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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, September 21. 1967
Car tax defeated
Voters and good judgment
If you're a KU student, run up and hug a Lawrence voter the next time you see one.
He may be one of those good citizens who, by almost a 3-to-1 margin, defeated a $10-per-year city car tax proposal this summer while you were away. It would have applied to every student driving a car in Lawrence, or about 8,000 cars. With the $10 University parking fee, if you wished to use a University lot, that would cost you $20 to drive a car in town this year.
But it was defeated Aug. 8. Now, there are two points worth comment regarding the tax. First, the election was held shortly after KU's summer session ended, so even the relatively few students in Lawrence this summer were probably not in town to vote.
Some call this taxation without representation. Certainly it would have been for the many students enrolling only for the fall and spring semesters.
City officials, before the election, said students could register to vote on the tax, provided they were at least 21 years old. So that eliminated quite a few students of driving age right there.
Secondly, the same city officials defended the tax by saying it was an equitable method of
paying street repair costs since those doing the damage were the ones charged.
If the tax had passed, however, a student driving a 1,400-pound sports car would have paid the same $10 per year a cement truck owner would have paid. That hardly seems equitable, considering the difference in street damage inflicted by the two vehicles.
However, the city commission's concept was valid; students who share the streets should, in some way, share the costs of maintaining those streets. But the student should pay no more than his fair share and have an effective voice in saying what that share will be.
Currently, the cost of maintaining Lawrence streets is paid by property taxes. The city commissioners indicated, if the tax proposal was approved, they would lower by three mills the tax levy, thus easing the burden on local property owners.
To date, the city of Lawrence and KU have had a harmonious relationship . . . and to the profit of both, we might add. If that atmosphere is to prevail, however, a recurrence of this summer's events must be avoided.
So in the meantime, we'll trust the good judgment of those Lawrence voters, if not their leaders. Allan Northecut, Editorial Editor
The anti-missile missile
The Pentagon announced Monday that it will build a $5 billion anti-ballistic missile system, and the United States got to take one giant step backwards in the "Russia must I?" game.
Only a few months ago, when Russia announced the initiation of an anti-missile system, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara assured the nation it would never enter the anti-missile racket. Visions of anti-anti-missiles being topped by anti-anti-anti-missile-missile-missiles, led the State Department to plead with her semi-enemy to forsake that nonsense. But Russia persisted, and now the United States is going into the anti-missile business.
Things could have been better, of course. The $5 billion plan, aimed at China, knocked out an alternative, strongly-backed $40 billion idea, which would also cover Russia. Mr. McNamara says the $40 billion shall never be employed, but the credibility gap cries in pain. Why don't we stop kidding ourselves? Perhaps if we escalated this one to begin with, the specter of a $40 billion program would scare the Russians, at least, into coming to their senses.
When the escalation begins, even $40 billion
is going to be a lot of dough. And it doesn't take an economist to figure that if $40 billion is topped by much more, even the biggest big spender is going to run out of money.
Picture the U.S. and Russia, frantically outmatching each other with bigger, better and more costly anti-missile missiles, while simultaneously creating bigger, better and more costly missile missiles. At the same time, internal conditions in both countries collapse into moral and monetary bankruptcy. The credibility gap is now a canyon, the people are hungry and they frankly don't give a damn about the outside menace.
Meanwhile back at the Orient, a punk government sits back and watches—by now having the leisure time to build her own great society. With a token advancement on The Bomb and a large amount of PR, she can keep everyone running scared, and save her money. They'll do the work for her.
That we are running in a circle is ridiculous. That we are running faster each day is intolerable. That we are running backwards is impossible. Sooner or later we're bound to trip.
—Betsy Wright, Editorial Editor
Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara has made nine trips to Vietnam since the United States found that country's fate to be in its national interest.
McNamara's inconsistencies
The first trip was made in 1962, the last about two weeks ago.
Each time McNamara has returned he has reported the progress of the war, and the record of those reports is an interesting and disconcerting testimony to the vacillating public posture of our national leadership.
In 1962 McNamara solemnly assured the American people that "there is no plan for introducing combat forces in South Vietnam." He said he was tremendously encouraged by progress in the war.
After his trip in September and October of 1963, McNamara predicted that the major military effort of the war would be completed in 1965.
His optimism was as high following a trip in December of 1963. "Excellent progress" was his verdict in May, 1964.
Suddenly, in July, 1965, the McNamara tune changed. "The over-all situation continues to be serious," he said then.
By November, 1965. McNamara's optimism had returned and he was able to report that we had stopped losing the war.
After his trip in October of 1965, McNamara said. I see no reason to expect any significant increase in the level or tempo of operations in South Vietnam, nor do I see any reason to believe that deployments of U.S. forces to that country will change significantly in the future." At that time there were 331,000 forces in Vietnam. Now 466,000 troops are fighting there.
Following his latest trip the Secretary was quoted by the British news agency Reuters as saying more progress has been made in the last nine months than in the previous six years.
If you believe McNamara, we have been making superlative progress for six years, and the progress in the last nine months has been superlative superlative.
From 1962 to 1965 we made "tremendous" and "excellent" progress, although we presumably were losing all the while, since McNamara wasn't able to say we had stopped losing until November.1965.
And we are apparently supposed to believe that since 1965 we have been at once not losing, making spectacular progress, and not winning the war in Vietnam, something only American ingenuity could accomplish.
Either McNamara is lying or this is the damndest war we have ever fought, or both.
Reprinted from the Minnesota Daily, July 28, 1967
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