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The Inside Dope

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The Backward Bicentennial Budget No one disputes Oakland Courity Prosccutor 1 . Hrooks Pattórson's ability to gèt hcucllines. A past master of media manipulation, Patterson carefully chooses issues tliat will appeal to the bagkward political orientation of his wellheeled supporters issues like busing, welfare cheating, parole, and SO-called "obscenity." In one of the richesl counties in the country, and one wliicli went tor Wallace in the 1972 Presidential primary, Patterson has styled hiniself asa maverick and a "refornier." His perlonsl charisma and eloquence have charnüd the pants off many a reporter, not to tion the grownig popular tollowing which he hopes to ride into higher office Bóon. While Patterson's constan! aetivily and high visihility convince his people thal he's keeping Oakland ('ouniy "clean," the,re may well be more going on than meets the eye. Wherever there is rapid suburban expansión. Miere's a Int of money floating around. and áreas utulei going this kind ot'developinenl tend to lostei a lïoni km atmosphere wide open to all kinds of wheeling and dealing. Organized crime, wliich hasofcoune been investing heavily in legitímate businesses of late, finds such environments a fertile breeding ground, and tliere are many indications that Oakland Counfy is no exeeplion. Why, then, has its prosecutor niaintained süence on the disappearance oi Jimmy Hoffa from a Bloomfield Tuwnship restaurant? Why hasn't he evinced any interest in the murder of Harvey Lc;ich, tlie Teamster lawyer whose body was found in Southtïeld? Why hasn't Patterson actcd on the list of Oakland County organized crime figures supplied him by James Piersantc. head of the state Attorney General's Organized Crime División? Why hasn'i lie used the SI 00.000 the county raised to investígate organicd crime? Unless Patterson seriously bclieves that welfare cheatersand dirty flicks are more dangerous to our health than professional gangsters, he should stop wasting public funds on quick, spectacular show prosecutions against defenseless peonle and use his sources ïnstoad t( begin the kind of methodical, tong-term investigation il wuuld take to answer tlie persistent questions aboul organied crime in Oakland County no matter whos involved. A good place to start might be tl.í mctedible series of events iluii led to the construction of Pontiac Metropolitan Stadium, many ofwhich are so suspicious it's amaing no one has questioned them. Fot example: Why wcie a Pontiac residentes allegations of irregularity in a crucial JocjI bond election ignored? Where did the extra money Por improving roads to the Stadium suddenly appear from? How did the Stadium people wangle a S24 million public subsidy fot their private enterprise? And wliy was the most recent appropriation slipped through the state legislature al 4:40am'? How about it. Brooks.' Salutations! It's been all I could do to sit on the followin' little tale for the past fortnight 'til I had the opportunity to share it witli all my new friends, not to mention, o' course, those gri.led veterans who knew me when. My days at the Free Press, as oldtimers will recali, cnded way back in '52, when I was fingered by Joe McCarthy for supposedly bein' in the pay of the KGB. Well, naturally, the boss called me on the carpet. explained how it was, and ol' lffy had to slip out of the public eye for a while, exceptin' an occasional communiqué from my clandestine sanctuary. Well, yon can imagine my surprise and indignation last week when the present-day pillars of journalism over at 321 W. Lafayette tried to teil me I couldn't ply my trade here in the SUN because they still had exclusive rights to my literary efforts! I could lundly restrain myself from marchin' riglit down to their executive offices and demandin' satisfaction on the spot. My present mentors, however, succeeded in calmin' me down and persuadin' me to pursue legal avenues of redress. Sure enougli, it wasn't but a few days later that the Freep took it all back. Seems after takin' a closer look at the fine print, they decided 1 was free after all to continue peddlin' my wares wherever I see fit. And so 1 intend to do, followin" the Iffy credo- I calis 'em as I sees 'ero, and I don'l give a hang who gets their back up over it! While musin' over a copy of the Rollin' Stone the other day, I chanced upon the prominent byline of an old associate. Mr. Howard Kohn, tellin' all about the Perils of Patty - Miss Hearst, that is - and her adventures in the underground. Good ol' Howard always was one to get that story, regardless of the risks entailed. Won 't soon forget how lie nailed those cops and pushers right on the front page a few years back for our Judging from his administration's proposals for next year's federal budget. Gerald "Whitey" Ford, our first appointed chief executive, will have to use the occasion of the Bicentennial to declare himself our first king since George III if he wants to stick a round after next fall. His substantial4ax-cut proposal notwitlistanding. Ford's planned assault on essential social-service programs could remove what cusliions the poor, working poot , and unemployed have left to shield tliem from the effects of incipient economie depression. Ford's ill-fated predecessor managed to mate most of the "Great Society" ;mii-poverty programs; now Ford apparently wants to go at'tcr social welfare legislation which originated in the kist great capitalist economie crisis for the specific purposc ot' preventing outiïght revolution. II Jerry wants an excuse to cali out the troops against hordes of broke and hungry Americans on H ís lawn next summer, he is headed in the right direction. The current talk about cuttiiiíí back in areas likc welfare, food stamps. Medicare and Met - icaid, and housing subsidies, and of using the Presidential veto "100 times" if necessary, should Congress resist. raises a grim spectre indeed tbr the growing number of people in a marginal economie condition- especially when Jerry is determined nut to créate any jobs for them. If the President wants to save S28 billion, there is no shortage of other areas to cut back in. Unfortunately, most of them are star-spangled Republican sacred cows like the Defense Department, the intelligence agencies, and the huge ations. The proposed S9 btllion cut in defense, though substancia], could be multiplied many times if the Pentagon stopped paying fot ei.iormous cosí overruns, creating expensive projects to bail out pet epn tractors, dreaming up Doomsday schemes like Project Seafarer, and paying for its own contractors to entertain Defense Department officials. The Pentagon's current darling, the B-l bomber, would cost SI billion alone for cuch shiny new engine of war. Despite recent guesses. body knows how much nioney (lic ('IA luis at its disposal to keep the world safe for capitalist investments. The corporations whose interests it detends. notably the oil companies, are experiencing windlall profil s and paying a fraction of the taxes due from them. Many individuals in the top uix brackets also nuinaee to pay little or notliing. But it is altogether fitting, as the international crisis of capitalism deepens. that "free-enterpiïse" advocates like Ford continue to defend such interests whilc attempting to blamo social programs fot muslirooming federal déficits and calling for further personal sacrifices in order to prop up the failing order. We can hope that Congress will struggle as best it can against the present attempt to hold it together at the expense of those already hard put just to get by. If not, the citizenry may mark the nation's 2OOth birthday in ways undreamed of by the Bicentennial Commission. mutual ex-employer. When it come down to the crunch, ihougli. they gave poor Howard his walkin' papers, and he walked straight to the city by the Bay, where he has evidently found better workin' conditions. Too bad, boys, ya let a good one get away there. Nice goin', Howard. As I sit here at my oíd Royal, fuelin' my imagination witli a tad of Jamaican brown, watchin' the industrial soot eddy through the autumn air and settle on the skyscrapers of downtown Detroit, I am moved to speculate upen certain aspectsof the human condition, in the manner ot Joe H. Slroud, one of my favorite poets. When struck by these pensive moods, the ol' Iffster sometimes wonders just where we're goin' when the Feds are down there in the Caribbean doin' their best to cut off my supply of this good while on the otlier hand, they're over in the nation's capital puttin' out another report as to-how it's really not very neighborly to keep me f rom smokin' up at my pleasure, in the privacy of my own abode. Now I just wonder when those fellas are gonna face up to the inevitable futility of all this prevaricatin', go drink their beer, and leave the dopesters of this world in peace? You young'uns wouldn't remember, but I was around when ol' Harry Anslinger was tellin' everybody how this stuff made folks pop their corks and run around rapin', pillagin'. and murderin' everything in sight. Let' me teil you, that Harry had a poker up his ass if anybody ever did. Kinda reminds me of L. Brooks Pat.terson. Ain't it amazin' how that kind iust kecps comin'? hortunately, things have loosened up these days to the point where at least some folks continuo on page 25 WRITERS VI ANTI D: The SUN is lookinx jor freelance wriicrs wfto (ire liip to the Detroit arca, cspcciaJIv the black commurtity. Senil u resume and a few samples of vmir work to Derck I anPelt, Editor, The SUN. Box 721 7, Detroit 48202. rriE INSIDE DOPE continuad f rom page 2 have the intestinal fortitude to stand up for the good weed - iike our intrepid State Representative, the Hon. Perry Bullard. In case ya didn't know, Perry is cosponsorin' a real meritorious proposition up in Lansing right now. Ifenough of his colleagues can be persuaded it's OK to vote for it, the sovereign state of Michigan migln just stop puttin' folks in the pokey for simple possession or use of reefer, if you don't get caught with too much of it. They'd just write ya a ticket and slap a fine on ya - which is still an affront to the dignity of dopesters everywhere, to be sure, but a damn sight better than the present situation. It wouldn't get ya a rap sheet, either. So here's the scoop - ya gotta write to yer people in 1 ansing and tell 'em it'sall riglit with you if they vote for the new pioposition. Now, you folks up Flint way have got an especially important job, because ya see, three of your state legislators are on the Civil Rights Commlttee, where the bilí is right now, and the fourth is the Speaker of the House. When ya write. ya got to ell 'em NOT to send the bilí to the Judiciary Committee. 'cause they got a chairman over there that's promised to put the kibosh on it. Just teil 'em Iffy sent va! Speakin' of dope, took due notice the other day that the latest fancy gummint report went so far as to say that the filet mignon of the dope world, cocaine, won't get ya hooked. I remember when those foamin" at the mouth cracker sherriffs used to say ya couldn't stop a Negro on cocaine with a .38 caliber bullet. Itïy wouldn't kid ya -- they went and upgraded all their animo to .45 caliber. It's the God's truth. Well, the typesetter here at the Shelby is houndin' me to get tliis out of my Royal so they can get it on the street, so I'U just lay one more item on ya. This one's from our Ann Arbor society correspondent, whose dispatch I herewith reproduce hot off the Iffograph: ANNARBOR, Oct. 1 7 The newAnn Arbor McDonald 's, squatting in synthetk squahr on the former site of the historie Nichols' House, was the scène todayfor the jirst Food Fateism Show, brPake-In for short. Twen t y memben of the Radical Vegeterian l.eagne eame u with the latest in plastic delicades and "blew lunch " lor a stunned house of nooit rush-how burger fans and a disgiisted management. Ilighlights of the show were Pinto Bean's lovely floor-length "Big Mae with C'heese, "with a touch of se ere sauce that went heautifully with it. and Gin Seng's "Strawherrv Shake, "which caused a big splash in the gallerv front the second floOT haleony. Also of note was Red .inger's "Large Coke, " which iced that category (and the judges ' labiel. The significance of the show, sadly, was sidestepped by the audience, mos! of ' wliom went riglit on ca t ing their french fries. With that, thisis Iffy the Dopester savin ', "Yippie! "and see ya later.