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Friday. December 3,1971
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Intellectual Bankruptcy
The state of Kansas is going bankrupt. The millions of dollars left over from the Avery administration have all been spent, and state agencies and now reeling under some of the most severely austere budgets ever imposed.
Hardest hit have been the department of social welfare and the six institutions of higher education: "those welfare bums" and "those pot-smoking hippies." It seems both are an吸引型 targets for budget slashing.
But the severe budget slashing would be unnecessary if the state weren't so pinched for money. And why is Kansas so pinched?
Politics, sadly enough, is the answer. Both Gov. Docking and the legislators have recognized the need for some sort of tax increase to meet the state's spending needs. But the stumbling block has been which tax to increase.
Docking, when he veted a boost in the sales tax this summer, termed it "necessary and highly desirable" to raise taxes, but only "if the legislature
will just accept my tax reform proposals." He proposed to the 1971 legislature that the state discontinue allowing corporations to deduct their federal income taxes on their state income and amends also proposed broadening the scope of, but not increasing, the sales tax. Neither was passed.
If this state had a Republican governor and a Republican legislature, or a Democratic governor and a Democratic legislature, some form of tax reform would be in effect by now. But we don't; we have a Democratic governor and a highly partisan Republican legislature. And while the two have quarreled, the state has found itself with less and less money.
Thus, partisan politics is now playing a tragic role in the financial crisis in which KU and the other state schools are now embroiled.
Taxes must be raised and raised now, if Kansas does not want to become intellectually, as well as financially, bankrupt.
—Pat K. Malone
One Letter
To the Editor:
After having read today's (30 Nov.) Kansan, we like to voice our own opinions in opposition to some of the ideas expressed in his book *A Swineheart at KU* Kui Rescher U.N.'s Action on Homeland" as follows
1. The recent action taken by U.N. is one giant step towards the reunification of China.
2. China is multi-dialected country, Taiwanese speaking a different dialect is speaking the same dialect in Cantonese speaking another different dialect in the Mandarin. Yet, we are all Chinese! This, difference in dialects offers only a basis for independence
3. Again, China is a country of various culture. Different habits and customs have long existed among all people, and cultural differences as a reason to promote independence only reflects ignorance in China's
4. Taiwan's split
Mahieu Chai is a consequence of Japan's aggression in 1894. After the war, Taiwan has been regretted.
5. Although the civil war between the Communists
and the Nationalists has not been ended, Taiwan, like other provinces, is always the last to be regarded independence is regarded as betrayal to our anarchism will therefore be forgiven will
6. We strongly believe that the gap between the Taiwanese and the Taiwanese can be maintained through brotherly discussion and mutual consideration. Any movement of getting independence will bring forth nothing auspicious but confusion unnecessary blood-shed.
Hsiang Huang (Taiwan, Republic of China), Senior, Mechanical Engineering
Where the Buffalo Roam . . .
... A New Tourist's Home?
By ROBERT W. PATRICK Kansan Staff Writer
To promote tourist travel in the state of Kansas the legislature allots this commission eighty thousand dollars each year which includes, according to George Matthews of the Commission's Travel Division, fifty thousand dollars spent for direct advertising, mostly in the TV guide in which thirty thousand dollars being spent primarily on salaries, including his own.
Matthews said this allocation has not changed in the last five years despite rising costs, and an
There is some feeling that Kansas is a "drive-through" state without any principle tourist attractions, that tourists do not come to Kansas to see tourist attractions, but merely visit tourist attractions as they drive through in other states.
Tourists spend more than $227 million in Kansas each year according to the Kansas Department of Economic Development Commission (KDED).
While Kansas does not have the spectacular tourist attractions of some states, it does have many cities where tourists will travel to see.
increasing number of tourists and tourists facilities.
While allocations for promoting tourist travel in the state have not increased, the need for recreational facilities has, and new facilities are being built. The number of outdoor recreation reports, it is estimated that the one thousand nine hundred and seventy five attendance at outdoor recreational facilities will more than double the figures for the early 1960's. This increase is due to anticipated population growth, increased mobility, increased income, and more leisure time.
The eighty thousand dollars spent by Kansas to promote tourism is pitifully small when compared recently to the Missouri Senate Appropriations Commission which would establish information booths at eight entry points in each town, ten thousand four hundred dollars from capital improvement funds and one hundred fifty three thousand four hundred dollars during the coming fiscal year.
Henry B. J. Jameson, Abilene publisher and former president of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, recently said that the KEDD was been hampered in its work by a legislature 'which has
been slow to recognize the one segment of our economy that is booming."
He said that very few businesses make money without making some kind of investment, and that the legislature could no longer overlook this rapidly growing segment of the economy.
Jameson said that the income from travelers could be more than doubled by attracting not only tourists, but those who came to stay longer.
Several states have established tourist information booths at important highway entrances to their states where the tourist can stop and get information about attractions and commercial. By providing this information it is felt that tourists spend more money and stay longer, a goal sought by Kansas, but Kansas state law prohibits the state from giving privately owned tourist attractions.
If a traveler stops at a Kansas port of entry, or other point marked "tourist information" he may get off the train and enter information. Inquiries at several of these offices in various parts of the state failed to produce more than copies of the official state map and about tourist attractions one
attendent said, "I don't know,
what do you want to know?"
"Tourist" information of this nature, coupled with too limited advertising outside USA "drive-through" attitude.
What does income from tourist travel in Kansas mean to the economy? According to a KEDD report titled, "Impact of the Travel Industry on Kansas Economy," personal income derived from travelers spending money in Kansas was over one hundred forty two million dollars in 2014. Eighty-eight seven million dollars was distributed in the form of wages and salaries to Kansas workers.
As a direct consequence of the five hundred twenty seven million dollars in travel spending the report says that the increase in the number of increased by thirty one million dollars. Over two-thirds of this amount was a yield of the retail sales tax and the motor fuel tax. The report also indicates that directly connected with travel spending there are indirect effects which magnify the impact of tourist travel on the economy of Kansas. The report says that increasing the motor fuel stimulates "the total volume of business by a multiple of the original spending—that is the
dollars are recirculated and the total effect is magnified."
The report says that in addition to the five hundred twenty seven million dollars in direct business sales from the traveling public, 80 percent of the million dollars in spending is indirectly contributed to the economy of the state. Thus, while the travel industry in Kansas accounted for over one and a half billion dollars in personal activity of the state, it also contributed three hundred eighty eight million dollars in personal income and generated some forty million dollars in tax revenues.
The nation will be celebrating its 200th birthday in 1976, and it is anticipated that tourism throughout the country will reach a peak that year. It is questionable whether the legislature of Kansas will spend additional money to promote Kansas. It is questionable whether the legislature will be willing to pass the necessary legislation to establish tourist information booths that can give information on all tourist attractions.
Will the legislature do any of this in time to take advantage of the money tourists will spend in 1978?
Garry Wills Column
Knocking Jesus Freaks
LOS ANGELES-California is the capital of fringe religiosities in America, so I was not surprised to find the Jesus movement so active here. The intensity still comes as a surprise.
Waiting to go into a movie, I heard a young usher heated debating with a friend the exact date of the Second Coming.
I mentioned this to a sociologist, who is studying three different groups of Pentecostals, and he told me Second Coming groups are a distinct strain in the movement. Some concentrate on speaking in tongues, discernment from world events, and others are strong on faith healing and laying on of hands. Still others tend more to counter-group kinds of mutual criticism. Some groups attract
mainly those coming off drugs and other kinds of freakiness. Others seem to gather in the innocent, with some impulse toward Fundamentalism surviving from their upbringing. The flamboyant girlhood would have affected the flamboyant evangelism of younger meetings.
This movement is not single, then, or homogeneous. Indeed, she and her group, for something "less treme" or "more warm" is common among the enthusiasts. I talked to the women in a very literate family who had tried to keep their weddings until they felt "at home."
Because of this variety, any criticism of Jesus meetings can be said to apply only to this or that group. In the whole movement, Fair enough.
But the comments of those studying the movement, those in it now, or in it until recently, reinforce some reasonable conclusions about the generality of Jesus people. I have met a number of them, been at other meetings, gone to one of their own meetings. It is the last one I'll go to.
I went without hostility. Indeed, Dr. Johnson's attitude seems the saest one—when he heard complaints that the brilliant poet, Christopher Smart, was compelling friends to kill him. "I told you," I'd said, "I'd as lief pray with Kit Smart as anne else."
Second, not only do they accept everything; they have various forms of gentle coercion to make you accept too. You must join in, and only the most curdlygum can resist their smiling assault of you. Second, not only do they must join or leave; you cannot simply observe or question.
usheetingly, without question.
Mutter whatever you like—rapid Latin obscessities or gibberish—and your neighbor will munter back "Praise the Lord." Nc doubts need apply.
Gilbert Chesterton described Eastern mysticism as symbolized by the Buddha, his whole body curving back on itself in closed-eyed smiles of compacency. The Christian icon, by contrast, is a man encapaged in a turtle of alert openness to all things—even to douse ("Why hast thou forsaken ne?")
If to be a Christian is to be so uncritically slapheart as these Jesus kids by and large are, then even so devout a skepster at Dr. Johnson would be excluded from the definition. Though he would pray with Kit Smart, he would not be happy with him being blind. Truth seeing is a painful thing—and the mysterious point of the Gospel is that such pain is worth experiencing, even for God.
Griff and the Unicorn
Third, these people are too happy. Reality has not got to them, or they are blocking it out. They're rocking closed eyeglasses, sights building rhythmically, continual nods of palised readiness to agree, their over-hearty laughs, their hurried forgiveness for committed, their self-hypnotic repose of how happy they are.
from these signs, Jesus was not a
Jesus freak. He was not happy
enough.
That is a mystery I did not find suggested at the Jesus meetings.
The Jesus they are celebrating is said to have wept over cities, rebuked and been angry, felt betrayed and ashamed, "sorrowful unto死," Judging
"Copyright 1971, David Sokoloff."
Copyright, 1971 Universal Press Syndicate
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