The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 14

The Boston Globe Saturday, March 15, 1980 She $0 ton (globe WILLIAM 0. TAYLOR, President and Publisher THOMAS WINSH1P, Editor JOHN P. GIUGGIO. Executive ti General Manager RICHARD C. OCKERBLOOM, Marketing it Sales DAVID STANGER, VP.

Business Manager ROBERT LHEALY, Associate Editor ROBERT H. PHELPS, Executive Editor JOHN DRISCOLL Ass't Executive Editor, Daily TIMOTHY LELAND, Ass'L Executive Editor, Sunday ANNE C. WYMAN, Editor, Editorial Page i Globe Newspaper Company, 135 Momssey Boston, Mass. 02107 617-929-2000 A Wholly Owned Subsidiary ol AFFILIATED PUBLICATIONS, INC. DAVIS TAYLOR, Chairman of the Board JOHN I.

TAYLOR, President 2 Ml must share the burden Certainly it is in the self-interest of all Americans to 1'mpose upon themselves the kind of economic self -discipline that President Carter urged repeatedly yesterday in his sober speech to the nation. As the President said, inflation, now running at record rates, is a cruel tax, one jthat falls most harshly upon those least able to bear the And. the fact is that if the program outlined by the President vesterdav afternoon can turn thp prnnnmv nil broken. The program of voluntary restraints on commercial credit, announced by the Federal Reserve Board and designed to direct it to productive investments that can reduce price inflation, is sensible on its face. To date, the Carter Administration's program of wage and price controls has been a dismal failure, as even its administrators concede.

Whether expanding its staff and increasing monitoring can improve its effectiveness is questionable, but, in light of the President's adamant refusal to embrace mandatory controls, it is the only alternative. The major questions raised by Carter's proposals are two. One is whether they go far enough, whether for instance an extra dime added to the price of $1.25 gasoline will really produce any significant reduction in consumption. The other question, which will take more detailed information and more analysis and will ultimately depend upon congressional action, is whether the program of budget cuts will fall fairly on the American population and not be targeted largely to programs that address the needs of the poor and near-poor. The Congress must make certain that whatever measure of discipline is required to shape a national attack on inflation is truly national, that it is imposed on the whole society.

-ground, the discipline required will not be terribly for most Americans. The most controversial aspect will surely be the impo-Sition of a fee on imported oil that would raise the price of gasoline at the pump 10 cents a gallon. That will pinch, given the bite taken out of most American pocket-rfeooks by the skyrocketing energy prices, only pinch. A nation that seems solidly behind major increases in defense spending surely must be willing to pay a price to reduce consumption of imported oil which, in truth, is v6ir most pressing national security problem. Constraints on consumer credit, too, should not prove unacceptably burdensome.

In fact, if the acceleration of jjiflation is reversed in the months ahead, the very psychology which has spurred the credit binge which has Americans that it is cheaper to buy on credit today than to save now and buy tomorrow can be Well, I. How Rolling Stone packages politics Rebuilding cities from the local level LIT'RY LIFE GEORGE V. HIGCINS j'0 With urban programs at the federal level taking a from Capitol Hill inflation-fighters, more and more of the effort to rebuild cities is going to have to -come from the local level and with private assistance. Legislation now pending on Beacon Hill to promote neighborhood-based rehabilitation efforts moves exactly lm that direction and deserves enactment this year. nJ The legislation would seek, through state participation, to expand the creation of so-called Neighborhood housing Services through which neighborhood-level, nonprofit corporations, directed by local residents, 4ng representatives and city government personnel would rehabilitation programs.

The concept originated in Pittsburgh, and three years ago it was formally embraced by the federal government, provides start-up money for NHS programs across the country. The NHS programs sometimes provide loan funds or subsidies to persons who need help with private loans. But their principal purpose is to counsel local residents in undertaking rehabilitation programs, obtaining loans and overseeing private contractors. Nothing in the program requires banks to make high-risk loans, but experience in Boston and elsewhere gests that close involvement in a neighborhood inclines banks to make loans in urban neighborhoods, especially when they know that a lender has the advice of city building inspectors and the support (and scrutiny) of neighborhood residents. Some see the relatively obscure NHS efforts as the most promising federal housing initiative of recent years.

The purpose of the state legislation is to expand it. Currently there are only five NHS programs in the commonwealth, two in Boston and one each in Chelsea, Springfield and Lawrence. Versions of the bill have been introduced by Rep. John Cusack of Arlington and Sen. Joseph Timilty of Mattapan, the House and Senate chairmen of the Urban Affairs Committee.

They have received a strong boost from Lt. Gov. O'Neill and are backed by Communities and Development Secretary Byron Matthews. The legislation would authorize the state to provide up to $30,000 as seed money for new NHS programs and help capitalize them with grants of up to $100,000 which would be folded into NHS revolving funds. There is no doubt that state funds are tight, that new spending programs deserve the closest scrutiny.

But the NHS legislation ought to survive it. There is little prospect for any infusion of new federal housing funds. Thus, even with the pressures on the commonwealth's budget, an expansion of the NHS program to spur urban revital-ization through local initiative and increase private-sector involvement is both desirable and appropriate. and (d) all of the above. The correct ah-' swer is (d).

There being for reasons of climate no serious business available for review by Roger Angell in the New Yorker, he is" reviewing movies until Fenway ParK Yankee Stadium and various other places' of adult occupation resume operation. gell is proof that an interest in baseball is an invariably reliable indication that its' possessor is a man of generous intellect: who can do anything. When baseball not available, Angell does something else," with aplomb. To go with Angell on the movies, E. J.

Kahn is allowed to recount, his visit to the Winter Olympics at Flaccid, a delightful piece. John Updiker. reviews some Indian who writes book, about India I like Updike but my prefj, erence is to read as little about India as-, possible. It always makes me uneasy to single; out one article in Yankee magazine, be-cause it doesn't seem fair to the writers. Still and all, Tim Clark's profile of Dartmouth president John Kemeny.t (you remember his name from the mission to investigate the problem at the.

-Three Mile Island generating plantj should be relished first in the March issue. Editor Judson D. Hale has a sense of the freedom he enjoys to special-iu ize in New England subjects, and the lux ury of attracting writers who really know.K their subjects. George V. Higgins is a Globe ship which is, after all, fascinated by KISS and the other groups that delight Margaret Trudeau of his purpose.

I do not bristle for Hope I cannot stand the man. I don't have much hope for Bush, either. But I tend to wonder whether Rolling Stone has treated either of them fairly, particularly in addressing limb-liberal speeches to readers who got their cookies watching Jimi Hendrix smash guitars. Phillip Moffitt at Esquire has a chatty column in the new issue. He says everybody at the magazine is a great bunch of guys, as though anyone gave a particular curse.

There are Richard Reeves on the Carter-Kennedy California dust-up (Reeves says it's no dust-up at all but a case study in the effects of political reform) and a completely stupid comparison of Soft Line like really into my feelings, you and Hard Line wanna punch inna An article on sperm banks, commissioned long before the Nobel Prize winners' depository was flushed out in California (where else?) is a good idea gone bad. Geoff Norman writes about backpacking and I liked it, but I like just about everything Norman writes. Least but not last, there is a profile on Dee Dee of the very same Ramones discussed in Rolling Stone, which compels one to question whether Dee Dee has (a) a brain the size of a fig, (b) the musical ability of a cat in heat, (c) a press agent with prodigious strength, Rolling Stone for March 20th raises some interesting questions, and there are other puzzlements as well. RS is the quintessential publication aimed "at a particular group of readers. Fully half of this issue is devoted to microscopic examination of adolescents in their twenties and thirties, among them being the Ramones, who play music that is popular and are therefore assumed to have opinions that are significant.

This assumption is grievously in error, but the popularity of RS suggests that many readers share it. To go with this more sophisticated Photoplay version of silliness dressed up as importance, RS offers political comment. It is not labelled as comment. It is presented as reportage. And it is packaged for its audience just as temptingly as the stuff on rock 'n' roll.

Timothy White dismembers Bob Hope, using adjectives and adverbs with an abandon that Henry Luce would have found excessive. Alexander Cockburn and James Ridgeway, who write for the Village Voice, contemptuously weigh George Bush and find the former master spy too lightweight for the presidency. Thus does publisher Jann Wenner present to his audience precisely the politics he has advocated for years, without bothering to inform his reader The threat to Bishop Tutu LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Sacrificing politically impotent generation Profile of an Independent Last spring, when Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa was in Boston, his friends among the clergy Were worried about him. No matter how moderate his rhetoric nor how elliptical his phrasing, there was no mistaking that the black bishop was an implacable foe of the racist South African government and its American economic collaborators. The bishop's friends were properly concerned.

A few days ago, the South African government threw its noose around his neck; it sent two security agents to Tutu's office in Johannesburg; they confiscated his passport. The noose can be tightened to include prison or banning, based on insidious laws designed to stifle dissent. Tutu, who is secretary general of the interracial South African Council of Churches, is hardly a fire-breathing radical. But what he says, in his mild-mannered way, sears nevertheless. "Nobody is free in South Africa," he said in Boston.

"By spending so much of their resources protecting themselves, the whites are punishing themselves. We know we aje going to be free, of that there can be no doubt. The only question is how and when." With a newly elected black nationalist government in neighboring Zimbabwe, where once Ian Smith fought and failed to maintain a white supremacist Rhodesia, such words must be threatening, even though the man who says them has no guns, no bombs, no airplanes, no army. Listening to arguments here that American investments in South Africa can have an ameliorating influence on that country's racial policies, Tutu chuckled. "Baloney," he said.

"The moral turpitude of that argument is breathtaking Foreign investments and loans have been used largely to maintain an immoral system of migratory labor which destroys the black family structure." The move on Tutu gives the lie to much of the vaunted "relaxation" of racial policies in South Africa. When he was here, Tutu shrugged at the minor changes in apartheid policies. "We don't want our chains made more comfortable, we want our chains removed," he said. For the moment, Tutu can no longer personally bring such messages to the outside world. South Africa has become his stockade.

But if that government believes it can stop the reverberations of Tutu's calls for freedom, it is mistaken. Its oppressive act has made them ring more loudly. The free world must not allow Bishop Tutu to be silenced. He must not be abandoned to the brutalities South Africa reserves in the name of "justice" for black freedom fighters. I wish to protest some recent examples of our society's disregard for the rights, liberties and interests of our citizens from ages 18 to the mid-20s.

1 Most recently we were treated to the decadent spectacle of the President's 30-year-old son, Chip Carter, announcing that he supports draft registration for 19-and 20-year-olds. Carter, a Vietnam war conscientious objector, says he supports registration because "We have to be strong and draft registration is one way we can keep strong without a draft." Impeccable logic! Iran and Afghanistan have now made it politically feasible for the President to openly advocate registration to solve problems with the peace time volunteer army that have existed for several years. The enlistment situation could be corrected by sufficiently raising military pay scales. Such increased compensation would require higher taxes to pay for it. This would mean that the generation that decides who is to bear the burden would take some of that burden upon itself.

Obviously that course will not be chosen. Recently we have also been subjected to the empty posturing of President Carter announcing that if the Soviet Union did not withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by Feb. 20, he will withdraw US participation from the summer Olympic games in Moscow. Aside from being clearly outside his constitutional powers, this is yet another example of leaders of my generation irresponsibly choosing to promote US "interests" at the expense of an undesirable sacrifice on the part of a younger, politically impotent generation. HAROLD J.

MANLEY Sudbury There are quite a few of us Massachuv setts Independents out there who weren't, mentioned in your "Profile of the inde-J pendent Anderson voter." We are not; young. We started to drift away from thej Republican Party after the Goldwater fiasco. The trickle became a steady streanii during the Nixon years, before and because of the frantic Reagan worship. We've been waiting for a genuine lib-4 eral-with-a-small-1, to claim our allet; giance; a gentleman, not a strident dema'-. gogue who promises everything to everybody and calls himself Liberal; a gentleman who tempers compassion with' common sense; who offers no short-cut easy solutions to long-standing complex' problems; and who, above all, trusts the American people to understand our prob-' lems and to manage their own lives most of the time, without a Big Brother watching over them at every turn.

John B. Anderson is that man, aJd, once again, I'm proud to be a Republics ELISABETH S. PULT Wayland Importance of stale aid to libraries As a librarian in a subregional refer Take one bow, Mr. Foster The entire state benefits. Library services in this state have improved greatly since the regional system was established but with no increase in state aid since 1972 we are squeezed to the wall.

Good libraries contribute greatly to the quality of life in this state do support them! ANNE L. REYNOLDS Head Cataloger Wellesley Wellesley Free Library 1000 hollow-eyed years The trouble with President Carter in his dealings with Iran and the Arab world, in general, is that he apparently has sever bought a rug at an oriental bazaar. The recent antics of the Iranians in their hostage negotiations reveal the Iranian mind and personality as it has remained unchanged for 1000 hollow-eyed years. About 50 years ago, a truly great American by the name of Will Rogers said: "America has never lost a war or won a conference." WARD COLLINS CRAMER Boston ence center, one link in the state's regional library system, I see daily evidence of the great importance of state aid to libraries. Those extra dollars from the state allow us to get maximum benefit from our local library dollar and we are able to share library resources throughout the state.

With extra funds we can buy materials that will help an individual with an elderly parent find and evaluate nursing homes. Businessmen come to us for the invaluable but expensive tools published by Dun and Bradstreet or Moody's. We make books, magazines, newspapers and films available that many citizens cannot afford to buy. The delivery service means that if we don't have an item, we can scour the state to find it. The regional funds open the great resources of Boston Public Library to our patrons, and if BPL's film collection were not available I believe that film programming in the state's libraries would come-to a grinding halt.

Few individual libraries can afford to purchase films costing from four to eight hundred dollars each but shared among a hundred libraries. that the faulty buses be repaired in MBTA shops, and a crash effort was made to get the buses in running condition. But there are signs that the apparent success of the maintenance effort includes some robbing of Peter to pay Paul. The troublesome buses are repaired (although there is warranty to protect MBTA interests if the repairs prove inadequate). But other buses in the fleet may have suffered as maintenance personnel concentrated on the buses involved in the dispute.

The MBTA Advisory Board says that last October there were 156 buses in the Everett repair facility and that there were 175 at the end of last month. How did the MBTA manage to do so well? The improvement appears to be largely the result of new buses 82 purchased, 14 borrowed from Lowell and six school buses. Robert Foster and the MBTA maintenance crews will be entitled to a second bow if they can cut into the still-large backlog of buses waiting maintenance at Everett and if the system can maintain its improved performance in the teeth of expanded spring schedules. That may prove harder to achieve than the first, welcome gains. MBTA management and employees deserve credit for tjheir contributions to a major restoration in the dependability of bus service.

A Globe survey earlier this week found that many fewer runs were being missed than last fall, to the relief ojf thousands of commuters and other travelers. Last summer and fall tens of thousands of runs were missed, 13,832 in the month of September alone, or 12.7 percent of scheduled trips. In a spot check by The Globe, missed runs had fallen to only 1.2 percent, an impressive improvement. MBTA chairman Robert Foster is undoubtedly relieved by the recovery, since it seems to be a vindication of his claim ffiat, given the tools, he can provide what the public needs. The nub of the bus service problem has almost always been maintenance.

Although service had been fairly reliable before 1979, the buses themselves were in horrendous shape. Foster claims that an accumulation of postponed maintenance burst on the system shortly after his arrival, complicated by a serious problem with a group of federally mandated buses that had faulty diesel engines. Gov. Edward J. King capitulated to employee demands Staying on the job Mike Barnicle writes that President Carter has an obsession "to remain stered, untouched and within the White House" instead of ting the campaign trail.

If the President can take time out fronV-' his tremendous responsibilities to cam-l'' paign all over the country during year, it would seem to me that we dohT need anyone to fill the highest office in the land. Is our President merely a figure- head? President Carter can "campaign" most1' effectively by staying on the job. The war in which he performs the awesome tasks of his office will do far more for his second candidacy than campaign oratory. 7v H. M.

Roslindale.