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Wednesday, November 1, 1989 / University Daily Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
State to suffer if Congress includes aliens in census
A recent United States House of Representative's decision that would be politically detrimental to Kansas borders on insanity.
The House voted to include illegal aliens in the 1990 federal census, thus giving some states the opportunity to increase their representation through the congressional reapportionment process.
The decision, which all but guarantees that Kansas will lose one of its five seats in the House, will add to the political leverage of states with a large illegal alien population.
The reasoning and justification of this decision is completely illogical and unfair. Kansas would be cheated of its already limited voice in the House as it loses a seat in government for a faction that theoretically does not exist.
Guaranteeing representation in the United States government for a population that is here illegally also undermines our government's constitutional process. This nation's forefathers opted to establish a system that based taxation on representation. How can this session of Congress justify creating representation for a population that is not taxed and is present in our country illegally?
It almost appears that most of the House is encouraging illegal migration to our country to create more political positions in federal government. Because of this precedent approved by Congress, some states might consider it more politically advantageous to cease enforcing laws that prohibit people from staying in our country illegally.
The House of Representatives should exercise better judgment and begin to consider regulations that guide this process. Kansas, a place of little importance in most U.S. Representatives' eyes, will unjustly suffer the consequences for this regrettable decision.
Thom Clark for the editorial board
Reagan's papers will help to close book on scandal
The Iran-contra affair is still a mystery that needs to be solved. U.S. District Judge Harold H. Greene should be commended for a ruling that gives John M. Poindexter access to former President Reagan's personal papers. Now, almost three years after the scandal broke, the people of the United States might finally learn the whole story.
States might initially rely on the ruling will help Poindexter defend his involvement in the Iran-contra affair. The affair involves illegal sale of arms to Iran in exchange for help freeing U.S. hostages in Lebanon. Poindexter, a retired Navy rear admiral, was national security adviser. He and North were the only two of six men originally singled out for rebuke that were indicted by a federal grand jury, requiring them to face trial for their involvement in the scandal.
Since the affair began in 1986, the White House has, for the most part, dictated the release of information pertaining to the incident. Many barriers have hindered efforts to get at the truth. For instance, the judge presiding over Oliver North's trial denied him the right to have access to Reagan's papers and diaries, denying their significance in ending the matter.
What's even more amazing it that a judge, whose purpose you would think would be to get to the heart of the matter denied this request even after a special congressional hearings review board reported that Reagan authorized the sale of arms.
By giving Poindexter access to Reagan's papers and diaries, Greene has demonstrated his desire to learn the truth. His papers will either confirm or disprove public suspicions of his involvement. Reagan has nothing to lose by disclosing this information if he has been telling the truth during the past three years.
The subpoenas will only be issued for "specific relevant documents" in the custody of Reagan or the federal archivist. Poindexter wanted these items to demonstrate that Reagan had in fact authorized many of his actions in the affair.
Kathy Walsh for the editorial board
The judge's ruling should be applauded, if it has the potential to uncover a lot of information that is needed to answer questions that Reagan has been successfully evading since the scandal began.
News staff
David Stewart...Editor
Ric Brack...Managing editor
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Education, not crime, will pay off
Spending one dollar on education can save six dollars that would otherwise be spent incarcerating a convict.
The U.S. federal and state prison system, one of the most expensive taxpayer-supported social programs, provides the worst return on dollars spent. Education remains a bargain to taxpayers, and nowhere is this more evident than in the relationship between education and prison populations.
These are conclusions of a study released last month by the Institute for Educational Leadership, a Washington, D.C., think tank specializing in applying demographic analysis to educational policymaking.
The study found a strong correlation between educational success and low prison populations. Using information from the Department of Education and the Census Bureau, the study reported that in 1987, Florida led the nation in high school dropouts and prisoners per 100,000 population, and Minnesota was 50th in dropouts and 49th in prisoners. Nine of the 10 states with the highest graduation rates were below the national average in prisoners per 100,000 population. Interestingly, Kansas was the exception. Nationwide, 82 percent of those in prison are high school dropouts; 70 percent of high school sophomores graduate on time.
The economic correlation is striking in many ways. On average, it costs about $20,000 a year to maintain a prisoner. A college student or a child in a Head Start Program costs taxpayers about $3,500 each. In Pennsylvania, it is seven times more expensive to have someone in the state pen than it is to have someone in Penn State.
Stuart Beals
Staff columnist
The study pointed out the disparity in terms of so-called entitlement programs: "If entitlement means that you get the benefits of a program if you fit a category, then prisoners are the best example of 100 percent entitlement in all of our services. While one child in six eligible for Head Start is actually in a program, every prisoner gets his or her 'entitlement' payment of $20,000."
How well does this money perform? Dismally, considering that jails rehabilitation only a small fraction of inmates: A Justice Department study released last April reported that 63 percent of the inmates released from prisons are arrested again for a serious crime within three years. Twenty-five percent of those released were arrested again within six months, and 40 percent within the first year. Of those under 25 who had 11 or more prior arrests, 94 percent were arrested again.
By comparison, the education entitlement programs appear highly cost efficient. For example, a student enrolled in Upward Bound is four times more likely to graduate from college than a member of a control group who did not participate in the program. Consider the performance of Head Start participants 16 years after they had completed the program:
Fifty-nine percent of the Head Start participants
are employed, compared to 32 percent of a control group.
Sixty-seven percent graduated from high school; 49 percent of the control group graduated.
Thirty-eight percent enrolled in college, compared to 21 percent of the control group.
Thirty-one percent of the Head Start group have been arrested and 18 percent are on welfare, while 51 percent of the control group have been arrested and 32 percent are on welfare. Translated into money saved, one dollar spent on Head Start saved 7 in services not required later.
Sounds great but overall spending patterns hardly reflect this wisdom. The total cost of criminal justice activity more than doubled from $22 billion in 1980 to $45 billion in 1985. During the same period, expenditures for higher education increased by about half, from $62 billion to $98 billion.
These diverging trends in spending reflect a deeper social malaise. The study concludes:
"Of all taxpayer-funded social services, investment in our prison system has increased faster than any other, including education, transportation, health care, housing and welfare. The U.S. incarceration rate is the highest in the world, with the exceptions of South Africa and Russia. What kind of social policy is this?"
What kind, indeed. What could be more pragmatic, more level-headed, than to educate six kids for the cost of one inmate? After all, education is the archetypal "growth industry."
Stuart Beals is a Lawrence graduate student.
Bureaucrats rediscover the obvious
Hot Dog! The long-awaited report from the Lily White Lower Mississippi Delta Development Commission is in, and for our $2 million the taxpayers get items of wisdom like these:
"Wise and effective use of the Delta's abundant natural resources must be an integral aspect of the region's 10-year development plan.
"A sound infrastructure is essential for economic development and the enhancement of the quality of life.
"Human resource development must be the foundation of any attempt to secure sustainable economic development for the Lower Mississippi Delta region.
"The region's history of racial incidents has hurt the Delta. Scarcity of capital financing is a major barrier for would-be entrepreneurs. Access to money and technical assistance is an even more severe problem for ethnic groups."
wow. Would you ever have suspected any of that? It takes a bunch of bureaucrats to make such startling discoveries out of what simple laymen might think was obvious. Instead of spending $2 million to come up with these keen observations, why didn't the commission just go out and invest 10 bucks in a dictionary of bromides and bureaucrates? Then it could have used the rest of the money for something useful, like investing in education or a sawmill.
My favorite quote from this model report out of the L.W.L.M.D.D.C. has to be that platitude about the difficulty the ethnic groups experience in the
Paul
Greenberg
Syndicated columnist
Delta. "Ethnic group" must be this year's label for Blacks and Hispanics or maybe Chinese and Italian, as if these groups require a euphemism when they're mentioned in a respectable report.
The report's elevated concern for the lack of access to money and technical assistance on the part of ethnic groups comes with particularly ill grace from a commission that does not include a single Black commissioner. It's a wonder that this collection of clichés doesn't address one of the Delta's most obvious needs: greater political participation by Blacks. Or is that glaring omission a sign that the lily-white commission does, after all, have some shame?
Leave it to Rosalie Gould, the plainspoken mayor of McGehee, Ark., which is as Delta as a town comes, to shatter the report's talk of high-tech industries for the region.
high-tech houses. We've been hearing that same song for years," says Gould. "We can't expand high-tech. We haven't got any to expand." At this stage of its development, much of the Delta is doing well to spread low-tech — like plows and sewing
machines.
"This is an undeveloped Third World country in a lot of ways," she adds, which should not surprise anybody who has ever taken Highway 65 South from Pine Bluff, Ark., down to Lake Village and then across The River to Mississippi.
The report — all 40 pages of it, with its glossy paper, color photos and snazzy charts — isn't so much a prescription as it is a vacious read, a slick magazine, an excuse for spending $2 million that the people of the Delta could have used a lot better. The typography is nice, but the language sounds like the exhaust of a committee of economists running on idle.
From its segregated start, this commission has provided a model of how not to conduct a federal program, and its report carries on that tradition in the most officious way.
We in the Delta should get our money back. We want these bureaucrats and experts and long-distance analysts and politicians off our backs. Let them find employment in that "private sector" they keep invoking instead of taking public funds to turn out drivel.
We want action not just words.
We want action; not jokes.
And when we do get words, we want words —
clear, direct, meaningful. Not more mumbo-
jumbo.
> Paul Greenberg is the editorial page editor for the Pine Bluff (Ark.) Commercial.
CAMP UHNEELY
In this line you will wait with the rest of the students.
Who've a desire to give evidence with a such diligence as defence.
These pupils you'll find aren't much different than most 'Cept some of them have the I.G. course.'
BY SCOTT PATTY