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Thursday, August 31, 1972
University Daily Kansan
KANSAN comment
editorials, columns and letters published on this page reflect only the opinions of the writers.
Aluminum America
In Europe, when a building begins to decay, the people, often as not, attempt to rebuild it. And Europe is a great place for learning about our heritage and a sense of community.
In America, when a building begins to decay, the people, often as not, attempt to put a new aluminum or concrete face on it. In America they call in the Urban Renewal Agency to scrape the old buildings; homes and houses where the house was built their place erect new ten-story glass and concrete rooms houses.
Some people call this progress. But I think it reflects a deeen-shame.
Rather than restore the original home or the first business, rather than maintain our fathers' churches and our forefathers' legislative houses, rather than have them established as part of our heritage—we Americans dispose of them like so many rusty tins can.
The young son quickly moves away from his home, as if to say, "I'm ashamed to have lived here." The merchant slips off to some "new location," as if to say, "I'm ashamed to have been taken away by the Urban Renewal funds to revamp her streets, as if to say, 'We're ashamed to have been this.'"
Americans are ashamed of their heritage, but for some reason they refuse to deal with their shame, to confront it and cleanse it from their conscience. Instead they carry on, destroying the old—whether it be beautiful, inspiring or useful—and usher in the new amidst a flurry of reassuring speeches proclaiming what's "right" about America.
They preach the gospel of American beths but they spend their summers in Europe.
—Robert Ward
Guest Editorial
Enrollment Ecstasies
Society has created a number of ingenious games to escalate its own level of anxiety, producing just the right amount of tension, apprehension and fear. This will become contented and fall in our quest toward the American Dream.
To enhance our quest, "they"—that wondrously mysterious group of dysfunctional computers located deep below the great California land-fault—have given us such amusements as Freeway Roulette, the Income Tax Shuffle and—grandest of all—Pentagon Poker, which provides Americana with the suspense element known as "national security."
One of the lesser anxiety elements we all enjoy and whose intricacy astounds most mere mortals must be grateful. Sometimes called the Line-Up Laughs,
Things started out with the "pink pong routine" between windows one and three at the registrar's. It appeared that I had committed some wrong actions by the purchase of a pink computer card, KU's equivalent of a rosary.
First, a positive contribution in our what-the-hell-happened-this-time commentary. Things went better this year, but the server's experience. I did get enrolled.
If it had been as simple as buying that little card, all would have been fine.
Yes, you have just been duped into reading the Kansan's traditional comment on the enrollment hassle, specially produced to escalate the tension between Kansan administrators, the office of the registrar and a certain Honeywell 635 computer.
James J. Kilpatrick
Now, as for what happened between the time I set out joyfully for academia and the first opportunity for an enrollment blues beer.
But, lest the value of anxiety be forgotten, this year's enrollment was
scripted by Joseph Heller—"Catch-22" and coproduced by the Nixon Administration—"We must limit the arms race. We must increase the Pentagon budget," remember that one?
Well, to get the card I had to have my folder, but to get my folder I had to have the card. Pacing the tiles of Strong Hall, I decided in the interest of cooperation instead. Instead, I swore literally to serve and be a better man for the experience.
As things were swinging into the best of the Marx brothers, a nameless face with a window relented and purged me of my love for women. You know you are young. You all know the story from there.
A political scientist once postulated that the lines of people awaiting the judgements of the French bureaucracy were one cause of the highly splintered France political system. The anxiety and backlash of people back, block after block, hour after hour, he suggested, is a partial cause of the instability of French politics.
An analogy might be drawn between French politics and KU enrollment. Who knows what the wear and tear of lines and more lines has cost the cause of education? The sight of highly paid (!) professors shuffling computer cards gives only an inking of lost opportunities.
For myself, I felt somewhat less scholarly and decidedly less energetic in the latest Field House marathon. I only趴床上 watch me for the Mid-Term Merry-Go-Round
I was rather taken a back by the sight of a meek, young woman, armed with the computer cards of the Establishment and the effect, "Up against the wall, mother."
One a musing moment did lighten the day, however, when I completed one phase and was asked to step into the next line along the wall.
It seemed highly appropriate. Dave Borsel
Dave Bartel
MIAMI BEACH-A page-one headline in the Miami Herald told most of the story of the Republican convention: "Smiles, Harmony Prevail As GOP Family Gather." Not since San Francisco in 1956, when second term, have the Republicans looked November with greater expectations.
GOP Reeks Of Confidence
Their largest campaign problem, at this writing, is a problem more parties should suffer from: They have no way to win. If colleagues will tell you solemnly, trying their best to look troubled, that "we've gotta run scared." It is rule one in any incumbent's guide to relection. But the voters who don't will trot scars. This time they will trot scars.
Three factors account for the elephant's cheerful glove: The withdrawal of George Wallace, the inept leader in the campaign, and the unity of the party itself.
It has run out of gas. Barring catastrophe, Nixon should take the whole of the South and the border states as well; and the GOP will benefit not only in terms of electoral votes, but in a tactical advantage also: With his right
With Wallace sidelined, the American party no longer offers a threat.
Of McGovern, it can be said only that things have to get better. They could not possibly get much worse. Since the July convention, the Democratic Party has some union endorsements; he has supported the Eagleton affair with net gain in the person of Sargent Sriver; and he now has the support of Lyndon Johnson.
flank secure, Nixon can push all the harder for center and liberal votes.
This last is a doubtful asset.
Among McGovern's ardent youngsters, his reconciliation with LJB will be viewed with dismay. It is as if he has been given a role in the name of women's liberation
McGovern is not off and running; he is off and stumbling. Increibly, he has lost credibility. He also has lost his image as the pure and gentle knight. Modesty somehow has yielded to the pressure of being Percy Salinger to meet in his name. The Communists in Paris is an idea that many Americans will find offensive. And what can one say of the great McGovern raffle? The candidate has sent out a fund-raising letter with a built-in gift: In he promises, if he wins, to draw 250 names at random from a pool of 163 contributors. The prize: dinner at the White House Bingo! It is not the kind of thing Sir Ghalah would have done.
The ailing Wallace and the blun-
dinger McGovern are external factors.
Of greater importance in the actual
waging of the Republican campaign is the unity, relatively speaking, of the Grand Old Party itself. Grafted, both
its left wing and its right wing are fluttering in despair, but they flutter vainly. They are trapped in Hamlet's dilemma, and find it better to bear the ils they have, then fly to others that they know not of. Few party liberals will defect to the standard of George McClover, and virtually no concession will be for John G. Schmitz, the Wallace replacement. Willy-nily, they are stuck with Richard Nixon. They may not like it, but they won't lump it.
Other considerations have contributed to the smiles and harmony
The 3,000 "young people for Nixon who came to Miami made an excellent impression. They offered an appealing contrast to the scraggly dissenters and they provided visible evidence that the youth vote is not locked up for the next election appears, is the black vote entirely任免, better in these areas than most analysts have supposed—and he is gaining among Jews and Catholics also.
It all adds up, in *Republicans' eyes*, to a pretty picture. To be sure, they had a pretty picture in 1948, when Dewey lost the campaign. They were unified in 1960, and still likely to forget the disastrous last two weeks of the '68 campaign, when they nearly lost to Humphrey. If the Republicans this time can find a way to smatch defeat from the jaws of victory, they will find it. But as we look to the main candidates, the confident Republicans have little to fear but overconfidence itself.
(C) 1972 The Washington Star Syndicate, Inc.
Jack Anderson
Wallace Spared Trial Publicity
WASHINGTON—To spare Alabama's George Wallace from the embarrassment of having his naught dragged through a long stretch of the West Side, Kleindienst personally intervened last week to stop the prosecution of the ex-felon of the Alabama Air National Guard.
Major General Reid Doster, the former guard commander, had been charged by a federal grand jury with squeezing illegal political donations out of guard officers. The indictment said he had turned over $1,700 of the money to the gubernatorial campaign of George Wallace, whom Doster has called his “personal friend”
By the time the case was scheduled to be tried last week, federal prosecutor Ira Dement had lined up 40 witnesses to testify. The trial was expected to last weeks.
But on the day the trial was to begin, Dement suddenly dropped the charges. Doster agreed, in return, to resign his commission. Three other defendants, suburban Daster, were let off scot free.
We have now learned that the decision to call off the trial was made personally by Kleindienst. When my reporter Mark
McIntyre demanded to know why the charges were dropped, a Justice Department spokesman said. The governor Wallace was involved."
It wasn't the first time that the Nixon Administration suppressed a criminal action embarrassing to Wallace.
WALLACE PAYOFFS
WALLACE PAYOFFS
Our stories four years ago about WALLACE, who used payoff system led to an investigation by the Internal Revenue Service. In a confidential summary of the case made available to us, the IRS charged that the Wallace law firm, then operated by George Lloyds, was used as a conduit for kickbacks from state contractors.
The IRS also concluded that Gerald Wallace had failed to report the full income that came to him through the firm in 1967. His taxable income for the two years was given as $175,924.
Yet the federal tax case against Gerald Wallace was suddenly abandoned after a private company owned and Governor Wallace last year aboard the presidential plane. Not long afterward, George Wallace announced his candidacy for President as a Democrat.
White House aides, discussing the political outlook with us later, said they had assurances Wallace would not run as an independent, and that he would support the Democratic convention. They regarded this as a significant advantage for the President, in case of a close-fought election.
For in 1968, Wallace's third party candidacy prevented Richard Nixon from carrying southern states that would have allowed him slain over Hubert Humphrey but Wallace not been in the race.
Again this year, Wallace as a third-party candidate might have threatened the President's bid. He and his South and several border states.
Whether or not Nixon and Wallace actually made a deal aboard the presidential plane—no embarrassing prosecutions!—was probably not to run as an independent—the results have been the same.
Footnote: General Dostel told us he raised the money for Wallace on orders from Wallace's finance coordinator, Jimmy Faulkner. "I passed the money to him and got up the money," Doster said. Faulkner admits only that he asked Dostel for a "personal
"WELL DONE, O GOOD AND FAITHFUL DELEGATES"
contribution." Both versions would have been embarrassing to Walzaca if the case had been disclosed. Kleindienst refused to comment.
LAND MISUSE?
About a century ago, Congress turned over the nation's railroads 150 million acres of land to the people of the total land in the country.
The condition was that the railroads were to sell off the land to small farmers and homesteaders to finance the construction of new rail lines heading west. If the new lines failed with a reasonable period, Congress ordered that the grants be forfeited and the land again become public property.
The Interior Department is now investigating charges that the Southern Pacific Railroad is operating in and across acres of this land illegally.
The land, in Nevada and California, is allegedly being exploited for its minerals and
developed for commercial and residential use. If the charges are true, the illegal use of this land contributed significantly toward the funding which Southern Pacific made its real estate holdings last year.
The charge was brought to the department's attention by the National Coalition for Land Reform and the California Coalition of Seasonal and Migrant Farm Workers.
They filed an administrative complaint with Interior Secretary Rogers Morton in June asking for an investigation. So he answered nothing but an acknowledgment that the request had been received.
A spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management told us, both recently and already begun looking into the matter. The Southern Pacific, of course, contends that the land is already under the original grant requirements.
Copyright, 1972 by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
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Griff and the Unicorn
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Universal Press Syndicate 1972