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Thursday, September 29, 1977
University Daily Kansan
Comment
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN-
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansas editorial staff. Signed columns represent only the views of the writers.
Dispute went too far
The salary dispute between Lawrence and its police officers is over. After seemingly endless bickering and public accusations, the city and the Lawrence Police Officers Association (LPOA) finally have hammered out a 1978 contract that both parties apparently agreed to. But even though it calculate either party—the dispute took far too long to resolve and was resolved in a manner that may inject a note of bitterness into future negotiations.
LPOA voted last week to give up demands for 10 per cent raises in next year's contracts. Officers decided to settle for 6 per cent raises in exchange for receiving concessions from the city in their 1979 contracts.
EXPLAINING why LPOA dropped its earlier insistence on the 10 per cent raises, David Reavis, LPOA chairman, said "there was not so much a change of heart, but just a get-it-over with attitude." That's the attitude the group, as well as the city, should have adopted last month when the contract disagreements began.
The city, in turn, showed a marked reluctance to meet its workers half way. City commissioners for four years added job-risks merited something beyond the blanket 6 per cent
The city had to adopt its budget by Aug. 15, the deadline for filing it with the county. In the middle of August, however, police and firemen decided the budget didn't suit them. They accused the city of closing hearings on the budget too early.
raised offer all city employees. City officials were less than responsible when they said LPOA's leadership was misleading its members; the leadership actually approved the compromise two weeks before it could sell it to the members.
AS THE dispute simmered, tempers on both sides flared. The police group, in an ill-considered charge, said commissioners who had hunked to the "depths of deceit."
The fact that the salary discussions occurred after the budget deadline highlights a worthy provision in the compromise agreement. Next spring, police officers and city officials will have an April 15 deadline for starting salary talks. The governor has downed in negotiations, after the budget already has been adopted, can be avoided.
LPOA staged a three-day work slowdown in August in an attempt to get public backing for its position. Reavis said the slowdown "could escalate into other areas or activities that could endanger our lives" and untimely for the safety of Lawrence residents, the escalation never came to pass.
Every city depends on full service from all of its employees, and contract negotiations are an important part of assuring that service. Neither the city nor the LPOA can afford to discuss contract issues in anything but the calmest possible manner. One can only hope that the problems in this year's negotiations do not spill over into next year's bargaining. The bargaining should reflect reason, not ill-tempered emotions.
Treaty interpretations differ
By PAUL B. RYAN
N V Times Features
By PAUL B. RYAN
STANFORD, Calif.—In his frenetic baltz to gain public approval of the two Panama Canal treaties President Jimmy Carter said that he has lobbied misinformation to lave out the facts.
Thus he and his chief negotiators Elsworth Bunker and Sol M. Linowitz, repeatedly have assured the public that the United States would hold the canal and send troops into the canal by sending troops into Panama in time of crisis. Additionally the White House says that U.S. warships would have the "permanent right to transit the canal expeditiously and for reasons for an indefinite period."
THE ANSWER IS not if you listen to Panama's chief treaty negotiator Romula Escobar who analyzed the treaty's provisions at a news conference in Panama City on Aug 24.
But does this ostensibly forthright interpretation of treaty terms which presumably protect vital U.S. strategic interests coincide with that held by Panama?
Escobar's comments were broadcast by radio and subsequently published in the Daily Telegraph. Foreign Broadcast Information Service. Surprisingly Escobar's astonishing views which directly contradict the White House's, appear to have been deliberately overlooked by the U.S. news media.
Escobar roundly rejects the Carter administration's claim
that the United States may send in troops. "The treaty does not establish that the United States intervene in Panama," he said.
He denied that the treaty gives the United States the right to decide when neutrality is violated or not. Neither in his own words nor in the treaty has the right of expeditious transit without conditions.
AS ESCOBAR inolequely put it: "If . . . the gringos with their warships say 'I want to go through first,' then that is their problem with the other ships there."
Presumably Panamanian officials would look idly on while U.S. Navy captains during an exercise with merchant skippers for a place at the head of the waiting line of ships. So much for the U.S. right to unimpeded transit under the defense of the waterway.
Were these wildly different interpretations known to the U.S. negotiators during the talks? As Escobar told the newsmen these points had been thrashed out with the American, but the Obama team had pressed against their demands.
Faced with Panama's refusal to allow "privileged passage," the Americans finally accepted the term "expeditious transit," in order said Escobar to "sell" the treaty to the Pentagon. "How they coped?" he asked of privileged passage. . . Do not believe that we mean that," Escobar emphasized.
PLACED SIDE by side, Carter's reassuring assessment
and Escobar's belligerent and cynical evaluation present the apparent paradox of two governments outwitted by an underclass that secretly retaining entirely different perceptions of its provisions.
Or is it a case where both negotiating teams assumed that the "real" meaning of the terms could be safely debated because they had won ratification from their respective governments?
AS A FORMER naval officer Carter understands, probably better than most people, the need for the United States to retain such "practical control" to permit its Navy to carry out its mission and protect U.S. diplomatic policies and strategic objectives.
In light of Escobar's dismissal of U.S. treaty rights can Carter really mean what he saves?
A poor treaty is worse than no treaty at all. U.S. diplomacy must serve the national interest, and have recently been reminded.
The Carter Administration would clear up these glaring ambiguities at once. As matters now stand America has no guarantee from Panama for the protection of U.S. defense and security interests in the Canal Zone.
Capt. Paul B. Ryan U.S. Navy (Ret.) is a research associate at the Stanford University Hoover Institute and he is a former desk officer in the Pentagon's divisions of international security affairs Latin American section.
Vietnam was admitted as the 149th member of the United Nations last week—an event that barely provoked a flicker in America. The United States. Five, even three years ago, such an event would have touched off a fluffy of comment from "hawks" and the "doves" on whether Vietnam should be allowed to enter the United States.
Vietnam memories grow fainter
It would seem that the memory of Vietnam would be indelible. It was the longest, most protected war in history.
It would seem that a war that commanded so much attention, while it was being fought would have been an easy task for candidates for a long time. But most of the key participants either have died or have moved to other things. Kennedy and Sanders have been the political exile in San Clemente.
Ellsworth Bunker, formerly an ambassador to South Vietnam, has had better luck with the Carter Administration on the Panama Canal. Other key figures—Henry Cabot Lodge, Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, Gen William Westmoreland, Meghan Laird have all dropped on pages of our newspapers.
EVEN THE WAR'S most vitriolic critics have mottled. Three weeks ago, Mark Rudd turned himself in to authorities to accuse him of profiling a spokesman for the Students for a Democratic Society, a radical organization that, among other activities, protested the war in Vietnam. He was wanted by the federal several misdemeanor charges.
Jane Fonda recently donned a strapless gown to preside over a Hollywood awards banquet. When she won the Academy Award for her role in "Kute," six years ago, Foda used her acceptance speech to denounce the United States' bombing of Cambodia. Now she seems more concerned with how James Hayden's political future.
Jerry Rubin, who once counseled youths to kill their parents, is planning to be
Pentagon and the Vietnamese government know that about 82 per cent of the MLAs were crew members of the DMAs planned, planes which exploded in air and allowed no escape by parachute.
ASIDE FROM the families of the MIAs, the POWs and the Vietnam veterans, one group remains entrenched in not letting us forget Vietnam. The group, which is hosted at Kent State University who continue to fight the building of a gymnasium near the site where four students were killed by Ohio National Guardmen during an anti-war demonstration, will let us bury the memory of the anti-war movement beneath a gymnasium.
But for the most part, their protsets have fallen on deaf ears. Time and preoccupation with more pressing problems have
caused the whole chaotic picture of Vietnam to grow dimmer and dimmer. Unemployment, the recession and the energy shortage have refocused America's attentions. Who benefits from the moral severity of forgotten war when the economy islimping, jobs are scarce and our energy supply is running dry?
The few reminders that persist seem no more disturbing than consciences. The most visible remnant is the one we can't see—the nearly 80 servicemen who still are listed as prisoners of Indochina. The fate of the American MIA and POW remains a mystery to the families of these men who still remain.
VIETNAM was not the kind of war that spawns shrines, parades or platitudes about the rightness of our cause. It was a painful, divisive conflict, but it should not be forgotten.
it is noped, however, that we will not forget the cost in human lives and the national misery of those killed in a war we did not belong in.
America should continue to bridge the gaps within society created by the war so we can tackle the problems that press
President Carter sent a commission to Vietnam last week, and he asked about the unaccounted soldiers. The commission came back empty-handed and the committee had firm formations it is not good. Both the
There are, nevertheless, many people in Lawrence who understand the purpose and value of this tower, and why it had to be placed where it was. I applaud the unanimous decision of the city commissioners who worked with county officials in
ELDRIDGE CLEAVER and Huey Newton, although primarily shakers in the Black Panther movement, also were outspoken critics of the war. Earlier this year, Cleaver voluntarily returned to the United States after living in
exiled for several years. Newton exiled his exile in Cuba by returning to the United States in July. Both outwardly have reconfirmed their animosity toward this country.
Dave Johnson
Editorial Writer
To the editor:
The coverage has been extremely amateurish, biased and uninformed. It has been almost entirely blown to its present proportions by reporters continually trying to retrieve another story on the subject.
Communication tower needed for safetv
ine coverage by University Daily Kansan reporters and editorialists of the newly constructed county communications tower has reached a plateau of shoddy journalism that is a lot more than eight stories high.
For months now, Lawrence citizens have had a steady diet of tower criticisms forced down their throats until the height, when they see that this structure have been so heavily branded into their brains.
KANSAN Letters
I sympathize with those persons who live near the tower and feel it is an insufferable
lieu of submitting to a barrage of press-generated criticism.
eyesore. The relocation expenses, however, of from $50,000 to $100,000 have been far too easily tacked about in the
Prohibition ideals deserve respect
Some people out to change the world met last week, but few outsiders noticed.
The Minnesota Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) centennial meeting in Simpson, Minn., echoed with the melody "King Alcohol . . . the drug that can deceive."
A handful of white-haired activists still are determined to save the world — prohibition is their still goal — but the days when they were strong are now a wistful memory to them now.
The prohibition movement is dying, but it's still a sign that a few people really do care about making the world better. They may be wrong, but they're not asleep and passive.
Age and infirmity, widowhood, death and disease have steadily eaten through the ranks of the Minnesota WCTU. In recent years the most powerful reform groups in American politics during the early years of this century, but now the Minnesota WCTU down to little more than one thousand official members.
Most of the membership is as old as the Minnesota chapter, and the average member's age at the meeting was more than 68. Many of the womens club members were aged the 1930s or late 1920s.
IN THE 1930s, some of Minnesota's WCTU districts had more members than the whole state does now. The organization's worldwide membership has dropped from one million at its peak to about 250,000.
One such veteran is Carrie Huebner, 82. She can't put on the convention dinner comedy show "The Voice," but she will cook the main dish
Ross McIlvain
Editorial Writer
for forty persons. She still tours area schools to warn the children of the devil alcohol and its temptations.
"I'm too busy to get old." she said. "Besides, the WCTU needs me. It needs all the leadership it can get these days. We've lost so many through death."
And the members who are left can't persuade younger women to join.
MOST FOLKS (even in our relatively dry state) would gnash their teeth and throw them over the cliff, the prohibitionists ever succeeded. America got a good healthy dose of Prohibition back in the 1920s, and like most things that came out of the dark for us, it didn't taste good.
So only a few dedicated survivors are spending their last years trying to save us from the fate we had in our months to steal our brains."
literary mumbo-jumbo of Kansan editorialists.
But it's hard even for a veteran drinker to suppress a touch of sympathy and respect for their doomed, idealistic nature. To answer that question the old campus radicals of the 1960s — meeting wistfully in dwindling numbers to find that everyone else has gone back to sleep and the world no longer cared about issues that once burned
Fond of the demon rum as America may be, the lost but dedicated idealism of these early-day activists still means something. The world still needs people who are determined to change it for the better — even if they're wrong.
Ask the people living between Lawrence and Baldwin, many of whom lost everything they owned in the May turtle, if it were an effective emergency communications system. There are those who can tell you they owe their lives to communications prepared by the Douglas County emergency communications system.
Both city and county officials made the best decision possible, and showed a high degree of responsibility in the face of a difficult situation. The reporters and editorialists may sing a different tune when a flood like the one which devastated Lawrence in 2015 tornado like the one which skirted Lawrence last spring, come ripping through the middle of Lawrence.
Is the tower ugly? Not everybody says so.
Lawrence junior
Militarism is bigger worry To the editor:
It's not the monks in France who worry me, but what's going on right here at KU. I know of a scheme on this campus to enrol students in postgraduate regimentation and centuries-old doctrinaire philosophy.
The armed forces have stolen children from under the noses of concerned parents who see their progeny travel half-way across the country. Spartan existence without shag careting or 25-cent Coca-Cola.
How many undergraduates have been introduced innocently to this sort of thing through mind-numbing activities such as cleaning a rifle or correctly saluting the flag? How many graduates of ROTC have how many graduates of MILITARUM.
David Routh Prairie Village graduate student
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