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University Daily Kansan / Tuesday, February 25, 1992
OPINION
Parking plan ignores problems of students
What is the greatest robbery ever planned, attempted or accomplished? Knocking off a Brinks Armored Car? don't think so.
Raiding the Fort Knox Gold Reserve? No, because it would be almost impossible to pull off, and it would destroy the national economy (as if it weren't in very bad shape anyway). Besides, there aren't that many places where you can actually spend gold, especially without attracting attention.
Yellow zone parking permits?
We have a winner. The prize is a $50
year-long yellow zone park sticker
that will do you almost no good after
8:30 a.m.
All seriousness aside, the parking permits this year are simply not worth the money. It does no good to have a yellow zone permit when the only space available is at the north end of Memorial Stadium or across the street from Naismith Hall. Or when someone with a red or blue permit parks in a yellow lot. But then I guess those permits are oversold too. The Parking Department is out to make money. And it has a great system: The department sells more permits than spaces available, then tickets people at outrageous rates for all but parking meter infractions. This works especially when student spaces are taken away without any warning, such as when part of Lot 62 east of the Computer Center was switched to red zone parking last semester. Some penalties
Patrick G.
Brungardt
Staff
columnist
should be harsh, such as the $50-penalty for blocking handicapped access parking or wheelchair ramps. But being charged $10 simply because the people at the Parking Department oversold the lot is a little too much.
Several years ago, Parking Department touted the new parking garage next to Allen Field House as a solution to many of the parking problems. About the only thing it really fixed was giving more alumni a nice, close parking place for basketball games. Otherwise, it is primarily red-zone parking with a few yellow slots, and only has any real effect for people in Green, Learned and Murphy Halls. It didn't increase student parking spaces, nor did it get students closer to class.
Because of all these problems, a new bird has appeared on campus the last several years. This creature is known as the Parking Vulture; it spends its time circling through parking lots waiting for someone to drive away and open up a parking space. Then usually three or four vultures dash for that spot. Last month, I out-vulturied another desperate vulture in Lot 62. As the other vulture drove past me looking in
vain for another spot, he flipped me a one-finger salute. I can't say that I really blame him because spaces are so few that people park on the grass bordering the lot just to make it to class.
The parking garage and current Parking Department plan was ill-conceived. Although the garage may look nice and allow more alumni parking, it only helps a small portion of the University community. Indeed, it is sign of a deeper problem of the University's attitude of caring more for graduate research projects than the majority of undergraduate students who come here for an education and without whom the University wouldn't exist. And if the garage were really supposed to help the majority of students, then it would have been built either in the "O-Zone" of Robinson Gymnasium or in Lot 91, the "X-Lot" right next to Spencer Museum of Art. This location would allow many more students to get closer to campus, with less time worrying about getting to class and more time actually in the classroom. But this would also prevent the Parking Department from making money on all those infraction tickets. And when our "beloved" Gov. Joan Finney is calling for cuts in the Regents budget, we just cannot have the Parking Department not making any money, can we?
Patrick G. Brungardt is a Fort Leavenworth senior majoring in political science.
THE UNIVERSITYDAILY KANSAN
Don't cut capital gains tax
Democrat Paul Tsongas should wisen up and not follow Bush's lead to decrease the tax
What frightens Democrats most about Paul Tsongas is his imprudent belief, like the president's, that a cut should be made in the capital gains tax. Where did he go wrong?
Since his election, President Bush has fought unsuccessfully to lower the capital gains tax rate. Tsongas, a Democratic front-runner supporting the cut, adds legitimacy to the argument for a lower rate, one made by many Republicans and few Democrats.
Whether Tsonga continues to do well in the primary race, his advocacy for "the other side" weakens the Democrats' argument.
At 28 percent, the top tax rate on capital gains is about where it should be: on par with the tax rates on labor. There is a balance. Taxing capital less than labor upsets the balance and is reminiscent of the years before the 1986 Tax Reform Act, when the labor tax rate topped out at about 50 percent, when the capital gains tax rate reached 20 percent, and when tax shelters built by masters of subterfuge and detail pervaded the nation.
Tinkering with the balance invites irresponsible investment. This is why the president should call off his request to halve the capital gains tax, and why Jerry Brown should quit espousing a reduction in the income tax to 13 to 14 percent. These two ideas are really quite similar.
Everyone admits a capital gains tax cut is unfair. Those making $200,000 a year would reap $12,500 more under the Bush plan. And supporting a cut because the occasional middle-income taxpayer profits from selling capital — a home, bonds or stock — follows the same logic as baking a cake to lick the beaters; therewards go elsewhere.
A growth package this is not. Japan manages to thrive with a capital gains tax rate higher than our own. Their income tax rates are higher, too. If the U.S. government can afford to bestow a tax cut — a dubious prospect in itself — on the rich, it should be able to spend smartly, too. A real growth package — investment in education or the infrastructure — would be a start. Wake up, Mr. Tsongas.
Martin Scherstuhl for the editorial board
Drive needs marrow donors
Minorities are sought, and registration for a tissue match is as easy as giving blood
Today, students will have the opportunity to give someone the gift of life. Zeta Phi Beta Sorority is sponsoring the Bone Marrow Registry Drive along with the American Red Cross and the National Bone Marrow Donor Program from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Pine Room in the Kansas Union.
Since the first successful bone marrow transplant in 1968, leukemia patients' longterm survival rate has been 30 percent to 80 percent, depending on the stage of the disease. This compares to a maximum survival rate of 15 percent without a transplant.
The unique tissue characteristics of an individual's bone marrow are inherited. When no matching donor is found within the family, chances of the best match are found from someone of the same racial background.
However, the chances of finding a match in tissue typing, which is the drive's objective, currently are one in 20,000, said Tonya Brown, the Kansas minority recruiter coordinator for the National Marrow Donor Program. The odds are worse for minorities. Out of 500,000 donors on the national registry, African Americans and Hispanic Americans make up only 3 percent each, and American Indians compose a mere 0.7 percent.
The procedure student donors will experience is similar to having blood drawn. Two tablespoons of blood and consent to be entered on the registry is all that is needed for today's stage of the drive. The bone marrow transplant would not occur until anywhere from three months to four years after the blood is drawn, depending on the results of extensive blood testing. The transplant would not happen without the consent of the donor.
The goal of the Bone Marrow Donor Drive is to register at least 200 minority students, African Americans in particular, out of all donors.
The idea of bringing the drive to the University of Kansas came from a program about leukemia patients and the difficulty in finding bone marrow donors. Kansas State University has sponsored similar drives in the past with great turnouts. KU students have the chance to do even better.
J. R. Clairborne for the the editorial board
Straits Times, Singapore, on Iraq:
International perspectives
Reports claim that he has allocated $30 million to the Central Intelligence Agency to undertake covert action against Saddam.
President George Bush would be ill-advised to try to recapture the historical opportunity he missed a year ago when he called for a halt to the allied forces' advance into Iraq, allowing Saddam Hussein to remain in power in Baghdad.
But like it or not, to engineer his downfall is not playing by the book, and the importance of the world's sole superpower playing by the book at a time when a New World Order is being shaped cannot be overestimated.
Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo, on the U.S. presidential election;
The most important issue in the (U.S.) election campaigns this year is not a diplomatic question but a domestic one, especially the economy that shows signs of an increasingly serious slump.
It is common knowledge in the United States that, devoid of prospects of tomorrow becoming better than today and hope and a sense of
security for the people, especially of the middle class, which will be richer in the years to come, there are no new American dreams nor is there faith in new frontiers.
The reality is harsh. According to an announcement by the U.S. government, 91,000 people lost their jobs in January and the employment rate stays as high as 7.1 percent.
Such an atmosphere provided ample opportunities to use the slogan "America First" by (Pat) Buchanan and others and hard-line Democratic contenders playing on the frustration of U.S. voters. These isolationist positions are also a national mood lamenting the decline of the United States and yearning for return to a big-power status.
But can the United States really live with isolationist policies? Isolationist economic policies will hurt first and foremost the United States and its people.
All we do is try to understand the unique and paradoxical events in (the republic of) Russia: disaster without a loss on the battlefield, misery against the background of enormous natural resources, international charity for a nation that still possesses one of the two largest nuclear arsenals in history.
- La Repubblica, Rome, on Western aid to Russia;*
We are seeing another fuse burn in (Boris) Yeltsin's Russia; it is no longer hunger, the harshness of winter, but the humiliation of Russians.
For the demagogyogue of the strong men lying in ambush, it is a fuse that could be even more useful than any lit thus far.
Gulf Daily News, Manama, Bahrain, in raid raid killing Abbas Musawi;
Israel's assassination of Hezbollah leader Sheikh Abas Musawi predictably has torn open a hornet's nest of hatred and revenge in south Lebanon. And attacks by Israeli and SLA artillerymen quickly and ominously prompted the Lebanese army's heavy guns to join the battle.
It all adds disturbingly to the rising cycle of Mideast violence in recent days and seriously threatens resumption of peace talks in Washington.
This time Israel has gone too far in an operation plainly orchestrated to cause massive political disruption as part of its stated objective of wining out Hezbollah strongholds.
Musawi's killing also saddly marks a dramatic end to any attempts to negotiate an Israeli Hebollahl prisoner swap as part of the U.N. campaign for a comprehensive end to the hostage crisis.
western embassies in Beirut now will be prime targets for attacks by pre-Iranian militants, and groups operating under Hezbollah's umbrella may well resume kiddings.
The situation is fast developing into another tragic mess that soon may run out of control.
**Arab News, Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, on AIDS:**
The latest figures from the World Health Organization on the spread of AIDS make horrifying reading.
Like everything else, people are subjected to the whims of the passing interest and fashion. A few years ago, the press was awash in what many considered AIDS hysteria. One could not look anywhere without dire and dark warnings of the horrors of AIDS plague hitting us in the
Non-governmental agencies and persons should be enlisted by Third World governments in their fight against AIDS. Bureaucracy and red tape should not delay such programs.
face. Today, with bold and imaginative campaigns in the West having slowed the spread of the disease there, people temporarily have decided to forget about AIDS. But that is a big mistake, especially for the Third World, where the syndrome is unfortunately booming.
Time is of the essence. Most governments have set up AIDS prevention committees, whose task it is to coordinate and launch national anti-AIDS programs. Leaders of Third World nations openly and publicly should head such efforts to send a clear message that they mean business and to help take away much of the stigma attached to those afflicted with AIDS.
KANSAN STAFF
TIFFANYHARNESS Editor
The Third World cannot afford to ignore AIDS. Three million women alone have the AIDS virus in Africa. We cannot hide any longer behind the excuse of social restraint. If we don't act now it will be too late. The warnings must be heeded NOW.
VANESSA FUHRMANS Managing editor
TOM EBLEN General manager, news adviser
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