Golden Opportunity
Sir / I think that it is time for the country to realize that George McGovern [May 8] is the man for the nomination.
Senator McGovern has offered programs that deal with both foreign and domestic issues--ending the Viet Nam War and reforming our tax laws. He has spoken openly with the people and told them exactly what he is going to do.
Let us not pass up this golden opportunity for change.
MICHAEL BURLAS
Fallston, Md.
Sir / George McGovern is a frightening presidential candidate.
Who is he? The Organization Man, that's who. You want populism! The organization speaks populism. You want liberalism? The organization speaks liberalism. You want busing? The organization speaks busing. You don't want busing? The organization speaks alternatives. You want peace? The organization speaks peace.
You get a sure feeling this is a speakeasy organization, and an insecure feeling that maybe we can't chance an organization President.
DOROTHY HUNDT
Oakland, Calif.
Sir / Thanks for your straightforward article on George McGovern. His proposals are not radical or left wing. They are the closest thing yet to the ideals that America was founded on.
Voters will finally have an alternative to voting for the "least worse" candidate when election time comes in November.
LESLIE SIEGMUND
Concord, Calif.
Sir / So George McGovern would take three years to dismantle our defenses, meanwhile confiscating our money and property.
What would he do during his fourth year? Why, transform us into the American Soviet Socialist Republic, the first noncontiguous state of the Soviet Union.
The prairie populist? Nonsense. The prairie Marxist!
CHESTER PLACEK
Vienna, Va.
Sir / I read with interest your cover story on the "Prairie Populist" and was both amazed and fascinated by the ironies and inconsistencies of this year's "spectacular." McGovern questions John Lindsay's populist credentials because Lindsay plays squash at the Yale Club. Should anti-Establishment populists who live in $110,000 houses cast stones?
To be fair, however, I don't imagine that any of the public servants who are wooing our votes come from log cabins or antipoverty housing any more!
CAROL ADAMS
Raynham, Mass.
Sir / Your story on Senator George McGovern, which had me saying that I agreed with 95% of the Senator's "plan" to cut the defense budget, was in error. What I said was that 95% of the weapons systems that Senator McGovern wishes to eliminate are the right ones to eliminate. I am opposed to any U.S. troop reductions in Europe or Korea at this time, and without such reductions, further large manpower cuts do not seem plausible. Some 50% of the defense budget is consumed by manpower costs. I also said that in my opinion the Senator's plan overestimates the savings from weapons systems cuts and underestimates the cost of force modernization. My own figure for an initial defense budget reduction was $10 to $12 billion, not $32 billion.
LESLIE H. GELB
Senior Fellow
The Brookings Institution
Washington, D.C.
Sir / You have misrepresented an important McGovern proposal. McGovern did not suggest that "anyone making over $50,000 a year--earned or unearned--would have to pay 75% of the excess in taxes, no matter what tax shelters might exist."
What McGovern is proposing is that everyone pay some income tax. One formulation would apply to those with total incomes in excess of $50,000, regardless of the source. "The entire income of any person in this range would be subject to payment of taxes at a rate of 75% of the current statutory rates at the rate they would have to pay if there were no loopholes."
DEBORAH MALLEY
New York City
The Ultimate Goal
Sir / Having been a member of the United Methodist Church for 30 years, I found much to laugh and cry at in "Methodist Malaise" [May 8].
It is not successful religions that are characterized by a "high profile of unshakable exclusiveness, strict discipline," as Dean Kelley argues in his Why Conservative Churches are Growing; it is rather successful organizations that are so characterized. This view overlooks the ultimate goal of a church--that of total integration of religion into all of life.
Ideally the people called Methodist would become so engrossed in tolerant, relevant, concerned living that the organized church would become progressively less needed and therefore less evident.
WALTER S. BOONE
Valdese, N.C.
Sir / The United Methodist Church is not "going bad." For years we have played the numbers game in measuring our success.
The fact is, under the direction of our United Methodist discipline, inactive members who do not withdraw voluntarily are being removed from the rolls. Oh yes sir, we are still leaping like a brushfire along the frontier of the 20th century, but this time we are burning up our own deadwood.
(THE REV.) WILLIAM J. BARNEY
Pastor, United Methodist Church
Lyndonville, Vt.
Pat Solution
Sir / As long as the custodians of our tax dollars remain so dedicated to the interests of big business and to winning the largest voting pluralities, what hope is there for the mentally retarded [May 8], who will never host Texas barbecues, who will never fund a convention, who will never even vote?
The pat solution is to thrust the burden, in whole or in part, back on their families. With the increasing costs of dropping bombs in Southeast Asia, of taking care of the ITTs in our midst, of sending men to the moon, of guaranteeing outrageous agricultural commodity prices, what family is left after taxes with the resources necessary to care for a lifelong dependent?
CELINE S. MARKS
New York City
Sir / Congratulations on your comprehensive and informative article on mental retardation. Your reporters and writers did a splendid job of informing the public on a problem that faces 6,000,000 Americans and their families. The article should serve constructively to improve the lot of the retarded and encourage research to help prevent further retardation.
CLAIR W. BURGENER
Vice Chairman
President's Committee on
Mental Retardation
Washington, D.C.
News in Manure
Sir / Your paragraph on Mayor Lindsay's campaign [April 24] contains some inaccuracies and a distortion of a quotation. You imply that a TV commercial portrayed Lindsay spreading manure in Wisconsin. There was no commercial; a network news show ran film of the incident. You say Lindsay was shown spending the night on the sofa of a blue-collar family. That event was off the record and neither filmed nor photographed. Finally, you quote me: "The only thing charisma did for the mayor was bring people out to see him. But when they heard him, they said goodbye." What I said was: "But when they heard him talk about the urban crisis, they said goodbye." I went on to say that what scared me most about the mood of the country in 1972 was the desire to escape from the problems of the cities. It still does.
THOMAS B. MORGAN
Press Secretary to Mayor Lindsay
New York City
Too Old to Qualify?
Sir / The anomaly of Isaac Presler's being "simply too old to qualify as a victim of discrimination against the old" [May 8] is a matter of direct concern to me as commissioner of the New York State Division of Human Rights. My position is that all able-bodied individuals should be afforded the right to work, even if they are 75, and I support Governor Rockefeller's proposal to amend the employment section of the Human Rights Law to protect persons of all ages.
JACK M. SABLE
New York City
Sir / So the Supreme Court decided not to hear the case of Isaac Presler because it was not important enough.
It seems to me that an old man who is so dynamic is an inspiration to old and young. Surely the issue involved is extremely important. A man who stands on his own two feet and who continues to improve his mind as he gets older is a rare individual who has earned the right and the courtesy of being heard.
(MRS.) BERTHA R. EWING
APO New York
Safer Than Maryland?
Sir / TIME'S story on India's dacoits [May 1] reports in awed tones that in 1971 they "committed 285 murders, 352 kidnapings and 213 robberies, all within an area smaller than the state of Maryland." Well, within the real state of Maryland, in Baltimore alone, the 1970 score was 273 murders and 11,687 robberies. Unfortunately, my souKce does not give the number of kidnapings. Even so, dacoit country looks to be safer than Maryland.
J.M. BRADLEY
Bonn, West Germany
Pity for Elizabeth
Sir / After reading your essay on Mary v. Elizabeth [May 8]. I started to wonder whether men really understand what Women's Lib is all about.
It is interesting that Gerald Clarke admires Queen Elizabeth because she would rather have had power than love a man. I think she is a pitiable character. To be a liberated woman, one must be a liberated person. She was neither. Her victory was complete, yet it was Pyrrhic.
In surrendering her identity to a crown, she was no more a person in her own right than a woman who lives vicariously through her husband.
MARY LYNNE ANTONSANTI
DE VIZCARRONDO
San Juan, Puerto Rico
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