Banner Graphic, Volume 12, Number 83, Greencastle, Putnam County, 14 December 1981 — Page 7
Alaska gas pipeline made stranger bedfellows than usual politics
By William Hines (c) 1981 Chicago Sun-Times WASHINGTON your home with natural gas, or own a business that uses this form of energy, you are about to become a partner in one of the biggest risk-capital ventures ever undertaken. Rut your role in the partnership will be an unusual one. You will get to buy a piece of the risk up front but when the dividend melon is cut tis it ever is) there won't be a check in the mail for you. There is the possibility, however, that you will be paying larger gas bills for the rest of the century. This unusual arrangement got its final approval on Capitol Hill last week and was sent to President Reagan for signing any day now. It has been variously described as the salvation of a vital link in the nation’s future energy supply and a raw, crude power play with the smell of oil
Crisis in Poland: Too many things were unravelling too quickly
By Hal Piper (c) 1981 The Baltimore Sun BERLIN What did it in the end 9 Was it Solidarity's challenge to the government of a showdown at the ballot box in Poland? The radicalization of Lech Walesa, hitherto a voice of moderation among union leaders? Was it Soviet pressure 9 Or the intervention last week of the Catholic church on the side of the workers? Too many things were unravelling too quickly in Poland. During the 16 months since the outbreak of strikes in the Gdansk shipyards last summer, the country has careened from confrontation to con-
opinion
Letters to the Editor
Thanks to Beverly Jones
To the Editor: As a parent of a member of the Greencastle High School football team, •I have noted, as have other parents, what a pleasurable experience the halftime ceremonies were during this past season. This has not always been tnie in the past. While I am speaking only for myself, I feel confident that all of us who had sons who were members of the team this year agree that the band has never sounded better and that due to the efforts of an unsung hero, the Guard added enough to the band that they won
Effort aids ISF inmates
To the Editor: DePauw University and the churches of Putnam County have given wholehearted support to the PACE Christmas party for inmates for 11 years. A public word of thanks for all their efforts is long overdue. This year we had nearly 100 volunteers from the Greencastle Putnam County area. They and their churches supplied over 200 dozen cookies. Inmate participation totaled 750. A student music group from DePauw played and sang contemporary Christian music.
Video games fee criticized
To the Editor: It appears after reading the “No Free Game” article that the Greencastle City Council is dying from the same disease that is killing our federal government -- over regulation. For some reason, it seems, our elected officials feel compelled to pass legislation merely to justify their existence. And what Mayor Jane Harlan has done by assessing a SIOO fee per machine for an annual license on video games only lends credence to this thought. Why pass such an expensive ordinance? Is not the small-business man
Signed letters are welcome
The Banner Graphic believes the interests of its readers are best served by expression of varied points of view. We offer our opinions and those of others on this page and welcome you to do the same, whether you agree, disagree or wish to comment on another subject of public interest. Letters to the editor should be typed or written clearly and limited to 300 words if possible. All letters must be signed and include the author's address
money all over it. The legislation supposedly will facilitate financing of a 4,800-mile gas pipeline shaped something like an upside-down “Y” linking the rich natural-gas fields of the Alaskan North Slope with population centers in the Midwest and Far West (the San Francisco Bay area). The story begins in 1968, when vast oil and gas deposits were found at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. By the time oil started flowing through a transarctic pipeline to Valdez on the south coast of Alaska, several oil-industry groups were vying for rights to bring gas as well to the “lower 48.” In 1977, the gas pipeline project was approved, with the Northwest Alaska Pipeline Co. as this country’s chosen instrument. Northwest and its chairman, John McMillian, accepted the conditions in the enabling act, including one that required private financing of the
frontation. Until now one side or the other, usually the government but sometimes the union, has always pulled back. Poland’s success in avoiding catastrophe, and the Soviet Union’s failure to intervene militarily, suggested to some observers that the country might actually find its way to real reforms, for the first time in the history of a Communist state. There was even talk of creating a broadbased national front, uniting the Communist Party, the Catholic church, and Solidarity to steer Poland through the crisis. But meanwhile, the economic situation was worsening. Industrial output is now
LARRY GIBBS Publisher
first place at the band contest in Plainfield. Unfortunately, in the publicity they received, as well as at the Sports Banquet, the person who made such a significant contribution to the training and choreography of the Guard was never mentioned. For this reason, I want to take this opportunity, presumably on behalf of all of the football and band parents, to thank Beverly (Mrs. Barney) Jones for a job well done. J.C. Greencastle
The “Volunteers” visited with inmates in two 40-minute sessions. The Christmas party tells our inmates that they are thought of, that there is still love and that there is still hope. Surely the warmth bf human friendship, if only for an evening, will light a glow in many hearts that will make Christmas a little less lonely for these imprisoned men. Merritt W. Dayton Chaplain Indiana State Farm
already burdened by too much red tape? Doesn’t this also affect the cost of the product, which must now increase? The City Council should be more concerned with “helping” local commerce, not trying to destroy it. How can one small merchant absorb $2,100 annually? And what effect does this have on our youth? If the small video concession is forced out of business, then the young people will surely gather in another place, perhaps one that is not so patronizing to the city. D.B. rural Greencastle
and telephone number. Although we encourage readers to permit publication of their names, requests for use of initials will be honored in most cases. Letters containing personal attacks on individuals, libelous statements or profanity will not be published. All letters are subject to editing, although such will be held to a minimum and the intent of a letter will not be altered. Send your letters to: Letters to the Editor, The Banner Graphic, P. O. Box 509, Greencastle, Indiana 46135.
ERICBERNSEE Managing Editor
multibillion-dollar job. Economic conditions have changed since 1977, however, and by the time Ronald Reagan moved into the White House, McMillian was having trouble interesting banks in his project or in enticing equity capital into it. So he sought and eventually got seven changes to the rules of the game that he agreed to four years before. The five most important changes: —■ Remove a prohibition against gas producers on the North Slope owning an equity interest in the pipeline. Permit the pipeline operators to include the cost of a $6 billion gasconditioning plant in the rate base on which the price of gas carried through the pipeline will be figured. Raise the possibility that gas consumers in the lower 48 could start paying for the pipeline, in supplements to their monthly bills, after various segments of
about a third lower than it was last year, when economic conditions were so bad as to touch off the strikes. Hoarding and shortages are pandemic, and the currency is debased. Farmers produced a pretty good crop for the first time in several years but are reluctant to sell it because they do not trust money, which no longer buys anything. So food remains undistributed to cities, and barter flourishes in the countryside. In this situation, tempers began to flare as the daylight hours grew shorter and colder, dinner table fare more meager, and the lines outside shops longer. Both sides Solidarity and the govern-
Communism's failure
Unfulfilled promise of a better life at root of Polish revolution
By JOHN DARNTON c. 1981 N.Y. Times WARSAW, Poland Behind the workers’ revolt that began with strikes in the summer of 1980 and grew to a revolution on the shoulders of the Solidarity union lies a story of failure the failure of communism to deliver on its promise of a better life. The revolt sprang from an unspoken consensus among many Poles that despite more than three decades of sacrifice and toil, conditions of everyday life were scarcely improving and that the Communist system had failed most dramatically in precisely those areas, in the realm of social welfare, where its ideology called for greater exertion and improvement. Appalling dirt and safety conditions in factories, cramped and unavialiable appartments, substandard and sloppy health care, lines in front of meat shops —food shortages in general despite a stringent rationing system these were the distingushing traits of people’s Poland. They were glossed over, ignored or denied by successive regimes that pressed instead for higher production statitics in heavy industry They certianly did not keep pace with expectations and, compared with the West which more and more Poles were visiting during the loosening of restrictions that came with the improvement in SovietAmerican relations they were failing behind. “All my adult life I’ve been told that my life doesn’t count, that I’m sacrificing myself for my children,” said one wellknown Polish journalist, speaking privately. “Well, now I’m 48. my son isl 9. His life is no better than mine and he’s being told he must sacrifice himself for his children. What’s life all about, anyway ?” Satisfying the basic needs of the population was given low priority when it came to allocating investment in the national budget. But it was given lip service in public propaganda and highlighted in the speeches from the podiums on May
the line are completed but perhaps years before any gas flows through them. Do away with public hearings on construction and operating phases of the pipeline project, supposedly to hasten its completion. Limit the authority of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to adjust rates charged for transportation of gas through the pipeline. Waivers 6 and 7 are technical in nature, and are regarded as less important than the others, of which No. 3 (pre-billing) has received the most attention. A study completed by the staff of the House Energy and Commerce Committee last month indicated that pre-billing could cost the average American residential gas user $37 to $72 a year more, the average commercial user $244 to $447 and the average industrial user $12,000 to $24,000 even before (or whether) Alaskan gas ever flows through the pipe.
ment stepped up their war of accusations and pressure. The government proposed an emergency powers bill in the Sejm (parliament) which would ban strikes, which Soldarity sees as its only weapon and the only reason the government listened to the workers in the first place. The government also unleashed a propaganda offensive against Solidarity. It publicized a tape-recording in which militant union voices called for confrontation with the government. The armynewspaper Zolnierz Wolnosci accused Walesa personally of being “prepared to stop at nothing, even if that means spilling
Day celebrations. The gap between words and deeds became insupportable. In 1978, the percentage of investment outlays for housing, education, health care, social welfare and culture all of them added together amounted to less than half that given over to industry. “For years and years, everyone asked: how much coal is being mined, how much steel is being produced? But no one looked at what is all meant for the life of the worker,” exclaimed one of the strikers’ negotiators at Gdansk a year and a half ago. “It makes us think about the Marxist criticism of capitalism,” said another, “and what it’s like when the owners exploit the workers.” The world view behid such remarks has become increasingly clear as Poland’s crisis developed over the ensuing 16 months, lurching from flashpoint to flashpoint and never approaching resolution. The party’s dogma that Poland was a workers' state, controlled by workers and for workers, in which the quality of life was gradually improving, was judged a sham. A new generation, not devastated by the war, not crippled by terrors of Stalinism, has emerged. For it, the standard explanations for the difficulty of life the excuse of damage and trauma from World War 11, the minor wrinkles on otherwise perfect five-year plans are no longer acceptable. More and more people have to come to judge communism itself, by its own achievements. As newspapers began to test new limits of freedom, Poles began learning more and more things that are wrong with their society. They learned the extent of alcoholism, of crime, and even of drug addiction. The party organ, Trybuna Ludu, admitted that one in every six Poles and 40 percent of the country’s children are living below the poverty line. They include pen sioners, invalids, members of large families, single women bringing up
Not to worry, Sen. Ted Stevens (DAlaska) said in floor debate Nov. 19. “The risk that pre-billing could actually occur is so small it is unmeasurable,” he said. Ohio’s Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D) was unimpressed. “The concept of consumers being forced to pay for the pipeline’s cost before any gas service is provided is anathema to anyone who believes in fair play and free enterprise,” he said. Metzenbaum asked the same question about the Alaska gas pipeline that Sen. Charles H. Percy (R-Ill.) had asked about the supersonic transport airplane in 1971: If the deal is so attractive, why have the banks not leaped for a piece of the action? Percy, incidentally, voted with the majority to approve the waivers. Behind the scenes was a great deal of lobbying, involving not only Reagan wheelhorses but such Democratic worthies as former Vice President Walter F.
the blood of the workers whose leader and protector he pretends to be.” The union, long-split between militants and moderates like Walesa, closed ranks behind militancy. Walesa himself admitted that his gradual approach had led nowhere and that he now favored more forceful measures. “We are here to win,” he told delegates to a Friday meeting of Solidarity’s steering committee. Meanwhile, other forces also rallied to the side of the militants. Archbishop Jozef Glemp, the primate of Poland, asked the government to withdraw plans to outlaw strikes.
children alone and young working couples squeezed by rent payments all the disadvantaged that the system, theoretically, is geared to shelter. “At the end of the decade which proclaimed the subordination of economic policy to social policy, we are facing a situation which is in painful discord with the principles of social justice,” the newspaper admitted. In other words, somewhere along the line the Communist ideals of justice and equality had fallen by the wayside. Nowhere was this more evident than in the emergence of a small group, the party and monied elite who monopolized the privileges and against whom the workers turned with wrath and a sense of class revenge. A similar “Red bourgeoisie” has grown up in other Communist countries in the Soviet Bloc, beginning with the Soviet Union. The phenomenon has been documented and analyzed in nunerous films and books, most notably by Milovan Djilas, the Yugoslav dissident and author of “The New Class.” But in Poland, it was relatively new. Under Wladyslaw Gomulka, the predecessor of the now-disgraced Edward Gierek, diplomats and high party functionaries were expected to emulate his frugal, ascetic style. “When Gomulka came to your embassy, you brought out your worst china,” said one retired diplomat. But when Gierek took over in 1970, all that changed. Within three years, local party leaders had learned that they could divert public funds almost with impunity, host lavish banquets, and construct expensive villas. Gomulka did not believe in borrowing. Gierek borrowed and spent liberally, and by the time he was thrown out of office by workers’ strikes in 1980. Poland was $24 billion in debt to the West. The existence of a small, privileged group grated upon Polish sensibilities. “You know, we Poles are strange,” said a former adviser to Gomulka who
uecembw 14, Mi, Til* Putmm County Banner-Graphic
Mondale and ex-national committee Chairman Robert S. Strauss. Oil, it seems, makes even stranger bedfellows than politics does. And so the pipeline waiver resolution was adopted a measure that Metzenbaum called “the bailout bill for the oil companies who do not need any such bailout.” The Alaskan Pipeline people put a different gloss on it. Passage of the resultion, public relations vice president J.N. Vallely said, “remove(s) obstacles hindering development of a private sector financing plan for the Alaska Natural Gas Transportation System.” “We are delighted,” Chairman McMillian was quoted as saying in a press release that went on for three pages. The handout contained not a word about the pre-billing provision that could inflate the utility bills of natural-gas users in the years ahead.
An anti-Communist right-wing organization, the Confederation of Independent Poland, previously thought to be a fringe group, mobilized 1,000 people Thursday for a march in the southern steel-works city of Katowice. The group published a manifesto appealing for a “determined, massive offensive” to rescue Poland from a “counterrevolutionary” crackdown by the communist party. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, was warning that it regarded the course of events in Poland as a threat to its own security. A Tass commentary Thursday referred to the safety of the lines of communication running through Poland from the Soviet Union to East Germany. Such rumblings from Moscow undoubtedly caught the attention of the Polish leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, but even without them his own worries must have boiled over after the two-day meeting Friday and Saturday of the Solidarity commission in Gdansk, where the strikes began 16 months ago. In addition to hearing Walesa declare his conversion to a militant course of action, that meeting heard other voices offering direct challenges to the government’s right to rule. Marian Jurczyk, of Szczecin, called for new parlimentary elections to be held by next May, two years before the current parliment’s term expires. The demands crystalized into a plan for a national referendum pitting Solidarity against the government to see which body enjoyed the people’s support. Such a vote would threaten the communists with anniliation at the polls and almost surely provoke a confrontation with the Soviet Union. The government had agreed to some form of national-front power sharing, but at this point it must have seemed to Jaruzelski that Solidarity would be satisfied with nothing less than a power grab or, as he put it in the statement with which he explained his preemptive strike, “civil war.”
requested anonymity. "Despite our tradition of aristocracy we belive in equality. We demand a certain cleanliness from our public officials. We are not accustomed to seeing people enrich themselves in office.” Years before Solidarity came into being, the existence of special shops, where scarce commodities were sold only to party officials, was an explosive issue. In one town in the southern industrial area of Silesia, a group of meat-hungry workers invaded such a shop, divested it of ham, wrceked it, and left money behind to pay for what they had taken. From the very beginning, the workers' revolt had a whiff of something like class antagonism to it. When the government negotiator, then Deputy Premier Mieczyslaw Jagielski, the prototype of the smooth bureaucrat, arrived at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk to begin talks with thd strikers, he nervously eyed a phalanx of workers in soiled clothes who locked arms. “Look straight into the eyes of a worker.” shouted one of them. Continuing anger at the privileged elite is one reason why the strikers have not subsided for long periods and why the Polish crisis never seems to end. People still belive that “they" are in charge of the government and that the government continues to serve “them." The impetus that the hunger for material gain provided in the workers’ revolt has generally been overlooked amid attention paid to the more dramatic drives for political freedom and for throwing off Soviet domination. But it was there from the very beginning and, as the economy continues to worsen and as Poles look with trepidation upon the coming winter, it is coming to the forefront again. Interviews with dozens of union activists, party members, government officials and average Poles indicate that the material grievances that helped give rise to the revolt are still very much there.
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