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Wednesday, March 1, 1978
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unagged editorial represent the opinion of the Kanan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers
Douglas County has all of the ingredients necessary for chemical disasters similar to the ones that recently killed eight persons in Florida and 11 in Tennessee. The potential for tragedy is sobering.
Stop chemical threat
Specifically, Travis Brann, county emergency preparedness director, told county commissioners this week, "We have trains daily that carry the same kinds of chemicals, and we have two chemical plants located in Douglas County. We have vehicles going down Interstate 70 that have highly toxic, highly flammable material."
The FMC plant, for example, handles phosphorus that is transported by railroad car. According to John Kasberger
Lawrence fire chief, if a fire broke out in a railroad car containing the chemical, evacuation would be the only possible course of action. He said his fire department did not have the kind of foam needed for putting out a phosphorus fire.
Could a tragedy happen here? Lawrence is hardly in immediate danger. Yet just two years ago, a rail car carrying phosphorus was damaged in the city. No leakage of chemicals occurred, but the possibility remains that it could have.
For openers, why doesn't the fire department have the foam required to fight a phosphorus blaze? Such precautions inevitably seem costly and unjustified—until it's too late.
Ford left merely prestige
To the editor:
I know that Gerald Ford is an ex-president. I know that is supposed to make him somewhat special, but I see some difference with the governor, and what he can tell us about that. Possibly a two-hour session, the majority of which is question-and-answer, could impart some knowledge. But what can a person tell a class in 15-20 minutes to enlighten it?
The University sweated to roll out the carpet for this man. Whole parking lots closed—Hilltop blocked off for parking, and Facilities Operational and to work weekends to make the campus look good for Jerry. Why the pagan rituals to honor him? For the majority of people working and going to school on campus, it is a day of inconveniences rather than enlightenment, people who told long people who hard for this day? Do they get to see him for the sacred 15 minutes?
The working people on campus and the serious students have nothing to learn from Jerry under the curtain because are inconvenienced, but lo and behold, the University gains prestige by having Jerry bless its new building. I thought the University was a place of education where you could to survive economically, a supposed place of learning must brown-nose a former president.
KANSAN Letters
We are closer to an aristocracy than we think. The visit of Jerry Ford is for prestige, not education. Archie can have lance the former presiding bearer his nose will grow a little browder for it.
Patti Hackney
Clark III, student and mother
Hall dedication raises criticism
To the editor:
The recent dedication of the law school building provided the ironic exemplification of the values pervasive among society's leaders. All the plattier candidates in the university democracy were dutifully uttered by President Ford and the other speakers.
Not to be outdone by the man who pardoned Richard Nixon, Governor Bennett reminisced about the days when he was a law student and on the steps of the library watching the "things" walk by. Aside from a few stunned looks, the majority of the pillars of justice in the audience chuckled their approval of Bennett's attitude toward undergraduate women. The decision, based on the exploitation of women in our society was made disinterested clearly by Bennett.
noulding a reality. Yet not one word of recognition, much less thanks, was given to the construction workers who actually built the edifice. By this omission, the powers that be also placed their stamp of "thing" on the worker's job is a tool to be taught and sold, objectified and exploited. It was made clear that dollars, rather than people, build buildings.
the chancellor, the governor and the lauded praise upon one another for making the new
Lessons in constitutional law and justice were taught at the receptions in new Green. In keeping with the great tradition of free expression, leaflets detailing Ford's dubious record of injustice as president were removed from bulletin boards as fast as students got a taste of equality in consuming free coffee and donuts brought in for the alumni and friends. On days when students are present, law students pay 20 cents for a donut.
The day's events were an appropriate expression of the ideals of who think they built the law school building. Likewise, for some law students and faculty, it was a day for rededication to our concepts of law and justice, whereby law is understood of being perceived of and treated as people, not objects, and deserve the chance to grow and express their humanity.
Barry M. Shalinsky
There are, the pundits say,
but two inievitables: death
and taxes. Of these, death has
remained substantially the same.
Theists have changed—
died—and are subject to
more change.
Second year law student
Tax changes create confusion
Kansas is no exception. All levels of government need to pass a tax on the sales tax the citizens according to a different base. Cities and counties prefer property value; cities like sales and income levels.
Not satisfied with one base, the governments then decide to tax other things, such as cigarettes and liquor.
THE RESULT of all of this is that there are more tax laws than there are legislators, no one is sure how the system works. In fact, it is the branches of government blame one another for the mess.
Finally, each new government decides to grant special exceptions in some tax cases and levy higher taxes in others.
The Kansas Senate last week passed a tax relief package that would mean a loss of $44 million in tax revenue for the state. The package includes a provision to allow $15 to be taken off state tax bills for almost everyone in Kansas, to compensate for sales tax taxes. The tax赋 was added to another bill removing sales tax from the price of farm machinery parts and labor.
The package goes on to provide more people with less of a property tax burden. It is an expansion of the existing tax relief tax relief working older people, widows and parents eligible for the tax
exemptions given by the homestead program.
Meanwhile, the House Assessment and Taxation Committee approved from $25 to $29 million in its own tax package. How much would expand homestead property tax relief in ways different from the Senate, increase the amount of state money going to the cities and countryside, and enable people with lower incomes to pay less property tax.
THE PROGRAMS pending in the Legislature have drawn attention and anger of Gov. Robert F. Bennett. After the Senate's tax package was passed, Bennett accused the Legislature of "constipativeness" thought and misogyny that the programs would deplete the state treasury.
The legislators who conceived and passed the program answered charge with retort. Senate Minority Leader Jack Steiner, D-Kansas City, said he believed that meaningful tax relief will interfere with his plan to purchase re-election. Bennett has
Bennett said predictions showed that by January, the programs would leave a balance of $17 billion on $82 million on the treasury. By 1900, he said, the state will be broke.
The legislative ring-around-the-box laws leave observers in a state of surprise that the taxpayers should save money. But are the taxpayers actually going to pay for these from tax manipulations?
It isn't likely that city and county budgets are going to decrease by much, if at all. And with all the property tax relief measures in the works, it is a good question where the cities and counties are going to get people who do not qualify for tax relief are in for tax increases.
his own programs for income tax credits and other parts of the budget.
planned to flow in ever-increasing amounts away from the state government, Bennett's qualms appear to have a basis. Topeka cannot serve as the source of money for others if its legislature is stemmed, as would be done under the tax-crisis proposal.
WITH THE state money
The confusion is based in the state's tax system—so complicated, so overlapping and riddled with so many exemptions and special cases that no one knows what to do. More. The legislators who propose tax cuts assume that the money thus lost to the state can be acquired through some other program. But that other program has not been increased to bear the extra load. The tax burden on Kansans
would be shifted around, not eased.
THIS YEAR the House and the governor are up for reelection. Everyone has his own strategy for campaigning, but in general, legislators try to get re-elected by spending state taxes on campaigners, Governors, on the other hand, try to get re-ecled by keeping taxes where they are and saving the state money.
And after this election, the legislators and the governor will have the next one in sight. They will try in the meantime to protect their constituents. So it will be changing—and changing—and subject to more confusing change.
'Patriotic' loyalty oath an empty gesture
A remnant of the McCarthyism and rampant paranoids of communism in the 1960s is still with us in 1978.
This remnant of an era most Americans want to forget is in the simple form of an employee's oath. All Kansas state employees are required by state law to sign an oath stating their "support" of the U.S. and Kansas constitutions.
The oath, which has to be signed before a notary public, reads:
THE WHOLE ritual seems harmless, almost patriotic, because almost every American thinks it's a good idea to support the constitutions that govern him. It is a most wonderful thing to believe in one's own war patriotism is hard to argue against.
But the oath is an empty gesture that
"do solemnly (swear) (affirm) that I will support the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the State of Kansas, and faithfully discharge the duties of my office or employment. So help me God."
Steven Stingley
Editorial writer
means absolutely nothing and carries absolutely no weight.
Those Americans who support the constitutions of their state and nation may find it silly to be required by law to acknowledge that support, but surely they will sign the oath for the state job. Why not?
Those Americans who do not support the constitutions of their state and nation and want to defile and overthrow our democratic system will also probably sign the oath. Why not? It is to their benefit that the state job and further their nasty deeds.
RESIDES, THE word "support" is blindly ambiguous. Many politically conscious American who lack faith in the law may disagree with specific parts of those constitutions.
Constitutional disagreement, debate and change are a vital part of the democratic process. For one to unthinkingly and faithfully support a constitution in its entirety is a dangerous and uncaring action.
The oath is simply an ineffective way of sorting out the good guys from the bad guys, the Americans from the Comrades, and the Nazis from sort outting see unsuccessfully because it is hoped that Americans as a country and a political system have shaken our paranoia of communism and can tolerate individual conviction and expression.
The oath is hollow in another sense.
THE NATURE of democratic government dictates that many views are better than one. Flag-waving is good medicine for a sick country, but openness is the right medicine for a healthy country.
The oath is shown in Figure 2. According to James Feldman, director of the U.S. Air Force (AF), one no one has ever refused to sign the oath, at least during his tenure in office.
People laugh at and question the need to sign a loyal oath, but they always sign up when it comes time to take the oath. But not, the signature doesn't really matter.
One may even be so curious and so un-American to question whether the oath is constitutional.
IN THE 1950s the constitutionality of the kind of oath that exists in Kansas and similar oaths outstrikes the constitutionality of the oath that proclaimed "support" of the constitution but struck down oaths in Kansas and similar oaths any affiliation with the Communist Party.
Even though the oath is constitutional and well intentioned, it seems to be unnecessary and ridiculous.
And though the oath is a harmless and meaningless gesture of patriotism and allegiance, it seems that the most democratic thing that the Kansas government could do is to eliminate it altogether.
Nothing would be lost, not even American patriotism.
Today's students share ambivalence of Emerson
By MARTIN DUBERMAN
N.Y. Times Features
By MARTIN DUBERMAN
N.Y. Times Featuring
It's being widely labeled the
widest and most certified as
complacent and careerist, dismissed as a mere replication of the 50's generation. Before the portrait gets cast in textbook cement, I'd like to loss a few pebbles into the mix.
Marxists and feminists often
The students I teach at Lehman College and meet in travels to other campuses are not, contrary to reputation, more informed and angry about the vast disparities of income and opportunity in our country. They place primary blame on the wealthy, their hereditary wealth, political officialdom, Pentagon brass and multinational corporations. There's a marked resurgence of interest in the analytical—though more typically confined to informal study groups than to memoirs —in socialist organizations.
SUPPOSITIONS ABOUT human nature that have long had the stature of axioms are not bound to human nature or bound norms subject to scrutiny and redefinition. What does, or should, it mean to be "male" or "female"? Do marriage and fertility conditions apply in these conditions for human happiness? Does sexual pleasure require the justifying context of a love relation to organic connection between sexual and emotional fidelity?
Ferminist analysis has had still wider appeal and has been far better reported in the news media. In the 16-25 age group, the transformation in sociosexual values has been seen in the state where respected polster Daniel Yankelovich.
Theirs is a divided consciousness, the Emersonian double vision that prevents single-minded commitment, whether to personal or public goals—that fears to participate and fears not to...
FEMINISTS FEAR that Marxists are eager to destroy class privilege but tardy in their efforts. They view most male Marxists as cultural conservatives—committed to patriarchal values and owe them discipline, given to over-rationalizing experience,
impatient with personal idiosyncrasy ("subjectivism"), distrustful of aspects of reality (intimacy, say) that cannot be closely measured and defined.
The vast majority of the young stand apart from these concerns but are not indifferent to them. Many seem attracted
to socialist economic analysis and to feminist values. But the flirtation tends to be intermittent, the commitment sporadic. Not because of callow self-absorption (the standard view), but from profound wariness. They are neither obtuse nor heartless. They suffer, if any, from a
IVE COME to think of this pervasive ambivalence as essentially "Emersonian" in spirit, though I may love it more than anything -- dignifying what is in essence a banal set of generational characteristics.
surfeit of knowledge, a deep revulsion against moralizing, a resentment with accusations for social change—even as they profoundly wish it otherwise, wish to end the stalemate between their political pessimism.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the historical figure, has always been most unmanageable. The problem (as with the generation of the "17s") is his pleureness. No sooner does his image seem fixed than it dissolves. He declares decisively on this or that question—then shifts ground (or the question) onto claims of the self, the need to reject the world's "conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles," the delusion of schemes for social reform. Your writer pick up another essay, and the disdainful Olympian turns into an egalitarian democrat, the hermit scholar disdains books as "crutches," the radical author as "protestants," and the attention be paid to the mind of the world.
Is this a spirit at war with itself, a temperament unable to choose? Or a multitudinous nature refusing to reduce itself to a single idea of selflessness. The '50s, my students couldn't have cared less. They simply found Emerson boring; too serious, too introspective, too abstract, too indecipherable, over-cultivated, indifferent to suffering, smothered in self-importance.
F
BUT IN the past year or two, students have begun to respond to him again and again. He has that divided consciousness that has long seemed foreign in a culture attuned to categorizing. Even this genius has an odd side: the aspects of Emerson's personal style and thought, still sees him in certain central ways as on the other side of an immense
He was no one's Representative Man. For one a time, I gave up pleading his case, increasingly uncertain he had one.
Emerson's serene affection for his own shifts in opinion puzzles those who have learned to cherish it and to cheerish it. His conviction that the universe is a base benign—that an underlyling "moral order" ultimately produces an intellectual intuition that prodoses astonished disbelief
But almost everyone else—the centrist majorities—find themselves Emerson, something to admire. His themes once more have takers: the illusion of "reality," the need to cultivate inference, the importance of becoming a "system instead of a satellite," the sense that the demands of the community and the government must always be somewhat at odds. The single line, "Perhaps
all that is not performance is preparation, or performance that shall be," produces a particularly deep response. Perhaps because the image is comforting: Concentration on career will someday justify itself in performance.
BUT WHEN I hear them talk of "performance," they put emphasis on a particular kind: one that combines personal advancement with some form of public service.
They are not comfortable—as students in the '50s were—with the former alone. Nor can they devote themselves—as could the activists of the '60s and the more dedicated of today's young socialists and feminists—with the latter alone.
Theirs is a divided consciousness, the Emersonian double vision that prevents single-minded commitment, whether to personal or public goals—that fears to participate and fears not to. A cany awareness that corruption is available solutions shopworn—but in tandem with a guilty recognition that the subtlet form of corruption may be resignation.
Martin Duberman is professor of history at Lehman College of the City University of New York. This article appears in longer form in the current issue of Liberation magazine.
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Editor Barbara Rosewicz
Publisher David Dary