Word: gardners
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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THERE'S a new book out, called The People vs. Presidential War. It's about Vietnam and the Shea Bill, the state law that protects Massachusetts men from combat service in undeclared wars. One year ago today the bill's supporters massed in Gardner Auditorium in the State House to begin to work for the bill's passage. The bill became a prime trial for the people's right to govern themselves, and the book reflects basic liberal hopes and idealism. A jacket blurb quotes George McGovern...
Common Cause has already enlisted 53,000 members; each contributes at least $ 15 in annual dues, and many volunteer much more. With a big advertising campaign, Gardner hopes to pick up another 20,000 in the next few weeks; his target for the end of 1971 is a total of 100,000 citizens. The Cause's kitty has built up at least as rapidly. Gardner, who once headed the Carnegie Corporation, has already raised some $900,000 through memberships. Two early financial angels were Howard Stein of the Dreyfus Fund and John D. Rockefeller III. Experienced men-about-government...
...that took a full page in the New York Times last week and is also appearing elsewhere, Gardner explained Cause's cause: "One of our aims will be to revitalize politics and government. The need is great. State governments are mostly feeble. City government is archaic. The Congress of the U.S. is in grave need of overhaul. The parties are becoming useless as instruments of the popular will." Gardner's initial attack is on those last two targets...
...maximum per candidate. According to the Common Cause complaint, the parties have regularly set up campaign committees that enable a contributor to give much more than the amount permitted by the Corrupt Practices Act. Moreover, some of those committees spend more than the $3,000,000 allowable annually, Gardner charges. Next week Gardner will testify in Washington against the seniority system for picking congressional committee chairmen; one prominent House Democrat thinks that Common Cause can grasp enough of the power levers to get rid of seniority-"something we could never do without outside pressure...
Folk Cynicism. Good intentions are not enough to make a citizens' lobby effective. Some such efforts, Gardner concedes, have been "fumbling, inchoate, amateurish." He hopes that Common Cause will be different because of the special expertise and influence of its supporters, and because it is an idea whose time has come. Besides, he insists, "the folk cynicism about citizen efforts is negated by the record. The conservation movement, family planning, the Viet Nam peace crusade have done pretty well." Women got the vote, child labor was abolished, Prohibition was imposed and then repealed, he says, all "because people raised...