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Wednesday, January 25, 1978
University Daily Kansan
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Comment
Unsigned editors represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
Tax proposal unwise
State Sen. Donn Everett, R-Manhattan, has decided to sponsor legislation that would place a three-cent tax on the sale of each pack of cigarettes purchased in Kansas. The proceeds of the tax, which apparently could raise as much as $8.4 million, would help finance recreational athletics at the six Board of Regents universities.
At first glance, Everett's bill sounds like a fiscal gift from heaven for the universities. Recreational services that are strapped for revenue would benefit from an assured source of income. Cigarette smoking is hardly on the decline. According to Ecumenical women's athletics and soccer, such as gymnastics and swimming would benefit the bill. In addition, the health hazards of cancer presumably would be discouraged by raiding the wallets of cigarette smokers.
EVERETT ALREADY has scaled down his original proposal, for a tax of five cents a pack, after learning that the bite from his first idea would amount to $14 million annually. He still must justify his modified plan to Kansas taxpayers, who are now under the naive impression that 1978 is to be a year of tax relief, not tax increases.
The cigarette tax legislation, however, raises more questions than it answers. For one, are the recreational needs of the universities so pressing as to justify their own restrictions? And, in another, are the educational needs of the universities less important than any sports, major or minor?
a year. The state treasury already has a surplus of $143 million. An additional $32 million is expected to be added to the surplus this year from excess tax revenues. Perhaps both parties' election-year promises of tax reduction would mean more to voters if legislators such as Everett would take them seriously.
Aside from whether the state should raise taxes, Everett's new bill would distribute revenues in a lump sum to the Regents. The board would then dole out the proceeds as it saw fit, with no guarantee for any schools. Under Everett's original plan, the University of Kansas, Kansas State University and Wichita State University
each would have received one of the five cents from the tax. The remaining two cents would have been split among Pittsburgh State University, Emporia State University and Fort Hays State University.
The most disturbing part about Everett's bill is that it rests on skewed priorities. It rests on the assumption that a statewide tax is needed for sports, but not for improving the quality of education at Regents universities. KU, for openers, could use a decent library. It staggers the image when it is more important than improving the delicate safety conditions at the understaffed, undefunded fire trap that masquerades as Watson.
Now, however, the geographic fairness built into Everett's first plan has been eliminated. It would be up to the Regents to somehow determine the relative importance of minor institutions and institutions in a clarification about how the Regents would accomplish this is needed.
Everett's bill would, indeed, be a way to facilitate equitable funding among men's and women's recreational sports. Once that equitable funding is achieved, however, and once coaches for minor sports have made their most present interest in expanding facilities, then what? It is doubtful that a three-cent tax would have a lasting value.
Everett's bill may be a blow against cancer and a boon for athletics, but it shouldn't be adopted. The economics of the plan aside, it just isn't aimed in the right direction.
More disturbing about the legislation, though, is that it rests on the assumption that recreational programs need continuing booster shots each year. It is undisputed that women's athletics must be given a broader funding base; Title IX strictures doubtless will see to that. It is also undisputed that coaches of minor sports would like a steady source of income annually, regardless of whether their sports are capable of drawing even minimal crowds willing to pay to see them.
CIA asset to journalism
Various episodes in my career must, in that case, have qualified me for an "assert" as well as these as a caliphary tale:
By DANIEL SCHORR BY DANIEL SCHORR
1. In the late 1950s, I was one of the group of CBS correspondents who would dine, watch TV, or with high CIA officials. My current amnesia about what was discussed may attest either to their intelligence skills or to the quantity of the wine consumed.
6. STATIONED IN Moscow from 1955 through 1957, I met Americans on voluntary or assigned mission missions. For example, a visiting television executive in New York sent the transmitter, whose location he obviously knew. In May 1957, I spent many late nights with CIA-financed American students
WASHINGTON—Whether the journalists who served the CIA should be numbered in the dozens or the hundreds hinges, it has become clear, on how one reads this article, that part of CIA-media relations, the House Intelligence Committee has come up with a distinction between 'contacta' (voluntary) and 'contrabita' (coercive), may yetrayan intelligence officers. An 'asset' could be anyone enlisted, even unwittingly, to provide assistance or someone who was merely claimed to be a self-aggrandizing field officer.
who had been sent to the Moscow Youth Festival as an antidote to the predominantly left-wing delegation.
3. Barred from the Soviet Union after being arrested by the K.G.B. in 1958, I was invited to lunch in the office of CIA Director Sidney Meyer, without asking my consent, he led me into a room for what turned out to be a debriefing by agency specialists. I had some qualms and I rejected some questions. Shortly thereafter, as I learned after obtaining parts of my CIA file two decades later, some consideration was given to recruiting me into the CIA's involvement no offer was made.
4. IN EAST EUROPEAN capitals, as a matter of practice, I sought out CIA officers in American embassies because they would knowledgeable and objective than their diplomatic counterparts. Before leaving these countries, I would share my findings to check my findings and maintain contacts useful for the future.
5. In West Germany, an important CIA terrain in the 1960s, the West Berlin station chief at his home one dined was a soldier from Communists. I discussed with him my impressions of visits to East Germany. In Bonn, Henry Pleasants, a station chief under the German dictator with American correspondents at his sumptuous hilltop
mansion. He seemed mainly to be trying to recruit us for discussions of music and for his wife's harpsichord recitals.
6. WITH LESS OVERT CIA officers in West Germany, I entered occasionally in operation for Europe. I accepted the offer of a filmed interview, in an obscure country retreat, with African students who had quit East Europe. We were bitter about Communist racism. It made an interesting story for CBS and undoubtedly an interesting propaganda point on American society.
7. AS LATE as 1976, while working on a television program for children called "What's the best way to get your agency to obtain U-2 spite plane equipment and photographs of missile sites in Cuba. I was aware that the CIA was anxious to have its greater moments recalled. The CIA was perfectly 'for television, however.'
Was I a CIA asset? Perhaps. Certainly the CIA was an asset in my work. Journalism, art criticism, tele-research—requires various kinds of active cooperation. As long as my sole purpose was getting a story and my employees were doing it, I felt ethically secure.
Daniel Schorr, a former CBS news correspondent, is the author of "Clearing the Air": he discusses government security.
Screw ad may give state boost
A state funded study released last year announced that Kansas was not one of the most popular tourist states in the country. This "news" upsets many state enthusiasts because, as everyone knows, tourists typically spend money when they take a vacation. As everyone also knows, more money always is good for a state.
Kansas is usually traveled only by people wishing to visit a state on either side or to the other. It can also be included Al Goldstein and other
people who go on trial in Kansas.
Few would have guessed it, and it really seems too good to be so bad. The publisher of Screw and Smut magazines, as well as owner of other Milky Way Productions projects, just may be what I wanted.
GOLDSTEIN, it appears, is not a man who is acquitted and
forgets, Goldstein remembers his arrival in Kansas City, Kan., three months ago. He came into town accusing Midwesterners of not being his kind of people. Kansas Midwesterners are on trial for four weeks, on the charge of distributing allegedly obscene publications, the jurors just couldn't make up their minds. The case ended in a mistrial. And Goldstein, so far as the jury concerned, was free to go home.
Goldstein did return to New York, but not until he
apologized for "degrading Kanans." After the apology, most Kanans thought that they had saved the last from Goldstein.
But even while Goldstein was in the state, the staff members of the Kansas Department of Economic Development had made such a sketch to attract business and money to the state. One of the plans was to run an advertisement in Business Week that would use an ideal business locale, where department did.
Enter grateful Goldstein again. Even though he had already run a full-ad in a few Kansas newspapers thanking Kansans for their kindness, the Goldstein knew that he could do something to really help the state. So without the state's permission—it was supposed to be a surprise, after all—Goldstein's advertisement from Business Week and printed it in Screw.
AS MIGHT be expected, Kansas government officials, especially the secretary of economic development, are angry with Goldstein. But because of its copyrighted, Goldstein will not need to return to Kansas again on legal business.
When Goldstein left Kansas in November, he said, "I'd like to spend a five-day vacation here but not have to go to court every day." Goldstein is offering Kansas to his readers in a magazine with a
magner circulation than Business Week. But the state officials are still mad.
If Kansas is too proud to accept free advertising, Goldstein probably would accept payment for it, maybe at a discount rate, in the future. But would state officials be charged for their vettement appeared in Forbes or Nation's Business (both magazines have lower circulations than Screw?).
PERHAPS STATE officials are worried about advertising in a somewhat inappropriate publication. But surely they don't think business magazines like The New York Times businessman read on the train, on the plane, in hotel rooms late at night . . .
The possibilities are endless if one thinks about what may happen in Kansas as a result of the advertisement in Screw. Because there don't seem to be any legal restrictions against it, maybe the ad will appear in Rolling Stone next week. And Mr. Dollar's Next Week, we Merry Flynt will spot it in Screw and use it in his newly purchased paper, the Plains (Ga.) Monitor.
Maybe then, if the department of economic development wrote an effective advertisement, Lillian Carter and all the other Carters could flock to Kansas. Peanut farming may make it easier to grow Kansas soil but some extra revenue might be collected from the seasonal business of Amy Carter's lemonade stand.
Clinton development area needs controls
There is an area four miles southwest of Lawrence that is now mostly pastures and woods but has the potential of becoming a booming area of housing and commercial development within the next 10 years.
It is inevitable that roads will replace cow paths and that the sound of carpenters' electric saws will erase the area's present calm.
When "progress" does come to this patch of countrise, it will be necessary to prevent an unrestricted explosion of modern clutter.
This area includes the future site of the 12,000-acre Clinton Reservoir and surrounding land already zoned for residential and commercial development.
CLINTON RESERVOIR is a $88-million flood-control and recreational project started by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1972. Water will be dammed up in a series of gradual stages during the next four years. The Corps, which originally said that the lake would be ready in 1978, now is somewhat older than 1979 before it is a double pool. "The gates of the dam were closed for the first time last month.
Just as predictable as the Corps'
Steven Stingley Editorial writer
neglect of deadlines and cost ceilings is the certainty that the Clinton area soon will be flooded with weekend visitors and permanent residents.
The lake will be close to the people of Lawrence, Topeka and Kansas City. The Corps expects the lake to draw about 1.3 million visitors the first year, annually a few years later. The "design-day load," or capacity of the total facilities designed for daytime use, is more than 28,000 a day in the future. Those are hefty figures.
Private development of the vicinity around the lake is expected to flourish as soon as the lake begins to enlarge. Indication of this fact is found in the increasing dollar value of the land near Clinton Reservoir.
HAS been predicted by some local realtors that land prices will double in the next two or three years. Darwin Rogers, Douglas County assessor, has
predicted that some land around the lake could cost as much as $20,000 an acre in three years. Another hefty figure.
In the project's comprehensive plan it is projected that there will be a demand for more than 5,000 residential housing units within the next 15 to 20 years.
Arthur Heck, speaking for the Kaw Basin Water Management Association at the Clinton gate-closing ceremonies, said that the reservoir would have the capacity to provide water was decided that the University of Kansas would be located in this area."
What all of this means is that there is going to be a tremendous amount of growth around Lawrence's new attraction and that strict controls are going to have to be exercised if the lake site is not to turn into another 23rd Street monster with neon eyes and ugly arms of steel.
ine Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission and some state agencies have been working for the last few years on a plan that will ensure careful and controlled development. The Mini-Comprehensive Plan was prepared recently for the Planning Division of the Kansas Department of Economic
Development and will serve as the primary guideline for the local planning commission.
THE PLAN is a good one. It represents compromises between many special-interest groups, including private investors and environmentalists, those people who already live near the future lake and "outsideers."
Obviously there are problems that cannot rightly be compromised, such as the basic question of whether it is just to displace long-time residents and farmers with short-term workers; whether it is right to replace a long-time natural ecosystem with a man-made one.
But Clinton Reservoir and the subsequent private development of the land around it are going to be a reality. There is no stopping it now. What county and city planners must do is remain steadfast behind their commitment to preserve the reservoir will be a pleasant place to enjoy the outdoors, whether one lives there or visits on the weekends.
Growth and development around the lake are inevitable and maybe even desirable, but a proper integration of natural and artificial elements and visitors of not being strangled by an ugly monster like the one that exists on 32nd Street.
Renovations produce discontent
To the editor:
The time has come for us to make ourselves heard! The classes of the late 60s and early 70s had the Vietnam War to tell about. Our class has gone through a lot of controversy, little controversy. Now we have a true cause to support.
Clyde Walker has provided us with an issue that affects each of us, as well as our families. For four years I have been looking for a way to the hill into Memorial Stadium on May 22, 1978. Walker has, without considering any alternatives, declared that he will be possible. Walker's announcement came conveniently after the Kansan had stopped printing last semester, perhaps by large outburst of student protest that is very justified.
I attended the meeting of last Nov. 1 and was very disappointed to find that Walker refused to address himself to the questions I asked of him. Instead, he spelled out 20 questions telling him crowd why it is necessary to do the renovations on the stadium that almost everyone already was in favor of. My specific questions were these: How high is the proposed wall going to be? What is its purpose? Will it interfere with my questions? Walker did not answer any of the three questions.
Imagine if you will, a massive concrete wall at the south end of the stadium obstructing all view either into or out of the stadium. Walker during the meeting also made reference to several items that were too complicated for us to un
Letters
derstand. As a senior civil engineering student, I feel that Walker would have a hard time understanding many of the things mentioned in the wall and the meeting only to put Walker's actions in perspective. I am sure Walker will find out that he has opened up a can of worms will be very difficult to close.
Apparently Walker feels that students are just ignorant morons walking around the University and that our student body will fill his beloved stadium to watch the football team play five or six times a year. It could be pointed out that the Memorial Stadium because it is home to the people of the state of Kansas paid for it. It rests on
Letters Policy
The Kanasan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten and include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include the writer's class and include the university or faculty or staff position. Letters are not to exceed 500 words in length. The Kanasan reserves the right to edit all letters for publication.
state property and contains a track.
This brings up another interesting point. Steve Leben was quoted as saying that the primary use of the stadium is for football games. Wrong! Last year, six players and four gamers were in Memorial Stadium, five KU games and one Shrine Bowl. An approximate addition of the days allotted to track meets comes to 15 days. The soccer team will have occasion. Each year there are also a spectacular Fourth of July celebration and the graduation exercises. Any student of lower math could quickly see that second to the many other uses that our stadium is put to.
I deeply mourn the loss of the Kansas Relays because it is the best sporting ever hosted on our campus each year. More world-class athletes come to participate than can be found in any other sport here at KU. But the real crime being committed here is the delay in privilege to participate in the most moving and traditional ceremony this University has to offer us.
What can we as seniors do about this? Let's start by all writing a nice letter to champlain high school to welcome enclose a copy to Walker and the University of Kansas Alumni and Endowment Associations. If we do not get satisfaction from our work, it is not much we can do. It is my impression that the people of the chancellor's office
Charles H. Nance Prairie Village senior
are on our side. I hope the associations realize that people whose last remembrance of a place is a rotten taste in the mouth are not usually inclined to support that place with their best friends. You don't get things back on track to start now, write your chancellor or call to complain. If each senior or prospective graduate were to write or call the secretary, be sure that we really do care.
Computers demand intricate planning
To the editor:
Every semester, one of the first editors to appear in the Kansas is urging the imprint "computerized" enrollment system. Please be informed that the University does indeed have "computerized" enrollment has it had for quite some time.
This past enrollment was processed on an IBM 370/148 computer situated in Sum-
merfield Hall, with remote access terminals in almost all administrative offices concerned with enrollment and in Allen Field House. The employees information systems work quite hard to run the equipment and maintain the systems during enrollment, and your editorslare seem to ignore the fact that these highly trained, data-hazing professionals exist at all.
If it is enrollment you want, you might try doing something that few people on this campus have thought of. You could enrolment you want. A computer, particularly one maintained by a government agency, cannot miraculously produce a system merely because the Senate endorses a resolution.
Systems must be carefully thought out, specifications written and planning carefully implemented. This is what you should be calling for, not the "organization" of enrolment.
David R. Wilson
Lawrence special student
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