UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
SEPTEMBER 26,1978
Dollars clouding issues
A political smoke screen is dangerously billowing forth, obscuring the U.S. Senate race between Nancy Landon Kassabsew, Wichita Republican, and Bill Rope, Topeka Democrat.
The smoke began with the release of Kassebaum's personal financial statement last weekend has thickened until it nearly obscures the more important issues of the campaign.
issue of the
Kassebaum released her financial
statement after being challenged by
Roy, who made his records public
several weeks ago. Kassebaum's
disclosure indicated her net worth was
$2.04 million and her income last year
was $92,298.
Roy's records indicated that his net worth was $329,000 last year and that he had a gross income of $104,600 of which only $75,300 was taxable.
ROY AND his supporters have not been pacified by their opponent's method of disclosure, however, and have complained frequently that Kassebaum did not release copies of her income tax returns as Roy did.
Roy's financial chairman, Robert Brock has asked Kassbeau to explain how she and her husband paid only $5,075 in state and federal income taxes in 1977.
Her total tax bill was $31,781, of which 26,760 was property tax. Roy has reported that his total 1977 tax payments were $36,600.
Brock has said it was impossible to tell what tax shelters the Kassebaum's used to lower their gross income to the
amount on which the $5,075 tax was paid.
KASSEBAUM HAS said the taxes were low because she and her husband had large real estate holdings and had refurbished a hotel last year, which gave them high interest payments and depreciation deductions.
THE VOTERS of Kansas deserve a clear unobstructed view of each of the candidates before the November election, and the hubbub over candidate finances does not help clear the air.
Why? Both candidates already have complied with federal disclosure laws and have filed personal financial statements with the secretary of the Senate in Washington. No violations have been found. So why the concern over Kasserbaum's finances? So she is a millionaire. Is Roy asking the voters to judge a candidate by personal wealth? One hopes not, because there are too many more important issues to be concerned with -inflation, unemployment and energy.
Paul Pendergast, Roy's campaign manager, said Roy would "aggressively pursue" the matters of Kassebaum's personal finances and tax situation.
The overwhelming importance placed upon Kassebaum's finances by Roy's campaign is disconcerting.
It is time for both candidates to drop the matter, and to let the smoke clear that threatens to cloud the actual campaign issues.
Screw publisher knows how to say 'thank you'
Al Goldstein must be a pretty nice guy. At any rate, he knows how to say thank you. Goldstein, the New York publisher of Screw magazine, has decided he wants to thank the nine students he sought to acquit him for their charges at his Kansas City, Kan. trial last November.
Considering Goldstein's experiences in Kansas, it's surprising that he wants to play football.
Although he didn't get completely off the hook, Goldstein has decided he wants to thank the nine who voted for acquaint. And he intends to do so by giving them an all-expense-paid trip to New York, to be highlighted by an all-night party in New York. The New York sex establishment. The cost for the party, which will feature food instead of sex, is $20,000.
The trial then was moved to Kansas City, Kan. That didn't help matters much. The second trial was completed with a bung jury. Nine jurors voted for acquittal; three
A THIRD TRIAL was to be scheduled, but charges against Goldstein and former partner Jim Buckley were dropped after Milky Way Productions, Goldstein's corporation, pleased guilty to a charge of mailing obscene materials into the state.
After all, he was tried twice in the state on obscurity charges. At his first trial, in Wichita, he even was found guilty. However, the guilty verdict was overturned because of prejudicial remarks in the prosecuting attorney's closing statements.
"I've been wanting to thank them," Goldstein said. "I've booked the whole place, so Plate's crowd of swimmers won't be able to join the tables filled with that will not stop."
GOLDSTEIN SAYS he'll pay for round-
That's some thank you.
trip air fare for each journ and put them up at one of New York's finest hotels—the Chopard Hotel. You can welcome, but Goldstein will pay only for their hotel expenses, not the extra flights.
The party actually is being held in honor of Screw's 10th anniversary. Among guests Goldstein expects to attend are Sammy Davis Jr., Lynn Redgrave, Norman Mailer, the cast of NBC-TV "Saturday Night Live," jugglers, magicians and fire eaters. Goldstein wants the party's atmosphere to be circus-like.
It's also difficult to believe any precedent could be set by the publisher's actions. Future jurors who vote "not guilty" in hopes of a reward are only fooling themselves. The case is rare when a defendant has the money to thank jurors in such a manner.
Although at first glance, this party looks as if it could be some type of pay off in reverse to the jurors, that idea becomes pretty difficult to believe.
THE NINE who voted in favor of Gold-
stein didn't know his intentions and in a trial
was publicized as his was, bribling jurors
would have been a difficult task.
But Goldstein probably isn't the type who could just say "thank you" in a letter. So he's expressing his gratitude the only way he can.
Al Goldstein's got the money and he's using it to say thank you - in style.
Blaming Freddie Silverman, the programming genius who made ABC No. 1 in the Nielsen before moving to NBC this year, for the idiocity television feeds into American living rooms as an unjust offer that has caused a highly responsible for the Great Depression.
FCC restricts pay cable potential
Both men, more fairly, are extensions of the systems that dominate their lives. Hoover was a perfect expression of laissez faire economics and Silverman was—is an equally perfect expression of the orthodoxy of commercial television.
Silverman's success is symptomatic of what ails television.
By offering such shows as "Happy Days" and "Three's Company," Silverman exhibits little confidence in viewers, less artistry, even less depth; but what makes his "programming genius" so valuable is its knack for tickling a mass audience.
HIS SHOWS do what programs are supposed to do: deliver to advertisers a large audience for television's main event—the commercial. That is how television makes its money and how it became what it is—a boring mediocrity.
Ideas for a system of television in which viewers pay directly for the programs they want have been kicking away since 1932. Such a system would give viewers the major role in determining what appears on their screens.
It need not be that way
Advocacy of subscription television rests on two bold assumptions. First, that television watchers are not only the damned, the doltish and the otherwise defective, but also the unaffected that they would benefit from discrimination; that they would watch better programs if they were offered.
THE SECOND assumption is that people would rather pay outright for at-home entertainment than have its cost concealed in the products they buy.
The notion of free television is a great hoax. Consumers, those who are viewers and those who are not, ultimately pay. In 1976, commercial television stations raked off $2.2 billion from advertisers, who passed their costs to consumers.
Granted those assumptions, an economic base for subscription television exists. Given that base, there is no shortage of such systems about how such system would operate.
A viable subscription television system has three requirements: nonpaying users must be excluded, subscribers must be important, and it must make money.
ONE SCHEME broadcasts scrambled television programs that can only be received by television sets equipped with a decoder that unscrambles the messages. Several companies have produced electronic hardware needed by this system.
Rick Alm
But the scheme that has shown the most promise is pay-cable television, which sends signals to the receiver over coaxial cable. This is similar to cable television setups already in operation in most communities, including Lawrence, except the programs would not be those siphoned from the networks.
As for billing, workable options range from flat-rate billing, to pre-paid "tickets" that activate the station's signal, to nuisance calls. You can phone the station for activating codes. Someday two-way cables may allow subscriptions directly request programs from the station.
PROFITABILITY has so far been seen as the roadblock for subscription television.
Those who want to make money usually would rather invest in a commercial television station. But cable television companies, in the last five years, have shown that subscription television can be profitable.
Home Box Office, which began offering movies, sporting events and cultural entertainment in 1989, has become a national network of cable and microwave connections. The TheatreVision began in 1973 to offer, over cable lines, movies to homes and hotel rooms. Cox and Warner, the nation's leading systems, have entered the subscription field.
The cable experimenters, however, have fallen short of the 30 percent acceptance rate for video cameras. The problem is their product. They don't use the financial resources to outbid the networks for top-flight movies and sporting events. And they have not yet produced them.
GROWTH SHOULD improve the subscription television's competitive position. With more subscribers and more money, the cable companies will be able to offer more
programs from which viewers can choose those they want.
But the biggest hurdle may be the Federal Communications Commission, which has decreed its jurisdiction over the infant industry. The FCC has used its power to protect the broadcast industry from the interoper.
The FCC has formulated rules that prohibit subscription outlets from showing feature films more than two years old or from showing a sporting event regularly shown in the community over conventional television in the last two years.
the rues, in multiplying the advantages to the existing commercial system, hinder the development of a new advertising description investors. The industry, which might find opportunity in the blandness of commercial television, won't realize its potential until it is free of this kind of advertisement.
Without that freedom, subscription television will remain a second-class operation. And American viewers will find Freddie Silverman every night with Freddie Silverman.
U.S. must rescue its technology
BY MYRON KAYTON N.Y. Times Feature
SANTA MONICA, Calif. — How has America's technology failed during the past 20 years? How will its widely publicized panic have affected trade balance and the value of the dollar?
In the early 1960s, America imported $1.6 billion worth of oil and $6 billion in manufactured goods each year—textiles, shoes, machinery. We paid for these imports by exporting $2.7 billion of fodg and $10.8 billion of manufacured pharmaceuticals—that were admired throughout the world for their advanced technology.
By 1976, we imported $22 billion of oil and $60 billion of manufactured goods and were able to export only $15.7 billion of food and $67 billion of manufactured goods. Our overall foreign trade balance went from a strong surplus to a strong deficit, leading to a rapid decline in the trade surplus of the dollar on the international money markets. Most starting of all, the imports of manufactured goods rose 2,000 percent while exports rose only 500 percent.
LOOKING AHEAD to the 1980s, it appears that we will import more than $50 billion in all annually and an increasing variety of imports. That is because you can no longer be made economically in
Americans cannot compete on the world market by producing routine, manufactured goods unless our workers are content to accept a standard of living equal to that of their low wage co-workers in the rising production centers of the world.
America--steel, consumer electronics, textiles, shoes.
We will face strong European and East Asian competition in goods that only 10 years ago were high-technology: video recorders, computers, communication satellites and other high-tech products. Our newest high-technology products, software, are not easily exported. We will have fewer ways to pay for the imports we consume except by exporting food. The overall picture will be one of our frozen technologies, as has been widely predicted.
AS AN ENGINEERING manager who has been involved in high technology for more than 20 years, I would suggest at least three companies that might be able to arrest it.
One reason is the shift of federal funds from support of high-technology invention to the support of the consumption of low-technology products by the recipients of
The specialized manufacturers that developed products for weapons and space used their newly acquired technological knowledge to develop micro-electrode chips, computers, wide-body jet planes, fiber-composite materials. The high-technology money eventually reached the low-income consumers and provided a permanent investment for the future.
During the 1960s and 1980s, the federal government invested 13 percent of its budget in military development of technology largely through military agent and the space program.
THE HIGH-TECHNOLOGY investments permitted the low-income consumer to buy
In the 1970s, federal funding for high technology fell to 5.5 percent of the budget but the funding for social welfare programs rose from 16 percent to 38 percent, low-technology consumers buy low-technology, mass-manufactured goods, government money has been introduced into the bottom of the technological world where it does not stimulate organized in-
A second reason for America's technological decline is the rise in our interest rates from 4 per cent to 6 per cent, which has forced business to invest in ideas with a short-term payoff.
Everywhere, even in formerly aggressive large firms, ideas that promise payoff
A THIRD BRAKE on technological innovation in the 1970s has been the upsurge in regulatory and environmental pressures of the interpretation of defective product liability.
beyond three years are being deferred because of the high cost of borrowed money. By contrast, the new technological leaders, Germany and Japan, enjoy 3 percent to 4 percent interest rates and can, therefore, invest further into the future.
The conservative bent of lawyers and environmentalists and their inherent aversion to change are strongly influencing American society. Prudent manufacturers are reluctant to sell products based on untried technology. The high costs and long delays in dealing with technologically inept, legalistic regulatory bodies deter change.
Multinational companies will continue to divert risky research and the manufacture of risky products to countries willing to invest in these technologies to bring the future technological centers. These market forces are already moving product development overseas in the pharmaceutical, nuclear power plant, nuclear processing, and insecticide dustries.
WHAT ACTION can be taken if the United States stores its position of national leadership?
The regulatory and environmental
The resulting new industries would maintain America's high standard of living and would maintain our export dominance in high technology.
restraints to change have become so deeply embedded in the American social fabric that their relaxation would take decades. In fact, an increase in environmental and legal restraints to change as an unproductive welfare program for the huge new graduating classes of college students is
The fastest cure would be to divert perhaps 10 percent of the federal budget away from outright grants to the unproductive poor and toward the support of high-technology innovation, perhaps in energy technology.
I SUSPECT that the results would be a temporary reduction in the number of people receiving grants followed in two to three years by the creation of several times as many jobs as would have resulted from direct grants to the unproductive.
Americans cannot compete on the world market by producing routine manufactured goods unless our workers are content to accept a standard of living equal to that of their low wage co-workers in the rising production centers of the world.
Myron Kayton, an electrical and mechanical engineer, is senior staff engineer to the manager of Systems Engineering Operation at Thompson Ramo University in Tennessee. He is a graduate engineering for the Space Shuttle electronics from 1969 to 1972. He received his doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is the author of "Avionic Systems."
HIGH-TECHNOLLOGY manufactured goods; engineering, medical and educational services; and food are the only feasible exports that Americans can barter for oil and other imports. Unless we again create a climate favoring high technology, the dollar will continue to slide and our standard of living will continue to fall.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KANSAN
Published at the University of Kansas daily August through May and Monday through Thursday during June and July except Saturday, and Sunday and holidays. Second-class postage paid at Lawrence, Kansas 66045. Subscriptions by mail are $15 for six months. Subscription fees are $70 for one year. County. Student subscriptions are $2 a semester, paid through the student activity fee.
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