Opinion
University Daily Kansan, January 17, 1983
Drinking age logic off
"Old enough to fight, old enough to drink!"
This week, this fallacy of logic will assuredly be revived as Kansas joins 25 other states in an attempt to raise the legal drinking age. Although this chant and others like it helped lower the drinking age in more than 20 states a decade ago, the old battle cries are wearing thin.
"The fact is that people are always going to drink," says Mark Tallman, executive director of Associated Students of Kansas.
"Anyone who thinks raising the drinking age will increase highway safety is kidding himself," says Shaun Trenholm. Lawrence bar owner.
Yet the fact is that many who can now drink as teenagers are going to die in an alcohol-related traffic accident, according to the National Transportation Safety Board and a seventy study by Duke University. The Duke study, to be released next year, found that driving fatalities among 18- to 20-year-olds related to drunken driving increased 7 percent when the legal drinking age was lowered from 21 to 18.
And it is unlikely that Duke University faculty members and National
Transportation Safety Board members are kidding themselves. Since 1976, 20 states have raised the drinking age back up as a result of those and other figures.
Even when the old battle cries are replaced with reason, the issue is still not clear-cut. ASK and other groups are honorably lobbying for expanded educational programs and harsher drunk-driving laws — although that may be an attempt to cure the symptoms rather than the disease.
Bar owners insist, quite rightly perhaps, that raising the drinking age would deal their businesses a catastrophic blow.
Even State Rep. Ron Fox, R-Prairie Village, who is introducing the bill to the Kansas House, states: "I'm not sure it's the solution, but I think it needs to be debated."
when all is cleared away, the fact remains that an estimated 5,000 teen-agers die each year in drunken driving accidents. That number will not decrease by itself. Something must be done — and more states are finding that raising the drinking age is the best solution.
If ASK and other opponents cannot rally around different arguments, the war in Kansas may soon be over.
Economy must be stimulated with consumer spending lift
By CHARLES PETERS New York Times Syndicate
WASHINGTON — Supply-side economics has failed, and for a reason that is right out of the old-fashioned economics textbooks: Nobody's buying anything.
So it has become clear to almost everyone, even the economists, that recovery, if it is to happen, must be led by consumer spending. What we need to do now is figure out how to encourage people to start buying again.
Ronald Reagan's Robin Hood-in-reverse strategy of taking from the poor and giving to the rich should be reversed by rescinding the tax cuts given the wealthy — worth $38 billion to the 20 percent at the top of the chart scale in 1982. The rest of the population, to the 30 percent who have not benefited so far.
How should the redistribution be accomplished?
Still another way is to extend unemployment compensation for those without other sources of income. More than 50 percent of the country's unemployed have used up their benefits. Such an extension would reach the males and childless females not covered by welfare.
The obvious way is to reduce the taxes of middle- and lower-income groups. Another way is to increase welfare payments. Unlike many social programs, welfare has a means test. The poor are the ones who get the money — but there is not much question that they have needs that are not being filled by monthly payments. In Mississippi, for example, a needy mother and two children get only $96 in cash and $183 in food stamps.
The poor are likely to spend every cent we give them. But employed middle-class people are different, the fear of becoming unemployed is greater than the dollar in the cookie jar instead of spending it.
There is an answer to this problem. It comes from the 1930s, when lenders were afraid to make mortgage loans because there had been
"Today the need is not so much to reassure the lender as it is to comfort the buyer. He is afraid to buy because he is afraid he might be laid off and not be able to pay his debts. What we should do is reassure the buyer with a consumer loan and not effect the "effect. The government will pave if you can."
such a high rate of default during the depths of the Depression. The federal government recognized that the solution was to insure the mortgage — so the lender could be certain that he would be paid.
Here again, the 1990s offer guidance. During the Depression, an epidemic of bank failures spread throughout the country as worried citizens stocked up on deposits, fearing that their bank might be next.
The government stepped in with deposit insurance to reassure customers and halt the panic. It has worked like a dream for almost half a century, costing the government practically nothing while continuing to inspire customers' confidence.
Consumer insurance can work the same way. The key to making sure that it won't become an immense drain on the Treasury is to limit it to working people and to make sure they take it seriously. The insured consumer should be made to pay a small fee when he makes his purchase, and he should also have to sign an agreement authorizing the government to tax him for what he would owe if he fell seriously behind on his loan. People who don't pay taxes — the truly poor, those on welfare and unemployment — would be ineligible.
I know this proposal will strike some people as outrageous. Certainly it will seem so to those who see our society as excessively consumerist, more in need of saving than spending, and more seriously endangered by inflation than by any other economic peril.
I happen to think their concerns are the wrong ones at this time. What we must do is stimulate consumption now and save our worries about overheating the economy until it at least begins
Charles Peters is editor in chief of the Washington Monthly.
Salvadoran rights record poor
President Reagan is a lot like a bull. Flash red before his eyes and the nostrils begin to flare, the muscles tense. El toro is ready to charge.
El Salvador is a good example of the Reagan attack reflex. In the name of fighting communism, the United States in 1982 poured $81 million in military aid into a government that has killed an estimated 7,372 political opponents since 1980, according to the U.S. Embassy.
This is the government to whose army the United States has sent 50 military advisers, the government that Amnesty International placed in charge of political killings by governments (or 1982).
Particularly appalling is the fact that the Salvadoran military has killed Americans.
Last October, the Salvadoran military killed American Michael Kline. The military claimed that Kline was a mercenary fighting with leftist guerrillas. The army said it shot Kline from a distance, but according to an autopsy conducted last month, Kline was shot in the head from close proximity.
Americans Michael Hammer and Mark Pearlman were not mercenaries, but were representing the AFL-CIO in El Salvador. They and Jose Rodilo Viera, president of the Salvadoran government, Christian Transmisión were burned down two years ago in the San Salvador Sheraton hotel.
Atrocities such as these convinced Congress to require the Reagan administration to certify that El Salvador was improving its human rights record before the United States sent the country further aid.
The Salvadoran courts have yet to pursue the case against the army lieutenant and the police officer who shot the man.
The administration's next certification is due Jan. 28.
In its last certification report in July, the administration asserted that El Salvador, based on public and private statements made by its legislators, was making significant progress in human rights.
However, the provisional president himself, Alvaro Magana, has said that it is difficult to control the abuses of the military. In fact, the military has built a long record of abuse.
In 1976, Mount Kisco, New York, police arrested Manuel Rodriguez, then the chief of
DAN PARELMAN
staff for the Salvadoran army. Rodriguez was attempting to sell millions of dollars worth of American weapons to the two officers, who posed as Mafia members.
Last February, Robert White, U.S. ambassador to El Salvador during the Carter administration, testified before Congress that reliable information provided by the police officers were selling arms to the revolutionaries.
It is apparent that the public announcements of Salvadoran leaders on human rights progress is not sufficient grounds to continue to supply
such a military with more weapons. As long as the military remains corrupt, fortune, murder and graft will remain staples of the Salvadoran military's bloody diet; a diet nourished with U.S.
But as the Reagan administration would have it, El Salvador will fall into the hands of the leftists and become a Soviet satellite if the United States ends its support.
However, fueling the civil war by encouraging Salvadoran military atrocities through U.S. support is hardly a way to keep the country from becoming communist. It is only a way to buy troops to fight against them. The government, grown tired of government abuses, will be forced to take up arms against the government.
The proper alternative to supporting violence is helping El Salvador seek a negotiated settlement of its civil war. Last fall, leaders of the Salvadoran opposition groups, the Democratic Revolutionary Front and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, announced that they were willing to take part in the political process.
In the past, the Reagan administration has resisted peaceful solutions to the Salvadoran civil war. Blinded by red and determined to further U.S. economic interests in Latin America at all costs, the Reagan administration demanded an immeasurable, expedient answers to a complex situation.
If the United States continues to support Third World regimes such as El Salvador's, the United States will further alienate itself from the people of these nations and make communism the only viable choice. Now is the time to stop support the military, and start seeking an end to the bloodshed.
Lifeline withdrawal leaves some cold
If Lawrence had been hit with a colder winter, then maybe the Lawrence City Commission would have approved the Lifeline natural gas rates proposal by now.
The University Daily
Perhaps, the problem is that no one has frozen to death yet.
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Last Tuesday, city commissioners voted to set up a task force to study whether there was a need for Lifeline rates, a natural gas rate discount that would lower Lawrence's elderly, low-income and disabled residents' heating bills. By doing this, they killed any possibility that Lifeline would be implemented this winter. Under the proposal, about 1,600 Lawrence residents would have qualified for the special Lifeline rate.
Qualified residents would have received a 50 percent discount on the first 15,000 cubic feet of
KATE DUFFY
natural gas used during the two billing cycles after Jan. 15. In a winter month, the average Lawrence resident uses 17,800 cubic feet of natural gas.
At last Tuesday's meeting, city commissioners were very close to giving low-income families a break they desperately need in these hard economic times. They had voted 4-1 for the Lifeline ordinance on its first reading two weeks ago, after studying the proposal since October.
Wary at first of changing the rate structure as a way to help low-income families with high heating bills, commissioners seemed to gradually warm to the idea. After all, the Lifeline idea is not a new one. Congress passed the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act in 1978, which directed state regulatory agencies to study Lifeline policies for both gas and electricity.
but something happened. Two Lawrence residents passed around a town petition against Lifeline, gathering more than 2,000 signatures. Lifeline opponents appeared at recent commission meetings and complained that being forced to subsidize the service such as Lifeline. On the other hand, they said, they don't mind contributing voluntarily to charities such as the Warm Hearts
They argued that there were federal programs such as the Low-Income Energy Assistance Program (LIEAP) that will help people with their heating bills.
program that would then pay low-income residents' heating bills.
But programs such as LIEAP and Warm Hearts are not solid solutions to the problem of outrageously high gas bills for our elderly and low-income residents. An average yearly LIEAP payment is only about 410, maybe just enough to pay one month's heating bill, if that
And how long will people keep giving money to the Warm Hearts program before they are discouraged by their constant giving? Granted, more than $66,000 has been contributed so far by generous Lawrence residents. But that was in the heat of a campaign that was advertised daily on the front pages of the Lawrence Journal-World and by local radio. Those kinds of charitable programs tend to fizzle if they are not lent before the public eye.
The group in charge of distributing the funds, the Emergency Services Council, has been paying out an average of $3,000 to $4,000 a week. And that is in a winter that has been warmer than average. What happens when and if the bitter cold finally settles? in Gas bills go up and so does the amount of Warm Hearts money going out to pay heating bills.
Lifeline opponents repeatedly said they resented being forced by government to subsidize others; but the Lifeline program is no different from unemployment insurance.
On a local level, Lawrence residents have been footing the bill for land developers who don't pay their special assessment taxes, and residential customers pay a higher rate than industrial users.
The average Lawrence gas bill would go up by only 62 cents a month to pay for the Lifeline rates. Is that too much to pay to insure the health and welfare of 1,600 low-income residents?
Gas prices are not going to get cheaper in years to come. Lawrence needs to do something lasting to insure that people don't freeze to death because they can't afford to pay the bill.