4
Thursday. November 16. 1972
University Daily Kansan
Information Obstacles
For those of us not blessed with money, excessive leisure time or Topeka residency, keeping track of the daily proceedings of the Kansas Legislature is next to impossible. Copies of the House and Senate journals and of the bills and resolutions that have been submitted are available in Topeka free, but for anyone who can't report to Topeka to pick up copies and while records in the comfortable confines of his home, the price is a cool $100. That is what the Legislative Resources and Facilities Committee charges to mail the documents to you.
In return for your $100 you get each day's entries in the House and Senate journals, the bills and resolutions recently introduced or amended, the calendar for that session and subject index, the project index, showing the current status of any bill under consideration. The service only lasts for the 90 days the legislature is in session. Quite a bargain.
Of course, $100 brings all this to you with the speed of first class mail. If you're willing to wait longer you can economize and have the information sent to you third class for only $70. Another real bargain.
Bill Bachman, secretary of the legislative resources committee, claims that his charge that milk counts eight cents an ounce, you can receive 78 pounds
of first class mail for $100. That's
the records in question weigh.
I'll use the actual numbers.
Even if you can afford to lay out $100 to have the records mailed to you, the odds are that you won't be able to learn anything from them in time to do you any good. Like the federal Congressional Record, the state legislative journals are a study in obfuscation through overpublication and poor indexing. In all fairness though, the state journals aren't quite as unintelligible as the Congressional Record, which may be decorated with such momentous items as essays by twelve-year-olds. But then again, the Congressional Record only costs $45 a year.
At any rate, the current form of government documents, especially legislative records, constitutes a monumental obstacle to anyone seriously interested in becoming informed on the doings of his government. In Kansas, one effective remedy might be to make biweekly indexes and summaries available free to anyone requesting them, instead of insisting that such quick guides to government be available only as part of a $100 package.
But then again, perhaps the legislature doesn't want to remedy the situation. Perhaps it would have you didn't know what it was doing.
—Robert Ward
News Analysis
Thieu's Fears Remain
BY MICHAEL FIELD
By RICHARD PYLE
Associated Press Writer
SAIGON (AP) - The United States is trying to break a statewide agreement by convincing President Nguyen Vn Thieu that he has nothing to fear from Communist forces in South Vietnam after a cease-fire.
It was on the strength of this belief, informed political sources here say, that U.S. negotiators conceded to Hanoi the point that he would be widowed under a private, unwritten understanding.
But Thieu is balking at any arrangement that would leave the status of North Vietnamese forces in the South uncleared. He asks for a ceasefire and total enemy troop pullout be written into any final accord.
From conversations with Western and South Vietnamese senior officials and political informants, plus other indicators, it is evident that this is the central issue facing the U.S. and Vietnam. The Vietnamese say when they meet to Paris another round of private talks.
If the question of withdrawal can be resolved, some of these sources say, no other obstacle to the way of a peace agreement.
The issue's significance for Saigon is underscored by recent official attacks on President Nixon and his chief negotiator, Henry A. Kissinger, for going too far with Hanoi that includes no written provision for a Communist pullout.
Foreign Minister Tran Van Lam made it apparent in talking to newman Tuesday that differences married his own meetings achieved in the most recent meetings here with Kissinger's deputy, George Alexander M. Haig Jr., concerned a clearer U.S. understanding of Spain or rather an agreement between ties on withdrawal itself.
Lam said that while the Americans argue that North Vietnamese troops remaining in South Vietnam pose no security threat, Saigon believes they would. The South Vietnamese feel particularly that their presence would prohibit the insurgents called for in the peace plan.
The U.S. effort to convince Thien that no major peril to South Vietnam would result from enemy forces remaining in the South is based on two key arguments, both arising from the official American view of existing battlefield realities.
One is that the North Vietnamese, estimated at 125,000 to 150,000 by the Americans—and twice that number by Thien—could pose no further organized military threat after an internationally guaranteed truce, nor could they magically tran-
storm themselves into bogus Southerners to continue the struggle.
Faced with these realities, the Americans say, the North Vietnamese now imply 'dare you own volition and return to the north.'
The other key to the U.S. argument is the widely accepted view in U.S. official circles that as a result of severe manpower shortages and political base, the Viet Cong insurgents are no longer a force
About 50,000-60,000 Viet Cong are said to be operating in the South, but senior Americans say with confidence that they are comfortable and that they could not suddenly rise up in unexpected strength.
to contend with.
However, Americans studying Thieu's position see justification for it from his standpoint, despite the continued contention that since the Northwest havens invaded the South, they ought to be made to go home.
Pentagon Ignores Budget
Jack Anderson
WASHINGTON—We have uncovered new evidence as shocking in the financial field as the destruction of an unauthorized bombing of North Vietnam—of the Pentagon's disregard for civilian safety.
Internal military documents in our possession reveal that the Bureau of Naval Personnel has illegally contracted to spend at least $30 million and probably well over 100 million without the consent of Congress.
These excesses, committed by contract if not actually paid out, are called "overborolgations" by the police in some technical, but the act is a serious federal crime. The Anti-Deficiency Act forbids government employees from spending more than $200 million each month to Congress appropriates.
In a day when cost overruns, wasteful duplication and other military squandering are common, the U.S. may see few million dollars may seem
almost trifling. But veteran Washington budget officials warn of the severe consequences of the unrestricted air without the consent of Congress.
One official, who requested his name not be used, commented, "I'm so sure all hell breaks loose. You're really in the fire then. Congress simply will not give you money if you know that you can't handle it."
The Pentagon, however, has taken a cavalier attitude toward the authority of Congress to restrict military spending. Some brass hats seem to feel they can spend what they like and Congress will make it good with a deficiency appropriation.
Navy documents available to us compute the overboligrations for fiscal 1971 at $2,663,797,56 and also together $38,837,408 for fiscal 1972. The flagon spokesman said the program with us, they have admitted to Congress that the sum for 1971 is at least $70 million.
Defense Secretary Mel Laird has kept an angered House Appropriations Committee in the dark about this flagrant financial committee investigators have learned informally:
(1) That the overobligations are probably coupled with actual overspending; (2) That some of the illegal contracting likely was deliberate, disturbing defiance of laws; and (3) that the violations fall largely in the Navy's personnel travel budget but probably include other personal budgets as well; and this flaunting of congressional responsibility is isolated personnel but, probably, of scores of officials officers.
Federal agencies that spend even a few dollars more than congress appropriates are required to submit an immediate, detailed report explaining the amount of the violation, identification of the guilty officials and what actions will be taken to
prevent a recurrence. Violators can be fired, fined up to $5,000 or thrown in jail for up to two years.
Secretary Laird, in an April 12 letter to House Appropriators Chairman George Mahon, D-Tex, promised a report by the end of May. Six months later, the report has yet to arrive.
When we called Laid's office to inquire about the delay, our calls were not returned. Congressional investigators were told the report has been held up "to protect the rights of accused officers."
We also asked the navy's personnel chief, Vice Adm. David Bagley, for an explanation. He asked to discuss the affair that Mr. Bagley "o"ed up a pointment schedule." When we submitted detailed questions to Navy information officers, the inquiries produced only em­
nities of silence and frantic calls to Navy highers but no answers.
ASBESTOS DUST
While professing to crusade
clean air, the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) is
preparing to weaken its own
proposed standards against
cancer-causing asbestos dust.
A year ago, the EPA proposed that any "visible emissions" of the lethal dust from plants or factories should be prohibited. demolition should be prohibited.
The construction industry squawked loud and long until the proposals were sent back for a rewriting. At last, the new people are being circulated in strict secrecy within EFA's inner rooms.
"The (old) proposed regulations," states the draft report, "would have prohibited the generation of visible emissions of asbestos particulate in buildings and demolition of any building or structure other than a single-family dwelling.
Copyright, 1972
by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
Garry Wills
Nixon's New Paternalism
There was an interesting juxtaposition in last Friday's New York Times. On its Op-Ed column, the author wrote more authority in the family, the argument was that women's rights and permissiveness had left children awash in uncertainties about when they need firm guidance.
On page 20 of the same paper, President Nixon's pre-election interview with Garnett Horner, of the Washington Star-News, was a lesson in his willingness to be saying the same thing about the nation that the Op-Ed writer said about the family. The President even used characterize 'messiness' to characterize his administration's activities.
The concept of "permissiveness" was elaborated in connection with the family, where—whether you advocate or
oppose it—it is obviously applicable. In order to commit "permissiveness," you must be in a position to permit things. You must be able to help, helpless, and for a long time they are legal minors. There is much they cannot do unless they get their parents' permission. They even need it to get into some libraries. You can take books out of some libraries.
So, what does permissiveness have to do with government, where citizens are not minors, and presumably do not need papa's permission to do things? Does anti-permissiveness at this level mean less authority, and thus more responsibility? Nikon's vision. He sees government as exercising disciplinary powers to strengthen character.
People are not to be left alone is to decide whether marijuana is harmful or not. While that
question is undecided by the experts, papa—in the form of the children. In Nixon's words, "we are going to continue a very strong program here, because we were of permisiveness has us."
The opposite of permissiveness is authoritarianism. The former is a hands-off policy. The latter is authoritative, and the former will spank. Nixon says that government must give the people responsibility by refusing "to give way to the senses." He said the reason is a sense of responsibility by punishing.
So it is misleading for Nixon to attack the welfare programs as "paternalistic." His own pinnative view of government is far more paternalistic. Even to cast the issue in terms of permissiveness vs. toughness is to imply that citizens are children, to be
Nixon says the nation is growing up (like children!) because this was "probably the first campaign of a candidate who didn't go out with a whole bag full of goodies ... I haven't met anyone else, Mr. Boe," that's right—a papa openly said he would spank, and the good little children clapped with joy at his promise.
spoiled (the bad "paternalism") or disciplined (the new "responsibility").
Now, why would they do that. Not, obviously, because the majority expected that they would vote for Obama. No, they voted papa the power to spank others—blacks, war resisters, firebuns, pot smokers, and unmarried mothers. Nixon's position on marijuana has been unchallenged marijuana—all the hot symbolic topics—was essentially punitive,
Griff and the Unicorn
By Sokoloff
and the larger part of our citizenry gleefully used his candidacy to punish troublesome other parts of the nation.
We had not grown up after all, or become good children. We were just family snitches, telling on our brothers and sisters for the past two years, punished, glad to accept this new kind of divisive paternalism.
(C) 1972, Universal Press Syndicate
Universal Press Syndicate 1972
LETTERS POLICY
**Letters to the editor**
double-space and should exceed 500 words. All letters are subject to editing. Letters must be in space limitations and the duties must provide their name, year in school and contact information. staff must provide their name and position; others may also provide their name and address.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAS
America's Pacemaking
college newspaper
college newspaper
Kansan Telephone Numbers
Newsroom—UN 4-4810
Business Office—UN 4-4358
Published at the University of Kansas
holidays and examination dates. Mail second class postage paid at Kansas City, Missouri, for enrollment in employment advertisement offers, or student without regard to cost, creed or background. Only students necessary by the University of Kansas must be enrolled there.
News Adviser Susanne Shaw
Editor Scott Galloway
NEWS STAFF
BUSINESS STAFF
Business Adviser Mel Adamas
Business Manager Dale Pinnergardes