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University Daily Kansan, April 2, 1981
Opinion
Circus in the House
Thanks to a power ploy between Kansas bankers, leaders of the state House of Representatives and small-time investors, the kansas Legislature last week lost control of itself and wandered recklessly for a couple of days like a ship in a storm drifting aimlessly on the rocks.
At issue were money market mutual funds, a type of investment small investors like because they get much higher interest than savings accounts, and they don't have to put up thousands of dollars just to begin investing. Kansas banks and savings and loans, however, don't like the funds because they tend to drain money from savings accounts.
The amendment bypassed consideration and debate by any House committee. It was voted on and, in essence, smugged out of the House and sent on to the Senate, where banking interests kept their fingers crossed.
And so it came to pass that to an otherwise uncontroversial state banking bill, the House attached an amendment that could have spelled the end of money market funds in Kansas.
Last Friday, the Senate was amazed to hear screams coming from representatives who'd unwittingly voted for the amendment by approving the original bill. These representatives were being roasted by constituents, who just happened to be
small investors demanding to know why they weren't given a say before the vote.
Rounding out the week's mayhem in the Capitol was an admission by House Speaker Wendell Lady that the whole thing was slipped through the House to give it "an airing before the public." On that count, the House succeeded; it's getting quite an airing now. Even the governor got into the act by condemning the House for its sneaky politics.
The Senate, meanwhile, realized it had better assign the amendment to a committee before a vote came up. Banking interests probably consider any committee hearings equivalent to the death of the amendment because it would give the small investors a chance to speak up—and the more than 40,000 Kansas investors who don't want to lose the lucrative 15 percent interest they're now receiving are an indication that the bankers are probably right about the amendment's chances.
But most importantly, any time legislation can only be passed by dressing it in sheep's clothing, there's a lot more at stake to the democratic process than 15 percent interest. The Legislature's recent escapades should interest all Kansans, whether or not they have a stake in money market mutual funds. All Kansans, after all, have a distinct interest in representative government.
These days, parking a car almost is always adventure
Vacant street parking spaces only appear when you don't need them. This has been proved by the law of averages—and by countless cases. When you do find a parking space, invariably it has zone, loading zone, intersection, fire zone or two parking spaces are hogged by one car.
Never fear! These hindrances are not merely a test of your emotional maturity. They are also the reasons for the nearby multi-level commercial parking station. How else could a large office or store, occupying expensive real estate, earn enough income by solely renting parking spaces? Of course, they save money by not employing people.
The World Held Hostage
PETER
SOMERVILLE
The parking station attendant at the gate is a humorous machine vomiting tickets from its metal mouth. It will open the gate only when you take the ticket checkly thrust toward you. At the door, the camera captures and so the ticket stands silently out of your reach. You must therefore get out of your car (much to the amusement of the driver in the car behind you) to take the ticket. The boom-gate opens and you are left standing beside your car. Before you expect, expects you to drive through immediately.
And because it is a machine, you can't reason with it. You can't ask whether it operates on a time mechanism (which means the boom will soon close on your car's hood) or on a force field that will wait with icy patience for you to pass through.
You scramble back into your car and hit the gas pedal. The car plows through the gate and down the ramp into the gloomy unknown. The engine echoes. The fluorescent lights glare. Arrows point and you follow, hoping they mean you. The massive concrete pillars barely hold the roof from falling in on the car and the down-ramps taper until you feel you are about to slice into the walls. You glide by row after row of dead cars.
Here you are in an alien world with no sky, sunshine, soil, vegetation or human life. You peer through the windshield for a space to park and glimpse the future through the post-nuclear mists when these mausoleums will inherit the earth. Down and down you go, until finally, as the door to Hades, you find someone unlocking his car and placing bags in the back seat.
Obviously he is leaving. You quickly reserve his about-to-bacated space by placing your
car near his bumper and signaling with your turning indicator light, thus blocking the lane so that no cars can come in from the rear. He can feel the hot crash of your engine. For the other car, it is like seeing his relatives waiting for him as he tries to protect himself to procrastinate is overwhening. Let him enjoy it. One day he'll be waiting for that parking space.
Like breathing, maneuvering is a survival skill. The skill lies in maneuvering your car into a restricted area, the aim being not to touch the other cars. It doesn't matter how long you take, but it can be one else around and provided your machine tends up roughly parallel to the cars on each side.
This makes it easy to swing your door into the paintwork of the car beside you. And even if you think: "What's a little dent?" the owner of the car won't. He will be hire, write nasty little stuff on your windshield, and will blame your upbringing on a serious ancestral deficiency.
To avoid this, you cautiously open the door to the first rachet, hoping it is your size. Then you discover that the space is too small to even squeeze through, and so you must begin another round of car maneuver. This time your space is admirably sufficient—even if it does force the driver to enter his car via the passenger door. This is called job-buck. Of course, you need not be so careful opening your door if there is no one actually sitting in the other car.
In case you want to find your car again, take note of the surrounding environmental features and not the car beside you. Because all parking levels are identical, each level is coded with a distinct number on the concrete pillars, or a distinct marker on the door at you, children will tumble happily under your bird or other foreign object is painted on the door opening to the stairs.
Do not liften on the stairs leading out of the parking station, as these are nesting grounds for frustrated housewives or couples who cannot find the level on which they parked. They are also secluded places to smash bottles, start fires and gang murders. This is because of the unhealthy atmosphere generated by commercial parking stations which attempt to segregate cars from people.
There is a bloom of isolation in these subterranean caverns. But to cheer you as you drive out through the parking station, pedestrians will stroll into your path, cars playfully will reverse at you, children will tumble happily under your knees, and parents will turn away from dizy peaks. But let's enjoy it. One day our ancestors will cry out for the good 'ol days when adventure meant parking your car.
KANSAN
The University Daily
(USPS 605-649) Published at the University of Kansas daily August through May and Thursday; June and July except Saturday, Sunday and holidays. Second-class postpaid pay at Lawrence, Kansas 73118, or by student credit at Kansas State University or the KSU or KSJA year outside the county. Student subscriptions are a $2 per semester, paid through the student account. Postmaster's good changes of address to the University Daily Kansas City, Flint Hall. The University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas.
Editor David Lewis
Managing Editor ... *... Ellen Iwamoto
Editorial Editor ... ... Don Monday
Art Director ... Bob Schmidt
Campus Editor ... Scott Paulet
Business Manager Terri Fry
Hospital Manager
National Sales Manager
Campus Sales Manager
Larry Lehberg-
Bright Light
Kaw Wong-
Kaw Wong
General Manager and News Adviser Rich Massee
Kanan Adviser Chuck Chenney
Prince Charles needs to be himself
By MICHAEL PALIN
New York Times Special Features
LONDON-Everyone in the United Kingdom is very happy that Prince Charles is to marry Lady Diana Spencer. The queen is happy, the Duke of Edinburgh is happy, Margaret Thatatcher is happy, the press is happy, the Tourist Board is happy and the Bank of England is happy. The agricultural workers are happy and the sewage workers are happy and the keeper of the Eddystone Lighthouse is probably not unhappy.
There is to be rejoicing in the streets and the entire country has been granted a day off for what is being termed The Wedding Of The Century. There will be celebratory mugs, spoons, tablemats, dog-dishes, washcloths, tape dispensers and anything else Hong Kong can produce in time as a token of its deep and abiding affection for the mother country.
There will be dancing in the streets, parks, factories and any other large empty spaces.
The eyes of the entire nation will be on Mr. and Mrs. Windsor Jr. as they emerge from the portals of the mighty St. Paul's Cathedral, specially built for a similar event in 1897.
There will be smiles of joy and clasped hands and burglaries will give back their ill-gotten gains and vandals will scrub the clean Scottish psychopaths will break down and cry.
Across the length and breadth of Britain the cry will go up from a million loyal throats, "Vive Charles et Mademoiselle Deli" ("Long live Charles and Mademoiselle Deli") and the cry shall echo across seas and across continents.
The Indian elephant (that's the one with small ears) in the scrub-lands of Bibar will rest a moment in its mighty task of turning logs over and raise its trunk and bellow its own homage at 10,000 miles away the ring slips onto Ladv Diana' s slim finger.
In Hobart, Tasmania, the psychiatrist will pause a moment from his Jungian labors and raise his head too—silently acknowledging from across the other side of the world the momentous vibrations that still bind together the dominions of Lady Diana's mother-in-law.
But once this moment of global harmony is over, once the processions, the fireworks and the splendid banquets and the sumptuous present-giving has ceased, when Prince Charles and Lady Diana have become just any couple trying to book into a motel outside Hampton Court, ones whose flight to Miami has been played away by the handlers' slowdown in Madrid – what then?
Is there any advice that we humble, joyful subjects, having sung ourselves hoarse on the national anthem all through the gladson day, can offer to the young couple in Room 10.
Well, all I would say to Prince Charles is this: Relax. Forget, for once, that you're Charles Philip Arthur George Windsor, Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall and Rothesay, Earl of Carrick and Baron Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Great Steward of Scotland, Grand Master of the Order of the Bath and Colonel in Chief of the Cheshire Regiment, the Gordon Highlanders, the Parachute Regiment, the Royal Regiment of Wales (24th Stroke 41st Foot), The Second Kind Edward VII's Own Ghurkha Rifles, The
Royal Australian Armored Crops, The Royal Regiment of Canada, Lord Strathcona's Horse and The Royal Winnipeg Rifles, and just be yourself.
Treat your new bride just as you would any other bride. Don't try wiscearness like taking her over to the window, pointing to Gatwick and saying, "One day all this will be yours."
And however homesick you feel, don't for heaven's sake say, just before you switch the light out. I must call the queen 'This can be difficult.' The queen, three private detectives sit in the closet.
And when you come back to your mansion in Gloucestershire to settle down, try to remember married life is a bit of give-and-take, so: (1) cut down on the parachute jumping and the tank driving and the State visits to Fiji and spend more time helping out with the washing up; (2) don't just throw your Admiral of the Fleet's uniform down on the floor as soon as you come in—but it's straight in front of me, where all that which has bathroom—take 25 each; (4) leave the horses outside when you have company; (5) remember times are hard in Britain, so try to economize on servants—for instance, one man could pull off both boots.
But whatever you do, never spare the compliments. When you come home late from a hard evening at your Ruling Classes, to find her looked tired and cross and carewn after two hours spent scrubbing your polo socks, tell her that she looks like a queen.
(Michael Palin is a member of the Monty Python team, and co-author, most recently, of "More Ripping Yarns," stories from the television series.)
Letters to the Editor
KU-Y column is misconstrued, hypocritical
To the editor:
In his column, "KU-Y hiding behind service facade," David Henry has accused the KU-Y and me of dishonesty and misrepresentation, and on that basis he encourages Student Senate not to fund KU-Y. Ironically, Henry's article is dishonest and misleading.
As a former senator, Henry claims that minority viewpoints should be encouraged and acknowledges that "this encouragement can take the form of Senate funding." He also states that his "opposition to KU-Y's funding in no way interferes with the particular political and social platform in which this facade of adherence to the "rule of thumb," Henry opposes Senate funding of the KU-Y.
The KU-Y always has been perfectly straightforward about our purpose: the elimination of racism and sexism, and the promotion of social justice. Henry's argument services is a ruse for his opposition to those activities that most clearly fulfill our purpose.
Henry quibbles about semantics. He clumps Big Brothers-Sisters and Rock Chalk into the service category, not mentioning any of this year's direct services. The real semantic issue probably, probably because it is the genuinely important, and clarifying issue, is the definition of politics.
Defenders of the status quo label dissent as political, yet what could be more political than the professional organizations that perpetuate the good of 'boy system, which discriminates and denies the Third World people?' Student Senate funds about 28% of total funding for students in law, pharmacy and engineering.
It's been more than 10 years since the women's movement trenchantly defined politics. Politics is how you live your life, not who you vote for. Only the naive and informed could fail to understand how complex and interconnected are all our choices, from what we eat and how we
Not only does Henry misrepresent his motives, but the information he presents is false. He fails to mention a single direct service of the KU-Yu, that was provided or is providing the following services: the KU-Krute KU Committee on South Africa; Anti-Draft and Latin American Solidarity; the Child Advocacy Project; Urban Plunge; poetry readings; myriad films and speakers and co-sponsorship of museums such as the Roger Fischer Lecture, KU Women's Week, Women's Health Fair and more.
Finally, I have to say that it is impossible to separate Henry's hypocritical editorial from the various forms of harassment that recently have plagued the KU-Y and individual members: the Senate vice president's file of leaflets that he thinks are subversive; rightist graffiti outside our office; harassing phone calls to my home; Lesbian-gay gaiting; and time-consuming, hostile interviews with two editorial columnists from the Kansan.
dress to what student organizations get Senate funding.
All this opposition certainly indicates that KUY has struck a nerve. Thank the Goddes们 are doing something right, continuing in the KU-Y's defense, in a positive, controversial, political and social advocacy.
Pamela Johnston KU-Y coordinator
TV news important To the editor
Vanessa Herron's recent editorial charis-
tizing television news journalist flaunts
the world's most complex cultures.
One of her main criticisms was the networks seemingly sensational reporting tactics. However "scrapy" or sensational Gerald罗派aura appears to some, he and others like him do something many reporters don't do: Interview the lower- and middle-class American.
To the editor:
B
"W House telling
Because most news sources are public of ficials, some with high incomes, the news favors the affluent and the powerful, a small percentage of Americans. So I find it interesting to review the economically disadvantaged. It gives a truer reflection of street life in America.
R
The print and broadcast media also have a bias against races. In the '60s, blacks only made the news when they tried to attend a segregated school or rioted during the long hot summers. And whoever头 of Iran before November 1979?
How and impli anye
The avuncular Walter Cronkite, himself a former print journalist, even admits people rely solely on TV for news. They should read newspapers and magazines for detail and analysis.
Herron confuses superficiality with differences in the media. TV journalism covers the newsiness of an event. It doesn't trace an issue's history back to Adam.
Locally, broadcast news is expanding. WDAF-TV will soon have 30 minutes of local news at 5 a.m. and at KCUM radio has had its TV talk-form since last spring, although its TV counterpart no longer broadcasts instant messages after presidential addresses. They are shown at 10:30 instead.
She also charges TV with spending one-third of its time with commercials. She obviously hasn't noticed that Kansas latently, or else she would have noticed the nearly half its space is given to advertisement.
I contend TV news is just as believeable as newspapers. For there, no one can see the videotape of history in the making. A videotape is worth 1,000 words.
What is that mote in the broadcast journalist's eye when there is a log in the print journalist's eye?
Steve Obermeier KJHK radio student news director
- Fish sauce from THAILAND • Nori from JAPAN