Page 4 University Daily Kansan, February 27, 1981
Opinion
Scrap self-supporting postal service
In 1971, a rather radical experiment began. The old Post Office Department, sometimes corrupt and often inefficient, was reorganized and withdrawn from the executive branch of the federal government. Thereborn mail service was christened the United States Postal Service and charged with the twin goals of being a semi-autonomous operation and a financially self-supporting agency.
After 10 years of trying to make that experiment work, the USPS now believes it's finally on solid ground.
But that "solid" ground is dependent upon several not-so-solid premises. First, it assumes that the postal service will continue to be granted postage rate increases when it says it needs them; in this case, that means first-class postage would go up to 20 cents next month. It also assumes that the USPS will continue unpopular cost-cutting measures, such as the proposal to end mail delivery on Saturdays. And it further assumes automation of mail delivery.
The USPS is in an unusual position because, unlike other government agencies, it's supposed to be paying its
own way. Yet when it chalks up its annual deficits, as it's done nine out of the last 10 years, it still goes to Congress for handouts. Thus, because the USPS has broken even only once in 19 years, the entire concept of a self-supporting postal service should be questioned.
Add inflation to the improbability of a self-supporting mail service and most of the postal system's other woes come to light. Rising costs, mostly for labor, have time and time again forced the USPS to raise its postage rates—which in turn causes a drop in the volume of mail processed because people find it more expensive to use the mail. The decreased volume eventually reflects itself in increased processing costs, therefore mandating another rate hike.
Most importantly, despite its one break-even year, in 1979, the future of the UPSS is not promising. Postmaster General William Bolger has said that first-class postage must go to 20 cents this month to keep 1981 from becoming another deficit year, but the postal service's own wild bureaucracy that decides on rate hikes has pared that figure down
to 18 cents, with Bolger vowing to return later in the year for the full 20.
Postage rates have been increasing every two or three years for the past decade, and each time rates have gone up, there's been a public outcry. But the rate increases are only a symptom of the postal service's illness, which is a bad case of delusion - the delusion that it can achieve self-sufficiency through higher postage rates.
It's time the postal system was put back under executive control and its deficits willingly funded by Congress rather than through higher rates. Skimming some of the fat from the bloated defense budget easily could make up the costs of keeping postage at a reasonable rate.
The old Post Office Department wasn't perfect, but it had the right idea—moving the mail isn't a break-even proposition, and it's silly to try to make it so. Congress created the USPS, and, for the good of the country, it had better dissolve it before the USPS strangles itself on its own ever-increasing postage rates.
Olvmpic hockey players were real heroes
Ice is hard and cold but it doesn't lie.
There is truth in its gleam, in the crimp glide of a slender blade across its solid surface. With unsurpassed purity, it hides nothing, pretends nothing; with crystal transparency, it reveals nothing, and everything, at once. Ice is now, it has no was or will be, simply is: a frozen master, raw and clean, simple and mean, with a nasty but sincere bite.
And so, therefore, are its dependents, men of grace and stamina, as if of ice born, nurtured by ice, driven and dumped by it, living on it, for it, because of it; theirs is a fast, rough life of skates and sticks, fiercely pursued on the tough but temporary surface of frozen water. They are quick, like ice, and fleeting, immediately brilliant, like the instant flash of a bursting firecreaker, but doomed to ice's thaw as the firecreaker is to fizzle.
These men play hockey, and, like the ice, they are hard and cold, but they don't lie.
Thus, it was a year ago this week that a handful of these robust fellows told us, told the world, the truth about themselves—that they, the U.S. Olympic hockey team, were the best in the world. It was only a year ago, in the depths of uncompromising truth of ice and skaters, of pucks and goals, slammed into our hearts like a great slapshot of joy and patriotism.
It couldn't have come at a better time. There were Soviets in Afghanistan, hostages in Iran, boycotted summer Olympics in Moscow. There were, quite clearly, doubts about America, both
at home and abroad. Of the eight football teams at Lake Placid, the U.S. team was ranked seventh, a particularly dismal seventh at that, for in America, Olympic teams are a one-shot deal, hardly competition, one would think, for professional'* teams representing other nations.
Not to mention that just weeks before the Games the Soviet team, ranked first at Lake
AMY HOLLOWELL
But truth prevailed. The Americans were truly hockey players; they were truly amateurs and these were truly just hockey games. When it all ended, after a dramatic 4-3 victory over the Russian team and a gold-clinching 4-2 victory over Finland, morning, the Americans were truly heroes.
Placid, had thoroughly crushed the young Americans, 10-3, in Madison Square Garden. And aside from defeating the young Olympians (the younger U.S. Olympic hockey team in history, averaging 22 years old), the Russians had soundly baken the NHL All-Star team. Moreover, the United States hadn't won a hockey gold medal since 1960.
"Heroes," in retrospect, seems a bit grandiose for this bunch, more than half of which had
learned their game on the frozen lakes and backyard ponds of Minnesota, without refereres, blue lines or penalty boxes. Even their coach, Herb Brooks, came from St. Paul's Payne Avenue, a tough strip of the city's toughest turf, where skaters survive and good skaters rule.
But according to definition, a "hero" is "a prominent or central person taking an admirable part in any remarkable action or event." And so they were. Jim Craig was admirable in the goal, as was Mike Eruzione scoring the winning goal against the Soviets, a truly remarkable event. But it took more than 20 years for Brooks, Baker, Strobel, Christoff, McClanahan, Johnson and the entire 20-man squad. They were all central and prominent; they were all heroes.
Classic tragic heroes are heroic in proportion to their nobleness; the more noble, the greater the fall from grace. The heroic gauge for the young Olympians seems to have been the inverse; the more humble the beginning, the greater the rise, the more remarkable the victories, the more triumphant when rawd and ragged, relying on stamina and determination rather than on finesse and professionalism, came from nowhere and won the gold. Pure and simple.
Emotionally, America responded with resounding pride, a sudden surge of patriotism gushing across an open-armed nation. Flag-bearing storms stormed the streets of Lake Superior and the Star-Spangled Banner" echoed from coast to team. And all for the love of a hockey队 to team.
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Ah, but it was much more, or maybe it really wasn't anything more at all. These were real boys, the kind of guys we grew up with at the neighborhood ice rink, the ones we watched on high school squads, skating with their hearts. When they scored, they shouted, raised their sticks above their heads and did it over the ice, then dropped down the ice on the tips of their skates, leaping into a grand heap that buried goalie Craig and the American flag.
"Maybe we were what everybody hoped they could be," said Eruzione. "We were their dreams. We were young kids. We slew the dragon."
They were real. Their victory was unquestionable. Their gold was gold, their joy was joy. They were true to their sport, to their team. They played their best and won. They were hard and cold, and like the ice, these boys didn't lie.
Central Kansas, Australia different as well as distant
Around 8 p.m. on a balmy evening last summer, I sat on the steps beside Flint Hall and looked out over the lights of Lawrence. I had nowhere to sleep, and I hadn't eaten. All I owned was locked away in suitcases, and I knew no one. For the first time in years, I cried.
It was somewhere over the Pacific between Sydney, Australia, and Los Angeles when the thought finally hit home to me that I would not see my family, friends or country again for a
PETER
SOMERVILLE
long time-perhaps a few years. When a return air ticket costs around $2,000, one doesn't visit home over the weekends. Still, I had my mind set on seeing more of the world.
"Why Lawrence," people asked incredulously, "from Australia?" (I soon began to wonder why myself.) I returned to the United States, after spending 1974 in New York as a high school exchange student, to take advantage of graduate studies in journalism. There were other reasons for my interest in the KU catalog, the fact that the KU catalog was one of the few shelved in the U.S. Consulate library in Sydney.
Whenever I feel down in the dumps and have the dreadful feeling that I'm lost in another world, I take great solace (apart from the port bottle, in dreaming of a steamling lamb roast with baked potatoes, baked pumpkin and onions and a side of minted peas, followed by caramel pavilion. It then sit back, contented, and feel that I am being slowly very comforting, when Arctic winds howl through the room to return to one's birthright and dream of the good old-fashioned pleasures.
What do I miss? Not too much, except perhaps,
the glory of fresh tropical fruit and those
squeaky-clean, sun-drenched beaches. The surf.
Clear blue Kansas skies remind me of home.
At KCI, my luggage appeared magically on one of those little metal merry-go-round things, looking somewhat battered. Then the came in part-drummaged two 44-pound suitcases (one minus a handle), a hefty cabin bag and a sultholder filled with dirty underwear and magazines stolen from a collection of airplanes, out to Lawrence.
A taxi and two buses later, I was delivered to the office of Foreign Student Services. And I felt strange! Pity help those other homeless, tempestuous people in our country. McDonald's hamburger, and I laughed loudly.
English? Yes, that is what most Australians speak. I just wanted to clear that point up—having been complimented by a well-meaning individual on how well I had mastered the language. And no, Australia is nowhere near Germany. That's Austria, folks.
I admit travel is a sort of disease with me, as I feel incomplete without mixing into the world outside my own. Each day is for learning and understanding—as well as for having a good time.
I remember the day when I asked a student if, he had a rubber I could borrow. He looked horrified until I realized that what I really needed was an eraser. And what always amuses me is to hear students going to "root" for a tree to be in "narrack" in Australia; "root" might leave a hole in a position—just as if that person hadn't used an eraser—er, sorry, rubber.
Of Australia, most Americans know very much. If it sank into the Pacific, informed Americans, always my friends, would be sorry. But the masses would not know where it had been. Perhaps this is partly Australia's fault, as we Australians do so little to illuminate our true character. Americans are among the most polite and friendly people on God's earth, but my goah, it seems they still believe there's not much more to that earth than the good old United States of America! On the whole, I know, Americans are articulate, concerned, active people.
Cultural faux pas work both ways. If there are any Randys reading this column, beware of wandering onto Australian soil, where "Randy" means "horn" means here. It struck me as being mildly advantageous to have my name changed to Randy Somerville, but the legal authorities were the riding upon my return to Australia, would be too great a strain on my professional career.
Pot Shots
Years ago, white-haired matrons organized flower shows—annual events heralding the beginning of spring. Nowadays, on college campuses anyway, the pastel colors of Chemise
Spring has sprung,
The grass is riz.
I wonder where the Izods is?
But I am left out. I am unfashionably healthy. I have no problems eating, except at the end of the month when the money's low. No problems sleeping, except during mid-terms. I haven’t
It is an age of strange and wonderful maladies: Disco knee, telephone ear, tenni elbow and the new kidney aliment caused by the over-zealous riding of mechanical bulls.
Lacoste have replaced crouches and daddials as a sure sign that Padre and Lauderdale are just another kind of
This year's cheerful alligators out of the closet early, brought out into the open by unusually warm weather for late February. But whenever it occurs, it's a thrilling sight to witness. After a dreary winter of grays, brownns and beiges, the foxes magically appear in every color and hue of summer. Their eyes are even multicolored. This year's best planting is, as always, in front of Wescoe Hall. The sorority committee once again deserve our thanks. Nice job, ladies.
Nuts to those silly swallows in California or Washington's cherry blossoms. For me, nothing can compare with the brilliance of a kelly green Izod walking proudly down Jayhawk Boulevard.
been to Watkins Hospital once since the school year began.
I can't bemoan the intolerable waits for a doctor. I can't gripe about having contracted something in the waiting room that is worse than what I already had when I went in.
Soon, however, I may change all that. KU Health Services has requested a $2 increase per semester in student health fees, which would move the fee from $4 to $6 per semester. That's $5 I would be throwing away because I am such a quiet soul; $1 I would be spending to subsidize the echidna of all the smiffy people who run for pulps and prescriptions at the drop of a Kleenex.
Well, if the fee increase takes effect, you can be sure I'm going to get good and sick next semester like everyone else. I've got to get my money's worth.