Newspaper Page Text
— Griffin Daily News Monday, December 20, 1976
Page 18
— Opinion —
Can Jimmy Carter
work this miracle?
By JOHN PINKERMAN
Copley News Service
WASHINGTON - One of
President-elect Jimmy
Carter’s campaign cries was,
“We must clean up the
bloated bureaucracy in
Washington.”
If this promise was any
thing beyond preelection
rhetoric it was a lofty and
worthy goal but, for a variety
of reasons, you can forget it.
Many others have said they
would cut government pay
roll waste here, a few have
tried — and practically all
have failed.
First of all, there is a built
in bureaucratic incest here
that defies the best intentions
of the best of presidents.
It is best illustrated by a
remark made to me by a
medium-range bureaucrat in
the overpopulated Health,
Education and Welfare De
partment: “I>et him (Carter)
try it. We know how to protect
ourselves. We survived (two
term President Dwight)
Eisenhower and we made
(Richard) Nixon look like a
fool. Carter was only talking,
anyway.”
A lower level Commerce
Department minority worker
was just as contemptuous,
cynical or blase on Mr.
Carter's promise, one akin to
Eisenhower's clean up
the mess in Washington."
This woman, a veteran of 12
years in Washington — Lyn
don Johnson, Nixon and
Gerald Ford — said it like it
is: “They wouldn’t dare
eliminate my job, and you
know why." She is a very
Caucasian-appearing person
but of Puerto Rican ancestry.
The federal government
employs more minority
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workers than any other firm
or bureaucracy and releasing
any of them will be an almost
insurmountable task for Mr.
Carter.
Herbert Hoover, from 1928
to 1932, tried to make sense
out of a growing Washington
job haven for both the quali
fied and the lazy, and look
what it got him — humiliating
defeat at reelection time.
Franklin Roosevelt piled
waste on top of waste and es
tablished a bureaucrat’s
paradise, and look what it got
him — four terms in the
White House.
Harry Truman hired
Hoover to make sense out of
the Washington mess in 1947
but 10 years later Congress
still was resisting. Eisen
hower got Hoover working
again on reduction of waste
but government worker
unions, lobbyists with big ex
pense accounts for congress
men and the “system”
thwarted him.
John F. Kennedy and John
son didn’t make much of an
economy effort regarding the
inflated government payroll,
but Nixon did — and he failed.
He had the sensible sugges
tion that 11 Cabinet depart
ments be reduced to eight
through consolidation.
However, the farmers
fought him the minute they
sensed that some of the fluff
might disappear from the De
partment of Agriculture. Al
though strictly a “big busi
ness” president, he angered
both corporations and labor
unions in his efforts to cut
duplication in the I<abor and
Commerce departments.
Voter support of the
economies Mr. Carter dis
cussed vaguely is a very iffy
thing, too. The voter applauds
words like the new president
offered in August but with the
reservation, in effect, of,
“Sure, make lots of cuts —
but don’t interfere with the
bureau where I do my busi
ness."
Economy always is for the
other guy.
So far, Mr. Carter’s only
specific suggestion has been
to talk about melding 18
offices now confusing the
nation’s energy programs
into one new agency, a De
partment of Energy. He
hasn’t spelled out whether
this will be a new Cabinet de
partment, but the bureau
crats here hope it will be.
Then, the bureaucracy will
grow, rather than recede.
The new president also has
said, “We have in Health, 302
different programs adminis
tered by 11 major depart
ments, and none of them do
the job properly. We’re going
to do something about that.”
If he does, good. But, the
“system” has its built-in,
traditional protections. If Mr.
Carter can conquer them
he’ll be a miracle man.
The Homesteaders
On the same day that
Abraham Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation
— Jan. 1,1863 — another land
mark act took effect. It was
the Homestead Act, under
which settlers could acquire
up to 160 acres of America’s
vast public domain for $1.25
an acre after six months'
residence, or after five years'
residence for a sls filing fee
Under the act, more than a
million families received title
to over 248 million acres of
public land in the western
plains, prairies and moun
tains.
Detroit’s massive new beginning
Center with a tall order to fill
By Don Oakley
DETROIT - (NEA) - This
is a city of vivid contrasts.
As sharply delineated as the
soaring towers of a spec
tacular skyscraper complex
— Renaissance Center —
nearing completion on the
riverfront. Or the flat squares
of abandoned lots one can see
from its vantage point
As extreme as hope and
despair, growth and decay,
security and fear
One goes south from Detroit
to reach Canada One goes in
any other direction to escape
despair, decay and fear, as 20
per cent of Detroit's popula
tion, both black and white,
have done since 1950 — but not
as many blacks as whites,
since the nation's fifth largest
city, hard-pressed for that
ranking by vigorous Houston,
is now more than half black.
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RENAISSANCE CENTER is the biggest privately financed
building project in history. It is scheduled to be opened in
March.
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Immune deficiency
HOUSTON—David has lived 5-years, from the day he was born, in a near germ free plastic
isolation bubble at Texas Children’s Hospital. Officals at the hospital say David is
developing normally both physically and emotionally whlll researchers investigate his
immological system. He has severe combined immune deficiancy. He has no natural
defense against disease and would die without the protection of the bubble. His teacher,
Marlene Jenkins works with David through the plastic. (UPI)
One goes up, however,
literally up to the skies, to find
rebirth, or the promise of it
If it is possible to be un
concerned about the fate of
Detroit, whose problems after
all are only those of a hundred
other cities, if on a magnified
scale, it is impossible to be un
excited by the Renaissance
Center
At the core, a 70-story cir
cular glass hotel — the
Detroit Plaza — scheduled to
be opened in March, 1977
Surrounding it, four lesser of
fice towers, already partially
occupied At the base, a 14-
apre "podium,” with parking
garages, restaurants, enter
tainment facilities and space
for 100 retail stores in an
enclosed three-level shopping
mall.
A third again as large as
New York’s Rockefeller
Center, three times as large
as Atlanta's Peachtree
Center At $337 million the
largest privately financed
project in history, the
brainchild of Henry Ford II
and 51 corporate members of
the Renaissance Center
Partnership
Despite the massiveness of
it all, and even amid the jum
ble and dirt of construction,
the surprising impression is
one of airiness and light. The
best place to view the RenCen
(as Detroiters, perhaps to
reduce it to more humanly
comprehensible- terms, call
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it) is actually from inside it,
from the atrium at the hotel’s
base. This is an eight-story
skylighted expanse, criss
crossed by aerial walkways
high above a giant reflecting
pool, hanging gardens and
cocktail pods
From anywhere within it, a
different vista of the outer
glass towers, of reflection
upon reflection, dazzles and
redazzles the visitor This is
the brainchild of John Port
man Associates of Atlanta,
designers of famed
Peachtree.
They call it the “Jesus
Christ school of architec
ture,” for that is the name
everyone invokes, and in no
irreverent sense, upon first
entering the atrium.
This is what architecture
ought to be. one thinks. And
inevitably: If the mind and
hand of man are capable of
this, surely a city can be sav
ed
No one, of course, including
its planners, thinks that the
Renaissance Center alone will
revitalize Detroit. Some peo
ple, in fact, are afraid it may
do just the opposite, that in
stead of radiating a spirit of
renewal outward it will
become a thing unto itself,
drawing off business energy
from the rest of downtown and
thus accelerating the decay it
is designed to reverse.
Nor do buildings, however
grandiose, a city make. A city
is people, and if people cannot
live decently in the city, if
they cannot find work there, if
they are afraid to walk its
streets, the decay goes far
deeper than brick or stone.
Last August, black gangs in
vaded a rock concert at Cobo
Hall, within the very shadow
of Renaissance Center, rob
bing. raping, terrorizing the
white audience. For those who
were there, or who merely
read about it, it will be a long
time before they venture
downtown again for any
reason.
Where were the police?
Nearly 1,000 out of a force of
5,000 were laid off in July to
help the city balance its
budget. Where is the money
that could have kept them?
Gone north and east and west
with Detroit’s fleeing middle
class taxpayers, gone with the
jobs Detroit lost or did not
gain because of the recession
Even more ominous for
Detroit in this past summer of
discontent was announced
closing of 15 schools and the
severe trimming of the
budgets of others because
citizens again defeated a tax
increase, continuing the
pattern of a decade Despite
special appeals to blacks and
ethnic groups, few people
even bothered to vote.
Yet a new beginning has to
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be made somewhere, and
what a beginning is
Renaissance Center. If it does
more than pump new money
into Detroit — if it can also in
spire new pride in Detroiters,
whose city still has much that
is beautiful and much to offer
in the way of culture — it will
truly have earned its name.
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