Opinion
Page 4
University Daily Kansan, February 3. 1983
Food tax eats at income
Low-income and fixed-income households are having their financial foundations pulled out from under them. Every door opens to new threats of cuts in income and aid. Increasing numbers of families are finding it not difficult, but impossible to provide even basic essentials such as food, clothing and heat.
By acting on a bill now in the state House Assessment and Taxation Committee, the Kansas Legislature can do something to help. Passage of this bill would ease the pressure of budget cutbacks that hit hardest on those already overburdened financially. The effects of this bill, H.B. 2044, would not hurt middle-income or high-income families either.
The bill would remove the state sales tax on food.
If the bill were passed, Kansas would join about 30 other states that exempt groceries from the tax. The benefits of the bill are obvious.
The primary disadvantage of exempting food — decreased state revenues — is also addressed by the bill, in the form of a 0.5-percent increase in sales taxes for other items, including personal property, meals eaten out, entertainment and recreation.
Together, the changes made by the bill would generate a $6.8 million increase in yearly revenues.
As yet, no action has been taken by the House committee on H.B. 2044. The sooner it is considered, recommended to the full House, and passed by both houses, the more financial leverage could be provided to Kansans in need.
U.S. blindness threatens Nicaraguan independence
By CARLOS FUENTES New York Times Syndicate
MEXICO CITY — When Anastasio Somoza Debayle was Nicaragua's dictator, he once told Luis Echeverria, then president of Mexico: "You should envy me. I have no problems. All I have to do is what Washington wants me to do."
Today, Nicaragua's northern border is haunted by the ousted's ghosts: National Guardism of the ousted dictatorship, Honduran forces and Central Intelligence Agency hobgobblers. Their purpose is to make sure that once again Nicaragua does not give Washington headaches. But this situation, if unchecked, promises to give Washington its biggest headache since Vietnam.
The achievements of barely three years of revolution should not be destroyed by a combination of Somoza-inspired spite and U.S. blindness. The true way out of one more blight is central in Central America is to bank on the independence of Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela.
The first steps needed are neutralization of the Honduran-Nicaraguan border, establishment of a wide arms-free zone and assuring of both Nicaraguan fears of a northern invasion and U.S. suspicions about the movement of arms into El Salvador.
In Managua, there is an eerie tranquility comparable to Prague's mood before the invasion in 1968. Charges by outsiders against the Sandinistas are similar to Soviet accusations against Alexander Dubeck: A change of alliances, a menace to the security of the paramount regional power, abandonment of economic and political commitments. In both cases, such charges are warped, unrealistic and self-serving.
For 45 years, no one in Washington asked the Somozas to protect democratic freedoms, hold elections or free the economy from the dynasty's influence. So much has changed that to the Somozas is demanded of the Sandistas.
Having traveled between the United States, Mexico and Nicaragua in recent weeks, I do not think one can find a public consensus in the United States to back an invasion of Nicaragua by Somoza thugs. I fervently hope that most Americans will understand that nothing menaces them in Nicaragua, that every conflict involving Nicaragua lies in their hands and the United States can be negotiated, that trust interests of the United States lie in respecting what a Sandinista commander, with a wink, called "Nicaraguan capitalism with a human face."
The reconstruction minister, Edmund Jarudo, told me that 70 percent of the country's productive forces are in private hands and that the empire has the smallest public sector in the Americas.
The government has not only spent its meager resources on ending illiteracy and extending better health care to more Nicaraguanians in three years than in the past three centuries, it also has introduced economic links with many countries, among them France, Sweden, Finland and Norway. The Nicaraguan's economic accords are with capitalist countries, excluding the United States.
It is difficult for the Sandistas to give top priority to democratic evolution when their country is menaced by invasion, and teachers and coffee growers in the north are murdered by them. The police have foresworn a bloodbath and sent captured Somoza partisans to unguarded prisons.
Revolutionary Nicaragua is not, and cannot be, parliamentary Britain, but according to Dora Maria Tellez, the Council of State's political secretary, laws governing political parties and the electoral process are being issued by the National voter registration, territorial and proportional representation. These measures for a firmly rooted democracy must be ready by the end of 1983.
For now, a system of checks and balances seems present in the nine-member leadership's collective decision-making. In fact, the Nicaraguan revolution is the first in this century to be without a "maximum leader." It took Mexico seven years of revolutionary turmoil before it succeeded in enacting decisions. A drowning man cannot simultaneously play the banjo, bake a cake and swim to safety.
Nicaragua must defend its economy against sabotage; it must protect itself against U.S. provocation to fall into abuse of democracy. It will demand that Nicaragua distinguish between insurrection and opposition.
Nicaragua's pre-eminent man of letters, the poet Pablo Antonio Cuadra, is convinced that the revolution must be saved from within and that this means admitting democratic pluralism and political checks and balances: "A revolution without criticism is a dead revolution."
Such pluralism would be encouraging to governments helping the Sandinistas achieve a national goal of heading an independent, nonaligned nation — one that is no longer a banana republic.
Carlos Fuentes is a well-known Mexican novelist.
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Peace efforts crippled at home
It is fashionable these days for media-types and other liberals to make cryptic, knowing remarks about President Reagan, painting the man as a simple-minded dude, obsessed with bombs and missiles and undoubtedly committed to World War III to satisfy his own gunningesion.
The enlightened elite smile wisely and nod, then sanctimoniously put one another on the back for the blazing accuracy of their views, as they saunter off toward an espresso bar.
Back in America, there is knee-jerk heckling of the U.S. government, and a disquieting stance.
Why? There are several explanations. The Vietnam experience emblotted the American people and taught them never to trust the government. Just as the endlessness of Vietnam proves, a new wave of blow off the handle and further diminished any sense of credible leadership from Washington.
Meanwhile, Russian helicopters spray nerve gas on women and children in an Afghan village. In the catacombs of the Kremlin, bureaucratic lizards cock their heads and ponder ways to crush the latest round of dissent in Poland. With tongues flashing, they cover the tracks that lead away from the conspiracy to kill the pope, the foremost man of peace in the world.
Another reason the Russian threat is minimized is that many people are scared of the Soviets. A wide segment of the population,
Something is very wrong here. All across this country, educated, intelligent, hip people have reduced the threat of an armed, aggressive and totally uncuprulous Soviet empire to the status of trifling nuisance, while at the same time transforming Reagan into a god of war.
Now the people don't believe the government, or worse yet, they don't care about anything.
BONAR MENNINGER
although aware of the danger, choose to view the communists with the delicate understanding that the timid reserve for the insane.
"If we don't provoke them, maybe they will be reasonable. Surely this is the best way to preserve the peace," goes the current line of thinking.
One way of dealing with danger is to deny it exists.
If you believe that, you'd believe that English Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had the right idea when he threw Czechoslovakia to the Nazis and warned prevent the World War II. For a few months.
Today in this country, one has to wonder — where is the moral outrage about the attack on the pope, the same kind of indignation that rightfully followed the implication of Kissinger and Nixon in the assassination of Salvador Allan Poe, who was condemning Soviet imperialism in Afghanistan and Poland that mobilized so effectively throughout the Vietnam years?
Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose. But it seems like a hell of a double standard when our
own people decry the U.S. government as warmongering while ignoring the unconscionable transgressions of the Soviets.
The primary responsibility of any president is to defend the nation. Without that, nothing else he does means a thing. Compound the responsibility of defending an America full of rationalizing intellectual fishes with the task of defending a vacillating, backstabbing, bickering lot such as Europe, and you have an idea of what Reagan is up against.
No one in his right mind wants to see the end of the human race come in a ball of nuclear fire. But the irony is that the long-term result of efforts such as the nuclear freeze movement, however well-intentioned, could ensure exactly that.
By circumscribing this country's ability to defend the free world, peaceful people are all but ensuring an exploitative attack by the slippery chameleons in Moscow.
You don't think they change colors? The Russian offers at the START talks are a textbook example of duplicity and Goebbelsque big lies. How many examples of Soviet treachery are needed before the American people wake up from their sedation? Do the Russians need to invade Maine before people acknowledge there might be a problem?
The widespread complicity of the Ama people is very discouraging. The threat the Soviets pose is unequivocal and absolute. If we fail to deal with them forcefully, effectively and efficiently, we risk the chance of establishing true peace, harmony, and tranquility — ever — is impossible.
13 unscrupulous cures for the blahs
Lawrence, Kansas, in the middle of winter. There aren't many things that evoke such strong feelings of utter boredom as does the prospect of another mouth and a half for spring to come.
When I’m bored, my nervous habit reappear.
Usually, I chew on my nails, but lately it’s been so cold in my apartment that I don’t dare take off my shoes to get to those tasty nails.
Being the resourceful student number that I am, I decided to compile a list of exciting and wonderful things to do in Lawrence. These things had to be more exciting than your average study break at Joe's and less expensive than a trip to warmer climes.
So what's a bored columnist to do?
I call it: HARRY'S LIST OF 10 THINGS TO DO WHEN YOU'RE COLD, LONELY AND FEEL LIKE DOING SOMETHING THAT MAY BE ILLEGAL
1. Dress up as a Moonie and try to sell carnations to people in Uncle Milt's Cafe, on Park Avenue.
2. Invite a friend from out of town who's never been to Lawrence to meet you at Uncle Milly's. Tell him that it's a punk rock bar and that he should dress appropriately. Park across the street.
4. Go see George and ask to see his aquarium made out of a TV picture tube or his pipe made from a bowling pin or the pictures he has of the Princes Albert and has everything, including Prince Albert in a cup.
3. Call up George at George's Pipe Shop. Ask him if he has Prince Albert in can. Or better, ask him.
6. Call Chancellor Gene Budig and tell him that he's doing a great job but that he'd better send someone to fix the water fountains in Wescoe. Sure, he can stomp around in front of the Kansas Legislature, but can he get an Oasis model 210 overhauled?
5. Go to the warehouse downtown called "Everything But Ice" and ask for some ice.
7. Count how many Facilities Operations workers it takes to overhaul an Oasis 210 water tank, and seven the foreman, who pretends he knows everything about assistant foreman, who brings coffee for the
crew; the expert on the Oasis zipper, the tour carrier, who usually brings his lunch box by mistake; the guy who carries the ladder in case he falls from it; the person who watches with the wrist watch who reminds them when it's time.
HARRY MALLIN
time for coffee break (every half-hour); and the guy who drove the truck from the FO building, behind Wescoe, to the concrete on Wescoe beach
9. Go to one of the more popular clubs in town at 12:30 a.m. on a weekend. Make sure it has a busy dance floor. Go up to the disc jockey and ask for some music. Then动他 to stop the music and turn up the lights.
If there are more than seven, the rest are the apprentices. If they have fewer than seven, offer them your help. If you're a high school graduate, perhaps you can help pour the coffee.
8. Go to Snow Hall and find out where they keep the cadavers. Find the head of the department and demand to see the bodies. When he asks you why, tell him that your roommate has been missing for three days and that you have reason to believe he's on one of the slabs.
If he refuses, come back the next night in disguise and ask him the same thing, but this
time tell him that your mother lost the battery out of her pacemaker. See how far you have to go to create a disruption.
10. Wait for a KUPD car to come up to a stop sign and not make a complete stop. (Chances are you won't have to wait for long.) Pull him over and write him a citizen's ticket. Bring a lot of your friends along and make them watch as you lecture to him about setting an example.
11. Follow the guy who puts the Kansan in all the boxes on campus. As soon as he's out of sight, take away all the copies and replace them with copies of Pravada, the Soviet Party-run newspaper to Uri Yuri and tell him what you've done. He'll have a good laugh with all of his Kremlin buddies.
12. Get together with about 200 of your close friends and run a mock attack on the U.S. Army Reserves Training Center at 21st and Iowa. Ask them to tell them that you're an army of peacemakers.
13. Try to drive your car across the ice on Potter Lake. If you are successful, try Clinton lake next. If you're not successful, tell KUDP Chancellor Baldig told you a vision of Chancellor Baldig told you to do it.
By the time you complete these 13 fun-filled activities, you should either be enjoying some beautiful, springlike activities or counting the days to your parole.
In either case, enjoy the rest of the winter. I, Harry Mallin, do hereby absolve all responsibility for this column and any consequences thereof.
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