Missouri Western State University - Griffon Yearbook (St Joseph, MO)

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1979 and beyond? Good news was hard to find in 1978-1979. As the world turned, sometimes so did the stomach. Overhanging the economy like a burgeoning radioactive cloud, infla- tion burned away the dollar's value causing an abandonment of the neo- Keynesian drive for more growth and full employment. Tight money became the cry, as liberals in Congress caught that old time finan- cial religion from the tax revolt that swept in from the West. The Proposition 13 rebellion was first attacked by California Governor Jerry Brown as a . . . ripoff. . .a consumer fraud! Brown then flip- flopped into a born-again tax con- servative to try to ride fiscal restraint into the White House. The Administration moved to con- tain churning inflation with Carter's seven percent solution. Alfred Kahn, the nation's number one infla- tion fighter, when chided for even saying the word recession, began substituting the word banana George Meany, labor leader supreme, growled and snarled defiance at the so-called voluntary guidelines. The White House collec- tively sighed and blushed in relief as it announced the first major labor settlement was within its seven per- cent per year guideline - and that 7 !0 x 3 years equaled 2706. Through this period, OPEC lpetroleum exporting countriesl kept pressure on the superheated U.S. economy by periodic price increases until gasoline at the pumps in some places reached 99.9 cents per gallon. Americans suddenly awoke to find that foreigners were buying up the country - ranches, banks, super- markets, department stores, fac- tories and farms. Such diverse things as mustard, Kool cigarettes, Foster-Grant sunglasses, Libby canned goods, Alka Seltzer, Clorox were now the property of people who did not even speak English. By Christmas of 1978, inflation hit ten percent and the anti-inflation Czar Kahn was quoted as saying - lt's God-awful! Those words of wisdom, however, failed to slow the insidious climb to over 13 percent by the first of May. Egypt's Sadat and lsrael's Begin continued all year to waltz back and forth between peace and war with Mr. Carter calling the tunes at Camp David summit meetings. The nuptials were finally posted, after a fashion, when Uncle Sam donated the dowry in the form of some five billion dollars of additional aid and a guarantee of all the oil needed by lsrael for the next 15 years. For his efforts, Anwar Sadat was roundly cursed by his former Arabian bedfellows as they turned another screw on the price of petroleum. Joy radiated from the White House as Jimmy Carter's full-ivory smile reflected the Near East agreement. In the Eternal City, a dense crowd in Saint Peter's Square murmured. The sound crescendoed into a roar. The smoke is white - we have a Pope! It was September when John Paul I slipped into the shoes of the fisherman. Thirty-four days later he was dead. The world was shocked. The Cardinals met again. After seven ballots, the first non-Italian Pope in 455 years emerged on the balcony to the cry of 100,000 voices - Polonia! Polonia! Karol Wojtyla, Cardinal of Poland, became Bishop of Flome and the 264th successor to Saint Peter. His chosen name: John Paul ll. The world, except perhaps for the puzzled Communists, was happy. In an insane fit of jungle madness, one Reverend Jim Jones, self- appointed Messiah of the People's Temple cult of San Francisco, led 900 of his followers in drinking strawberry flavor Kool-aid laced with cyanide. This orgy of murder and suicide took place at the settlement at Jonestown Guyana. Gentleman Jim insisted that women and children go first on this pilgrimage to heaven. Echoing across the world from Iran was the roar of Marg bar Shar! lDeath to the Shahl as the Moslem religion resurrected its strength to overthrow that country's powerful dictator. The Ayatollah Khomeini prayed and plotted in Paris as a

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1979 and beyond? coalition of his disciples and the radical left joined to throw out the Shah, convert his army and execute his generals by firing squads. Millions in American investments were seized by the revolutionaries as 41,000 American military and in- dustrial advisors fled, leaving behind, no one knows how much secret defense material, to fall into Russian hands. The oil exports of lran trickled down to nothing as the price at the gasoline pumps of America surged upward again. In an effort to woo previously ig- nored Mexico and its abundance of natural gas, Jimmy Carter gathered his entourage and flew south of the border where he gritted his teeth and suffered his ailment themorrhoidsj while being publicly scolded by El Presidente of our usually snubbed good neighbor. Embarrassment permeated the scene as our Jimmy stumbled through a maladroit joke about Montezuma's revenge. In the Peoples Republic of China, the year of the horse became 4671, the year of the sheep, on January 29, 1979. lt was only a month or two earlier that the Carter Administration decided to betray its friend Taiwan, America's fifth largest trading partner, for the enormous potential market of mainland China. This opened the way for hundreds of political and bureaucratic junkets as well as numerous commercial visits to the mysterious Orient. While the American State Depart- ment was patting itself on the back, and Mr. Carter was smiling, American commercial interests began noting that the PRC had little or nothing to pay with, for all those American goodies they wanted. Teng Hsiao-Ping, the Communist Deputy Prime Minister, made a flying trip to the United States where he was wined and dined exceedingly before the Taiwan Ambassador was thrown out into the streets of Washington. While in America, the prime minister managed to toss a few verbal brickbats at Vietnam for attacking the Pol Pot which, in turn, was busy butchering its own Cam- bodians. When Hsiao-Ping returned to China, the army of the PRC struck across Friendship Pass, invading Vietnam, only to get its nose bloodied by the more war- experienced Orientals. Crime made more than its fair share of headlines during the year. The scandals, corruptions, archaic practices and frauds of the General Services Administration, which spends over five billion tax dollars each year, rocked the bureaucratic world and resulted in fifty in- dictments. John W. Gacy, 37, a doggone good member of the Jaycees, was nabbed for sexually molesting and strangling some 32 young men and burying the bodies in his basement. ln the course of the year, marijuana smuggling became a six billion dollar business as some 40 million Americans got high by puffing pot. On the west coast, a pudgy young computer expert pilfered 10.2 million dollars from a bank and the bank was unaware of the heist until the programmer began bragging to his friends. Meanwhile, on the east coast, three young men joined together and tried to steal a nuclear submarine. They didn't succeed, of course, and are now practicing their hornpipes in federal prisons. January was a bitter cold month this year. The storm that dumped 31 inches of snow on Chicago moved on to spread its favors at the nation's capitol where farmers of the American Agricultural Movement were sitting on their tractors blockaded on the Mall. They had come to Washington to demand much but got little. The record snow- fall cooled rural tempers and the city was thankful to have those machines and willing people available to dig out the metropolis. The women of the world progress- ed far during these months. ln England, Tory Margaret Thatcher became Europe's first woman prime minister while in the U.S. the nation chuckled as Bella Abzug opened her mouth once too often and was fired by President Carter. Michelle Triola tMarvinj, unwed bedroom compa- nion of Lee Marvin, tried to legally pluck 1.8 million dollars from under his mattress. The Navy got busy con- verting its vessels to accomodate females for co-ed sea duty and a lady named Greta Rideout charged her husband John with rape. The judge however said Rape? lm- possible! Patty Hearst was tried, convicted, jailed, pardoned and married. Christina Onassis wed a Russian bureaucrat and Farrah Fawcett-Majors was the most pop- ular jiggler on television. Culture was not neglected during the year. College humor returned to the campus as National Lampoon's Animal House was an infantile but runaway success at the movies. Saturday Night Live became a T.V. favorite and popular books were J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Barb Tuchman's A Distant Mlrror. Vladimir Horowitz played the White House but wore earplugs when he danced at a disco. The magazine Playboy celebrated its 25th erotic year and Betty Ford got a face lift. Billy Beer went bankrupt but the President's brother himself was dried out and returned to the Amen corner. Scientists were kept busy last year seeking answers to questions plagu- ing even the masses. Almost no practical solutions have been found. The big bang of cosmology, however, was poked, prodded, ex- amined and explored. lt earned the Nobel prize in physics for two American researchers, - Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias. Without the contributions of Albert Einstein, all current knowledge of the cosmology boom or bust would not exist. ln recognition of the German genius, the scientific world paused on March 14 to honor the 100th an- niversary of his birth. lt was his mind that conceived the roads that let to such discoveries as nuclear energy and laser beams. Nuclear energy production was given a serious setback by an acci- dent on March 28 when the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, near Harrisburg, Penn., malfunctioned. Traces of radiation had escaped into the atmosphere. The emergency lasted several days, exposed an em- barrasing degree of imcompetence in the supervising agency and fur- nished anti-nuclear protestants with excellent arguments against the proliferation of nuclear power. If there were a Chicken Little, perhaps she would be justified in screaming that the sky is falling. A NASA statement during the year reported that the Skylab space sta- tion is drifting down at the rate of one to two miles per month and is ex- pected to fall into earth orbit in the February of 1980. lt is hoped the 84- ton craft will at least partially burn up on re-entry. Skylab's orbit covers heavily populated areas in the U.S., South America, Africa and Europe. Officials say there is no cause for alarm. That remains to be seen.