The Capital Times from Madison, Wisconsin • 37

OPEC shouldnt get all the blame Could we turn off the toys for a little while?" electronic games and Diplomatic pipeline Animosity toward Israel Is boiling inside the Wliite House. Aides refer to the Israelis privately as "stubborn" and "inflexible," but call the Egyptians "positive" and The Israelis have returned the sentiment. They now refer to Jimmy Carter as the best president Egypt ever had. The shah of Iran has complained petulantly to U.S. diplomats that Americans have been involved with opposition leaders.

Soviet diplomats seem to have China uppermost in their minds. In private conversations, they have warned American authorities not to trust Peking. Intelligence reports warn that Taiwan leaders reacted to the severance of U.S. relations by threatening privately to seek an alliance with the Soviet Union. They pointed out that President Chtang Ching-kuo once studied in Russia.

Gasohol update It appears that some American farmers are abandoning food crops in favor of those that will produce energy. In Missouri, militant farmers are planning a 130 million distillation plant that will turn their crops Into alcohol. The high-proof brew will then be sold to oil marketers for use in a premium motor fuel blend called "gasohol." Another still is planned by farmers in Sumter County, President Carter's home county. Agriculture officials, meanwhile, are considering federal loan guarantees for a Colorado distillery that would make alcohol from sugar beets. United Future Syndic Air plana to reduce by one-half the number of auditors assigned to investigate the fraud.

Having gotten away with it once, the big oil companies are likely licking their chops at the prospect of yet another round of price gouging which of course will be blamed on the Arabs. Feotnete: The Energy Department's assistant administrator for enforcement naturally disagrees with the findings of the Inspector general, lie insists that the oil investigation was given the "highest priority" during part of 1978, and calls the allegations of lax enforcement totally misleading" and "Invalid." Headlines and footnotes Some enterprising Mexicans operate a thriving business selling fraudulent documents to their fellow citizens who wish to enter the United States. The hucksters have become so brazen, say Intelligence reports, that they are openly plying their trade in public parks. Many Mexicans, says one confidential document, "have been observed in (the) park awaiting their turn to negotiate with (the) vendors." According to intelligence reports, several U.S. motorcycle gangs are trying to move in on their Canadian counterparts.

The Hells Angels and the Outlaws, says one report, are making a concerted effort to take over Canadian motorcycle gangs. In a related story, Canadian police agencies have informed their U.S. colleagues that Canadian criminals are fleeing into this country at an increasing rate. The crooks cross at small isolated ports of entry. By JACK ANDERSON WASHINGTON It is fashionable to blame greedy Arab oil sheika for our Inflation problems.

When the oil sheikdoms announced their 14.8 percent price increase recently, Jimmy Carter's energy chief, James Schlesin-ger, puffed thoughtfully on his pipe and sorrowfully predicted that Americans would soon noUce the effects at the gas pump. The Arabs, in some cases, are a convenient alibi for the administration, They can be used as whipping boys to protect the real culprits domestic oil producers and retailers greed is matched only by their contempt for the law. We first reported on the so-called "daisy chain" scandal two years ago. This multibillion-dollar rip-off by American oil companies has been called by one Energy Department official "the largest criminal conspiracy in U.S. history." EssenUally, what the petroleum moguls did was evade the government's price controls on oil by falsely representing "old" oil, at IS per barrel, as "new" oil, which sold for 111 per barrel.

Turning the bureaucrats' confusing maze of regulations to their advantage, these unscrupulous operators passed the oil back and forth on paper, pumping up the price at each step of the phony transaction. The oil never actually changed hands In this "daisy chain" swindle, but American consumers were taken for a ride that cost them billions of dollars. Energy officials have known about the scandal for over three years, and have volumes of evidence to document it. Incredibly, though, not a THE CAPITAL TIMGD 1901 Fiih Hatchery Road Phone 252-6400 Mailing address: PO Box 8060, Madiaon, 53708 William T. Evjue, Founder-Editor, 1917-1970 Miles McMillin, Editor and Publisher, 1970-1978 ELLIOTT MAKAN188, Editor ROBERT MELOON.

Ettcutivt Editor OHN PATRICK HUN'ILK. Auocittr Editor DAVE ZWE1FEL, Editor MAJUX PULVERMACHEX, Attocitit Editor ART H1NRICHS, Sports Editor DAVID 8ANDKLL Chief Photographer MADISON, FRIDAY, DEC 21, 17 Cronyism: alive and well Carter finds road to certain re-election single criminal case was referred to the Justice Department for prosecution until early this year. INSTEAD, ENERGY czar Schlesin-ger has chosen to pooh-pooh the charges against the grand dukes of America's royal oil family, and has ridiculed congressional protests at his department's failure to act against them. Meanwhile, a confidential report by his own Inspector general bluntly concludes that the Energy Department's enforcement of the oil pricing regulations has been both "inadequate" and "incomplete. As one official familiar with the investigation told our associate Jack Mitchell, DOE's enforcement division is a bureacratic "Bermuda Triangle," where "things go In but somehow never come out" Soon It will be too late to do anything: The statute of limitations is running out, and the perpetrators of the gigantic rtp-off will go scot free if action is not taken soon.

Yet the department's auditors are quietly cutting back on the man hours devoted to digging into the biggest oil scandal since the Teapot Dome. Unreleased figures from the General Accounting Office reveal that the agency I'rr-ldent C-artrr button to world peace. The White House now believes that the changed relationship with mainland China may hasten rather than retard the current U.S.-Soviet strategic arms limitation talks (SALT). If so, Americans may witness an historic summit meeting in Washington between Brezhnev and Carter even before the arrival here of the official Chinese delegation, headed by Deputy Prime Minister Teng Hsaio-ping, on Jan. 21.

PEACE has frequently played a decisive role in U.S. Presidential elections. Woodrow Wilson's famous slogan, He Kept Us Out of War won him re-election in 111! against the LEE DREYFUS has promised to bring a breath of fresh air into state government Perhaps he will by the time his term end in 1SS3. But he has started out his new administration by invoking one of the hoariest political rules of all to the victor belongs the spoils. Many of the major appointments have gone to people who helped him win election.

Most of them are FLSDBTSPers (For Lee S. Dreyfus Before the September Primary). Not all by any means. Hes kept Don Percy, a Schreiber appointee on as secretary of Health and Social Services. Dale Cattanach, the present Secretary of Transportation, declined a Dreyfus cabinet job.

One of Dreyfuss major appointments went to Kenneth Lindner, UW-La Crosse chancellor, to head the Department of Administration. For a man who owes his upset victory to his run against the political establishment, Dreyfus has managed to reward some of his political cronies with some of the best-paying jobs. William Kraus, the Stevens Point insurance executive who managed his campaign, will work in the executive office. Lowell Jack-son, the Dane county Republican activist who joined the Dreyfus campaign very early, wiD be the new transportation secretary. Mark Musolf, who has fought vainly in trying to put some liberal blood in the state Republican party, also a charter FLSDBTSPer, will be the new secretary of revenue.

The list of women and minorities is pretty thin. So much for affirmative action. Republicans, of course, dominate the list Besides Kraus and Musolf they include Joseph Noll, to be secretary of Department of Industry, Labor, Human Relations and Stanley York, former GOP legislator and DILHR Commissioner, to an administrative post in the executive office. State Rep. LaVerne Aus-man, the unsuccessful GOP candidate for lieutenant governor in the September primary, will become a DILHR commissioner.

Paul Swain, a local Republican, has been appointed legal counsel for Dreyfus. Another is Robert Brunner, Milwaukee, an unsuccessful Ninth District Congressional GOP candidate this year. Brunner will become secretary of the Department of Business Development. SOME OR most of the new appointees may turn out to be first rate. But with a few exceptions, the prime prerequisite for a top job in the new administration was GOP credentials.

There may well be a new broom in the East Wing of the Capitol, but most of the sweepers are going to be Republican cronies of the new governor. i I I I I I i i I I nominee of the then-dominant Republican Party. Franklin D. Roosevelt won a third term in 1940 on non-intervention in World War II. In 1119, Dwight Eisenhower's election-eve promise to go to Koren" personally to negotiate peace literally annihilated the candidacy of Adlai Stevenson.

Elsenhower also was re-elected by a landslide after rejecting the urgent efforts of his secretary of State and the Joint chiefs of staff for U.S. military Intervention in South Asia. "Let Asians fight Asians," was his dictum. John F. Kennedy always regarded his Cuban Bay of Pigs Invasion as his biggest mistake, but he learned from it and his popularity rose notably when he started promoting peace, detente with Russia and enactment of the nuclear test ban treaty.

Politically, the most brilliant peace exploiter wu Richard Nixon, who won the presidency by less than 1 percent In 1988, and wu far down In the polls in 1971 (the year before his re-election campaign). Although his entire political career wu based on anti-communism, particularly attacks on Russia and mainland China, Nixon, with the aid of former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, secretly reversed himself and brought off detente with Moscow and rapprochement wth Peking. He neither explained, nor apologized. He simply presented the American people with a daring fait accompli in the name of puce, on which he campaigned for re-election, winning However, that is the wrong question to uk.

The real question which district residents and school board members must answer is far more complex than the simple eitheror posed in Sen. Risser's poll. Those who opposed the recent school board action to dose three elementary schools argued that other options ought to be explored and tried before resorting to the ultimate solution the closing of neighborhood elementary schools. For instance, space equivalent to one neighborhood school is now being rented for various programs in a number of operating schools around the city. The city's efforts to rent out apace even though hampered because they began late this spring were extremely successful and can go a long way In seeking valuable rentpaying programs for vacant school Apace.

In addition, the same dollar savings can be achieved through reducing administrative staff and through flexible district reorganization, such as keeping sixth graders at some elementary schools closer to home. The superintendent has proposed selling off the School Administration Building. Rather than purchasing or leasing By CLAYTON FRITCHEY Ncwtdiy WASHINGTON President Carter has apparently discovered the path to re-election. He is the new apostle of peace; the exemplar of international cooperation and stability. If this is the true shape of things to come from the Carter White House, the president can be considered a favorite now for renomination and re-election.

This is not said lightly, for the American people, in this century at least, have never rejected an incumbent presidential peace-maker, especially one who in just three months has suddenly and dramatically pre-empted the peace role on a scale seldom, if ever, seen in our time. On Sept. II at Camp David he came closer to resolving the Arab-lsraeU conflict than any other American leader has in 30 years of trying. The agreement is not yet complete, but It could be at any time. And in the midst of these negotiations came the flash that the United States and the Peoples Republic of China have agreed on recognition and normalization of relations, a feat that had also eluded American presidents over three decades.

Then, within 48 hours, Carter was able to report that Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev had personally Informed him that the Soviets accepted the new agreement as a contri- VOICE Luce says Taiwan remains dictatorship NEW YORK, N.Y. Normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China is a welcome step. But It leaves the people of Taiwan under the same cruel dictatorship. The island nation has been ruled by martial law for 30 yean longer than any nation in modern history. "Improper thought" Is a crime and high school students are required to keep diaries of their thoughts and activities.

The diaries are then reviewed by the high school security officers. Signs In public telephones, on cigarette packs and bank windows urge people to "Report Suspicious Activities of Your Neigh-bora" and "Retake the Mainland." The people are prohibited from reading the Bible In their own romanized Taiwanese script The normalhatlofl hu been used by the Chiang Ching-kuo regime as an excuse to tighten martial law. The Dec. 22 elections involving lea that 16 percent of the congresntonal sate have been canceled. This Is a dear attempt to crush the growing Taiwanese opposition.

The Joint Communique of Cdna and 49 out of SO states; despite his forbidding personality. FURTHER, it is revealing to check the election performances of presidents who came to be regarded war-minded. Harry Truman plunged the U.S. Into the Korean War without consulting the public or getting formal congressional approval. By.

1952, he wu so low in the polls that he chose not to run again. Later, Lyndon Johnson dragged the United States Into the Vietnam War with little public knowledge or support. The reaction wu so severe that he felt compelled to abandon his hopes for election in 1968. Former President Gerald Ford might easily have won in 1976 (he only lost by 1 percent) had he not favored further rescue efforts for Vietnam and more U.S. involvement in the Angola conflict.

He also banished detente from his vocabulary. Carter seems to be finally making good on his pledge to "free the U.S. of its inordinate fear of communism," but more and suffer tests are ahead the naUon's cold warriors try to intim-idate him. Nevertheless, if he can keep the momentum of Peking, Panama, Moscow and the Middle East rolling, he will be a tough leader to stop. Six years ago, Nixon said in Shanghai, "This wu the week that changed the world." Carter now hu a splendid chance to make that come true.

space, I would propose moving the central administrative staff closer to where the action is to vacant space in operating schools. And Anally, once those and other creative ways of meeting the problem of declining enrollments have reduced the ultimate solution closing schools to more manageable proportions, then we are faced with the choice of which schools to dose. The recent School Board decision side-stepped the issue of closing middle schools in preference to elementary schools; I think the middle school students are older, the great bulk already are bussed to school, while shutting down elementary schools requires additional bussing and imposes a bigger burden on the children and on the community. If Sen. Risser had asked whether the people of his district would close neighborhood elementary schools only after the above options had been explored and tried, I feel confident three quarters of his answers would have been yes.

His poll is not an affirmation of the recent School Board action because It fails to ask the right question. Rebecca Yeuag i New era, old problems of the people NEXT WEDNESDAY a new political era will begin in Wisconsin with the inauguration of Republican Gov. Lee S. Dreyfus. The traditional ceremonies will take place, as usual, in the ornate Rotunda of the State Capitol.

Wisconsin has been inordinately proud of its capitoL with its glistening marble and its towering dome, and its gleaming light grey granite exterior. But the architects of the structure didnt know beans about acoustics. And the space devoted to the inaugural is a joke. Dreyfus and the other constitutional officers, their families and honored guests will be seated on the second floor mezzanine. A segment of the public will take up space on the ground floor, where theyll be lucky to get a gfimpee of the proceed-tess; -v Latecomers will be crowded behind ropes in the circular area on the mezauiine floor, and higher on the third floors.

Some even wO go higher. Ness of them, it is sa to pre dict, will be able to hear the proceedings. The marble walls echo sound like a summer thunderstorm. It is a perfect set-up for disrupters, such as those who drowned out Sen. Edward Kennedy in October.

DREYFUS AND the other principals will try, with little su-cess, to overcome the handicap by using loudspeakers. But generally, they merely magnify the problem by Increasing the volume of the sound that echoes around the rotunda. To cap off the billowing echoes, the Milwaukee Symphony, which almost never comes to town, and certainly not In recent years when it has achieved a national stature, is scheduled to play during the inaugural ceremonies. One of these days, some wise politician will change the rules and the setting. Theyll delay the inaugural to summer and hold It outdoors under the oak trees on the lawn, or else move the whole shebang out to the University of Wisconsin's Stock Favillon.

It may be just a big barn, but it holds 9, CC9 people and Its acous- i the United States properly denies legitimacy to the Nationalist regime on Taiwan. It ala affirms the principle that neither nation should seek hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region. However It acknowledges the position of the Chinese government that there Is but one China and Taiwan Is part of China." The people of Taiwan have already had this formula imposed upon them for the past thirty years by an expatriate Chinese regime. It is now the responsibility of the United States and China to affirm the right of the 17 million people of Taiwan to determine their own future free from imposed rule by either the Chinese Nationalists or the Peoples Republic of China. Don Lace, Clergy and Laity Con- Rinser asked wrong question.

Young says "MADISON It's no surprise to me that Sen. Risser's legislative poll found that three quarters of his responders would not support increased real estate taxes in lieu of closing neighborhood schools hi areas of declining enrollments. I would be hard pressed not to have responded in like fashion to that'question..