News Addition

So you're saying you won't throw it in kind of wood, you can get it out of it. I don't want to lose that. I come here and I was something like about 17 years old and I picked up a few jobs and the last job I was working out there at LTV building out planes and I seen that I got laid

out one year and I saw that you get laid off any time so I said shoot, I'm going to have to sign me some problem, you know, at the house. I started out with Tola Poles and done some African art like the man told me, so you were going to America to say, if we were Africa, it's all right but we want America. This is where I'm at now. I started out carving on the hardest wood. I started out looking for a thorn tree, there's some thorn tree that's in the past, you got them thorn tree there. You see, I was going to tree that they didn't want, that's training myself, you see. And after I learned well, then I come back to the sausage wood.

I go in the woods with many different animals in my mind, you know, and I just pick up from that. I get stuck up, then where I get ready, go to them, I got them satin in the wood pile. I was born by the rhythm, in a little tent, oh it's just light, the river rapid, I run back and there. My instinct is to farm what God has already far.

And that's what I will do. Well, young lady, what's your name? Susan Walker, what's yours? I'm Santa Claus.

Oh, you don't believe that, do you? I believe the Santa definitely do. I do now. I didn't at first, but I do now. My name is Robert Helm, and I work at the South Del's Cultural Center. I'm a theater and help with the children in neighborhood try to get them more aware of the culture. And I do play Santa. The first time I saw the neighbors, because it was sort of warm, but this was suitable. And it fogged up my glasses, and I couldn't see. Well, you sent that to the bathhouse culture center. Over there, you have a lot of angle children, right? So, they come to the bathhouse. Here I am sitting here with peppermint stick candy, and a black Santa.

They look at me real funny. It says, now, where'd you come from? I said, what do you mean? You're not Santa. I said, yes, I am. You, you're black. I said, well, they come in all colors, aren't they? Ho, ho, ho. Very Christmas. Hello, Helen. I enjoy working with the public and the children, especially the children, because they're in dire need of help, role models, whatever. We seem to forget about the children. And then you forget that we were children. It's much your name. I feel good that knowing that I'm going to make some children happy, you know what I believe that I'm Santa. A hard thing for me as Santa is being convincing as a man. I tried to do the John Wayne walk, you know? If you're going to walk like a man, walk like a real man. Ho, ho, ho.

Very Christmas, everybody. My name is Barbara LeVand. I work as a pharmacy tech at Fort Worth Rehabilitation Hospital. And I play Santa. After many years of looking at the Christmas catalogs with the pictures in it of the Santa's costumes, I just looked at it at those pictures year after year. And I said, that must be fun. So I went and bought the costume. I plunked down a whole lot of money for it right at first. And I'll tell you what, the very first minute that I had that costume on, it was worth every penny I put into it. And it would have been worth more if I paid more for it. Because it was such fun. I worry sometimes because the pants are so baggy and I can't always feel them. Every once in a while, I think.

Are they still there? Have they fallen off? Like that. It's good. I want a pretty smile. What a great smile. I think you need to like children. You need to be able to... To accept what they're going to give you. Like, if you expect to go out there and just embrace every child, it won't happen. You have to be sensitive to what the child needs to. Children aren't the only ones who get excited now. There are all kinds of adults who get just as excited and maybe even more so sometimes. I think of Santa a lot. Not the picture of Santa or the presence. It's a warmth in the caring. Merry Christmas. It'd be nice if we could all think of Santa all year through instead of at Christmas time. Maybe we'll have a world like that someday.

I speak to my children in Spanish and I speak to them in English too. And then I had to tell them Santa Claus speaks all the languages of the world. My name is Jose Arturo Angelo Brown. I work with a city of Dallas, a personnel department. And my job there is try to help people find a job. And I play Santa Claus. Just once a year, there is no special train. It's a special person. Maybe it's born to be a Santa Claus. I put on my wrinkles. And then I put on my pants and the pillow. And then I dawn on my coat. It seems like you actually feel Santa Claus' spirit comes over. My first experience helped me very much and taught me very much. Because I had visited a children's hospital.

And I was a little girl that was dying from cancer. And she had lost all her hair and she was receiving treatments. And just happened to go down the hall and visited her. And she was sitting there and I visited. And she walked in like Santa Claus and I gave her a big hug and everything. And her name was Chrissy. And I said, Chrissy, if it were possible for Santa Claus to give you a gift, just you so you wouldn't have to share with no one what you want. And she looked up and she says to me, Santa Claus, I would like to be able to grow up and be old. Weeks later, little Chrissy died. Unfortunately, it's one of those things that Santa Claus could never, never do. You're going to give me a big hug. I've seen a lot of children who are suffering. If I may just one child smile, I have made all the children smile. And you're going to be an old lady already.

The year ends as it began with the future of the Dallas City Council up in the air. Voters rejected a plan for single-member districts and a federal judge will decide what happens next. We believe that a judge bug miles a fair judge and we'll rest our case with him. 1990 was also the year that people realized Oak Cliff residents aren't joking about

the city of Dallas. A news edition, we examined the historical roots of the battle. Oak Cliff and Dallas have always been separate. Dallas was clearly becoming a business center while Oak Cliff developed as a residential and farming town. But economic hard times forced Oak Cliff to unite with the city across the river. The measure passed by only 18 votes. 1990 was the year that Dallas fired the first outsider they had ever brought in to run its police department. Mack Vines was dismissed two hours after he was indicted for misdemeanor perjury. There is potential confidence and trust issues when an indictment is issued by Granger. Well, I don't feel I'm guilty of anything. In a news edition interview, the ex chief said he was startled by his dismissal. On the day that you were fired, that night on television, there were a lot of officers being seen practically dancing in the streets.

Excited that you were finally leaving. Did that hurt? Their enthusiasm was a bit unjustified, I think. Are you all doing? We're fixing to help you out here in the community. 1990 was a year of trouble for County Commissioner John Wiley Price. It began in March when he whitewashed liquor and cigarette billboards in black neighborhoods. The protest led to his arrest. Commissioner Price, you're out there breaking the law, why? Well, there have been very few times that the causes for African-Americans in this country has been able to move forward without the quote breaking of some law. We want to help! We want to help! We want to help! We want to help! Our commitment is to see that the homeless people have a place to live that they can call home as opposed to shelter. In 1990, squatters moved into vacant apartments at the West Dallas Housing Projects.

We're trying to establish the right to open these units and we're trying to demonstrate by showing a few of them that they are fixable and livable. Police were called in to remove the squatters. But the protests continued and the Housing Authority did allow some squatters to stay. Poor George, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth. Protection deserted more than another campaign of ridicule and distortion. And rather talk about the issues. 1990 was a year of political conflict with one of the most negative races for governor in Texas history. I'm sorry. You lied about me, you lied about Mark White, you lied about geometric limitations. I'm a physicist at the Illinois Channel. Some people blame the media for the way the campaign turned out.

I think the press ought to be prepared to take its share of the blame. Is the press prepared to give equal coverage to a gentlemanly or a lady-like campaign as it does to a negative campaign? My answer is no, I don't think they are. And 1990 was a year of environmental conflict as well. It marked the 20th anniversary of Earth Day and schooly children in Ulysses decided to boycott McDonald's. If all of us keep on writing to McDonald's and boycotting it, then I really think that they're going to stop, they're going to use less Styrofoam. The kids were right. Adults had been complaining about the phone packaging for years, but in 1990, with children boycotting, McDonald's announced it would wrap its hamburgers in something else. Without a doubt, this was the most difficult decision I've made in my 21-year professional career.

It was difficult for many reasons. Number one, of course, is you. The public television audience and supporters who have allowed us to challenge this community, even when the community did not think it needed nor deserved any prodding. Then there were the... Bob Ray went through many changes during his tenure here. But he taught us there's a place for reporters who care about the stories they cover. At KERA, Bob Ray Sanders did more than journalism. He was also an advocate for justice. It was. This casket has a white, sheer, crepe interior.

Producer Rob Tranchon investigated the $6 billion a year funeral industry. These people know very little about the funeral business, and critics say the industry likes it that way. The Texas Association of Funeral Directors prohibits the public and the media from attending industry exhibits. Mr. Coker, we wanted to give you the opportunity to... The Cameroon? Yes. Try to know. There were a lot of people who were coming through the front doors of the concerns that I was working for, who were asking for very simple funnels, and when I was complying with their wishes I was being taken aside by the owners of the funeral home and told that my sales average wasn't high enough. Cremation is a less expensive alternative to burial. The critics say cremation costs prove that the industry's profit margin is too high.

While crematoria charged funeral homes about $125 a body, funeral homes charged consumers $500 to $1,000. Of course I've got the charge for my fees and for my time and for my talent, you know? It's business. Producer Sheila Cooper took us to Baylor Medical Center to witness how a fatal accident victim was able to help others through the donation of her vital organs. Well financial status isn't considered by the medical evaluation team. A potential candidate must be able to pay for the transplant procedure in order to be entered on the nationwide computerized waiting list. If you need a hard transplant or a liver transplant and you have no insurance and you don't have the down payment, you don't get the organ and I don't feel that's right. I think that all patients in this country should be afforded the equal opportunity to obtain an organ if they need it. In June alone, several candidates accepted by Baylor's transplant evaluation committee

were turned down by the hospital's financial department because they had no insurance and no other ability to pay. When you look at an institution that perhaps does, you know, 200 transplants a year, it's not a therapy that the hospital can absorb the cost of and stay afloat. News edition went to Amarillo in 1990 to talk to workers who build atomic bombs at the PanTech's nuclear weapons plant. For the most part, I do feel safe. PanTech's has a pretty good record, however, there's still a lot of uncertainty, especially concerning low level doses to radiation. 20 years down the road, they're going to say, hey, it's hazards, but that's not going to happen. As we're done, you're going to be buried and gone. Has anyone in the history of this plant gotten cancer because of an exposure of all the thousands of people who've worked here since the 1950s?

Not to our knowledge has worked here directly directly to cancer-related health problems. But cancer deaths among the workforce have many employees believing that their jobs are killing them. Union officials say there's a government cover-up. It's all been so secret. And this is what the Department of Energy has hid behind for years is secrecy. The need to know, you know, the public doesn't need to know what's going on out there. Don't tell them. Producer Rosalind Solis profiled Dallas Attorney Parker Wilson, winner of the Dallas Peacemaker Award. He's a contradiction. A former corporate lawyer turned refugee advocate. With volunteer translators, Wilson helped Central American refugees apply for political asylum. Some of us feel that our government, with its policies, is at least partly responsible for their situation in their own country, the continuation of the war and the violence

there and the persecution that causes them to have to leave their homes. Wilson is a quiet man who hates talking about himself, but his story explains the struggle facing Central American refugees. He says she has frequently resisted collaborating with the guerrillas. As good as he is, Wilson wins few cases. It's both frustrating and maddening. There are those of us who strongly believe that the immigration laws, while ostensibly it's applied on a case by case and even across the board basis. And actually they're applied according to the U.S. foreign policy and also with domestic political considerations entering into it. And Bob Ray Sanders profiled activist Bill Nelson, who talked about his battle to bring homosexuality out of the closet in Dallas.

When I was growing up, there were no gatekeepers. He helped bring the movement to the streets, to the front pages of newspapers, and to the living rooms via television. One of the first most important things when I became president of the alliance was that we had to keep gay people before the cameras and so on. But you had some opposition on that, didn't you? I mean, weren't there people in the alliance who said that's not the way to do it? You're a little too bold, you're a little too activist? Oh, I had a lot of gay people who thought I was irresponsible radical. Nelson died of AIDS one month after this interview. Gary Carr returned family and friends at DFW Airport on December 10th.

He'd spent four months trapped in the Middle East. Carr was captured on the first day of the invasion in Kuwait. Four days after his return to Texas, Carr spoke with us at his home in North Richland Hill. Although the invasion started around two o'clock in the morning, we didn't see him because they came down the highway straight into Kuwait City.

So where is it that you were in the country? At this time, we were right here at the place called Kral, Maroo. Now once they secured Kuwait City, Amity, the heel, then they started coming across this way to make a sweep, and this is when they picked us up around two o'clock in the afternoon. And I didn't think here where we were going to stop him, because there was just a huge long line of them, one going down the right side of the rig and going left side of the rig. The invasion of Kuwait took only one day. Gary Carr and others were sent to Baghdad, Iraq, and then to strategic industrial and military sites throughout the country. What kind of people are the Iraqis? What do they like, the people that you met? There are really a lot of them, not a whole lot different than anybody else you meet in the world.

You know, their society is quite a lot different than ours, of course that ties back into the Muslim religion, because it's quite a bit different than ours. But they don't, they're proud of their country, just as we're proud of our country. They think that they were wronged enormously by the Kuwait government, and they were just rectifying the wrong. I don't agree with it. I don't agree with it at all. Going in that way is not a way to do it. The Americans treated differently than other expatriates who were there than the Indians or the Filipinos, or Vietnamese. Now everybody was treated the same, and to give credit to the Iraqi soldiers, when they had water, they shared it, when they had something to eat, they shared it. They didn't have anything, we didn't eat anything. The hostage stalemate intensified as American troops were sent to the Middle East.

Carr was moved from site to site inside Iraq. He spent two weeks at a chemical plant called El Kayam. He then spent two weeks at the Saddam Dam on the Tigris River near Turkey. Then he was transferred to the Haditha Dam on the Euphrates River near the border with Syria. What was the toughest part about being a hostage there? Not knowing what was happening with my family back here. You completely cut off? Yes. At that time we had no information. Do you feel that the American Embassy or American authorities were doing enough to try to keep you in touch with what was going on with your families and around the world? No, not really. I don't think they tried hard enough to get in to see us. Carr's wife, Willie, was in Kuwait on the day of the invasion, but managed to escape. Carr knew she had escaped, but didn't hear from her again for months until he was allowed to receive a brief telephone call.

During his captivity, Carr kept a journal of his thoughts. August the 17th and 90. Everyone is nervous and scared. I'm not ready to die, but I feel that God is with me and I'm not terrified of death. I pray that we will get out of this. I'm sure I want to grow old, Willie, and play with their grandkids. 20th of August of 90, and it's hard to stay up. Most everyone is despondent, especially after taking some of the guys away. Need to work on picking up our spirits. What did you learn about yourself when you had all that time of think? I don't know if you really can say you learned anything about yourself. Maybe it's reinforced what you already knew. It's basically had a lot of time to think about what would happen with a family if anything

happened to me. How did you organize yourself and what did people talk about and what was daily life like? We just kind of got together and met and held, you know, by consensus and different people would go out and talk to the head, keeper, and keeper. Yeah. I figure that's a good name, is any. A lot nicer than some of my heard. What do they want to be called? A lot of them want to be called friends, but we never really quite get that close. Do you ever feel like a guest? No. That's what they were calling you. Yeah. Well, one time when I was in Baghdad for a short time during one of these transfers, I ran into a Norwegian and I think he did it best so that, you know, they call us guests, but no, we're not.

We say we're hostages. They say we're not. So I guess we're a guestage, and that's that one carried on there for a while. Adam Hussein staged television appearances with some of the hostages. The military situation continued to intensify. The White House had forged an unprecedented international alliance against Iraq. The United Nations had condemned the invasion of Kuwait, and the hostages kept up with the news by listening to shortwave radio broadcasts from the BBC and the Voice of America. Everybody is pretty much in agreement that we needed the multinational force in place. They needed the sanctions, the blockade, to try and bring this man around, and they got to the point several times that, you know, we kind of all got disgusted and said, hey, come on, guys. Come on, guys. Mm-hmm. Promise now? Yep.

Because you get a little tired of watching these 20-year-olds carrying guns. Trying to say that they're there for your protection. But you thought it would have been all right if America had to kill some of the hostages in an air raid if it would be what needed to be done for the strategic military move. Don't put me on spot and say, I think it's all right. I think it's something that is, that might be necessary. But let's face it, we all heard Bush's speech and Baker's speech. The people who were picked up, regardless of their nationality, had already been written off. You felt written off? Yeah. Kar says the tension came out during an exchange with one of the Iraqi guards. I never did really care a lot for him anyway. And I was angry, and that's when I went up to him and asked him if he was ready to die now.

And he'd upset him, as he couldn't understand why I was talking that way. And I said, you know, you got us here now so that you're attacked, that we will possibly die. And the thing with is, you're right here with him. So if I get it, you're going to get it. He said, oh, you must have talked this way. I said, why not? I said, this is the truth of the matter. He said, no, we must not talk this way. I said, well, I'll tell you, I just have one hope. And that's how I get to what you'd have before I did. 15th September of 90. I'm continuing the amazed by the reaction of the Iraqi guards to all this. They can't understand the world reaction to the invasion of Kuwait taking hostages, violation of embassies. They're almost childlike and their arguments defending their stand. Kar was released and returned with other Americans to Andrew's Air Force base.

His wife was among a delegation of relatives who had flown to Baghdad to secure the release of the hostages. Kar is critical of the way the American authorities handled the evacuation. They wanted hostages to pay for the flight home. I signed a loan agreement with the US government stating that I was destitute and I had to tell them what assets I had and if I didn't pay it back, they could take those assets. Do you think that's fair? I think that's about a sorry and indictment of our government and State Department, you can get. I mean, I'm a US citizen, I was over gainfully employed, I didn't go over there and party my money away where I didn't have any to come home on. I got picked up due to an active war and you're telling me that I have got to pay to get home.

There was a party waiting for Gary Carr once he did get home to Dallas, complete with stretch limousines and a pony keg of beer. Do you think it's more likely now that you're out that there will be a war there? I would say that the odds of a war have gone up, but at the same time I would like this to be settled without a war, I don't want to see anybody die over this. Should we invade? I don't think we really need to invade, but I don't think that we can let this man get away with this. He has got to be stopped for the security of the world, not because Texco needs more war. I think that was an insult ever hostage over there when the demonstrators said, hell no, we won't go, we won't fight for Texacup, that is so simplistic as to be insulting. Is there something you want to say to the side of me saying?

Yeah, get out of Kuwait so I can go to work. You want to go back? Yes. To Kuwait? Yes. I'll do it. I think we'll win this race. Elected officials may wish they could hold on to election night euphoria when they get

to work January 8, state legislators begin their five month working session knowing they don't have enough money to get through the year. Counties and cities will feel the weight of legislators budget decisions. The state budget deficit, we all know that that's a nightmare is there's something that we can reciprocate and work together on trying to get bigger bang for the buck on whatever we're going to have. I guess best solution, I don't know, lets the cities allow us to keep the sales tax tax. Joking aside, long term slumps in oil, real estate and banking have weakened the state's tax base. Texas must spend less and still find more money for prisons, public education and social programs. In the search for more tax dollars, some legislators want to expand legalized gambling. They may introduce bills to help the struggling horse racing industry and establish a state lottery.

Money, how to spend it and where to find it will be just one concern this session. More people live in Texas so legislators must redraw congressional district lines. Public worries about drugs, crime and insurance rates will cause debate and so will ethics reform. Ethics legislation may get more attention following how Speaker Gibluis' indictment. He was book last month in Travis County in connection with ethics charges. When it comes to getting ideas, it's difficult, I think it's one of those kind of mysteries. I'll constantly seek divine intervention, I mean there are times when I'm sitting here

and I don't have an idea where I'm like, please Lord, smack me with one now. Because I don't know where they come from, it's just a matter of, I sit down and I read the papers through. It seems rather chaotic at times, but really it's kind of organized daydreaming, just sitting and stewing, letting ideas fly. And then once I get the idea, the easy part comes. When I'm actually sitting here at the desk drawing and in, in, in, in, in, in my cartoon, people are usually surprised when they, when they find out that it takes a whole day. I use a brush, which is actually, um, inside of a pen, which really kind of, it gives it a more distinctive look than a, than a pen does. I think it was fourth or fifth grade, somebody introduced me to Mad Magazine and I always relate to this fact that Mad Magazine really, I think, is the, the making of me. It was something fun to read and, and my reading skills, uh, uh, sword after I found Mad Magazine.

As a cartoonist, you know, it would have been nice to have seen Clayton Williams win. I mean, he's, he's very, he's very exaggerated anyway. The big nose, the big ears, the cowboy hat, um, the big possum grin. Uh, that would have been very easy. But on, on the other side, Ann Richards is, just as easy, you know, with her big bouffant hairdo and the, the sly eyes and, and the wrinkles and, and stuff. And so she's, uh, the physical characteristics really didn't play that much in it, uh, was stewing around, uh, with the ideas that this is, this really is new. I mean, there's a new governor. So really for most, you know, a lot of Texans, uh, it's the first woman governor that they'll remember. And there's such a difference between Ann Richards and Bill Clemmons and then how the Texas legislature will then, uh, adapt to that. Now, there's going to be a lot of adapting, uh, a lot of changes. I think she'll throw them a lot of curveballs. And so that's kind of where I was going with the cartoon, even though it's, uh, it's, uh,

it's one of those kind of, doofy kind of joky cartoons, but it's still, uh, I was trying to show the, the differences between the two. I'm not going to be, uh, my head isn't big enough to think that every cartoon is going to change somebody's life or change somebody's opinion, but if you can make someone think, I think you've done your job. We can only show you a rendering of the 812 stealth aircraft. The Navy commissioned project is that secret.

But the fate of some 3,500 workers at Fort Worth's General Dynamics plant is no longer secret. Massive layoffs have resulted after defense secretary Dick Cheney's decision this week to totally scrap the 812 program. As project employees packed their boxes Tuesday afternoon, they were still reeling from the news. The 812 workers had been warned before Christmas that their jobs could be forfeited if the Pentagon acts the 812. Although the contract had been troubled by delays and cost overruns, word of its demise came as a shock. Cancelation of the $5 billion project makes general dynamics workers economic casualties of the largest weapons contract ever terminated. The men and women who worked on the project aren't the only ones affected by the shutdown. The Fort Worth and Tarant County defense-based economies are also expected to suffer significantly. The bad news is generating a lot of thought about the dependence on the defense industry.

The defense is real shaky and then again that's been always, there's always been up and down. If we didn't have a strong defense industry, I think we'd be another class of country. So you don't think there's too much emphasis placed on defense? Joining me now, Dr. Seymour Melman, Professor Emeritus of Industrial Engineering at Columbia University in New York, Dr. Melman is chairman of the National Commission on Economic Conversion and Disarmament. The commission is studying ways to convert military spending into economic development. Thank you, Dr. Melman, for being with us. Let's start with the basics first, what is economic conversion? Economic conversion is the activity of planning and then carrying out a change in industrial and other work from military to civilian products. It means changing the skills of people, it means changing the production equipment, it means changing the layout of factories, it means changing the use of bases, changing

the use of laboratories. So economic conversion really entails the whole array of activities needed to move from a war economy to a peacetime economy. Having got that on the table, I'll pose the same question to you that we asked the GD employer, the employee, rather than we saw just a moment ago. Is there too much emphasis placed in our country on defense? First of all, there is no defense, that's a misuse of language and an abuse of ideas. From the time that nuclear weapons became available in quantity, there's no shield for any country. So defense is gone. We don't have defense, we've got a military establishment and it's a military establishment that until recently was oriented to fighting a war with conventional weapons and nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union.

The prospect of that war is now essentially gone from the time that Mr. Gorbachev essentially went to the UN and said, we quit. So now there's no longer a military confrontation issue with the Soviet Union. Instead, we've got the military confrontation issue in the case of the Gulf. And that is very important. The most important part of it is for us to understand that the United States government played an important part in the buildup of the capability of the Iraqi government to wage modern war. Iraqi society contains no modern industry base. It contains no military industry base to produce the weapons that are now in hand. They've all been imported. And during the last five years or so, that importation took place with supplies from the Soviet Union, the United States, Germany, France, England, Brazil, China, Poland, Bulgaria and

other countries. So a great array of countries played an important part in building up the military capability that now generates a crisis of a military sought for the U.S. in the Gulf. Indeed, in a published report, the U.S. government recently claimed that it had shipped zero weaponry to Iraq. That is false as good investigative reporting done by the village voice in New York City and reported on December 18th showed that the U.S. government had participated in arrangements whereby U.S. weaponry was shipped to third countries and then sent on to Iraq. U.S. firms also supplied various classes of industrial equipment of importance to the Iraqis, especially for making of more sophisticated weaponry of various sorts.

So to your question, do we spend too much on defense? The answer is we hardly spend anything in the nature of a shield because there is none. What we've spent, what we're spending on is $300 billion a year for a military establishment that is now oriented to fighting a series of wars in the third world countries. What's freedom factor into this at all? I noticed you found a little bit when the gentleman talked about freedom, you know, all this being about freedom. Is this? A militarized society always restricts freedom. The longer a militarized society exists, the less freedom there is. I think it's important that American newsmen have responded with dismay to the new regulations that the Pentagon is imposing for their functioning in the Gulf area.

Less freedom of the press, less freedom of the press as compared to five years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago. No, this does not make for more freedom, it makes for less. Okay, let's talk about the GD employees a little bit, obviously they are in some pain right now. If we, going back to your explanation of economic conversion, would they be better off if there were plans in place, places like GD and other contractors where they could convert to a civilian type of industry? Let's go right to the point, two years ago, Jim Wright and the Speaker of the House played a crucial part in putting legislation for economic conversion planning in a front position for the 101st Congress. With the departure of Jim Wright, commitments made by various members to back that legislation were withdrawn and the opposition of the Department of Defense and the White House to such legislation

has dominated the field. With the consequence, the today, the people working for general dynamics or the people working for McDonald Douglas are in the worst possible shape, again to go back to the matter, if the legislation that was backed by Jim Wright had passed, then the last two years could have been spent in doing detailed planning for alternative work. Why is there such resistance to this? There is resistance in several departments. First of all, the Department of Defense doesn't want any such planning to go on because it means that several million people in this country would have a perspective of doing something else other than functioning under the orders of the Department of Defense. It means less decision power for them. It would mean smaller budgets.

But it also might mean greater productivity for our economy. You look at countries like Germany and Japan where they spend a fraction of the money that we spend on military spending and they're much more productive. That's exactly correct, but the Department of Defense is not a Department of Productivity. It is not concerned with the civilian productivity of society. The managers of the Department of Defense are concerned with maintaining and enlarging their managerial decision power. But there is opposition to conversion legislation elsewhere as well. Characteristically, the very top management layer of the principal military industry firms have opposed economic conversion planning. Some degree, this is due, surely, to the fact that men and women who have spent virtually their entire careers in the service of the Department of Defense don't know how to operate in a civilian environment. They wouldn't know how to deal with Sears' robot to save their lives while they are expert in the politics and diplomacy of dealing with the Pentagon.

What is this boiled down to? Is it a fear of peace? I've heard you talk about that before. Yes, there is a fear of peace. Should there be a fear of peace? For the people whose power and position is in war preparation, that's a justified fear. For the largest number of us in this country, that's an unjustified fear. Indeed, the move to a peace economy would be an enormous productive opportunity for the people of this society. There would be a chance to do a repair job on the enormous array of public responsibility matters that are now in gross disrepair. Isn't it a national disgrace that several million people are homeless and wandering the streets? Isn't it a disgrace that there are more beggars on Broadway today where I live than they were during the Great Depression? Isn't it a disgrace that 85% of the school buildings in New York City are in gross disrepair? Isn't it a disgrace that there are parts of New York City and other big cities that have

infant mortality rates like those of underdeveloped countries? So turning our swords into plowshares, as you have often said, would change that? Exactly. Turning people to productive work would transform quality of life in this society. It's important to underscore that military products, while given a money value, are completely lacking in or narrowly understood use value for consumption or use value for further production. Boy, I hate to cut you off, there's so much more we could talk about, but we are out of time. Thank you very much for joining us. I'm delighted to be with you. Let's open my car door three times.

Let's open my car door three times. Let's open my car door three times.