Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

By J. G. Krol t> o '" ;;: w Z W -J U > U Have you ever seen that TV program where the hero comes to the aid.of an honest elected official who is threatened in his re-election campaign by the ugly revelation that he has unwittingly received contributions from a crobked, nasty, evil, mean and bad businessman, or from some unsavory syndicate of characters - not the Mafia, of course, which doesn't exist, but something of that sort - but who never, never in tended to do these generous contributors any special favors ... only who'll believe him? Of course you have. It's been shown in a thousand variations. And this sort of trash is killing motorcycling: too many people in the sport and the industry have been so brainwashed by sucl}"nonsense, they actually find it inipossible to distinguish between this sort of roman tic fiction and the reality of everyday life. They probably believe that Batman and Johnny Quest are real people. People and organizations have to cooperate or society would disin tegrate, for "society" is nothing more than the name we give 'to the ongoing process of cooperative in teraction among men and institu tions. The cen tral institu tion in society is called "government". Ergo, this is where we should expect to find the highest degree. of cooperative interaction. Government officials wbo flatly refused to cooperate with tlie significant individuals and groups in society plainly wouldn't be doing their job. They'd be like salesman who refused to talk to poten tial buyers, or doctors who didn't want anything to do with people who were sick or injured. In these intereactions the government official is most in teres ted in increasing or, at least, main taining his power to plan, organize, staff, direct and control social activities. for this power is the very product he is selling, and the citizens are most interested in extending their righ ts and contracting their duties or, at least, holding even on both flanks, for these privileges and immunities are the very products they are buying. To say you are indifferen t to such commodities is to say you are indifferent to the conditions of your life, or to life itself. Governmen ts arise by the normal economic process called specialization of labor: when a lot of people are interested in buying and selling a good or service, it is efficient for somebody On Legalizing the Astro by Bill Spencer HO-MOL-O-GATE (ho-mola-gat) - To ratify; assent to; approve. The above word is one that· is generally not used in motorcycle circles although there is a definite need for its use. In other fonns of motorsports, the need to have carS t enginest, etc. homologated by the sanctioning bodies is a big deal and one operation that is done quite carefully by each manufacturer, each year. l':ot so is this case for motorcycJing. The result of which brough t a major lawsuit from a young Mt. View, Cal. man agaipst the American Motorcycle Assn. for 'not letting him enter his motorcycle in AMA activities. The motorcycle was the Bultaco Astro and the man was Steve Doi. Steve owns four Bultacos and sponsors a number of racers from Northern California including the likes of Al Kenyon (from whom he bough this bikes), John Genna; (when he isn't riding the & A Yamaha), Pat (-Jennen, Dave Lewis and others. Doi owns an auto stereo shop and uses the shop as his advertising gimmick in the running and sponsoring of the bikes. When the AMA decided that the Astro was no longer lega, S [eve became incensed and the .subsequent dealings with his lawyer led to the suit, filed in District court in San Francisco. The background on th is class action is precedent-setting and, hopefully, tl,e outcome will he beneficial to all parties. In the future, it is hoped that all motorcycles intended for use in a particular year will have the necessary papers submitted to the AMA Congress in .sufficent time so as they may be approved before any major efforts by the public would require necessity. Also, it might be of some e.ducational to specialize in orgamzmg the trading. This gives rise to stockyards and stock exchanges, to universities and em ploymen t agencies, and to governments. The brokerage function of govern men t is to organize the trading in enforceable rights and duties, in taxes and subsidies, in the choosing-up-sides that determines who shall command and who shall obey.1fgovernment didn't do this, who would? Looked at this way, that supposedly "honest" politician of TV romances is seen as a crook of the worst sort, a con man, a welcher, a double-dealer. We would all see this very clearly had the politician led pensioners to believe that he would raise Social Security paymen ts and cut property t.axes if elected, and then turned around to do the opposite. But votes are not the unique currency of power-bro kerage anymore than brown cows are the only color cattle traded at stockyards. There are introductions to valuable contacts, campaign contributions, endorsements, free publicity, tips and inside information, mass demonstrations, personal gratuities, embarrassing leaked stories, conceaJmen t of embarrassing information, loans, investment advice, personal glory. favoritism, nepotism, tax dodges, financial assistance, academic honors, as assinations, exemptions from petty regulations, favors, public respect, honor, and about a thousand other ways a governmen t official can be paid for his services. An official who accepts payment, then refuses to deliver the goods, is as crooked as a stockbroker who accepts your money, then refuses to deliver the securities to your account. One of the most important goods a government official can deliver is organization; he is a specialist in organizing interest groups. It maKes sense to turn to a government official for this service just the way i makes sense to turn to a den Ust for a toothache instead of breaking out the old Vise-Grips and trying to extract the tooth yourself. We are constantly told that motorcyclists are supposed to organize to defend their interests, but we are rarely told what it is these organizations are supposed to do. Implici t in most such proposals seems to be the notion that motorcyclists should organize to deal with the aggregation of all other interest groups, i.e., with the upublic". Then, in the crunch, it would be motorcyclists' organizations against the organizations of the rest of the world. This will not work. The most significant other organizations are govemmen i-led, and in a head-to-head match between a privately-led and governmentally-led organization the latter will always come out on top. Your government officials are specialists in, experts in, organizing interest groups. They are good at it. A much more effective arrangement is to construct a patron-client relationship with some persons and/or agencies in govern men t. The main function of the government patron would be to put together the government-led organization which. would have primary responsibility for defending motorcyclists' right to exist against the incursions of opposing in terest groups. The main job of the privately-led organization of motorcyclists would not be to deal with the rest of the world, but to deal with the government patron. Like any broker, the power-brokers of governmen t depend upon steady, repeat business from satisfied customers. This is why there are Umining Senators", "petroleum Senators", Ucotton Senators" I and all the rest - officials who specialize in serving a certain few in terest groups. My own State SenatoT, for example, recently mailed a brochure in which he advertises as clearly as imaginable what specific products he's marketing. "The three areas of my basic interest" be says, are (1) "education", (2) "law enforcemen t and judicial reform", and (3) "environment and natural resources". Speaking of his bill in the last area, he couldn't be plainer in his advertising for clients than when he says, "Every environment and ecology-oriented individual or group, regardless of influence, budget or membership size, will have an opportunity to help formulate the criteria to be used to save our coastline from further unnecessary development. Even more important, they will have an active role in making sure these criteria are enforced." For those who are so thick they have not yet managed to comprehend that he is advertisirig for clients, he ends by saying, "All my constituents and all other persons interested" are invited. to participate. For heaven's sake, does the man have to take TV commercials, like Dr. Beauchamp, to advertise his desire for clients? All government officials needs clients, just as all interest groups need government patrons. This cooperation fulfills a mutual need, just as doctors couldn't get along without patients and patients couldn't get along without doctors. The lesson is clear: motorcycle organizations should not dissipate their efforts in fu tile attempts to deal directly with· other in terest groups, with the "public", or with some generalized sort of "government". Motorcycle organizations sli.ould direct their efforts to working with specific govemmen t patrons, the patrons being the ones whose job is to defend the sport against encroachments by others. We might be able to deal with, say, the Sierra Club, but there's no way we can deal with the governmen t patrons of the Sierra Club. What we need is our government patrons who are capable of dealing with . their government patrons. Potential patrons of the wonderful sport of motorcycling must fmd the political naivete of motorcyclists and thl: motorcycle industry extremely frustrating. I beg their patience for, after all, motorcycling has started to move in to the mainstream of American life only very recently, and we're just n')w beginning to get the hang of it. \\. 'tile elected officials like President Nl shinl(ton with postcards demanding new, luxurious quarters for the BLM District Offices, to replace the cramped, old ones they're now living in? Are any of the local honchos in terested in free motorcycles on indefinite loan for their personal use? To evaluate and study them, of course, so they can do a better job. We must begin thinking in such client-patron terms if we are -going to survive at all. We can no longer dwell on TV -roman ticism. Why You Can Race a Bultaco Again benefit if the AMA were to know of the sale of a model of motorcycle that was coming up soon. Then they could get some better communications out to the public so that action such as happened in July of 1972 would not be necessary. A t the .Pioneer Rodeo grounds in Oakdale, the night of July 29, a number of amateur riders signed up to ride a sportsman short track. They were informed of the ruling handed down by the AM'" and that all square barrel Bultaco Astro's were illegal and therefore cOilld not operate that nigh t. Referee Orlan Wilhite did a fantastic job of not getting in to a figh t over the protests that many of the riders voiced. The same cry came out of the J 0 short track series at Fremont while, in some cases, some referees were allowing the Astre to run as an amateur event wasn't the same as the AMA ruling for pro events. While this is not true and those races were illegal, as far as the running of the square barrel, no cries of anguish were heard and no protests filed. It was after the Laguna Seca National that the effluen t hit the rotors and things started to get repugnant. At a particular short track in Oregon, the next week, one Kawasaki dealer was noted doing a lot of complaining about Lee eidel's new Sonny Kenyon Bultaco Astro. At about this time. the AMA staffers and Don Woods, being righ t in the thick of it were making a decision tint would take the Astro off the tracks. Tlie ruling that was sen t to almost all referees and to the pros themselves said that the square barrel Bultaco was illegal and that a clarification of what one could do to a sleeve was set about, so when the square barrel came to the races, they were turned away. What the guys were doing to get around this ruling was take off the square barrel and replace it with a round one with the same sleeve in it. The outcome was to have the same working componen ts -only round instead of square. But the big bitch was still why call them illegal after almost eight months of competition. For this, Steve Doi we n t to courL and received an injunction stating in effect that the Astro was legal for competition. In retrospect, the AMA issued a bulletin statiI]g that the Astro was legal and all the lnconvience was the fault of the referees for letting anyone of those square barrels run at anytime. Of course, this then reflects on the referee of the Houston Astrodome National and he is on the AMA staff. A bummer in the summer. The outcome is that Doi spent $2700 in fighting this and for what? So he could put his square barrel back on and prove that the AMA had goofed although the AMA has yet to admit it. Of course, the Bultaco people have managed to skate through this whole operation pretty easy but it will remain to see if their jobs stay healthy or not in the future. If there are any of you out in the wide wide world who would care to help Steve pay for this operation. that helped to put the AMA down, send your contributions to the Astro Defense Fund at 811 Castro St., Mt. View, Ca., 94040. Whether anything comes of this law suit as far as the repercussions are concerned is unknown and doubtful, as ti,e legal apparatu is backed by the Federal Anti-Trust laws. o if the AMA were to come out and say that tbe Astro is still illegal, BuHaco would have a fair suit going as there were over 600 of the little devils sold in the slates and run at races. Steve's point in aJlthis is reflected in a conversation we had at Sonny Kenyon '5 one even ling. "The rule on what makes a bike legal is rather vague and in this AMA rule book that they seel to the public, it states that 200 must be manufactured to be approved, bu t it doesn't detail a whole lot." . "I tried to settle this whole affair out of court and thought at one time the members of the Competition Congress that knew of the problem were in favor of letting the whole thing blow over but somebody else decided against that and so we went to court and won. I didn't want to spend all that money and create any animosity, but then again, I knew I had a legal bitch, so we went to court." "The AMA is run like a club and is pretty used to pushing people around, so they can make the rules any way they please and nobody can do anything about them, but they are going to have to wise up to the new world and readjust their thinking as more and more people become aware of whats going on." Steve Doi is of the aware set of young America that doesn't sit back and let the world slip by. His sponsorship of motorcycles is a rare thing and one that should not be dealt with lightly. It is his type of people that can make motorcycling a top notch sport with the other biggies. Without this kind of held, the sport will just drag along without revitalization, which is what it needs now. While there are younger and younger men taking over the more responsible posts of rule enforcement and procedures, the staid officials of yesteryear still squash much of their talent and suffering is felt throughout the AMA. Hopefully it won't suffer much longer. If it does, the likes of independent sponsorship won't be as readily available. That is the part that hurts the most.

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