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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (March 16, 1970)
DM Socialism comes to the Pentagon by Dan Ladely The anti-draft rally last Friday was nothing more than a circus. Each suc ceeding rally becomes a? bit more redun dant, a bit more hackneyed until you have nothing left but an ineffectual platform designed mainly to bolster the egos of a few professors who consider themselves liberal and provide some Friday afternoon entertainment that could very well be taken care of by the Union's Jazz and Java program. Friday afternoons shouldn't be wasted on such unfruitful activity. Why not take Alan Siporin's advice and spend your Fridays getting stoned, drunk or go home and boop your girl something totally constructive, designed to give pleasure and release pent-up frustrations built up during the week. DON'T break up your guns. Save them for the revolution whether it is a revolu tion from the right or the left, you are going to need them. This country is a seething cauldron ready to boil over at any time. The people within are polarizing black against white, left against right, minority against majority. : Don't burn your draft cards burn your draft boards. If you want to be really effective, think of ways to screw up the system. If you burn your1 draft cards and go to prison, you are only playing their petty little games. Resist, but be militant. There is no more time left for us to play games and be on the defensive. ' THE MORATORIUM has lost all its zap. The people Involved are so wrapped up in themselves like crusading individuals - against the big bad wolf the government they have lost perspective. When you stand around and talk about all the bodies being burned children being killed all the atrocities committed by our won derful boys in uniform, you should be sick or angry. You don't solve the problem by holding church-service-pray-in type rallies and whimper about the war. Sit back and think of what the Moratorium has accomplished. Nixon does not listen to you. He has not had a troop withdrawal for some time and he is even expanding the war into Laos. He is not affected by your rallies, no matter how big, and will continue not to be affected until another step is taken. The time has come to join your brothers in Chicago, Santa Barbara and New York. Join us in Woodstock Nation. When you are backed into a corner, the only alternative is to fight back and when your adversary is as big as Pig Nation, you must fight viciously. RAPPING by FRANK MANKIEWICZ and TOM BRADEN Washington The spectacle of Undersecretary of Defense David Packard agonizing over how to give Lockheed Aircraft $650 million of the taxpayers' money in order to keep it in business is a scandal made more so because it is so revealing of. the military-industrial complex. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's recent definition of the military-industrial as a figment of the imagination (as Stone Age men imagined evil gods to explain a poor rainfall) is a better description of a tendency in high places to intellectualize than it is of economic fact. The economic fact is that the government already owns nearly all of Lockheed ex cept the stock and the profits. We own the Marietta, Ga., plant at which the C-5A was built, and we own the plant at Sunnyvale. Calif., where the Poseidon-Polaris missiles are fashioned. NOW it is boldly proposed by Lockheed management that it be rewarded for stunning mismanagement by a gift of cash in order, we are told, to "keep the team together" and avoid the risk that several other weapons systems will go by the boards. And the government treats the event as a commonplace. What is unstated, in the Lockheed proposal, is that the company's cash flow is tied up not in Pentagon contracts alone, but in construction of the commercial L-1011 Jumbo Jet. But the new plane is at least a year away from the runway. costs are high and commercial airlines do not have the cozy arrangements with their sup pliers which the taxpayers do. LOCKHEED is in trouble on the C-5A a giant plane whose cost overruns, concealed in the Pentagon last year to protect the company's stock position, were finally revealed to be enormous. As a result of con gressional outcry the reorder was reduced and the game was up. The game, in this case, is Pentagon procurement prac tices which would cause the instant dismissal of anyone in business. It is a world of "will cost" contracts, rather than "should cost," of "contract nourishment" rather than con tract policing, of "get-well money" under the guise of change orders. It is a game o! which former Pentagon official A. Ernest Fitzgerald has said "The more you spend the more you earn." FITZGERALD and others think there is another solution. For once, let capitalism work; let the inefficient producer be driven from the market. A Lockheed bankruptcy, after all, would mean the government could look for another tenant for its factories another manufacturer who would hire the present work force and finish the job. Perhaps a score of Lockheed executives would lose their jobs for they would have gambled, as American businessmen used to do, and lost. Instead, inefficiency will have been rewarded, the club will not be required to post the names of delinquent members and we will have moved a step closer to Uie interesting pro spect of socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor. Editor, I recently received a reply on the article by Mr. Paul Wicks about the University of Missouri which appeared in the Daily Nebraskan on Febr. 27th. The response: In the Febr. 27th issue of the Daily Nebraskan, an article appeared by Mr. Paul Wicks which grossly maligned and misrepresented the student body of the University of Missouri, as well as the University itself. FIRST, Mr. Wicks mentions that he had "just spent the better part of a week at the University of Missouri." Now, seriously, ask anyone who has ever spent part of a week at Mizzou and they will tell you emphatically that it wasn't the better part of that week. Second, he contends that "the Aggies drive around in green pickup trucks and beat up peo ple with long hair." This state ment Is Incorrect on two ac counts. First, rather than pickup trucks, the Aggies have a flotilla of tractors; and secondly, they are exercising Silent Majority rule over the shaggy subversives who are threatening our democratic government. AS A MEMBER of the fraternity about which references to mud fights, etc. were probably Intended, I can only say that we shall not let our reputation be so dirtied. Also, it should be added that we pledge no virgins in the first place. The panty raids do not originate on "Greek Street" but in dorms. They represent the social event of the year for the dormies. It is their way of ex pressing their virility. FINALLY, Mr. Wicks' definitions near the end of the article are wrong. "Relevance" is having a date every Friday and Saturday: "disad vantaged" is not having a closet full of Gant shirts; the "Establishment" is the Board of Curators; and the "urban crisis" is closing down the "Black and Gold." Sincerely, Garland Tschudin Student, University of Missouri MONDAY, MARCH 16, 1970 -I Just LOVE politics, don't you . . .? PAGE 5