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Show Thursday. January 17. 1980. THE HERALD. Provo, Utah—Page 35 Second Opinions An extra page of commentary, analysis and cartoons on current issues and events ALK Washington Entering Golden Age By JEFF MAPES lerald Wi ton Bureau WASHINGTON — Never mind that everyone from the president on down criticizes Washington. For this city is entering a Golden Age. The District of Columbia and the surrounding metropolitan area has entered a period of unrivaled prosperity and excitemeat — ironically at the same time so many Americans are assigning ‘‘Washington’’ the blame for high taxes and skyrocketing inflation. Ever since Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Dealers cameto town in 1933 and created big government, the cliche has been that Washingtonhad finally its image as just another sleepy Southern town that just happened to be the nation’s capital. Butin truth it has only been in the past decade that Washington has comeclose to what many of its citizens aspire it to be: a bustling center of politics, culture and leadership on the scale of great Europeancities. Washington has the feel of a Sunbelt boom town like San Jose or Houston. Unlike most Eastern cities, so many people are moving here thatreal estates prices are among the highest in the country. Urban sprawl has gobbled up three more previously Tural counties in the last decade and is stretching all the way to Baltimore,45 milesto the north. Downtown,office spaceis at a premium (even though more than 3 million square feet of office has been built in each of the past four years) as former residential or low-density commercial areas are being filled with new office buildings. Across the PtoomacRiver, the Virginia suburb of lyn is filled with skyscrapers kept out of D.C.by a 12-story heightlimit. Thecity's cultural life is now rivaled by only a few cities and surpassed only by New York. The aggressive SmithsonianInstitute, once the keeper of a few musty museums,in the past 15 ears has built no less than four uge top-flight museums — all offering free admission thanks to Uncle Sam's annual contribution of about $100 million. The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which boasts five separate theaters, attracts the nation’s top ballet, symphony and theater productions. And Joseph Papp, the New York amendmentto give Washington ETTA Fotr worm STAR-TELEGRAM N.E.Q. 79 full representation in Congress. HULME «THEN WE FINISH UP OUR TOUR WITH A VISIT TO THE CURRENTLY “IN" SPOT IN WASHINGTON, WHERE IM SURE YOU'LL ENJOY THE ANTICS OF THE INHABITANTS... GREAT! WE GET To SEE THE Z00 / ACTUALLY, T'¢ THE SUPREME COURT... Of course. the summer weather is still miserable, the city government remains on the whole marvelously inefficient (and expensive; for instance. the restaurant tax is 8 percent), and the closest baseball team is in Baltimore. But some things are beyond the reach of mortals. Thecity is entering this Golden Age for the simple reason that the federal government con- tinues to generate new jobs at a prodigiousrate. Ci and the country may be talking conser- vative, but the Great Society bureaucracies, the militarydefense structure and even the New Deai agencies of the 1930s have become entrenched and paret cease to find ways to ex- pand. Eachnew problem the country has faced seems inevitably to lead to a new bureaucracy. Awareness of pollution led to creation of the Environmental Protection Agency; the energy crisis brought with it the rtmentof Energy. Following closely behind wasa slew of lobbyists looking vut for the suddenly endangered interests of their clients. Nicholas Lemann recounts in Washington Monthly thestory of an accounting firm that came to town to interpretthe increasingly complex tax code for their clients, Pretty soon things became so tangled that the governmenthired the accounting firm to explain the whole subject to the government. producer famous for presenting free Shakespeare in Central Park, is now trying to establish a national theater company that would alternate between Washington and New York. Asoneofthecities devastated by the 1960s, race riots, much of downtown Washington wasleft scarred by abandoned buildings, high crime and a sense of decline. Now the newspapers are filled with stories about the renovation of yet another D.C. slum into an expensive neighborhood. Nowherehas the trend of young affluent whites moving back into the city been stronger than in D.C. Violent crime has decreased, and the major problem is many poor blacks are being pushed out Kevin P. Phillips of city neighborhoods and into neighboring Prince George's County in Maryland. Evenretail trade in the downtown area increasedlast year, a surprising trend considering the number of shopping malls that have been built outside the city. Retailers say Washington's new subway system — called Metro — hasplayed a major role in bringing shoppers back downtown. Although modeled on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, Metro actually works efficiently and has avoided most of the mechanical and labor problems plaguing BART. Of course the subway has not beenable to avoid BART's other problem, financing, but Presi- dent Carter recently signed a $1.7 billion bill to help finish the 101mile system — contingent on the States of Virginia and Maryland agreeingto find a stable financial source of money to operate the system. Thebill passed Congress over the objections of such members as Sen. Thmas Eagleton (DMo.), who complained: that federal taxpayers are paying for a gold-plated mass transit system when somecities in his state are having trouble buying new buses. Perhaps thebest place to view Washington's affluence is in Georgetown, which has long sheltered the city's elite. The quarter's trendy shopping dis- trict along Wisconsin Avenue is virtually busting at the seams with new boutiques and restaurants crowding into former townhouses. At the same time, there are no fewer than three large bullaings being renovated or built to house yet morerestaurants and shops. This is not to say that poverty has disappeared from Washington—far from it. But blacks, who have had‘ to bear most of the brunt of the city's crime and poverty, at least finally have a voice in running the District. Congress previously directly ran the city, but now there is home rule that has produced a black mayor and police chief. The 50 states are even considering a constitutional Of course, Congress itself has expanded to keep aneyeonitall. Its own budget has more than tripled since 1970 and 38,000 ple now work for the 535 lawmakers on Capitol Hill. The truth is that big govern- menthas somefriends in surprising places. For instance, the trucking industry is fighting tooth and nail to prevent deregulation of the industry, which would end the practice of having the Interstate Commerce Commission set standardized rates. It is much cheaper for the trucking industry to pay a battalion of lawyers to make sure ICC rates stay high enough to be profitable than to fight price wars all across the country. And where do these high priced lawyers live and spend their money? Washington, of course. The Herald in Washington Carter Shows - Foe Remembers Meany Fondly His Naivete WASHINGTON — The Soviet Union’s move into Afghanistan “thas made a more dramatic change in my opinion of what the Soviets’ ultimate goals are than anything they've done in the previous time T've been in office.” So said the resident of the United States in a Bee. 31 interview with ABC News. Unfortunatley, this statement reflects more on the acuity of Mr. Carter's previous geopolitical perceptions than on any inconsistency of ultimate Soviet goals in the general area of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. For nigh on three centuries, Russia's objectives have been all too clear. Czar Peter the Great wrote in the early 18th century that his successor should aim southward to Constantinople and India, for ‘whoever governsthere will be true sovereign of the world." At the time of Czar Peter's death, Imperial Russian power wasstill remote from such goals, but the 19th century saw Moscovite armies move steadily southward, forcing Iran to relinquish Georgia and otherterritories south of the Caucasus (mountains). In 1878, the Turkish provinces of Batum, Kara and Ardahanfell to Russia. Afghanistan, in turn, first cameunder pressure in 1885, when Russia, having conquered the enor- mous land mass between the Caspian Sea and the foothills of the Hindu Kush, finally drew upits Cossacks along the Afghan border Whatever delusions about Russian ambitions former peanut warehouseman Jimmy Carter might cherish a century later. Abdur Rahman, amir of Afghanistan in the last yearsof the 19th century, had none. His cynical judgment. as set forth by a biographer. wasthis “The Russians would be glad if Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan ceased to exist as kingdoms but were maintained merely to be used as tools in the service of Russia herself.” Prophetic words, and the amir also caused to be reproducedin his biography this morevivid late 19th century verse by England's Sir Alfred Lyall: “The Afghanis but grist on their mill And the waters are moving it fast Let the stone be the upper or nether, It grinds him to powderatlast But the kingdoms of Islam are crumbling And round mea voice ever rings Of death and the doom of my country. Shall I be the last of its kings?’ the-end scenein the movie "“Kim"— based on Rudyard Kipling's storyof that name — when Errol Flynn (who else?) threw out the Russian surveyors nosing around near the strategic Khyber Pass? But perhaps Mr. Carter doesn't watch movies (any more than he apparently reads South Asianpolitical history). Russian ambition is national. nut ideological. A half century ago. Russia's new communist regime madeit clear that the Soviets were picking up wherethe czarsleft off Negotiating with Germanyin 1939 as a prelude to the Stalin-Hitler Pact. V.M. Molotov, then chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, emphasized Moscow's condition that “the area south of Batum and Bakuin the generaldirection of the Persian Gulf should be recognized as the main area of Soviet aspirations."’ In 1945, Russia acutally seized the Iranian province of Azerbaijan, retreating only on the order of the United Nations Security Council NowMoscowis once again overtly pursuing its ancient geographical goal, the dreamsof czar and commissaralike By LEE RODERICK Herald Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — Warclouds are on the horizon and a militant nation under satanic ruler is threatening world peace. The responseis a labor boycottof that country andthe creationofa fundto jtelp thosefleeingit. This may soundlike the current world crisis, but the year was 1933 and the country Germany. Within months of Adolph Hitler’s rise to poner: a 39-year-old New York labor leader named George Meany instinctively saw the danger and spearheaded the boycott. Nearly a half century has passed and Germany has been replaced by the Soviet Union as the biggest threat to world peace. Most of the principal actors on the world stage of 1933 have long since died. Eight U.S. presidents have served since then andfive are in their graves. And now George Meany, himself, hasleft the world over whichhe cast an enormous shadow for muchofhis 85 years. Meany is gone but his legacylives on: Evenas he died the other day after a long illness, American labor, synonymous with his name, again was refusing to do business with an outlaw nation. Many critics — including this writer — have taken issue with Meanyandother labor leaders over their attempts to force unwilling workers into unions or to ram unwarranted demands down the throats of business and consumers at ae Yet Meany, while fightingfiercely and usually with devastating effectiveness for working men and women, had another side characteristic of great figures in history. He was firmly committed to freedom in a large sense, and often risked his personal future and that of his movementto uphold that principle. After Alexander Solzhenitsyn was exiled from Russia and took up temBokaty residence in Switzerland, it was Meany whopersonally asked the Russian dissident to come to America andtell our people the lessons he had learned. A year later Solzhenitsyn took Meany and the AFL-CIO up onthe offer. Solzhenitsyn, speaking in several U.S. cities, electrified Americans with his message of the awful decline of the West — morally, militarily, spiritually — and the urgent need for a new sense of purpose to confront Russia. But those were the heady days of detente and Solzhenitsyn's words did not go down well at the State Department or the White House, then occupied by Gerald Ford Under the apparent urging of Henry Kissinger, the architect of detente, Ford refused to host Solzhenitsyn or attend his dinner in Washington. It might offend the Kremlin. Notably, when Ford left office, he remarked that one of his biggest Tegrest was that he had snubbed Solzhenitsyn. Meany’s foresight had proved correct again. There were other high-water marks in Meany’s role as a super atriot. In 1940, while Secretaryreasurer of the AFL, he represented labor on the War Labor Board. The purpose was to have no strikes and to keep labor and managementworking harmoniously during the war years. And that they did. Also during World War II Meany provided support to labor leaders in lierated countries. More recently he developed a wide-ranging international affairs organization within the labor movementto train labor leaders around the world, especially in the developing countries oa Africa, Asia and Latin America. Meany, a Bronx-born Irishman who started his labor career as a journeyman plumber, had aninnate senseof the needs and dreamsofthe little man. He puted official Washington to make special provision forillegalaliens in the U.S. — no doubt in part to swell labor's ranks — and wasa leading voice in urging admission of refugees from Southeast Asia, including the boat people. Lane Kirkland, Meany's long-time associate and hand-picked successor as president of the AFL-CIO,said uponhis death that‘Behindthe iron curtain andinall countries ruled by dictators, George Meany was hated by the oppressors because he was a beacoi: of hope for the oppressed “He was their spokesman, too — sounding a message of freedom, of free men and women living their lives as they wished.”’ Meany not only was personally dedicated to fighting oppression, but he also helped immenselyto put the lie to one of the mostbasic tenetsof Marxism: that capitalism will fall like an overripe fruit as the working class is"exploited to the point of rebellion. Meany rebelled all right, but he did so not in the streets witha gun but across countless labor management bargaining tables. Byraising (ie !o! of the workinj man and wouan ia America, an helping to du so in manyother countries, Meany proved that managementdoesn't have to break the back of labor to succeed. Meany will be missed in many ways. We won't seehis likes again soon. |