Rockefeller, Money and the Game

To the Editors:

I am as puzzled as anybody about Nelson Rockefeller's gifts and loans to his buddies, and about his brother's literary patronage. It smells peculiar, but no one seems to know what these odors mean precisely concerning the vice presidency--except that his confirmation would give us the most generous Veep in history.

One thing does seem certain. Where there is big money around, politicians will spend it to get themselves elected, to increase their influence, to help their friends (personally as well as politically, it seems) and to confound their adversaries. It is an old, old game and the public often loses. Isn't it time to change the rules? We cannot make our leaders take a vow of poverty. But we can make ironclad restrictions preventing a candidate or public official from using his own money for any political or public purpose. The next clause should prevent one officeholder from "assisting" another. Let them a11 behave like paupers.

Margaret Menendez

S. Miami, Fla.

I believe in Rockefeller and his heritage. Why shouldn't he express his gratitude to friends with a token gift of a porcelain figurine? This gesture was not a swindle at the expense of the taxpayer. The Carnegie, Rockefeller and Henry Ford families, through their endowments of Libraries and foundations, have contributed much to the peoples of the Americas and other countries.

J. Jackson Bartlett

Huntsville, Ala.

That's a switch, a politician buying instead of being bought.

Dean P. Blanchette Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Now we know why Rockefeller could never find anything to criticize in Nixon's arrogant abuse of power.

James E. Dittes

New Haven, Conn.

Nelson A. Rockefeller apologizing to Arthur J. Goldberg about that derogatory book was similar to a professional boxer beating up an ordinary citizen on the street and afterward telling onlookers that he was sorry for the mistake.

Andrew S. Kushner

Lakewood, Ohio

Governors and Governance

I am thoroughly satisfied with the fine job Ronald Reagan has done for our great state and surely do not want a Jerry Brown [Oct. 21] to take over now. Houston Flournoy not only has the credentials for Governor but has the guts as well. Sympathetic? Yes. Empathetic? Yes. And he has the courage to tell those who want to spend our state out of existence to go directly to hell. I feel that Jerry Brown might have to call a prayer meeting to decide a tough issue.

Dwight W. Heminger

Claremont, Calif.

To be in tune with the times, you should run a cover picture of Houston Flournoy on your next issue, plus at least two pictures of him at work in your inside story. Fair play is what campaign reform is all about, and you are the first and worst violator.

Charles S. Gubser

Member of Congress

10th District, Calif.

Washington, DC

I've often heard the question asked about New York City: "Is it governable?" As if New York were way off out there somewhere, not part of the U.S. Now one hears the question: "Is the U.S. really governable?" The fact that the question is being asked introduces a small measure of equality in the business of governance in the separate worlds of city and nation. When the oil crisis was suddenly thrust upon us, I, like everyone else, witnessed the event with some dismay. But it was not without a personal, bittersweet sense of irony --now everyone, not just big-city folk, was being buffeted by forces beyond his control, and apparently beyond the control of his Government.

The question that must first be asked is whether our Government will have the capacity (it doesn't now) to deal with the onslaught of civil crises: a failing economy, energy anemia and oil politics, environmental destruction and automobile dependency, social needs and a flawed criminal-justice system, institutional bureaucracy, including Congress and state and local political systems. The last chapters of Watergate do not prove that "the system works," for the boil was burst more by accident than by the system, proving that the system is only as good as the people who work the levers. Here the leadership gap is real.

I see hard choices ahead for the country. If the nation's political leaders are not prepared to make them, then I see even greater loss of confidence, and increasing doubt that government really works at all.

John V. Lindsay

Manhattan

The writer was the mayor of New York City for eight years.

Warning for the Corrupt

Your story on the recent convictions of three public officials, "Turning Point in Chicago" [Oct. 21], is accurate in stating that the cases may have marked a turning point in Chicago's political history. Conduct that has been the accepted way of doing business in Chicago for decades was found by three separate juries to be grounds for guilty verdicts.

All of the cases were complicated, but the intent of each of the defendants was clear. Each of them was attempting to make large profits from his position of public trust. The fact that 36 disinterested laymen could unanimously agree that such conduct ought to be subject to criminal penalties should put public officials on notice all over Illinois.

J. Terrence Brunner

Executive Director

Better Government Association

Chicago

South Boston's True Enemy

It is truly ironic that the Catholic Irish of South Boston would loudly denounce the Protestants of Northern Ireland for inflicting a physical and psychological violence upon the Catholic Irish of Belfast and Londonderry that they themselves are inflicting upon the blacks of Roxbury.

Surely the memories of the South Boston Irish are short. Do they not recall that they were once the victims of similar racial violence? Do they forget that the Irish liberator Daniel O'Connell could not separate the emancipation of Catholic Irish from the emancipation of black slaves in the U.S.? The Irish have much to learn through the association of their children with blacks. They might discover that their real enemy is the system that has kept them in the ghetto of South Boston, as it has kept blacks in the ghetto of Roxbury.

(The Rev.) NeilJ. O'Connell, O.F.M.

Assistant Professor of History

Fisk University

Nashville, Tenn.

As a former victim of the Boston education system, I can attest to the fact that the city's schools in general were --and are--dull, drab, rundown and brown. The effect was mind-numbing, stupefying.

Busing kids from one lousy school to another lousy school does not improve the quality of their education or their temper.

Linda Terrell

Safety Harbor, Fla.

Having lived my whole life in the cancerous society that goes under the name apartheid, I know from firsthand experience that the philosophy of "separate but equal" is rarely more than a thin veneer of racism.

Allow me to invite any Bostonian who feels unable to meet the demands of a pluralistic society to take up residence in this segregated land that is my home. Just do me one favor: give me your passport so I can go live in Boston.

Jeff Walker

Cape Town, South Africa

Anne Sexton, Poet

Your Milestone [Oct. 14] said: "Died. Anne Sexton, 45, suburban housewife who turned to poetry ... 18 years ago ..." Couldn't you have had the decency to have said: "Died. Anne Sexton, 45, poet ..."? Would you have said, "Died. Robert Frost, part-time farmer..."?

Florence Owen

Providence, R.I.

The Wolf of Havana

In the wake of Senators Pell and Javits traveling to Castro's Cuba, we again find ourselves courting the friendship of those who would have our heads, given the chance. Though detente with China and East Germany may be born of the diplomatic necessity of communication with important forces in world politics, the same hardly is true of Cuba.

Castro proclaims that "Cuba is an irreversible reality on this continent," but the U.S. should consider him a wolf at the door. Just because he will not go away, is he to be invited in?

Marshall G. Colcock

Sausalito, Calif.

My compliments to Fidel Castro.

His system is like a vacuum cleaner. He was swept to power by a vacuum. He turned the hose around and blew all the intelligentsia and its supporting middle class off the island. He has apparently turned the hose around again and cleaned up his little island. But his innards still conceal a lot of dirt.

David Logan

Lima, Peru

What FDIC Does

Your article on the Franklin National Bank failure [Oct. 21] reflects a common misunderstanding of the division of authority and responsibility between the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the other federal banking agencies.

FDIC insures deposits in 14,470 banks in the U.S., including all national banks, but it is not the agency that examines, supervises or presses corrective action on either national banks like Franklin or state-chartered members of the Federal Reserve System. That job belongs to the Comptroller of the Currency (4,700 national banks) and to the Federal Reserve System and state banking departments (1,070 state-chartered "member" banks). FDIC's examination responsibilities are confined to the nation's 8,700 state-chartered banks which are not members of the Federal Reserve System.

FDIC'S insurance activities, as distinct from its examination responsibilities, are designed to minimize the impact of bank failure on depositors. FDIC performed that function as receiver of Franklin National Bank by arranging the transfer of all Franklin's deposit liabilities, all its offices and about half its assets to European-American Bank & Trust Company.

Frank Wills Chairman

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

Washington, D.C.

Surviving Breast Cancer

Your story "Coping with Cancer" [Oct. 14] is full of the kind of scare words that contribute to the widespread panic and misapprehension about breast surgery. That "all women feel mutilated by a mastectomy" is simply not true. I've had two such operations and feel no more "mutilated" than if I'd lost an abscessed front tooth.

Nor is losing a breast to cancer any more "tragic" than losing a spleen. It is a lot less tragic than losing a limb or vital organ.

Merla Zellerbach

San Francisco

During all the current interest in breast cancer, why haven't the possibilities of catching the cancer but also reforming the breast through plastic surgery been more thoroughly explored? The physical-health-first attitude of "I'm just happy that they caught the cancer and saved my life" is exactly what women should not be saying now in an age when face-lifts and padding of the fanny are routine operations. Instead they should be asking for an operation in which the breast can be reformed.

Obviously the male-dominated medical world needs a good kick to get it to work on this problem.

Mary Ann Page

Hamden, Conn.

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