UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kanass
Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
JANUARY 18, 1979
Carlin should choose
The 1979 edition of the Kansas Legislature opened last week amidst the usual pump and ceremony, but new and returning legislators barely had time to find their offices before they were given the first political controversy of the season.
Bearing the gift was Gov. John Carlin, who announced the appointments of Margaret A. Glades of Yates Center and Peter Macdonald of Hutchinson for two of the three current vacancies on the Kansas Board of Regents.
Unfortunately for Carlin, however,
outgoing Gov. Robert F. Bennett had
already reappointed Walter Hiersteiner,
Fairway, and Glee S. Smith
Jr., Larned, to the vacancies five days
before leaving office.
Who savs politics can't be fun?
Understandably angered by Bennett's action, Carlin has said he will attempt to persuade the Republican-controlled Senate to reject Bennett's appointments and approve his own.
Both sides have played down the role that partisan politics will play in the upcoming decision. The nominees of Bennett and Carlin are both Republicans, as mandated by state statutes prohibiting more than five members of
the nine-member board from being members of one political party.
Apparently the resentments stored during the long, hard-fought election campaign were difficult for Bennett to dismiss, however, leaving Carlin facing an early battle in the Legislature.
Of course, this early in his term the outcome of the squabble could not possibly be decisive for Carlin's administration. But a governor's ability to choose the members of his own administration can be crucial to his effectiveness.
While Bennett had the authority under state law to make the appointments, Carlin has justifiably claimed that he should have been given the courtesy of choosing his own nominees.
Bennett started the political gamesmanship early this year with his appointments. The Senate should now end the gamesmanship by ignoring partisan politics and approving Carlin's appointments.
But neither side can play down the importance of the appointments to Carlin, who will be working with the Regents during the next four years and must take responsibility for the actions of his administration.
Doomed Skylab alleviates anxieties
By CARYL RIVERS
N V Times Feature
WINTHROP, Mass.-It was with a sense of relief that I read the recent headlines proclaiming that Chicken Little, long ago, had been a paranoid, manoid, was right. The sky is falling.
To be more precise, Skylab is falling. The huge satellite is wobbling about up there like a drunk at a NASA Christmas party, and one of the biggest problems is Kaput and Skylab will come tumbling down.
One NASA official did a television interview in which he smiled wanily and said everybody hoped the thing would come true. NASA's mission control in Houston filled with guys praying. NASA's appropriation could be in trouble if the thing landed on the East Coast.
NASA'S PROBLEMS aside, I was relieved when I read the story because it was the perfect candidate for what I call my dream. "I am going to be about all next year: Will I get beaten by a manned orbiting space laboratory?" Several times a week I will glance nervously upward, looking for a great shadow against the sun or the moon and go on about my business, feeling better.
Let me explain about prime anxiety, which is my own personal technique for coping with the stresses of the modern world. It is basically a way in which to amalgamate your anxieties—something like the beatles' every month or the ninety-second every month instead of a lot of numben ones. My mother taught it to me when I wait in the fifth grade.
TO INSURE THAT we would wash our hands after going to the bathroom, she told us about the little girl who didn't; she抱 epierse. Sophie Francette described, in lurid detail, how the girl's fingers turned yellow and dropped off.
In that year, my spiritual and physical edification was in the charge of one Sister who was a Catholic nun. The good sister was much concerned with proper hygiene, and she used what might be called the Cotton Mather method for getting her point across to her students. Scare the other nun.
The little boy who didn't brush his teeth was struck by such a fearful malady that his tongue had to be cut out. And so it went, through a whole list of unhygienic practices. I woke up screaming in the middle of the night for weeks.
Finally, my mother sat me down and suggested that since it was impossible for
me to come down with all of Sister Frank's and worry about it pickily out one and worry about it exclusively.
I chose leprosy and dutifully worried about it on Wednesdays and Fridays, which left my psyche unbroken the rest of the week. And I was surprised by anxiety ever since and I can recommend it.
The problem, of course, is that everything is getting too close for comfort these days.
THE SECRET IS to pick an anxiety that is modish, dreadful, but not really too close for comfort. They don't want you. You could confide to another person and have him think you merely a garden-variety
I used nuclear holocaust for a while, but gave it up at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, for obvious reasons. The killer bees were a good idea until I heard they were moving north. Carcinogens lurk in soft drinks, bacon and sunlight.
Choosing the right anxiety is not an easy task. One walks a fine line between worries that are either too plausible or outlandish.
For example, I live near an ocean, so that rules out sharks, tidal waves, hurricanes, and storms. But my girlfriend gets abducted by a UFO or shot by the Red Brigades just seems to defy the odds of probability to too great a percentage. A prime anxiety must have some verbiage.
SKYLAR CAME along just in time. It is very big, it is falling, and it has to land somewhere. Even if it misses me, what if it crashes into a house? Our entire fortune is invested there.
I can hear our insurance agent now, thumbing through the policy: "Let's see—fire, water, termites, theft, broken sewer pipes." The laboratory orbiting laboratory falling from the sky.
"Couldn't it come under act of God?" I ask.
"Act of God, Subsection 2. 'Damage must be caused by objects or conditions produced or manufactured solely by the deity, in all materials must be of natural origin.'"
"Nope. God doesn't make orbiting laboratories. He makes trees whose hungry mouths are pressed against the earth's surface." You didn't get bit by a tree. Tough luck.
The agent thumbs again.
"Skvlab doesn't make it?"
Caryl Rivers is associate professor of journalism at Boston University.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
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For years a proposed Tallgrass National Park in western Kansas has not been considered by the House Interior Committee because of the influence of former Rep. Joe Skubitz, R-Kan., as the ranking Republican on the committee.
Odds for prairie park improving
BUT THE concerns of other groups, including Save the Tallgrass Prairie, an environmental group based in Johnson County, are gaining the interest of not only environmentally concerned, but also a large number of environmentally concerned, out-of-state legislators.
Skubitz's successor, freshman Rep. Robert Whitakter, has been lobbying ranking Interior Committee members and leading House Republicans to support his campaign to unify the committee so that he also can use his position to block any consideration of the park.
Skubitz had continually said the voters in the Fifth District of Kansas do not want the park. The Fifth District includes the four counties that would contain the park.
But even if Whittaker is appointed to the committee, the Tallgrass Prairie park's chances of coming into existence will be improved with the absence of Skubitz.
NATIONAL PARK Service officials have said they will now push for the proposed park, something they had been reluctant to do with Skubitz on the committee.
Mary
Ernst
usually at fat prices—is the cause of his political support in the Fifth District.
Rep. Larry Winn Jr., R-Kan, and already the author of a bill proposing the park, has said that he hopes a revised form of the bill, which should be ready within a week, would attract more support than the old bill. He has received a promise from the chairman of the park to submit a committee that hearings about the park will be conducted by the subcommittee.
However, despite Whitaker's stand and the Kansas Legislature's firm three-to-one opposition to the park, Kansas congressman John W. McKinney of at least the idea of creating the park.
No doubt Whittaker will continue to oppose the Tallgrass Prairie National Park in Kansas and be appointed to the Inheritance Committee or Committee on his opposition will continue to gain him votes.
Rep. Keith Sebellius, the senior Republican on the National Parks subcommittee, is against the idea of condemnation of the land by the government,
but supports the idea of preserving the land if donated. The Nature Conservancy already has acquired some of the tracts of the 187,500 acres Winn proposed, but not much chance is given to the rest of the land being put together by private interests.
REP. DAN GLICKMAN, D-Kan., also opposes condemnation in favor of negotiating private purchases. He, along with Sens. Bob Dole and Nancy Kassbaum and Rep. Jim Jeffries, is waiting to see Winn's new bill.
Much of the chance for the park seems to rest on the response to Winn's revised bill. There is a possibility the bill will not include condemnation of the land, because the in-place residents in the area will play a major role, whether Congress will accept the park.
Although Whitaker has said a dangerous precedent would be set by the purchasing of privately-owned land to establish the park, four parks recently established all included in the Whitaker development privately owned. The fact that some land would be bought from private landowners—
Whatever the response to Winn's bill, it should at least be given a chance to be discussed in a congressional committee. As with those smokes, his has cleared from those discussions, and he agrees that Kansas will preserve a great part of its natural beauty in its first national park.
But even the combined opposition of Whittaker and his constituency will not come close to matching the political clout of the other parties used to block consideration of the park.
U.S. needs energy pact with Mexico
Next month in Mexico City, President Carter and Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo will meet for talks on energy, immigration and trade. The cornerstone issue to an eventual agreement between the two countries, Specifically, Mexico's natural gas and oil.
Mexico's proven reserves of oil and gas that can be recovered at existing prices and with the present technology, amount to 20 billion barrels a year. It ranks among the lower oil-producing countries.
However, a recent discovery of new oil and gas reserves in the Chinotepec field near the eastern coast boosted Mexico's potential reserves to 200 billion barrels.
With the predicted energy crunch in the mid 1980s and the current instability among some members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the United States no doubt would benefit from an agreement. Increased oil and gas exports would create jobs and increase earnings in Mexico, providing a boost to its alluring economy.
BUT OPPOSITION is being voiced within the administration against any imtradite managemennt of staff.
A 1978 Central Intelligence Agency report estimated that Mexico, by 1989, may be able to produce 10 million barrels of oil daily. That would equal the present production capacity of Saudi Arabia, the current top exporter of oil.
Phillip Garcia
gas. The source? None other than our Energy Secretary, James R. Schlesinger.
As energy secretary, one could assume Schlesinger would work in the interest of the consumer, mainly seeking out and obtaining sufficient energy sources at reasonable cost. In his jobbing and policy efforts seem to be in the interest of the oil and gas industry.
Studies last year by Congress and the Department of Energy compared the cost of producing and transporting Alaskan gas to the cost of purchasing Mexican gas. The
In a New York speech last week, Schlesinger said the policy priorities of the United States should be completion of a $12 billion budget to develop and develop of domestic natural gas. This should be done in order to reduce American dependency on imports, he said. Only after the pipeline is completed should the United States purchase Canadian gas or gas from any other exporter.
OFFICIALS FROM Carter's corner were quick to note that Schlesinger's comments did not coincide with the president's attitude toward the talks.
Still, Schlesinger contended, Alaska gas would be more beneficial for the American economy. More beneficial for oil and gas industry at the expense of the consumer, that is.
results pose a problem for Schlesinger's policy.
The sources said that Mexican gas, by 1985, could be about $1 less for 1,000 cubic feet that Alaskan gas, because of lower prices in the American gas and deregulation of American gas.
The secretary's comments, which will draw Portilla's attention, may present a snag in the talks. Essential to the negotiations and general relationship between the two countries is a natural gas pact.
MEXICO IS peculiar because increased production of either gas or oil leads to further production of the other. But Mexico is not monoally, has yet to find a big buyer.
Two years ago, petroleum Mexicanos and six U.S. distributors tentatively agreed that the United States would purchase gas at $2.60 for 1,000 cubic feet. The Mexican government was nearing the completion of a pipeline from southeast Mexico north of the border with Argentina to the Schlesinger and the Energy Department blocked the deal. They refused to allow the gas companies to buy the gas, which, at that time, cost 44 cents more than Canadian gas
Brzezinski's optimism a risky balm
He says a "massive awakening of man politically and socially" is the most fundamental force of change in our lifetime. As a result of this awakening, he says much of the once colonized Third World is beginning to self-determination, urban growth and prosperity to the extent that it is "more susceptible to mass political mobilization."
That is the message from a New York Times interview published at the end of the year in which Brzzeniak gave his thoughts on the importance of foreign policy would take in the next decade.
The president's national security adviser is "basically optimistic" for the future of international politics. In and around the U.S., Republicans are pushing the West depends, there is unhappy bickering and fighting; Russians are in Afghanistan and South Yemen, Cubans are in Ethiopia, and there is growing unrest in Zimbabwe Brzezinski is "optimistic."
HIS DESCRIPTION is plausible. but
hardly grounds for optimism. He is
an inexperienced internal stability is a best question mark.
Brzesniski believes that a SALT agreement is of critical importance to the United States and the Soviet Union. But he also acknowledges that even with an arms agreement there will be continued disagreement and friction.
"The point is not to become paranoid about," he says.
those countries living under the fear of Soviet dominance to tread that fine line
True, to quote U.N. ambassador Andrew Young, we shouldn't "get paranoid about a few communists." But there is no question that the sustained growth of Soviet military power has made it a more threat. And as Soviet subversion continues it becomes increasingly more difficult for
and almost $1 more than gas regulated by the United States.
Perhaps. But Iran's spiritually yearning protesters have been responding more to the voice of Ayatollah Khomeini than to Carter, Khomeini, who is in self-exile in Paris, seeks to establish an Islamic republic in his homeland.
IN THE recent wave of religious fundamentalism swearing the Middle East, Brzezinski sees a "a massive reaction" to the Islamist extremists who characterizes our times. He detects in the Middle East turmoil "an increasing yearning for something spiritual," and he seems to feel that this yearning for the Muslim world is Carter's personal human rights campaign.
Since that time, Mexican gas has increased to $2.90 for 1,000 cubic feet. Schlesinger wants Petroleum Mexico to increase its price to $2.35, which is closer in price to U.S. gas.
With the headlines switching from Iran one week to Rhodesia the next, Brezinski's optimistic forecast is just what the doctor expected. But with the spread of good news. Only time will tell, if his predictions become long range curses or just another placebo.
Partly as a result, Mexico now burns off 300 million cubic feet of gas a day, which, according to one national publication, is energy supply Vernort with energy for eight months.
U. S. OFFICIALS think Petroleum Mexicans will not increase its oil production if a large market for her natural gas is not found. Therefore, a natural gas company should purchase the United States to buy thousands of barrels of oil from just across the border.
The gap between the two countries needs to be bridged. An added problem to the talks is the presence of a strong sentiment among students in the country, resources should be used only by its people.
Also Petroleum Mexicanos will not back down on its price, it seems. The company has announced plans to up with the world market, meaning OPCC. Currently, OPCC countries sell their oil at $13.33 a barrel, while Mexico sells its oil for $13.70. Negotiations should be
With the crisis in Iran, the potential energy shortage, which Schlesinger himself promotes, and price increases by OPEC, an energy producer, its energy would benefit the United States.
MEXICO COULD have many advantages from an agreement.
Its economy cannot keep pace with its 66 million people, and the population is expected to double by 2000. According to one study in the United States, most of whom are seeking better economic conditions. If Mexico could fortify its economy with gas and oil profits, it could then develop its agricultural and industrial sectors, and machinery, no doubt, would be helpful.
Mexico may very well look for other large markets for its resources, a development the United States may not like.
During the 18 month ordeal of the Carter energy program in Congress, Schlesinger called for reduced consumption of gas and oil to reduce greenhouse gases and take painful actions now—meaning higher gas and oil prices, even though domestic oil and gas are available—to avoid greater fuel costs.
Schelsinger must cease his act of placing industry's special interest ahead of the consumers, especially when that attitude is tempered by a friendly country that shares our border.