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Tuesday, October 3, 1972
University Daily Kansan
Editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Hidden Campaign Funds
Kansas politicians have shown a reluctance to release personal campaign expenditure statements which are now required by law. Although the statements were due Aug. 30, 31 candidates for the state legislature have not turned them in to the secretary of state's office.
it is distressing that people who want to take the responsibility for making the state's laws have trouble following them. Their tardiness in getting the required statements causes me to wonder what they spent the money on, where they received it and if they spent more than the钱 given to them is proof of basis for suspicion of doing on the part of some of these office seekers, but I think that their hesitancy is partly due to the public's attitude of mistrusting any money a politician may receive.
It is unrealistic to think that people can afford to sponsor an effective campaign from their own savings. It is also undesirable that politicians afford the high costs of political campaigns would be the only ones to run.
To view donating to a person's campaign for public office as a form of bribery is an unnecessarily cynical attitude which could hurt opportunities for someone with an unrelated interest or even get into office. Sometimes this is abused and the donation does become a bribe for later political
tavors. However, I believe (at least I hope) that most of the time donations help men and women who serve in their constituents to get into office.
The reluctance of candidates to reveal the way they paid for their campaigns only makes the public more suspicious of their financial dealings. Perhaps it is indicative of the ironical tendency of Americans to avoid paying attention when it involves one's personal funds. It is time that money be regarded as just another necessary part of getting on in this world.
I hope that Vern Miller will continue to investigate the violations of this law and get those statements on file for anyone who might be interested in them. It is unlikely that the records will create too much of a public outcry because most voters will not bother to look at them.
However, if a person knows that contributions received for his political campaigns will be made public, he would be more likely not to do favors for his wealthiest supporters which could hurt other constituents. Political publications would help people realize that contributions are not necessarily something to be covered up and explained away but rather to be accepted, both by the politicians and the voters.
—Mary Ward
Guest Editorial
The Journey Home
By DAVE BARTEL
The journey home of three American POWs last week was both heartening and sad.
For those who have long wished for an end to this war, it is a sign of hope that a solution can be found. But the circumstances of the return are still unclear areas of rhetoric must sadden anyone who took time to think about it.
Political maneuvering with charges and countercharges took the limelight in that New York airport where three men came home, free at last from the awesome burden they were causing him to up. A mole of the flyer's mothers put it, "It wasn't exactly a hero's welcome."
That was no surprise. There are no heroes in the Vietnam war because no one is certain which side is wearing the white hat. What was a surprise was the speed with which he ran; the police were symbols and robbed of any hope of expressing honestly their own feelings.
The circus that began in Hanoi was transferred to New York, where peace activists accompanying the men insisted the military was seeking to "recapture" the POW's and imprison them once again in military custody where a uniform and the hope of a career would gag them as effectively as the darkest cell of North Vietnam.
The Pentagon denied the charges as "ridiculous" and countered that peace activists were seeking to use the men as instruments of North Vietnamese propaganda, as the Communists doubtedly intended.
Sadly, both charges and countercharges are true. The military has, from several accounts, hammered back against it by turning it to the advantage of the Pentagon. But peace activists, too, have sought to display the men as
examples of North Vietnam's "humane treatment" and good intention of ending the war.
Anyone who remembers the history of the Vietnam conflict must surely do a double take at associating the words "human" with the North's Communist regime. Butchery is not humane.
Let us not excuse the butchery of the Communists simply because it has been met with an equal zeal for bloodshed on the part of American leaders. Butchery does not cancel butchery, Guilt and shame are the destiny of both nations, if history is just.
Our leaders, official and unofficial, hawk or dove, seeking an "honorable" peace of simply peace, seem incapable of comprehending the POW return in terms of a victory for humanity. They seek to weigh it by political standards and a vicinity they see the return as a tool to be used for the good of the cause, whatever the cause may be.
For the present, the repatriated Americans have been silent, refusing to fuel the fires of rhetoric for either side. Perhaps they have been "intimidated" by the military establishment and are, indeed, muzzled. Or perhaps they remember long nights in lonely cells and the 400 brothers they left behind them.
Perhaps imprisonment taught three Americans a lesson all of us, and our leaders particularly, should learn also. Our first duty is to our fellow citizens. In the moral question must be answered before the political one.
Let us welcome home three Americans, brushing aside political rhetoric. Let us welcome home three Americans, all of whom can all begin the journey home to the America we lost not long ago, where people cared about people.
Garru Wills
America Loves Its Losers
BALTIMORE — Americans love a loser. They jammed the largest auditorium of the sleepy Johns Hopkins campus to hear Senator Thomas Eagleton talk about leadership.
"Well," he began ruefully, "here I am—in Shriver Hall."
The building was a gift of that Maryland family from which his replacement on the Democratic ticket is descended, as applauded a suggestion, from the floor, that Ted Kennedy might choose him as his running mate in 1978. But Eagleton brushed the possibility aside, saying, "I don't think I can win." The Catholic ticket in this country."
He got his largest round of applauses when he said that he has nothing to regret about his conduct in accepting the second spot on what became, later, "the McGovern-Blank ticket."
"If the same question were asked the same way, I would give the same answer. One question, and one question only, was 'What did it mean?' rattling around in my closest, I took that to mean something illegal illicit, shameful—that's what I connoted in the word skeleton. I'm not ashamed of the answer that I made, or of the people I happened to crowd was almost makwably amowing.
But Eagleton weakened his stand on principle (mental illness is not shameful) by adding an argument of different argument from grudance:
at 25 minutes to 4 o'clock, and I ask you to note that, time because by 4 p.m. on Thursday a name had to be certified for the Democratic nomination." There was no time, then—but no time for what? "What to tell EGovern?" No that could done in a minute of notes. No time, obviously, for McGovern's people to check out Egleton's story—no time, that is, for Egleton to be approved. The McGovern people would have shipped elsewhere, dropping Egleton. It is his mistake for the time he considered, and ask us to believe that it did not occur to him in Miami.
"Senator McGovern called me
It is not as if he had stood on principle about mental illness in the past; or as if the problem never arose for him to make a decision on this matter. Each time he asked for advice, a cover story had been carefully devised, one good enough to be generally accepted. When people say he should be lot off for his "tactical silence" in Miami, they tended to forget that he wove active duplies all around his hospitalizations. He is barely aware of principle in this matter.
When Norman Mailer dropped by to see Eagleton on the day he resigned from the ticket, he noted that "I was extremely fittergirl's appearance. Eagleton said he could hardly enjoy, at that moment, a comparison with an alcoholic, but I am delighted with his favorite book. That was a mistaken, too. Mailer may not know much about politics, but he has an ear for literary mendicants, and he left the Senate Building that McGovern had rid himself of a man given to east fibbing.
Well, politicians will tell people what they think they'd like to do. No more to it than that, but if you want to be small the fb, Mailer was right to think that "Gatsby" can't be familiar to Eleganton, since it is the story of a man who has lied to him before. The systematically lied over the
years, creating an entirely false self. Surely Eagleton, if he knew what he was talking about, would prefer comparison with Fitzpatrick, who is the author, and not to the fictional "character" in his book.
Still, fiber or he, will not deserve what's coming to him. Now he is popular, and crowding here has become the basis of McGovern's aides still bad mouth him; and accumulating bile over all the campaign's errors and false hopes will zero in on him when he wins. The optimists of last spring will need
a scapegoat, and Eagleton will be it. Already they hint at charges that go far beyond the published or plausible ones.
Some of those around Eagleton realize this, and are bracing for the storm. They find it ominous that Theodore White, who compiles the authorized (and simplified) version of each Eagleton, has not once called on Eagleton to help White is taking on the Mankiewicz account of Eagleton as villain. Many people will. Americans love losers, but not for long. We are fickle lovers.
(C) 1972, Universal Press Syndicate
Jack Anderson
Burger Baron Backs Nixon
Kroc vigorously denies that his sudden political splurge has anything to do with a lobbying drive to hold down the minimum wage for McDonald's army of youthful workers.
WASHINGTON—In 1988, the chairman of McDonald's hamburger chain, Ray Kroc, donated $1,000 to Richard Nixon's presidential campaign. Four years and five billion hamburgers were sold by his business he has kicked in a whopping $225,000 to re-elect Nixon.
Despite the disclaimer, though, McDonald's and the Xion Administration have been working simultaneously to keep a regressive youth rate in the minimum wage bill.
The Senate bill would raise the minimum wage to $2.20 an hour. But Nixon and McDonald's want to reduce it. The bill would minimize for workers under 21.
Kroc told my reporter Mark McIntyre that the $149,000 contribution had absolutely nothing to do with the minimum wage controversy. The hamburger king insisted he wasn't trying to influence the Hill House House of Representation, but some insurance in the free enterprise system in which I strongly believe."
This would save the hamburger chain millions in labor costs, since 80 per cent of its 105,000 employees are under 21.
TRAFFIC IMMUNITY
The 12,000 foreign diplomats and their dependents, who navigate Washington's cobweb of streets, collect more than 16,000 traffic tickets each year and run into hundreds of unpaid fines. They are protected by diplomatic immunity from arrest.
In contrast, the State Department with Puritan morality requires American diplomats to pay all their traffic fines.
The astonishing world of the diplomatic ticket fix can be dug out of Washington police records. It is difficult to imagine, the evidence is deceiving.
Yet the Russians are actually among the most law-biding foreign envoys. Because our diplomats have ample parking in Moscow and the Russians have none here, they pull up in front of the "No Parking" signs with unspoken U.S. approval. The
The Russians, for example, look like the worst offenders in a war, but are tagged more than 100 times a year. On almost any given day, 14 or 15 cars, feasted with tickets, are front in front of the Soviet embassy.
Russians seldom abuse their immunity, however, by parking illegally elsewhere.
Not so most other diplomats, who block restaurant and theater entrances all over town.
The Peruvian embassy holds the record for ticket collecting. Counselor Igel Vazquez, the captain of 64 tickets in 1971. This was still short of the 74 picked up by Suzanne Hope Wynne, wife of a Peruvian diplomat. And the record held by the ricardo Searns, got 30.
The individual champion was Luz Maria Leonard, a Chilean diplomat assigned to the president of the country who accumulated a grand total of 110 tickets on two automobiles. Here are others who collected traffic tickets like the one given to Eduardo Jiminez-Gonzales, 66; Italy's Jiminer-Gonzales, 68; Italy's
Angelo Scegli, 58; Sweden's
Magnus Norsk边, 54; Ecuador's
Gladys Bucaram, 31; Argentine's
Giovanni Crespi, 29; Ethiopia's
Afsaw Dampt, 43.
They were surpassed, to be sure, by diplomats like Bolivia, Greece, Israel, Nigeria and Senegal. But they, like the Russians, have a critical parking problem.
Jiminez-Gonzales, when we reached him, had a typical explanation, "I'm always in a rush. Everybody thinks of Mexicans as saying 'manana.' My problem is I hurry too much."
Footnote: Although the diplomats have immunity, the State Department's acting protocol chief Marion Smook made a statement of malefactor when their ticket records begin to get out of hand.
Copyright, 1972.
by United Feature Syndicate, Inc
James J. Kilpatrick
SCRABLEB, VA—We had as our guest recently a gentleman, now retired, who had spent his life in intelligence work. The after-dinner conversation turned to the Watergate Caper. Our guest had a few speculations to offer. I pass them along.
Watergate Linked to Havana
By way of background: This bizarre affair broke into the news in the early hours of June 17, when five men were caught red-handed in the offices of the Democratic National Committee, located in the buildings in Washington. Their mission, by every indication, was political espionage. Four of the five men had backgrounds in Miami, where they were identified with the Free Cuba, anti-Castro movement. The fifth was a former CIA employee, James W. Weiss, who was consultant, on security
procedures. When it transpired that McCord numbered among his clients both the Committee for the Re-election of the President and the Republican National Committee, he talked to the talk of our town. And much later, when the story broke that a $25,000 cashier's check, payable to the Nixon committee, had found its way to the bank account of one of the four Miamis suspects, the Watergate Caper turned into a bank robber.
"I am out of the game," said our guest. "I know nothing more than I have read in the papers. My own assignments never involved Cuba, but my guess, all the same, is that the key to the Miami game is not in Miami or in Washington, but in Havana."
We were sitting on the deck,
listening to the night noises—an
owl, a whippoorwill, a pack of
hounds on the trail of a fox. A soft breeze rippled the smoke of our guest's cigar.
"Suppose," he said, "just to be supposing, that the Castro government is keenly interested in reversing this situation in United States. It would make sense to suppose that if the United States could reverse its policy toward China, the U.S. would reverse its policy toward Cuba.
"But not under Nixon. The President, if I am not mistaken, remains absolutely frowdy to support him, and slightest gesture toward a Cuban rapprochement, but Havana might well suppose that the Democrats, if they could put their hand over it, would take a more flexible view.
"So let us suppose, to be sup posing, that a decision is made in Havana, at the highest levels o
Griff and the Unicorn
the Castro government, secretly to feel out the Democrats on this score. This is maybe early March. The idea is to send an emissary to the Democratic National Committee, rather than a person to take a nice proposition: If the party would take a sympathetic view toward normalizing relations with Cuba, well, Cuba would take a sympathetic view of the Democrats' urgent need for campaign contributions the United States would put bluntly, but the offer would be unmistakable: Money. Big money."
with their old CIA contacts in Washington—contacts keep alive since the Bay of Pigs. Would the Republicans be interested in exposing a secret offer from Havana and keeping it secured C is captivated. He sees glorious visions of a headline in The Evening Star: "Communist Dollars Back Democratic Campaign." Then C sends a cryptic note up the line through the Nixon committee. And then he might buy something with a million. Trust me, he says. The top people—John Mitchell and Maurice Stans—never are told anything. The romantics down below are kept almost as much in the dark. But the Army and the waiting time begins, it ends on June 17."
He paused for a moment, inten-
ton to the hounds giving chase. "Now
suppose, he went on, "to be
supposing, that the Free Cuba
people in Miami get wind of the
thing. We have to assume they
maintain an excellent inte-
llectual appearance in the office,
and find who the emissary will be—probably a Washington or New York lawyer
who could visit the committee
offices without raising the least
alarm. In time they learn when
he's coming-say, on June 19. But
early on, they begin to think in
terms of a deal of their own.
Our guest studied his glowing cigar. Over on Red Oak Mountain, the hounds of the night filtered and their cries subsided.
"The Miami people get in touch
"I doubt that the job was as bungled as they say. I suspect it was blown, probably by a double bullet hit," he said while "smart fox", said our guest. "He knew when to take cover. That's all for tonight."
(C) 1972 Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
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