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Opinion
University Daily Kansan, February 2, 1983
Striking beyond reason
The Surface Transportation Act of 1982 may be corrupt enough to justify a possibly crippling nationwide strike by the Independent Truckers Association — but that is unlikely.
Equally unlikely is the argument that the strike may do some good, especially after Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis's flat statement Monday that the government would increase highway user fees for truckers before it would decrease them, as the truckers hoped.
Even so, some of us — rooting for what we perceive as the underdogs — still might cling to the notion that the truckers have a God-given American right to continue their strike, no matter what the odds.
Not anymore. Definitely not anymore.
This week, in more than 20 states, violence ripped through the lives of independent truckers who chose not to
join in the strike. A North Carolina trucker was killed; several others were wounded. Across the country, truckers favoring the strike turned snipers, cowardly spraying active trucks with shotgun blasts, rifle bullets and bricks.
The question to thousands of truckers today is not how the Surface Transportation Act's 5-cent per gallon hike in fuel taxes or increase in highway user fees will affect them. The question is how long many of them will live.
Until the truckers learn to protest peacefully and no longer terrorize their colleagues who disagree; until they can unite in one lobbying mass and are not violently splitting themselves wider apart; until, indeed, they regain their humanity — then, and only then, do they even have the right to strike, much less the cause to strike. Until then.
But not now
A word on superstition
Amid the headlines of robberies, rapes, violence on our highways and despair and poverty in our streets, we occasionally need something to call us back to sanity.
Sometimes it can be something ridiculous, reminding us that we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously.
Before we dismiss Groundhog Day as silly childishness or another holiday drummed up by the greeting card industry, it's interesting to learn its origin.
Over the centuries, the day became a presage for the spring. If it was sunny, more cold weather was in store. If it was cloudy, a milder spring was to follow. We Americanized the tradition and linked the sunshine, or its absence, to the groundhog.
It was originally a religious celebration, dating back to 542 A.D., that came to be known as Candlemas. It was observed on Feb. 2 — that being the 40th day after Christmas — in the East as a festival of Jesus, and in the West as a festival of his mother, Mary.
Many of us must look smugly at this superstition and laugh that people could place such faith in an oracle. But do we, with weather satellites, public opinion polls and economic indicators have any better idea of what the spring will bring?
Today we should step beyond our wall of confidence and admit to ourselves that in the uncertain whirlwind of our times, there are many things we just don't know.
Maybe the shadow does.
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Life with a law student intense
If I were someday to write an engrossing novel based entirely on the strange assortment of roommates I've had during my college years, some would get only cursory mention.
But I would definitely devote an entire chapter, maybe two, to "Living with a Law Scholar."
I gave up my solitary bliss in a one-bedroom apartment last semester to move in with a law student — let's just call her Karen, because that's her name. Law students are into boozie.
Karen and her law school friends call themselves the Lost Generation, and they may be
They are enclosed, you see, in Green Hall, which could be called Green High School, or GHS. All their classes are in the same building. Bell clicken them to class, lockers hold their many and very heavy books, and — believe it or not — they have their own yearbook and prom. Due to their isolation and their camaraderie, they seldom venture out of GHS.
Living with Karen has taught me that law students are not the competitive, brassy, win-at-all-costs fanatics they are thought to be. Law students are close. If (God forbid) Karen misses a class, she can always get notes from a fellow tailor. They are green and unselfish.
The fruits of a law student's entire semester of work ride on that week and a half we call finals week. No other tests are administered during the semester.
For baby barrists, it is a time of hysteries, weeping, wailing and nashing of the teeth. They corner the market on yellow highlighter pens. They form their own mutual protection society.
That is, until their grades come out. Law students' grades are issued later than the rest of the University's grades because the massive essay tests take longer to grade. Law students will help each other study, give solace to fellow students. But they never talk to each other about
grades. It would be as tabo and tasteless as a writing, a piece called, "The Ten Greatest Writers."
Karen swore she would not open her grades when they came. I just sat in the rocker and smiled. She called admissions and records several times, just to see if the grades had been mailed. After all, she had to know when they would arrive so she wouldn't have to open them.
The day the envelope came, Karen held it up by the corner as if it were a dead mouse she was going to dispose of. First she opened a bill, something both of us seldom do. I held my breath, waiting to see whether she'd open the grades and knowing all the time she would have
TRACEE HAMILTON
to. She did, and she let out a scream that stood the hair on the back of my neck straight up. I ran to the kitchen, ready to hide all the blunt instruments and carving knives.
But if it was a happy scream, thank God. And my roomie promptly called everyone who knew me to come inside.
I used to think that law students were stuffy, intellectual, materialistic types. I could picture them, standing around at parties muttering songs such as “quid pro quo” or “sine qua non”
This is not the case, as I've learned from Karen, who has regaled me with stories of, for instance, balcony-jumping. Law students vent the frustration of a week of reading about piggygery cases by huge frantic weekend parties — law students' parties.
They are the kind of partners, however, who weigh every potentially depraved or illegal act very carefully. You can see it in their eyes—the mentally juggle the pros and cons of, say, pouring beer in the indoor pool at a recent party. Did the $100 security deposit constitute a contract? The y think of relevant, related cases. They ponder the potential for conviction and punishment. They then make the only sensible, rational choice.
Law students come from many walks of undergraduate life, but more and more, like Karen, seem be coming from the hallowed halls of Flint, and other journalism schools, for that matter. Perhaps this is because journalism, like the law, is supposed to serve the public's best interests. Perhaps it's because there's no money in journalism.
Whatever the reason, I have nightmares about my 10-year School reunion. Karen will wear her silk shirt and gray-black wool suit with conservative pumps. She'll drink Scotch or sip wine. She'll talk of the country club or the especially weighty Supreme Court decision just handed down.
Then there's me. I'll wear either Lewis or my army pants, which is clean and within reach. I'll drink vodka or gin — with a milk chaser to soothe my ulcer-racked stomach. I constantly check my watch even though, for once, no deadline hangs over my head. I'll talk about a really great triple overtime game I got to cover, or a particularly irate reader who calls me at home every other morning or so at about 3 a.m.
In that way, and in many others, Karen and I still have much in common. Both of us will find, in our careers, that serving the public often means serving an ungrateful public. It's good to have a friend from any school on campus who can sympathize with that.
Defense shouldn't be exempt from trimming
"Tax and spend, tax and spend, bwawk!"
"Tax and spend, tax and spend, bwawk!"
Like so many parrots, the Republicans, led by President Reagan, have perpetually lamented the Democratic habit of deficit spending.
Now, two years into the Reagan presidency, the squawking has caused Congress to arrest the growth of social spending. At the same time, Republicans have set goals with record-high deficits the last two years.
With the rate of social spending declining and deficits far from conquered, it is now time to apply the Republican's knee-jerk response to the remaining budgetary leech -- defense.
One thing we have learned from the budget-slashing season is that constituencies that take from the pie too excessively place a burden on others who claim a right to government funds.
As Reagan said last week in his State or the Union address, "The truly needy suffer, as funds
intended for them are taken not by the needy but by the greedy."
Reagan, in this statement, was referring to abuse in welfare, not defense. He said his administration last year found about $1.1 billion in overpayments in the food stamp program.
but the unruly needy are not the only ones ripping off taxpayers.
Bob
News stories published the day before the address reported that the House Appropriations
DAN PARELMAN
Committee had charged the Navy with concealing $500 million in cost overrunes on the F-18 fighter-bomber. The committee said that the Navy hid the money by manipulating cost
One's interpretation of the deficit problem, then, depends on whether one gets enraged when people take extra food scraps, or when admirals fix it so they get more airplanes.
Reagan, as he stated in his address, has concluded that social spending, not defense spending, is the root of high deficits. Consequently, he proposed a freeze on domestic spending, which, according to an unnamed White House official quoted in news reports, would be held 3 percentage points below the 5 percent inflation rate.
Despite Reagan's views to the contrary, defense spending should be cut for some of the countries that have been severely affected.
Reagan called for an additional $55 billion cut from his 1954, $1.6 trillion defense increase. This "cut," according to the official, would still increase almost three times the rate of inflation.
argue for social cuts. And it can be done without sacrificing the country's security.
For example, by dropping plans for the MX missile and the B-1B bomber. Congress could ax $70 billion without imperiling U.S. defense capabilities.
Nobody has yet devised a basing plan for the MX that is economical, secure or politically feasible. And, according to William Kaufmann, former high-level advisor to defense secretaries in the Obama administration, Nakamara, Trident II missiles can destroy Soviet missile silos almost as effectively as the MX.
Cost estimates for the planned production for Trident II missiles and Trident submarines — the missiles' launching site — are almost $30 billion less than plans for the MX
Similarly, other weapons will be able to do the job of the B-1B, which Kaufmann calls "a lovely plane whose time has come and gone." Experts say the Stealth bomber, currently in development, will be able to fly undetected by Soviet radar, something the B-1B cannot do.
The MX and the B-1B are both indicative of a prime target of defense-spending critics
According to Richard De Lanier, under secretary of defense for research, engineering and acquisition, the Pentagon "absolutely must become" more selective in deciding what weapons to produce. The duplicity of weapons among the armed services, exemplified by the competition for aircraft between the Air Force and the Navy, fuels the wastefulness.
Close scrutiny of every military procurement should replace the waste. Last summer while Congress wrangled over every dollar sign and decimal point in the social spending part of Reagan's budget, it signed his blank check for the military.
Congress should need Reagan's call in his address for applying realism and pragmatism to cutting spending — and realistically assess U.S. defense needs.
As it has with social spending, Congress will be able to find plenty of ways to cut defense spending.