Opinion
Page 4 University Daily Kansan, January 14, 1982
Drawing battle lines
Gov. John Carlin opened the 1882 Kansas Legislative session with a bold and direct challenge to state lawmakers—he included revenue from his proposed severance tax in his recommended budget for Fiscal Year 1883.
If approved, the state's first $3 billion budget will include $125 million in revenue generated from a 5 percent severance tax on oil and natural gas production and a 2 percent tax on coal production.
If approved, this money will be earmarked for primary and secondary public education in the state.
But the "if" is a big one.
The Republican-controlled legislature did not buy the tax last year and chances are that it hasn't changed its collective mind now.
Carlin's arguments sound convincing. Without the tax, the burden of improving, or even maintaining public education in the
state will be carried by higher property taxes.
Originally, Carlin planned to use part of the severance tax revenue for highway improvements. But last week he said he wanted the entire amount to go to education.
It's hard to hate a plan that avoids property tax increases while helping out schools.
And for those of us at the University of Kansas, there is a slight hope that the tax could ease financial pressures in other areas and permit the legislators to funnel more money into higher education.
Carlin has said he is ready to stop playing games with the tax.
"If the legislators want something different," he said, "they're going to have to carry the whole burden of putting it on the backs of the property taxpayers."
He has made his challenge, and the stage is set for a heated battle in Topeka.
American elms victimized by veneer-hoarding masses
I'm starting an American terrorist group.
We're going to be Depression Era Elmwood Vener Terrorists. We are each a DEVIAT.
No snickers, please. . . I'm serious. There are veneer owners out there who ruined my childhood, maybe yours.
Let me explain our cause. When I was a kid, on the parkway along the street in front of my house's house near Chicago there were kids living elves as far as my little eyes could see.
They were big, georgous trees that would rain artist's colors when the leaves changed and fell in the autumn. The kiss from my first romance came in a pile of these leaves with a blond and sky-blue-eyed dream girl from my second grade class. Little did I know that the very next year that vaulted canopy of nature would be gone, victim to a ravenous plague of
W.I. ANDREWS
They were American elms, the species Ulmus americana.
Dutch elm disease that claimed all 17 members of the stand.
I loved those trees. City workers marked and cut down the diseased trees, then offered us chopped wood in bitter consolation. My leafy romance ended when my first-loved took up with another on the other side of the block. His parkway sported sturdy, disease-resistant maplies that still produced those magic tiles of lover's leaves each fall.
But, back to our cause.
We want retribution from the people who took those trees away—the people who provided the market for elmwood vender by becoming furniture conscious. They forced furniture manufacturers to import beautiful elms from central-European forests to make the veneer. This doomed our elms. You see, along with the elm log came the hitchchiking beetle of the European elm bark beetle. He gave up the old country for the new to compete with our native elm bark beetle Hylurgonus rufipes.
"Do they kill the trees?"
No. The beetles by themselves cannot do enough damage to terminate a tree.
But when the foreign beetles popped off the jogbates in '33 and flew to the nearest elms on Long Island and in Baltimore and began their business, to dine, they played travel host to a nasty fungus named Ceratocystis ulmi. This fungus kills the trees.
This is the science of it. After the females mate they bore below the bark to lay their eggs. Then the fungus takes hold and really grows into a tree. The wood cells and blocking the flow of water.
Meanwhile eggs hatch and adults emerge through the bark to fly away, in turn playing host to the fungus and infecting other trees.
The beetle population thrives as long as the trout are free, then came all the way to the Midwest in spring.
The point is, the fungus was okay when it was on the otherside of the ocean. The more resistant varieties of alms in Europe wouldn't allow disease or the environment to cripple as many trees. Having a reduced breeding ground that is not at the diminished level and stunted by check, over there, away from my street. Until . . .
"The veneer."
Exactly. You are understanding our cause.
But, even though by 1833—only 30 years after the first appearance of the fungus in America—large portions of many major stands of the American elm had been felled, there is confidence the species will survive.
Research has uncovered two approaches to stop our loss of limbs. One method attends to the beetle itself by interrupting its breeding. The other attempts to inhibit the fungus' growth by injection of a bacterium into the tree's trunk. Though each method has proven only partially successful, a combination of it is usually enough to control the disease.
There is one other solution, maybe the best. Recently a tree disease specialist completed 20 years of research and produced a hybrid elm named the Sapporo Autumn Gold. Eugene B. Smallley, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, crossbred a disease resistant Siberian elm with a shaplier Sapporo elm.
The experiment was so successful it commanded the attention of Prince Philip, who planted a Sapporo Autumn Gold last year in a ceremony at Windsor Castle.
This is precisely what the DEEVIAT group proposes, the planting of a Sapporo Autumn Gold in place of every fallen American elm. And, we believe some elmwood veneer will be offered their help in our effort to secure leafy, childhood romances for future generations.
For my childhood is gone. When I visit my old neighborhood and stand in front of my old house, I can sing to the birds flying high the green roof of Ulmus americana. It makes it seem long ago.
The last time I went back I left the house after my brief elm fantasy and drove down the next side of the block. It was a sunny, mid-summer day. My mother brought young mother and daughter in their front yard.
They were raking multi-colored maple leaves into a huge pile. I drove past the mother looked up and smiled, and I smiled. Then the little girl did. They both had blond hair and sky-blue eyes. Oh, woe for the American elms.
KANSAN
The University Daily
USPS 6846 (published at the University of Kansas daily August through May and Monday and Thursday during June and July except September, Sunday and holidays. Second-class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas 6646). Subscriptions to mail are $10 for six months or $12 a year inbound or $15 a year outbound. Mail is sent to the address of the university through the student activity fee. Postmails send to addresses of the University daily Kannan, Fliell Hall, the University of Kansas.
Editor
Vanessa Herron
Managing Editor
Editorial Editor
Campus Editor
Associate Campus Editor
Assistant, Instruction员
Assignment Editor
Sports Editor
Entertainment Editor
Makeup Editors
Vice Press Editor
Photo Editor
Head Copy Chief
Copy Creator
Columbiaists
Retail Sales Manager
National Sales Manager
Classified Manager
Production Manager
Travel Agent
Retail Sales Representatives
Retail Sales Representatives
Barba Burma, Larry Burmuster, Susan Cooksey, Richard Dagan, Jerris Grump,
Amy Jones, Mary Jones, Phillip Langham, Jennifer Davis,
Katharine Myers, Karya Duggan, Jason Boyer, Jane Wenderson
Chuck Blumberg, Karly Duggan, Denise A. Popovits, Voz Zakaryan
Sales and Marketing Advisor
And News Advisor
Business Manager
Nataleine Julie
Tracee Hamilton
Karen Solbiller
Gene George
Jane Nardell
Joebe Reinach, Christina Changy
Steve Bedlbrun
Rhigent Nagpur
Bing Neghrop
Coral Beach
Lia Masoch, Lillian Darte, Shane Applebush
Elena Markey, Teresa Riorand, Lila Masoch
Ben Biggrat
Cindy Campbell, Chris Cobler, George Pollock
Bren Abbott, Dan Bowers, Chris Cobler, Dana Torcia, Joane Wall, Isa Ballon
Toni Boutragier, Jeff Thomas, Teresa Riorand, Ben Jones, William Wall, Jeremy Bell
Sharon Burnett
Larry Calcudog
Job Egan
Barba Burma, Larry Burmuster, Susan Cooksey, Richard Dagan, Jerris Grump,
Amy Jones, Mary Jones, Phillip Langham, Jennifer Davis, Katharine Myers, Karya Duggan, Jason Boyer, Jane Wenderson
Chuck Blumberg, Karly Duggan, Denise A. Popovits, Voz Zakaryan
Sales and Marketing Advisor
And News Advisor
Kansan changes as semesters pass
Last Thursday was cold. Ice froze diamond-hard on the sidewalks. Disk joees reported the coldest temperatures of the century and warned their listeners to avoid frostbite on their way to the ice.
But last Thursday, I wasn't afraid of frostbite. I was afraid to walk into the empty newspaper in Flint Hall to finally take the reins of the University Daily Kansan, my old adversary.
My fears were not caused by a lack of job qualifications. Since Fall 1980, I had worked for the Kansan as a reporter, a columnist, a copy editor and a wire editor. In the summer of 1980, I for the Coffeyville Journal and last summer, I was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.
For nearly two years, I had been part of the mainstream of the newspaper business. But I still had not forgotten the fact that I gained my first newspaper experience working for the Criterion, a black student newspaper that was owned by the Kornish and the Kompak's insensitivity to minority groups.
In those days, I was angry. I knew that in my freshman year, no black person was ever included in a Kansan photograph—except on the sports page.
I saw that the coverage of many minority groups was limited to a perfunctory feature article or two. And I fumed after reading the concert review that sparked one of that year's best-publicized articles. Natura Cole, a black singer, was depicted as some kind of gyrating fertility goddess.
But after three years, things have changed. For one thing, the Kansan, that purported bastion of middle-class white supremacy, is now headed by two black women.
I lent personally insulted, and so did hundreds of other black KU students who met one night to protest the article in particular and the Kansan's news judgment in general.
We all believed that the Kansan was part of a journalistic conspiracy to stifle, or just plain dislike it.
And after three years, I've changed, too. I'm not as eager to believe in conspiracies. I've learned that there is no such thing as a black and white truth—especially in the pages of a newspaper.
Over the years, I have learned to like the
VANESSA
HERRON
newspaper, maybe even love it in a guarded sort of way.
Most former foes of the Kansan learn to
aspire to lead them more after they have
learned to understand it.
For example, the Kansan is in the curious position of being both an official newspaper for KU students, and a laboratory publication for the KU School of Journalism.
That means that the 19- or 20-year-old students who produce the Kansan are suddenly expected to perform as well as professional journalists, and the suddenness been called professional journalists.
In the pursuit of professionalism, staff members lose sleep and skip classes. They get tired and hungry. Stories fall through and and accounts fizzle out. All 98 staff members take full classloads, and most earn little or no money for working on the Kansas.
In fact, the Kansan's editor and business manager are its highest paid staff members.
Of course, Kansan staff members are not naints. The skills they will acquire this semester are a saleable commodity, and Kansan titles look very, very good on resumes. But the fact remains that there are easier ways to pad resumes than working for the Kansan.
Some students come to the Kan萨 for money or prestige. But those who stay, stay because
When I joined the Criterion staff in protest three years ago, I thought the Kansan was insensitive. Sometimes, I still think it is. But I also believe that he improved and that it will continue to improve.
This semester, the Kansan will continue to publish reports on everything from Senx to the Gung Fu Club. And the Kansan will continue its teaching on little-known and well-known injustices.
But along the way, the Kansan will try to pay more attention to what's right with the University and to pay more attention to the university's nonnominity and nonnominity, who live in the community.
Hard news stories are exciting. But people are just as important as the scoops and scandals for the news world.
Of course, we at the Kanas will never be able to cover every subject subject. And we Will always have everyone living here!
During the semester, space will be scarce, time will be short, and reporters, editors and salesmen will get tired.
But when all else fails, we can only promise to do our best.
Something tells me that our best will be more than good enough.
Let's concentrate on one strategic threat
By JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH New York Times Special Features
CAMBRIGE, Mass.—Those who say that our foreign policy is inconsistent and unpredictable have one thing solidly against them. That is our deep and reliable concern for adverse political developments in small countries, both nearby and around the world.
The objects of our concern change radically with the passage of time. As surely as we grow older, it becomes clear that as it comes to a bit unnecessary or foolish, or as it encounters the problem that your average American does not always know where the country is, then we can count on alarm shifting to
That alarm is never over what bizarre, incoherent or socially angry change promises for the unfortunate citizens of the unhappy country; we now know that socialism and communism, with their large and complex public apparatus, do not work well in the poor countries of the world, as they also encounter grave difficulties in as sophisticated a community as Poland. And are coming gradually into opposition to alternatives to capitalism are irrelevant in the absence of capitalism. Our concern is always over the strategic implications of the political change.
Those strategic implications are usually unspecified but always grave. And since they are said to bear on our vital interests, one no wishes to disagree. Just 20 years ago, it was Laos.
Weekly and sometimes daily briefings were given to the more vulnerable journalists on the strategic threat of the Pathet Lao to the Plain of Jars.
Arthur Schlesinger, whose non-communist credentials are adequate, expressed the thought that Laos was not a danger pointed at the heart of Kansas. This was considered daring.
Laos has long since returned to the strategic insignificance for which, one judges, nature intended it and for which its inhabitants unquestionably yearn.
in ensuing years, Zaire, once the Congo; South
Vietnam, alas; Somalia and Ethiopia, both at
various times bastions of the free world and outposts of communism; Cambodia; the Yemens; and, in a very small way, the Yemen—all have been objects of strategic concern.
It is, however, in the last 12 months that all records have been broken both for strategic anxiety and for the speed with which this has shifted from one small country to another. In rapid sequence, we have had concern for the threat from El Salvador and Nicaragua, which combined with the recurrent menace of Cuba, have led to a massive global war and the massive world threat from Col. Moamarra Khaddady and his limitless desert and his 2 million Libyans.
It is not my intention here to argue that there is something unworthy, undignified, derogatory or, at a minimum, lacking in grandeur in a great country squandering so much public emotion on its small neighbors or more distant fortunates. Though I like to seem courageous, I try to protect all flanks, so I do not wish now to arouse the anger of those who find their theatrists. And, as a practical consideration, our compulsion in these matters is too great to leave any real bone for change.
What I propose for the new year is something more practical: Let us in 1982 settle on one clear and comprehensible strategic threat, stay with it and leave all the other little chaps alone.
The choice is obvious. It is an outpost of socialism on our own continent; it is subject to the authority of a government in which communists have an active role. It lies squAREly adjacent to the greatest trade route into the North American continent, this being曼提雷恩 River, the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Great Lakes, including our own Lake Michigan.
It is St. Pierre and Miquelon, a French possession on Cabot Strait (named for earlier, non-Boston Cabs) on the main approach to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There are, effectively, not three islands in this most strategic of outposts—Miquelon, Langlade and St. Pierre.
The islands were the first free French territory seized by Charles de Gaulle in 1914, in which he established a naval base. He also involved a
sharply adverse strategic response from Washington at the time. Yet older Americans know how the port of St. Pierre exploited its strategic position in the yet more distant past—with the use of ships that were well-sourced and sources of logistical support for the ruin fleet, as that considerable naval force was then known.
Concentration of our attention on St. Pierre and Miquelon will not arouse much domestic opposition— their constituency in the United States is almost certainly small. It will not arouse the fear and opposition of our Latin American allies, but it will present Caribbean policy. The French and the Canadians undoubtedly understand our compulsion in these small-country matters and are otherwise too sophisticated to object. It will seem a bit foolish that we will be expending so much rhetoric and passion in their territory. But we now know, is not a concession to the making of our foreign policy.
(John Kenneth Galbraith, professor emeritus of economics at Harvard University, is a former president.)
Letters Policy
The University Daily Kansas welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typewritten, double-spaced and should not exceed 500 words. They should include the writer's name, address and phone number. If the letter is submitted by a student, the letter should include his class and home town or faculty or staff position. The Kansas reserves the right to edit or reject letters.
.