OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN November 30, 1983 Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 bv students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kaman (USP$ 60-640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer Fint Hall, Lawrence, KA 60053, daily during the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer sessions. Subscribes are $15 for six months or $25 for three months. Subscriptions by mail are $15 for six months or $25 for three months. Student subscribes are $3 a semester while the student activity is POSTMASTER. Send us your information to usp@ku.edu.
MARK ZIEMAN
Editor
MARK ZIEMAN
Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM STEVE CUSICK
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The big picture
A state legislative committee spent a full day Monday listening to business owners complain about the way their property is valued for tax purposes.
Fortunately, the interim Assessment and Taxation Committee didn't buckle under to the wishes of the businessmen and recommend that the "trending factor" method of amoizing property be abandoned.
The method uses inflation and the equipment's expected life as a way of placing a value on it.
Such a method seems to be a reasonable way of determining the value of equipment — and a company's ultimate tax bill.
Business and industry representatives, however, call the method an unfair one. To them, decisions about the value of property can mean a difference of thousands of dollars in their tax bill.
The method, they say, puts an unfair burden on business and industry, especially when businesses provide jobs.
The committee luckily decided that the state's tax system as a whole — rather than just this one part of it — needed to be studied by the 1984 Legislature.
If the committee were to have recommended that this particular method be abandoned, it would have
addressed only one part of the problem.
The root cause — that some properties are valued differently than others — would not be addressed if the shortsighted solution sought by the businessmen were to be used.
Instead, the Legislature would do well to look at "the big picture." For example, personal property is appraised annually. Real estate values, however, are set on the same basis as they were in the 1960s.
This leads to differences among various types of property. Also, variations among counties can lead to discrepancies among similar businesses, because county appraisers from around the state often use different procedures.
The businessmen are seeking what is a laudable goal, for them—they want a lower tax bill. Lower taxes might be used by some to provide another job or two, or to modernize the company's equipment. Others, however, might consider the lower tax bill solely in terms of increased profit.
Congress' swift action
The legislative committee balanced interests that sometimes are in competition. The committee was wise to consider the benefit to the state as a whole, and to look for what will be a more just solution anyway.
President Reagan's plan to sell the nation's weather satellites to private industry has been shot out of the sky. That's not surprising. What is surprising is the suddenness of the proposal's death.
The idea of selling the weather satellites came up during the Carter administration, and was part of a proposed sale of land-sensing satellites to private industry. "Landsat" information deals with oil, minerals and agriculture, but the market for it was considered so small and unprofitable that the weather satellites were included in the package to sweeten the deal.
satellites. Then the storm began
In spring 1983 Reagan officially proposed the sale of both types of
The particular issues are complicated; the sale was of questionable merit. One need not feel heartbroken that Reagan had to kill his own idea when he signed a vital government appropriations bill that contained an amendment forbidding the sale. The sale was studied, debated and finally voted on by Congress.
While such longstanding matters as immigration and budget deficits fester, some issues are able to grab the rather swift attention of Congress. The sale of satellites is one such issue. Another such issue may turn out to be security in Washington because it is difficult to protect
— bombs are difficult to neglect.
More CIA controversy
Controversy embarrassing to President Reagan has dogged multimillionaire William J. Casey ever since he was appointed CIA director in January 1981.
Much of it has centered on Casey's substantial private investments. He could have averted questions by putting his holdings in a blind trust before receiving access to secret government economic intelligence. But Casey arrogantly resisted congressional pressure to do so until last month.
It's not enough for CIA lawyers and government ethics officials to assure us there have been no conflicts of interest. The opportunity for such conflicts exists, and that smells — especially in a government agency that more than others demands a high degree of public trust. The CIA had enough scandal to live down before Casey came along.
held stock in several firms doing business with the CIA, and he continued to acquire stock in such companies after taking the post.
Now a suit filed with the federal government has smoked out censored documents revealing Casey
-Chicago Sun-Times
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LETTERS POLICY
Tower: an unabashed hawk
WASHINGTON — In the waning hours of the recently completed session, Sen. John Tower, R-Texas, carved out time to lecture Congress on its tight-fisted treatment of defense spending.
And, Tower said, the country would have gotten "a much bigger
Tower, using blunt language, told his colleagues that more money spent in the last two years would be saved to big savings in the years ahead.
White House the final day of the session.
STEVE GERSTEL
bang for the buck" with just a little foresight.
"The vested interests we have in various areas of the world that must be defended are constants that do not go away, and yet to save a few from the marginal impact on the defect, we understand our defense requirements."
United Press International
That kind of talk, coming from Tower, is not surprising.
A Navy veteran who served on a gunboat in the Pacific during World War II, Tower is a hard-line commander in military matters, an unabashed hawk.
Tower's views do not predominate in the 8th Congress but considering his expertise, they are more than enough to defeat over defense spending.
"We should do more," he said. "The nature of the threat that confronts the United States of America tends to grow at a relentless pace.
The Texan said he was "enormously disappointed" in the $250 billion military spending package that was approved and sent to the
As chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Tower was given serious consideration by President Reagan for the post of military secretary and may get the nod after he retires following the next session.
To make his point, Tower said that in each of the last three years, the administration has made concessions on the defense budget before it was sent to Capitol Hill, the congressional budget resolution has lowered the total and then appropriations bills dues even deeper.
These are the figures Tower provided; for fiscal 1982, the final figure was $7 billion below the administration request; for fiscal 1983, the reduction was $18 billion, for fiscal 1984, the drop was $18 billion.
"Let us be very careful about how we point a finger at our NATO brethren." Tower said.
Yet, Tower omits some major points in his summation.
Tower said the defense appropriation bill represented a mere 3 percent increase in defense spending, which he noted was smaller than the one included in Great Britain's defense budget.
One is the inescapable conclusion that the defense budget sent to Congress is inflated.
realized that Congress would trimm military spending. Therefore, it would make eminent good sense to submit a budget with fat for the trimming.
From the outset, the administration numbers players must have
Tower, while mentioning that Congress cut, does not point out that Congress also provided the Pentagon with every big-ticket weapons system, including the MX missile. The only system that did not survive was a new generation of nerve gas weapons.
The nature of the threat that confronts the United States of America continues to grow at a relentless pace.
John Tower,
Republican Senator
from Texas
A third point, one which unloudly does not rank high with Tower, is that Congress was in a vicious squeeze.
The anticipated deficit grew almost daily and the cuts in domestic programs had already shredded Reagan's "safety net." There was no more that could be cut in that area.
That's why Congress chose to prune the defense budget. There was no other fat left.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Movie was just another TV event
To the editor:
I say yes in answer to the question posed by Roger Holden in a column in the Nov. 21 Kansan, "We have to our misfortune, learned to live with the bomb, as we have learned to live with fast food and automobiles?" That is exactly what we are doing in accepting a television program like "The Day After" as an evening's entertainment.
For all of its supposed support of anti-nuclear sentiment, it can only serve to undermine that sentiment in the long run. We, as the viewing audience, have become so accustomed to less radical forms of violence on TV, such as armed robberies, kidnappings and kidnapping, that reports of such events in real life often fail to elicit any response at all.
We have a dangerous familiarity with such deeds — almost an acceptance of them as endemic to life in the 20th century. But we cannot afford to accept as commonplace to daily life something that portends the very end of that life itself.
While our initial reaction to "The Day After" may be one of horror and may lead temporarily to outbursts of anti-nuclear activity, how effective will it be as a rerun? How motivating will possible sequels and spin-off series be? Can we afford to become comfortable with and accustomed to the scenes of nuclear disaster? That is what we are doing, albeit unconsciously, in viewing and supporting such television "events."
survive this dilemma is an informed citizenry. This can only be achieved through propagation of the hard, cold facts of nuclear weaponry. It will not result from the exploitation of these facts in form of sensation-alized entertainment.
ABC has done no favor for those of us truly concerned with nuclear sanity. What we need in order to
Antha Cotten-Spreckelmeyer Lawrence graduate student
How absurd
To the editor
Regardless of whether "The Day After" had a political slant, the ABC program was a movie. Allowing the peace-through strength defenders their say after the show was political by nature.
The anti-freeze response should have been restricted to the same mode of expression, a flick. Think about it.
Roll 'em -- two middle-aged men, both kind of overweight, are sitting on a couple of charred stumps. It's a bit chilly out, but they have on their official winter Air-Force parks, with little fur hoods.
One of the men reaches down into a bag of potato chips, while the other gets up and kicks some sense into a crusty Zenith black and white.
Dust and ash spring in his face and he waves it away with a 1978 Alabama football program. "Boy, it sure is great ever since the nuclear holocaust came to town. No more taking the wife out to eat, no more of those punk rockers, no Middle East crisis."
"You said it, friend," says the other man. "Kind of cloudy all the time, but a hallway lot more peaceful — like the good o'l days, when a man
had a little breathin' room of his own " Fade out.
Is there any logical rationale for the existence anywhere of weapons capable of annihilating the entire human race? We've got them. They're all ready to go. The film reminded us of that.
There's no missing it, not from the word go. Man is a curious and investigative animal who has arrogantly asked for everything, including the anodyne for his own sake. Hitler comes around every so often.
A friend, after watching the film shrugged and said, "It's just as well. I wouldn't want to have us left loose to terrorize the rest of the cosmos."
Another said, "When they push the buttons, I'm going to walk outside, open my shirt and take the brunet of it."
Man ate the apple. He'll use the bomb. If not today, tomorrow. So relax, and forget about it.
I'm selfish. I can only hope the rolling roil doesn't come during my time here. Soon, they'll be fighting in the streets over whether to have the weapons or not. The lines are being drawn. The topic is highly divisive and they still their trenches deeper. And where will that leave us?
As a contemporary New York writer, Lou Reed, said, we're 'beyond redemption ever. No Freud will work here. We're past that. There's no obedient today — it’s too late for that of kind explanation.'
It's time we realized how absurd this all is and go get a stiff drink.
Robert Wiseman Lawrence senior
Puerto Rico is unknown to America
Christopher Columbus discovered Puerto Rico 490 years ago this month; it is high time that America discovered Puerto Rico.
Puerto Rico's standing, in the eyes of most Americans, is illustrated in a letter written by a "middle-aged mother," as she said herself, from rural Oklahoma to the governor of Puerto Rico.
"I like so many in this country do not know one thing about Puerto Rico," she wrote earnestly, if not with grammatic precision "We never see it in our news, unless you be bad, so to we Americans you might as well be on the other side of the moon. For if you were on the moon, we sure would know all about you."
Although the American flag has flown over Puerto Rico for 90 years, and only 23 of the 60 states have a national flag, the island remains virtually unchanged.
GEORGE MCDOUGALL
known to tens of millions of Americans
Puerto Rican Government Official
Granted, no one really suffers when the stamp and coin collectors request samples from Puerto Rico, not realizing that American postal and monetary systems apply to the island.
On the other hand, the American public's ignorance of Puerto Rico needlessly humiliates a great many individuals and their families, sometimes causing hardships:
- Relatives on the island sent a money order as a Christmas gift to a Puerto Rican couple in South Carolina, where the husband was serving in the Navy. To their astonishment, the couple found that the manager of their credit union refused to accept the order until it had been converted into "American dollars."
- A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School applied for employment with the Export-Import Bank. His resume listed his birthplace as New York, but he was rejected. "As an agency of the United States Government," wrote a personnel officer, "the Export-Import Bank is restricted by law to making appointments only to United States citizens." The bank unaware that Puerto Ricans have been natural-born American citizens since 1917.
This type of discrimination undoubtedly occurs daily across the nation. Although it is probably prompted less by outright bias than by a pervasive ignorance, this discrimination is inexplicable.
The regrettable likelihood, however, is that so long as this predominantly Hispanic island languages as a U.S. territory, its leaders are ceded as "outliers," and even as "foreigners," by many of their fellow American citizens. In all probability, that barrier will not begin to crumble until Puerto Rico becomes the 31st state.
Copyright 1983 New York Times
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