OPINION
The University Daily KANSAN
October 10, 1983 Page 4
The University Daily KANSAN
Published since 1889 by students of the University of Kansas
The University Daily Kansas (USPS) 60-6400 is published at the University of Kansas, 118 Stauffer-First Hall, Lawrence, Kans. 6045, daily during the regular school year and Monday and Thursday during the summer sessions. Students who are registered with a Kansas State University subscription may be subscribed by mail are $1 for six months or $2 a year in Douglas County and $1 for six months or $3 for a year outside the county. Student subscriptions are $3 a semester through the student activity file - POSTMASTER. For more information on mailing subscriptions, please contact us.
MARK ZIEMAN
Editor
DOUG CUNNINGHAM
Managing Editor
STEVE CUSICK
Editorial Editor
DON KNOX
Campus Editor
PAUL JESS
General Manager and News Adviser
ANN HORNBERGER Business Manager
DAVE WANAMAKER        MARK MEARS
Retail Sales          National Sales
Manager
LYNNE STARK Campus Sales Manager
JOHN OBERZAN Advertising Adviser
Bread and butter
One of the most important topics to be addressed at the Midwestern Governors' Conference today and tomorrow will be agriculture.
Despite large government outlays to agriculture, farmers are having a tough time of it. The 11 governors at the conference, which started yesterday, must know all too well of the problems their rural constituents face.
Among these problems are mortgage foreclosures, drought aid, price supports and conservation.
Yet many people wonder, and rightfully so, why agriculture is having problems when the federal government's farm programs cost taxpayers billions of dollars a year.
Perhaps the governors will find some solutions this week. The discussion of farm issues has been long overdue.
Unfortunately, preliminary indications are that the governors will consider what others would call the parochial interests of their states.
One of the proposals, sponsored by Gov. John Carlin, advocates a comprehensive drought-relief program that would be coordinated by a
special department in the White House.
Another proposal would suspend a tax on milk production. The tax itself was started in hopes of decreasing production, which is already too high.
In other industries, overproduction leads to lower prices. And weather — good and bad — has long made farming a gamble. That's the good old All-American way.
Except when their old pocketbook is at stake. Then the government is supposed to step in, which appears to be what some of the governors want to happen.
Other agricultural proposals, however, are more significant. One of the proposals calls for soil conservation to become a higher priority at both the federal and state levels — certainly a laudable goal.
The governors, if their conference is to be a meaningful one for the region's farmers, should stick to the substantive problems facing their states in agriculture and other areas. To do otherwise would only dilute the power of their final recommendations.
Trivia clogging courts
If not for the facts, a person might truly feel sympathy for the federal court system.
After all, a glut of cases has plagued the federal court system in recent years.
The facts, however, are that the federal court system permits itself to be bogged down by frivolity, and that really important legal issues receive inadequate attention in the pursuit of judicial fun and games.
A current example of the system's playground mentality is a case before the Supreme Court.
The case, Lynch vs. Donnelly, raises the question of whether a city can sponsor a Christmas display that has a scene depicting Jesus in the manger, Mary, Joseph, the Three Kings, the angels, the shepherds, the animals and so forth. The city in question is Pawtucket, R.I.
The case would be laughable if not for its status before the Supreme Court. The court, along with other components of the federal court system, is using its limited time to consider the case, even while crucial decisions are pending on the exclusionary rule for evidence in a trial,
affirmative action and seniority,
and the legal status of illegal aliens.
Is the issue of a community-sponsored Nativity scene one of constitutional importance, of separation of church and state? One must ask whether a city through such an exhibit is promoting a generally recognized season, a set of customs, or a particular religion. One must also consider whether the crib scene has legendary importance or only religious significance. Moreover, one must wonder about possible repercussions from a case of such supposed constitutional importance: perhaps name changes for Los Angeles and San Francisco and other geographic-governmental entities?
In short, a case such as the Christmas crib display is likely to lead only to further legal hair-splitting, judicial law-making and court overload. As important issues simmer, the federal courts fiddle around with trivia. The federal courts should stop preying on the patience of the public and concentrate on issues of obvious importance, not those requiring heavenly inspiration to resolve.
Trendy tastelessness
Somebody in California, no doubt trying to be cute, has come up with a new line of macho-outdoorys clothes under a peculiar label: Banana Republic.
We'd just love to see the reception if some trendy type, aspiring to be taken for Harrison Ford, waltzed into Nicaragua wearing that emblazoned on his shirt front. The term is so profoundly resented throughout Latin America that it threatens to
Then again, maybe some foreign clothiers should respond with competing labels: Ugly American and Yankee Profiteer would be good for starters.
set off more than a shouting match. It calls up an unthinking, patronizing stereotype.
Stylish Third-Worlders would gobble them up.
-Chicago Sun-Times
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BUILD DOWN MEANS THAT FOR EVERY TWO OBSOLETE NUCLEAR WEAPONS WE THROW OUT...
WE PUT ONE MORE ACCURATE, MORE POWERFUL, MORE HIGHLY SOPHISTICATED NUCLEAR WEAPON IN ITS PLACE.
Reagan sliding toward war
The tone of President Reagan's speech to the United Nations recently was so different from the tone he has set for his administration since the day he was elected that one of his supporters, Ronald Reagan been born again."
More likely, with a presidential election looming, enough Americans have become so shocked and scared by his "big stick" solution to every problem that his advisers are now emphasizing the "speak softly"
In either case, the speech was full of ironies, including Reagan's claim "to discourage reliance upon force"
OHN B. OAKES
Former Senior Editor of the New York Times
and his support of "the right of all nations to define and preserve their national goals" — except, presumably, in Central America; his emphasis on nuclear nonproliferation — except, presumably, in Pakistan and perhaps a few other places "friendly" to us; his acceptance of "any equitable, verifiable agreement that stabilizes (nuclear) forces at lower levels" — while he rejected the nuclear freeze, which would be the simplest and most logical first step in that direction.
He is now clearly on record as saying that "a nuclear war cannot be fought without the use of fire." Yet his arms control policy is, no less than that of the Russians, based
on a striving for nuclear superiority that can only lead to nuclear war.
Reagan is not afraid to take risks for war, but he is incapable of taking any risks for peace.
As he has proved with increasing clarity on several occasions in recent weeks, Reagan has an intellectual and temperamental unfitness to conduct foreign policy on a rational or even a legal basis.
When the Soviets committed the criminal barbarity of shooting down the South Korean airliner, the President's response was to play directly into Moscow's hands by sending in a petty, lawless act of retaliation.
In direct violation of an explicit legal commitment under the United Nations Headquarters Agreement of 1947, President Reagan allowed — even tacitly encouraged — the governors of New York and New Jersey to bar the Soviet Foreign Minister from landing at Port Authority airports because he had been unable to stop them, Reagan bears full responsibility for permitting the governors to pander to the crowd for their own political gain — and for his — in contempt of American law.
When Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick and her parrot-like deputy Charles M. Lichenstein compounded the folly by gratuitously insulting United Nations members and inviting them to leave the United States, Reagan not only failed to repudiate their grade-B movie
scenario but proceeded to play his own part by endorsing it Within hours, the Senate, taking its cue from the president, voted to cut America's annual contribution to the United Nations by 50 percent or more — thus placing on Washington, instead of on Moscow, the onus of threatened disintegration of the United Nations.
In other aspects of foreign policy, too, President Reagan has been showing his disrespect for law, human rights, civil liberties and common sense. He has repeatedly and falsely certified to Congress that El Salvador's government is getting its murderous military and political attacks against him. He has been waging an illegal under cover war against Nicaragua.
He first ignored the War Powers Act, and then, as our troops became engaged in open warfare in Lebanon, tried to force through Congress a quasi-ratification of a quasi-policy that, despite the cease-fire, has every prospect of ultimately involving us in another quasi-war.
Despite the pacific tone of the United Nations speech, it is a war psychology that, with ample assists to overcome its formidable building up in the last three years.
Congress still has the power to rescue the country from Reaganism's steady slide to war. The answer is: Does it have the courage?
Copyright 1983 the New York Times.
Apartheid in Africa affects all
South Africa is just another faraway country for most students. Apartheid and black suppression problems do not interest them. Or they aren't even aware of any injustice in that country.
Geographical barriers are just barriers, after all. Apartheid is not one country's problem, but it affects mankind.
Unaware or disinterested, such attitudes show sheer callousness. There is no excuse for such ignorance, especially when the situation is dire and even mere awareness would foster anti-anarhied ideology
Apartheid is to Africa what slavery was to America.
A new referendum may give Indians the right to vote, but that's a very clever, tactical move on the part of the government.
By isolating the Indians, who definitely have more opportunities for education, from the black South Africans, the possibility of a great impact on their development is reduced. Meanwhile, the government classifies blacks as
There is no justification for the policies of the South African government, whose major concessions were made to the same aparthood infrastructure.
incapable of governing their own country because they are illiterate.
The British did something similar in India. Their excuse to deny independence to the nation was that the country was not prepared for it, that there was nobody capable of ruling it.
White South Africans have the advantage of education, power and money. Their intellectual snobbery is contemptible. Illiteracy is always cited as a handicap but efforts to alleviate that problem are nowhere
Another presumptuous attitude is that the 'one-man, one-vote' theory will not work in South Africa. Whites, by speaking against the theory, are only doing so to protect their own selfish interests.
Blacks, if given the right to vote,
would vote the white government out
White South Africa, gripped by
racism, has become blind to human concerns.
The whites advocate a gradual change. But haven't the blacks waited long enough for change?
The age-old bias remains — white is superior and black inferior. Color should not be the basis for distinction, utility or capability of individuals.
At this stage, even awareness of this cruel apartheid system will help.
Only 75 KU students attended the recent showing of two films on the South African women's movement. The low attendance shows the indifference and lack of concern about affairs of another country.
To fight for a cause, especially when the cause is toward a change for the good, requires much more participation. More people should start thinking about South Africa and getting others to do the same.
South Africa does not need people in support of anti-apartheid, but people who are supportive of a just cause. It needs those people who are suffering through human eyes and who reject the white South African perspective.
Fighting AIDS and hyperthermia
This summer, the number of people to contract Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome rose to nearly 2,000 and mortality neared 50 percent. Appearing at the bedside of Peter Justice, a 40-year-old AIDS patient in New York City, Margaret Hecker, secretary of Health and Human Services, said that she would urge Congress to approve $40 million for AIDS research in the next year — twice the original request.
She had found the extra money in the back of her vast enterprise: $22 million originally committed to "new furniture and construction" for the Rural Development Fund. Assuming reasonably that the industrial output would reach 4,000 in the coming year, the government would be spending $10,000 on research for each person stricken by AIDS — a sum that, if expended in similar proportions on cancer or heart disease, would swamp the
federal budget. By this same line of reasoning, research into Alzheimer's disease should be financed to the tune of $20 billion a year and my own field — arthritis treatment — should claim $320 billion.
Much of Heckler's apparently disproportionate response to AIDS
GERALD WEISSMANN
Director of the Division of Rheumatology at the New York University Medical Center
can be attributed to deep public fears that the disease will ultimately spread beyond the limited population now affected. But fear is not the best reason to support a Heckler request for AIDS research money
If we agreed that a request by Heckler was justified, we should then add another item to the secretary's budget: hyperthermia.
The tab for AIDS research would
Heat deaths in the aged are clearly caused by a lack of air conditioning in the presence of poverty. We can do little about age and poverty in the short run, but we ought to be able to buy cool air. We could cure hyperthermia simply by providing an air conditioner to their own. Bought in bulk, a perfectly splendid air conditioner should cost $350. Add $50 more for electricity, and the price is merely $400.
Effie Albright, 76, Woodson Terrace, Mo., was found dead by police in her apartment with the windows tightly shut. Joanne Smith, 88, East St. Louis, Ill., died in her home on the same day. These were only two of several deaths reported in the Midwest and Southeast during a week in July. By mid-August, 200 deaths had been reported, and in
or what the press calls "heat- related death."
Why is it we are so ready to spend millions on the conquest of a new disease, but are reluctant to do as little good housekeeping for an old
run $40 million a year. Should an effective treatment elude us for five years, that would add to a cool 200 million in 1984-89. We could aircondition 500,000 homes and rooming houses for that kind of money
Beyond that, we are simply not as good at taking care of each other's commonplace needs as exploring the new. We have conquered polio but not poverty, tuberculosis but not truancy, syphilis but not slums. We have changed the triumphs of biological wizardry and failures of social management.
It is not beyond our capacity. I should think, to help both Peter Justice and Elfie Albright. We can make a difference, just what it is that is killing them.
Copyright 1983 the New York Times