Wednesday, may 2, 1979
pago4
daily nebraskan
mm cfe
Carter exchanges
oil drain problems
for excess profits
May be you remember the old brain-teaser. You are
in a bathroom whose window and door have been
sealed shut. Both faucets of the bathtub are wide open
and capable of filling the tub to overflowing within
20 minutes.' The drain, also fully open, is capable of
emptying the tub in 40 minutes. The room is water
proof, and escape is impossible. How do you keep from
drowning?
What brings the poser to mind is President Carter's
agony over What to do about the "windfall profits"
that would accrue to the American oil companies as a
result of his scheme to deregulate the price of domestic
crude.
William raspberry
Should the Congress enact sufficient added taxes to
absorb the excess profits? Should the companies be
permitted to keep their profits provided they agree to
plow back a certain percentage to exploration for un
tapped deposits? Should there be tax relief for the
citizens whose energy costs will go up as a result of
deregulation? How do we keep from drowning in sea
of oil-company profits?
I don't know much about the petroleum industry,
but I do remember the answer to the old brainteaser.
The way you keep from drowning is to turn the water
off.
Deregulation to permit domestic oil prices to rise to
world-market rates, themselves set artificially by the
OPEC cartel, is the source of the windfall problem that
has Carter so vexed. He wants the prices to rise in order
to force us to reduce our energy consumption.
Hardly anyone will argue against the need to curtail
our energy gluttony-even those who believe that the
present crisis is contrived. But it is fair to wonder
whether it makes sense to solve one problem by crea
ting another, equally vexatious one.
Why exchange the problem of excess consumption
for the problem of excess oil-company profits?
It isn't as though U.S. oil corporations are starving
to death. In fact, their soaring profits are a source of
considerable embarrassment, both to themselves and
to the administration.
Admittedly these huge profit increases are not en
tirely the result of domestic production, but the point
is that the companies aren't exactly hurting. The
president's windfall-profits proposal acknowledges as
much. So why create the windfall in the first place?
The answer depends on when you ask the ques
tion. A while back, the rationale for deregulation was
that it would encourage major increases in domestic
exploration. Permit the oil companies to earn more per
unit of production, we were told, and they will
naturally increase the number of units. Ergo: Our de
pendency on oil imports would be substantially
reduced.
Today's answer is vastly different. Deregulation, we
are told, has nothing to do with domestic production;
in fact, we should take away, through taxation, the
extra profits that stem' from deregulation. The
rationale now is that we need higher energy prices to
force us to consume less energy.
Again, I don't know much about the petroleum in
dustry, but it seems to me that soaring food prices are
busting our family budgets, and we are still as fat as
ever
Is oil really so different? Isn't the lieklihood that we
would continue our energy gluttony even in the face of
vastly increased energy costs? Do we burn less gasoline
at 80 cents a gallon than we did a few years back when
it was in the low 30s?
You know the answer to that one. The only
absolutely predictable result of the increased costs Car
ter now proposes would be another disastrous round of
generalized inflation.
The way to curb our wasteful consumption of
energy is to make less of it availaole-at any cost, in
a word: rationing I
The House Conimerce Ccromittee lastweek re
jected Carter! proposal for : stand-by : rationing
authority. In: fact the Congress has turned down
almost tne wnoie ot carters energy conxrrzuoa pat.
Judrin from Ccnsress'f attitude, you would
worker whether our legislators believe there really is
o energy crisis. Do they know something we con n
. CexyrtJit 1970, Ha Wxca PcGnspsay
Political game cools NU regents
Don't count your chickens before they're
hatched is an adage to which the NU Board of
Regents and university administrators should have
paid more 'attention last November when they
approved the contract for the now infamous East
Campus chiller.
For in approving the $463,000 air conditioning
project, the regents were spending money they
did not and , as of now, do not have.
Instead they planned on the Legislature approv
ing funding for the project this spring, because as
Regent Ed Schwartzkopf said, "I would expect
them to pass the bill as we have prioritized
them," the chiller being the number one priority
for NU capital construction.
It seems, however, the regents and administrat
ors are now learning a lesson in legislative politics
as the Appropriations Committee did not include
the chiller in the capital construction bill they
sent to the floor and the university has been
wedged between a rock and a very hard place.
The university faces substantial penalties if the
contract is broken and at the same time some
legislators who must approve the funding have
been angered by the regents' action which they
feel is manipulative and steps on their, the legis
lators', authority.
"It seems we have a chess game with 49
pawns," Bellevue Sen. Frank Lewis said Tuesday,
"and I prefer to be one." So he offered his own
solution to the chiller problem-take the money
from the NU operating budgetThat plan failed.
The university received an extension on the
contract but that merely postpones the inevitable
conflict, for push must soon come to shove.
Regent James Moylan said Tuesday that the
board may have gone beyond their authority in
approving the chiller "on credit". We agree.
What the regents also did was create a no-win
situation for themselves and for the university,
for if the chiller is not funded the university will
lose money and look foolish. If it is funded, the
resentment and the fiasco caused by the Legis
lature will inevitably return to haunt them and
harm the university perhaps as early as next week.
Farm workers suffer in filthy homes
Soft scents of fragrant citrus trees hover in the air
above the flatlands that are the country's most fertile
orange groves. The sweet smell of financial success is also
here. Indian River citrus, shipped to all markets in the
United States, has been a booming cash crop ever since
Americans discovered that good oranges mean good
health.
If Indian River County-on Florida's central Atlantic;
coastline-is nationally known for its citrus, its success
is negated by a different reality: the wretched housing
conditions endured by many of the local agricultural
workers. By one estimate, some '1,500 substandard
houses, plus another 1,500 in stages of deterioration, can
be found. Nearly one-eighth of the county's 52,000 citi
zens live in homes that are no better than shacks.
Earlier reports
The poverty and squalor in Florida's citrus groves have
been reported often enough in past years-from the cele
brated "Harvest of Shame" of Edward R. Murrow to the
occasional investigations of the Miami Herald and the St.
Petersburg Times.
But the victimization of the poor in Indian River Coun
ty represents a style of neglect that is subtler-and per
haps meaner and more contemptible-than what was seen
before. More frightening, it is a part of a pattern that has
been, developing in all parts of the country as rural
problems have been given less and less attention.
In Indian River County, this turning away means that
the white establishment in wealthy Wero Beach, the coun
ty seat, sees no urgency to create a public housing author
ity. A few local politicians of brave mind have spoken out
on behalf of the poor, and since 1970 five major commit
tees that have studied local housing problems have called
for 'reforms. But then, stagnation.
Degradation continues
That no public housing authority exists means contin
ued degradation for the black families in the shacks. But
it means also that the local white elites don't have to get
involved with the federal government. In their minds,
public housing means that federal money comes in, and
federal money means federal controls. Added together,
the trouble isn't worth it, especially if it is understood
that after local blacks move into good housing, other
blacks from out of the area will suddenly pop up wanting
to take over the shacks. That means more public money
spent on welfare and food stamps.
In the past, this was seen for what it was: racism. But
now, with loathing for the federal government being not
only acceptable but praiseworthy, a cover is provided.
Keep the poor down by keeing the feds out.
Infects government .
If this anti-federalism is in places like Indian River
County, where, a wealthy right-wing' makes sure that it
blossoms, it is startling to see the federal government it
self being infected. In Washington, a political battle in
volving the Department of Labor and a national farm
worker housing assistance program reveals how a federal
agency can be uneasy with its own mission.
The department has announced that it plans to discon
tinue the $2.5 million the program now receives. It isn't
that the program, which is administered by Rural
America, a Washington group, hasn't been successful. It
has broad support in Congress. Nineteen senators, ranging
from Russell Long to George McGovem, have endorsed
it. They have seen it for 10 years and know that it's work
ing well.
Program shuffle
Officials at Rural America have been told by Labor
that the program belongs someplace else in the govern
ment, perhaps with Agriculture or HUD. Labor .wishes
that "an interagency agreement can be implemented in
the near future."
In the field, in 56 farm towns from Salinas, California,
to Vineland, New Jersey, where the program has been
serving farmworkers, this bureaucratic language doesn't
camouflage the message: Get lost.
It is hard enough to get local communities involved
in a national program for a group as forgotten as farm
workers, but officials at Rural America must now take on
the added burden of defending their success in Washing
ton. The irony is painful. As part of the Office of Econo
mic Opportunity in the late 1960s, the program Was able
to survive the Nixon-Ford years. But now, with a Presi
den from rural America, rough weather, has blown in.
The storm doesn't threaten the crops-only the im
poverished people who tend them.
Copyright 1979, The Washington Post Company.
G(
Ever since this whole business started about the burn
ing of the turkeys in the bonfire. I have tried to keep my
views to myself, but with Friday's article of "Stress out
let" I found it impossible. Although you may not wish to
use the entire editorial, I would appreciate some acknow
ledgement in printing as I am sure many feel as I do
toward people with such cruel hearts.
While observing the infamous bonfire early Friday
morning; I thought I had witnessed humanity at its lowest
form with the tossing of live turkeys into the ebullient
fire, Jbut Lwss wrong. After reading the article in Friday's
paper written by Bernie MorcUo, that not only excused
the tossers, but praised their "enjoyable way of releasing
school pressures.
Anyone who has such a high lack of respect for life,
whether human or animal, to exterminate it in such t
cruel way is mentally unstable to say the least. But what
land of person would not only tolerate this action, but en
courage more of the same? I have seen and heard many
events in my life that throughly turn my stomach, but Mr.
MoreIlos view of '"enjoyment makes me empty it. Too
bad Mr. Morello was not around during World War II; I am
sure that he could have spent socse fun-fiUcd weekends
with Adolf Hitler. J -- . .
I do not know when, or even if I will observe another
early-moming bonfire, but I sure hope that I do not see
Mr. Morello 'there. I believe I would have little trouble
in finding some people to help me throw hira ia. But
then, I doubt if he would bum, being that his mind and
heart is made of stone. . V
".V Matthew B. Ellis