UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
OCTOBER 3,1978
Broader tax lid needed
Kansas gubernatorial candidates Robert F. Bennett and John Carlin, like most opportunistic politicians across the country, are riding the coattails of Howard Jarvis and his California protege - Proposition 13.
Although the so-called taxpayers' revolt lacks a champion in Kansas such as Jarvis, Republican candidate Bennett and Democrat Carlin recently have been exhorting the attributes of a property tax lid.
Their agreement on the issue of a property tax lid smacks of the zeal of a bandwagon effort. But considering the public mood, what better way is there to woo the voters' favor than to offer an anti-tax measure?
DESPITE THEIR agreement on the principle of a tax lid, they differ about its structure. Gov. Bennett calls for a constitutional amendment that would establish a uniform property tax lid that would be binding on local governments.
State Sen. Carlin of Smolan, however, proposes a statutory property tax lid similar to one passed during former governor Robert Docking's administration.
Carlin says his proposal is more flexible than Bennett's because his would allow the Legislature to grant
exemptions to local governments to exceed the tax lids.
Under Bennett's proposal, a local government could raise its property tax if it published its intentions to increase the tax, allowing voters a referendum on the tax if they request it.
THE TAXPAYER, not the politician,
would ultimately decide on the
necessity of a tax increase if Bennett's
proposal was accepted.
Yet both candidates are riding the wave of anti-tax hysteria, but not wholeheartedly. They seem to be using it only as a campaign ploy and are not committed to extensive tax reform that would give taxpayers greater control of their government.
Kansas tax rates are modest when compared with California standards, and a property tax lid, both candidates say, would ensure it remains so. But if Bennett and Carlin are honestly concerned about the taxpayer's future, they will go beyond their meager property tax lid proposals.
A true tax-reformer, in the spirit of Javis, would propose a broad tax lid—requiring all proposed sales and income tax increases to be submitted to a vote that would need a simple majority approval.
A newspaper photograph last week showed Erik Wetznitzer, a woman reporter for the New Brunswick (N.J.) Home News, interviewing New York Yankee second baseman Wille Randolph in the Yankee clubhouse.
Women have locker room rights too
He was nude. Yes. Randolph was nude.
Weltzner, bless her, appeared interested in nothing except what Randolph was
But a woman?
But a woman. Certainly. The time has come.
Nude men, of course, are as common to locker rooms as we wet towels and athlete's foot. Men reporters have usually been allowed to wander freely among the ballplayers to gather quotes and stories for tomorrow's editions.
Weltner and several other women were allowed the rare privilege of violating the Yankees' male sanctuary because U.S. District Judge Constance Baker Molley—yes, fellas, another woman—said it was wrong for the Yankees to exclude women reporters and, at the same time, admit men reporters.
The locker room generates good copy. If Weitzer and all women reporters were barred from the clubhouse, they might as well drop sports for the society page.
The ban, moreover, would give any newspaper a valid reason not to hire women for its sports staff. Women have a right to cover sports if they can do the job. A rule that has the effect of barring them from the use of an aspect—morally as well as constitutionally.
CRASHING THE YANKEES' clubhouse will never be regarded as more than a small skirmish in the war for sexual equality. But their ability to confront it without Access, they can't do their job. They will remain second-class shadows of men reporters, virtuoso players and big baseball coverage.
The clubhouse controversy began when the Yankees told a woman reporter, Sports Illustrated's Mulholland house because she was a woman. That put her at a competitive
Business leaders need to help government stimulate the economy
By J. PAUL STICHT
N.Y. Times Feature
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.—One of the remarkable periods in the development of America was our successful transition from slavery to emancipation.
Those were years of creative partnership between business and government. The results included plentiful jobs, higher standards of living and generous programs of international assistance.
If we are to reassert our economic vitality, characteristics of those challenging times should be resurrected.
A key factor in that postwar era was that business produced leaders and spokesmen—industrial statesmen—who looked to the promise of the future instead of worshiping the dead hand of the past. Clarence Fulton, a prominent steel in steel, Clarence Fulton and Paul Hoffman in auto's.
WHAT FOLLOWED in the 1960s was a period of breaking away from the Nixon administration's leader, a campaign against the Depression, emerged again as a
News magazine cover stories reflected the positive public attitude toward business leaders. Big Steel's Ben Fairless, Westinghouse's Gwilym Motors, Charlie Wilson and Harlow Curtice of General Motors, Du Pont's Crawford Greenewalt, the Ford brothers and Studebaker's Hoffman were portrayed as the new type of industrial statesmen.
As 1957's Soviet Sputnik launched the space race, the research scientists of industries and universities began the pervasive electronic revolution. Business, government and academia achieved partnership. The universities produced the intellectual resources, government helped where needed but did not obstruct, and business took the entrepreneur's risk.
IT SEEMED for a while as if that could continue. Prices remained stable and inflation was negligible under Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson. The bull market roared on and reached astounding peaks.
However, by the end of the Vietnam War, trends and forces of the 1980s protests had eroded the popular climate for business. Opinion polls showed that the public view of business and its executives pad tumbled sharply.
business leaders must share the blame. We stood mute, carrying on "business as usual" while the nibblist voices of the 1960s set the agenda for public debate. What followed was a welter of non-negotiable demands turning what had once been seen as needs into rights, entitlements to be provided by government, presumably could care any problem with a hefty appropriation.
AS A RESULT, most of us have fallen into the trap of turning
more and more to government for solutions. Government has grown intently an unmanaged monster that not even the federal government can control.
But there are signs that the general public considers the costs of government too high. Proposition 13 may be the first "shot heard 'round the wards" of what could become the upswelling of a new mood of public concern and involvement. Perhaps we in business can help make this new leviathan of government more responsive. In so doing, we could help individuals overcome their sense of oppression, indignation and helplessness.
Just possibly this "shoot" could portend a second American Revolution in which the voiceless, faceless taxpayer demands and gets greater control over his life and destiny—over how he lives and where his tax money is spent. There are hopeful signs.
RECENTLY, CONGRESS and the press have shown considerable interest in economist Arthur Laffer's argument that cutting taxes can increase revenues—like the $4 billion increase in revenues that followed President Kennedy's 1963 tax cut of 25 percent. Another hopeful sign is that a majority seems to have formed in Congress to back proposals that would roll back the new 49 percent maximum tax on capital gains toward its previous 25 percent maximum.
This new emphasis in public opinion offers business managers a fresh opportunity to reassert constructive public leadership. In the 1960s we had business leaders who were truly national leaders, running the Marshall Plan, managing the Defense Department and directing important commissions.
THE ENORMOUS challenges confronting our nation require applying the best resources society can muster. It is appalling that there are so few business leaders within the Carter administration. In fact, we often find that key elements of our overgrown, irresponsible federal bureaucracy are headed by yesterday's hard-shell anti-business activists.
Business leaders have the skills and experience to help contribute to our society's progress. Perhaps they can be encouraged to regain the determination to serve in and with government. We need a new era of business statesmanship to enable the United States to reach beyond yesterday's achievements.
J. Paul Stich is president and chief executive officer of R.J. Reynolds Industries Inc. This article is adapted from a speech Stich gave at the University of Pittsburgh School of Business.
Rick Alm
disadvantage with her male counterparts,
she said, and she went to court.
SHE FILED HER discrimination suit in Motley's court and won the right for her sex to venture where no woman reporter had gone before, the Yankees locker room. As a result of her stunt, she was the clubhouse after the Yankees game last Tuesday with the Toronto Blue Jays.
"Chaos did not ensue," Robert Jofe, Ludke's attorney, said after the Blue Jays game, "the nation's morals have survived."
Maybe so. But baseball Commissioner
nowie Kunn was in Motley's decision a threat to baseball, his "great American game." He joined the Yankees in asking Motley to reconsider in the interest of the welfare of organized baseball and the players' modesty.
She refused. Baseball cannot, after all, weasel out from under the Constitution as easily as it did from under the antitrust laws. However, the judge did say the Yankees could protect players' privacy in things as curtains, press areas or brooms.
"NOTHING CAN BE more grave," Jesse Climenko, attorney for Kulu and the Yankees, said, "than the court's holding that the Constitution itself requires that a male professional athlete wear a towel around his waist so that women sports writers may inude in their livelihood at the expense of the players' rights."
towels, but the 14th Amendment has a lot to say about equal protection and due process. The Yankees finally chose another of the judge's options Friday and closed the clubhouse to all reporters for 45 minutes to allow players to dress after a game.
The Constitution mentions nothing about
The decision will drive the men reporters mad. Most of them labor under deadline pressure and enjoy the spontaneity of the post-game locker room. In all likelihood the 48-minute delay won't survive reporters' pressure to reopen the clubhouse. And when the doors open again, women must be allowed to enter.
The Constitution says so.
Eventually players and reporters will find a way to accommodate each others' needs. Perhaps the players will find towels not to be such a burden after all or women will find eye contact very necessary for interviewing baseball players.
As Joffe said, no chaos.
INDEED, JOHN INGRAM of North Carolina is the only challenger for a seat previously held by the conservative old guard who carries liberal credentials into the fray. Perhaps the best gauge of his effectiveness is the vitrific comments of his critics, who charge that he has a "messianic complex," and call him a "demoniac." Or that he is an unfit person for his attacks on the high rates fostered by large insurance companies.
The revelation that Robert Kruger, the moderate Congressman from Texas who is challenging Tower, had accepted illegal campaign contributions only seemed to make Kruger more popular in Texas. He is one of the Senate with an eye on the White House.
On the other hand, Proposition 13 has fueled the success of some previously undistinguished conservatives A prime example was the defeat of Rep. Donald Fraser in the Democratic Senate primary in Minnesota by Bob Short, former owner of
Of course, this thinning of the Senate's conservatives rank doesn't mean an influx of liberals. The politicians vying to replace them are doing most part politically successful moderates.
Senate election outcome to lean left despite Proposition 13 pull to right
Well, it's that time of year again, election fans, and despite a challenge on the right from Proposition 13 and indications on the left of a comeback in old-fashioned liberalism, the smart election money is once again riding right down the center of the
One exception, however, might be the U.S. Senate, where death and retirement have dealt a solid blow to that august baby's right wing. Five of the Senate's leading candidates, and three of the most powerful Southern Democrats, will not be returning in January.
Democrats James Allen of Alabama and John McCullum of Arkansas have died. Democrat James Eastland, the man once referred to as the last slave-holding leader of the Civil War and Republicans William Scott of Virginia and Carl Curtis of Nebraska are retiring.
Those five senators were uniformly conservative, and they wielded seniority with a powerful flourish. With the changing demographics, they could be on a fresher and slightly more liberalue hone.
IN ADDITION, three more of the Senate's most neandermal members, John Tower of Texas, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Jesse Helms of North Carolina, are facing tough re-election battles. Those three have responded to the challenge, however, by raising campaign treasures of $4 million to $5 million dollars. By using saturation advertising campaigns, they stand a good odds of holding on to their jobs on Capitol Hill.
Still, most signs point to a slight decrease in right-wing clout in the new Senate that convenes this January. The good-old-boy network that produced some of the most visible extremists from the South seems to have died from a healthy overdose of black voting power.
THE LIBERAL column in the Senate is likewise not without its losses. James Aboreux of South Dakota, the Senate's most liberal member, is retiring, and Edward Brooke of Massachusetts might be in for a fight this year.
the Texas Rangers and a millionaire who rode the tax-cut issue to victory.
That voting power has reached the kind of strength that can win elections. There are four million black voters registered in the South, or 15 percent of the total registered
voters. However, that figure increases to 25 percent in Georgia, Mississippi and South Carolina, and that is what is making Atlanta's popular black mayor, Maynard Jackson, consider running for the Senate in 1980. Some observers think he could win.
THE POSSIBILITY of a black Senator from the South is as strong a symbol of the changing of the Senate guard as there is. Of course, there are still enough of the old bulbs that have been replaced in losing its right wing entirely, but there are bound to be changes in the new Senate.
The Judiciary Committee, once headed by Eastland and dominated by McClellan, would be a different entity under Teddy Kennedy and Birch Bayh—not a radical overhaul, but enough of one to make a difference.
So since the public opinion polls indicate a political shift to the right and precedent indicates that the American voters will opt for the center, perhaps the Senate will be bucking the trends and leaning toward the Senate, for the Senate, would be considered the left.
At least it's an encouraging sign in an area too often dominated by the status quo
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