The President's Taxes

Sir / I am not galled by the errors (if any) in the President's tax returns [April 15]. What does gall me is that Citizen Nixon has been forced to make public what most citizens consider private matters.

If all this fuss is because he is a public official, why don't we require tax audits for all public officials, including members of the Congressional Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation?

SUZANNE PINKERTON Atlanta

Sir / Your article on the President's income tax returns restores my battered confidence in him. Though I don't know about ITT or Vesco or milk supports, I do know about taxation. All of the details you have reported show that there is no "scandal."

ROBERT H. LILLY New York City

Sir / Americans are traditionally for the underdog. TIME is doing a magnificent job of promoting this image of the President. Please keep it up and you will have the whole country behind him.

WILLIAM H. DAVIS Cincinnati

Sir / At the same time Nixon and Agnew were telling the young men of this country to die cheerfully for Viet Nam, they both neglected to pay their income taxes, which would, at least in part, have helped support the war. Some patriotism. Some sense of sacrifice.

THEODORE L. STEINBERG Fredonia, N.Y.

Sir / Congratulations to the Internal Revenue Service, the Congress and anyone else who has helped formulate our tax laws. They have finally made the impossible possible. "Only in America" could a widow raising two kids on a part-time teaching salary pay more taxes (1972) than the President of the U.S. paid in 1971!

LOIS J. ROSE Spring Valley, Calif.

Sir / The whole blowup only proves once again that if an executive does not have a salary in line with his position and responsibilities, problems are bound to come up.

The top executive of the U.S. should earn enough (tax free or after taxes) to maintain for the rest of his life a standard of living like that enjoyed by the top people in industry. Perhaps $1 million a year plus cost-of-living adjustments would do that.

VICTOR WEISZ Buenos Aires

Lifelong Economizing

Sir / I am sick, fed up, had it, with all the guides to economizing [April 8] that are appearing in magazines now during the current inflationary period. Lots of us have lived this frugal way all our lives.

(MRS.) MARY JEAN BEY Portland, Ore.

Flying Cheap

Sir / Pan American Airways and Trans World Airlines have asked the Government for welfare funds called subsidies [April 15]. They are asking for an amount equal to $5 per U.S. family.

The users of Pan Am and TWA services should pay all the expenses and the return on investment when they purchase their tickets; and if they will not. Pan Am and TWA management should reduce operating expenses by reducing the number of flights and the number of flight attendants, and by installing automatic coin-operated food and beverage vending machines.

HENRY WAGNER San Jose, Calif.

Sir / I could not help noticing how glibly you offered "the only alternative" to subsidies for Pan Am and TWA--"outright nationalization." There is another alternative: for Pan Am and TWA to cease overseas operations. If foreign countries want to burden their taxpayers with the unrecoverable costs of airline operations, let them do so. I see no reason why American taxpayers should also be victimized.

GEORGE F. PLATTS Ormond Beach, Fla.

Sir / Back to subsidies for the airlines? They have never been off them. Billions have been poured into the airlines for their terminal expenses alone under the label "airport support funds." If similar amounts were voted to support railroad yards, they would certainly be called subsidies.

PAUL MALLERY Murray Hill, N.J.

Shortage of Conservatives

Sir / Ever since my college years during the reign of Joe McCarthy, I have wondered why conservatism has been so poorly served by its representatives among the columnists [April 15]. Exceptions exist, the most notable of whom is James J. Kilpatrick, whose observations give evidence of a humane, flexible and generous mind. But far more usual is the crabbed, niggling, denunciatory ranting of ideologues.

Conservative spokesmen seem unable to tolerate the ambiguities of human existence, which flavor our lives and give occasion for the exercise of wit and irony.

CONSTANCE M. MCDONNELL Baltimore

Sir / Your story on conservative columnists failed to include Russell Kirk or Paul Harvey. These two have raised their firm opinions for many years in hundreds of newspapers across the country. Their label is certainly "conservative." Both were writing when the balance was heavily against them in favor of the liberals.

ED GRADE Director Los Angeles Times Syndicate Los Angeles

National Symbols

Sir / In your article on the sale of the passenger ship France [April 8], you mention that "the French attach great importance to symbols of national prestige," as though this were a rather unique national trait. Let's see now--just how much did the Apollo program cost?

JEAN SAITOU Paris

Ride to Success

Sir / The equality of opportunity that exists in America is inadvertently illustrated in the photograph intended to portray the idle rich in the Essay "The Delicate Subject of Inequality" [April 15]. The unidentified person lounging in a luxurious swimming pool was so impoverished when he left his native Minnesota to make a career in New York that he had to make the journey on a freight train.

ARTHUR BURCK Palm Beach, Fla.

Macabre Prying

Sir / Your article "Listening In" [April 8] brought to light the bugging of auto showrooms by dealers. In all fairness, auto dealers should not have to suffer condemnation alone. The funeral industry has been known to bug casket showrooms to find out what survivors could afford to pay for a funeral service.

Who can doubt that we have created a monster when even death is robbed of its privacy?

LUAN BEATY Sherman, Texas

Theological Hopscotch

Sir / For an issue devoid of an Easter motif, running an article on St. Thomas Aquinas [April 15] was a good second best to the Resurrection of Jesus. In an era of philosophical and theological hopscotch, it is good to see that many can appreciate the one who transcends lifestyle, hope, change and the rest. The detractors of Aquinas clearly show that they have not read his works, and those who boast of the vacuous labels conservative or liberal do not realize that the pluralistic venture of seeking harmony between reason and faith has no need of such labels.

Only a faithful following of Aquinas' teachings can keep one sane in ferreting out the substantive from the accidental, the bogus from the real in our present era. Isn't it a pity that we must still resort to a medieval man for answers to current questions?

(THE REV.) RICHARD P. DESHARNAIS Wilkes-Barre, Pa.

Sir / Typical of the day is TIME's downgrading of St. Thomas Aquinas' mystical experience by comparing it with a "breakdown." Other religious leaders have had similar experiences, characteristically considered the crowning events of their lives. The "normal" Western mind does not recognize spiritual excellence when encountering it, and even the churches fear nothing quite so much as religion.

WALTER HOUSTON CLARK Newton Centre, Mass.

Jackie's Replacement?

Sir / Though Mrs. Kissinger will abhor this notion, I submit that upon her marriage to Henry Kissinger [April 8], the American public found their replacement for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Both women are youthful, intelligent, attractive and gracious, with a ravenous desire for privacy. Now, perhaps, Mrs. Onassis will come a step closer to regaining her well-deserved privacy.

JANE F. CHRISTOPHERSEN Washington, D.C.

Sir / I am still gagging over your quote from the Kissinger aide's wife: "It's so nice for him to have someone to come home to."

But mein Gott! It is 1974 and you are still helping to promote typical matrimonial garbage. It is no wonder that people are still marrying (and divorcing) while suffering from the wives-love-to-keep-house-and -are-always-there-for-a-man-to-come-home-to syndrome.

CATHERINE LINCOLN Wolfenbuettel, West Germany

Values of Space Travel

Sir / I found the description in your article "A Ghost Town of Gantries" [April 15] somewhat disheartening.

Whatever its critics may have said about the manned space program, its real value lay in its ability to remind us of the true insignificance of our disputes, inspire us to continue to work for a better world and unite all men in a pride in mankind's ability to achieve its goals. In this year of scandals and shortages, what do we have to take its place?

JEFFREY SMITH Mundelein. Ill.

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