Polk County Enterprise (Livingston, Tex.), Vol. 104, No. 39, Ed. 1 Sunday, May 18, 1986 Page: 4 of 32
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: Polk County Newspapers and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Livingston Municipal Library.
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SUNDAY MAY IS, IMS
THE POLK COUNTY ENTERPRISE
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Letter to the editor
Politicians, dean it up!
To the editor:
At election time we are told
many times by the men and
women running for political of-
fice of their concern for the peo-
ple, precinct, county, state, and
the nation as a whole.
There is a familiar saying -
“we care” - that comes from
most politicians at election time.
Now, what I would like to see is
for all of the politicians running
for office to show “they really
care” about the people, county,
state and country, and I can’t
think of a better way to start than
for all of the candidates that litter
our countryside (as well as our
utility poles in town) with
posters, handbills, and all sorts of
signs and show how much “we
care” by removing, picking up,
and disposing of all the campaign
material that is and will be marr-
ing the beauty of our countryside
for weeks, months, yes, even a
year after the elections are over!
What better way to show “that
you really care.” How about it,
politicians, let’s clean up what we
mess up!
John H. Brown
P.O. Box 153
Moscow
Learn lesson
Americans look at the Soviet nuclear disaster
and ask: “How could they build nuclear power
plants without crucial safety features?”
Perhaps they should ask the same question of
our own government.
In the United States, only six plants have no con-
tainment structures to prevent radiation from
spewing into the atmosphere. And five of those -
one in Washington state and four in South
Carolina - are operated by the federal govern-
ment.
Federal officials were busy following the Cher-
nobyl incident assuring the public that the federal
plants, while similar in some respects to Cher-
nobyl in the Soviet Union, are far less dangerous.
Because the federal plants produce plutonium
for atomic weapons, we’ve been assured, they’re
under less stress than a commercial power-
producing reactor.
Sure, the federal rectors don’t have the contain-
ment vessels. But they do have a backup system,
said the experts. They let the vapors escape, and
some carbon filters supposedly clean up the
isotopes on their way out. Graphite in the Cher-
nobyl plant went up in flames. But graphite in the
Hanford plant in Washington state would never
bum, according to one official.
Just who is doing public relations for these
guys? Tass? If everything’s fine at the lightly
girded federal reactors, then why does the federal
government insist on heavy concrete containment
structures for utility-owned nuclear power
plants?
The only commercial power operation that has
escaped that requirement is a trouble-plagued
gas-cooled reactor in Colorado,
It’s time for our own government to learn a
lesson from Chernobyl. The Nuclear Regulatory
Commission should take a careful look at all six of
the less-protected plants. It shouldn’t hesitate to
order containment Structures, or any other safety
feature, that would help avert a disaster.
Hard choice
You believe that society must not take the life of
a human being. Yet you are chosen for a jury in a
state, like California, where the people have
strongly affirmed th death penalty. Before you
sits the person accused of murder. You know that,
if the jury convicts him, he could be executed.
Yet, for you, this would mean personal complicity
in what you consider a socially sanctioned
murder.
What authority should you follow - the law or
your conscience?
The U.S. Supreme Court ha: cided that people
who strongly oppose capital punishment may be
excluded by the prose, .'ion *vom serving as
jurors in capital punishmt <* Is.
This doesn’t diminish the dilemma of capital
punishment. But it shifts responsibility from the
shoulders of the juror to society as a whole.
Thejuror’s duty in a capital case remains
awesome. But his responsibilities are limited to
determining the guilt and innocence of the person
charged with a crime - not in judging the justice of
capital punishment.
As the legal barriers to execution are taken
away, society must face the grave responsibility
of seeing its death penalty carried out. That is not
a happy prospect. But neither are the 40,000
murders committed in California since 1967, when
the death penalty was last enforced.
Whistleblowers face losing their jobs
By JACK ANDERSON
and JOSEPH SPEAR
WASHINGTON - Anyone who
thinks whisUeblowers in the federal
government are protected by laws
passed a few years ago to do just
that should ponder the case of Elaine
Mittleman.
A Treasury Department lawyer,
her only discernible shortcoming
was a determination to do the job
she was getting paid for - to see that
Chrysler Corp. reported regularly to
Congress on its financial situation,
as was required under the bailout
legislation that kept the automaker
afloat a few years ago. Her
superiors took a dim view of Mit-
tleman’s zeal in enforcing the rules.
She was later fired.
Convinced that her dismissal was
a reprisal for strict enforcement of
the bailout rules, MitUeman took her
case to the federal government’s
supposed “ombudsman” - the Of-
fice of Special Counsel. But the
lawyers there decided she had no
case and she went to work in the
private sector.
So far, so bad. Mittleman didn’t
realize just how bad until recently,
when she applied to the Office of
Personnel Management for another
federal job. Because her dealings
with the Special Counsel years ago
were no secret, an investigator for
the personnel agency was able to
learn that MitUeman had been
suspected of leaking information to
Congress and The New York Times
while she was at the Treasury. She
denies this fiaUy, but the accusation
was enough to blackball her from
federal employment.
A spokeswoman for the Office of
Special Counsel told our associate
Stewart Harris that the law required
her agency to tell the Office of Per-
sonnel Management about is con-
tacts with MitUeman. The normal
confidentiality between lawyer and
client does not apply to the Special
Counsel and whistleblowers who
complain to it.
Tom Devine, an attorney for the
Government Accountability Project,
a group dedicated to helping
whisUeblowers, offered a succinct
description of this flaw in the law
that set up the Office of Special
Counsel: "The office is a Trojan
horse.”
Rep. Patricia Schroeder, D-Colo.,
has introduced legislation that
would remedy the situation, but she
candidly acknowledges that she
doesn’t expect it to get through the
Senate.
Meanwhile, the number of
whisUeblowers asking for help from
the Government Accountability Pro-
ject has almost tripled in the last two
years. Here are some other cases
from the group’s files:
- Joseph D. Whitson, a chemist at
an Air Force laboratory in Texas,
found that testing of recruits for
drugs was sloppy and the results
could be skewed if the subject had
just eaten anything with poppy
seeds
- like a fast-food sandwich on a
poppy-seed roll. After he testified to
this effect in a court suit, Whitson
began getting unsatisfactory perfor-
mance ratings, and was shunted to a
dead-end job where he now spends
his days "dusting the file cabinets in
the basement where he has a desk."
- Hobart Bartley, an Agriculture
Department meat inspector, was
suspended after he declared 90,000
pounds of poultry tainted. He was
overruled and had the nerve to pro-
test the decision. His suspension was
for showing disrespect" to the
meat packer
- Postal employees David Patter-
son and Alvin D’Andrea were
demoted after they told postal in-
spectors about a hiring scandal in
Prince Georges County, Md. Even
though inspectors confirmed 43 il-
legal hirings, the two whistleblowers
still haven’t gotten their old jobs
back
Draft changes reflect our history
By PHILIP GOLD
Philip Gold is a professor of
history at Georgetown University
and author of Evasions: The
American Way of Military Service,
from which this is adapted.
(c) PRS, INI
There is a part of public life which
tells us, not just what to do, but also
what we are. That part is called law.
And nowhere does the law tell us
more about ourselves than in those
matters pertaining to national
defense, and specifically to the ques-
tion of who shall serve, and who not.
As I write, we are at peace. No one
has been drafted since 1973. We
recruit our military through the
same techniques employed by
Burger King and IBM: the offering
of benefits for membership and
work. And also, as I write, it is
becoming steadily more difficult to
attract sufficient young men and
women to fill our peacetime forces;
meeting wartime requirements via
market mechanism inducements is,
as even the most fervent proponents
of voluntarism concede, totally im-
possible.
But my purpose in writing this is
not to advocate any immediate
return to peacetime conscription.
My purpose is, rather, to point out
what American law, as it defines
military obligation and excusal, tells
us about what we once were, and
what we have become.
Since before the founding of the
Republic, American law has upheld
the concept of a universal (i.e.,
male, and prior to 1865, Caucasian)
obligation to serve. Prior to the
Revolution, every colony save
Quaker Pennsylvania passed and
(intermittently) enforced man-
datory militia service. The Federal
Constitution and the Militia Act of
1792 reaffirmed this requirement of
citizenship. True, the Constitution
nowhere mandated direct Federal
conscription. But it didn’t have to.
Throughout the 18th and 19th cen-
turies (with a brief Federal draft
during the Civil War the only excep-
tion) America’s military manpower
was organized and trained at the
state level, and made available to
the Federal government in time of
war, insurrection, or domestic
disorder. The modern descendent of
this old military system is, of
course, the National Guard; the
power of the Commander-in-Chief to
employ it is known as Federaliza-
tion.
In equal measure, since before the
founding of the Republic, law has
provided for the exemption from
service of any man conscientiously
opposed to participation in war in
any manner, by reason of religious
training and belief. In its 1775 resolu-
tion mandating what would become
the Continental Army, Congress
said; "As there are people who,
from religious principles, cannot
bear arms in any case, this Congress
intend no violence to their cons-
ciences, but earnestly recommend it
to them to contribute liberally and
do all other services which they can,
consistently with their religious
principles." This practice of accor-
ding exemption to such persons has
been a principle of American law
ever since, although it has never
been considered a constitutional
right. In 1918, the Supreme Court
noted that: "The conscientious ob-
jector is relieved from the obligation
to bear arms in obedience to no con-
stitutional provision, express or im-
plied, but because, and only
because, it has accorded with the
policy of Congress thus to relieve
him.”
In the twentieth century, however,
both military service and conscien-
tious objection underwent major
redefinitions. Due to the re-
quirements of modem warfare,
direct Federal conscription became
necessary. All four of our twentieth
century wars were fought largely by
conscripts (or by conscription-
induced enlistees in the other ser-
vices) and today, draft registration
is required of young men, albeit in a
lackadaisically-enforced sort of
way. But as our manpower re-
quirements in peace and war steadi-
ly and inexorably increased, so did
the categories of those eligible for
exemption. The World War I draft
law authorized excusal for members
of the so-called peace sects;
Woodrow Wilson, by executive
order, extended the privilege to
mainstream Christians and Jews
who claimed - and proved - their
opposition to war in any form. The
World War II and postwar draft laws
codified this change.
In 1964, however, the Supreme
Court, in an act of pure judicial
lawmaking, extended this privilege
in a more curious way. In United
States v Seeger, the Court held that
belief in God was not a necessary
precondition for exemption, and that
anybody whose beliefs (to quote
from the decision) occupied “in the
life of its possessor a place parallel
to that filled by God” could qualify.
Further, the Court held that the test
of eligibilty for exemption could only
be "sincerity," and specifically en-
joined local draft boards “not to re-
quire proof of the religious doctrines
nor to reject beliefs because they are
not comprehensible.” In other
words, any and all beliefs could ex-
cuse a citizen from military service,
provided the claimant was suffi-
ciently “sincere”. Christianity,
Judaism, Buddhism, existentialism,
a commandment once encountered
on a men’s room wall...anything and
everything, provided that the clai-
mant was “sincere."
Five years later, in Welsh v United
States, the Court further expanded
this privilege, even though Mr.
Welsh had clearly stated that his op-
position to war was founded neither
upon religion nor upon any religion
equivalent. Concluded the majority
in reversing a lower court’s decision
to deny the privilege: "It (the deci-
sion) places undue emphasis on the
registrant’s interpretation of his
own beliefs.”
Undue emphasis on the
registrant’s interpretation of his
own beliefs...in the matter of in-
dividual conscience as it pertains to
the bearing of warms.
And thus the law of the land.
But if it is true that law tells us, not
just what we do, but also what we
are, what conclusions might we
draw from the law of a citizen
military service’’ Perhaps the con-
clusion that, while registration and
conscription represent an ancient
practice in modern form, the
privilege of objection has come to
typify the moral anarchy of the past
few decades. Perhaps also that such
anarchy might well render impossi-
ble a rapid return to conscription,
should that become necessary. And
perhaps, most of all, the conclusion
that we have, as a people, lost sight
of a dictum well expressed by the
Supreme Court In a 1163 draft case :
“While the Constitution protects
against invasion of individual rights,
it is not a suicide pact."
Wise words. And worth
remembering
POLK COUNTY
ENTERPRISE
ALVIN HOLLEY, PUBLISHER
Telephone Number 327-4357
USPS 437-340
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Texas 77351 under the Act of Congress of March 3,1897
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White, Barbara. Polk County Enterprise (Livingston, Tex.), Vol. 104, No. 39, Ed. 1 Sunday, May 18, 1986, newspaper, May 18, 1986; Livingston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth782023/m1/4/?q=war: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Livingston Municipal Library.