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Fridav. November 18, 1994
OPINION
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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
VIEWPOINT
Real welfare reform better than hasty cuts, limitations
The battle over welfare will continue to rage on in Congress, where partisan politics threaten to suppress the best solutions.
The Editorial Board proposes real changes instead of the cuts included in the Gingrich and Clinton plans. And no amount of compromise can change the inherent ineffectiveness of both plans.
To ensure a better future for all Americans, their children and their grandchildren, Congress needs to pass a welfare reform bill that includes some limits, child and health care, work programs and the subsidizing of work.
To supply jobs, businesses must have the means to pay wages.
To get jobs, people have to be trained to work. These are two logical conclusions.
Nonetheless, these logical conclusions have been ignored or underappreciated in the welfare reform plans of Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton.
Although Clinton's plan does call for some job training, it is insufficient on the whole. Gingrich's plan for a work program would include more people but would not allow for additional aid during the program.
The most sensible plan would be a program that included Gingrich's plan's requirement that 1.5 million aid recipients join the work program by 2000. This plan also would allow the work program participants to receive additional aid. The biggest complaint is that such an extensive program would be expensive. That also is a logical conclusion. It would be an expensive short-term program. But in the long run, such a program would save the taxpayers more than cuts and limitations could.
Job training is an important part of any effective work program and should be the foundation of any plan adopted.
Another kind of training could help solve the problem of legal immigrants on welfare. Language training would give immigrants a better chance to apply skills they already have or to learn the skills they would need to find a job. Many immigrants are skilled laborers and business people who lack only the ability
WELFARE REFORM Work , business programs key
to speak English. A language training program would be a better alternative than Gingrich's planned elimination of aid to legal immigrants and Clinton's proposed reduction of aid.
But no amount of training will get people off welfare if no jobs are available or if the jobs available cannot pay enough.
To create more and better-paying jobs, the government should consider subsidizing businesses that provide jobs to those in danger of going on welfare. It makes more sense to give less money to businesses than to pay people not to work.
This is an idea that is not included in Gingrich's or Clinton's plans.
The biggest problem with the Republican and Democratic proposals is that they do not call for changes in distributing aid to the country's poor. The politicians see the solution as a fast-fix bandage created by cuts and limits. But by subsidizing work through businesses, instead of encouraging people to stay home by providing them all the money they need to survive, we are subsidizing positive attitudes and good work ethics.
Changing the way the nation thinks about welfare and work would take time. And it would take money to start job training and work programs.
But in the long run the country, the people and the government would benefit from real reform instead of hasty cuts.
DONELLA HEARNE FOR THE EDITORIAL BOARD.
Military cuts hurt families overseas
"Hello. this is your mother." the voice said on the other end. My mother lives in Germany, so when she calls I drop everything and talk. "Its Veteran's day," she reminded me. "I was in the post exchange (PX) yesterday, and I met a soldier whose stationed in Norway.
"He was telling me how horrible things are up there. They have closed the American school, so his kids are going to British schools. The Americans living there have to buy everything in Norwegian stores, but they have not received a cost of living raise to reflect any of that. He said he had lost 30 pounds because they could not afford to buy enough to eat. Can you imagine that?"
COLUMNIST
I could imagine it all to well.
"I think everyone has forgotten all about the service people stationed overseas. " she said. "Why don't you write one of your columns about that."
HEATHER KIRKWOOD
I tried to tell her that college students in Lawrence were not terribly interested in starving U.S. service people in Norway.
"Oh" she answered. "Too bad."
Even so, I have been thinking about Americans stationed in Norway and all the other places around the world. Defense Department cuts have taken a heavy toll on these families.
In the good old days our families
overseas had all the basics of an American existence. We had places to shop that had American goods priced in dollars instead of local currencies, good schools, activities for kids; in short, we had communities.
Yet with the budget ax being so in vogue these days, especially in the Defense Department, it is these things that have been the first to go. Maintenance on family living quarters has been cut, medical care for dependents has seen a turn for the worse, and programs to help families in crisis so far from home have been scaled back just when they are needed most.
As the Defense Department downsizes and military commitments around the world seem to pop up more and more frequently, military families overseas are under an incredible strain. When we talk about cutting the defense budget, these families are forbidden.
Either we are going to play the part
of global super power and policemen or we are not. We cannot continue to straddle the ocean wanting to do both.
The Pentagon has promised to allocate $2.7 billion to improve the morale of our troops and to support their families. Secretary of Defense Perry had promised the money would come from cuts being made in long term programs to modernize weapons.
What a trade off! Is that really what we want? While we no longer need to station troops in every nook and cranny of the globe, we do need to make sure that should the need arise, both our troops and their equipment are ready to meet the challenge.
So what will it be America? Readiness or morale? Super power or global partner? Make up your mind.
Jeff MacNelly / Chicago Tribune
Heather Kirkwood in a Wichita Junior in magazine Journalism.
If only we were attracted to each other's livers and lungs
One day last summer, I was in my car at a stoplight and saw something hysterically ironic. I glanced over and saw a car with a magnetic sign reading "Freed's health Service." I looked up at the driver and saw a sweat, fat man smoking a cigar. Nothing could be more symbolic of the hypocrisy inherent in many a person's idea of health. So many people practically have a magnetic sign on their foreheads promoting health, while on the inside are sweaty, fat men smoking a cigars.
Health almost has become a fashion statement in today's society. It's in style to exercise and eat healthy foods nowadays. That's a good thing, but when drugs and alcohol are just as in style, it serves little more purpose for most people than would a magnetic sign.
I suppose a little weight on the hips is more dreaded than a little cancer on the lungs.
The most blatant example I've seen of this is when someone has a bottle of mineral water in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Are they really horrified by all the harmful impurities in tap water that might enter their precious, tar-stained insides?
That's what people care about though, because that's what others see. If the opposite sex were attracted
COLUMNIST
JACK BIRMINGHAM
to a nice set of lungs, you'd probably
see a lot less people smoking. It's too
bad lungs aren't very interesting.
Another example of health hypocrisy can be found in vegetarianism. I know plenty of people who become vegetarians because of the health benefits of the diet. Many of those same people smoke, drink or use other drugs like there is no tomorrow. I know all about the unhealthiness of meat products and how we don't actually need them in our diet. However, the lack of meat in one's diet is not going to make them a healthy individual who is going to live longer if they've got a beer belly and a diseased liver. Maybe if livers were more interesting, people wouldn't drink as much.
I know I'm not an extremely healthy
person, myself. I don't exercise, and I eat a lot of junk food. I don't smoke, and I don't drink, though. I don't care that much about my personal health. I'm 18 years old, so I'm not really concerned about living longer. I am concerned about becoming addicted to something. I don't want to have to depend on anything as a crutch. If I were a health nut but, it would seem like being drug-free would be more important than being meat-free. After all, it's probably much easier to work off something like fatty foods than it is to work off something like cancer.
I wonder what will become of this healthy paradox in the future. Will there be alcoholic vegetarians doing the Jane Fonda workout at 2 a.m. in their underwear, not sober enough to keep both eyes open in order to work off that big salad they ate for dinner? Will people be coughing up their lungs in the morning as they eat their sprouts and drink their mineral water? Will drug users get the munchies and eat large mounds of tofu?
In the end, will we improve our health or will we just improve our magnets?
Jack Birmingham is an Overland Park freshman in pre-journalism.
LETTERS TO
THE EDITOR
Rethink criteria for a chancellor
At this historic juncture in higher education it is most needful that KU appoint a Nobel laureate for its chancellor.
Money-changers in the temple have hoodwinked the public that the university is a business. They have systematically created the image that fund-raising and abilities for certain functions, as directing athletics or the Medical Center, and rapport with the Legislature make its head. Students and faculty are guided by the conversion potential into dollars later of not only the degree but of every course they choose.
As the pope or abbot of a medieval monastery, the chancelor of a university is the presence, the symbol and inspiration to all of its spirit. The spirit of a university is an undefinable, yet real, mixture of scholarship, austerity, mysticism, idealism, humanity and holy awe. The university is the salt to the outside world, eschewing to become its soup.
The chancellor's abilities for specific functions are most ancillary and can be delegated. Imagine the abbot of a medieval monastery being appointed for his ability in jam and wine making or fund-raising, the sustenance functions of the unit.
Doctors come a dime a dozen now. The degree doctorate, a requisite for the chancellor, has no presence anymore. Balancing diverse functional abilities within such a pool, the search committee will come up with a whitted-down appointee. A Nobel laureate is involate in a class of its own for evoking the spirit of a university.
At this time of KU's history a Nobel laureate in literature for its chancellor is more needful than in other areas of that prize.
There are 123 living American Nobel laureates in the country today, of whom 15 are below the age of 60.
The search committee should reopen the search, including in the advertisement "Nobel prize required, preferably in literature."
This may be odd to do so, but what is worth doing is worth doing odd.
T. S. David
Lawrence graduate student
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