University Daily Kansan, April 4.1985
OPINION
Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
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A cracking wall
The Wall of Separation used to be a magnificent object. It stood broad and beautiful, stretching in front of any government office that wanted to enter a religious battle
Our big, beautiful wall is starting to chip now. It hasn't crumbled yet, but slowly it is cracking.
crumbed yet, but slowly it is becoming Architecturally it was well-built. For years the U.S. Supreme Court had been following the rule of benevolent neutrality in regard to religious questions - the state wouldn't interfere with church business as long as the church didn't try to run the state. And that worked fairly well.Each was civil to, yet separate from, the other.
Somehow, the wall grew weak. And the courts were called in to return individual religious or moral decisions to their proper sphere.
One large crack appeared in 1963, prompting the Supreme Court's ruling against prayer in the classroom.
Court's ruling against privateAnother crack opened in 1973 when some states tried to stop women from having abortions during the first six months of pregnancy. In its decision in Roe vs. Wade, the court ruled against state interference and found the decision to have an abortion to be a private, moral one.
Those weren't the only hints of weakness. Since the abortion ruling, the Supreme Court has ruled on issues such as the right for church groups to use school property and the right for teachers to designate a quiet or meditative time.
The latest crack appeared last week when the court said that public land had to be provided for a privately sponsored Christmas Nativity scene. The court upheld an appellate court decision that said a Nativity scene did not "advance religion in general or Christian faith in particular."
The Supreme Court itself did not issue a ruling. It ended up with a tie vote, 4-4. But by allowing public land to be used in a private, religious observance, it made another chink in the wall.
wan.
The entity that once protected the wall has now begun to chip away at it. The Wall of Separation should stand now as it has in the past. It's not too late to repair the damage.
Media mergers
The recent purchase of ABC by Capital Cities Communications Inc. for $3.5 billion surprised people like the entry of the Trojan horse into the walled city after a long siege. After all, the fortress of the big networks already seemed threatened by Sen. Jesse Helms, R.N.C., and his Fairness in Media group, who say they want to take over CBS.
But media mergers, like all business mergers, require individual review. No general assault of the communications industry has occurred yet.
Many think Capital Cities' friendly takeover of ABC will benefit both companies, which mostly have operated in different parts of the industry. Mergers can help everyone by providing better management practices, money for capital improvements and, importantly for media, support in legal proceedings.
Mergers can also harm the free flow of information that this nation considers vital. For that reason, the Federal Communications Commission since 1934 has operated under a law establishing the public interest as the one basis for regulating broadcasting.
Among its regulations, the FCC until recently restricted owners to seven each of AM radio stations, FM radio stations and TV stations. The commission's relaxation of that provision to 12 of each kind of station proved, in fact, to be the trigger for the ABC acquisition.
Broadcasting is changing rapidly as technology improves. The protection of the big networks — whose domination has written almost all of television's history — is not necessary. But protection of the public interest is.
The FCC must continue to ensure that a wide variety of unrelated sources exist to generate and circulate news.
SBA battle reveals spenders, cutters
Many interesting battles are being fought in the budget war now going on in Congress and the White House. One such battle is over the future of the Small Business Administration.
Although it is not a colorful or politically sexy topic, its outcome will reveal just how committed the president and Congress are to cutting federal spending. We want to get back of the SBA, but the members want to keep it alive, has a lot of support in Congress.
To set the stage: the SBA is the federal government's attempt to assist small business formation. It provides disaster relief to farmers and small business. It gives relief to firms that suffer from changing economic conditions. The SBA also conducts training programs for entrepreneurs.
graths. At a glance the SBA appears to be one of the wiser investments of taxpayer money. Small business is the engine of American economic growth: Warren Brookes, in "Economy in Mind," reports that between 1968 and 1976, nearly two-thirds of all new jobs created in the economy were generated by businesses employing 20 workers or less.
tions and innovations per research dollar as medium-sized firms, and nearly 24 times as many as the larger firms.
A National Science Foundation study, Brookes continues, found that between 1953 and 1973 small firms produced four times as many inventors.
Need more be said? Capitalism thrives only to the extent small business that the business agency at the federal level would be a good thing.
Unfortunately, the government, true to its nature, took another good idea and hungled it. Edward Hud-
BRYAN
DANIEL
Staff
Columnist
gins, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, in a recent article in Reason magazine, summarized the deficiencies of the SBA. In an nutshell, he says the SBA is "relatively ineffective in generating new business; even worse, it misdirects opportunities for entrepreneur who may have been able to make better use of them."
The SBA's raison d'etre is to provide seed money to new firms. But, Hudgins notes, of the $3.65
billion lent in fiscal 1984, 80 percent of the beneficiaries were "double dipers" receiving assistance for the second time. Negatively put, only 20 percent of the loan commitments were to new start-up businesses. Doctors and dentists, good credit risks, received $143 million.
The second major problem according to Hudgins is the exorbitant default rate on the loans. In 1984 around 18 percent of the loans were defaulted, and a tremendous improvement over the 40 percent default rate posted in 1982.
Although the default rate is improving, this has been accomplished primarily by tightening the qualifications necessary to get government approval. In contrast, criticism of the SBA is searching for "safe" businesses in which to invest.
But then the purpose for having a SBA in the first place is defeated: Tighter qualifications cut out those who need SBA help the most, and the business can work with businesses that can and should deal with private financial institutions.
The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), a major backer of the SBA — even though, in a recent poll, 50 percent of its members had never heard of its existence — admits the agency's deficiencies but would rather reform the SBA than junk it.
NFIB spokesman Jim Weidman wants the SBA to stop making new direct loans and just work on the outstanding loans. He also would like to see the agency budget cut by 60 percent and turned into a "user-financed service provider."
Again, if the SBA is to provide no direct loans to start-ups, why have it at all? And if it is to be transformed into a user-financed service, why not cut the budget 100 percent rather than just 60 percent?
The whole idea itself, the government giving a helping hand to a segment of the economy that plays vital a role, is hard to oppose. But, as Donald Lambo writes, the SBA plays an almost negligible role in the current economic growth. Less than two-tenths of 1 percent of all small business, 21,461 out of 14 million, received any aid at all.
The SBA's existence, however, is almost guaranteed: It has two committees in the Congress, both of which look after their own. It will be an uphill battle for the administration if it's to carry the day.
Reagan, for his part, has said no to the budget bloating of farmers and other special interests. Stay the course, Mr. President. Cutting out the SBA will send a strong signal to the country that even the interests of political supporters will be subordinated to the national interest.
Budget balancing: by law or by fact?
WASHINGTON — President Reagan wants it both ways.
After submitting a budget proposal that shows the government will be $180 billion further in debt next year even if Congress approves all his proposals, Reagan then urged Congress to approve a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget.
The obvious contradiction raises two questions. If the president wants a balanced budget, why doesn't he submit one to Congress? Second, how would a constitutional amendment help the government balance its books?
On the first point, Treasury Secretary James Baker defended the president's decision not to submit a balanced budget.
Baker, testifying before the House Budget Committee recently, said, "A balanced budget, if presented overnight, would result in some very difficult choices for a lot of people."
Although Reagan asked for a balanced budget amendment, he supported the Baker.
sant the president "never thought it should be implemented cold turkey or overnight." However, he said Reagan still would like to see the budget brought into balance some day, and he called the $50 billion in proposed budget cuts a first step toward that end.
On the second point, supporters of the idea of a balanced budget
But requiring a balanced budget won't make the decisions of where to cut any easier. Just saying "you have to" doesn't make it so.
MARY BETH FRANKLIN
United Press International
amendment argue that it would force Congress to stand up to special interest groups that demand more spending than the government can afford.
worthy goal and cutting federal spending is a monstrous task, but wouldn't it be better for the president to point the way with his own budget proposal rather than just blaming Congress for its excesses?
Reagan's $974 billion budget certainly lets the country know where he stands — more defense and less spending on social programs — but it offers little chance of ever reaching the balanced budget goal that he has preached since 1980.
Admittedly, a balanced budget is a
preacher. Reagan has governed over the largest deficits in history — larger in fact then the deficits of all the previous presidents combined. The current sea of red ink — topping $200 billion for the year and a cumulative debt of more than $1 trillion — is due in part to his huge tax cut program and unprecedented military buildup.
As Seen, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. pointed out during a recent Senate Appropriations Committee hearing: "The president has not lost a major spending or tax vote over the last four years." Why, with that kind of
record, he asked, can Reagan not propose and pass a balanced budget?
"Because we don't have a funded budget amendment," Baker argued. "Even members of the predecessor's staff can Sen. Lowell Weickner, R-Coun., seem to unable to grasp the logic of the mystical budget amendment."
Weicker said Reagan's request for a balanced budget amendment was like "the quarterback leaving the team and asking you to wilt and yelling we want a touchdown."
"Why does he need it?" he asked.
"Nothing in the law precludes him from sending up a balanced budget now."
now
"He needs it to give us the political will to bring about the balanced budget." Baker responded.
budget.
An angry Weider shot back, "I don't want a lecture on political will. The dollars are there in areas you won't touch — defense spending, revenue raising and entitlements. The only courage in this budget comes down on the weakest in our society."
Public TV channels just can't match 'Rich and Famous'
A friend of mine asked if I had seen some wonderfully cultured television show recently presented on Chicago's public broadcasting station.
That's what everybody always says in Chicago, and I suppose it's the same in other parts of the country. If you want to see thoughtful drama or fine music or shows with deep social significance, you are supposed to watch public broadcasting.
When I told him that I hardly ever watch that channel, he looked amazed.
"You don't watch it?" he said.
"But that's the only station that shows anything of quality."
caution.
Well, maybe they have such shows,
but they're never there when I turn
my set on.
No matter when I look, all I ever see on PBS is one of four shows:
see on PBS is one of your favorite.
1. Insects making love. Or maybe
they are murdering each other. With
2. A lion walking along with a dead antelope in its jaws. I don't know how many times I've seen that same mangy lion dragging that poor antelope into a bush. The tourist bureau in Africa must bring him out every time a man is stabbed, but why is he, why do they keep showing it? Does somebody at PBS think that we must be taught that lions don't eat pizza?
insects, it's hard to tell the difference. But after a day's work, my idea of fun isn't watching a couple of bugs run around in the room or trying to give each other hickies.
3. Some spiffy dressed, elderly Englishman sitting in a tall-backed chair in a room that is paneled in dark wood. He is speaking to a woman who wears a World War I uniform and skirts before a crackling fireplace.
The older bloke says things like:
"Well, Ralph, see you're back from
the front. Jolly good luck that you weren't killed. Sorry to hear about your brother. Bloody bad luck, that.
Shell took his head clean off. Oh, well, we must go on. Will you be joining us for dinner."
MIKE ROYKO
Syndicated Columnist
And the younger man says:
"Thank you, father."
4. A station announcer talking about what great shows they have and urging us to send more money. The last time I tuned in, the announcer was talking about how great the next show was going to be.
He talked about it for so long that I dozed off. When I awoke, he was talking about how great the show had been. Before I could get to the dial, two insects started making love again.
That's it. That's all I ever see
That s t. That's all I ever see.
Wait, I forgot. There are a couple of others.
or maybe skimmy, bearded, squeaky-eyed, wimpy guy from Seattle does a cooking show. I have never seen a grown man get so excited about sauturing a Chinese pea pod. He even jiggles the pan so that the pea pod flips in the air. I guess he does that to prove that he's macho.
And there's a show in which an intellectual carpenter clumps around somebody's old house and they talk about refinishing the woodwork. The last time I happened to tune in, the intellectual carpenter and a Yuppie couple were standing in the upstairs
john and the young woman was talking about improvements she was considering for her old toilet.
Now, let's say you've driven on the crowded expressways to and from your stress-filled job. You've finally made it home, had a couple of beers to calm your nerves, and eaten dinner, and you sit down to watch some TV.
And there is this woman pointing at her toilet bowl and saying: "We are now working on the problem of the loud gurgle."
That's entertainment?
talking about how she was mysteriously drawn to visit Egypt because she is convinced that in another existence, many centuries ago, she lived there.
or Those who are very best kind of trash, as a matter of fact. And I have found it on a show called "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous."
what's entertained.
When I explained this to my cultured friend, he said: "What kind of trash do you prefer?"
Recently, they had Lana Turner on, showing off her face-lift and
And I don't doubt her. Maybe in the good old days, Lana was a camel.
Regardless of what she was, it was better than hearing about gurgling toilets.
On another segment, the rich and famous were shown at a big party, wolfing down pounds of belugas caviar and quartes of $80 champagne. Sure, it was disgusting, conspicuous consumption. But I'd rather watch that than that damn lion conspicuously consuming the dead antelope.
And if there is a starlet in a bikini who has been overlooked by the rich and famous cameras, she must be hiding.
"Ah, that's what I'm interested in," sneered my cultured friend.