Page 4
Friday, September 3, 1982
Daily Nebraskan
tona
Edi
Gesture noble but misguided;
fight needed to regain salary
Bob Fitzgerald doesn't want to be a
martyr.
Fitzgerald, the second vice president
of ASUN, is giving up his salary for the
4982-83 school year because ASUN
President Dan Wedekind is not getting
paid.
But, Fitzgerald said Thursday morning,
he doesn't want people to think he's saying
"poor me." He doesn't want to publicize
the trouble he's having surviving without
a salary, but he will answer questions
about it when asked.
Any of us in the same situation would
have ample cause to complain. Fitzgerald
has lost IS pounds since taking office
this spring. As of noon Thursday, he'd
eaten three meals during the entire week.
And he's seeking an evening part-time
job - to go to after 'a full day of classes
and ASUN duties.
He says he's refusing his $932 yearly
salary for religious and philosophical
reasons. Because Wedekind is not being
paid what is supposed to be a $1,356
yearly salary - withheld by order of
the NU Board of Regents - Fitzgerald is
not accepting his paychecks.
While Fitzgerald's action is noble
and well-meaning, it's probably a
strategic mistake.
Declining the salary says to the regents,
"Look, we'll hold office, fulfill our duties
and represent our constituents without
being paid. We can do our job with or
without the salary."
Not fighting encourages the regents to
continue acting in violation of law and
legal advice.
The law: A provision in the state
constitution states that non-voting student
members of the Board of Regents (which
is what Wedekind is) shall receive no
compensation. It does not say the student
regent and president jobs are one in the
same.
The legal opinion: Richard Wood, NU
attorney, was asked about the legality of
withholding pay from student body
presidents on the grounds that the
president is also a regent. In a June 9,
1980, letter to the board, Wood said
"the constitutional prohibition does not,
in my' opinion, extend to compensation
received by a student body president for...
duties .. which are totally unrelated to
service on the Board of Regents."
Soon after receiving that opinion, the
board opted to ignore Wood's counsel
and said the ASUN president could not
be paid.
Some say the action was a figurative
slap on the face to former ASUN President
Renee Wessels. The regents were not fond
of Wessels' sometimes combative style.
But Wessels did not suffer because of
the action. Neither did last year's
president, Rick Mockler. Wedekind is the
first to have his salary withheld. And he,
like Wedekind, is suffering. According to
Fitzgerald and earlier Daily Nebraskan
reports, Wedekind has taken a second
job and is working weekends and some
afternoons to support himself and his
pregnant wife.
Since the regents have made the salary
a political issue, Fitzgerald and Wedekind
ought to adopt a little political savvy of
their own. Now, when the 1980 decision
has finally hit, is not the time to forget
the issue.
If Fitzgerald and Wedekind let the
matter drop without a fight, the position
of president may remain permanently
unsalaried. Then only those students
who have the financial means to hold
non-paying, full-time jobs can serve.
That would substantially narrow the
field of candidates.
"r Letters
Israel not the meek in Mideast
1 am amazed at the simple mindedness
of Americans like Murray Frost (letter to
the editor, Aug. 30 Daily Nebraskan), who
still believe that Israel is the meek in the
Middle East problem.
The writer said Israel is a small nation
that has faced hostility since its creation in
1948. 1 agree that Israel has faced hostility
but attitudes and views have changed since
1948.
Frost wrote that the Palestine Libera
tion Organization was rejecting negotia
tions. I would point out that the United
States would not talk to them nor would
the Israelis. At least 10 peace plans were
proposed in the recent Israeli-Lebanon
conflict, but not one was given by Israel.
Does this seem like a nation that wants
peace?
The writer also remembers Yasser
Arafat as a terrorist and the man who
asked for the Holy War against Israel. I
would like to juggle Frost's memory
further and ask what did Israeli Prime Mini
ster Menachem Begin do during Nazi oc
cupation of Warsaw and also against the
Ben Gurion government in Israel? Wasn't
that classified as terrorism?
Ali Quraishi
junior, computer science
Bumper stickers drive home
the common man 's message
In an unprepossessing office building on
the North Side of Chicago sits one of the
world's best-selling authors. He talks in a
gruff, gravelly voice, and no one outside his
own family would recognize his name. But
his works of literature are read all over
America.
"I'm thinking all the time," said Bill
Harris, 62. "I'm thinking here at the office,
I'm thinking while I'm driving in my car,
I'm thinking while I'm in bed. 1 keep a
note pad by the side of my bed.
"What do I think of in bed? Let me
give you a for-instance. I'm sleeping one
night, and all of a sudden I wake up with
an inspiration. My wife, Beverly, is used to
this
"Here is the line: 'BUSINESS IS SO
GOOD I COULD PUKE. Right away I
Bob
Greene
know I got a winner. I write it down. The
next day I put it into production. And now
it's one of our biggest sellers."
What Bill Harris does is write bumper
stickers. He is the author of a huge percent
age of the allegedly humorous bumper
stickers you see on America's highways and
back roads; he estimates that his
company, the Moderne Card Co., produces
80 percent of the bumper' stickers in the
"humorous" category. He lets someone
else write the political and cause-oriented
stickers.
"I've been doing this since 1947," he
said. "I've written maybe 1,000 different
bumper stickers in 35 years, and they've
sold maybe 15 million copies. They go for
a buck a bumper sticker these days.
"The rule is, you got to keep it short.
A bumper sticker is only 12 inches long.
You try to get too complicated or to say
too much, you lose your readers. I spend
all day editing. Shorten, shorten, shorten.
My whole life is spent shortening what I
write.
"But what I come up with sells. I'll hear
somebody say something, or hear a snatch
from a song, and 111 think: 'There's a
bumper sticker.'
"And then I'll refine it. I'm very proud
of my work. I have my favorites. 'POLICE
OFFICERS NEVER COP. OUT.' 'BANK
ERS DO IT WITH INTEREST.' 'IF YOU
TOUCHA MY CAR, I BREAKA YOU
FACE.'
Continued on Page 5
U.S. defense contractors: Wealth before security
"If it hadn't been for taxes, we couldn't hnvp hnndlpd
our profits with a stream shovel. " - a Todd Shipbuilding
Corp. executive testifying before the Special Senate Com
mittee investigating the National Defense Program in
1940.
It is now 1982, but the majority of defense contractors
are still having trouble hauling away their profits. The
special committee headed by then-Sen. Harry S. Truman
Matthew Millea
more than 40 years ago uncovered trends in defense
spending which have only accelerated since then.
The committee findings, as Truman recalled in volume
one of "Memoirs by Harry S. Truman," sound somewhat
familiar: "The committee found that leadership in both
labor and (defense) industry had been too concerned with
its own interests and too little concerned with the nat
ional welfare ... I felt that many demands for wage in
creases were inspired by the reports of horrendous profits
being made by defense contractors."
The profits being made bv defense
and now, were indeed amoral and unpatriotic. From Tru
man's memoirs: "We found that the Navy was extremely
liberal with the private shipbuilders. Nine of 13 companies
which had cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts were entitled to
receive fees, plus special bonuses, which exceeded the
amount of their net worth (emphasis mine) on Dec. 31
1939, as estimated by them ... In one case it (net profit
profit) exceeded by nearly 800 times their average annual
net profit; in other cases by 20, 30 and 40 times the
average annual net profits."
The primary reason the defense industry has been able
to continue sponging the American people is the now
time-honored practice of issuing cost-plus contracts
Instead of encouraging defense contractors to deliver
the best product for what the government decides it can
afford to pay, the Pentagon demands the best weaponry
regardless of price. It seems time to re-evaluate this
practice.
Rather than constantly assaulting social programs the
David Stockman crowd might do well to look out from
under their noses out there on the West Coast. (As Tru
man warned in Merle Miller's oral biography ("Plain
Speaking"), "all through history it's the nations that have
given the most to the generals and the least to the people
that have been the first to fall.")
Take McDonnell Douglas as an example. This aircraft
bui der provides jets for aircraft carriers at the cost of $25
million per plane. That's a few million more than the bid
they submit to the government. Apparently some of the
boys at the Pentagon arc suspecting that McDonnell
Douglas might be taking advantage of their trust (in the
iorm of a generous cost-plus contract.) The government
even went so far as to threaten to buy a different model
from Grumann, another aircraft manufacturer, at the
bargain-basement rate of $22 million per jet. (It's prob
ably just a threat though. Everyone knows a $22 million
jet isn t as good as a $25 million one, right?)
Ine point is that all of this could be avoided if the
government would play by the same rules business has to.
You don t hand people a blank check. Why not stipulate
j? the cAomPani that they must build a plane for less
than $10 million a copy? If, as you would expect, the
companies presented prototypes that sold for that price,
olficials could choose the most effective model.
The contractor would then be required to provide the
equipment at the stipulated price. Now im that the
American Way" these planes are bought to protect?