PACK I'OUR-A—Sapulpi (OU«.) Herald, Friday, July 11, 1M1
Sapulpa Herald
Notebook
Ed Livermore
Today s Almanac
WE DO NOT know whether President
Ronald Reagan's economic plan will
work for the U S. or not. We have hope
and faith it will. Time will tell.
BUT THE entire political tussel over
whether the Democrat or bipartisan
bill would prevail has a different set of
meanings to us. Namely, it may usher
in a new type of political leader; it may
mean a different type of public servant
will find appeal in the years ahead.
OI.D-FASHIONED courthouse
politics has ruled the roost since the
lBflOs That has been principally a
policy of party politics. In recent years
it has been primarily the Democratic
part} with the power But in previous
decades it was the GOP.
WE WONDER if this is not the
threshold of a new era of “people
politics?” There is little doubt
President Reagan's lobbying efforts
were directly effected by his pitch to
the home folks, and the home folks got
the message to congress
“PEOPLE POLITICS” has more
appeal than party politics. Party
politics has become repulsive to most
people not milking the udder for per-
sonal gain. Left standing alone these
days are the bureaucrats and door
polishers who still wave the flag of
party politics under the guise of “doing
something for the people.”
THE “PEOPLE” apparently have
had about all done for them they can
stomach. And this is the reason for new
interest in politics and governmental
affairs. Inflation, taxes, and crime are
subjects the family relates unto itself.
And this relationship is passed along to
anyone offering to serve.
OLD TIME politics suffered its worst
blow in congress Wednesday. It may
not be terminal. But whether it lasts for
a month, a year, or for the balance of
the Reagan administration and beyond,
the die has been cast. It IS possible for
the people to respond and orchestrate a
new direction for their government.
Bob Wagman
The Wagman File
Will the FEC
be gutted ?
WASHINGTON (NEA)-The Federal
Election Commission is coming under
increasing fire on Capitol Hill. This
attack is unlikely to kill the watchdog
agency, but may well render it largely
ineffective.
The FEC was established to regulate
the raising and spending of campaign
funds in the wake of the abuses of
Watergate era. Its chief function is to
enforce 1974 legislation that permits
individuals to contribute no more than
11,000 a year to a single federal cam-
paign and $25,000 a year to all federal
campaigns; an organization can
contribute no more than $5,000 annually
to a federal campaign.
• Ironically, the Republican Party—
supposedly the party of the wealthy—
has fared far better under these
limitations than has the Democratic
Party. In 1979-80, the GOP’s three
national fund-raising organizations
together took in more than $110 million;
all of that money came in small
donations and most of it was raised
through direct mail. The Democrats
raised only about $20 million during
that period.
Yet it is the Republicans who are
leading the backroom fight against the
FEC, despite their greater success at
coping with its fund-raising limitations.
The anti-FEC sentiment can be at-
tributed in part to the general antipathy
to regulation that is sweeping this city.
But it has also been inspired by the fear
among many conservative Republicans
that tough enforcement of campaign
laws may start to limit the flow of
political contributions, especially from
corporate political-action committees.
Some saw this threat in the recent
suit filed by the FEC against the
National Rifle Association. The FEC
has strict rules against the mingling of
funds by political action committees
and their sponsors. The suit charged
that some $37,000 in expenses incurred
in 1979-80 by the association were
“reimbursed” by its political-action
committee, The Political Victory Fund.
By making the NRA the target of this
test case, the FEC may have played
into the hands of the forces that seek to
weaken it The NRA is a potent political
force—especially among con-
servatives—and is hardly pleased
about the FEC action.
By United Press International
Today is Friday, July 31, the 212th
day of 1961 with 153 to follow.
The moon is new.
The morning stars are Mercury and
Mars.
The evening stars are Venus, Jupiter
and Saturn.
Those born on this date are under the
sign of I>eo.
American writer John Kent was bom
July 31, 1763.
On this date in history:
In 1792, Director David Rittenhouse
laid the cornerstone in Philadelphia for
the United States Mint, the first
building of the federal government.
Tn 1972. Missouri Sen. Thomas
Eagleton withdrew as Democratic vice-
presidential nominee, six days after
disclosing previous hospitalization and
psychiatric treatment
In 1973,88 people died in the crash of
a Delta Airlines plane in Boston. There
was one survivor but he died four
months later, making the final death
toll 89.
In 1974, John Ehrlichman was sen-
tenced to 20 months in prison for his
role in the breakin of the office of
Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist.
A thought for the day: American
writer Henry Thoreau said, “It takes
two to speak the truth; one to speak, the
other to hear."
Sapulpa Daily
HE^^LD
EdiloruU-Cominrnu-OlMrrvaiioni
Commentary
The politics of
polarization
Donald F. Graff
In Washington
Threat to
informed consent
Robert Walters
Obviously, the Republicans do not
want to be seen as doing away with the
agency charged with safeguarding the
punty ot election campaigning. So, they
are likely not to try to abolish the
agency but to strip it of many of its
regulatory and enforcement duties.
The Reagan administration is also
doing its part in the appointment of new
FEC commissioners.
The White House has nominated to
the commission Lee Ann Elliott, who
for 10 years was associate director of
AMPAC, the massive political-action
committee of the American Medical
Association. She held that position
during the period in the mid-1970s when
AMPAC became involved in a scandal
over Its financial practices and ties to
the pharmaceutical manufacturers.
The spotlight was turned on AMPAC
when a former AMA employee leaked
dozens of documents to journalists. The
source of the leak became popularly
known as“Sore Throat," a play on the
nickname of the famous Watergate
source.
Mrs. Elliott says that she will ad-
minister election law as it is written
during her tenure on the commission.
But she has also called for the
elimination of all contribution limits on
individuals and political-action com-
mittees as well as for the elimination of
many of the FEC’s enforcement duties.
Meanwhile, Democratic fund-raisers
as well as their Republican coun-
terparts are growing misty eyed over
the good old days when their requests
were rewarded not by a $1,000 check but
by a suitcase filled with unmarked bills
in small denominations. They
remember when a campaign could be
launched by a single wealthy con-
tributor wuch as General Motors heir
Stewart Mott. So, some Democrats will
also be seeking to raise or abolish
contribution limits.
This issue is likely to heat up as the
1982 campaign season draws nearer.
The betting is that a coalition of con-
servative Republicans and financially
strapped Democrats will succeed in
substantially modifying the work of the
commission. The probable result will
be an FEC that does little more than
keep records and regulate only the
most outrageous of fund-raising
abuses.
WASHINGTON (NEA)—The
Declaration of Independence promised
a government that derived its power
“from the consent of the governed.”
But that commitment cannot be
fulfilled if the people are not qualified to
provide informed consent
Informed consent requires
knowledge of the issues — yet much of
the requisite information is in the hands
of public officials, elected and ap-
pointed, who supposedly represent the
best interests of the citizenry.
In theory, those citizens ought to have
full access to all materials affecting
decisions made in their name. In
practice, it doesn’t quite work that way
— and that’s why a strong Freedom of
Information Act is so important.
Approved by Congress and signed
into law by President Johnson in 1966,
the FOIA was strengthened by
amendment in 1974 — but today it is in
danger of being gutted by a coalition of
politicians, bureaucrats and special-
interest groups uneasy about public
scrutiny of their work.
President Reagan has never
displayed any enthusiasm for full
disclosure. During the first six months
of his tenure, the White House has
quietly but effectively throttled the flow
of public information throughout the
government
Attorney General William French
Smith, in one of his first acts after
taking office, abolished the Justice
Department's procedural guidelines
requiring federal officials to justify
withholding information from the
public on the grounds that disclosure
would be “demonstrably harmful.”
Although Smith’s action probably
was more symbolic than substantive, it
sent a message throughout the
government:    The Reagan ad-
ministration is not particularly in-
terested in unfettered freedom of in-
formation and is encouraging
bureaucrats to resist requests sub-
mitted under provisions of the FOIA.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation
and the Central Intelligence Agency
have been campaigning for several
years in favor of restrictive amend-
ments to the law, possibly even
exempting those two agencies from all
FOIA requirements.
The FBI and CIA claim that their
work is hamstrung by the law, but
neither has ever been able to provide a
single convincing example of FOIA-
mandated disclosure that adversely
affected their lawful missions.
Moreover, the law already includes
exemptions that allow the FBI and CIA
to deny requests for information that
would harm “national defense or
foreign policy” or compromise “in-
vestigatory files compiled for law
enforcement purposes.”
Some of the nation's biggest cor-
porations and most powerful trade
associations are lobbying for restric-
tive amendments because they have
been embarrassed by disclosure of
information in government files about
their questionable practices.
(Ironically, the business community
has been by far the most prolific user of
the FOIA because government files
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contain vast amounts of otherwise
unobtainable data about competitors.)
Finally, too many federal employees
view the FOIA as a threat to their job
security because it requires disclosure
of materials documenting their
mistakes, poor judgment and in-
competence.
“Fighting for recognition of freedom
of information," says former Rep. John
E. Moss, the chief author of the FOIA,
“is like stepping on a baloon. You
stamp out excessive secrecy in one
place and it pops up somewhere else. ”
Examples of government in-
formation denied to journalists and
citizens in recent decades include Navy
telephone directories, reports on the fat
content of avrious brands of frank-
furters, data on pesticide dangers and
retired servicemen’s military ef-
fectiveness reports.
In one case, the Agriculture
Department even refused to reveal
what specific information it had
classified as exempt from FOIA
requests.
Critics of the FOIA claim that it has
been abused, is flawed, is too expensive
to adminster and endangers the
secrecy of information that is
legitimately classified.
The law isn’t perfect and no doubt
could be improved — but almost all of
the current attacks come from those
who want to cynically destroy the right
of citizens and the news media to
continuously evaluate the work of
government.
(Bobby Newton Says ]
Justice is not slow if you count the
speed of a lawyer’s bill.
Gov. Brown’s answer
was a huge fly swatter.
to fruit flies
One way to stay cool is to go south for
the summer, like to Australia.
The riots in Bn s racially and
economically troubled cities have been
making the headlines, but it could be
that the real news out of the island these
days is being made elsewhere.
Or so history, with all the advantages
of hindsight, may see it.
“Elsewhere" at the moment is an
obscure constituency in the north of
England where a by-election to fill a
vacant parliamentary seat has been
won by the Labor Party candidate. To
absolutely no one’s surprise since the
district, Warrington, is a Labor
stronghold.
But he won by only a slim percentage
of the total vote over the candidate of
the Social Democratic Party, who had
been expected to do well but nowhere
near as well as he actually did.
That was a surprise, and therein is
the news.
This was the first election contested
by the Social Democrats, a party for-
med only six months earlier by four
dissident Labor Party leaders. That
move formalized a split that had been
widening in Labor ranks for years as
left-wing ideologues with the support of
militant trade unionists took control fo
the party machinery, displacing the
pragmatic political professionals.
Meanwhile, the Conservative Party
has taken a hard right turn under
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher,
with the result that British politics are
polarized between extremes of left and
right as they have not been in modem
times.
The Social Democrats are seeking to
pre-empt the vacated center,
presenting themselves as a moderate
and practical alternative to the two
extremes. Although losers their first
time out in a local election, they are
now being viewed as potential winners
on a national scale as a consequence of
having come so close.
Viewed with justified alarm in both
Labor and Conservative headquarters,
for what their success may portend is a
major reordering of the British political
balance comparable to Labor's
displacement of the Liberal Party early
in the 20th century. If so, it would mean
that a possibly decisive portion of the
British public is buying the Social
Democratic message of modemation to
the detriment of the ideologues of left
and right.
All very interesting, you say. Tht.t
may be what’s new with the British, but
what particular significance does it
have for Artiericans?
At least some on the New Right ap
pear to hope that we are. That is ihe
message in the opposition to the
nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor to
the Supreme Court, evidence of the
Reagan administration’s pragmatic
willingness to accommodate a variety
of interest and attitudes that has
brought some of its single-interest
zealots out fighting. They don’t want a
politics of accommodation and
moderation, the practice of which in the
long run has been the strength of the
major American parties.
The disadvantage in reaching a
political pole is that once there, there’s
really nowhere else to go. And the
distance between poles has become too
great for effective communication.
The politics of polarization can easily
become that of political dead ends, as
British voters may be about to
demonstrate to their major parties.
That is not saying that precisely the
same thing could happen here. But a
dead end is a dead end, British or
American.
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L.M. Boyd
An odd way to break an arm
i
“Could you state It for the record? Is that the device you use to investi-
gate the backgrounds of high-level appointees?”
Seventy-five percent of the population would have no
idea how you did it if you laid you’d once broken your arm
trying to Mart your car.
You've read about the renowned Borton Tea Party
wherein 50 coioniali toaed a ihipioad of tea cheats into the
sea. To protest taxation without representation, as every
schoolboy knows. But did you also read that those patriots
earlier drank rum punch for several hours at the home of
one Benjamin Edca? Edes' son Peter was assigned to keep
the punchbowl and his compatriots loaded. Historical foot-
notes indicate that by the time they got down to the harbor
they were drunker than Hogan’i goat.
Food expert Craig Claiborne tayt curry makes an excel-
lent salt substitute.
BODY PART
Q. Sir, where on my body b my philtnim?
A. In the middle of your upper lip. It’s that vertical groove.
Twenty-one pnbHthers rejected the rights to Richard
Hooker’* humorous war novel “M*A*S*H” before Wiliam
Morrow accepted it. Think of that! Few manuscripts have
generated more money than the original “M*A*S*H.” MB-
Hons of dollars went elsewhere because reader after reader
at tittle desks in little office* fafled to see the potential.
Q. Who was the first king addremed as “Your Majesty”?
A. Henry VRI of England. Earlier king* were addremed
as “Your Grace," “Your Excellent Grace," “Your High and
Mighty Prince" and the old familiar “Your Highness.”
NAIL MAKER
Thomas Jefferson also ran a nail factory.
Have you ever seen a bald-headed news anchorman on
television? Neither have L
Tire cantaloupe and die cucumber are Idn, too.
If you haven’t loM half your teeth by age 40, you’re juat
not average.
It’i not out of the quertion for an iceberg to last 225 years.
Local law hi Reed City, Mich., prohibits a resident from
owning both a cat and a bird.
Q. I know the cheetah is the fastest mammal at 60 trifles
an hoar or thereabouts, but what’s the aloweM?
A. The doth. At about a tenth of a mile an hour on the
ground.
There’s no such person as a little girl-she’i juM a short
woman. There’s no such person as a grown man-he’s just a
tail boy. Such is the contention of a grandmother with
large experience in the bringing up of offspring. Wfl] you
buy her playful notion? Girls, she says, wisely try to turn a
profit even from the most unsatisfactory happenings. They
are practical. Boys, she rays, tend to be disappointed, disil-
lusioned and disheartened repeatedly, even unto old age.
They are idealistic.
You want to lose weight? All right. If you're right-handed,
eat with your left hand. If you’re left-handed, eat with your
right hand. Thatli do it. Or so contends a diet authority.
LITTLE ROMANCE
Q. How do you explain the report that there's leas extra-
marital sex in the Soriet Union’s Moscow than in any other
major capitol in the world?
A. Room shortage.
Something else you can do to while away time at Mop- *
lights is count the things that people ceremoniously Mm.
Rings. Dice. Garment hema. Holy Writ. The Blarney Stone.
Icons. Fingers. Feet. Lottery tickets. Any others?
It is also a curiosity, is it not, that gorillas know perfect-
ly well how to take care of their offspring in the wild, but
have to be trained to do so when in zoos?
Am asked how long H takes a publishing house from the
minute it gets the manuscript to the minute it puts out the
finished book? Used to take month*. But last year Bantam
Books turned out the Mory of the U.S. Hockey team-
“Miracle on Ice”-in 46 hours 15 minutes. That’s the re-
cord, so far.
TIGHT BUILDING SYNDROME
Doctors claim a new ailment is hitting people in big
towns. They call it “Tight Building Syndrome.” Some
offices with windows that don’t open let toxic air recirculate,
evidently. In it, they my, are chemicals from fancy mach-
ines such as copiers and developer*. The architects are
thinking it over.
Takes nine minutes longer to die from lack of oxygen
than to bleed to death from a severed artery. Let’s break
for lunch.
Pet expert* say it's ail right to feed catfood to dogs, if
you can afford It, but not dogfood to cats. Too little
protein for the felines in that dogfood.