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Show Page 62—THE HERALD, Provo, Utah. Sunday, November8. 1981 Opinions \ AKE TWAT/- Ano TWAT. The Herald, its readers, syndicated columnists and cartoonists discuss vital issues fs The Herald Comments How About24 Hoursfor Voting? \ ie OnrPeve: e—— 7 tors ccoBerets— Feedback Reagan Cuts Help Americans Editor, Herald: I was shocked by the shortsightedness and partiality of Lou Cottin’s outrageous Nov. | editorial, “Taking From The Poor.’’ This viewpoint of President Reagan’s policies showslittle or no concern for the people who will be living a few years from now. No, President Reagan will not “try any nastytrick to take from the poor andgivetothe rich.” Heis concerned with the future of ournation, as evidenced by his unfaltering efforts to keep our governmentfrom being overcome by financial disaster, Herealizes that this can be done only by reducing spending (or the acceleration of spending) to levels that are at least close to total revenuelevels. It is easiest for the government to reduce spending in school lunch programs and Social Security because our governmentis not designed to efficiently control extensive social welfare projects. Although it may seem horrifying that ‘‘we will be forced to go to our grown sons and daughters for financial assistance,” that is the method of support for senior citizens that has provenitself to be superior to mostothers. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for example, has a very effective welfare system that relies on the family This arrangement would not put independence of older people at stake - they are already totally dependent on the federal government (as demonstrated by the numerous “‘damnations’’ of our government that are heard when seniorcitizens are told that they will haveto live on a tighter budget) It is not practical to tax the oil companies because their extra profits go into research for badly needed new fuel developments for the future. This is a necessary job that can be done mosteffectively by the private sector of the U.S economy. I sincerely hope that all people who have read Cottin’s incredibly biased editorial will have the courage to look atall sides of an issue before lashing out at President Reagan, whois trying to improve the qualityoflife for everyone, now and in the future. Neal O. Shumway R-406 Deseret Towers Provo Drunk Drivers Make HerIIl Editor, Herald: I cannot be quiet any longer about drunk drivers. 1 am sick to my stomachbecause of the lax federal and state laws towards drunk drivers. A friend who was very excited about her upcoming marriage next weekwasin an autumobile accident with her fiance. A man ran a red light, hitting their car. My friend had cracked ribs, her fiance was taken to the hospital where he died within hours. I for one am sick of drunks being treated with the idea that “Well they didn’t mean to.” I am sick of as tough on drunksasthey should? We keep hearing how ourelected officials want airbags installed in automobiles at the cost of as much as $800 per car. This will save lives I'm sure. Yet, the biggest problem, the biggest cause of accidents are drunk drivers. Why are we always so willing to spend millions of dollars on the symptom rather than the cause? I don’t hear any congres- smen saying anything about cleaning up the drunk driving problem. Look how much moneythat would Save, noi to mentionlives. I am sure it is because moneytalks. There is big moneyin booze. When the drunks sober up, they should be madeto go tothe hospital everydayandlook at those theyput there. They should be madeto work the rest of their lives paying the hospital bills and helping people that the innocent havingto paywith their lives. I am sick of drunk driversgetting away with murder on the highways.I am sick of the apathyof all of us towards drunkdrivers. We need to change a fewthings Let's start with the newspaper. Newsitems on drug busts, nuclear protests, strikes, ERA, etc. are always front-page items. An acci- dent involving a drunk driver seldom is. That news is put on a back page, once, and never mentioned again Why not put those stories on the front page. Follow up with pictures of the maimed and “murdered” victims. Tell howthe drunk gotoff with his hands slapped. Tell what kind of future the maimed have because of a drunk Areourlawsreallythat lenientor aren't our judges and courts being have been maimed bydrunk drivers. Alcoholismis called a ‘‘disease.”” A real disease is something you get over which you have nocontrol- not something you have started yourself So, Mr. Drunk, go to the hospital and tell the maimed children you aresorry, but you have a “disease.” Tell my friend whose fiance was killed, that you are sorry about your “disease.” I am sure theywill understand Pat Spencer 192 W. 205 N Orem community interest and impor that spirit. The Daily Herald welcomes letters to “Feedback on any subject of broad community interest Letters should be typewritten, double spaced annot exceed 400 words about @ page and a half of typewritten. desble: spaced copy Thelength limit will be en: forced strictly Without exception, every letter must be signed in ink with the writer's full name. home address and phone number Phone numbers won't be published Names can be withheld for good reason, butonly after personal consultation with the editor. ‘The Herald will not accept or publish letters which are duplicated photocopied. or which otherwise give the Professional news people could not be expected to ignorethe storycf an incumbent president conceding his overwhelming rejection bythe electorate. But the President would not have found it necessary to make that concession statement had it not been for early network projections of his defeat which were basedontallies from areas of the nation where the polls already had closed and from “‘exit interviews”’ with voters leaving voting booths in areas wherepollsstill were open. tion results until West Coast Polls had closed.Those proposals amounted to an uncounStitutional prior restraint on the press Otehr proposals called for setting up poll times so all poils closed at the same time. As originally proposed, those ideas were impractical and unfair, because the traditional, 12hourpolling periods would be convenient for East Coast voters and progressively more inconvenient for the Central, Mountain The 1980 election projections broughtforth a flurry of proposals for dealing with the problem, including some which amounted to violations of the free press guarantees of the First Amendment. Now from one of the greatest offenders in election projections comes one of the best ideas yet for a solution. Most proposals amounted to legislation forbidding news media announcements c! any elec- ine which attempt a persona ebate with a previous contributor rather than addressing issues. which repeat positions previously expressed by other contributors. or letters which are addressed to individvals or institutions other than the Herald Theeditor reserves the right to edit any letter to remove potentially libelous material, material in poor taste and to makeletters conformtothelength limit As nearly as possible. all letters which meet the above requirements will be Published in the order they are received although handwritten letters may be delayed for typing. and letters which ex ceed the length limst or otherwise violate the stated policy may be returned to the writers for correction or revision Thomas H. Wyman, president of Columbia Broadcasting System Inc., has come up with a workable proposal for uniform closing times for polling places. be released until after the universal poll closing time. This idea avoids any question of prior restraint on the news media and voter inconvenience. Congress should study the cost involved and produce some decision before network prognosticators have another opportunity to cross the line between reportage and participation. President's Happy With Haig vi ; “ WASHINGTON — The column cuss it. He said it was obviously the that was scheduled to appearNov. 3 handiwork of a top White House aide. who has been running a guerrilla campaign against him for nine months. The campaign to discredit him, said Haig, also involyed persons high in the Central Intelligence Agency and the Senate. ‘This damages myability to carryout the president's foreign policy,’ he declared. Hecalled it ‘‘sabotage of the president’ by someof his own people. “‘It is just mind boggling.”” said Haig Later, the president telephoned to say the column was wrong. ‘I am very pleased with Al Haig and what he has done,” Reagan assured me. in this space reached the White House in advance and stimulated some urgent telephone calls from President Reagan and Secretaryof State Haig. The story behind the column is more intriguing, therefore, than the original report I had written that Alexander Haig was top man on the president's “disappointment list’’ and that he “reportedly has one foot on a bananapeel.”’ I had cited incidents that allegedly had caused the presideni to lose confidence in Haig’s judgment Haig was so disturbed over the columnthat he called twice to dis- “All that I have heardis that he has the confidenceof leaders around the world. We haven't had a secretary who was so well thought of in years." The president said he'd like to know ‘‘who is aying these things’’ against Haig but acknowledged amiably, ‘I guess I am asking the impossible.” Yes, the identity of sourcesis one thing a reporter can’t tell even the president. Reagan reviewed with me the in- cidents I had reported in the column. I had cited, for example, Haig’s handling of Menachem Begin during the Israeli leader’s recent US. visit According to my sources, Haig had favored placating Begin and had promised that the Israeli leader, in return, would not lobby against the U.S. sale of AWACSradarplanes to Saudi Arabia, Begin, nevertheless, had spoken out against the sale. Reagan said the promise not to lobby came from Begin himself, not second-hand from Haig ‘‘Menachem told me he would not lobby against the AWACSsale,” said the presicent “T got upset,” he admitted, ‘‘when I got reports from the Hill that Begin had spoken against the AWACSsale. But Menachem said, no, he had just answered questions but had not gone out of his way to deliberately lobby. I accepted that and believedit.” Congressional Quarterly Mideast Military Buildup in Trouble By PAT TOWELL Congressional Quarterly WASHINGTON, D.C. — It would be hard to imagine a partof the world that presents more obstacles to U.S. military intervention than the Persian Gulf The region is almostexactlyhalf a world away fromthe United States. but contiguous with the Soviet Union Mostof thelikely U.S. alliesin the area are small. militarily weak and politically wary of becoming too visibly associated with Washington Butlike the Carter administration before it, the Reagan team has decided such problems simply must be overcome, because of the overriding U.S. interest in the region’s oil — which is important to the United States but vital to its European allies and to Japan Following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. the Carter administration adopted a four-part program to beef up US. Gulf Perhaps surprisingly, in light of the potential magnitude of U.S. involvement, there tias been no substantial challenge or questioning on Capitol hill of the basic idea of broadening U.S. military options in the Persian Gulf. But key programs designed to carry out this policy have been stalled by budget problems and by disagreements among the Armed Services and Appropriations com- mittees and the Pentagon about some technical aspects of the program. Theplanned upgrading of bases in the region — mostof which will remain under the control of the host country — has met a hurdle in the House, where the Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction cut by nearly 40 percent the Q power in the Persian Gulf, the in: dian Ocean and the east coast of Africa The Navy added a second carrier task force to the one stationed in the Indian Ocean after The Pentagon planned new fleets of transport planes and ships to ferry more U.S. ground units and their equipment into the region quickly and to speed delivery of reinforcements for thefirst units. — A Rapid Deployment Force RDF) headquarte:s was es tablished with first call on more than 100,000 ground troops and other units from the four services. The RDFalso has a mandate to plan US. military options in the Persiaw state in days to retrieve its equip- ment from the ships. STEN 18 snes ROCKY MTNEWS In 1980, the Pentagon announced plans to replace most of those ships with larger ones built — or extensively modified — for the “prepositioning” mission. The planned ships (called T-AKXs) would be built to let tanks andtrucksdriveoff the ships onto reguiar wharves or ontofloating causewaysleading to a beach, in case no port were available. The Pentagon plans to ac- quire 12 ships, enough to support 50,000 Marines The congressional defense panels approved the general prepositioning concept. But the House Appropriations Committee insisted that the Navy put more money into converting existing ships. And to save funds. Reagan later canceled the request for one new T-AKX and conversion of two existing ships Instead, pre-positioning ships would be chartered The Pentagon also plans to buy from the Sea-Land Corp. eight highspeed cargo vi i that are to be modified so that tanks and trucks could be driven on and off, allowing the ships to be loaded in 48 hours and unloadedin 24 hours cluding 122 tanks and182 helicopters — to the Persian Gulf in about three weeks, Congressional committees ap- ground and air units that would be sent to the area in case of an emergency. agreements were sought for US. access to military facilities in the region that wouldre. main under the control of the host governments fiscal 1982 request for $541 million for RDF-related construction. On Sept. 16, the House approved the cuts. Somecuts reflected concern that U.S. rights to use the facilities were not sufficientlyfirm; others, a judgment that there was unnecessary redundancy among the various facilities. Fundamental, however, was the subcommittee’s unhappiness that U.S. allies were not sharing the cost of U.S. projects that would defend the allies’ oil supplies Under a second facet of the RDF plan, tanks, vehicles and 15 days’ worth of supplies for a Marine brigade have been stored on ships anchoredat the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia. In a crisis, the brigade could be flown to a gulf ‘The Pentagon estimates the eight vessels could carry the equipment of a mechanizedinfantrydivision — in- thefall of the shah of Iran in early 1979. deployment, andto set the stage for appearance of being a mass mailing. let and Pacific Time Zones. He has revived the idea for a 24-hour voting day Under this plan, Election Day would be a national holiday. Polls would open at the same time everywhere — regardless of the local time — and would close 24 hours later Any voter could vote at any hour during that 24 hours, and network prognosticators wonld have to base their reports solely on exit interviews because no returns could Jack Anderson - To support the increased Navy AboutLetter “Feedback” is intended to provide Daily Herald readers with an open for It’s a basic rule of journalism that the reporter or news medium onlyshould report events, not become part of them But the tremendous advances in computer technology have blurred the line betweeen reporting, and involvement in covering national elections. Network television projections of Ronald Reagan as the overwhelming winner over then President Jimmy Carter in 1980 prompted the defeated president to concede the race hours before polls closed on the West Coast. As a result some Democratic congressmen, as well as state and local candidates, contended they were pulled to defeat with Carter because Democratic voters saw no point in going to the polls after their presidential standard bearer had conceded. proved procurement ot the ships, for 4... AND IN THE MOST (SHOCKING DEVELOPMENT | AYET IN THE TENSION- FILLED MIDEAST, | NoBODY ATTACKED ANYBODY TODAY! about $35 million each But the Pentagon and the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee have disagreed about the proposed modifications The most controversial aspect of the whole RDFprogramhas been the plan to enlargethe fleet of intercontinental transport planes with bodies wide enoughto carry tanks and other verylarge pieces of Army equipment The Air Forceinsists it would consider building a new model of the ex- isting C-5A, but strongly favors building a new, smaller plane, called CX, which could be flown into smallerairfields than the ©-5A |