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Friday, October 20, 1989 / University Dally Kansan
Opinion
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Government's budget plan disguises deficit's growth
Congress and the president need to change some provisions of the Gramm-Rudman law. The statute was intended to create a balanced national budget, but the deficit continues to grow. In fiscal 1988, the deficit was about $155 billion. That's $61.4 billion more than a 1986 projection released after the passage of Gramm-Rudman in 1985.
Both the House of Representatives and the Senate overwhelmingly passed the Gramm-Rudman Balanced Budget act into law. This statute required Congress and the president to reduce the federal deficit by set amounts each year until the budget was balanced.
Originally, fiscal 1991 was the target year for a balanced budget with Gramm-Rudman. However, in 1987 Congress revised the law and moved the balanced budget year to fiscal 1993.
Now we are faced with a federal deficit that threatens our economic independence. According to the June 5 issue of U.S. News and World Report, the Congressional Budget Office said "the Bush budget will break the Gramm-Rudman ceiling by at least $23 billion." Wall Street calculations predict the ceiling will be surpassed by at least twice that amount.
Because we have a law that is supposed to prevent a growing deficit, it's reasonable to wonder how the deficit just keeps getting bigger. The answer is simple.
The deficit continues to grow because Congress and the president continue to perform cosmetic surgery on the budget, a cut here and a tuck there. Sunday's Kansas City Star reported, "The law has led to a shortsighted approach in which quick fixes and artificial devices have replaced long-range policy-making." It couldn't have been said better.
don't care because the 1950s banking push Bush's budget project collined $6 billion of federal assests, which is just as bad as the deception that is taking place to present a palatable deficit. Our country is ready to sell itself out.
policy-making.
An example of a cut is the U.S. Postal Service. With a deficit of almost $2.2 billion, the service was removed from the budget. It's still an expense, it's just not on the budget. And almost $1 billion of farm subsidies for next year were moved forward by one day, thus tucking it into fiscal 1989. This tuck increased the deficit for the 1989 budget, but our politicians don't care because the 1980 budget looks better, and so do they.
Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill want to make changes in Gramm-Rudman when Congress considers legislation to raise the statutory ceiling on the national debt later this month. Let's support those changes and put an end to all the gimmicks that reduce the deficit only on paper.
Kathy Walsh for the editorial board
Programs seek to spotlight domestic violence problem
There was a march last night.
It wasn't protesting abortion. It wasn't protesting the launch of the space shuttle.
It was protecting domestic violence.
The "Take Back the Night" march from the Kansas Union to the South Park Gazebo was organized by campus and community groups to call attention to the problem of domestic violence.
Violence. Tuesday night, Lawrence Mayor Bob Schumm proclaimed October as Domestic Violence Month to help focus the spotlight on the problem.
through programs like those scheduled this week, people are getting help. Agencies are available to counsel women trapped in abusive environments, and the march and proclamation might allow victims to get help.
Imagine yourself caught in an abusive relationship. Would you know where to turn? Would you feel alone? Confusion and depression are only two of the symptoms of domestic violence that the awareness programs are fighting.
Domestic violence eventually will affect nearly all of us, indirectly or directly. Through the efforts of groups such as the Lawrence Women's Transitional Care Services and others involved in these programs, maybe you can help someone, maybe help yourself.
It is a sad fact that the march must be held. It is a sad fact that domestic violence exists.
By raising community awareness participants are helping us all to realize the scope and terror of domestic violence.
News staff
David Stewart . . . . .
Business staff
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Ethnic humor taken too offensively
Mason's departure from campaign proves New York politics not so funny
jackie Mason has had to bow out of Rudolph Giuliani's campaign for mayor of New York, having been caught committing humor in the first degree, namely ethnic.
Jackie Mason is a comic who can take a stereotype and make it a thing of beauty and a joy for an entire one-man show. Naturally he would come up with the perfect, one-sentence description of David Dinkins, Giuliani's heavily favored but highly forgettable opponent, Dinkins, said the irrepreable Jackie, "tooks like a Black model without a job."
That did it. If there is one thing worse than humor in a mayoral campaign in New York, it's accuracy. It would be difficult to come up with a single phrase that better captures the essence of Dinkin's contribution to new Man politics. He is Ralph Ellison's "The Invisible Man" not only personified but running for mayor. This change may be a blessed relief after Mayor Ed Koch's unbuttoned personality, but let's not pretend it's a substitution; it's an absence.
Mason made other not so funny remarks, but this observation alone was enough to mark the end of his career as a political consultant. Politics in New York has grown remarkably humorless since Florello La Guardia'a time. Once upon a time there was a Republican ticket in New York that sounded like an ethnic joke itself (Lekowitz, Fino and Gilhooley), but it wasn't much sounded. One reason ethnic humor may be flourishing onstage is that it has been driven from political life.
It may be a mark of good taste, and mercy, to end the political career of tiresome types who tell attempted jokes, the kind of "humor" that is only an excuse to hurl witless epithets at classes.
Paul Greenberg
Syndicated columnist
creeds, races or national origins. The names of Earl Butz, James Watt and Archie Bunker come to mind. But a Jackie Mason is a national asset, even if the gold he mines comes with a large admixture of dress. Nobody would ever call him refined, which in his case would be a comedown.
It's the rare politician who can still tell a joke, that is, a funny joke, which is quite different from the ceremonial witticism that opens a politician's speech and sends all those who depend on his patronage into laughter as loud as it is calculated.
A politician such as the late great Earl K. Long of Louisiana would surely be relegated to late-night television today. He almost was back then when he found himself deserted by all the respectables and trundled off to the funny farm. Few in the '50s dared admit that Earl Long told more truths drunk than others did sober or that he made better sense crazy than others who were oh-so-sane. There is a kind of utter sanity that is a craziness, too, and U.S. politics grows rife with it.
Since his death in 1980, Earl Long has gained a place in folklore that he could not have hoped for in life; death always makes a politician safer to admire. Who would have predicted that, when they made a movie of his life, Earl Earle would be played by Paul Newman? That joke might not have been foreseen by e.A.J. Liebling, the few literate to appreciate Earl Long's genius
while the man was still alive.
Alas, because so many polls and so much of the press can't tell the difference between humor and brutishness, our political culture plays it safe and declares all humor verbben. Soon this country's political life may become as solemn as the Germans'.
Imagine the trouble Finley Peter Dume would be in if he had written his essay on "The Negro Problem" in this enlightened year instead of at the turn of the century. Could the creator of the immortal Mr. Dooley even get his essay on race relations published today? It probably contains more epistles for Negro per column inch than any contemporary effort, a fact that might obscure its thesis that the Negro problem is basically a white problem.
Finley Peter Dunne's language would shock the ethnically squeamish, a category that overlaps with the devoutly humorous. That's also the reason "Huckleberry Finn" has been banned. It uses the language of its time to rise above its time, which is a sure test of greatness in any book. And a sure invitation to censorship.
It would be a shame for anyone to miss out on Mark Twain or Finley Peter Dunne because dialect is considered insulting today instead of revealing. In these bland times one is permitted to bad-mouth only rednecks, the group in the United States that has no anti-defamation league or need for one, possibly because it has held on to a certain accent. You may never can laugh at themselves and at others. It may be only those without humor who are beyond being saved because they're so sure they have been.
▶ Paul Greenberg is a columnist with the Pine Bluff (Ark.) Gazette.
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Choice is not a crime
I am tired of anti-choice groups comparing me and the majority of Americans to Nazis, terrorists and murderers, simply because we uphold the democratic principle of choice.
Many opponents of choice would like us to believe that women who decide to have abortions are unethical, immoral and feebeling. Groups, such as the infamous Operation Rescue, have declared war on those of us who uphold choice. They have taken credit for bombing abortion clinics and camping outside clinics discouraging women from entering by shouting such things as "baby murderer," and "sinner." Simply put, these groups are waging a psychological as well as combative war. Who, then, are the terrorists, the
unethical and the immoral?
I will not argue their sincerity and commitment. But, where does this strong commitment stem from? It starts with their own interpretation of morality and ends with ridiculous acts of violence, psychological warfare and cheap name-calling. What are literally attacking is a person's autonomy. They want to restrict others rights because of their own personal feelings.
For those of us who believe in the democratic principle of choice, we need to work hard at retaining the right our mothers and fathers fought for yesterday. Let's not let anti-choice groups call our families and friends Nazis and terrorists. We only believe in choice. And that's not a crime, yet.
Debbie Bengtson Junction City senior
Pro-abortion week at KU
Last week was pre-abortion week on campus. I realize the paper and signs called it "Pro-choice Week," but pro-choice
are really just pro-abortionists.
Pro-abortionists hide behind their pro-choice facade because they know a pro-abortion stand is too hard to defend. It's easier to defend "I have the right to choose what happens to my body," than pictures of mutilated babies in a trash can behind an abortion clinic.
Abortion has become an issue of free will and a woman's choice, when in reality, it's a question of whether inconvenience, poverty, concern for the mother's life and imperfection are enough justification to end the life of a human fetus. Finally, the Supreme Court has admitted that life begins at conception. Under this legal, constitutional view, how can abortion be justified?
If "free will" and "everyone has the right to choose" were the true feeling of the pro-abortion movement, why boycott Domino's Pizza? The owner of Domino's can do whatever he wants with his money and property. That's his choice!
Due to the obvious pro-abortion majority at KU, I realize my letter
will be unpopular and probably won't be published. But as an anti-abortionist, I also have the right to speak my mind and do what I can to overturn Roe vs. Wade. Let's stop hiding behind the pro-choice facade and religious fanaticism and face the real issue: abortion
Rebecca J. Bogner Kingman sophomore
Other voices
The Greenwood (Miss.).- Commonwealth on Panama:
President Bush correctly handled the failed coup attempt against Panamanian ruler Manuel Antonio Noriega . . .
If the people of Panama want Norlage out, let them arrange it, not us. To do otherwise is to much the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.
Bush should let the Panama crisis cool. He should bide his time. Noriega can't last.
CAMP UHNEELY
BY SCOTT PATTY
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