UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
SEPTEMBER 28,1978
Library split wasteful
There is a bright side to the University's plans to divide the art library between Watson Library and Spencer Museum of Art: time remains for the administration to reverse its decision.
But that's all the good news.
But the other is a change of heart in Strong Hall, KU's art library will be split—flying in the face of current efforts to improve the University's library system.
library system.
Executive Vice Chancellor Del Shankel, who last week said administrators tentatively had decided to split the art library, admits that further proliferation of branch libraries is inefficient and wasteful. The University has seen that even the existing branch libraries are a drain on library resources and has plans to consolidate them during the overhaul of the library system.
of the INCLUSION OF AN art library in Spencer stems from commitments made during the planning of the museum. Past University administrations, in accepting donation of money for the museum from Helen Foresman Spencer, have saddled current administrators with the dilemma of having either to break the commitments or promote inefficiency.
The issue of moving part of the art library collection to Spencer, however, has spread beyond Strong Hall.
The library split apparently will make other sectors of the University even more reluctant to part with the conveniences of their own branch libraries.
Charles Kahn, dean of the School of Architecture and Urban Design, says his school—which now faces the loss of the Marvin Hall library—would "use everything in its power" to save the Marvin branch if the current art library is divided.
The most reasonable solution offered so far is the procurement of more private funding to establish some sort of library, however limited, in Spencer. Commitments to provide such a library apparently can't amicably be broken.
But it should be obvious that the current collection must remain in Watson in the interest of maintaining a consistent policy against wasting public money on branches. Wavering in the drive to reduce inefficiency in the library system could stall the very real progress, now just beginning, toward improving University libraries.
New York needs papers, pressmen
New York City without newspapers is like Clemens sent without degenerates - "H just cement it."
doesn't seem New York is a newspaper town through and through. The town's papers are read from the subways to the skyscrapers, and from as much a part of the city's life as garbage, delicatessens and taxi cabs. Within the city limits of New York reside a disproportionately large number of newspaper junkies.
For those junkies the past seven weeks have been an excruciating withdrawal.
On August 9 the 1,500-member Pressmen's Union walked off their jobs after management of the New York Times, Post and Daily News announced the rule that would have enabled the jobs of 90 pressmen of the pressman at those three daily papers.
THE STRIKE is interesting for several reasons, not the least of which is the sight of scores of Yankees fans being subjected to the sports pages of the Boston Globe, or seeing hordes of New York readers rearing the ravages of Mayweather. Both of these newspapers have been distributed in New York in lieu of the real or at least regular thing.
But the most interesting aspect of the strike so far has been the solidarity with the pressman displayed by the Driver's Union and the Newspaper Guild, which represents newsroom personnel. Both unions have refused to cross the pressman's picket lines, enabling them to present a unified front at the bargaining table.
These actions are in direct contrast to the last presmenst's strike at a major metropolitan American newspaper, the strike at the liberal Washington Post in 1975. There the reporters' strike had so often supported unions and the right to strike, packed up their virtue and crossed the picket lines, while the normally moralistic Post management was busy hiring scabs. The Post managers' strike and was itself at the same time.
NO SUCH LUCK is in sight for the New
Capital deserves representation
Rv GEORGE DEVINE
N. V. Times Features
NEW YORK—Congressional legislation now before the states for ratification would have: the district of Columbia represented
How postponetous, cry the bill's opponents, that a single city should be as well represented as Nevada or Wyoming or Alaska. Far better, the critics say, to have the city of Washington ceded back to the state of Maryland, at least for representation if not in nomenclature. Otherwise, they fear, undue influence could be wielded by a single urban area.
Notwithstanding the wrongs that need righting, in that no urban area has been less represented than our nation's capital, there is a basic concept behind the proposed new representation: People whose metropolis bears a disproportionate burden for federally created problems should at least have the right to talk back to the government that put them in a fix to begin with.
Historically, the city of Washington has been required to house and school and entertain an invading army of well-heeled bureauxes of demanding tastes, a good number of whom stay in the D.C. area a maximum of eight years, and many of whom channel their government salaries elsewhere, to where home really is, whether that be a farm in Pennsylvania, a seaside compound in Massachusetts, a ranch in Texas or a peanut farm in Georgia.
NOW, ANYONE making a living amid the vagaries of elective government is up against a tough game, and one hardly can blame a representative who beats it back to Minnesota, California or New York.
But the poor deems really up against it are the quarter of a million who live in Washington—not Chevy Chase, Md., or Arlington, Va, but right in Washington. Monies go to the federal-governing functions of the capital, and home rule for the city itself.
takes a lower place on the totern pole—even in the latter days of a mayor and all that.
of a mission issue is a broader concept. The notion of representation for the District of Columbia should be seen in a wider context.
IF THE urban poor and the racial, ethnic and economic minorities of Washington are specifically represented, this could be—at least seminally—a new voice for the special needs of New Yorkers who bear the burden of the United Nations, Californiaians almost alone must host the Oriental immigration increase mandated by the federal government, Floridaians and New Jerseyans who bear a disproportionate responsibility for Cuban refugees. The Sam encouraged to land in America of the Washington state communities who are still smarting from the fickleness of government agencies who giveh the contracts to Boeing and taken away.
Who knows? Such a new voice in the District might demand that the burden of welfare be distributed equitably among the states. It might also demand that representatives of Southern states no longer hand out bus tickets to Manhua's students, repatriate their students to school or office and instructions as to say to get a payment there instead of back home in the society where the problems were created.
socially aware people, a voice might demand that foreign diplomats can get a parking ticket on the East Side of New York or in San Francisco's Pacific Heights, that monuments and tourist attractions of national significance be supported instead of being destroyed or restricted by security problems these attractions generate) and that the major urban areas of the United States stop playing sucker for those who enjoy the benefits of these great metroropolitan centers but who feel the super-cities get into jams they don't create for themselves.
George Devine sells real estate in San Francisco and is a freelance writer.
MACFILV GREAT FOUNDATION LIFE GROUP ©2017 WILLIAM TROHLMAN
John
Whitesides
York publishers. Both sides have been intransigent from the beginning, and all indications are that the strike could be the longest in history.
Management contends that "superfluous" staffing in press rooms is costing the papers money—in the millions. It would rather see fewer pressmen doing more work, for with presets now running faster it claims that they are "not the current environment levels means "a cut-in backs in profits."
However, an examination of profit levels for the papers hardly indicates that they have fallen on hard times. Although the New York Post is losing between $2 and $10 million a year, it has always lost money. Even if it were to lose $2 million, the problem there is more with management than with "superfluous" numbers of pressmen.
BUT IT'S a different story at the Times. In 1976, profits were $10.2 million; in 1977
While the immediate issues for the pressman are the new work rules that would eliminate many of their jobs, the working conditions at the papers also have come into question. When the presses start up, decibel levels reach 110, a figure to which OSHA allows exposure to be limited half hour if this level HEW says it is possible to communicate by shouting with your hands cupped between your mouth and the other person's ear.
they were $17.7 million; and in only the first half of 1978 they had jumped to $10.7 million. Hardly a paper being driven to bankruptcy by all those pressmen.
The pressman wouldn't want to talk much anyway. Because of the paper dust and chemical vapors that fill the air, they are required to wear protective masks. Without them, according to HEW, they would risk permanent damage to the liver, kidneys, blood-forming organs, nerves, eyes and brain.
break time. Under the new work rules they would have none.
At the Daily News pressman are covered with a layer of ink and grime so thick that scalding showers have been installed at the building for their use before they leave. With the current numbers of workers, the pressman now are allowed occasional
would have no need to MKE in New York represents a classic confrontation between management profits and worker rights. Neither side is bending. While the proponents are fighting for their jobs, the managers are distrusting the interim papers. Post publisher Rupert Murdock has put money into an interim paper, the Daily Metro, while the Times, distributing to newspapers, to its officials to keep them happy and available when the Times can publish again.
Using overhead costs at newspapers are combining with increasing automation in the printing process to make the pressman an endangered species everywhere. Union has already been one of the press rooms big and famous City Star and the newspapers. However, rather than laying off the pressman, many papers are allowing attition to do the work.
Still, situations like the one in New York are becoming more and more common, but the pressman's stand against the kingdom and the power is an emergency in New York could have disastrous implications for other pressmen across the country.
Deficits are no longer panaceas; federal budget must be balanced
It should have been a historic moment when British economist John Maynard Keynes called upon Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the White House in May of 1934.
Everything seemed right for an epocal meeting, as important as say, when Marx met Engels.
as, say, when Marx met Ender. The United States is in the Great Depression, needed Lord Kiley's ideas about government spending. And Keynes, meeting stiff resistance from within his native country, needed the United States as a training ground for those ideas.
The meeting between Keynes and Roosevelt frizzed because of an incompatibility of temperaments. And because FDR, like most those educated under Alfred Marshall's economics, hadAccepting the idea that a country could spend its way back to
needed the United Nations to command the FDR a deliberate policy of defensibility to yank the country out of the worst depression in its history. This was, at the time, heretical, but Keynes thought annual deficits of about $300,000 would suffice.
BUT IF KEYNES was not persuasive, conditions were. More than 15 million workers were unemployed. The Gross National Product had plummeted from $104 billion in 1929 to $41 billion in 1932. A balanced budget proved impossible.
Thus, more out of necessity than conviction, was born the United States' experience with massive deficit spending.
States' experience with this disaster. During the 1930s, with a country face-to-face with its worst disaster since the Civil War, the federal government spent $24 billion more than it collected. The largest deficit was in 1936—$3.5 billion.
The deficits of the Depression perhaps should have been larger. It was World War II, which brought deficits of $170 billion in four years, that finally ended the Great Depression.
Now there are many who would lead us to believe that we live in particularly perilous times. But compared to the Great Depression and World War II, these times are relatively safe. The nation is not immediately threatened by either internal or external peril.
immediately threatened by either intermortal YET, LAST WEEK it was announced that the federal government will spend about $39 billion more than it collects in fiscal year 1797. That is almost twice as much red ink as was spilled during the entirety of the Great Depression. It is an annual deficit almost as large as those of World War II.
to as large as those by Warwick. Incredibly, this book is trumpeted as good news. It is - if a disclaimer is added - good news to a condemned man. The good news in the new budget is that it will be the first since 1974 to produce a deficit of less than $40 billion.
less than $40 billion.
The smaller the deficit the better. But deficit spending is harmful—and proportionally more harm at higher levels—because it is the root of inflation, a cruel tax upon everyone's income.
Rick Alm
Almost by acclamation inflation is our most pressing current problem. It is not the Great Depression; it is not World War II. Unlike a war or depression, it is fought not with budget deficits, but with balanced budgets.
LOBD KEYNES, the man most credited with the invention of permissive deficit spending, had no doubt about the ultimate threat of inflation. In "The Economic Consequences of Peace" (1919), he remarked that ".there is no sublier, no surlier means of overturning the existing basis of Society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."
million is able to pay.
Americans will be to see that threat because huge budget deficits are passed as ordinary. Since 1975, $288 billion has been added to the federal debt with little more than a whimper from the folks back home.
According to officials of the organization, 22 of the necessary 34 state legislatures have already indicated their approval of the amendment. States are being asked to approve a Constitutional Convention that will govern the state and its own amendment and send it to the states to ratify.
toks back home.
Look at the figures again. A total of $258 billion is more than it took to beat the Great Depression and the combined might of the Empire of Japan and Nazi Germany.
John Whitesides" column about Big Mac's attack on the Third World did a good job of pointing out the extent of American "cultural imperialism," but failed to give proper perspective to the nature of enterprises of American corporations.
Extraordinary times surely require extraordinary measures. But we have managed to elect a succession of Congresses that spend on a scale commensurate with a national disaster when no such disaster exists. This must end before they spend us to ruin.
An amendment may be an extreme step, one that could pose problems during a future emergency. But the fight against inflation needs some restraint on federal spending. If Congress will not do it, the people must.
To the editor:
But now.
A balanced budget must be forced on a spendthrift Congress reluctance to change its ways. The National Taxiers Union, a 10-year old anti-tax organization, has proposed a constitutional amendment to require the federal government to balance its budget within four years of ratification and to keep it balanced except in times of national emergency.
But how?
But other examples of "cultural imperialism" are even more frightening. Nestle's, Carnation, Borden and others aggressively market baby formula in
U.S. corporations exploit Third World
Africa, Asia and Latin America. Mothers forcake breast feeding in favor of bottle feeding when shown the pictures of healthy babies. Preparation of baby formula requires
proper measurement, clean water, sterilization of bottles and nipples and refrigeration for storage. Women from the Third World lack this technology, and children are often born to formulas 28 percent of a Peruvian family's income, 47 percent in Nigeria, 62 percent in Pakistan) mothers often dilute the formula to make it last longer. The result is colored water fed directly into the baby's stomach with promise of a healthy baby turns to malnutrition and brain damage.
American enterprises at home and abroad are potentially a vehicle for cross-cultural exchange, but all too often the result is cultural genocide. Yes, John Whitesides, we may think the world loves us because we have sold the idea that "Coke adds life," but all too often, American corporations are the merchants of death.
Barry Shalinsky Lawrence 3rd year law student
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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