University Daily Kansan, April 9, 1985
OPINION
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kananau (USP5 600-440) is published at the University of Kansas, 110 Staffer Flint Hall. Lawrence Kananau 60645, daily during the regular school year and Wednesday and Friday during the summer session, excluding Saturday, Sunday, holidays and finals periods Second class postage paid at Lawrence. Kananau 66044. Subscriptions by mail are $15 for six months or in fourous County and $18 for six months or $3 a year outside the county. Student membership is free. For any other address changes to the University Daily Kananau, 110 Staffer Flint Hall. Lawrence, Kananau 66045
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Gambling vote
A statewide vote on pari-mutuel gambling almost became a reality this year. But in Topeka last week, the House defeated a resolution to amend the Kansas Constitution to legalize such pari-mutuel gambling on horse and dog races.
The Senate passed the resolution March 25 by 29-11, and the House Federal and State Affairs Committee endorsed it. But an amendment requires a two-thirds vote in each House, and this one fell 10 votes short of the 84 needed from the House's 125 members.
The issue probably has died for the session. If it had passed, and Gov. John Carlin had signed the resolution, the amendment would have appeared on the ballot of the 1986 general election.
Placing the issue of pari-mutuel betting before Kansas voters — something that never has happened — is still a good idea. Whether or not pari-mutuel gambling will benefit the state, enough people think so to make a statewide vote reasonable.
The issue keeps taking the Legislature's time, and a vote of the citizens would, if nothing else, send the amendment back to pasture for a while. A legislator's vote for statewide balloting on the amendment should not be construed as a desire to have gambling tracks in Kansas but as an attempt to get a resolution of the question.
Proponents say pari-mutuel gambling will bring economic growth and add tax revenues to the state because millions of dollars being spent in adjacent states will stay in Kansas. One study shows numbers as high as 13,000 year-round jobs and $47 million in taxes.
Opponents say the figures are misleading because much of the money spent on gambling simply will be diverted from other spending within the state. Even more, many opponents argue that regulation will be difficult. Their fears about parimutuel gambling stem considerably from reports of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation that organized crime is involved in bingo operations in the state.
Approval this year of a statewide vote would have left plenty of time — about 18 months — for all citizens to understand the issue. The proper decision would have been to let the people's wisdom prevail in November 1986.
War on cocaine
There is a growing realization in the United States that the fight against drug trafficking is a war, not just a series of skirmishes.
And in wars, there will be casualties, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration agents killed in Mexico and others around the world who place their lives on the line every day.
But the sad truth is that the war will be lost unless the desire to consume the cocaine, heroin and other deadly substances is curtailed.
The drug traffickers always will have the upper hand, because they can outspend any government to buy the latest arms, communication equipment and transportation.
There are several proposals floating around on how to deal with the problem in nations that produce drugs — for example, Bolivia and Colombia.
Sen. Paula Hawkins, R-Fla., has suggested cutting off U.S. aid to nations that have not made sufficient progress in controlling drug traffic at the source of production.
Others have suggested that cocaine be legalized, taxed and sold under controlled circumstances.
A third proposal is that the United States should buy the entire coca crop in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, take the leaves out to sea and burn them.
A report on this proposal said that the United States and other consuming countries would save billions of dollars in drug enforcement costs by taking these steps.
But all these proposals miss the point. Withholding U.S. aid would damage the fragile democracies in the regions and destroy whatever incentive exists for these countries to make any effort to crack down on drug production.
The other proposals would raise more problems than they would solve, because as long as there is a market for the goods, someone will supply them.
The only long-term way to rid the country of the scourge of drug traffickers is for the market to dry up. This is the one obstacle suppliers cannot overcome by bribery, force or murder.
Until that happens, the United States will be engaged in a costly, losing fight against the law of supply and demand.
The University Daily Kansan invites individuals and groups to submit guest columns. Columns should be typewritten and double-spaced and should not exceed 625 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. Columns can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject columns.
GUEST COLUMNS
Hilter had been defeated, and the world breathed a sigh of well-earned relief and prayed that peace finally had come at last — the Post War Dream. But even before U.S. and Soviet soldiers clasped hands in friendship and before the last German infantryman surrendered, the Allied nations already had decided how Europe would be divided.
U.N. repays U.S. efforts with abuse
President Franklin D. Roosevelt naively thought that the active participation of the Soviet Union in the Nations somehow would civilize them.
He was quite wrong.
Instead, the active participation of the Soviet Union in the United Nations has led to an international body that frivolously wastes money, supports violence in the name of "national liberation" inspired by the communists and serves as a clearing out sentiment against the United States.
In the current Ethiopian crisis, the United Nations is going to spend about $74 million on a building complex so Ethiopia's problems can be studied. That plan was announced in an update from the World Health Organization, a group sponsored by the U.N.
All the United Nations will find out is that Ethiopia is suffering from a drought, poor agricultural planning.
and a third-rate dictator who would rather spend financial aid on his coronation than his people.
However, this isn't the worst of it. A full three-fourths of the U.N. budget goes to salaries and related expenses. Victor Riesel, syndicated labor writer, reports that mid-career professionals at the United Nations
PAUL
CAMPBELL
alism - meaning the United States
Guest Columnist
average about $60,000 a year. Senior employees with 30 years of selfless service to mankind (and their pocketbooks) are given six figure checks — $150,000 is a fair average — as going away presents.
this, now this much is not the Soviet Union's fault directly. Perhaps this is merely indicative of world-class bureaucratic excess. But the Soviet Union is the U.N.'s problem child. Rather than becoming civilized, it has been left to its very dea of peacekeeping that the United Nations once nurpured.
— and the Soviets have taken their campaign to the United Nations. In its effort to establish Marxist regimes around the world, the Soviets have given weapons and pushed for support of the Palestine Liberation Organization and South-West Africa. In 2015, the U.N. General Assembly in the U.N. General Assembly in the
Lenin once said that he would destroy the forces of world imperi-
These organizations have observer status in U.N. matters. Naturally, the United Nations does not extend the same consideration to the Afghan Freedom Fighters, the Solidarity of Poland or the Nicaraguan rebels.
Also, the PLO has had access to $6 million to buy arms and stage demonstrations against the Israelis. SWAPO has had access to perhaps $40 million, according to Ralph Guest of the New York Times group.
Lastly, the United Nations has become a focal point for propaganda directed against the United States, because the Soviet Union has managed to keep U.S. "atractics" — support for Israel and our refusal to pass the Law of the Sea accord, for instance — in the spotlight.
Also, the Soviet Union insists that the wealthy (and implicit, guilty) United States surrender money and technology to the underdeveloped
world. Naturally, when the United States starts asking embarrassing questions along the lines of what the money will be used for, the Soviet Union begins leading the Third World in chants calling the United States "imperialist swine! . . . imperialist swine!"
And the sadstest thing of all is that, the United States foots a full one-third of the U.N. annual budget. This amounts to almost $2 billion a year, as calculated from a U.N. annual report to Congress.
I say "enough." Two billion may only be a drop in the bucket when compared with our national defiance, or we see throwing good money after bad.
It may be time to reconsider completely the future role of the United States in the United Nations. Specifically, I think the United States has more to lose by remaining in the United Nations than by getting out and taking the international heat that undoubtedly would arise.
The dreams of the world pulling out of the wreckage of World War II are dead, and the United Nations is, at best, a sorry testament to "world peace." The United States should have nothing more to do with the United Nations.
Paul Campbell, Tucson, Ariz. sophomore, is a geography major.
He said the park district could not afford to have full-time supervisors at every park.
"If the park district has to pay the majority of that settlement, we are going to have to take a cold, hard look at all of our equipment, and even the idea of having playlots at all," he said.
The attorneys for the boy and his family seemed pleased with the decision. But Maurice Thomasim told me that he was Chicago Park District. Was unset.
Suing threatens services
Is nothing still an accident?
A reader from Barrington, Ill., was confused and pensive about news reports of a huge court award to a child who died in the Chicago park and was severely injured.
The boy — he was almost 2 years old at the time — was playing on the slide in Chicago's Hamlin Park on Sept. 1, 1978. He was climbing up the side with an apical shape "torufo slide." His mother was on the steps just behind him.
In the lawsuit, the park district and the two companies were charged with negligence. The suit also said that the ground should have been supervised
The boy fell through the railing on the side of the steps and landed on his head on the asphalt below. He suffered a skull fracture and brain damage in the fall; his left side was paralyzed, he has speech and vision problems and he has to wear a helmet for protection
The boy is 8 years old now. In a Chicago courtroom last month, a settlement was reached under which he will receive a minimum of $9.5 million — and possibly as much as $28.8 million if he lives to be 75.
The money must be paid by the Chicago Park District; Miracle Recreation Equipment Co. of Grinell, Iowa, which manufactured the slide; and All-State Fence Co. of Chicago, which installed the slide.
"I can't imagine a mother letting a 1- to 2-year-old go up a 12-foot slide." Thominet said. "That sounds preposterous. What good would it have done to have a supervisor who would have done a mother a wound would have done if a supervisor had told her she could not go up the 'tornado'!"
Thominet said that, next spring, all of the "tornado" slides would be torn down
Which brings us to the reader from Barrington. I should say right here
that she was full of genuine sympa thy for the young boy and his family
"I feel for the family of this child, she said. "The anguish of being right next to your child when he falls with such a catastrophic result is not in my personal experience, and I hope it never will be, ever"
Then she made her point:
"Can a mother take the risk of taking her young child up to the top of a tornado slide, with every good intention, and have an accident?"
"Do accidents happen anymore?" She expanded on that thought: "Can someone slip on the ice in the park and say, 'I wasn't looking — I didn't see the patch of ice and slipped and broke my leg'."
"Who is responsible for a child in a park? The park district or the parent?" How sterile an environment do we need or do we want? Do we need a school or a park, but 1 year-old children in the head. I'm sure with dire consequences in
some instances. Do we eliminate swings?
"Parents and children have accidents; they make wrong decisions; they turn around for an instant and the accident happens."
The woman was asking this: With multimillion-dollar settlements for accidents like this one, is the time coming when no public facilities are available for our use because of the risk of injury or death from time coming when doctors will not accept risky cases because of the threat of malpractice suits?
We seem headed in that direction. The concept of accidents merely happening — with no one at fault — seems to be disappearing. And yet this whole area of discussion is far from simple. That young boy needs much medical care, and who is going to pay for it?
As the woman from Barrington said: "In this child's instance, the bills must be astronomical. Where do they obtain the money to pay them?"
"Our family lives very well, but we would be hard-pressed to provide the money to cover the high cost of giving medical and educational treatment to meet this child's needs. Where do people get the money?"
"I don't have any answers. All I know is that eliminating the large slides and restricting play is not the answer. Defective equipment should be off the market and out of the parks. But accidents happen. Where do we draw the line? And who takes care of these children?"
All good questions. Questions like these must have been coming up over the ages. But suddenly — in a time of soaring medical costs and multimillion-dollar court judgments — they seem especially urgent. No heroes, no villains. Just questions that perhaps have no good answer
WASHINGTON — The theme is deep in American folklore: Br'er Rabbit escapes from Br'er Fox by pleading not to be thrown in the briar patch; Tom Sawyer persuades his buddies that whitewashing a fence is a rare treat.
Has President Reagan been reading Joel Chandler Harris or Mark Twain? There are some on Capitol Hill who think the president, who has been stung in the past when he tried to uncover the truth of benefits, is setting up Congress to do what he wants to do but doesn't dance or care to propose.
President lets others take risks
There even are some who think such a bait-and-switch strategy may be in place on the issue of the defense
ARNOLD
SAWISLAK
United Press International
Suspicions about the president's intentions were aroused by his reply to a Jan. 9 news conference question about freezing cost-of-living in federal Social Security and efficacious as a means of reducing the federal deficit.
budget, which the president says can't be cut, and taxes, which he says can't be raised.
The president's response was to remind the questioner that he had pledged repeatedly to safeguard existing Social Security benefits, but adding that he might be faced by an "overwhelming bipartisan majority" in Congress demanding a freeze on cost-of-living increases.
He was less equivocal on the subject of defense spending and tax increases, but the response to the Social Security question reminded him that watchers that he is a man who has yielded to the need for compromise before.
"I would have to look at that situation and what I was faced with, with regard to a possible congressional mandate." Reagan said.
A number of students of Reagan's career in public life have said that he was able to do business with the Democrat dominated California Republican party. A short term as governor by skillful applications of political give and take.
And one enthusiastic Reagan supporter in Washington, Sen. Phil Grammar of Texas, said recently that the president has had to compromise on every defense budget he has submitted since he entered the White House and probably would do so again this year.
Gramm said in an interview that Reagan has never been intransigent and that although "he has deep convictions, he also is a skilled politician." The Texas Democrat-republican, who backed Reagan all the way in the 1981-82 budget battles, said the president has made a valid case for increasing the defense budget, but the political situation is such that he will have to bend on the issue.
As for tax increases, Reagan said during the 1984 campaign such a step would have to be a "hass resort"
For politicians, last resorts sometimes arrive sooner rather than later. If a sizable number of lawmakers become convinced that Reagan wants nothing more than to be pushed by Congress, some of the proposals to cut the burgeoning deficits that were supposed to be out of the question may turn up in the Oval Office.