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Monday, April 5, 1976
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN Comment
Opinions on this page reflect only the view of the writer.
Allocate fees fairly
Student Senate begins budget hearings this week with a newly approved budgeting philosophy. In the past there has been considerable confusion over what basis should be used in judging budget requests.
The committee members scrutinized requests quite thoroughly and attempted to evaluate them fairly. But without a well defined philosophy to guide them, the senators couldn't help but base many of their decisions on personal prejudices. In past years it was difficult for them to recognize organizations to the University with any consistency, and consistency is definitely needed.
This semester the Senate has more than $550,000 that it can allocate to various campus organizations. There will be no allocation made to the University of Kansas Athletic Corporation this year. Last year that group received $147,000. This means that even more money will be available for other groups, and thus the decision on how to allocate the funds will be even more difficult. The Senate will have to be cautious that money isn't allocated for unworthy activities simply because there is enough to go around.
THE MOST SIGNIFICANT power the Senate possesses is the power of allocating student activity fees. Every student enrolled in the University pays fee before, every student at KU is a fee by law in which these fees are distributed.
THE NEW PHILOSOPHY calls for funding of "responsible groups that offer strong programs, as so to create a better world." The program includes members of the student body." Under
this philosophy, strong programs are defined as providing "tangible and-or intangible benefits." Emphasis is placed on direct returns and enrichment of the University community, especially currently enrolled students.
The philosophy calls for special scrutiny of groups that duplicate services or benefit only a small number of students. This is an important facet of budgeting evaluations and one that has been a source of difficulty in the past.
GREAT DEBATES have raged over whether thousands of dollars should be allocated to groups such as the Consumer Affairs Association and the Douglas County Legal Aid Society, which are of unqualified rank, or whether it might not serve enough students to justify the level of funding they receive.
Even though the philosophy has been revised to provide the Senate with stricter guidelines, there is still a great amount of leeway in deciding just who should get how much. The new budget has the biggest budgets of many well established organizations. Some may even be cut altogether.
Regardless of which route the Senate chooses, it should be most concerned with establishing a consistent policy. Personal prejudices should be forgotten, and the new philosophy should be closely adhered to. Above all else, the Senate should remember that it is allocating the student activity fee. The allocations should benefit student activities.
By John Johnston Contributing Writer
By DON L. SMITH
Carter no laughing matter
WASHINGTON - The newest kind of jokes in the nation's capital are Jimmy Carter jokes. He is taking his initials too seriously. And it has been Carter's amazing successes in the first round of primaries that he to his newfound recognition
"Carter's ambiguity seems to reflect a refreshing detachment from the old political orders of his predecessor," MacLeish has written. "His clearest campaign promise—to give Clinton a chance, the only promise that counts."
JIMMY, CARTER WAS JUST another politician this time last spring. Few knew him and fewer knew what he stood for; today, many know him, but just as they know, few knew what he stands for.
RUT TO LIBERALS here, the Carter jokers aren't very funny. In fact, many people in this city are worried about Carter.
Carter has seemingly promised everything to everybody. Liberals think of him as a liberal. Conservatives think of him as a liberal. And that is what really bothers political observers here.
In a society that seems obsessed with judging its political leaders on appearance and success rather than substantive power, he says the seem to have won the political ranks to riches award of 1976.
In the first round of primaries he has trampled all except one of the Washington-based can- tiers, Henry Jackson of Washington.
REP. MORRIS UDALL
Freedom brawl stews
WASHINGTON - A gentleman by the name of Stephen Barrett, M.D., chairman of the board of the Lehigh Valley (Pa.) Committee Against Health Fraud, has filed a fore a hide of pure asbestos, but these birds are producing a slow burn. I feel a brawl coming on, and the bird is a grand and gorgeous feeling.
These various spokesmen for
By James J.
Kilpatrick
(C) Washington Star Syndicate
mal complaint against me with
the National News Council.
Other doctors, elsewhere in the
country, have recommended
remarkably stiff letters.
BARRETT SAYS I am paranoid. Others charge that I am irresponsible, even the news business have given the news business have given
the medical establishment are outraged by several columns. I have lately composed about the importance of those who have come late to the free-for-all, it should be said that the gang is composed of organic food nuts, non-organic foods, non-ecotectives and other freeborn
citizens They are convinced that a substance known as Laetrile may be useful in treating some forms of cancer.
THE GOVERNMENT and the medical establishment regard Laetrile as a sham, a hoax, and a threat to health from apricot pits and other natural foods, has been known for generations as amygdalin. No scientifically acceptable tests ever have demonstrated that Laetrile causes government has declared it unlawful for any person to import, sell, or distribute the stuff, and the government has not hesitated to seek criminal action against the alleged conspirators.
Very well. So far as I know, as I have said repeatedly, the medical experts are right.
When it comes to treating cancer, taking Laetrile is probably as useful as chewing
juicy fruit gum. Cancer victims who spend their money on Laetrile capsules almost certainly are throwing their money away. A patient would be a fool to pin his hopes on this stuff.
PUT LET US move back the chairs and tables and clear a space on the barroom floor. The arrogance of the medical establishment, in my own view, is either by far more important than the Great Apricot Kernel Gang. Barrett and his swelled colleagues are doubtless sincere, high-minded, dedicated, informed, and reputable fellows, but they never ran for God in an August primary and no one ever elected the Possessors of All Wisdom.
What has become of humility? What has become of professional modesty? What has happened to personal freedom in a free society? What has happened to the immaterial whether amygdalin is or is not a "vitamin." It is beside the point that the stuff may be dangerous in certain chemical situations. Vitamins are matters of wild disagreement and almost nothing under the sun may be dangerous in some situations.
In season and out, I have fought the doctors' battle against overwearing government. But it seems to me time for some of the high-and-mighty ones, the know-it-all ones, to put hubris aside and to die the savage of their ignorance of the human being. It is the sickness of freedom that troubles me. I wish it troubled my lordly antagonists.
Astounding! More than 300,000 cancer victims every year use orthodox treatment instead of Laetrile and they also lose their lives. Eventually you get sick with this life. The proponents of amygdalin insist that many apparently terminal patients have benefited from the stuff, and at least one federal judge, Luther Bohannon of Oklahoma City, accepts their evidence. Maybe the patients are hallucinating; maybe they have been poisoned so What? More things are wrought by faith than this world dreams of.
WHAT MATTERS is freedom. What is at stake is the right of a free citizen to fritter money, and the right if he wants to. The medical establishment is howling that the promoters of Leatrile make money on their worthless product, some of the fees that might be paid to republican doctors "quacks", instead. The republicant doctors can't stand it. Barrett says: "People who
suggestions as to how he'd reform it.
appears to be slipping in Wisconsin and the political reaction in at least one pro-Dudson congressional office last week was that Udall's campaign was in deep trouble in Wisconsin and headed for certain defeat in New York.
In addition, Carter has done better than Sen. Birch Bayh of Indiana, Sen. Lloyd Benton of Texas, Sen. John Hancock and Sen. Fred Harris. The only possible Washington contender still in the race is Sen. Frank Church of Idaho and he won't run to Alabama or abrasica primary in early May.
AND BESIDES depleting the ranks of the Washington candidates, Carter has singlehandedly destroyed Alabama Gov. George Wallace's hopes of creating chaos at the Democratic Convention in New York.
Yet Carter's electoral successes have not prompted
Finally, Carter's strongest idea seems to be his personality. He's from the south but one of a breed called the "New Southerners. Carter is soft spoken and not taken to getting involved in emotional confrontations with his opponents. He is often attracted to his style of care paigning after suffering through four years of the Watergate syndrome.
everyone to jump on the Carter bandwagon. One reason for the hesitancy shown by some potential Carter supporters is the strange resemblance between Carter and another politician of recent history, Richard Nixon.
AS SOME REMEMBER,
Nixon also campaigned on an ambiguous stand in 1968. He refused to be pinned down about his stance on the Vietnam War while insisting that he would not win. He was defeated by Nixon ran primarily as a media creation and be won.
Today Carter seems to be following the same sort of strategy. "As president I'd never tell a lie," he has said many times. But in the meantime, Carter refuses to let himself be pinned down on many issues.
SO THE JIMMY Carter jokes aren't about Jimmy Carter the carter of the day. They're about Jimmy Carter the personality, the smiling southern farmer farmer. And they're troubling to some observers.
FOR EXAMPLE, Carter has taken almost every conceivable position on busing: he's against
Another example of Carter's hazy stations centers on the military budget. Yes, Carter must have reduced. But by how much? Well, take your choice. In March 1975 Carter was calling for $18 billion to meet the current Carter revised that estimate to between $8 and $7 billion. And only last week, Carter told the Washington Post editorial cuts of only about $7 billion.
it, but he's against a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court ruling and finally he's against segregation. He's got all bases worked and that's what he wants.
It appears that again, just as in too many elections, the American electorate is going to make its most important political decision based on personalities, not policies.
**IN ADDITION, Carter has campaigned hard on the issue of reforming the bureaucracy here, because that such can be done. But it won't yet, Carter seems unwilling or unable to provide any
Although the Democratic party had a large stable of candidates in 1972, they had no real lead over the Republican downbroke that preceded the 1972 Democratic convention did nothing but persuade Americans that Vietnam had produced enough bloodshed for the war.
THIS YEAR the healthy assortment of candidates in both parties will guarantee that the public will be able to practice its good judgment in selecting a President in November. Past elections have showed that when there is a candidate, the political parties for a candidate, a more able, more highly respected President has been chosen, A President who has
BUT. IN EFFECT, the ?2 GOP convention was not a convention at all. There was essentially no decision made by the delegate. If there was any chance by Nixon as to whether to run.
Guest Commentary
Politics makes comeback
By BRAD JONES
WHY IS THIS health for America and its politics? It shows that people are urging more candidates to enter the race. And this is proving that American morale and the sense of participation are not down the坡, as critics have suggested.
In 1972, there were two incidents that indicated that it must have been a boring year for voters. Visitors to the Republican National Conference brightly illuminated convention floor of the Miami Convention Center. The 1972 GOP gathering had all the excitement and glamour of a circus with Richard Nixon the star and the entire nation, via national coverage, his granddaddy bill of goo-oo eyes kids.
Thus far, 1976 has been a healthy year for politics in America, thanks to the battles for the presidential nomination within both major political parties. Although many of the lesser candidates are already withdrawing from contention, there will still be two or three in each part of the GOP and Democratic conventions finally roll around in August.
come through the battles sound should be ready for the ordeal he will face during the next four years.
The fine array of clever minds and epos that have assembled for the 1976 race is not the only bright spot in this election year. Compared to those who were issues with which the candidates must contend. Four years ago, there two topics recognized and understood by the public. But one, the Vietnam War, was an old issue that, despite its endless interest of youth and the rawness left, was by convention time about to run its course.
THE OTHER WAS the then tumbling economy. The incumbent President, however, knew what to do in the impact of economic debate to the point that it became essentially a non-issue, an issue that carried no weight in determining who to vote for.
This year it is an entirely different situation. Not only are the challengers attacking each other, but Ford has proposed in the area of budgeting and defense, but there also are the heated debates over how to end and now the question of abortion being introduced with in-
Letters Policy
The Kanan welcomes letters to the editor, but asks that letters be typewritten, double-spaced and no longer than 400 words. All letters are subject to editing and condensation, according to space limitations and the editor's judgment, and must be signed. KU students must provide their name, year in school and hometown; faculty must provide their name and position; others must provide their name and address.
treasing frequency in news conferences and on the campaign trail.
THE REVISION of campaign contribution laws has made it easier for the "little man" to assume a major role in electing his candidate. It has been $5 and $10 contributions that have been made for the major campaigns this year. In 1972, Nixon's $8.2 million campaign budget was procured mostly through huge contributions from wealthy individuals and corporations. The small donations weren't really needed, thus alienating a day person from taking an active part in the election.
The past four years probably have been among the hardest, most memorable challenges America ever had to experience. In those years we were forced to up to what America really is—and what it
We learned that American democracy isn't always democratic, as was illustrated by the disclosures about FBI interrogation of Mr. Obama. We learned that the Central Intelligence Agency was, indeed, a sort of Gestapo in the way it engaged itself in the so-called covert operations in Chile and other nations—all in the name of national security. And, of course, the most destructive blow came from the Watergate anecdote an incident by blunt decision and illegal action by an American President.
WHAT GOOD HAS come of all these nightmares? Very simply, we are much, much more aware of what America is. We now recognize more rapidly its shortcomings and problems, place the FBI, the CIA and the White House did a great deal to cause fear in Americans about America. But we now know that the corruption exists and, in the future, will be able to recognize signs of recurrence of corruption before, we are an enlightened people about the American process. This is a drastic departure from 1972, and virtually every campaign year prior to it, when none of us had any idea about what went wrong, awaiting the results of the first presidential election in our revived nation.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Editor
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