UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
SEPTEMBER 19, 1978
Strikes endanger safety
Strikes by firefighters and police in Wichita should rouse nothing but public indignation and a hard-line response by city officials. The strikers deserve better nothing.
Under no circumstances can there be justification for a strike by those persons who have accepted responsibility as public protectors.
Even today, Calvin Coolidge's response to a Boston police strike in 1919 holds true:
Despite Kansas law, which prohibits public employees from striking, 260 of Wichita's 315 firefighters walked out on strike a week ago Monday. The striking firefighters protested a proposed contract, saying its 6 percent salary increase was inadequate.
EFFORTS TO COAX the firefighters back to work failed and by mid week the city had threatened to fire any of the strikers who did not report back to work. However, before a large number were fired, contract negotiations resumed with a stipulation that the firing be halted.
Wichita was still without adequate fire protection, causing Gov. Robert F. Bennett to mobilize the National Guard on Thursday. Then Wichita police
started a walkout in sympathy with the firefighters.
Of the city's 391 police, 160 walked off their jobs. But the city took stronger action with the police—firing 122 and processing the necessary papers to fire the remainder.
As Wichita Police Chief Richard LaMunyon said, "I will not and cannot support job action by police. It's just not morally correct. They have an obligation and they knew that when they took the job."
Without some moral bond guaranteeing the public protection—as should exist with firefighters and police—public safety becomes a transient notion, dependent upon the whims and demands of a self-centered group.
FIREFIGHTERS ARE said to be near a new contract agreement, and if it is accepted they will return to work, but their actions remain inexcusable.
LaMunyon's response to striking police was harsh, but necessary. Firefighters deserved similar action.
Wichita has been lucky. There have been no large fires since the strike began, but it could have easily been another Memphis, where late this summer firefighters struck and fires damaged large sections of the city.
IN WICHITA, as in any city, a clear and tough precedent must be established concerning public employee strikes. Calvin Coolidge is still right.
A committee of the Kansas Legislature voted last week to draft a bill to abolish the 71-year-old state Board of Embalming, a board of four people to whom the state has given the authority to regulate the funeral industry.
State's licensing powers misdirected
This costs about $80,000 annually. Much more, if you count the consumers to of retailers
The board is typical of a system of occupational licensing that has become widespread. Kansasans have been saddled with dozens of similar boards, among them a Board of Barber Examiners for barbers, a Board of Cosmetology for beauticians and a Board of Examiners for Hearing Aid Dispensers.
Other states have, at one time or another,
licensed egg graders, guide dog trainers,
pest controllers, yacht salesmen, tree
surgeons, well diggers, tile layers, piano
tuners, potato growers and hyper-
trichologists.
THE LAST of these are in business to remove excess and unsightly body hair.
Licensing is justified as a measure to guarantee to consumers competence and integrity. The boards come not from consumers who have been cheated, but from the members of the occupation, who persuade legislatures to impose political exhortations about the public interest.
First, producer groups tend to be more politically concentrated than consumer groups—an obvious point, but one often ignored in public policy.
But in operation these boards fall under the control of those they were supposed to regulate. That is too often the end of government regulation for two reasons.
A consumer divides his attention between thousands of items, but a producer has an intense interest in the specific problems of his trade and is willing to devote considerable energy to doing something about them.
THE SECOND point is more pertinent to licensing. Since a profession is to be restricted to the qualified, those in the profession—the morticians themselves—
Letters Policy
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KU would benefit from joining ASK
UNIVERSITY DAILY letters KANSAN
To the editor:
Recent articles in the Kansan have provided students the basic information about the proposed admission of the University of Kansas into the Associated Students and information vital to an educated assessment of the interest group has been lacking.
ASK was established in 1973 based on conferences comprising students from the current member institutions and KU. The goal of the conferences was to form a statewide student lobb, but for reasons that remain uncertain KU stopped short of joining. None were willing to accept responsibility much, particularly considering the paucity of its resources and its independence from the official structures of the educational institutions of Kansas.
A comprehensive landlord tenant act was passed in the 1975 legislative session to a great extent because of ASK lobbying. An important part of the bill, which would have allowed certain emergency repairs to be made by one or more employers, was deleted from the conference report. ASK is still trying to get a self-held clause put into the act.
Several pieces of legislation concerning electoral reform, backed by the student lobby along with other interest groups, have become law. In addition to striving for greater election participation through legislation, ASK conducts voter registration
drives and offers voter information on its member campuses.
The above are just a few examples of ASK efforts that have been carried to completion. This past year the lobby supported through both houses a bill to ease the current restraints on voter registration only to prevent a person from backing a bill to reduce the penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana and helped the bill to pass the House, but could not prevent a Senate committee chairman from killing it. These and other motions are bound to fail when introduced, and can even eventually be expected to pass.
The accomplishment that affects most Kansas students most directly is the Higher Education Loan Program. In 1978, when many commercial loan institutions were required to accept loans to students, ASK sought to make the state of Kansas a lending agent in the federal programs. ASK researchers soon found a more favorable system, called the Higher Education Assistance Foundation, in the institution and the lobby sold the idea to the Regents.
ASK was instrumental in having the Student Advisory Committee to the Board of Regents established. Since then, the committee has worked to ensure body presidents of the Regents institutions.
If the students of the University of Kansas are to contribute significantly to the improvement of their own situation, they should be ready to contribute equitably to the movement. The unity of the students in Kansas four-year institutions can promote the common goals of all students more effectively than before.
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Managing Editor
Editorial Editor
Barry Murray
Dan Bowerman
Brian Sartor
Campus Editor ...
Associate Campus Editor
Editor Steve Frazier
SenEx pussy-footing about proposals to rationalize and humanize the Senate Code's financial exigency procedures (Kansas, as well as a prospective of that document's real character).
Code is a method to pick a scapegoat
Council Grove graduate student
Business Manager Don Green
Associate Business Manager
Assistant Business Manager
Promotions Manager
Assistant Promotions Manager
Basisically, the present financial exigency procedures provide the legal means for tenured faculty to pick members of their number as scape-goats in a fiscal crisis. The University must adopt such a taposition of pious claims that financial exigency is "a condition descriptive of the University as a whole" (Sen. Code 7.1.1) which can be alleviated only when "the Chancellor shall designate which individual faculty should be released," that is fired (Sen. Code 7.2.3.1).
Karen Wenderott Brett Miller
To the editor:
Nick Hardy Mel Smith, Allen Blair, Tom Whitakes
Robert Frigo
There it may be better hidden, but there is little that can be done to overcome the problem that arises from the greater concentration of producer than consumer interest. That must remain an unfortunate fact of life.
Sponsors of the bill to abolish the Board of Embalimers should be commended, but they are missing the point when they suggest that the problem of symbiotic regulation can be cured by transfer of the board's functions to the requirement of Health and Environment.
General Manager Riek Musser
The best policy would be to abolish not only the board, but also the state's licensing power for morticians, barbers, beauticians, hearing aid dispensers and other medical services does not involve the prospect of significant harm to the public if unregulated.
Clearly, simple common sense dictates that if a crisis is everybody's problem, then everybody should contribute to the solution. And surely those who led us into the crisis should be up front using us out, taking an acrid-the-board salary cut with everyone else.
Advertising Advisor Chuck Chowins
What chance is there for adoption of such an obviously sane and fair solution? Not much, I fear. A university faculty which perceives crisis occurring only after all possible cuts have been made in services, will eventually lose staff off, and all graduate assistants, instructors and still untenured faculty fired, cannot be expected to reason sane and humanely.
The financial exigency procedures of the Senate Code are a means to select some petty officer to throw overboard after the ship has foundered and most of the crew have been killed, or clutch-mongers among us say that this is the way—that we must "bite the bullet."
They urge that on us because, heads in the sand, they are still confident that someone else will have to swallow the lead.
are most capable of judging who should be admitted.
Carl Leban
Associate professor of East Asian languages and cultures
Consequently, the Board of Embalming is made up mostly of morticians, who have a direct economic interest in decisions they make concerning their profession. Their commitment as consumers is indirect and unspecific.
It should surprise no one, then, that these boards decree policies that benefit their own professional interest. And that's exactly what the Board of Embalming did to bring
The board required that bodies be embalmed or buried within 24 hours after death. Paul Sullivan, a philanthropist who the board has to desist in the 24-hour limit was not something more than a way for mortuaries to make money, since defragmentation removes the health hazards
the legislators to consider doing away with it.
"It's called special interest rules and regulations," he said. "It's virtually impossible to bury someone within 24 hours in this state, meaning you are forced to have the body embalmed. That accounts for about one-third of the cost of funerals."
THE SOCIAL cost of most licensing laws increases as boards become a tool of special interests, which can pursue their ends at the expense of the rest of the public.
U.S. culture symbolized abroad by products, advertising jingles
We are so used to them that we hardly notice anymore. We make a special Fried Chicken. Burger King—their presence creates an experience.
But overseas, the golden arches are becoming a bigger symbol of America than even Jimmy Carter's pearly whites.
From strains of Dean Martin in a Polish disco to an A&W root beer stand in Malaysia, the Americanization of the rest of the world is slowly taking shape. While it may not reach America yet, America's more gross national products are picking up steam.
New Times magazine recently reported that McDonald's currently has 70 restaurants in 21 foreign countries. Kentucky is one of its states.
"The sun will never set on Kentucky Fried Chicken," said one chicken chain spokesman.
Coca-Cola soon opened bottled plants in Panama and Cuba, and quickly spread to the Far East. See the success of Coca-Cola, other companies rushed in where they had once feared to tread.
The fun all started back in 1968, when the son of Coca-Cola's founder took a gallon jug of Coca-Cola syrup to England and sold it to a London soda fountain operator. From there it was all downhill.
This cultural export includes more than just food and drink, Harold Robbins is a major literary figure in some foreign countries, and Ann Landers is a big hit in many foreign newspapers.
Kentucky Fried Chicken has replaced mashed potatoes with rice in some Asian countries, and Dutch franchises have added an East Indian egg roll to their menus. A name change was even necessary in Germany, where marketing studies indicated that the dish was mainly served in Samsara's problem, the name was changed to Harlan rather than Colonel, Sanders Fried Chicken.
Of course, given the troublesome fact that natives of some stubborn countries often refuse to act like Americans, some adjustments are occasionally necessary. McDonald's now serves beer in Germany and Sweden, and wine in France.
Loca-Cola is now sold in 135 foreign countries and Pesi is sold in more than 140 foreign countries. However, Pesi sells in China, Japan and South Korea.
Most U.S. companies with foreign interests play down their American connections, although Coca-Cola has become widespread a symbol of America as there is. That connection has not always been to their benefit, either.
A Coca-Cola bottling plant in Beirut was attacked by Lebanese rebels in 1958, and demonstrators in India threw bottles, presumably Pepsi, at an Indian bottling plant in the early 1960's.
However, most of the problems for these cultural imperialists have come from American ignorance rather than foreign hostility. The field of advertising has been the scene of many of the more memorable gaffes.
According to a book called "International Business Blunders." *Pepsodent's* "You'll wonder where the yellow went!" ad campaign did not go over well when tried in Asia, and America, with its more conservative status in North America, where "matador" is the Spanish word for "killer".
Pepsi scored a coup of sorts when its "Come Alive with Pepsi" slogan was translated into Mandarin Chinese as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead." The campaign was launched before the Maosit revolution. Puzzled as to why they weren't selling anything, company officials discovered that in Chinese, Coca-Cola spelled词典ally means either "female horse fattened with energy."
Whether this is what is meant by the phrase "cultural exchange" is an open question, although I have an idea of the answer. Nevertheless, one needn't be disturbed by this not-so-new phenomenon, for with the CIA busting about undermining governments and assassinating foreign leaders and such, the spread of American culture is almost comforting.
This, then, is the American legacy abroad.
Now we can rest assured that, no matter what happens, they'll always love us for our Big Macs.
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