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Show t ly (yii-- t Joseph Kraft Severe Jitters Grip Americans Field Newspaper Sjndicates America has suddenly been seized by a case of the jitters. The country' is panicky about gasoline, worried about the economy and edgy over the SALT II agreement with Russia. But the explanation fur this tremor in public opinion is obscure. Nobody, including the president, can do much except w ait for a change in mood. California, which shows the way in most matters of national mood, set in motion the great gas rush. Employment there has grown especially among women driving a second family car. So there was more demand for a supply of gasoline that is down slightly from last year, largely because of events in Iran. Still the shortage could have been managed easily, except that word got out in exaggerated form. Motorists by the thousands began lining up to top off tanks that were nearly full. Each little act of hoarding made an indent for the next. Excited stones were generated on television and in the papers, and the rush was on first there, and then across the country. Trap for Republicans It found the Congress wrestling with an administration plan for standby gasoline rationing. That plan had originally been demanded by a Democratic Congress as a kind of trap for the last Republican president. mood in full Gerald Ford. But with the me-firspate, what had started as a political game became hard ball. In the Senate, where states count more than st The Public Forum Tribune Readers Opinions DayV Best Lauh Ive come to the conclusion that the best comedies on television are aired at approximately 6:15 p.m. and 10.15 p.m. These time slots border both ends of weekday prime-tim- e viewing, and last only for a few moments. They are short segments about weather that are laced into the Salt Lake local news. The weathermen like to proclaim themselves as being meteorologists. Its difficult for them to predict the weather correctly from day to day. Yet they keep putting their feet in their outlook. One of mouths by laying out a five-da- y these meteorologists considers himself such an expert on the weather that he has written a book about it. He has applied his own terminology to certain weather patterns, such as the Williams Wave, the Lake Effect, the Omega Block, the Hatuic-- Winds, and the Arctic Plunge. If the prognosticating came true more often than it does, then these programs may become as interesting as their terminology. But until then, they will serve us a good laugh, which is what we need after reading the daily television schedule. JOHN BARTON Draper , ? ' Would Be Respite Font m Kuls Public Forum letters must be submitted exclusively to The Tribune and bear writers lull name, signature and address. Names must he printed on political letters but may be withheld for good reasons on others. Writers are limited to one letter every 10 days. Preference will be given to short, typewritten double spaced i letters permitting use of the writer's true name. All letters are subject to condensation. Mail to the Public Forum, The Salt Lake Tribune, Box 867, Salt Lake City, Utah. Ml 10. i 1 I place the newly discovered funds in an escrow account and apply them to a methodic reduction of taxes in the upcoming collection. This measure would afford the taxpayers of this community a brief respite from a spiraling tax burden. Considering the loss of credibility the commission form of city government as well as individuals of that body have suffered of late, this action might serve to restore a small measure of the publics confidence in City Hall. RICHARD M. ARNBERG, II 1 i Cant Fight Equivalent Jimmy Carter and his very inept band of merry men are waging "the equivalent of a So moral war against inflation and the oil crisis. Too bad were not fighting a real war when you look back and consider the United States entered and then helped win World War II in only four years. Its been five years since the 1974 Arab oil embargo. The government knew then that crude oil was in short supply, that demand was increasing for that oil, and that one of these days there just wont be any oil left to be found anywhere for . . . anyone. And of ct j ce oil and inflation go hand in hook because prices have to go up as long as the value of the dollar continues to decline and the value of the dollar will continue to decline as long as this country keeps flooding the world market with bogus bucks it prints up to pay for the oil it importants. It puzzles me greatly to think of the countless billions of dollars, time, technology and ingenuity along with all the other resources this country uses to assure us that if there ever is another real war, or if you prefer, another our nation has the capabilities to World War cinder turn this planet into a lifeless, burnt-oand quite possibly bring about the end of the human race altogether. Yet more puzzling still is the fact that the before mentioned resources are apparently unobtainable to fight the equivalent of a moral war. Think about it. JAMES R. CLENDENUN i s ut Cant Trnl Two was stunned by your editorial of April 27. "Nuclear Hearings ut las Vegas Help Restore Proper Balance." You are contemptuous of "late blooming nuclear testing of critics of the above-grounthe early 1950s which you say wet widely supported by residents of the affected area at the time. But as one southern Utahn after another testified, it became clear that the only reason they supported the testing was that they were lied to about the potential health hazards by officials who knew better. Reports by AEC scientists which pointed out the dangers in the testing program were suppressed by agency tops. Health officials investigating the thousands of sheep deaths told the ranchers their flocks had died of malnutrition and covered up the real cause of death in order to I d 1 3 i 'i 1 j Double-Edge- Fear d Similar games are being played with respect to the two different kinds of fear about the economy. There is a fear of inflation, causing some consumers and business men to buy now rather than pay more later. There is fear of recession, winch grow s blai ker the longer the inflation-buyingoes on. Policymakers have responded with a curious reversal of roles. The great risk for the is more inflation. So the administration president's economic advisers, contrary to their usual habit, now urge the Federal Reserve Board to raise interest rates The great risk for the Fed is that it will precipitate a recession. So chairman William Miller, contrary to the usual pattern, is hikes. Which hanging back on interest-ratonly confuses the public further. Opponents Force Issue Uneasiness over the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty finds its most striking sign in the administrations decision to announce agreement with Russia before the final details were settled. The headstart was deemed necessary because opponents of the treaty were dominating the prospective debate with two scare charges. One charge was that the treaty would tie U.S. hands in defense, and yield strategic superiority to Russia. The other was that a deterioration in monitoring capability had made it impossible to verify whether the Russians were living up to the terms of the treaty. ,Good answers to both charges are at hand Actually, the treaty affords scope for this: country to expand its military capacity well beyond anything the Congress is likely to approve. Moreover, without the treaty and its agreed levels, and rules against cheating, and procedures for adjudicating grievances, monitoring Soviet behavior would become all the more difficult. But the administration was not content to leave matters there. The president has launched a horror story of his own, a claim that Senate rejection of the treaty would cast those who voted against it as warmongers in the eyes of the world. That claim, surely exaggerated, fairly demands that opponents put tire monkey on the presidents back by throwing up amendments to the treaty which seem fair but g e push forward with nuclear development at any cost. If the Kennedy hearings are to be faulted, and I believe they are, they should be blamed for their failure to go further. The Kennedy the hearings were an attempt to cover-ucover-u- p of the 50s. A few officials were held up to public scorn. A defunct agency was criticized. The U.S. government was indicted without mentioning the fact that it is the Democratic and Republican parties to which Kennedy, Gam, and Hatch belong who ran the government beifore, during and after the 50s testing and run it to this day. It has never been clearer that working people and family farmers and ranchers like those in southern Utah cannot trust thc.c iwo parties to protect their health and safety or defend their interests against the giant energy trusts. If further nuclear disasters from either weapons or energy are to be prevented, the labor movement must take the lead in the movement. It must organize its own political party to lead this fight against this threat to human life, to win compensation for the victims of nuclear testing, and to force the energy corporations and nuclear agencies to open their books and files so the truth about what dangers exist can be known. Working people have no stake in nuclear power. Only a party of working people can effectively defend us p anti-nucle- ar PAM BURCHETT The discovery of $3.1 million lying dormant in the coffers of city government, as reported in The Tribune of May 9, prompts some very emotional concerns as to the eventual disposition of those funds. May I suggest to our mayor and commissioners they accept the established budget and population, the administration was forced to adjust its rationing plan to give preference to some of the wide-ope- n states with small populations whose citizens have immense distances to drive That preference struck the House, where the big cities w ith mass transportation systems are fully represented, as unjust So the plan was rejected. The president then challenged the Congress to come up with a plan of its own Which, of course, as it has just proved, it cannot do. Socialist Workers Party Candidate for Mayor of Salt Lake City could kill it. (Copyright) Attendance Restricted I read with amusement May 7s account of the high school senior who brought suit to have Title IX fully instituted in local high schools. According to the account, she will be spending next year at Bryn Mawr, an exclusive school in Philadelphia. If my information is correct, Bryn Mawr enrollment is restricted to women. I wonder if and if Sally considers this discrimination, so, whether it is important enough to merit investigation by the Title IX folks. Perhaps her. purpose in going to Bryn Mawr is to bring this injustice to the governments attention. JEFFRY L. STELNACKER Senator Soaper Spring doesn't. It daws its way up from winter, fighting to the death for every new bud and blade. Limitation is the sincerest form of mediocrity. Pocket calculators: the math of least resistance. the UFOs ever land, intelligent life on Earth? If California Gas Shortage? Love Affair With Auto Chicago CHICAGO In recent weeks, Ive been subjected to a steady stream of abase from residents of California. A column I wrote, expressing the sensible revolves around being mobile." When I read that, I smugly smirked. And I want any Californian who happens to read this to be aware of that: I smugly smirked. And I Hah, It serve you triumphantly said: Brown is Of course you depend on your cars. You love your cars. You fuss over your cars. There are Sun-Tim- view that Gov. Jerry a political moonbeam and that California is the worlds largest outdoor mental asylum appeared in five California newspapers. Since then, thousands of Californians they find have been taking time out from munching their granola and riding their surfboards to write me shrill letters. If the letters have a common theme, it would be something like this one, which came from an enraged Los Angeles creature : Hah! Who are you to talk about California? You live in Chicago, and Id rather live through an earthquake or a mudslide than live in the city. Your weather is foul vile, and your city is dirty . . . California is paradise, compared to ... blah, blah, blah. I don't want to turn this into a vendetta, but I can't resist taking note of the latest madness to occur in California and to gloat about why Chicago is, at this moment, a superior place to live. supporter, presented to the court a written motion to adjourn sine vile. The motion carried the signatures of 15 senators, saying that regardless of the testimony they would vote to acquit the governor, as they considered the impeachment proceedings illegal and unconstitutional. May 17, 1954 Utah and Salt Lake City will undergo a mock atomic attack June 14. Shrieking sirens, cessation of traffic and activities of Civil Defense units throughout the state will mark observance of a nationwide all-oalert designed to test response of citizens to conditions which would prevail under actual attack. Announcement of the plan was made in Salt Lake City Sunday by Col. Alvin Sessions, Utah Civil Defense Corps director. He had just C.D. conference in returned from a two-da- y Victoria, B.C., Canada, attended by representatives of the eight states comprising the Far Western Defense Association. ut niil." Fuss Over Cars more customized cars, sports cars, hot rod status-symbcars in California than anywhere else. A California lifestyle has evolved in which people drive great distances to their jobs, great distances back to their homes, great distances to play, great distances to buy a cheeseburger. They even have drive-i- n churches. Honk, if you love Jesus! For years, this country has been warned that the energy crunch is inevitable, that one of these days we wont be able to fill up the tank as often as we want, day, night or on weekends. And what was Californias reaction to these warnings? Did they sit down and make plans for a mass public transportation system? Did they tell their leaders that they want some insurance against the day the gas pumps go dry: An extensive bus network; maybe way to streetcars, which are energy-efficiemove people; commuter trains? Even Sillier VariatieM Not at all. Instead, they created even sillier variations of status vehicles expensive drive rigs. But did they want to get out of snow drifts, the only practical reason to own a drive? No, they use them to insanely race around the desert, chewing up the foliage and terrorizing rabbits and lizards. So there they are today, tanned, laid back, while getting stomach cramps over the nightmare of the needle sagging to empty. But here I am, sitting in my mean, sometimes freezing, always gritty city, and 1 am smugly smirking at the Californians. And why am I smirking? Because while you cant keep your granola down from worry, I face the crisis calmly. Maybe not with as good a tan, or with my surfboard in hand. But I can get to and from work without a car. Walk, Bus, Subway And it is easy beyond a Californian's dreams. A walk takes me to a bus. A ride on the bus takes me to the subway. And 20 minutes on the subway puts me in the Loop. As an option, I can walk 10 minutes and be at a city stop of one of the commuter trains that comes in from the suburbs. I can go all kinds of places without a car cars, and God-forsak- will The Way It Was Here are the briefs of The Salt Lake Tribune from 100, 50 and 25 years ago: May 17, 1879 Ice formed on Thursday CITY JOTTINGS night, but vegetation escaped damage. A soaking rain is one of the necessities of Zion at present. A new comice is being placed on St. Marys school building. Commercial Street, that fruitful source of fires, produced another small blaze yesterday. The Victor Drill is being used with great success in some of the Dry Canyon mines. May 17, 1929 BATON ROUGE, La. Without one word of testimony being taken, the Louisiana senate court of impeachment today released Governor Huey P. Long from charges of high crimes and misdemeanors. Just as the prosecution was ready to present its First witness, Senator Philip H. Gilbert, lawyer and planter of Napoleonviile and a Long Mike Kvok.lt If you have been reading the papers or watching TV, you will see that California is being swept by a wave of gas tank hysteria. Appear in Pajamas People are getting up at 3 a m. in order to get in line to top off their tanks. Some park their cars at gas stations the night before, then appear in their pajamas to await their turn at the pumps. So obsessed are they with keeping the needle on full that one man was shot in a dispute over a place in the gas tank line. And not surprisingly, their Gov. Moonbeam made a big fuss out of introducing an emergency gas rationing plan that got him national headlines, but will probably not reduce the consumption of gasoline by one drop. One man, who had spent half of his morning waiting in a line to top off his tank, told a reporter: I dont think people back East realize how important our cars are to us. We cannot function here without our cars. Everything we do, work, recreation, everything R.H.C. Surd nt four-whe- four-whe- el sun-kisse- d, five-minu- te including the vast Russ Super Weapons Using U.S. Parts Daily Telegraph, London nology supplied to the Soviets for civilian use The astonishing speed with which the Soviet Union was able to match Americas MIRV technology for packing several independently-guide- d warheads into a single nuclear missile was largely due to the commercial supply of key components by a U.S. firm. This was stated by Dr. MiJes Costick, president of the Institute on Strategic Trade, at a weekend conference at Leeds Castle, Kent, organized by the Foreign Affairs Research Institute. Soviet acquisition of the MIRV is ore of the main causes of Americas present dilemma over the SALT II nuclear weapons agreement. Combined with Soviet monopoly of super-heav- y missiles. It will give her the capability to knock out almost all of Americas missiles in a surprise attack by the early 1980s, Dr. Costick said. The Soviets heaviest missile, the RS18, is limited to 10 warheads in the treaty, although it could carry up to 40. America's missiles, which are much older and smaller, can, by contrast, carry only three warheads at most. Tnere can be no doubt that the Soviets have exacted a stiff price in the negotiations in return for accepting the limit, according to Dr. Cpstick. He gave several other examples of how Western machines, industrial plants and tech LONDON laud-base- d land-base- d are being exploited for crucial military purposes. Certainly several things went badly wrong in SALT I agreement of 1972, in which the the Americans allowed the Soviets a huge advantage in missiles and throw-weigh- t, on the assumption that it would take them 10 yearrs to master the over-confide- land-base- d MIRV. In fact, the Soviets were testing their first MIRVs a year later and deploying them in another three. They made equally startling progress in accuraev. Sale of Machine Tools One cause, according to Dr. Costick, was the supply by the Bryant Chucking Grinder Co. of Vermont of 164 precision grinding machines for producing ball bearings of 0.04 inch diameter with tolerances of less than one of an inch. This sale was approved by the Nixon administration at the peak of the detente euphoria, he said. What he is particularly worried about now is the supply of electronic devices intended for seismic oil exploration which can be converted for use as detectors. They are small array transform processors and enhance computer Fpeeds so that millions of tiny variations in sounds can be interpreted Dr. Costick said that 36 of these systems had been sold by the Geospace Corp. of Houston, twenty-five-million- Tex., to the Soviets and China. lie also mentioned Litton Industries as another firm involved in the sale of similar systems. He said he feared that if this went on Americas huge new Trident submarines would become vulnerable and prove a much worse Investment than a greater number of small submarines would have been. His catalogue of highly sensitive technology w hich the Soviets had got for commercial use and were exploiting militarily also included the follow ing Other Sales to Russians American jet aircraft teclmol ogy, useful for military transport aircraft and cruise missiles s The technology of the RB 211 ratio turbo fan jet engine, developed on U.S. government grants by Lockheed. The engine d powers jets and is suitable for e bombers. Integrated circuits from America for the most modem and only effective air traffic control center in Russia now being constructed at Moscows Ynukovov Airport. This computerized system has a direct military Dr. Costick also said that much of the billions in Western credits to the Soviet Union and her satellites is being used in various wajs for financing military research, development and production He rejects the widespread Western belief that an expanding network of economic will strengthen detente. wide-bodie- complex downtown. (Los Angeles no longer has a downtown because the car culture killed d high-bjpas- wide-bodie- long-rang- spill-ove- r. it). We can get to our baseball stadiums, our fooibctil stadium, our hospitals, churches, our favorite parks, and most importantly taverns, all without cars. And, all you surfboarders, eat your hearts over this: Chicagoans can even get to the beaches without cars. Could Survive Nicely The fact is. those who live in Chicago and the adjoining suburbs, could survive nicely with a limit on gas. Wed be inconvenienced, yes. But we wouldnt fall into a mass, collective trance, as much of California would. So think of that, the next time you write me about the superiority of your lifestyle. Think of lieing damned to a lifetime of sitting and staring at your backyard pool, wondering if Good Lord! does the pool maintenance man have enough gas to get to you? Well, maybe things will work. Who knows. Gov. Moonbeam might be working on a mass transit plan that will solve all your problems Knowing him, it would probably be rickshaws. I I I i solar-powere- d (Copyright) Orbiting Paragraph One of the first things a rookie cop learns is that a dishonest man can look him straight in the eye r i t ) r t |
