Page 2/The Battalion/Tuesday, April 12, 1988
Opinion
wraiMMftiBirTi
Who are we but
Taxes, like
death, are popu
larly said to be un
avoidable, and, at
this time of the
year, they seem es
pecially so. We are
taxed on every
side. We pay social
security taxes,
property taxes,
sales taxes, liquor
and gasoline taxes
and the hidden tax ot intlation among
others. Of all the taxes we pay, however,
we generally consider the federal in
come tax to be the most burdensome.
But it really should not seem so oner
ous. While we all have a general antipa
thy toward taxes that keeps us from pay
ing them ungrudgingly, we should
appreciate the federal income tax,
which funds most of the benefits we
seek from the government. Without the
income tax, our politicians couldn’t even
begin to do all the nice, considerate
things they do so well for us.
To protect us from all the nasty peo
ple in the world, they give us national
defense. To protect us from the nasty
people in our own country, they supply
criminal justice and business regula
tions. To protect us from ignorance,
they offer us public education. To pro
tect us from our own mistakes and the
ravages of chance, they provide welfare,
farm subsidies and mandatory seat belt
laws.
Surely we should be grateful that our
leaders have been so good about supply
ing the public goods we desire. But we
would be unrealistic to think we could
get all this for free. After all, our fine
politicians and bureaucrats need to eat
if they are to have the strength to keep
working so well for our good. Besides,
nothing comes for free in life, not even
our “free” public education.
In spite of all the manifest benefits,
some people still have the audacity to
complain about their taxes. Taxes are
too high. This year the IRS will gobble
up 19.2 percent of the GNP, while over
all, government will consume 32 per
cent of the GNP. In their selfishness and
greed, these people want to keep the
money they earn for themselves to
spend as they like rather than donating
Brian
Frederick
It has us by the throat
If you’re one of
those hard-line
conservatives who
thinks we need a
stronger national
defense but must
get more bang for
the buck, stop
looking. If you’re
a liberal who
thinks we spend
too much on de
fense and wants to
cut the fat from the Pentagon budget,
forget that too. You can’t get there from
here, either of you.
The truth is that the military-indus
trial complex has the country by the
throat and it’s not about to let go. Nei
ther does it have to because it has a pow
erful ally — us, We the People of the
United States.
Those are the melancholy conclu
sions one comes to after reading Nick
Kotz’s brilliant new book, “Wild Blue
Yonder — Money, Politics and the B-l
Bomber” ($19.95, Pantheon Books). It
is the story of how the B-l, a turkey if
there ever was one, came to be built de
spite the opposition of four presidents,
grave doubts as to its usefulness and a
price tage of $28 billion. More than that,
it is the story of how a major weapons
system builds up a constituency that, at a
certain point, becomes irresistible, re
gardless of the merits of the system. It is
a sad story, but a fascinating one.
The plane began life in the ’60s amid
doubts about the need for a strategic
bomber. If you can deliver nuclear war
heads on an enemy more cheaply, more
swiftly and with greater certainty with
missiles, why do you need a manned
bomber that can be shot down before it
reaches its target? Well, bombers gave
you “flexibility,” countered the strategic
bomber supporters. You could put
them into the air on alert, safe from pos
sible enemy first-strike, then recall them
if the crisis passed. You could reroute
them to secondary targets. They could
do other, smaller jobs, like conventional
bombing in small wars.
Not prepossessing arguments be
cause there was still the bombers’ vul
nerability to enemy fire. This is where
the B-l came in. It was to be a “penetra
ting” bomber, one that could fly deep
into Soviet territory at virtually treetop
level, thus confounding enemy radar.
That made it a significant improvement
on the old, reliable B-52.
But as the plane’s theoretical capabili
ties were expanded to make it more at
tractive, it became more the stuff of sci
ence fiction than a realistic weapons
system. It was supposed to be able to fly
low at the speed of sound, high at more
than twice that; it was to carry a heavy
load of heavy nuclear bombs and short-
range missiles, yet have a range of 6,000
miles. It would be laden with sophisti
cated devices to help it avoid enemy at
tackers and seek out targets but it would
be able to take off using less than 6,000
feet of runway.
Not much of that came to pass. The
plane as finally produced bumped
around a lot, making it difficult to re
fuel in the air, thereby limiting its range.
Besides, all. the girncracks had made it
too heavy to fly high, where the good
fuel mileage is. The gizmos designed to
help it avoid enemy radar didn’t work.
Then there were the birds and sucking
them into its engines. This is a real
problem for a plane that is supposed to
fly long distances at treetop levels.
How could this have happened, $28
billion for a paperweight? Easy. Forget
the strategic stuff; it was sold as a jobs
program. The contracts were carefully
distributed to subcontractors through
out the country. Local business leaders
were encouraged to lean on their con
gressmen. Political support for the pro
ject was constructed like a mosaic. The
American people were taken into the
scam — bought off, really. And the B-l
became invulnerable.
Kotz, in one of the most telling pas
sages of the book, describes the B-l
coming off the assembly line:
“First came the forward fuselage sec
tions, manufactured by Rockwell in
Palmdale (Calif.) and at Columbus,
Ohio. Next came the middle and rear
fuselage, built by LTV on a $1.5 billion
subcontract in Dallas. Workers then
connected the tail section, built by Mar
tin Marietta in Baltimore. The tail land
ing gear built by the Cleveland Pneu
matic Company in Ohio, and the nose
landing gear from Menasco Corpora
tion of Burbank, California, were then
attached, along with wheels and tires
from Goodrich Rubber Company of
Akron, Ohio.’ It goes on like that for
two paragraphs, listing the places where
the jobs had gone — Rockford, Ill.;
Seattle, Wash.; Long Island, N.Y.; Wi
chita, Kan. Democracy in action.
We see the same thing happening
now with the “Stealth” bomber and with
the Strategic Defense Initiative. We
build weapons not despite their great
cost but because of it. If we ever cut any
thing out of the defense budget, it will
be the lean.
Copyright 1987, Tribune Media Services, Inc.
Donald
Kaul
The Battalion
(USPS 045 360)
Member of
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Southwest Journalism Conference
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slaves to the tax man?
it “voluntarily”, as the IRS likes to call it,
to the common good.
But high taxes are not the problem.
Most of us recognize the real problem is
that our government consistently
spends more than it takes in. In recent
years, our wise leaders have tried to cut
spending and the growing budget defi
cits. But when it came time to cut spe
cific programs, we wouldn’t let them.
“Cut every other program as much as
you like, only don’t cut this one essential
program (which happens to benefit
me),” we chimed. But every program
benefited a “me”, and so no effective
cuts were made.
We like to blame our politicians for
this failure, but that is not really fair. Af
ter all, they merely give us what we ask
for. If they don’t bring home the pork,
we won’t re-elect them. We are the ones
who ask them to give us goodies from
the public coffers. We are the ones who
continue to ask them for more goodies
like better education, better welfare and
better defense.
And were we not the ones who asked
for a federal income tax in the first
place? We cleverly thought we could
make the wealthy pay for our desires
through progressive taxation. We would
get something for nothing. We continue
to justify the income lax in the name of
“soaking” the rich, but it is clear that the
idea has backfired on us. The wealthy
don’t have enough money to fund our
desires and usually are able to find ways
of keeping us from getting our grubby
paws on it anyway. Now that the middle
class is getting soaked in the very trap
intended for the wealthy, it is com
plaining about excessive taxation.
A few leftover conservatives could
condemn our politicians for lacking the
moral fortitude to resist the immediate
demands of the mob. But this idea is
outmoded and terribly elitist. We all
know that the voice of the people is the
voice of Cod and that the majority
knows what is best for the nation. Con
sequently we elect politicians who will do
exactly what the public opinion polls de
mand. We have no place for farsighted
statesmen who will place their judgment
above that of the crowd when the good
of the nation requires it.
Thus, we really have no right to com
plain. We want what our government
does for us, but balk at the price
Unless we are willing to make deep
we had better prepare to dig deeper)
our pockets. The budget this year
reeds one trillion dollars forthefj
time. Last year the IRS collected^
billion, nearly $40 billion morethat
year before, but its best effort will no!
enough to offset the deficit,
the interest on our more than$2tr|
of national debt is beginning toeai
ive. When foreign lenders getsmart!
quit floating our deficits with loans,
will have to raise taxes or startpri
money, which will amount tothe
thing in the long run. Either wav,
pay.
As a free people, we chose the
that have led to ever increasingkdi
and taxes. Those policies have left||
less than free people. Nomancanli
estlv consider himself free whoeiii
depends on government for hissa
nance or must pay a third of his into
in taxes. Whether we like it ornoii
the path we have chosen. Unfoi
nately, extricating ourselves fromi
course will not be as easy aschoosin;
Brian Frederick is a senior histoni
Russian major and a columnisthn
Battalion.
Strategy
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Perceptive Brian
EDITOR:
In a column last month, Brian Frederick discussed a
significant fault line running through the academic
community. This fault line separates the different
attitudes of those in the sciences and in the liberal arts
toward the meaning of truth in the world. The scientists
have a strong feeling that there is a world out there that
can be investigated and for which increasingly accurate
statements can be made. This view leads to an attitude of
intolerance toward those who will not accept well-
determined features of nature such as the law of gravity,
the conservation of energy and so on. This sense of
assurance is reinforced when professors face classes filled
with students from around the world who come to learn
about these accepted truths. On the other hand, in the
liberal arts there is no longer a generally accepted body of
truth; consequently, intolerance is criticized.
I was impelled to write this letter, however, because of
the fortuitous appearance of the Faculty Friends
advertisement on the page facing Mr. Frederick’s article.
Of the 122 names in this list of Christian faculty members,
41 were from the College of Engineering while only one
was from the College of Liberal Arts. Since the
engineering faculty composes somewhat under 20 percent
of the university faculty, the 34 percent engineering
representation among the Christian faculty is striking.
And, since Christianity is an intolerant religion (how else
explain the missionary movement), it comprises a much
more congenial system of beliefs to engineers than to those
in the liberal arts.
And, this is not just a Texas A&M phenomenon. The
faculty advisers for the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship
chapters on some 1,000 college campuses across the
country are predominantely in the disciplines of science
BLOOM COUNTY
our New v.R-eLecr has
RmtNpep we chair
THAT A NOMINATION VOTE
is not mpm uNcess
we up. Nomee &
IN ATTeNPONCB...
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ACT IN TAV0R OF
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and engineering. Perceptive students such as Brian
Frederick cannot help but recognize the differentattituilfi
of their professors in the various academic disciplines
concerning their commitments to their beliefs.
John A. McIntyre
Professor of physics
The majority versus the minority
EDITOR:
Yet, another response to a Brian Frederick article,In
his article, he implied that a centralized governmentwoiH
legislate moral standards on the whole. Frederick suggest!
that this government should be decentralized whilegivinf
more power to the local government. This way “peoplect
tailor the laws under which they live to match the
prevailing values of a community. Those not content will
the local establishment can work to change it ai thatlevel
or move on to a more congenial community.”
Furthermore, a truly federal system would “reduced
threat of having the morality of the minority imposeden
everyone else by a distant but powerful capital.” My
question is, who is going to reduce the threat of having
morality of the majority imposed on the minority? Why
should someone have to move just because his beliefsdo
not conform with everyone else in bis community? Myito
of government is to protect the rights of “life, liberty,anil
the pursuit of happiness” for ALL individuals, finally,
with a powerful local government, l can only forsee
vigilante “hanging mobs” for community dissenters.
Richard Bowling ’88
Letters to the editor should not exceed 300 words in length. The editorialslf :
serves the right to edit letters f or style and length, hut will make ever)4'
maintain the author's intent. Each letter must he signed and must indudtlk-'
sification, address and telephone number of the writer.