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Agent Orange Hotline In May, 1980, the Associated Press broadcast about two column inches on the establishment of an Agent Orange hotline for Vietnam veterans. As a Vietnam veteran with Agent Orange-related problems, I was lucky to catch the AP release and get on the right track for treatment. Between May 1 and September 15, 1980, over 400 other Vietnam veterans in Texas read the item in local newspapers and responded to the toll-free number. However, the Veterans Administration estimates that approximately 161,000 Texans served in Vietnam during the years Agent Orange was in use. Side effects from Agent Orange exposure are serious and long-lasting \(occasionally seems rather to be loaded politically in favor of the corporations which produced the chemical, with the VA assuming a “stonewall” posture. It would seem that more publicity would be propitious for those unknowing Vietnam vets in need of help. Nationwide, in the same MaySeptember time frame, over 10,000 calls for information and assistance were received by the Vietnam Veterans of America on their “800” telephone number. Subsequently, the service has been expanded and a new toll-free number installed. Could you, as a public service, publicize the new hotline telephone number in a future issue of the Observer? William H. Laufer Houston The new hotline number is 1800-424-7275. We urge Vietnam veterans to call for information at once, Ed. For the nonce This delayed renewal is not the result of an oversight. Over the last few years my original commitment to the support of progressive institutions has been shaken by the increasingly faddish and antirational tone of your articles; the recent articles “disproving” the energy crisis and savaging a centrist Democratic president I found the last straw you could as easily have been writing Reagan’s campaign speeches. Now, however, I find the situation changed once more. The election of a hard-core right-winger to the Presidency, armed with conservative to fascist majorities in Congress, puts us all in jeopardy. So we are for the nonce allies again. The longer term prospects depend on you. If there is any realistic hope for the country, it must be in a revitalized liberalism, stripped of arrogance and muddle-headed faddishness, and as commited to truth as it is to reform. Gary W. Bennett Glenside, Pa. Nuke Planning I wish to comment on the article written by Jeff Kanipe entitled “Three Days to Nuke City.” [Obs., July 4] It was well done. Part of my perspective is nostalgic. In the early 1950’s, my late father was given the responsibility for planning HUD’s He was also designated as the HUD chief at one of the emergency sites of the U.S. government in the event of an attack. \(For the exact location of these sites, call the U.S.S.R. embassy in house, which is located a comfortable 90 miles from D.C. and shielded by a 2,000 ft. range of mountains. Mr. Kanipe’s article did not touch on this point specifically but it is one that is important. “How are you going to get there from here?” The street and highway system of the U.S. has not been designed with rapid evacuation in mind. When the politically sensitive engineers selected the routes of the misnamed interstate highway system, they conveniently traded their concern for interstate transportation for intra-city, politically visible, transportation. Have you tried to drive lately on 1-35 through Dallas, Austin or San Antonio at starting or quitting time? Or 1-20, 1-45, or 1-81 as they plow through the cities that they supply with streets? This decision inspired the concept of the beltways most of which are very long parking lots. I do not know which is the longest, but I will nominate 466 around Baltimore and 610 around Houston with 435 around Dallas as possible alternates. \(I would like to see a study of increased costs caused by the decision to “go through” rather than “around” cities. It must have been in the I agree with Kanipe that three days’ notice of an attack is at best a doubtful Even if three days’ notice was given, can you imagine the lines at gas pumps, supermarket checkout stands, not to mention the liquor stores? About the only means of moving the population of Houston out in three days would be to in fact drop the bomb. Of course, they would not survive, but they would be “moved.” Kanipe wrote of the problems in testing a CRP except via a computer simulation. In the late 1950’s, my father drove all night to reach a civil defense command post located in North Carolina in an exercise. A new computer system was a major reason for the exercise. The computer got a “sick headache” and refused to participate in the week-long exercise. B. Douglas Stone, Jr. Professor, Business Administration Texas A&M University Dialogue/ CONTRABAND . . . from page 3 least 1,000 students or five per cent or more of the district’s enrollment. To qualify, the district would also have to already be receiving state equalization money, marking it as a needy district with a growing population but a sagging or disappearing tax base. As long as Texas accepts the money from the hands of adult refugees at the grocery counter and the gasoline pump, where 20 DECEMBER 12, 1980 we all pay a share of taxes, then their children should be allowed to sit, free of charge, in a public classroom. Otherwise, in the words of U.S. Dist. Judge Woodrow Seals of Houston when he found the illegal alien-tuition law unconstitutional last spring, “we are creating an enormous public cost, both financial and social, to be borne in the not-so-distant future.” I=1