OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
November 2.1983 Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansan (USPS $69,640) is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer Flint Hall
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MARK ZIEMAN
Editor
MARK ZIEMAN
Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM
Managing Editor
STEVE CUSICK
Editorial Editor
DON KNOX
Campus Editor
PAUL JESS
General Manager and News Adviser
Business Manager
DAVE WANAMAKER MARK MEARS
Retail Sales National Sales
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LYNNE STARK
Campus Sales Manager
JOHN OBERZAN
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ANN HORNBERGER Business Manager
Senate hearings
William Clark was prepared this time.
Clark, President Reagan's nominee for secretary of the Interior Department, quoted a variety of facts and figures about department programs during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Tuesday.
This situation was far different from the confirmation hearings Clark went through in 1981 after Reagan had chosen him as deputy secretary of state. Clark's lack of knowledge in foreign affairs embarrassed administration supporters and outraged opponents.
Tuesday, Clark discussed energy leasing programs and wildlife refuges with members of the Senate Energy Committee, and got a favorable reception from almost all of them.
In 1981, Clark did not know the names of the leaders of South Africa and Zimbabwe, yet went on to win confirmation to the State Department post. He later won respect in that job and was named national security adviser in 1982.
Clark was able to answer some
questions at length this time during questioning by the Senate committee. He brought with him to the Senate hearing a green-covered transcript of James Watt's 1981 confirmation hearings.
But Clark refused to criticize Watt, the man he is to replace at the Interior Department.
The biggest question now is not whether Clark is thoroughly familiar with environmental issues, or whether he is talented enough to provide leadership on those issues despite his inexperience.
Rather, the key question is this: Will Clark change the disastrous policies of Watt?
If Clark does not change those policies, the months ahead will be dangerous ones for the environment. Watt indeed was a genuine opponent of the environment at times.
The damage that unconcerned and uncaring people — particularly those in high places — can do often is irreparable. Let us hope that Clark is a proponent of sound environmental policies, rather than a warmed-over Watt.
A shallow reflection
Christine Craft will have to plead her case again. But regardless of the outcome, the pretty, packaged news now beamed into many homes across the country will remain long on looks and short on substance.
It won't get less pretty — the his and her smiling faces of the anchor team will still be there. It's attractive, and it digs easily with the evening meal.
Television news is only following the trends in television, the trends in American society. Television is slick these days. It's a multimillion-dollar business that is set on making America feel good — and making
Forget the untimely smiles that tell of the car wreck and fatality on Highway 54. The annoying chit-chat at the close of the news and the stupid jokes will keep bringing enlightenment to your life, regardless of whether Craft wins any money from her suit.
money, of course. A few television shows attempt to bring reality to the living room, but for the most part, TV, the modern hearth of the American home, truly is a wasteland of shallowness and absurdity. It probes America's abdomen for that soft spot, that pleasure button to keep them glued to their tubes.
The slickness and the materialism of prime time only reflect a deeper disease. The sores and the symptoms are evident in the nation's multibillion dollar shopping rush before Christmas and the multi-million dollar slick presidential campaigns. Issues are irrelevant; may the prettiest man win.
Craft's case brings to light some of the shortcomings of television. Unfortunately, those shortcomings are reflected in the rest of society. And for all that spending and slick packaging, Americans aren't one bit better off. Perhaps worse.
Football vs. baseball
Football may have long ago passed baseball as Americans' favorite sport — that is, if you go by numbers only. But in our mind, nothing that football can produce equals a World Series.
Super Bowl? It's just another Johnny-come-lately, over-priced event that the average fan can hardly relate to. The Super Bowl certainly has nothing to do with the long-suffering local fans who finally get a winner. Football's prime extravaganza is now usually scheduled a thousand or more miles away from such football hotbeds and frozen stadia as Green Bay, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati boast of in January.
But baseball still features its world championship games in the ball parks frequented during the long losing seasons by the finally rewarded local fanatics. Baseball championships are also more fairly decided — through best-of-five league championship playoffs and best-of-seven World Series.
The magic of baseball, unlike most purely national team games, goes beyond its borders. It is widely played in Japan and Taiwan, as well as Latin America. Ironically, baseball is the one item that both Ronald Reagan and Fidel Castro can agree on.
-The Newport (R.I.) Daily News
LETTERS POLICY
The University Daily Kansan welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 300 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the writer is affiliated with the University, the letter should include his class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansan reserves the right to contact the lautier individual groups to submit guest columns. Columns and letters can be mailed or brought to the Kansan office, 111 Stauffer-Flint Hall. The Kansan reserves the right to edit or reject letters and columns.
O'Neill's antiquated approach
WASHINGTON — Speaker Thomas O'Neill, now nearing 71, may be living in a political world that no longer exists — a world that died in the Vietnam War. O'Neill's old-fashioned approach during a national crisis is to rally around the flag on whatever stage it is played by American Marines or American Rangers.
In the past month, O'Neill has given a remarkable demonstration of this form of blindfold patriotism.
To begin with, he strongly supported an 18-month extension of the U.S. presence in Lebanon,
more vocal Democrats under his command and the near-annumous opposition of Senate Democrats.
United Press International
as requested by President Reagan.
This, despite the serious misgivings among many younger,
STEVE GERSTEL
After the 'Beirut massacre, O'Neill once again rallied to Reagan's call that the Marines must stay in Lebanon.
U. S. soldiers and Marines, the speaker refused to criticize the administration's action, of which he was not consulted but on which he was not consulted.
And in the days after the invasion of tiny Grenada by 2,000
"I'll have plenty to say about this after the action is over," O'Neill said on the second day of fighting in Grenada. "This is not a question in my opinion for my party or the press to try to divide the nation
"It's great to be partisan but there are times when people have to be patriotic too. I'll have plenty to say about Grenada when the action is over and our boys are secure."
O'Neill's genuine patriotism and his sincere efforts not to make either Lebanon or Grenada a partisan issue are laudable.
Yet, in neither case would O Neil's criticism endanger the security of Americans under fire.
What is lost, however, is an important voice in opposition. And only O'Neil, as the highest Democrat, can provide that.
The criticism leveled at the administration's policies in Lebanon and the invasion of Grenada by rank-and-file Democrats, in addition to a good number of activists, has a negligible effect.
The O'Neill approach was the prevailing one in Congress during the Korean War, the invasion of Japan. The Republic and the Vietnam War.
Only because it existed, was President Lyndon Johnson able to rush through the Gulf of Tonkin resolution.
Only two back-bench senators — Ernest Grunewald of Alaska and Wayne Morse of Oregon — rose in opposition, smothered by their colleagues eager to give Johnson a free hand.
The unquestioning loyalty to a presidential action that sends Americans into combat is no longer valid. Many of the Democrats, and some of the Republicans recognize that.
"I'll have my views and my saying of what the president did, whether I think he was right or wrong, when I think it is the proper time to speak up." O'Neill after the invasion of Grenada.
That, in O'Neill's case, is really too late.
This should be Reagan's last picture
Although Reagan has disgraced this nation by his clammy efforts to play policeman, the Senate has opted to minimize his inbicentric errors. Senators rightly invoked the War Powers Act and demanded that Reagan get U.S. troops out of Grenada within 60 days; they also plan to send a fact-finding group there.
That cowboy must be forced to leave office in 1994. Reagan has tried to turn the world into a rodeo of American strong arm politics. Will someone please tell him not to wear a wrist, or West won't exist any more. Don't wear no longer wear black 10 gallon hats, or red ones, either.
Reagan invaded Grenada, wrestled a revolution to the ground and tied three of its legs together. Forces already have caught Marxist leaders Bernard Kissinger, who now must suffer because their vision of good government differed from the capitalist one.
protect the regime of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop when he visited in June, but later crushed Grenada's revolution.
A tiny group of Caribbean countries asked for U.S. assistance, so American soldiers have died on a Caribbean island
The United States refused to
KIESA HARRIS
Staff Columnist
where the main sources of income are nutmeg and tourism. After all, Reagan doesn't like to be on the U.S. brand of democracy
The United States should rela-
t and let parts of the world settle
their own affairs. If the government
refused to prevent a revolution, it had no right to destroy one.
Reagan's contention that forces invaded Grenada because Americans could not leave the island lacks truth. An American official left from the airport at Pearls the day before the invasion, as did some officials from the Canadian embassy. However, some flights had to be canceled because the Caribbean countries that asked the United States to invade Grenada also had refused to accept Grenadian jets into their airports, including those jets bearing American passengers.
Now, Reagan wants to keep journalists safe from harm's way because they might not be able to take care of themselves in Grenada among all the men Marxists. After all, in "High Noon," everybody cleared the streets so the big guys could battle. That's the way things happen in Hollywood.
Unfortunately. Grenada lacks
glitter and stardust. Besides the Marine deaths, 47 innocent people were accidentally killed when U.S. forces shellled a mental hospital, according to the Wash. State Department, in Canada Maclean's magazine.
Yet journalists don't have access to the islands to report such details.
One senior administration official said that the Reagan administration staged the invasion to show Latin American nations that the United States was not afraid to use its power.
"What good are maneuvers and shows of force, if you never use them?" he asked.
Perhaps Reagan thinks the same way about nuclear missiles.
Let's put that power-hungry coot on a tall, white gelling and let him canter into the sunset. But first, disarm him. There's no telling where he'll aim his pistol next.
The problem of deficits pops up everywhere. A consensus of professional observers, among them Sen. Bob Dole and economist Walter W. Heller, thinks that the economic recovery is being dragged down by the deficit. Other experts predict dire problems, from hyper-inflation to economic stagnation, because of coming deficits.
The problem must be solved through the tax code by raising more revenues. And when you examine our options, the value-added tax, or VAT, is clearly favored by Congress and the public. A VAT is simply a sales tax applied to each stage of production, not just
Value-added tax would relieve federal deficit
WASHINGTON — A little logic and thought on the question of closing the federal budget deficit leads to an inexorable conclusion: We should join virtually all our European allies and institute a value-added tax.
the retail sale. It is simple to apply and hard to evade.
Further spending cuts, the alternative to tax increases, are unfeasible.
The solution is the VAT. The public consistently has condemned as unfair the income tax and
NORMAN ORNSTEIN
Professor
property taxes - while calling the sales, of all levies, a fair one. In a recent survey by the Advisory Council on Intergovernmental Relations, a government group, 32 percent of Americans said they would prefer sales tax increases to other tax increases. And because it consumes, it is acceptable to supply subsidies and conservatives.
No tax can raise as much revenue
with as small a percentage base. Americans in 1984 will generate an economy of roughly $3.5 trillion, of which consumption will account for $1.6 trillion to $2.6 trillion. Exemptions from the essential items, a 10 percent value-added tax could raise roughly $200 billion in one year.
Obviously, the shock of a sudden $200 billion tax increase would bring the economy to a halt, or worse. But consider a 10 percent VAT with appropriate exemptions and tax credits for the poor — along with a program to reduce income taxes for the middle class by $100 billion a year. We could sensibly realign the tax system, taxing consumption more and earning less. We could give appropriate tax relief to those who need it most. And we could raise $100 million a year to apply to our deficits, and thus bring them back to a manageable level.
To say that politicians greet this proposal with something less than glee is a gross understatement. Every legislator in Washington remembers Al Ullman, former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, who lost his seat in 1980 after embracing the VAT concept. But times and thinking have changed since then.
Liberal politicians want to reduce the deficit without eliminating Medicare and food stamps. Conservative politicians want to encourage productivity and savings and discourage consumption. All of us want to erase future deficits and keep the economy moving. The value-added tax would help accomplish both the goals of the New York normal Ornstein is a professor of politics at Catholic University and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Policy Research.
To the Editor:
e
Kiesa Harris' column in the Oct. 26 Kansan titled "Deployment Needs, Protest Wanes," was a silly essay that said, "I have such extensive silhouette in 990 words."
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
U.S. not the 'bad guys' in deployment issue
Harris begins her piece by using statistics — poorly. She says less than 50 percent of the people of the NATO countries want the weapons deployed. That does not mean that more than 50 percent are against them, but more thoughts of that paragraph: Why should she dominate NATO if we are so much larger and more powerful than the largest country?
Then she says we are untrustworthy and hypocritical because we deploy weapons while offering a "build-down" proposal. What hypocrisy? What promises have we not kept? Only a fool would bargain from a position of weakness. By deploying these weapons we are showing resolve and strength. The Soviets have a substantial conventional superiority that we are deterring.
Why isn't Harris complaining about Soviet weapons and Soviet deployments? They have no public opinion or free speech. The Soviet Union has been openly opposing such a statement since the early 1980s without much letup. In contrast, we have somewhat stagnated. Even so, one could argue that
Also, I have not heard any of Harris" "doves" give viable alternatives to a strong defense. All of us should want disarmament — not just
our nuclear weapons have provided the freedoms for us to do as we please — to wit, Harris' silly and critical editorial. I am also tired of hearing from people who know all there is to know about nuclear war. We do not know all that would happen in any kind of nuclear exchange, and a limited exchange may very well remain limited. A massive exchange may not destroy the whole world. There are too many unknowns. Any nuclear war would be terrible but let us be realistic.
the elimination of nuclear weapons.
let us destroy all weapons! A great idea, but we cannot do it alone. And the world being as it is, can we trust the Soviet Union to not take advantage of us if we do foolishly unilaterally disarm?
Finally, protest deployment if you want. You are still free to do so. Write to your congressman. And while you are doing that, write to Yuri Andropov as well. You are not doing that. You are doing the problem unilaterally. Just think about this whole situation. We might not be the bad guys.
Neal Duncanson
Fairbanks, Alaska, senior