Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 8

Thursday, July 6, 1972 'I was a delegate once myself Letters Minneapolis 8A 3 I from readers lota Charles W. Bailey Editor Wallace Allen Managing Editor Leonard Inskip Editorial Editor KEDENTMLS COMMITTEE Number 43 A poor time sharing Arrogant campaigners The people who are in control of the McGovern campaign come on as an arrogant, smart-alecky and ruthless crowd ho seem to have no lime for anyone over This country was built on blood, sweat and tears. 'I he new politics, as expensed by the McGovern coalition, Is that in 1972, sex, drugs and homosexuals are the top-priority issues. These elite intellectual snobs who have sold McGovern on these cockeyed, ridiculous planks have bypassed the farmer, the working man and the senior citizen as well as all the ethnic groups. The best man for the country at this time and place is Hubert II.

Humphrey. But his last hurrah is only a very faint hope. McGovern, running on the kind of a crazy platform welded together in Washington by the platform committee, couldn't carry a single Southern stale even if Jefferson Davis were his running mate. A. B.

Anderson, Audubon, Minn. Moline workers lose again Much has been said and written about the Minneapolis-Moline retirees getting their pensions drastically reduced by the plant closing. Another way all employees and retirees of Ihe United Auto Workers Focal 932 lose is that all assets and the Moline union hall, paid for by Ihe past and present, members of Focal 9,12, are being taken over by the UAW international union. Granted, the assets are not very large, and the union hall has a mortgage on it, but it still hurts to lose again. Simon Beaulieu Minneapolis.

Ice-cream ingredients The FDA has excused producers of some food products, such as ice cream, from printing all ingredients on the label. This isn't very wise. Some people may be allergic to something in the product, yet not know it is there. They may eat it and become very ill. Also, with all of the artificial flavors and additives in products, some of them may not even be safe.

Manufacturers should make sure that all of the ingredients are safe. For a healthier country, I think some sort of rule should be made by which manufacturers would have to print all ingredients on the labels of their products. Mary Idzorek, age 11, Minneapolis. Doesn't want Cavett any time So a few people would like to keep Dick Cavett at 10:30 p.m. Who do they think they are to tell us who and what to watch? I think it time for Channel 9 to start thinking about what the ma jority of the people would like to see, and this isn't Dick Cavett.

Jim McQuay, Coon Rapids. Gun registration: why oppose it? From a column in the Minot News by James B. Sullivan, the newspaper's sports editor A member of Gov. Anderson's staff and a conservative state legislator reacted almost identically the other day to passage by the U.S. House of Representatives of the federal revenue-sharing bill.

Although they aren't often in agreement, both were enthusiastic. So the bill's formulas aren't particularly helpful to Minnesota, each said; so it's a strange time for a deficit-ridden Congress to he approving a new aid program. No matter. Any new revenue for the state is welcome. That's typical nf the altitude of the coalition of state and local officials who helped lobby the bill through the House and are now working to get it passed in the Senate.

The proposal would provide $5.3 billion in the next fiscal year $.1.5 billion to cities, towns and counties, $1.8 billion to states and more than $30 billion during the next five years. We think the case for revenue-sharing is very weak from a national viewpoint, and even weaker, for the House-passed bill, from Minnesota's viewpoint. Revenue-sharing carried a good deal of basic logic in 1964, when it was first proposed by the University of Minnesota's Walter Heller then chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors. The argument then was that the progressive federal income tax soon would produce much more money than the national government needed, particularly in light of an expected post-Vietnam windfall. But the fiscal picture looks quite different now.

Federal deficits are large and growing. The post-Vietnam fiscal dividend has disappeared. The Brookings Institution, in a book-length analysis last month, made a convincing case that federal taxes will need to MlNiE ApOLifr TRipuwg '72. Spreading wealth around Revenue-sharing as proposed is particularly disadvantageous for states Minnesota, which already are themselves relatively heavily. have done all they can for or their local units of One recent rating of systems by the federal Council on Intergovernmental Relations gave only three (including Minnesota) a "passing of 70 or more, based on as fiscal effort, pro-gressivity of the state-local tax system amount of state aid paid Eleven states don't even personal income tax; in a others, rates are flat (not or very low.

Only 35 both general sales and high-fiscal-effort states to Washington to help so-called "fiscal crises" in are unwilling even to levy tax? In this regard, the was at least palatable introduced last December: It money for states lacking income tax. But that provision been dropped, and the bill contains only a slight bonus that tax themselves heavily. matter, the revenue-sharing does not represent to justify the urgency mayors and governors are it. In Minnesota, for example, slate government would equal to about 3.4 percent present budget. Finance Committee chairman, Long, has promised to process promptly so that it can by the full Senate this the committee can't at the bill, we'd like to Revenue-sharing was way to channel expected revenue surpluses to the as a high-priority federal in the face of massive a minimum, the committee take time to devise distribution formula one weight to high-tax states that funds go only to broad-based, progressive income taxes.

And we hope and governors who are the Senate for the bill will constituents that its passage the likelihood of a federal increase in 1973. be increased just to support present I program levels. For the first time, study said, federal civilian urograms is risinti 1 JCVCI1UC3 11UII1 a IVJWU vv-uiiuin So for Congress to commit the federal eovernment now to a $30-billion Volume CVI for revenue spending on faster than None of which would have pot public notice except that the indiscretions of an ITT lobbyist fell into the hands of Anderson, who passed them along, obligingly, into history. Along comes a remarkable analysis of what actually happened underthelaw.lt is by Mrs. Eleanor Fox, of the firm of Simpson Thacher Rartlett in New York, and is published in the Conference Board Record, an organ of TCB, formerly known as the National Industrial ference Board.

Con- It is her learned and dispassionate conclusion that if anyone troubles to look into the matter, he will discover that the government won quite extraordinary victories in the cases in question, victories that easily transcend the language nf the anti-monopoly laws. She concludes, in the bloodless language of the lution control. such as taxing Few states themselves government. state fiscal Advisory states grade" factors such and local units. have a number of progressive) states have income taxes.

Why should send money relieve states that an income House bill when provided no a personal has as passed for states As a practical bill enough money with which lobbying for the get an amount of its The Senate Sen. the bill be voted on summer. If least improve see it killed. proposed as federal states, not expenditure deficits. As should a better giving more and require states with personal the mayors pressuring tell their will increase tax ever gone that Fischer to move chess (and He's going cards yet.

Meanwhile, covering the have metaphor. been so something And just to bit further, match will the check, bill, at least without an accompanying tax increase, is irresponsible. Another difference between today and 1964 is that Congress either has eased, or is moving to ease, state-local fiscal burdens by providing large aid increases in specific program areas higher education, elementary and secondary education, welfare, water-pol The pre-match play-by-play 1971 did not emerge in recognizable detail when he submitted to Congress the programs for the final year of his first term. Rut there is every reason to suppose that the idea of spreading the tax burden more fairly, which is another name for income redistribution, has not fled from Mr. Nixon's mind.

President Nixon unashamedly appropriates issues raised by his opposition revenue-sharing, a national income floor in lieu of welfare payments, environmentalism, consumer interests and a detente with Russia and China. This is not to say that Mr. Nixon is about to appro i a McGovern's share-the-wealth program. But the circumstances do suggest that Mr. Nixon may try to pre-empt the issue with his own version of spreading the tax burden more fairly so that the middle-income people will realize a greater share in the new prosperity.

In fact, McGovern's pro-grams, which are so alarming to people with property and investments, open the way for more acceptable alternative proposals. These alternative proposals would take into consideration the adverse impact on the operations of the American economy of McGovern's kind of wealth redistribution. The shock effect of McGovern's ideas has already been felt in Wall Street. A New York Times survey shows that even the most liberal elements there and there are some important ones shy away from McGovern, although in the past these elements have supported liberal Democrats. case mestic firm having assets of more than $100 million or (b) acquire a domestic firm that occupies more than If) percent of a concentrated market.

"By the consent judgments," Mrs. Fox summarizes, "the government won something more than it could reasonably have expected if it won all three cases on traditional grounds: limitation on FIT's growth by large-firm and leading-firm mergers." Apart from the vindication of the Nixon administration, Mrs. Fox's dry analysis tends to show that large companies in the United Slates are prepared by the most convincing means to document that they are not profiting from bigness per -p; by eschewing, voluntarily, further growth by acquisition. By Richard Wilson Register and Tribune Syndicate Washington Sen. McGovern is shifting the emphasis of his economic program from $1,000 for everybody to tax credits for working people and middle-income families.

The program is si ill intended to "end the problem of the poor" and "end poverty," the senator says, by substituting direct giants for welfare. But it will also lift the income of workers and middle -income families through a tax-credit system. This appears on the face of it to be an effort to combine the philosophies of George C. Wallace and John Kenneth Galbraith in a wealth redistribution scheme of massive proportions. Taking from the rich and giving to the poor is on? of the oldest bromides of American politics, but McGovern is apparently not satisfied that the Democratic platform as drafted says enough on the subject.

Nor, it is apparent, was what he has previously said clear enough and plausible enough to be accepted as other than a flighty academic pipe dream that would never be accepted in Congress. Better arithmetic will undoubtedly accompany the new McGovern wealth-distribution plan, since the addition in the old one was off bv $30 billion or $40 billion." Rut one should not suppose that, this idea of wealth redistribution, with its flawed advocacy by McGovern, is merely a threatened, in combination with ITT, to dominate the market or to dominate it in certain parts of the country. And, finally, there is the economic graph thai shows that there are more and more conglomerates, that the 200 largest firms in America have command of 58.7 percent of the market in America, in contrast to percent in 1948, from which growth the reasonable a p-tions are to be drawn. However, the district, courts flatly turned down thf" government Thpv ruled that the government had not made a factual cave, tailored lo the prohibitions of the Clayton Act, and def lined to accept, ar gumenls based only on theory. The JT asP not go to trial, but a preliminary injunction against the merger was denied by the court upon reading the government's brief.

so high? It's more likely has just discovered a way into the realm of big-time big-money) pro sports. to turn up on bubble-gum at least the wire services Fischer-Spassky maneu-verings been handed a ready-made Never before has it appropriate to write that has been "stalemated." push that sort of thing a we might assume that the go on when Fischer sees mate. harebrained scheme that will go into limbo once the election is over. There is more than a little academic impetus back of it, and a great deal of bed-r political pressure. The Nixon administration has not been immune from this pressure.

While I he semantics used would be entirely different from McGovern's, there is a lively recognition in the Nixon administration of the need for readjusting the tax structure. In the latter part of 1971 and early in 1972 there was much discussion in the Nixon administration of a comprehensive system of tax reform. Attention centered at that time on the value-added tax, a form of national sales tax, which would provide the added revenue needed for government operations while at the same time relieving the i -t a payer. Time proved too short and the election year a bad time for the kind and scale of tax reform that was under discussion, and the subject was shelved. Rut in November 1971, an interviewer found President Nixon preoccupied with "tax reforms on a broader scale then previously undertaken, and intended to spread the burden more fairly." Mr.

Nixon was not disposed to talk in detail of what he had in mind. He linked it to what he called a "national growth policy" and "a jobs-for-peace program" as part of a fresh approach to restoring American economic strength at home and competitive drive in the world. As it turned out, these ideas that Mr. Nixon talked about in the fall of the ITT There it stood in the summer of 1971, when suddenly the company and the government got together and hammered out three consent decrees, which the courts looked over and promulgated. The remarkable thing about these consent decrees, says Mrs.

Fox, is what the government got from FIT rather than vice versa. FIT seemed to be playing from a situation of great strength, having won striking judicial victories on the first go-a-round. Then suddenly, as if it. had bee the govern-merit that won, I IT agreed to do all kinds of things that have (he eflect of giving life to the metaphysial theories of the government on the matter of aggregate concentration. FIT agreed to limit its growth by domestic acquisition.

I in less I IT meanwhile gets rid of Hartford, it may not, except on consent of the government or the court, (a; acquire a do Let's see whether we're up to date on the Bobby Fischer-Boris Spassky thing. Fischer went to the International Chess Federation's Q4, then sat there, refusing to move farther. While Spassky paced angrily back and forth from his QB3 to his QB4, James Slater, the British financier, moved $130,000 to Fi KR1, where it was locked in. the keep. Then Spassky castled while Fischer slept.

During all the foregoing, the president of the International Chess Federation made wry comments. Childish? Maybe but when was the last time you saw so much publicity given to a chess match? And when has the prize money for one The Senate Judiciary Committee's approved bill on a short-handgun ban and President Nixon's endorsement of the concept last week represent stronger gun control than licensing or registering. Such a ban would not illegalize ownership, but would cut off the manufacture, Importation and sale of about a million weapons annually, according to the chief sponsor, Sen. Birch Bayh, D-Ind. Two of the U.S.

manufacturers are subsidiaries of prestigious companies. Nevertheless, the National Rifle Association supports Bayh's bill in principle, but continues to oppose licensing (which would disqualify relatively few owners) and registering (which would chiefly benefit owners whose guns have been stolen). To promote maximum sales for the major companies, the NRA repeats its pitch like a telephone recording, and, unfortunately, our lawmakers are persuaded that it is in the public interest. Here are a few of the NRA repeats: 1. "Licensing would inconvenience a shooter and intrude into his life." (No more than applying for a job and awaiting the employer's check of the record.) 2.

"Registration would be costly and would lead to confiscation." (The cost would depend upon the final bill. A government bent on confiscation wouldn't need an owner list. Law professor Franklin Zimring of the University of Chicago, who is mystified by the fear of registration, says it is only a support for a licensing system and is intended to make an owner responsible for each weapon.) 3. "Ammunition-purchase recording is a tedious task." (It might well be repealed if we legislate licensing and registering.) 4. "The 1968 federal gun law hasn't reduced crime." (It has no control over firearms possessed before 1968.

About 2.5 million handguns are added to the arsenal yearly. The purchasing regulations are badly abused by dealers and buyers, a Chicago Tribune survey revealed recently. 5. "Secondary weapons would be used if guns were not available." (It is not evident in murder rates in Europe or Japan.) 6. "Federal gun controls are unconstitutional." (In a firearms opinion last month, Supreme Court Justice William O.

Douglas said, There is no reason why all pistols should not be barred to everyone except the police." In December, the high court suggested that Congress could forbid firearms to risky people.) 7. "Ihe Second Amendment guaranlees individual gun ownership." (Said Douglas, in the same opinion: "The Second Amendment was designed to keep alive the 8. "Gun control won't, work." (Aside from our preliminary stockpile, why shouldn't such laws operate on both sides of the ocean?) 9. "Gun-control advocates are anti-gun." (We have a state deer license that is restricted. Is our state government anti-hunting?) H).

"Enforcement is Ihe best remedy for Ihe crime problem." (Dreamers.) An analyst defends the judgments in By William F. Buckley Washington Star Syndicate New York Not very many people troubled to examine the arrangements finally entered into between International Telephone and Telegraph and the Nixon administration and agreed to by the courts. The legend was that an innocent and incorruptible official in the Justice Department moved against rTT in connection with three projected deals two acquisitions and one merger (with The Hartford Fire Insurance Co.) that officials of ITT thereupon took to political maneuvering and that secret deals were made involving on the one hand government permissiveness and fin the other hand ITT largesse to GOP causes. Whereupon the government suddenly abandoned its objections to the all-important merger, which was thereupon concluded. lawyer, There is no bon-a fid" basis for a challenge lo I hp merits of the ITT judgments.

hose judgments are fair. Indeed, they are exemplary. And they may he precedential in limiting by consent the growth of large, diversified firms." What happened was that the government attempted, in effect, to persuade the courts to rule on what they call "aggregate concentration theory." The government had specific complaints, to be sure. It alleged that in the acquisitions, as in the with Hartford, ITT stood to diminish competition by a variety of means. For one, "reciprocity." This is the word given lo business clone between companies commonly owned.

For another, the government asked the courts to hold that ITT, if it wasn't actually acquiring firms that were dominant in the market, was acquiring firms that "He took over the garngr, and now look!" so we put up a carport.