Marshall Plan

Oliver Shewell Franks, the university provost turned diplomat who helped make the Marshall Plan a dominant factor in Europe's recovery after World War II, has died, it was reported Sunday. He was 87. Franks died Thursday at his home in Oxford. The cause of death was not given. Lord Franks' career was as varied as it was significant. He was ambassador to the United States from 1948 to 1952 and formed a close working relationship with U.S.

At a time when percolating social unrest has reached a boiling point in cities across the nation, one of the country's foremost African-American social service groups comes to San Diego Sunday, bringing its far-reaching urban redevelopment program, which has been referred to as a Marshall Plan for America.

Standing in front of a burned-out mini-mall in South Los Angeles, world church leaders from Europe, South Africa, South Korea and the United States announced an "ecumenical urban strategy" for Los Angeles, which they hope will serve as a model for healing racial conflict throughout the world. The program, which includes a "Domestic Marshall Plan," was presented Tuesday after the Geneva-based World Council of Churches held two days of public hearings in Southern California.

Garry Marshall is nervous. In his bungalow office suite on a quiet street in Toluca Lake, just enough away from the madding crowd of Hollywood, this writer, director and producer of television, movies and now theater has been talking somewhat elliptically about his latest labor of love--and fighting conflicting emotions. You can see Marshall enjoys elaborating on the improbably titled "Wrong Turn at Lungfish," the play he co-wrote with screenwriter Lowell Ganz and is now directing.

Willard L. Thorp, one of the principal architects of the Marshall Plan for rebuilding postwar Europe, died Sunday in Pelham, Mass. He was 92. Thorp was chairman of the National Recovery Administration's policy board during the Depression before becoming Dun & Bradstreet's first economist. After World War II, Thorp was the assistant secretary of state for economic affairs under President Harry S. Truman.

Finance officials from the world's seven richest industrial countries Sunday endorsed the broad outlines of an economic assistance package for the former Soviet Union that could over time rival the Marshall Plan in scope. The endorsement by the so-called Group of Seven countries--the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada--represented a victory for President Bush, who unveiled the proposed $24-billion Western aid package for Russia earlier this month.

The article by Pozner is extremely timely, and points out the urgency of a grave situation. We fail to understand how the Administration regards such serious and dangerous consequences if Yeltsin is not helped with a full-fledged Marshall Plan type of aid instead of just vague promises, token support and nice dinners. At the bottom of the same page a Toles' cartoon depicts George Bush telling Boris Yeltsin that he would know what to do only if he were faced with hard-liners. Then in a flash, we see with clarity that the Administration figures the best way out of our recession is to start building our military-industrial machine and once again instill in our people the fear of the return of the Evil Empire hard-liners.

When, only hours after leaving Washington, Boris Yeltsin complained at a news conference in Ottawa that American business leaders and "some governments" weren't putting their money where their mouths were when it came to aiding reform in Russia, not a few of his friends in Washington and New York were upset. After all, they grumbled, the Russian president had been wined and dined in the very top government and corporate circles and given the best advice.

President Bush and Secretary of State James A. Baker have now revealed themselves to be the very liberals that they like to berate and belittle. They are liberal with our money when they arbitrarily decide to give $645 million of taxpayers' money to the former republics of the Soviet Union in the face of an increasing and deepening economic depression in our own country. The emptiness of the words--"I care, I really care"--expressed by President Bush is shown by this "generous" act of a gift, not a loan, to these republics.

Senate Democrats Friday unveiled a wide economic plan that would combine a middle-class tax cut with a longer-term "Marshall Plan for America" that would redirect defense spending to domestic needs such as bridges, roads and schools. The plan also calls, in the short term, for additional unemployment insurance benefits as well as grants and loans to state and local governments designed to create jobs in education, transportation and public safety.