PAGE FOUR
EDITORIAL
Peers?
If you are accused of a crime in Luzerne County,
and you happen to be something other than retired
and-or a housewife, the chances of your getting a
‘trial before a jury of your peers is virtually negli-
gible.
Of the 266 jurors chosen last week to serve during
the weeks of Sept. 7, 13 and 20 in Luzerne County
Common Pleas Court, only 11 list an occupation
other than ‘“‘housewife” or ‘retired.’
How did the list get so lopsided? First of all,
jurors are not actually picked at random in Penn-
.sylvania as they are in several other states. A
person must submit his name to the jury commis-
sioners before he can be chosen—a fact not known
by many people who might consider a call to serve
as a legitimate obligation.
A new system initiated recently in this county re-
quires that all prospective jurors who would be
willing to serve during 1972 fill out and return a
questionaire to the courthouse by Aug. 15. The sys-
tem will no doubt be helpful to the jury commis-
sioners in eliminating incompetent jurors, but it
will probably do little to increase the diversity of
potential jurymen.
Most important, though, is that the vast majority
of citizens regard duty as a time consuming bore, a
task to be avoided at any cost. The pay is low—3$9 a
‘day plus carfare—and the hours, if not long, are
tedious. For these people, signing up for jury duty
is simply asking for trouble.
So if you are accused of a crime in Luzerne
County, and you happen to be something other than
retired and-or a housewife, the chances of your get-
ting a trial before a jury of your peers is virtually
negligible. And unless you fill out a questionaire
and get it back to the courthouse before this Sun-
day, it seems to us you'd have no basis for squawk-
ing about it.
Eat Up
~ How many times have children in this country
been forced to finish a meal they either did not want
or did not like by a parent who begs them to “Think
of the starving Chinese.” The rationale behind this
statement goes something to the effect that you
can force a child to eat if you can make him feel
guilty for not eating. The irony is that a child is
made to consume more than he can use because in
the back of his mind lurks starving people. What he
is being told is that if he is in the position to con-
sume more than his share in the world’s wealth he
had better consume it, because to waste it would be
an insult to those not as lucky as he.
Ecologists are fond of telling us that America,
with six percent of the world’s population, con-
sumes 60 percent of the world’s goods. No doubt
this is true in a country that can risk $250 million of
its people’s money to guarantee a loan for a private
company(which should, by all rights, be bankrupt)
so that the company’s employees can remain on the
job and be in a position to continue consuming. This
is called stimulating the economy."
~~ Sen. James Eastland, (D-Miss.) makes
$150,000 each year for not growing cotton. We pay
him, and others like him, incredible sums of money
So agricultural supplies can be kept low enough to
keep profits high. This is sound policy.
There is something of the child at the dinner
table in our situation today. While the ad-
ministration worries about how to keep us con-
suming, one of the greatest human catastrophes is
occurring on the other side of the globe. Thousands
of East Pakistanis are being bombed, burned, and
murdered by troops from West Pakistan. Star-
vation is rampant in East Pakistan, and famine is
predicted for the fall. Refugees are pouring into
India, a nation that can’t even support its own.
Meanwhile our government has been supplying
arms to West Pakistan, helping to create more
victims. We remain callous to the hungry, the sick,
and the dying.
We wonder how good a system can be that
forces us to consume while others starve.
‘reveal that Neal Armstrong’s
Tie SIALLASC0ST
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Changes
By Eric Mayer
On July 20, 1969, a day hailed by one
observer as the greatest since the world
began, a worldwide television audience
watched in awe as a space-suited figure in-
ched down the ladder of his ungainly craft to
set foot in the ageless dust of the moon.
Now, two years and three moon landings
later, a disgruntled former astronaut, Bobo
Merriwell, has stunned the nation with the
release of top secret documents, already
dubbed The NASA Papers. The documents
“one small
step” left its transitory imprint in a New
Mexico desert and that his “great leap for
mankind’’ carried him no further than
NASA’s super secret ‘moon set’ near the
White Sands Proving Grounds a scant 600
miles from the Manned Space Craft Center in
Houston. In the wake of their disillusionment
and disappointment, Americans are left with
one bitter question—what happened to the $40
billion? ;
The most expensive and expansive hoax
in recorded history was brought to light when
Mr. Merriwell, dis gus ted with his “minor role
in the space program,’ approached the New
York Times Official Secrets Editor with
NASA documents that he had carefully
microfilmed during coffee breaks. Merriwell
and the Times’ staff, working night and day
with special Flash Gordon decoding
rings, translated the papers and bared a
monstrous, if ingenious, conspiracy, one that
had excited, duped and probably bilked the
American public for more than a decade. Said
onenewsman, ‘ ‘What was fascinating was the
unique manner it was accomplished this
time.”
Among the documents;
The seminal letter from science fiction
author and scripter Arthur C. Clarke to
former NASA official Webb. (Along with a
later letter suggesting that soon simulation
equipment might best be tested in the context
of a movie).
Rough drafts (by an unknown Hollywood
writer) of historic words from space, in-
cluding not only Neal Armstrong’s famous
“Eagle has landed speech but also the “‘A-
OK” popularized by John Glenn.
A multi-milliondollar contract for ‘‘space
hardware” with the Mattel Toy Corporation.
The entire transcript of the high level
board meeting that gave Adlebard Kociensky
his now renowned moon monicker—Neal
Armstrong.
According to the papers, the Moon Race
was instigated during the cold war rivalry of
TRB,
from Washington
‘Congress won't be back ill" September
and has left the city littered with unsolved
problems. Mr. Nixon hails the moonshot but
won’t act on the economy. Things ought to be
more cheerful these days; some troops are"
coming home from Vietnam, there’s that
lively trip of Mr. Nixon’s to China, and there's
the splendid adventure on the moon. But
somehow it is hard to rejoice. The economy
doesn’t seem to get any better; the Ad-
ministration wrings its hands about grasping
trade unions and corporations but doesn’t do
anything about it, and the banks put up their
interest rates. Inflation and unemployment
continue and the stock market sinks. If this
kind of thing goes on we guess Mr. Nixon will
be a one-term president.
It’s not just the immediate difficulties
though they are bad enough; the long term
problems of American life continue and an
inactive congress and a reluctant president
do not seem able to cope with them. It is
frustrating. People ask what is wrong; for the
first time in years they wonder if a govern-
ment where everybody has a veto power can
solve the problems of poverty, racial tension
and inequality. j
Congress was going to reform the elec-
toral college; it didn’t. The tax system has as
many loopholes now as ever. Welfare reform
hasn’t passed. There’s talk about health
legislation but families still go bankrupt over
hospital bills. Crime is no better. The ghettos
THE DALLAS POST, AUG. 12, 1971
And Now the NASA Papers
the early sixties partly in response to a
similar Russianmove and partly, as program
supporter JFK put it, “. . .as an uplifting and
invigorating tonic for the American spirit.”
At first, NASA’s largest concern was
“hiding the wires,” a term that recurs
frequently throughout the papers. Several
experts, reviewing ‘‘space walk’ films in
light of this new information, have already
discovered ‘‘783 frames in which mechanical
supports are detectable.” These experts are
presently studying the more sophisticated
lunar liftoff sequence, a sequence that struck
many laymen as phoney.
Predictably, as NASA widened its exploits
with ingenious arrays of special effects, some
insiders suggested that an actual noon
program be attempted. President Johnson, in
a phone call to Unmanned Space Craft
Director Pickering(whose program was not
implicated in the papers), dismissed the idea
for budgetary reasons. ‘How can we get to
the moon for $4 billion a year when we can’t
even get out of Vietnam for $30 billion?”
Not all of the NASA revelations are grim,
"WHAT'S ALL THAT RACKET DOWN THERE?’ : 1
however. Considering the number of
ludicrous gaffes committed, it’s surprising
that the hoax remained viable for so long.
There are bizarre tales of prominent scien-
tists receiving ‘lunar rock samples” con-
taminated by ring pull tabs and cigarette
butts. Only a few days ago, at 3:20 a.m.,
during the third moon ride of astronauts Scott
and Irwin, a national television audience saw
a drunken stage hand wander inadvertently
onto the moonscape. However, insomnia-
plagued spinster Maude Quigly’s letter to her
local paper wasignoredby the national press.
Explained by similar misadventure was
the malfunction of Apollo 12’s television
camera; a malfunction not caused by poin-
ting its lens at the sun as reported, but rather
necessitated by a falling boom that crushed
the cardboard LEM beyond repair.
Not explained was the real use of the $40
billion, only a small portion of which was
spent on mock-ups. Conflicting reports had
the money earmarked for education, ghet-
toes, food programs, or the CIA.
enna m————c
In a similar vein FBI patriarch J. Edgar
Hoover damned the NASA papers as ‘typical
communist titillation.” The President,
spending yet another working vacation at his
Western White House, was unavailable for
comment. However, it is thought that the
revelation plan that would have allowed Mr.
Nixon the opinion (in case of dangerously low
voter ratings) of making a dramatic, election
eve appeal from the “surface of the moon.”
Even as the tumult dies down one is
struck by the feeling that the calm is merely
the prelude to another storm. One wonders, if
the inclination was there, why didn’t the
scientists, in their ever advancing quest for
knowledge, press on toward an actual
conquest of space? Why did they settle for a
hoax? Perhaps the answers are to be found in
the new batch of secret documents that, one
informed source assures us, is already under
preparation at the Times. These papers,
sarcastically called the Columbus Papers,
will reputably reveal, among other things, a
long list of ships which have recently fallen
off the edge of the earth.
A One-Term President
expand. Public housing accounts for only one
percent of all housing in the US compared to
20 percent in Britain; Congress never funded
the program it voted in 1949 of 810,000 new
public housing units in the next ‘‘six years’.
Last year congress decided to cut down
farm subsidies for the rich and voted a limit
of $55,000 per crop per farmer. This turns out
to be just a joke. The big farmers subdivided
farms and created new entities; Sen.
Eastland (D., Miss.) received $160,000 in 1970
for not growing cotton; this year he met the
$55,000 limitation by creating eight sub-
sidiaries, and expects to get $159,925 for not
growing cotton. Congress doesn’t seem to
know how to write laws that stick. Or is it just
make-believe? :
On the other hand, congress has bailed
out the Lockheed aircraft corporation all
right with a governement guarantee of up to
$250,000,000. In this new form of state
capitalism the large corporationis rescued; it
is the little man who must struggle in the
* competitive economy.
One difficulty is the lack of access to the
President. His press conferences are erratic.
Following a gap of two months he held an
impromptu one last Wednesday where about
50 hastily summoned ‘regulars’ found
themselves in the pleasant surroundings of
the oval office where FDR used to hold his
twice-a-week affairs. It was good to get back
to the place unencumbered by radio or TV
Insights
and
by Bruce Hopkins
(NOTE: This is the second installment in a
series of articles comprising an interview
with Bruce Hopkins. The interview was held
by Greenstreet News’ roving reporter who
chooses to remain anonymous. But his initials
are BPH (Prounounced bipphh).
I: Well, Bruce, you’ve been something of
a journalist for—
H: That’s a nice description, “something
of . . ” Hits it exactly.
I: Yes, well you've been writing for some
six years now. How do you feel about freedom
of the press?
H: Loose.
I: Loose, Bruce?
H: Yes, loose. Certainly it is our most
important freedom. If we are indeed a
perople’s government, there must be a means
of keeping the people informed and allowing
them to express themselves. There is a poster
in my apartment bearing words once spoken
by JFK. It says: ‘‘The great enemy of truth is
not the lie—deliberate, contrived, dishonest . .
but the myth—persistent, persuasive,
unrealistic.’ That is exactly the problem that
the Pentagon Papers pointed out. The
government had not actually been lying to
us—they had been mything us. They created a
myth which we were asked to accept as truth.
The danger was in the fact that this was not as
dishonest as it was unreal. It was it’s
believability that we fell for. No, the people
must be informed of the truth. And they must
A
Illusions
operators, asking questions freely for an hour
without being an unpaid actor on a nationwide
television show.
Mr. Nixon was deft and siey and handled
himself well. His replies weren't always
exactly answers, but they filled in a good deal
of territory that the country ought to know
about. Indeed, it was to deal with one sen-
sitive subject, that Mr. Nixon may have
called the conference—his relations with Dr.
Arthur Burns, his erstwhile economic
mentor, whom he made head of the Fed.
Mr. Burns thinks the President ought to
crack down on union-management to control
inflation and proposes a wage-price review
board. Unflattering observations by mr.
Burns about the economy to a congressional
committee brought one of those leaked stories
from the White House that Mr. Nixon was
“furious’’ with his former friend, and thought
of retaliating.
Concentration of industrial power is
growing, too. The 500 largest corporations
now control three-quarters of all the
manufacturing assets, and that statement
wasn’t made by any wild-eyed radical; it was
made by Attorney General Mitchell, June 6,
1969. Indeed, the top 100 corporating now own
one-half of all manufacturing assets, and 49
big banks act as a kind of liaison nervous
system for the U.S. corporate establishment,
with representatives on boards of 300 of the
500 largest concerns.
We smiled at the report of colboia Gov.
Reagen of California salting away part of his
income in cattle-raising, which is ape of the
perfectly legal loopholes that shegger rich
men. There are lots of other loopholds, too, of
course; the law is a sieve. The one tax that
really hits the well-to-do harder than the poor
is the graduated income tax. Economists call
it a “progressive” tax in contrast to sales,
payroll and property taxes, that put the
heaviest burden on the poor and are hence
“regressive”. Well, economist Walter Heller
pointed out here recently that the graduated
income tax has been reduced five times since
the Korean war to the tune of $35 billion a
year. Fine news for the affluent. But mean-
while sales and regressive taxes have gone.
up, trying to fill the gap. It's a way by which
the poor help subsidize their betters under the
present national tax system.
The Census Bureau's respected Herman
P. Miller reports that the overall effective tax
rate on a poor family ($2000a year) and a rich
family ($50,000 a year) is presently just,about
the same—around a third—when ner
of sales and similar taxes is considertd
Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish economist,
notes, ‘America. . .of all the rich countries
(is). . .the one which has the highest rate of
unemployment, the worst and biggest slums,
and which is least generous in giving
economic security to its old people, its sick
and its invalids.”
Inside Bruce Hopkins
have the right to object and to criticize.
I: Have you ever regretted anything
you've written?
H: Ah. Hmmm. Gee. Huh. No, I think not.
Often I've regretted that what I wrote did not
communicate what it was intended to, but
always it was a genuine expression. The idea
was genuine and honest, even though the
words may have been put together badly. One
problem with writing humor, which I think I
do occasionally, is that it only creates
laughter. Very often the importance of the
statement is chuckled away. Conversely,
vehemence in writing tends to breed only
anger. It divides more than it unites. And the
problem with speaking quietly and clearly is
that it doesn’t appeal to any real emotion. The
reader or listener agrees, but isn’t inspired to
action. Sometimes, although not real often, I
wonder if it’s worth bothering to express a
viewpoint-because usually only those who
agree are inspired. But I suppose that if a
piece of writing causes one person to
reconsider, then it is a victory. |
Editorialists are, of, course, quite
egotistical. They feel they have the answers
and that everyone should listen. And they
have the power. Someone once asked me what
gave me the right to say some of the things I
write in my articles, and I told him quite
~ simply: the Constitution. I must admit that I
sometimes forget that one must temper one’s
words with a bit of courtesy because it works
better in the long run. But I am impatient by
nature and tend to dash into things. And it is
the alienation that sometimes results which I
find regretful. But those are the penalties to
writing. I don’t like to make enemies, but I
have to speak out.
I: Let’s change the subject for a moment.
H: Good idea. Personally, I was getting a
bit bored there.
I: How about sex?
H: Gee, I really think we ought to get to
know each other a little better first.
I: No, no. I mean, how do you feel about
the sexual revolution?
H: Loose. I think it’s a valiant effort.
Morals are a very personal thing, and I don’t
see why people feel they must impose their
own morals onto others. The only restriction
on sexual behavior should control the forcible
infliction of one’s sexuality upon someone
else. There is a strong and rather successful
movement in New York currently involving
homosexual liberation. And I think it is very
valid. There is nothing wrong with sexual
activity between two consenting adults. It can
be an extremely genuine and affectionate
relationship. Why must we consider that kind
of thing a sickness? Granted there may be
degrees of homosexuality that are perverse,
but no more than certain degrees of hetero-
sexuality. What a person does sexually should
be of no concern to anyone except the people
with whom he happens to be having sex.
Naturally, they ought to have some say in the
matter. No one in the sexual revolution is
i 8
demanding that others adopt their 2.
of morality. They are merely asking for the
right to their own sexuality. A right they
should certainly possess.
I: What about pornograhpy?
H: I personally find most of it boring. But
again, it should be a matter of individual
choice. People should be permitted to read
what they choose. I do object to blatant ad-
vertising of pornographic material because
that infringes on the rights of those who find it
offensive. The same is true of prostitution. I
favor its legalization, but I object to blatant
advertising. Streetwalkers who try to impose
their bodies on me as I walk down Eighth
Avenue are rather offensive. But a little
bordello here and there can be valuable in
releasing sexual frustration for some people.
Certainly this, in some cases, can be
dangerous from a health standpoint. But if an
individual wants to take the risk involved, you
and I have no right to demand that he not do
so. The thing we must keep in mind when
dealing with the sexual revolution is not to
allow it to infringe on the rights of those who
choose not to participate in it. That is where
the control mustbe exercised. Tell me, have I
communicated or alienated?
I: That, I suppose, remains to be seen.
NEXT WEEK: Bruce Hopkins continues his
dual process of communication and alienation
in the final interview entry. Don’t miss this
exciting episode. :
PA
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