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HomeMy WebLinkAboutHistorical Records - Miscellaneous (139)Page6A What U.S. needs is military draft President Carter this week will be signing legislation calling for registration of men 19 and 20 who later might be drafted in the event of a military emergency. The House last April approved a bill to re­vive mandatory registration, which had been stopped in 1975 by President Ford, and last week the Senate did the same. A minor change made by the Senate called for a compromise that was worked out yesterday. An estimated 4 million men will begin regis­tering, probably within a month. (Carter has had authority all along to require young men to regis­ter. But he needed Congress' authorizing $13.3 million to initiate the undertaking.) The revival of registration for military ser­vice is a necessary step, especially in the light of this country's declining prestige and world influ­ence. But the step falls short on several counts. To begin with, Carter first proposed regis­tration in his State of the Union address last January as a partial response to the Soviet inva­sion of Afghanistan. In other words, he wanted to show the Russians that Americans aren't going to put up with such aggression indefinitely, and that we're determined to safeguard our interests. Well, simply having y'oung people register is not likely to scare the Soviet leadership; the only thing that impresses Soviet leaders is true mili­tary strength, something that we don't really have today -and which Carter himself doesn't wholeheartedly support. What we need to revive is not just registra­tion but a peacetime draft. Another weakness in the legislation is that it omits any signing up of women, a feature Carter had sought and now will become the subject of a constitutional challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union which contends, rightly so, that it discriminates against men. The Supreme Court eventually may have to decide the issue. There are many in this country who object to forced military service for either men or women in peacetime. Basically, they find it onerous, which indeed it often is, particularly for young people concerned with civilian careers. Yet, a fact of life is that we live in a world that constantly threatens the very existence of the United States. And the only way to begin safeguarding the nation's future is with a strong military force; it must be credible, and not sus­ceptible to challenge. That's why the draft is necessary-and why a roster of names and addresses isn't enough. Good budget step Pima Community College President S. James Manilla has been keeping a pretty low profile ever since he came on the job 11 months ago. •But we were glad to hear from him that,tomorrow, he will ask the Board of Governors to endorse his plan to do away with take-home cars for deans and vice presidents, in the interest of economy. The move, which we heartily endorse, would save PCC approximately $207,000 annually. We also endorse Manilla's plan to cut down on stu­dent use of school vechicles. Naturally, if the deans and vice presidents should happen to use their personal cars for official business, other than driving back and forth to work, they should have some mileage compensation. itoria Tuesday, June 17, 1980 Bill Acton Citizen Phoenix Bureau Tucson Citizen Es1ablished 1870/A Ganneu Newspaper James Geehan, Editor and Publisher Dale Walton, Managing EditorAsa Bushnell, Editorial Page Editor Paul A. McKalip, Senior Editor Want to place any bets on who gets bailed out? Orville Shields is a big, rawboned man. His hands are gnarled, his short, white hair boxes the compass and a leathery neck reflects a life of hard-earth farming. Orville also is mad. His talk may ramble and his logic lack a precision fineness, but he's not crazy-mad. He's angry-mad. Orville owns about 10 acres near Oro Valley north of Tucson. I never knew peaches grew in the Sonoran desert, but that's what Orville does -grow peaches. Orville is mad because the city of Tucson has dropped its big, steel straws into his bucket. According to Orville, the city has bought farmland surrounding his tiny spread and has turned its land into a gigantic water farm, a move to which the city is legally entitled, bv the way. Orvilie's probiem really is hydrological. While he may own his land and the water beneath it, the city owns its land and the water beneath it. And that water is all part of the same big bucket. And that means that the guy with the bigger straw is going to suck the common water up faster. Orville has the little straw. Enter the new Groundwater Management Act, the first major change in Arizona's groundwater law in 32 years. It became part of Arizona's statutes last week. The law says that the city can suck up all the water it '� # »-wants because it's a municipal user. The law also says Orville can't because he's a farmer. And that's what's got Orville mad. Orville was here last week when the Legislature passed the bill, and he had a few things on his mind. He shared them with the lawmakers. "I'm gonna be your next governor," Orville angrily told the lawmakers. They just smiled. "I can't hardly read or write but I can stand up for the people. I mean exactly what I say. "I'm not scared off by 500,000 people. I think I can whip the entire city of Tucson and the state of Arizona. I'm gonna fight this and I've got lots of people around the state of Arizona," Orville said. "The Tucson media won't print my story. I think the Mafia's got 'em locked up." The legislators smiled some more, and some of them laughed. Orville started smiling too. Sen. Stan Turley, father of the new code, said, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was Orville." • Joe Ralston is not a farmer. His hair, like Orville's, is short and white, but it's brushed in an anachronistic flat-top. Joe wouldn't be caught dead in the Phoenix busi­nessman's summer uniform, the mandatory polyester lei-Ccps ... we see.in to� a. littleshort again tMs week .... Go nexta� and. a.�k ·em �runoff FEDERAL RESERVE PRlNTlNG WHILE·U·WA\T So1ne more twenties. Carol Richards Women waffle on draft, ERA Feminists didn't exactly cover themselves with glory last week. They left Nancy Lanon Kassebaum, the Senate's sole female member, to walk the plank for equal rights -alone. The issue was, as she put it, "precluding reinstitution of male-only registration" for the draft. Kassebaum's pro­posal to block any registration program that did not include women was defeated 51-40 by the Senate Tuesday night. The male-only registration bill passed Thursday, 58-34. The 39 who supported her included some who hoped the amend­ment would inspire the Senate to scuttle the whole bill. Not all were believers in equal rights for women. Aside from Kassebaum and some feminist male sena­tors, the believers in equal rights for women sat this battle out, thank you. Officials from the National Organization for Women and the National Women's Political Caucus ex­plained their groups' inattention to the Kassebaum amend­ment by saying that they would just as soon not see anyone registered. "Women are smart enough to recognize that some­thing that looks like equality," such as the Kassebaum amendment, "is really just another way of selling them down the river," said Iris Mitgang, who heads the Women's Caucus. OK. But it seems to me that if we want equal rights we should stand up for equal rights, even in painful situations such as reinstituting the draft. As Kassebaum put it: "Eq-� �� l .-J • uity certainly demands that exclusion from the obligation of registration be premised on some less arbitrary determina­tion than gender." Registering men only is "discriminatory and unfair," she said. Actually, NOW has made exactly the same argument in the past. President Ellie Smeal has testified before several congressional committees that, if there were to be registration for the draft, women should be included. But wtien it came down to pushing for votes for this issue, the feminist groups were strangely silent. Kassebaum said she was not contacted by any women's groups after she an­nounced her intention to offer her amendment. The Kansas Republican was generous about it, though: "I can't think of any senators I lost because the women weren't pushing," she said. She's probably right about that. Feminist lobbying efforts, alas, sometimes tum senators off. Conversations about the Equal Rights Amendment almost always come down to the bottom-line issue of women and the draft. Opponents shout that ERA will force the drafting of women; ERA supporters argue that Con­gress already has the right to draft women, and that in a time of national crisis women ought to be as responsible as men for America's defense. •When I decided I supported ERA, the decision in­cluded supporting the idea that women are as responsible as men for military service. I have the uncomfortable feeling now, however, that when it comes down to the practical matter of legislating equal treatment for women in draft registration, the national ERA leaders are being fair-weather friends. Their failure to push for what might be called "equal registration" leads me to suspect that the Congress-al­ready-has-the-right argument has been strictly rhetorical. It makes me think the proponents who used that argument knew in their hearts that Congress wouldn't exercise that right. The Senate evidenced that last week. This is especially bothersome now that presidential nomination time is coming up. Women will comprise at least 50 percent of the delegates at the Democratic Na­tional Convention, and will make up a significant portion of the GOP convention next month in Detroit. In 1976, women delegates went hat in hand to Jimmy Carter seeking pledges of female Cabinet nominees and support for ERA. He delivered on his promises, but in a manner that many feminists consider to be grudging. Recalling this, Mitgang of the Women's Caucus says that politically active women don't ever want to have to beg for favors again. At the Democratic convention, at least, they will insist that the nominee give firm pledges of specific actions. And they are prepared to urge feminists to vote for independent John B. Anderson in November if the promises are not made. Party officials should not underestimate the power of the women at the convention, she said. I agree, but I also think that when the chips are down, as they were in the Senate last week, feminists are as obligated as politicians to give more than lip service to their ideals. Carol Richards is a Gannett News Service regional editor and columnist . sure suit, white plastic belt and matching shoes. His is the rumpled look of affluence, brown loafers, expensive sports jacket and all. Joe is one of the best hired guns in Phoenix. He's a lawyer, and his clients are some of the biggest developers in the state. Joe, too, is angry at the Groundwater Management Act because one of his clients, the Paradise Valley Water Co., is angry at the act. The water company, you might guess, serves the Paradise Valley area. Paradise Valley is one of the poshest areas in Phoenix. If you have to ask the price of a Paradise Valley home, you can't afford it. "It's west of Barry Gold­water's house," Joe said, which gives you some sense of who lives there. Orville Shields could not grow peaches in Paradise Valley. Paradise Valley has been one of the biggest boom areas in the Phoenix area. Developers have made millions there, a number of them because they were smart enough to buy the land when it was cheap. The groundwater act will bring that growth to a screeching halt, Joe warned. The law requires water com­panies to prove to the new state Water Resources Depart­ment that it can supply the area with water for 100 years, and the state says the water supply in Paradise Valley is good only for 70 years, Joe said. When the thrust of Joe's remarks became clear, wags in the Capitol press corps circulated notes among them­selves. One said, "You'd think we'd give better treatment to those hardy pioneers who traversed the barren desert in their air-conditioned Cadillacs, seeking refuge from the common savages who lurk in the shadows of low-cost subdivisions." • Anybody want to bet that the Legislature will let Paradise Valley grow but that Orville will have to let Tucson continue to suck him dry? Lows Rukeyser The two 'big lies' The two biggest lies about the 1981 U.S. economy: We will balance the budget, and we won't have a tax cut. Believe either of them, and I have some undrained swampland south of the Seychelles I can offer you real cheap. The balanced-budget sham begins to look shabby even by Washington standards. Lofty talk about how White House and Congress, in a patriotic outburst of fiscal respon­sibility, are about to produce "the first deficit-free budget in 12 years" appears emptier with each passing gimmick. Filter out the political malarkey, and what you're left with is a budget in which spending is -as usual -gro­tesquely underestimated, and revenues greatly overesti­mated. The bottom line: still-another deficit. And, more­over, another pretty bad one -one that may well exceed $40 billion. (The 1980 budget, originally presented as "lean and austere," now $eems headed for close to a $50 billion deficit itself.) . I promise you: as 1980 progresses, Washington even-tually will get around to admitting -not, exactly, that everything up to now has been a hoax -but that events have changed, the recession is worse than we thought, no one could have done any better, it's impossible actually to balance this thing. And voters will sigh at this latest evi-dence that politics-as-usual is still the first imperative of U.S. economic policy-I promise you. (And I'd never lie to you.) Now for the tax cut we're not supposed to get -but will. You remember that one -the one President Carter said would be "irresponsible" until we got the budget into balance. Well, as noted, that alleged precondition is not about to be met. So that should mean, naturally, that we're not going to get a tax cut in the next year. Right? Wrong. Of course we're going to get a tax cut. What's more, as becomes increasingly obvious, the real "irrespon­sibility" would be not to cut taxes. Left unscathed, legisla­tion already in place will increase taxes by more than $50 billion in the next year -an unacceptable drag at any time, and totally loony in a period of economic slowdown. In truth, the reductions we're likely to get will not come anywhere near qualifying as an authentic tax cut; they will merely lessen the additional burden about to be placed on us. But reductions will be made, have no doubt about that, and those who enact them will brag about their seeming kindness in allowing us to hold on to a few more of the bucks we have earned. The end to the balanced budget may be coming furtively, and in carefully orchestrated stages, but the end to "no tax cut" will be happy headline news for the politicians. So the only real question about tax cuts over the next year will be not "whether" but "when" and "where" and "for whom." And some reasonable guesses seem possible there, too: By now the destructive effects of antibusiness taxation have been so generally recognized in both parties that some help should be forthcoming in this area -a trend begun in the 1978 legislation. Most probable is some form of faster depreciation of buildings, equipment and vehicles (a move that would improve business cash flow and likely stimulate investment and expansion). This may well take effect sometime in the second half of 1980. As a "balance" for individual taxpayers (though its benefits might profitably be expanded to businesses, too), Congress is likely to enact some sort of relief from the horrendous increases in Social Security taxes now sched­uled to go into effect in January 1981. (The maximum tax is slated to rise from this year's $1,587.67 to $1,975.05 -with further blasts up to $3,045.90 in 1987.) And there are a number of other possibilities for additional easing on the individual side. All of this seems in the cards even if there is not a major political change this year, bringing in a president and Congress committed to much more extensive tax reduc­tions. Indeed, cutting taxes should be nearly as easy for Washington as failing to balance the budget. Or tell the electorate the truth. Louis Rukeyser is host of television's highly re­garded "Wall $treet Week."