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Tuesday, May 2, 1972
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Garry Wills
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Consumer Protection
The Senate Student Services Committee is considering the establishment of a consumer protection board for the Lawrence area. It is not particularly flattering to regard oneself as an indiscriminate consumer, but that is what most of us are because we do not have sufficient information on products or services to intelligently decide which brand, among the large number available, is the best one offered. A consumer protection board could help to make such information available as well as assist citizens in correcting problems they encounter as consumers.
Many people claim that the government should be taking care of this sort of thing and they may be right. However, the government's resources are spread over a wide variety of projects and the concept of the consumer's need for protection would be more quickly initiated by a group of people exclusively concerned with that need. It is individuals who are spending their money and they should be willing to take the responsibility of making sure they are using their resources in the best way possible. Citizens and using their collective abilities to become knowledgeable about the products being sold in community stores. If people become aware of the quality of various products and buy accordingly the producer of shoddy merchandise will be forced out of business. This kind of action on the part of buyers is at least as effective as legislative action and it cannot be affected by even the most skillful lobbyist.
The government seems to be involved in everything and would become more active in this area with the prodding of a group of citizens who have studied the problem. It is easy to view the government as a huge mysterious
machine and forget that it is actually constituted of people who sometimes have to be made aware of citizens' concerns. A consumer protection group should study the ways in which government power and resources can be used best. It may be that new laws are not needed; more effective enforcement of existing ones may be better. Businessmen would be helped if they did not have to spend time studying new laws which are sometimes unnecessary and unduly wordy—to the amusement of everyone except the person who has to read them.
Although the consumer protection board is to be initiated by University students, the board should seek the active participation of Lawrence residents. Their participation could prove vital to the success of the project and should be recognized as such from the board's inception.
The Senate's purpose could be misinterpreted as another attempt to belittle Lawrence businessmen. However, the board can be a service to businessmen and it should not overlook that possibility. If the dishonest dealer is exposed as such then the honest man is likely to benefit. When businessmen are made aware of the concerns of their patrons it is probable that they will be better able to serve their customers; therefore, both consumers and producers benefit.
The task this committee is setting up for itself will be monumentous if it is taken seriously. The possibilities for the group will probably expand as it begins to function and see what the problems are. Certainly the people on the committee will need encouragement, and even more important, lots of help. I hope that people interested in consumer protection will give their time and effort to a cause that can serve both their University and their community.
Mary Ward
Dole's Emptiness
By MARK BEDNER Kansan Staff Writer
The emptiness of Robert Dole's speech last Thursday night was equalled only by the emptiness of his hecklers' nonsense. Each in his pennant coat contends with the largeness of genocide in a small country many miles away and to the polarization of a large country not so far away.
Twice within the last week this University has been humiliated by the acts of those who chose to boo and heckle rather than to listen. Twice within the last week the speeches of two very different people have go unrecognized for the purpose because they chose the path of self-indulgent disruption. What has their self-indulgence accomplished?
In the case of Senator Dole's speech, the disruptions most likely accomplished little more than they were made of. In the meantime the senator will probably stand confluent with its appearance before a hostile crowd and this ability make the best of an otherwise hopeless cause.
The majority of those who stood in resounding opposition to the continued bloodshed of a distant war could later only hang their heads in
The rare opportunity to question Senator Dole on his voting record, unfailing support of the Nixon administration, and, perhaps even more so, the ethics of serving as Republican National Committee man at the expense of his constituents, was lost in the mad scramble to point an accusing finger. No questions asked, no questions answered. The irony of it all.
shame while the senator and the tinkertoy radicals argued over guilt and cause.
"I am concerned," Robert Kennedy said in a speech given in Kansas two months before his death, "that at the end of it all there will only be more Americans killed, more of our treasure spilled out; and because of the bitterness and hatred on every side of this war more hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese slaughtered."
His words ring true. The death and destruction must stop now. It will not be stopped by immature and reckless behavior, but rather by the diligence and temperance of those people who desire real alternatives and are willing to work quietly to achieve mutual goals. 1972 can be a vintage year in American political history.
Demonstrate Against The War
James Reston, as befits a potentate of the New York Times, has an email where he cannot imagine a larger issue than he question. Who is going to run the present system? He thinks he is a big win because he does not want Nixon to run it.
Indeed, so intent is he on stopping Nixon that he would like to stop all demonstrations as a necessary prelude to his reelection. He treats as the necessary prelude to stopping the war). Big liberals think elections decide everything. (Actually, they come close to deciding nothing.) If Nixon were to decree a dreary establishment drive--that demonstrations turn people off, encourage the enemy, and lock our officials into their intriguation. This, in turn, will cause Nixon's reelection.
That is an easy threat to make- like telling a child if he doesn't stop crying by the end of the day, the sun will set. The odds for Nikon's re-election have been rising. A period when he said he would make the war no longer an issue by 1972. If he can keep that promise, and do his countdown, election tinkering with the economy, and showbite around Mossie, he'd around Peking, he is unbeatable.
the war an issue, to maintain the moral objection to it while selfish arguments about fewer American political types. That will limit numerous people are scared by James Reston talk into conventional electioneering. That is what destroyed the war-protest candidacy of Pete Clocksey. That is what took the edge off 1970 student protests and militant civilians, which meant they could not raise "divisive" issues, and candidates hedged and evaded, as the typical campaign demands—with the result that, less than six months after Cambodia and Laos the My Lai war and the Kent State murders, the war was not an effective issue in the '70 elections.
There is nothing Nixon would like more than to have all the kiddies go off and stuff envelopes for their favorite soups or smoothies, and energies in the Democrats' suicidal
current exercise in mutual mauling. It would reduce issues to a narrow and partisan base—e.g., who is the best anti-war candidate?
The only way to defeat Nixon (if there is a way) is to defeat the war. That cause, good in itself, also will benefit McCain by making him running against Nixon in November. The real enemy is not Nixon but the war. The real aim should not be to put McCannon (or whomever) into the war because but to bring peace to Vietnam.
That is why it would be more practical, today, to join the May 4 Emergency Moratorium than to work with Mr. Bush's anniversary of Kent State. Administration spokesmen would have pooh-poohed, two years ago, the idea that heavy bombing, amid heavy fire, would depress reporters in the spring of this election year.
The nation lazily snoozed on those kind of assurances—which is one reason for the bombing that still goes on. It doesn't make it very easy. We wanted to be conned.
To find out what activities are planned in your area, or to get help in organizing, call or write the Emergence Committee (202) 785-1535, 1414 M Street N.W., Washington, D.C. Better than the driven of James Restoration than the driven of James Restoration
Copyright, 1972, Universal Press Syndicate
James J. Kilpatrick
George Who to George What
YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO. The shouting scarcely had died last Tuesday night in Boston and Philadelphia when the word was passed to have bags in the lobby at 6 a.m. A part of our ggyss band is joining us as we use of us caromed to Ohio, Next week, Nebraska. Or maybe West Virginia? Who knows? It gets to be a blur.
But the blur is not as blurry as it was. The field of Democratic hopefuls, which once had seemed so large, has now dwindled down; and the utterly improbable notion is beginning to take root that the prize may yet go to George S. McGovern.
George who? Two months ago, to borrow a phrase from the late Joe McCarthy, such a prospect
would have seemed the most unthunkable thing one ever thought. Back in February, the Senator from South Dakota was three-four per cent per cell. His only role, it was thought, was to serve as a stalking horse for Ed Koch, who had turned about his last of excitement: "When McGovern enters the room"—pause for ef
fect—"nothing happens."
By Sokoloff
But McGovern is something more. Many voters do indeed understand his positions, especially the one he had against stopping the bombing of the people of Southeast Asia immediately and then get every American out of Indochina lock, stock and barrel as an example of how to speak. McGovern has preempted the anti-war issue; he has reduced Humphrey and Muskie to the me-to-murmurs; and he has the war heats up, the hotter he gets.
How to explain it? Several reasons come to mind. Paradoxically, George Who is benefiting because many voters still do not understand who George is. And they do not especially care. His handsome face is a fresh face. In a time of massive disenchantment, George will be whatever that noun embraces, McGovenn is seen as a man apart. Like George Wallace, he provides a vehicle for protest.
Griff and the Unicorn
The far-out liberalism that served McGovern so well in Wisconsin and Massachusetts is his ability to take care of other regions; and now that his candidacy is being taken seriously, his ideas—for example, his jaw-dropping concepts of tax and welfare reform—will get the serenity he received. He is emerging from George who to George, what. And the doctrinaire "what" of George McGovern embraces an extremism that beyond the extremism once attributed to Barry Goldwater on the right. When McGovern ranked as more than another dark horse, he pushed back, his philosophy went unnoticed. It won't go unnoticed now.
Well, plenty happened in Massachusetts. McGovern took on Edmund Muskie in a head-to-head race, and ran him into the midsize cuts close analysis, it probably will be evident that McGvern ran well everywhere. He was expected to sweep the pointed end of the field, but he was not expected to gobble up the no-nonsense nests of middle Boston. It is hard to believe, but he ate the whole thing. The next day, he was told they will be rough for Hubert Humphrey too. If McGernon can hold his position until the June 6 showdown in California, where the winner takes all, he could win with the roses around his neck.
Put these several factors together, and add a few more—the abstraction of Kennedy, the slow pace of America, the McGovern phenomenon seems less amazing. But when I look at the whole show, at McGovera's winning the nomi- nial contest, I don't see Nixon. I still do not believe it.
A third factor: McGovern throws off no sparks, but he conveys something else: decency.
Copyright 1972
Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
Finally, mundaney, the April flowering of George McGovern has to be credited in significant part to old-fashioned organization, to a methodical tilling of the soil. He has been formally on the trail of this nomination for more than 15 months. He has attracted some of the top professionals in the field of permaculture at Kennedy hands. His campaign management, in a short word, is superb.
kindness, compassion. To a round table jammed with sweaty hands and wrinkled palms, he brings the Galashad touch. He is the ultimate do-gooder, but he arrives on the scene at a moment when voters want to see good done.
"Copyright 1972, David Sokoloff."
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