# Opening Shots (July/Aug. 1979) **URL:** **By** Bill Birmingham **Published:** August 1, 1979 --- “Never let it be said that economists have no compassion for the poor and downtrodden; especially not of Professor Armen Alchian, the very embodiment of free-market economics at UCLA.” Never let it be said that economists have no compassion for the poor and downtrodden; especially not of Professor Armen Alchian, the very embodiment of free-market economics at UCLA. “Give me a capsule that will magically clean all the air in Los Angeles if I crush it,” an article in _For_\- _tune_ (May 21, 1979) quotes Dr. Alchian as saying. “Beg me to crush it. No, I won’t crush it, I won’t crush the capsule. Because if I do, poor blacks will have to pay $20 a month more for land rental. Why? Because clean air increases the demand for residences and helps the landlord.... But the black in Watts, already used to living with bad air, loses his discount for doing that. Think about it.” Indeed. And for extra credit, think about whether the good doctor, in the fullness of his compassion for the poor, would also refuse to crush a capsule that would magically eliminate mugging. Mugging the whole man, that is; not just his eyes and lungs. As the battle against sexist usage in the English language slogs on to victory, _Ms._ magazine reports that sign language too is replete with “sexist implications.” American sign language “indicates male pronouns by a combination of hand gestures and references to the brain area. The female pronouns are formed by referring to the lower facial areas.” The official explanation—that the signs derive, respectively, from the gestures of tipping a hat and tying a bonnet—will surely fail to appease those who wax wroth over manholes. Italian sign language, _Ms._ asserts, is even “more explicit” in its prejudices. “The sign for ‘woman’ is the cupping of the hands above and below the breasts; the sign for ‘man’ is the twirling of an imaginary mustache!” Come September 1, if all goes well, the state of New Jersey will lower the age of consent for sexual relations to 13. That’s the day New Jersey’s new penal code goes into effect, permitting those 13 or older to couple ad-libitum with anyone not a relative, guardian, or in a “supervisory” position such as teacher or employer. The provision has the support of the New Jersey State Coalition Against Rape and the National Organization for Women’s Rape Task Force. “The lowering of the age of consent,” the two groups declared in a joint statement, “was based upon statistical information which supports the reality that there are increasing numbers of sexually active teenagers of 16 years of age and under.” But when did reality ever count for anything in the field of victimless crimes? Four state legislators have already introduced a bill that would punish sex with a partner 13 to 16 years of age with seven years in prison, which just happens to be the penalty in New Jersey for such crimes as arson and kidnaping. Speaking at “If Women Planned the World,” the fourth annual University of Southern California conference on women in planning and government, _Ms._ editor Gloria Steinem opined that “capitalism is an especially pernicious subform of patriarchy. Capital distances men and women.” Earlier, she had mentioned that a _People_ magazine survey on potential presidential candidates listed her as tied with Richard Nixon, which La Steinem claimed proves that “being a woman is still about the same as being an unindicted coconspirator.” Or at least that being a fool is now about the same as being a knave. “It has become plain,” notes the incomparable Alexander Cockburn of the _Village Voice_, “that Carter is an anal retentive and now we have in hand a practical rendition of this psychological characteristic.” When our president served in the Navy, it seems, he helped dismantle a nuclear reactor core at Chalk River, Ontario, and in the process received one year’s permissible dose of radiation in just two minutes. “For a year afterward, he had to save his urine and faeces for radiation tests,” says Cockburn. “These things leave their mark on a man.” In our last issue, yr hmbl srvnt lamented the fact that the evil Shah of Iran had not yet perished by the sword. And lo! the Ayatollah Sa-degh Khalkhali, head of Tehran’s revolutionary tribunal, has put out an open contract on the former monarch and his retinue. Anyone who wishes to assassinate the Shah, ex-prime minister Bakhtiar, or certain of the Shah’s odious relatives will be considered “an agent of the Islamic Revolutionary Court,” carrying out its verdict. The Court apparently isn’t offering any reward to its volunteer agents, but according to _Time_ magazine “The owner of an Iranian newspaper offered an all-expense paid pilgrimage to Mecca to anyone who killed the Shah.” Just as we’ve always suspected: sugar, too, causes cancer. Indeed, according to Dr. Morris Cranmer, head of the National Center of Toxicological Research, sugar is 375 times more likely to cause cancer than is saccharin. You may read this for yourself in an article in the June _Atlantic_ by one W.A. Thomasson (“Dangerous to Your Health: Saccharin, Cancer and the Delaney Clause”), who also reports that “saccharin directly prevents cancer” in body organs other than the bladder (where rats fed massive doses of saccharin for two generations develop cancer). “So far as animal experiments go,” says Mr. Thomasson, “the evidence is unequivocal.” (For that matter, “excess weight . . . is a major risk factor in the development of cancer. Hence, if saccharin helps people attain and maintain their ideal weight, this in itself reduces cancer risk.”) The question naturally arises as to whether using saccharin prevents more cancer than it causes. Unfortunately nobody knows, because the infamous Delaney clause of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act does not permit the FDA to consider such matters. Intead, it requires that a substance that can cause cancer “in any amount” must be banned regardless of any benefits the substance may have—which, needless to say, hardly encourages research on those benefits. “The all-or-none approach of the Delaney clause,” Thomasson quotes the aforementioned Dr. Cranmer as saying, “provides absolutely no incentive to a petitioner \[to the FDA\] to do comprehensive research; in fact, the better work you do, the greater the chance that your compound will be banned. Who are we kidding?” Not Mr. Thomasson; he wants the Delaney clause repealed. Hoist a can of Diet-Pepsi to that—while you still can. Shed a tear, if you have any to spare, for David Rooke, president of Dow Chemical Company, who is “sick and tired of the chemical industry being picked out as the evil of mankind.” Dow, he will have you know, is a virtuous, public spirited company. “We hung in on napalm when it didn’t mean anything to us business-wise \[sic\]. The Government asked us to make it and we did. We believed in the principle.” The National Association of Government Employees says the government has imposed tighter security regulations on military bases across the country in the wake of “huge and massive losses” of weapons and ammunition. The union, which represents civilian employees at those bases, claims that “such sophisticated weapons as M-16 automatic rifles, hand grenades, grenade launchers, rockets and rocket launchers and even machine guns are suddenly disappearing in large quantities”—a claim the Army denies. True or not, the charge is obviously meant to embarrass military officials; no doubt in preparation for the union’s next round of wage demands. Which is rather interesting in the light of the Army’s assertion that “there has not been a break-in on a major army installation since 1974.” In that case, if arms are indeed “suddenly disappearing in large quantities,” it could only be the work of insiders . . . such as, perhaps, the members of the NAGE. ## Great Moments in Political Philosophy: “George Bush, the former CIA director seeking the Republican presidential nomination, said today \[May 2\] ‘it is not intervention’ in another country’s affairs for the United States to support friendly governments facing revolution, like the Shah of Iran. ‘That’s not meddling,’ he said. ‘That’s supporting.’ ” (Washington Post, May 3.) High gas prices getting you down? Go to Weekapaug Bait and Tackle Shop in Westerly, Rhode Island, and fill your tank for just a quarter a gallon. That price, however, is good only if you pay with pre-1964 silver quarters. Otherwise it costs 81.9¢. According to the National Taxpayers Union, it would cost an extra $115-million per ship to refurbish four aircraft carriers at the government’s Philadelphia Navy Yard instead of at the facilities of Newport News Shipbuilding, a private company. No prizes for guessing which shipyard the Carter Administration wants to use. Creative Wargames Workshop has a new game for your leisure hours: “Junta,” “in which the winning player does not seize or hold power, but rather flees to Switzerland with the largest secret bank account.” (_In These Times, April 11-17._)