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Opinion
FOLMSBEE: MCAT SHOULD FOCUS ON SCIENCE, NOT FLASH CARDS
1. 2023年1月，山东省济宁市曲阜市平阴县张家庄村村民委员会、村民大会通过的村民自治章程。
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To the guy juggling in front of Watson Library: Good work.
Brady Morningstar looks like Doug Funnie.
--increased tariffs by 60 percent, causing foreign governments to return the favor, and world trade plummeted by two-thirds. Steve Chu, Obama's energy secretary, recently said he supported raising tariffs on countries that don't institute cap-and-trade.
To the girl handing out papers in front of Wescoe: I'm sorry I completely ignored you.
I love how this week there was an article in the paper on how to get rid of the "r" word and then the comic Chicken Strip uses it. Way to be classy and not funny anyway.
To the girl handing out papers in front of Wescoe:'I'm NOT sorry I completely ignored
If we're in the process of going green, why are we still printing out two-color newsletters?
Just burnt my tongue on a Pop-tart.
This is the girl that was handing out the papers at Wescoe. It was fun and I didn't care if you ignored me or not. I am working toward a good cause. If you don't want to help then you have to live with it not me.
I remember a lot more from last night than you think.
PAGE 5A
F. Y.I., yelling obscene things when walking around campus doesn't make you cool. It means you're immature.
I'm the only person on Watson's third floor. Creepy.
--increased tariffs by 60 percent, causing foreign governments to return the favor, and world trade plummeted by two-thirds. Steve Chu, Obama's energy secretary, recently said he supported raising tariffs on countries that don't institute cap-and-trade.
Spangles commercials are the essence of the devil.
To the blonde idiot-woman at Mass. Street Hookah Saturday night: No, hookah is not illegal. Quite obviously. Why did you even go if you're that stupid?
16,000-plus fans: Way to pack the house!
I miss you. Mom.
People always tell me each cigarette takes seven minutes off my life. That's seven minutes I'm not shitting myself and dependent on others. I'm fine with that.
My boyfriend de-friended me on Facebook. FML.
Hi, Free for All, I love you. I hope this comment gets in the paper. Then I'd be famous.
To the person who told Free for All they're on a boat: I got a nautical-themed pashmina afghan.
EDITORIAL BOARD
In 2005, Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute outlined policy blunders that lengthened the Great Depression. He included policies such as increasing taxes, blocking trade and controlling prices. Many of the mistakes Edwards blames for prolonging the Depression were made in the first 100 days of the FDR presidency and in the first 100 days of the Obama presidency, we are repeating them.
Government repeating mistakes of Depression
The Obama administration, like those of Hoover, FDR and Bush, has chosen to employ fiscal stimulus through deficit spending. Unemployment was high through the 1940s despite Hoover and FDR's stimulus efforts, and Bush's modern attempt you can judge for yourself. Obama's charge for fiscal stimulus is based on the belief that every dollar Obama spends will put about $1.50 into the economy, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal. But studies of this type of policy by the International Monetary Fund and the Università Bocconi concluded that results like this would be unlikely. Based on these two studies, every dollar Obama spends will boost the economy by less than $1.
Obama, like Hoover with his
TODD DAVIDSON
Revenue Act of 1932 and FDR with the Revenue Act of 1936, will kill incentive for investment by raising taxes. Obama is looking to raise corporate taxes, increase the capital gains tax and start cap-and-trade carbon permits, among other clever ways to pay for his endeavors. This would all be wonderful if the costs of spending were really borne by "polluters" and "evil corporations." But the costs will be paid by real people. Your dad's ailing portfolio will decline as corporations struggle to maintain a profit because of higher taxes. Worse, he may lose his job because it's cheaper to make soap in London and ship it all the way to Mexico than to pay high corporate taxes in the U.S. Energy prices will go up because of cap-and-trade; poor families will be hurt the most because a larger percent of their income is spent on energy.
This cap-and-trade program is similar to the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1929. Smoot-Hawley
A study by UCLA economists Cole and Ohanian concluded that FDR's National Industry Recovery Act, or NIRA, extended the Depression into the late 1930s. The study showed the NIRA kept prices and wages high, which lowered the demand for goods and labor. Helping the NIRA raise unemployment was the Davis-Bacon Act, which requires that government contracts pay prevailing wages; this in effect raises the market wage and again lowers demand for labor. We are not headed towards another disastrous NIRA but the minimum wage is being raised and all the stimulus package pet projects will be under Davis-Bacon rules.
Figuring out how to fix the mess we're in isn't going to be easy, so wouldn't it be a good idea to start by taking a look at how we screwed up in the past and not repeat those mistakes?
Davidson is a Tonganoxie senior in economics.
EDITORIAL CARTOON
NICHOLAS SAMBALUK
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Last week's items you might have missed. Check out Kansan.com Roundup for full stories.
File photo by Jon Goering/XANSAN
The number of hours Student Senate spent deliberating funding and budget cuts. Senate determined which groups should receive funding cuts on April 2.
THE CONTEXT
File photo by Jessie Fetterling/KANSAN
The new sales tax percentage that went into effect in Lawrence on April 1.The 7.85 percent sales tax is an increase from the older 7.3 percent,
THE CONTEXT
THE CONTEXT
The number of years the KU School of Fine Arts has existed under its current organization. But beginning July 1, the school's programs will be reorganized into an independent School of Music and a School of the Arts within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The department of design will become part of the School of Architecture and Urban Planning.
The number of elliptical machines that are going to be used to provide renewable electric power to the Ambler Student Recreation Fitness Center next fall.
THE CONTEXT
File photo by Ryan McGeeney/KANSAN
The estimated number of homeless people in Lawrence as of 2008, according to a recent study. The number is up from an estimated 112 in 2005.
THE CONTEXT
FROM WASHINGTON
Death penalty takes moral monetary toll on taxpayers
BY GAVIN MATHIS
Washington State U.
Daily Evergreen
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson signed legislation last month abolishing the use of the death penalty, making New Mexico the 15th state to prohibit capital punishment since the Supreme Court reinstated the penalty.
Recognizing that more than 130 death row inmates were exonerated in the past decade, Richardson made a civilizing leap in the movement to abolish one of the most heinous usurpations of political power in America.
Capital punishment is not only a judicial decree, but a political manifestation of power. Besides the primary victim (the executed prisoner), capital punishment aims to ensure obedience within a secondary victim (the general populace).
By imitating the same barbaric acts of violence that it hopes to curtail, states are ignoring that the punishment has no place in a penal system where less severe sentences, such as life without parole, could achieve aust end.
A handful of other states, including Montana, Maryland and Colorado, are also deliberating changes to their capital punishment statutes, indicating a tidal shift against the death penalty. Each measure is facing stiff resistance from victim advocacy groups who believe capital punishment saves the state money and acts as a deterrent to future crimes.
The first assertion is not only incorrect, its application in capital punishment is erroneous. According to a 2008 study in Maryland, condemning a
man to death costs the state $1.9 million more than sentencing him to life imprisonment because the costs of the lengthy appeals process far exceed the price of housing and feeding the prisoner. Besides being flagrantly untrue, assigning a value to an individual is essentially an attempt to demoralize the subject. There is no reason for Americans to be ensnared by a punishment that is ripped from the Code of Hammurabi. If an eye for an eye is the most reasonable outcome the government can offer the victims of violent crime, then the state has failed.
Another death penalty fallacy states the punishment serves as a deterrent. If capital punishment was a deterrent, then Texas would be a magical utopia.
State governments serve many primary functions: the provision of public health, the regulation of intrastate commerce and the issuance of licenses. Murder is not one of them. Capital punishment is the ultimate premeditated murder, and taxpayers are blind accomplices in the state's physical confrontation with the condemned.
Justice in America is not blind. Americans may abide by the rule of law, but those laws are written by flawed humans. The impending sense of mortality that grips the condemned man as he walks the green mile is the same feeling experienced by his victim. Looking beyond the prison bars and finding the human story of the condemned is the first step in overcoming mankind's primitive need for revenge.
Vengeance is easy,but justice is difficult.
— UWire
Gay marriage advocates should learn from Iowa Supreme Court case
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
That the Iowa Supreme Court affirmed a case that challenged the constitutionality of a gay-marriage ban is no surprise to those who can read the legal and political tea leaves. What is a surprise, however, is that it was unanimous.
Although this is reason to celebrate, the party may be short. California is expected to uphold Proposition 8, a measure that amended the California constitution to imbed anti-gay sentiments within it.
So what now?
The gay and lesbian rights movement, it seems to me, would do well to capitalize on lowa in two ways. First, lowa can serve as an example of how public opinion can be changed by political mobilization. Second, the decision provides fertile grounds for templates for future legal arguments.
To give gays and lesbians equal rights under a different name is not so different from giving minorities separate water fountains or other facilities and saying "well, at least we gave them something." Segregation is segregation, period. But unfortunately, we are at a point where we have to find ways to spread that message. This is where Iowa becomes important.
I am confident that, someday, a ban on gay marriage will seem as silly as a ban on interracial marriage. Until then, the gay and lesbian political coalition must take its victories where it can get them, and learn from them. California is promising to throw icy water on the warm feelings in the wake of the decision in Iowa. This doesn't have to last, however, if gays and lesbians file this crucial victory under the title "lessons learned," and use it to replicate this success in the future.
A. Bryce Myers is a senior from Overland Park
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