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Thursday, June 20, 1974
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
By STEVEN LEWIS
Kansen Editorial Writer
The Senate has been debating tax reform this week. Our representatives should be thankful that most tax payers know almost nothing about taxes, except for the myths that many of our well-to-do "taxpayers" fertilize regularly.
For example, there is considerable support in the House and Senate to lower the capital gains tax. Capital gains is income from business or property, such as stocks, bonds and land.
Although there are minor complication, generally only 50 per cent of income derived from the sale of property is taxed. In other words, if Mr. Moneybags paid $60,000 for stocks in 1988 and then sold the stocks for stock in 1974, he would realize $100,000 profit.
However, instead of paying taxes on $100,000. Moneybags would pay taxes on one-half of his earnings, which would be $50,000. Assuming Mr. Moneybags was in the highest tax bracket, 70 per cent, he would pay $25,000 of taxes, despite his 'ability to pay' $70,000.
The capital gains loophole has been around since 1921, supposedly to encourage investment so that our economy would thrive.
A proposal now before Congress would reduce taxable capital gains to as low as 20 per cent on stocks held 15 years or longer. If it is approved, Mr. Moneybags would pay only $14,000 in taxes on his $100,000 income derived from the sale of stock.
This is a further insult to the "ability to pay" ethic that is supposed behind our tax system.
Fortunately, Senators Kennedy and Humphrey have begun an attack against those who seek more special tax privileges. Kennedy has recommended that the 50 per cent capital taxation rate be increased to 60 per cent.
Moreover, Kennedy has also proposed that capital gains be taxed on property that is transferred and sold after an investor's present, such capital gains isn't taxed at all.
Kennedy's proposals won't be passed because most of our representatives are intent upon using the tax system to help persons with disabilities of persons who have extra cash to invest.
Historically, an increase in the capital gains tax hasn't significantly deterred investors. Regardless, American corporations obtain insignificant amounts of capital from the sale of stock. Furthermore, if an investor sees a promising stock, he will invest whether the loophole is 20 per cent or 60 per cent.
It's a shame that congressman think that a proper way to boost the economy is to distort the tax system so that it will favor a select few.
If the personal tax exemption is increased from $750 to $825, which is being proposed, less affluent taxpayers probably will be fooled into thinking they got a good deal.
Yes, Will Rogers, we still have the best congressmen money can buy.
Advisement Problems
"Before arriving, freshmen and sophomores are assigned faculty advisers, whom they may consult at least four times a year about their course of study and their general progress toward a degree. This is eloquent testimony to the concern of the College for the student."—1973-74 Catalog of the Schools
We have all recently finished another enrollment, some complete with forged adviser's signatures and others with class notes. We know that friend who could in with the first group.
He advised one student to take a class in public relations because she had been a clerk-typist in a PR agency during the previous summer. He was not concerned that the course was of senior standing and special prerequisites. Of course, when the student would enroll, she was turned away. She never went back for any more advice, either.
I can recall some horrors of advising, as I'm sure every KU student of more than one semester's experience can. My first adviser, who arrived in Lawrence only a few days before he began advising, was quite congenial and concerned. He spent an afternoon with his group of 20 College Within the College freshman, first talking to us as a answer general questions such as, "Where is your case in any case through this professor was generous with time, smiles and advice, what he had to say was nearly worthless.
Just before enrollment I heard again that old story of bad advising. The essence of this story was that a student had graduated without knowing he had. An advised tell
Students sometimes can pick out a good adviser. But students sometimes trust someone with a smile and an easy answer—someone who knows little or nothing of the件事情, how they have changed or what courses be substituted or appealed.
him he would need more hours to finish his degree and would have to attend summer school. An alert secretary (and KU has many) discovered the error and submitted the student's name as a candidate for graduation.
Then there's another kind of bad advising that may be a blessing for some people but possibly a curse for the student. Many people are aware of the numbers game KU is now playing and will be playing in the future. Schools have gotten the message: "let me many bodies as possible in your classes this fall so you can get the most dollars.
The most insidious form of bad advising is the adviser who enrolls students in his own courses, without regard to what may profit the students most. He also refuses to allow students to enroll in other courses that might be more worthwhile. This "refusalal" can be low-key, with comments such as "He know you know how." You know what they say about him. Perhaps the student doesn't know, but at that point he isn't about to find out.
I wonder how many hours and dollars are wasted each year on bad advice! On the other hand, I wonder how many students and former students have gone back to school because of bad advice and said, "Thank you. You were right. You gave me my money's worth."
Maybe if there were more people showing their gratitude there would be better advising. Then again, maybe advisers ought to be held accountable for the advice they give. And maybe our administrators ought to put more emphasis on the responsibility of the University to serve its students by advising the advising process a more important role in it. We rather than merely a clerical testimony, I have bad advising to not "an eloquent testimony of the concern" of the University for its students.
—Rita Haugh
Reader Praises KANU
To the Editor:
We could not leave KU without publicly expressing our deep gratitude for the outstanding broadcasts offered by KANU. During these last few years they brought to us highly selective material that deserves nothing but praise.
Although most of KANU's presentations were interesting and stimulating, we singed out their classical music programs and recorded all of the composers and music offered every day.
A nutshell of the best international composers and compositions daily opened to us a source of culture of the highest value and interest, and revealed the respect and appreciation of the selectors for art and beauty. It is reassuring to know that some people still believe in art and beauty and their capacity to ennoble the soul. As such.
classical music should definitely be seen as a "requirement" for any student who wants to attain the higher goals of humanities—meaning an "homme cultive," a cultured man.
Luckily, KANU seems to be blessed with administrators who do not compromise and lower their standards for the sake of profit. And this is the public to reach for higher spheres
Our best memory from KU will be KANU,
and we sincerely hope that wherever we will
solve ourselves in the future, we will be lucky
enough to find a reid station of a similar caliber.
Patrick Bruneau
Montamise, France, Graduate Student
Agnes Strasser
Brooklyn, Graduate Student
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Survey Shows Local Levy to Pass
School District Employes Optimistic About Pay Raise
By RICHARD PAXSON and CARL YOUNG Korean Staff Reporter
Many of those polled who said they would vote for the levy need an increase teachers' salaries as a reason for their參购.
he proposa. "Lawrence has a good record in never having turned down school bond proposal," he said, "But this is the first referendum on teachers' salaries." More than one
Editor's Note: This is the second of two stories on the Lawrence school levy referendum.
MARK REYNOLDS, of 318 EB Brutal Teral, one of those polled, said, "In general, teachers are underpaid. People are demanding more from schools and are not willing to accept this." The question is increasing the operating costs of everything else."
Several members of the Lawrence school board and representatives of the local teachers association are optimistic that an increase in the school mill key will receive voter approval in the special referendum on June 26. A meeting at the university will be the weekend by the University Daily Kansan indicates that they probably have good reason for their optimism.
Darrel Ward, spokesman for the association, said recently that he was surprised at the positive response of Lawrence residents to the proposal.
More than 60 of the 100 persons polled in the survey said they would vote for the levy increase. Only 11 said they would definitely vote against the levy. A simple majority is required for passage.
TWEIGHT-EIGHT PEERS said they were undecided or didn't plan to vote. The standard requirement in such survey is at least 50 percent voting.
Dr. Helen Gilles, president of the USD No. 497 board, said Monday that she expected the levy increase to pass. She declined to say by what margin she expected it to be approved.
community is educationally conscious. The average city in the Midwest is being eaten up by inflation, and I'd say a levy couldn't pass there. But I think it will pass in Lawrence.
Larry Hatfield, board member, said Tuesday, "I think the levy has a good chance of passing because the Lawrence
"If we want to maintain our quality teachers in Lawrence and provide special education for all children who need it, we're going to have to pay for it," he said.
J. R. Oldham of 224 Tennessee St. said, "At the high school, two teachers with families have salaries so low that they can qualify for food stamps. They need a cost-of-living increase."
Another board member, Julie Hack, said Tuesday, "I've become increasingly optimistic. I hope it will pass."
Voters are being asked to approve an increase of approximately 1.36 mills in the school levy. This would raise the school's per capita income.
THE NEW REVENUE generated would provide a 3.16 per cent salary increase for all employees of the district and 2.45 per cent for all employees of the city.
The levy should pass, Hack said, because it not only teaches teachers' salaries, but also would give other district employers the ability.
Millard Denny, president of the Lawrence Education Association, which represented the teachers in their negotiations with the board, said last week, that the public and the groups promotional efforts had been very favorable.
Denny said he knew of no organized opposition to the levy increase.
Others had different reasons for supporting the levy. Mrs. Lewis Parsons of 2145 Tennessee St. said she supported a pay increase for teachers "because they didn't strike to get it."
Mrs. Berta Nelson of 328 Elm St. expressed the opinion of most of those who said they would vote against the levy when she said, "I'm not for any more taxes."
By NICHOLAS VON HOFFMAN King Features Syndicate
"Our greatest threat comes from no foreignoe but from those at home who seek to impose the power of negative thinking," our Vice President said the other day to a meeting of the National Conference of Christians in America, noooooously toothless, but Jerry Ford could speak such pietistical nonsense before any group and not get hissed.
Jerry Ford Is Agnew Without the Alliteration
Since the death of Hippie and Commune Pinko Fag, we left off hecking our politicians. The most tasteless non-denominational swan can come flooding out of the hall and be lucky to get out of the hall with but three standers. Such are our good manners.
To Mr. Ford "the prophets of doom and gloom" are those who "predict that we will be destroyed by inflation." And who is loudest in making that very warning? It is Arthur Bursa, the chairman of the Federal Bank, who could be one of the "negativists," the "damagers" that Mr. Ford went to Cleveland to tell both Christian and Jew to careful of.
Thus: "These negativists would write a script to prove their point, to bring about the very disasters they warn against, and to hasten the end of the American society through chasies policy. I recently noted, for instance, an outcry against the police in Los Angeles because the police dared to shoot back at a murderous group to self-proclaimed revolutionaries. The outlaws there were charges of police brutality and an effort moral standing outlaws as persons of high status. Somewhere in their emotionalism, the doomsayers arrived at a distorted conclusion that the outlaws were the innocent civilians and the police and society were the offenders."
When the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board reminds us that inflation has destroyed more governments than hunger, he is not trying to help Patty Hearst rob a bank. Jerry Ford doesn't think so either. Neither does his audience, so that this jejune nonsense about prophets of doom fails even as rhetoric.
It is the language of a politician who has nothing to say and therefore thinks he can
say anything. Such meaning as it does have is attitudinal. Don't knock when you can be a positive booster.
Committed positive thinking can be applied to anything. George L. Hart Jr., the chief judge of the District of Columbia, can do it. A man comes into his courtroom and confesses he led under oath to a committee that would investigate, and Judge Hart tells him that this is evidence violation that reflects a mind bent on deception." Richard Kleindienst, the first Attorney General to so disgrace his office, wrote in the judge, who declares with a dafy serenity that he was possessing "a heart that is too loyal and considerate of the feelings of others."
A positive thinker must be who he accepts inflation and perjury while learning how not to listen to the "prophets of negativity (who) try to debunk our whole society and demand that we do not mean when he utensers words like, "The morality of politicians—and the government itself—reflects the morality of the cross-section of the people who go to the court. It is immoral to condemn crime by individual but to conduce crime by revolutionaries."
Agnew without alliteration, that is Ford tripping over the stumps of dead ideas, giddy with a gaseous sort of attitudinal meanness, which his friends here in Washington apologize for by saying he is dumb but decent. The difference between malice and mental retardation in Mr.
Gibberish. Not supposed to take the words one-by-one, but pick up attitudes. We steal, you steal, and whoever makes too much of it condones murders committed by the pubescent cobras of Symbionese Liberation, so many of whom seem to be hatched out of precisely the kind of homes and home-life Jerry Ford extols and represents. Yes, we encourage these women to mopupts because we wonder why hundreds of bulleties in that black Angeles neighborhood without evacuation the innocent to safety. We favor inflation because we want to know why no more serious an effort was made to take the guilty alive.
Ford's case is 50 points on an IQ test, the results of which are locked up in the White House safe with Ehrlichman's notes and the truth about Kissinger.
Ford's admirers must come up soon with proof that he is mentally handicapped or we shall be forced to conclude the Vice President knows what he's doing.
1974-Young Voters' Last Chance
'IN AMERICA...I THINK THEY CALL IT A PR JOB'
BY STEVEN LEWIS
Kansan Staff Reporter
By STEVEN LEWIS
That is the message of a former University of Kansas student and now a voting rights advocate, Morris H. Kramer, Atlantic Beach, N.Y., in his book "A People by Age-Year Old: People to Effective Voting." Kramer was a pharmacy student at KU in 1963.
A recent Gallup poll indicates that 49 per cent of college students reject affiliation with either of the major political parties in the United States. However, such idealistic attitudes have a good way for young people to elect representatives sympathetic to their needs.
Kramer warns that 1974 may be young people's last good opportunity to elect a president.
environmental deterioration and other problems about which young people should be worried.
This year, 34 U.S. Senators, all 435 members of the House of Representatives and countess state and local officials face re-election. Because the 30-year-or-under group is becoming proportionally smaller to the over-30 group, Kramer says young people must make their political presence felt in this year's elections.
KRAMER POINT OUT that polls have shown that young people are more liberal than their parents. Nevertheless, in the 1972 elections, when for the first time 18-year-olds could vote nationally, a more conservative House of Representatives was elected.
old's vote was partly due to a mere 40 per cent turnout at the polls of eligible voters under 30, whereas 70 per cent of those over 65 voted.
The ineffectiveness in 1972 of the 18-year-
Kramer recommends that young people register as Democrats or Republicans and vote in primary elections. He is saying, in part, that the system's most effective way of changing the system.
Kramer warms against too immersed in a single campaign issue. He points out that in 1968 many people didn't vote because Nixon and Humphrey were such a tough couple, and such nonvoters respected the differing impact Nixon and Humphrey would have
A LESSON from the 1972 residential election, Kramer points out, is that one should vote to nominate an acceptable candidate who can win the general election, even if a less popular candidate is more compatible with one's beliefs.
He also advises young voters to vote against officials who have held the same political office for 12 years or who are over 60 years old.
had on the content of the Supreme Court and on social legislation.
Young voters have as much in common as senior voters, Kramer says, and if young people are to be listened to, they must work for change within the two-party system.
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