In addition, workman’s compen sation benefits totaling $75 million and $57 million of the $250 million program to compensate federal em ployees disabled on the job were exempted. Labor Department sources said. Officials, however, .pointed out that those exemptions include only benefits, and that administrative costs in for each of the programs still have to be cut by 4.3 percent. “We don’t have a lot of flexibility from one program to another,” Da vid Demerest, a Labor Department spokesman, said of other non-bene fit activities under the agency. Demerest said there would be some “picking and choosing” within specific programs, but that generally the percentage cuts were fixed and across-the-board. An analysis by the House Educa tion and Labor Committee said the March 1 cutbacks would result in a $170 million cut in funds for the federal compensatory education program, a $224.8 million cut in stu dent aid, and a $43.6 million cut in the federal vocational and adult edu cation program. The committee document also said the cutbacks would mean a $159.2 million cut in the Labor De partment’s training and employ ment services budget, a $15 million cut in a federal jobs program for se nior citizens, a $96 million cut in low-income energy assistance and a $62.7 million cut in the federal pro gram for handicapped people. The law is designed to eliminate the federal deficit by 1991 through a series of decreasing annual deficit targets. Automatic spending cuts would be triggered each year if Con gress fails to come up with either spending cuts or tax increases to meet the annual deficit targets — be ginning with an $11.7 billion spend ing cut on March 1. Social Security payments are exempted from the cutbacks. FAA set to inspect airlines that hold Pentagon contracts Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Fed eral Aviation Administration, re sponding to last month’s crash of a military charter plane that killed 248 soldiers, on Tuesday announced in-depth inspections of two dozen airlines that have Pentagon contracts. The airlines range from char ter operators such as Rich Inter national and Arrow Air, which was involved in the Dec. 12 fatal military crash at Gander, New foundland, to major carriers such as American Airlines, Delta Air lines and Northwest Airlines. Transportation Secretary Eliz abeth Dole, announcing the new inspections, said that while the cause of the Gander crash has yet to be determined, “we want to as sure ourselves and the public be yond a shadow of a doubt that these carriers are operating with the highest standards of safety.” Meanwhile, Pentagon spokes man Bob Sims said military au thorities also intend to increase their surveillance of the airlines with which they do business. They will increase the number of spot checks on civilian jetliners serving military bases, put more “check riders” on military charter flights, and conduct informal re views of the airlines’ performance once a year instead of every two years, he said. Since the crash of the Arrow Air DC-8, which was carrying U.S. peacekeeping troops home from the Middle East for the Christmas holidays, there has been heightened concern about the safety record of small airlines used as military charters. It was found that Arrow Air had a history of federal air safety violations during four years and had paid a number of fines in cluding $34,000 last summer due to deficiencies uncovered in past FAA inspections. The Pentagon uses civilian air carriers extensively for transport ing military personnel and de pendants within the Lhiited States and to foreign duty stations.