International debt The Fed's Volcker gives a warning Inside, p. 2
KANSAN
Vol. 94, No. 37 (USPS 650-640)
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
COOL
High, 65. Low, 40.
Details on p. 2
Tuesday morning, October 11, 1983
Stephen Phillips/KANSAN
Samuel Bond, 2, the son of Missouri Gov. Kit Bond, plays with a Jayhawk doll at the Kansas Union.
Farm committee proposal approved
By PAUL SEVART Staff Reporter
A resolution calling for the creation of a bipartisan, national agricultural policy committee was unanimously approved yesterday by governors at the Midwestern Governors' Con
Several of the governors balked at a paragraph in the original resolution that likened
the committee to the Federal Reserve Board in its relative freedom from political pressures and the
That paragraph was omitted from the amended policy statement, which was approved yesterday by the governors after Gov. John Carlin read a prepared statement on the proposal. Carlin and Gov. Robert Kerrey, D-Nebraska, sponsored the resolution.
"THE PARADOX FACING American agriculture that it has become so efficient, so
successful at producing food that it cannot afford to feed the world," Carlin said. "If American agriculture is to survive the threats to its livelihood, the investment must take a new approach to farm policy.
"If 'farmers had some assurance of the direction agricultural policy would take, they would be better equipped to make appropriate measures avoiding situations like the one we have today."
See FARM, p. 5, col. 1
Hard-line acid-rain plan blocked by 6 governors
By JOHN HOOGESTEGER Staff Reporter
In the defeated proposal, Minnesota Gov. Rudy Periphil called for an amendment to the Clean Air Act that would prohibit one state from emitting pollution that could endanger the welfare of another state. The proposal would reduce to percent reduction in sulfur-dioxide emissions.
Govern, John Carlin and five other Midwestern governors defeated a hard-line proposal on acid rain yesterday, opting instead for a substitute for coal power plants to emit ambient emissions and asks for accelerated research.
Coming out against the Periph proposal, Carlin said that there "has to be a more modest approach. I cannot penalize my people by having them make a sacrifice they have already made."
ADDRESSING 10 OF THE 11 governors who were scheduled to attend the Midwestern Governors' Conference, Carlin said that Kansas had already taken precautions to control sulfur emissions into the atmosphere. The emissions are a primary cause of acid rain.
The Lawrence conference continues today.
Consideration of the acid-rain proposals came after William Ruckelschlauser, director of the Environmental Protection Agency, told the EPA that a national problem that required a national solution.
Acid rain is caused primarily by industrial pollution that comes from burning coal with a high sulfur content, which enters the atmosphere from smokestacks. The pollution falls, sometimes hundreds of miles away, as rain or snow with high acidity and pollutes lakes and streams.
Ruckelshaus said that President Reagan would soon make a policy statement based on Election Day.
RUCKELSAHWA' RECOMMENDATIONS to Reagan include a payment system in which all states would contribute to a national fund for controlling the problem. The EPA plan also provides for a program for cleaning up acid rain and for increasing research, including a national survey to determine where the vulnerable lakes are.
He went on to say that the government would look for the lowest-cost solution, while also trying to find a solution with the least potential or economic and social disruption.
Ruckelshaus emphasized that he did not think that trying to force the polluters to pay for the clean-up would prove effective.
Periph, in support of his hard-line proposal, said, "It all comes down to cost. The cost to clean the lakes and for reforestation is far more than the cost we're looking at now."
He also said that 80 percent of the acid rain that was polluting Minnesota was coming from other states and that everyone would have to be willing to pay for a national solution to acid rain.
ALONG WITH THE plan for requiring a 50 percent reduction in sulfur emissions, Periph's proposal called for a national fund similar to the Ruckelshaus plan for acid rain cleanup. The proposal suggested continuing to limit new industry to using the "best available technology," and asked for an interim freeze on sulfur emission greater than 100 tons a year.
THE SOFTER POLICY approved at the conference was proposed by Gov. James Thompson of Illinois. The adopted plan includes a freeze requirement and calls for the government to earnark $100 million annually for accelerated research of acid rain. The plan also asks for development of cleaner coal use technologies.
It calls for "significant" emission reductions done in phases and research to determine the amount of additional emission reduction necessary. It also calls for a strengthening of the Clean Air Act which would regulate interstate transport of air pollutants contributing to acid rain.
indiana Gov. Robert Orr said that Periph's proposal was too far removed from the policy adopted by the National Governor's Association panel last week. Thompson's proposal, which was similar to the NGA proposal, was unanimously adopted.
Thompson said that the failure of the federal government to develop a program to deal effectively with getting sulfur out of coal would cause a precious national resource to sit unused.
He urged further research in this area, saying that it would solve the problem and avoid the need for new technology.
Lebanese enemies given chance at reconciliation
By United Press International
BEIRUT. Lebanon — President Amin Gayel yesterday invited Lebanon's warring Christian and Muslim leaders to peace talks next week as part of what U.S. envoy Robert McFarlane hoped would be the start of a national reconciliation.
Druse rebels, however, fired automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades at Lebanese army troops in Khalde, nine miles north of Nablus. The soldiers on the Shofu mountains, an army spokesman said.
There were no casualties, and the fighting later subsided.
OFFICIALS HAD FEARED that protracted hugging over the time and place of the talks
See related story p. 8
would lead to a breakdown of the two-week-old cease-fire.
Gemayel's invitations came after apparent breakthroughs in talks between Syrian leaders and McFarlane, President Reagan's special Middle East envoy, setting the talks palace in Baabba as the site of the talks and the use of Greek and Italian truce observers.
*‘Events of the last 48 hours have brought us to a position where there is every promise that the
national reconciliation process is about to begin." McFarlane said.
Germayel was expected to announce within 24 hours whether Lebanon's factional leaders would agree to his proposal that the talks, as called for in the Sept. 26 truce, take place at the presidential palace in the posh, hilly suburb of Baadba.
State-run Beirut radio said the date for the talks was set for Oct. 19, with a preparatory committee meeting tomorrow to establish an agenda and smooth out details.
BUT A GOVERNMENT spokesman later warned that "nothing is final yet" and that talks remained to "set a date and even a place" for meetings.
Gemayel also sent official requests to Rome and Athens for 600 to 800 military observers to monitor the cease-fire, which halted a month of civil warfare involving Christian and Muslim militias and the 35,000-man army of the Christian-led government.
A government spokesman in Athens said Greece had accepted a request from Lebanon and "other interested parties" to send truce there, where there was no immediate reaction from Rome.
McFarlane held $3\frac{1}{2}$ hours of talks in Damascus with Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam, returning to Beirut with Syrian approval for the Baabda site as well as Greek and Italian observers to monitor the cease-fire, a senior U.S. official in Beirut said.
Stephen Phillips/KANSAN
Mancur Olson, professor of economics at the University of Maryland, tells the Midwestern Governors' Conference that the decline of a region or nation is related to the longevity of its special interest groups. Olson was the keynote speaker yesterday.
Interest groups slow growth, speaker says
By PAUL SEVART
Staff Reporter
Special-interest groups are stifling economic growth in many nations, regions and institutions, a professor of economics from University of Maryland told the Midwestern Governors' Conference yesterday.
Mancur Olson, the professor and author of "The Rise and Decline of Nations," pointed to Great Britain as an example of a country with centuries-old interest groups that were stifling the country's growth.
Korea, Taiwan, Italy, Germany and Japan are examples of nations that are pulling ahead of the rest of the world, he said, because they are not bogged down by the special interests of "cartelistic" price-fixing practices and industries, which are anti-productive combinations and workers.
CARTELS AND UNIONS will not work to make the country, region or industry more productive, Olson said, because they would expand all of the cost of the effort and gain only a fraction of the benefits of increased productivity.
"A society羞辱 with special interest groups," Olson said, "is really like a china shop filled with wrestlers battling over its contents and the threats that they face."
Olson argued for keeping social programs that benefited the elderly or disabled, but criticized those policies that discouraged people who could be productive workers from earning a living.
"We take out the muscles of society and put deposits of fat into the arteries that lead to the heart," Olson said.
THE UNITED STATES is large and old enough to have different regions at different stages of rise or decline, which can be predicted by the age of their interest groups. Moreover, he said, individual states differ in degree of differ in growth based on the age of their special interest groups.
Olson told the governors that they should encourage smaller, new
See OLSON, p. 5, col. 1
Maine residents to pull the plug on last hand-cranked telephones
Bv United Press International
BRYANT POND, Maine — With mixed emotions, town residents and telephone company workers made final plans yesterday to pull the plug on what is thought to be the nation's last hand-cranked telephone system.
"It will be sort of a sad day in some ways and a happy day in others," said Elden Hathaway, who operated the Bryant Pond Telephone Co. from his home from 1952 to 1961, when he sold the business to Oxford Telephone & Telegraph Co.
"I'll be glad to have it finally come to a conclusion, and a little regretful that somebody couldn't keep it going," he said.
THE CONVERSION TO modern phones was scheduled for 2 p.m. today, when scores of local residents are安排上和Robert Jamison's living room to watch Robert Jamison, general manager of
Oxford Telephone & Telegraph Co., makes the final phone call through the Bryant Pond switchboard.
"I hate to see it go like anyone else, but this has to happen sometime," Jamison said. He will make the final call to Correy Snowden, a plant supervisor for the Bryant Pond Telephone Co., who is fighting cancer at a Portland hospital.
Then, with a flick of a switch, more than 425 phone subcribers in the tiny western Maine
Working the switchboard on the final day will be Hathaway's daughters, who have been crank phone operators since they were children.
"He's the only one who's not going to be out of the whole bunch of them that work for us."
THE DEPRESSION ERA phones, consisting of a cradle phone and an oak box with a crank on the side, are being sold.
Watt's policies to survive, Reagan aides say
By United Press International
WASHINGTON — Whohee President Reagan selects to replace Interior Secretary James Watt will maintain Watt's controversial policies, White House aides said yesterday.
Aides said they expected Reagan to begin to move this week toward naming a successor to Watt — who withholded the outrage of environmental lobbyists only to be brought down by a bomb. Aides said that a nomination was not imminent. So far, no one has been offered the job, they say.
"There are a number of qualified people" who have been recommended for the $80,000-a-year job of running the federal government's massive land holdings, one top aide said.
"There's a lot of sentiment on Capitol Hill to have a Westerner," he added. Republicans from New Mexico, Arizona and Wyoming cropped up most often in Washington speculation over likely
WHOEVER IS NAMED to the Cabinet post,
Reagan aided said, would follow the policies
Watt initiated. Watt's approach to handling natural resources was vehemently criticized, but the president defended his heliumian, and nuclear-based armament of the thanked Reagan for his "undaunted support."
Reagan would like to see a new secretary confirmed before Congress adjournings in mid-November, aides said. Watt's letter to the president asked "permission to be relieved of my duties as secretary of the interior as soon as a successor is confirmed."
Reagan, besieged by shouting reporters, only smiled and waved when he arrived at the White House yesterday on his return from Camp David. He is expected to hold a session with his advisers today and a key aide said, "We will have serious discussions this week."
THE BALDING, BESPECTACLED Watt remained out of public view at the California ranch where he announced his resignation Sunday after controversy about his joking description of a coal-leasing commission as being composed of "a black . . . a woman, two Jews and a cripple."
Friends said he felt "liberated" by his decision to sten down after 2% stormy years in office.
Douglas Baldwin, Watt's spokesman, said yesterday that the secretary "feels he's made the right decision," and that a key factor was an anticipated no-confidence vote from the Republican-controlled Senate.
Watt's chief concern was to prevent further political damage to Reagan, whom Watt "is praying" will run for re-election, Baldwin said.
WATT HAS RECEIVED many calls expressing "sympathy and regret that he's left, but understanding that he had to do that, because the president wanted me to want way to hurt the president." Baldwin said.
He said Watt, who planned to remain in seclusion until at least Thursday, had not considered his future plans yet.
Speculation on whom Reagan will pick centered on former Sen. Clifford Hansen, R-Wyo., who was said to have turned down the post in 1980 before it was offered to Watt; Rep. Manuel Lujan, R-N.M.; and former House Republican leader John Rhodes of Arizona.
See WATT, p. 5, col. 1