Portland Observer, August 11, 1982 Page 3
EDITORIAL/OPINION
The Reagan Administration is supporting a
controversial bill that would virtually eliminate
the power of the federal courts to order busing
for school desegregation. The bill would bar
tederal judges from ordering that students be
bussed more than 15 minutes from their homes.
The bill, that passed the Senate in March and
now is before the House, would block the Jus
tice Department from seeking busing as a rem
eds and allow the department to go to court to
overturn previous busing orders.
Tederal courts would retain power to hear de
segregation cases but could not order busing.
This bill is clearlv a threat to the constitutional
The Reagan Administration has announced
that the economic recession has bottomed out—
that recovery has begun. This is based on a mod
est 1.7 per cent rate of increase in the gross na
tional product in the second quarter, after two
steep quarterly declines.
The small gain was largely due to a slower rate
of reduction of business inventories. Sales of
goods and services—as opposed to inventories—
went down .6 per cent.
Business investment fell at an 8.5 per cent an
nual rate; government purchases fell 6.4 per cent
and net exports fell slightly. Personal consump
tion, which accounts for one-third of the GNP,
rose 3 per cent. The unemployment rate is the
highest since the 1930s and industrial production
is falling.
An up and down business cycle has continued
Lebanon:
authority of the courts, giving Congress the right
to limit the actions of the federal courts. The bill
does not go so far as to attempt to take away the
jurisdiction of the courts in desegregation cases
—as other bills do in abortion and school prayer
—but it is clearly an effort to impose restriction
on the courts and as such should be disclosed
unconstitutional.
This bill is a dangerous procedure that not
only could eliminate the citizen’s right to equal
educational opportunity, but could undercut the
entire federal court system which, with all its in
adequacies, is still the only hope for minority
people in this country to achieve some measure
of justice.
since World War 11, with six recessions and re
coveries. Each recession was followed by a surge
of grow th that continued for several years.
Since 1979 the pattern has changed. There has
been a series of recessions with small waves of
growth that do not reach previous highs. The
economy—as measured by the GNP—is where it
was in 1979, 3 l/ i years ago.
The fact that the GNP remains the same does
not mean that each American income remains
the same. Since the population is increasing 1
per cent annually, income per capita is falling.
The president might hope the recession is over
but the truth is that the country is still caught in
a spiral of stagnation and depression and the
Reagan policies have done nothing to bring
about a recovery.
by Dr. Manning Marable
"From The Grassroots"
To most Americans, a “ p o liti
c ia n " is someone who completely
disregards the truth. To others, poli
tics is the rich man’s game, usually
played fo r high stakes, w ithout
blacks, Hispanics or females. The
first thing I do when someone intro
duces a politician to me is to hold
onto my wallet!
Even before Nixon uttered his fa
mous phrase, “ I am not a crook,”
we’ve known that electoral politics
in the U.S. is structured to favor the
wealthy, the elite, and the corpora
tions over the rest o f us. What is
most perturbing, I think, about this
electoral “ con game” is that it per
petuates the illusions that A m er
icans are being told the “ tru th ”
about this or that issue, and that
“ equal opportunity” exists for ev
eryone who runs for office. Let’s ex
amine these concerns more closely.
Last year, as anyone who reads
the newspapers can attest, Ronald
Reagan fought to slash or delay So
cial Security benefits. Against the
Republican A dm inistration, Con
gress parsed a 7.4 per cent increase
in Social Security benefits, which
took effect on July 1 for 36 million
elderly recipients.
So wha, does Reagan do? The ob
vious—he lies.
This month, the Republican Na
tional Committee paid for a $1 m il
by Martin Peretz
excerpted fro m the Sew Republic,
.4 ug. 2, ¡982
Much o f what you have read in
the newspapers and news magazines
about the war in L e b a n o n ...is
simply not true. At best, the routine
re p o rto ria l
fare
has
been
wrenched out o f context, detached
from history, exaggerated, dis
torted. Then there are the deliberate
and systematic fa lsifica tio n s: re
markably little o f what has been al
leged in various published protest
statements against the Israeli action
in Lebanon is fact. I know; I was
there .
About ten days into the war, The
New Republic noted editorially that
there had been “ terrible civilian ca
sualties
terrible Israeli callous
ness." With the specificity that the
computer age requires, two numbers
had by then been bruited about in
the media. One widely cited report
numbered the dead at 10,122;
another, at 9,583. The figure that
took hold in the public's imagina
tion was a neat 10,(XX) fatalities, to
which were added anywhere from
16,000 to 40,000 wounded and no
less than 6(X),(XX) refugees. (Another
recent figure claims 700,000). . . .
Tyre is where the controversy
about civilian casualties starts and
Sidon is where it ends. The casual
ties o f West Beirut, whose destiny
the PLO holds in its hands, were
never counted in the early estimates
that first provoked in d ign a tion .
Ty re and Sidon fell to the Israelis af
ter forty-eight hours of heavy fight
ing. The cities were bombed from
the a ir, shelled from the sea, set
upon over (he land. These were not,
said a saddened Israeli colonel,
“ manicured a ttacks." But neither
were they indiscriminate or whole
sale; this was not war against a civil
ian population, Lebanese or Pales
tinian. Whomever 1 talked to on the
streets—and there are many eager to
ta lk, C hristian and Moslem, in
French or English or Arabic—point
ed out that what the Israelis had tar
geted were invariably m ilitary tar
gets. A friend in the States later re
monstrated that this observation im
plicitly faults the PLO for resisting
the invasion. I t ’ s not that, not that
at all —but rather that the PLO re
sisted, as it had previously ag
gressed, from the midst o f civilian
life, and o f Lebanese as well as o f
Palestinian civilian life. With excru
ciating consistency, the PLO’s com
manders seemed to favor for their
antiaircraft batteries the courtyards
of schools, for their tanks and artil
lery the environs o f hospitals, apart
ment buildings, and—easiest fo r
them and most devastating for their
families—the labyrinthine alleys of
the refugee camps, Rashidiye at Tyre
and in Ain el-Hilwe at Sidon. The
PLO was not alone in turning non-
combatant areas in to war zones:
Jonathan Randal in the Post (June
14) gingerly admits from Aazzoun-
iye that “ there were also confused
reports o f Syrian soldiers being in
the area o f the sanitarium during the
fighting.” In Jezzin, more beautiful
than Aspen, the reports were not
confused. Dr. Naji Kannan told me
that he had evacuated patients to his
own home from his hospital because
the Syrians had installed themselves
in its confines and wouldn’t leave.
On whom, according to the Gene
va Conventions laws o f war aiming
to set inhibitions on the killing of in
nocents, falls the onus for civilian
casualties incurred in populated
areas? Had the Israelis, I asked,
shelled areas from which there was
no fire? No one, not even the surly
young bank clerk in Tyre, suggested
they had. The entrance to Sidon and
the city center were devastated—
and, I was told by locals, that’ s ex
actly where PLO arms and fighters
were most densely concentrated.
The bombed-out, skeletal evidence of
a m ilitary infrastructure proved it.
In this p rim a rily Moslem locale,
PLO headquarters stood directly be
tween the Shabb hospital and Al
Fatah’ s own in firm a ry . A ll the
same, it was apparent that Israeli
forces took pains not to damage
such buildings, likely to hold civili
ans. Even in heavily hit areas, many
mosques and other public in s titu
tions seemed miraculously to sur
This week, House and Senate
vive unscathed. I wandered freely, I
conferees are continuing debate on a
should add with an officer fro m ...
$99 billion Administration-backed
the army’s information unit. He had
tax b ill—a bill that proponents like
no itin e rary beyond my curiousi-
to call a “ tax reform” measure.
ty -----
But the more one looks at this
In both m ajor coastal cities,
bill, the clearer it becomes that it is
hours before the Israeli attack, leaf
anything but a reform measure.
lets had been dropped, calling on
This b ill is a tax hike—and a hike
the inhabitants to flee to the
that once again takes a big bite out
beaches, which would be guaranteed
o f the pocketbooks o f those least
by the Israelis as open or war-free
able to pay.
zones. That’s what the cities could
Consider the facts for a moment.
have been had the PLO entrenched
Under the bill:
themselves in the hills and not in the
cities. In Sidon, I was told by a local
•Tax deductions for medical bills
merchant, the PLO firebombed a w ill be smaller and harder to get.
street o f shops to emphasize its in Only medical and dental costs in ex
tent that people not leave.. . .
cess o f 7 per cent o f adjusted gross
Numbers have always been a income w ill qualify for an itemized
problem in Lebanon: there has been deduction, up from a floor o f 3 per
no census for more than a genera cent. O nly $100 o f medical insur
tio n, lest fresh figures disrupt the ance premiums will be deductible—
political formula for denomination a $50 cut from the present amount.
al representation... .The PLO w ill
•Medicare recipients w ill have to
not allow UNRWA to do a count o f
the refugees in the camps lest alloca
casualty figures at a ll. " A phone
tions be reduced... .The population
call to U N IC E F headquarters in
o f Lebanon is said to be about three
New York provoked a stronger de
m illio n ; this makes the figure o f
nial.
600,000 new refugees in the south
This leaves the International Red
transparent nonsense, since that is
Cross,
which seems absolutely be
roughly the total number o f inhabi
side
itself
to deny responsibility for
tants o f the war zone, fro m the
the
casualty
numbers. David Otta-
Mediterranean in the west to the
way reported in the Post on June 25
Syrian fro n t in the east. Even the
that Francesco Noseda, head of the
scaled-down number o f 300,000 ref
Red Cross mission in Lebanon,
ugees defies logic and one’s eyes. . . .
claimed
that “ we did not mention
Given the im possibility o f accu
here
any
figure approaching
rately judging the number o f the liv
10,000.”
He
did say that the only
ing, it is not surprising that sloppi
numbers
the
Red
Cross had provid
ness and propaganda determine the
ed were the counts o f 47 dead and
number o f the dead. In the begin
247 wounded in T y re —and these
ning the high to ll seemed to carry
figures, interestingly, are lower than
the cachet or in te rn a tio n a l re lie f
those
put out by Israeli authorities.
agencies. .. But the source was nev
In
Tyre,
Dr. El Khalil estimated that
er actually the In te rn a tio n a l Red
between
57
and 63 persons had been
Cross or any U.N. agency, though
killed, including civilians from the
they have been widely cited. The
refugee camps. Dr. Harris told me
numbers came originally from the
that
Israel “ doesn’ t estimate the
Palestinian Red Crescent, o f which
dead.
We count them. This is why
Yasir A rafat’ s brother is president.
we
couldn’
t give numbers as readily
Some early Lebanese estimates were
as
the
people
in Beirut. We had no
close to his . .. Chancellor Bruno
real numbers u n til the fallen-in
Kreisky of Austria, joining the lit
buildings were dug out. Maybe there
any fo r the 10,000 dead, said his
are
a few more we won’ t fin d.” . . . .
source was UNICEF. But in Geneva
The
refugee estimates have also
a spokeswoman fo r U N IC E F de
(Please
turn to page 2 column I )
clared, “ We have not reported any
P o rtla n d O bserver
Oregon
Newspaper
Publishers
Asso, u tio n
L
PER
Association - Foundad 1885
The P o rtla n d Observer (USPS 959 6801 is published every
Thursday by Exie Publishing Company, Inc , 2201 North Killings
worth Portland, Oregon 97217, Post Office Box 3137, Portland,
Oregon 97208 Second class postage paid at Portland. Oregon
AI McGUberry, Editor/Publisher
D r. M a n n in g M a r a b le is D i
r e c to r o f th e R ace R e la tio n s In
s t it u t e a t F isk U n iv e r s ity , N a sh
v ill. T N
by Congressman Ron Wyden
pay a fee fo r home care visits—a
proposal that w ill eat away at the
pocketbooks o f senior citizens while
doing nothing to save money for the
federal treasury. Medicare recipi
ents who can recuperate at home—
instead o f in a hospital—actually
save the taxpayaers money.
•Savers and small investors w ill
be subject to a 10 per cent withhold
ing tax on interest and dividend
earnings.
•Consumers will also have to pay
double the current tax for local and
long-distance phone service.
In all, individuals will have to ab
sorb some $48 billion, or nearly one-
half of the three-year tax hike.
The approach o f the tax b ill is
clearly unfair: the same people who
were left out o f the tax relief pack
age last year are being singled out
fo r the proposed tax increase this
year. In essence, the tax b ill w ill
throw people who are already
drowning an anchor.
But more than that, the tax bill is il
logical. The sole purpose ot this bill
allegedly [,sto help reduce the deli
cit. But byigiving people less money
to spend, it is more likely to increase
it.
It would make some sense lo r
Congress Io undo some o f what was
done in last year’ s giant tax cut.
M u ltib illio n dollar oil companies
and other special interests came
away with subsidies that are unjusli
fied and should be cut.
But it does not make sense to add
more burdens to the shoulders of
young families, small savers, senior
citizens and other hard-pressed Am
ericans.
The tax b ill being debated by
House and Senate conferees does
not add up to tax reform , it just
adds up to more taxes. Congress
should not support it.
Letters to the Editor
It is a re lie f fo r me to learn the city and culture is being violcntly
steeple on the First United Metho dismantled and destroyed? While
dist Church in Salem is just being re many seem not to know what is
paired and will be replaced. I view it happening there, I feel knowing and
often and with great affection.
caring people throughout the world
The scene o f the Oregon Pioneer will long remember when this terti
atop the Capitol on State Street to ble destruction and death was com
gether with the steeple o f the Metho milled upon the W'orld. I tear the
dist Church, just two blocks away, days of August 1982 in Lebanon will
fittingly at the corner o f Church and join December 7th, 1941 (the Japan
State Streets, has come to mean and ese attack on Americans at Pearl
represent much to me. These two Harbor) followed by August 6th,
spires express our pioneer and more 1945 (the American nuclear bomb
recent past and have always stood ing of the Japanese at Hiroshima) as
above the spring and summer Salem days when terrible wrongs were
skyline during the legislature. They committed. I tear too that many,
represent Jason Lee, W illia m S. many people in the world are decid
U ’ Ren, earlier Oregon and present- ing that Beirut too w ill need to be
day middle America rolled into one. avenged and that they w ill not rest
Lately I'v e noticed a bit o f Tom easily until both Israel and its arms
McCall there too.
supplier and supporter, the United
An unplanned, parallel thought
States, have been repaid.
came to mind during this local inci
More than the beautiful church
dent. If the dismantling of a Salem spire I have come to love in Salem
church steeple holds this much could then be destroyed.
meaning and significance for myself
and others, how can the people of
Wally Priestley
Beirut, Lebanon feel as their entire
state Representative
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A I Williams, Advertising Manager
E\.
V irtually every U.S. Senator to
day earns more than 580,(XX) a year.
Only one out of every one hundred
Americans earns that much. O nly
4,000 blacks out o f almost 30 mil
lion earn incomes above $80,(XX).
What’s worse, they’ re in the pro
cess o f hiking their incomes. Their
annual living allowance jumped to
$19,000 from $3,000. H a lf o f the
senators earn over $40,(XX) annually
from honarariurns for speeches. In
this country club, some are a little
better o ff than others A 1979 as
sessment o f Republican Sen. John
Heinz’ s wealth exceeded $20 m il
lion. The Senate’s "poor man” may
be New Jersey’ s B ill Bradley, a
former professional basketball star
who has to struggle to get by on
“ only” $95,(XX) a year. There are at
least 40 “ o ffic ia l m illio n a ire s " in
the Senate, and in all probability,
there are even more.
So you wonder why Reagan robs
the poor and gives to the rich? You
ask why the American political sys
tem places the interests of p ro fits
over people? Don’ t ask: just watch
the scoundrels at work. Their con
game might even be amusing, except
there are too many millions o f poor
and working people’ s lives at stake.
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MEMBER
lion television advertising campaign
which tries to convince the Am eri
can people that Reagan actually is
responsible for w inning a 7.4 per
cent increase. The ad pictures a
folksy old postman who’s delivering
Social Security checks. The postman
declares innocently that Reagan
himself “ promised that raise and he
kept his promise, in spite o f those
sticks-in-the-mud who tried to keep
him from doing what we elected him
to d o . . . . For gosh sake, let’ s give
the guy a chance.”
Democratic Congressman Clause
Pepper, chair o f the House Com
mittee on Aging, was shocked at the
G O P ’ s ad. For Reagan to claim
credit “ lowers the art o f deception
to depths not explored since N ix
o n ," Pepper declared. “ The ad is
nothing less than a hypocritical at
tempt to mislead the American peo
ple into thinking President Reagan
and the Republican Party are re
sponsible fo r the very benefit in
crease which they fought so hard to
postpone.”
Why do Reagan and his coterie of
reactionary supporters, like Nixon
before them, have such a contempt
for truth? Their distortion o f poli
tical reality may have something to
do with their great wealth, and the
manner in which one’ s olym pian
status high above the poor affects
one’s perspective.
Washington Hot Line
One Jewish Viewpoint
T h e P o rtla n d O b server tr ie s to
p r e s e n t a ll s id e s o f th e M id d le
E a s t p r o b le m as w e ll as o t h e r
c o n tr o v e r s ia l issu e s. T h is w e e k ,
w e r e p r in t e x c e r p ts fr o m " L e b
a n o n E y e w itn e s s ," an a r tic le b y
M a r tin P e retz w h ic h a p p e a re d in
The A e w R e p u b lic , A u g . 2, 1982
T h e a r tic le w a s s u b m itte d to us
by a p ro m in e n t re p re s e n ta tiv e o f
P o rtla n d s J e w is h c o m m u n ity
N f M A
Money and truth in politics
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