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Show July 16, 1971 Viewpoint Reagan's Smear Backfires By Jesse Helms Inasmuch as spokesmen for the major ultra-libernews media are pleading for public respect, it may be instructive to examine the case history of an episode illustrating why millions of Americans no longer trust the major news media. Several weeks back, there was a news story out of California which was given prominent display on every network newscast and in every newspaper. In retrospect, it is obvious that the story was published and broadcast in a contrived manner carefully calculated to mislead the public. . Governor Ronald Reagan of California, whom the leftwing news media despise, paid no California state income taxes last year for the simple reason that he was not due to pay any. He did pay federal income taxes. Prior to being elected Governor of California, Mr. Reagan was a successful movie actor. He was paid well for his work, and he saved his money. He invested it in various businesses. His investments, in general, have been productive ones but 1970 was not a good year for a great many businesses around the country, and some of those in which Ronald Reagan had invested suffered along with all the rest. Simply said, Mr. Reagans net income dropped sharply in be he a 1970, and no citizen Governor or anybody else should be expected to pay income taxes when he had no al - taxable income. So Governor Reagan filed his income tax returns, and he filed them honestly, lawfully and accurately. There is no dispute about that. Moreover, his tax returns and those of all other citizens are ' supposed to be confidential. But the leftwingers, who make so much noise about snooping, delightedly gained unlawful access to the confidential information contained in Mr. Reagans tax returns, and broadcast it throughout the nation, carefully implying that he had evaded payment of taxes. Because of business losses in 1970, he had no taxable income even including his as so .under Governor salary California law he was not subject to payment of state income taxes. However and this is something that the leftwing news media carefully Ronald Reagan paid ignored a total of $91,128.22 in state income taxes during the first - years that he was Governor of California. On top of that, he paid huge federal income taxes. Ronald Reagan didnt owe any state income taxes in 1970, so he paid none. He abided by the tax laws, just as every, other citizen is entitled and obliged to do. But in one of the nastier little vendettas to be waged by the leftwingers, they are suggesting that he ought to have paid state income taxes whether he owed them or not. The point is that Ronald Reagan is a conservative political figure. He is an effective one, a man whose - and integrity courage are admired by millions of citizens across the country. He is a handsome man with an attractive personality, and leftwingers privately that he would be acknowledge He had done no such thing. Straight Talk A Few Not - So - Random Shots By Tom Anderson Traitors I heard that President Nixon was praying re ce ntly con- and fided God: to Im worried about a little fellow in Alabama who wants my job. God answered: Well, thats a relief! I thought he wanted mine! (Obviously, a Republican joke.) Russia cant afford to communize the whole world then where would she buy her wheat? At a recent meeting of the American Newspaper Editors in Washington, the head of Webster College in Missouri proposed a guaranteed income for everybody at age 18, so they would have "economic maturity, and a recent editor the of Harvard student newspaper editorialized for. freedom from having to work for a living. A far better idea would be to restrict the vote to people who pay income tax. If and when we ever kill the personal income tax, ownership of property should become a voting requirement. And we should have a guaranteed annual hunger program for all needy, adult$ who refuse to take any decent, available able-bodi- As Always a David Clayton-Thoma- s, Canadian member of a rock Blood, Sweat, group called said at a State and Tears, I reception: didnt just wear this by accident, pointing to a large peace symbol on his purple sweatshirt. I wore it because I believe in it. The group doesnt stand for the things Mr. Nixon is doing. . . .Ive traveled the country. . .Ive seen hatred and racism, and Ill tell that no matter where I go. Three guesses as to what our State Department did after Mr. Clayton-Thoma- s promised to denounce the United States world-widThey lifted his visa and informed him he would no Department e: longer be welcome here? Or maybe rebutted his statements or slapped his wrists? No. Our State Department, same old traitors as always, gave and the Clayton-Thoma- s rock group $40,000 to tour three Communist countries. They are acting as youth-administratio- annual jail program for all fathers who refuse to support their dependent children or the dependent children of the woman they are currently shacked up with. of our State You should not Department. be too surprised that the rock group is against the United States. So is our State Department. But dont get upset. Only 12 of the State security risks Department named by Senator Joseph McCarthy are still there! representatives Going broke? Cant pay your bills? Cant meet your payrolls? Merge with Lockheed or Penn Central Railroad and let the taxpayers keep you up! The average paychecks should pay of the be d. Wonder whatever happened to the six young Negroes held in New York for plotting to kill one policeman every week, in brutal fashion, to spark violent reaction from the police and Negro community? Five of them were seized in a raid on their Harlem apartment where police found two bombs, home-mad- e gunpowder, two rifles and a pistol. The sixth was arrested at his apartment. All were charged with conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to burglarize a state armory, conspiracy check-cashin- g to rob a establishment and possession of explosives with intent to use them. So what? Doubtless all the six had to do was to get the American Civil Liberties Union to furnish them a lawyer and if the case can be taken to the Court, the plotters will probably go free. The Supreme Court has ruled in the case of a group of Communists plotting to caught overthrow the United States government, that it is all right to plot to overthrow our government, can it be wrong to merely plot to murder a few policemen? Possibly the most serious ' plotting being done to overthrow our constitutional republic has been done not by the red-le- d rioters, but by the Supreme Court itself. Are the plotters any sicker The than the court? American Way Features Supreme n ed job, along with a guaranteed approximately three million federal employees is only $10,200 a year. Getting your moneys worth? Most of their gift-wrappe- red-hande- d - formidable candidate for President of the United States. In short, they fear him. So they have set out to destroy him by false innuendo and contrived implications. And they do this in the full knowledge that what they are doing is dishonest and unfair. They cannot defeat Ronald Reagan with truth, so they grasp for falsehoods. Surely the American public will reject this sort of tactics. Yet this is the sort of thing that the leftwing news media They will participate with enthusiasm in the destruction, if they can pounce upon. Pige 3 manage it, of an honest man simply because they disagree a - four The UTAH INDEPENDENT with him. Ronald Reagan will survive it, because he is a bigger man than the political pygmies who hurl their poisoned darts at him. But can the leftwing news media survive their own degrading conduct? . That is the question. Public confidence in the news media has been falling rapidly. A few more episodes like this one, and the media will hit rock bottom. Which, unless they change, is precisely where they The American Way belong. Features - Expert on USSR Defense Warns of SALT Dangers Dr. Stefan Possony, a highly regarded Soviet uefense analyst now with the Hoover Institution in Palo Alto, Calif., provided Human Events with his own views on the Presidents recent maneuverings in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. Possonys verdict coincides with our own: The Administration is playing an extremely dangerous game of Russian roulette which could cost the United States dearly. For the past three years, says Possony, the Soviets have been striving for global military superiority while simultaneously inducing the United States to emasculate its own military might. The Kremlin performs this magicians trick, as Possony calls it, by negotiating with Washington about strategic arms. There should be no mystery in this Soviet ploy, says Possony. has been the Arm the proletariat, disarm the bourgeoisie Lenin invented the Kremlins definition of disarmament since SO seem does to What Possony is mystifying years ago. strategy learn this have seemed to never that American politicians elementary fact of Communist gamesmanship. President Nixons hint that things are improving because once again the two superpowers have agreed to negotiate indicates only one thing to Dr. Possony: The Republican Administration has resigned itself to accept decisive Soviet superiority. The President announced that we would talk again about what we were talking about before. But his statement, according to Possony, also contained these ominous implications: (1) that we were willing to scrap our own ABM program (or radically scale it down to ineffective proportions) and (2) that for the duration of the talks the USSR would not be forbidden to enlarge its ICBM and ABM deployment. In brief, says Possony, the longer the talks last, the stronger, obviously, the USSR will get. Indeed, as the talks have stretched out, we are continuing to discover dramatic new deployment of Soviet missiies, both defensive and offensive. By the end of the current Nixon Administration, or at the latest by 1974, the USSR will possess a crushing long range missile superiority. Our seeming unwillingness to even hint that we should check medium-rang- e strategic force suggests to the Soviet MRBM-1RBDr. Possony that even before the U.S. is put on the auction block, we are willing to relinquish to the USSR strategic control over Europe and the Far East. Dr. Possony notes that the Washington rumor mill also alleges the President is persuaded that in the present political climate the American defense problem cannot be solved and that, therefore, an agreement on arms limitation is our best course of action. If this assessment of American paralysis were correct, says Possony, the Kremlin would be in a position to achieve its strategic goal regardless of American attempts at diplomatic maneuvering. An arms limitation agreement, moreover, woud deprive the United States of the last vestiges of its strategic freedom of action. Concludes Possony: The Administration has not taken any serious steps to inform the country about the deadly peril in which the United States finds itself. The Presidents announcement on SALT has only added to the misinformation which has been befuddling the American people, and it has compounded Mr. Nixons future problems. It was a mistake for the President to beat the drums for SALT, and to put his own prestige on the line. It was a mistake tp convey the impression that a sensational breakthrough is in the offing and that it would enhance U.S. security. It was a mistake not to couple the announcement with a statement on the true U.S. strategic position. Finally, it was a mistake not to explain Soviet intentions on the basis of the Brezhnev statement. Survival without leadership is impossible. Such leadership is three parts psychological and one part political and administrative performance. The Administration simply is unaware of the fact that it leadership is lacking the necessary psychological ingredients and that whenever it tries its hand at persuasion, it tactics. indulges in a musical ear are deaf to music. Similarly, Persons without the morale aspects of strategy cannot be explained to leaders who lack psychological understanding. Failure in psychology has been the root cause of the debacles which the Republicans have suffered repeatedly during the past two generations. And like the and unwilling Bourbons, the Republican elite appears unable Human Events to learn from its mistakes. . M self-defeati- ng - -- |