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University Daily Kansan, June 8, 1981
Opinion
Staff seeks involved readers
Putting out the University Daily Kansan can be a daily chore, except in the summer, when, in spite of its name, the Daily Kansan becomes a semiweekly newspaper that appears only on Mondays and Thursdays.
In some respects, the Kansan won't be a traditional paper during the summer months. Old news is dead news, and the staff realizes that if we don't produce a daily paper, we won't always be on top of the breaking news. So, in a spirit of self-defense and adventure, the summer Kansan will be developing a news magazine format to bring you not only the news that breaks on Mondays and Thursdays, but also an updating and a deeper analysis of the news that breaks on our "days off."
A newspaper's pages reflect the day's happenings, and although the names, and sometimes the faces, change, the news themes keep winding their way back into prominent play. This year the budget cuts, the political impact of the Moral Majority, the Right to Life Amendment and the new swing to conservatism are among the
items that have continually fought for the public's and the media's attention.
The summer Kansan intends to examine these news themes, on a national, as well as a local level. What do the budget cuts mean to Lawrence and the University? Who is the local Moral Majority? What's the local impact and response to the conservative swing?
Among a newspaper's responsibilities are its obligations to inform, to educate and to entertain. We'd like to offer one more-to involve.
Summer is traditionally a time for leisure, for long moments of quiet reflection. The newsroom is hardly a place for quiet and leisure, but we hope to produce stories that lend themselves to reflection.
This summer, the Kansan is extending an invitation to students, Lawrence residents and the University's staff to submit guest editorsir on topics that reflect the writer's ideas and concerns. We ask only that the editorials follow our policy for letters to the editor.
We'll only be with you for two months, or 16 issues. We want to make that time count.
Like sheep on a farm, troops are part of Northern Ireland's scenery
Editor's Note:
Kate Pound is a KU journalism student who spent her 1980-81 school year studying in Ireland. Her last column for the Kansan arrived before the deaths of Bobby Sands and the other prisoners had further intensified the emotions of Northern Ireland.
By KATE POUND
By KATE FOUND
Dungannon, Northern Ireland—
I had time to kill before my meeting and decided to take a look around the town, Dunganon, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. But there was no place to leave my overnight bag and backpack; the bus station had no lockers, because it was located in their right mind in Northern Ireland will allow a stranger to leave bags unattended, even in hotels.
I got tired of lugging my stuff and decided to take advantage of the one truly spring-like day I'd seen in a year. I found a public bench on a quiet side street, sat down and pulled out my backpack. It looked like I was at the dangerous end of a loaded, British-made automatic rifle.
"Is it a good book?" the soldier asked as he crouched near me and against the wall of the building behind us. He was hidden from the street by the bench and my body.
"Please point that thing away from me," I said, trying to speak calmly. Having grown up an Army "breathe," I have the rule "Never point a gun at anyone or let anyone point a gun at you!" on my brain. Having a British corporal, who looked to be about 17, pointing a loaded gun at my head was, therefore, a tad unsettling.
I showed him the book, "The Great Shark Hunt," by Hunter S. Thompson, filled with lunatic raveings about the use of illegal drugs, war weapons and uncontrolled violence.
The story ends quietly, however, if not pleasantly. The soldier just wanted to know who I was, what I was doing in how long I planned to stay and why I was carrying luggage. I was a stranger in a small town, my accent was different and I was reading on a laptop to make sure I wasn't smuggling in plastic weapons for the Irish Republican Army.
And, as far as he was concerned, I probably
was smuggling explosives. I was as likely a threat to him and to the town as a protest march led by IRA supporters. His crouched position was taken deliberately, so that anyone shooting at him would hit me first. Three of his buddies took positions within 20 yards of my bench; one man aimed his gun to the front, another pointed his to the rear. They had been attacked four more soldiers trooped past us. I had to remind every one of them to keep their riffes pointed at the ground, not at my chest, as they moved by.
The soldier finally decided I was harmless. He and his buddies moved off. I watched them as they continued their patrol of the town. I watched the townpeople, who had to protect. They ignored the soldiers, walking calmly past them. Parents strolled with small children just a few yards from the heavily armed soldiers. No one noticed the armored trucks in the war zone so old now that few can remember a time when there were no soldiers.
It is a war zone. Police stations, post offices and government buildings are barricaded and entrance gates are closed.
The fighting between Protestant and Catholic has gone on for 11 years in the six northeastern counties of Ireland. Rarely does a day go by without some incident of sectarian violence—a bombing, a shooting, a fight, a march grown into a riot.
The children of Northern Ireland accept as part of life the presence of armed soldiers. The troops are like the sheep in the farm fields—part of the scenery.
I won't hurt by my encounter with the British Army, only frightened. Northern Irish friends couldn't see why the incident had taken place on the street-side interrogations are normal here.
One mayne that's why I was upset. The idea that troops are needed to protect the citizens of a country from themselves is foreign to me. The worst part all of it is that the citizens don't seem to be bothered by any of it—they are willing to let things continue as they are. Only strangers are frightened by the guns, and, I suppose, that is why few strangers are willing to visit Northern Ireland. Life in a war zone is hardly relaxing, even on a fine spring day.
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By DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN
New York Tires Special Features
Budget cuts fortify Reagan's tax plan
WASHINGTON - How did it come to pass that a Republican administration that came to office in January promising at most some modest cuts and efficiencies in government spending ended up in May proposing such devastating cuts in the Social Security system that a Republican-dominated Senate voted 96-0 to reject the entire proposal?
It is not all that complex. In its formative political stages, the administration committed itself to a theory of taxation that held that it was possible to make huge reductions in marginal tax revenues and any significant loss in tax revenues. This was the economist Arthur Laffer's famous curve.
If the notion invited a measure of derision, it ought not. The respected conservative economist Herbert Stein wrote: "The temptation for conservatives to stretch the limits of responsible discussion of economic questions has been strong in the past 20 or 30 years for several reasons. The background noise of liberal talk was loud, and the popular media were not receptive to conservative discourse. To penetrate the media curtain . . . it seemed necessary to express conservative views in extreme, black-and-white letters."
Thus, if the subject at hand is a balanced budget, don't simply propose one; propose, rather, to amend the Constitution to require one. Similarly, if the subject is a tax cut, don't just offer one; instead, offer to cut taxes "by one-third" and assert it would cost nothing.
President Reagan genuinely believed that this was feasible. He would say, as he did in Flint,
Mich., on May 17, 1880. "We would use the increased revenues from the tax decrease to rebuild our defense capabilities." There would also of course be a balanced budget.
Retirement Benefits Go Untouched.
Then came office—and reality. One economist after another and, in the end, decisively, Wall Street, offered the view that there was no way that a one-third tax cut would be necessary in policy. If the tax-cut proposal was to be retained, the balanced budget would have to be put off and major cuts in spending would have to be made. So, starting with budget director David A. Stockman's black book" of early February, an almost certain prospect of ever-deeper budget cuts was proposed.
Remember that the victorious party was not pledged to any radical disruptions of social programs of the kind now being proposed. In his major economic address of the campaign, given in 2015, he pointed out some "waste and efficiency" from government spending. No more. He said at that time: "I am confident that we can squeeze and trim 2 percent out of the budget in fiscal year 1981 and increase this gradually to 7 percent of what would otherwise have been spent in fiscal year 1985."
Cut elementary and secondary education a quarter, preventive health a third, abilism mass-transit operating assistance. On May 5 the Senate Finance Committee was requested to repeal, and did repeal the provision of the Social Security Act, 45 years in place, that entitled orphans in foster care to federal assistance. Seven days later, a general proposal to slash Social Security retirement benefits was sent up even as the Republican National Committee was mailing out its publication, "Senior Republican," with the headline:
President Reagan Keeps Promise,
That did it. Perhaps preditably, the orphans had not been much heard from. But the 35 million people receiving Social Security benefits were. So also were those economists who, wishing the administration well, had been talking to power. It worked. On May 14 Martin Feldstein, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research, told the finance committee: "A year ago, the president's campaign rhetoric was still full of wishful thinking about major issues and about spending. Despite all of this early supply-side hyperbole, the president's actual program represents a total repudiation of the naive Lauer curve theory that across-the-board tax cuts are self-financing."
And so there will now be a compromise tax bill. But must the administration also abandon the idea of economic policy directed toward greater productivity and production?
We need—urgently need—a set of supply-side tax cuts that reward actual savings, successful investment, increased labor, enhanced capital. We cannot go on with the lowest rate of savings and investment of any industrial nation in the Western world.
Last August the Senate Finance Committee, 19 to 1, approved a tax proposal that while cutting personal income taxes 1 percent to 3 percent in the middle brackets, can increase the increasing depreciation allowances, getting rid of at least half "the marriage penalty" (a true supply-side tax cut). We are now saving 5 percent of income. Saving 6 percent won't change a thing. It is time that we rethink how to tax business administration give us that goal; let campaign promises rest in peace; let the future begin.
(Daniel Patrick Moynahan is Democratic senator from New York.)
Who is me? Me is Judy and my life what is about to do is share part of my life with you this summer—the cabbage patch and all. From the local cemetery and grain elevator to the Kansas City Stockyards, we be in search of an accurate picture of rural and small town life. We meet the old-time local poet and his son "Painter" and live out a day in the life of a farmer and a country veterinarian. And we'll explore some of the programs aimed at awareness of literally from the land and try to understand farmers' children as they leave this way of life and their mixed feelings of relief, apathy, and guilt. We may even visit the cabbage match if my sibling returns.
Yep, no supermarket for me. I came in style.
Or so my father says. As he tells the story, he was out in the garden one day and "there were two pairs of eyes under this cabbage." So I told him that we should take the one I always wonder what that was that went off there. "So do I. They got me instead."
Farm life mixes pride, broken dreams
Not many babies are found under cabbage leaves.
My life since that fateful day in the garden hasn't included gang fighting in Harlem or being proclaimed a child prodigy or even being the secret daughter of Howard Hughes. No, my most ferocious battle was with an old white rooster who pecked my knees and my one claim to fame as a child was being dragged by a wild sheep (formerly my jame pet) at the county fair.
And my father? He's neither rich nor beyond a few miles radius exceedingly famous. Instead, he's the kind of man who walks around in cabbies and bogs and grazes wheat fields and bog peas. My father is a farmer.
Because of his profession, his daughter has not led a standard life. Because we live miles from the nearest town of any size (which I shall name Pumpkin Center) my school friends were my friends from 8:20 a.m. to 3:10 p.m. each day. After that I headed home to a world of pigs and cows and demented chickens. That world is where I once again spending my summer.
Such a life may sound boring, which it many times is, but there often is excitement. A child who learns that everyone knew them was happy.
Diane's inseins came out the first time she had a lamb. The vet who put her all back together again was a saint in my eyes. The runny-nosed grew tom cat a ate litter of baby rabbits.
My brother caught a 14-pound channel catfish and let it rot till the maggots appeared. Then he took pictures. Then his friend Darrel threw up. I remember it well.
One winter night our chimney fue caught fire and the whole Pumpkin Center Fire
Judy Crawford
And this morning, a cattle egret was out in Hog Heaven (the pig pen, or where the hogs hang on earth). He son flew away. Didn't like it. Yes, yes. Indeed, this sure can be an excitable life.
And frustrating. And full of stubborn, surprising, prejudiced, generous, prideful people who shattered dreams and unexpected hopes, but were also hard-working farmers and farm. And physical abuse and bitterness and seemingly meaninglessness. It's almost all here. One difference is that you know just about everyone whose name appears in the People in the News or that you report columns in the Pumpkin Center Gazette.
Department out here at 3 a.m. we had the flames doused by the time they roared up the lane, but they still hung around hoping something else would happen.
About four years ago I left the farm to get an "education" at KU or "Snob Hill" to my K-State sister referred to it. A few weeks ago I left there and worked on my own project. I'll be back at KU in the journalism Masters
Opi
You may be wondering if the person making these big generalizations is competent to write about this kind of thing or any kind of thing for that matter. Good question.
R
program, specializing in science and agricultural writing. As for newspaper writing experience, I wrote for the big time All Scholarship Hall. With a bachelor's degree to a journalist—a verbose person.
I don't want this column to be "My Life with the Corn and the Cows" but neither do I want it to be "Dirt From Down Home." Instead, it should be an introduction to perhaps a vanishing way of life. Probably some of you are familiar with this way of life, but most people are not. I can't help but respond red or as Pa Walton. My Dad certainly isn't either and I'm not Mary-Elle. Or her redened counterpart.
You should now have a smattering of an idea of what you will find in this column in the weeks to come. You also have an impression of the person who is writing it. That person I will earnestly try to keep in the background (though it often will be impossible) and instead I'd like to loan you my eyes, ears and memory for a few weeks. Maybe we'll both learn something. I hope so. Well, as my great Uncle Dwight always used to say, "See you in the funny papers!"
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The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and telephone number. If the writer is after school, please include the writer's class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan reserves the right to edit letters for publication.