UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN editorials
Unsigned editorials represent the opinion of the Kansan editorial staff. Signed columns represent the views of only the writers.
SEPTEMBER 13, 1978
FCC can be beaten
There is a satisfaction in the knowledge that big government can be beaten at its own game, at least when the bureaucracy threatens the so-called "little person."
Such is the case of a recent Federal Communications Commission announcement concerning the University's ownership of two FM radio stations. The FCC last week issued a "notice of proposed rule-making," which would force the University to give up ownership of one of its FM stations if the notice is approved. The University has until Nov. 15 to respond to the FCC notice.
The larger of KU's FM stations, KANU, is a full-power public station, and KJHK is a 10-watt educational station. So, according to the University's numbers theory, KJHK is now on the FCC chopping block, a potential small fry victim of the great Washington appetite.
THE FCC SAVS that its crackdown of low power educational stations is necessary because they "represent a highly inefficient use of the limited spectrum space available for educational FM."
In addition, the FCC has backed down on its long-time policy of exempting educational stations from FCC rules against one-company ownership of more than one FM station.
Given the growing popularity and profitability of FM radio, there is an increasing demand placed on the FCC to provide FM spectrum space. The FCC, in its newest crusade, seems to have bowed to the demands of the business world and its thirst for the almighty dollar.
IF THE FCC axes KJHK, the University will suffer a great loss. Not only will an important educational tool be removed, but a news voice of the students also will disappear. Despite its limited range, KJHK provides a voice primarily directed to the KU student that other local stations cannot and this alone, one might assume, should justify the station's continued existence.
But the University, not relying on the logic of government decisions, wisely found a possible alternative to the FCC notice. Using a loophole in the FCC's regulations, the University possibly could transfer the ownership of KJHK to a private corporation, perhaps even the student body. But in any case, the transféral would save the station.
The ownership transfer, if possible, seems to be a feasible solution to the FCC's meddling, provided that the station's independence is ensured. In fact, the University should consider the transferal whether or not the FCC rules against JHK. It might prevent some further problems with the long tentacles of Washington bureaucracy.
With consumer prices rising at an annual rate of almost 10 percent during the first seven months of this year, President Jimmy Carter—and his critics—have been open wondering what is to be done about inflation.
Controls are not remedy for inflation
This week the American public received, courtesy of the usual Washington informed sources, a preview of what probably will happen in the Administration's program to bust inflation.
The cabinet-level Economic Policy Group—remember, no longer are there great men, only great committees—reportedly is prepared to recommend to the government policies limiting increases in wages to 7 percent and prices to 5 and three quarters percent.
Voluntary controls, particularly at this time, are no stroke of genius. The Carter advisers are apparently content to choose the least offensive policy, in hopes of giving conditions of doing something, while hoping conditions improve of their own accord.
THEY WON'T.
Inflation has been invested with an almost mystical complexity by successive administrations, Republican and Democrat, that have failed to control it. The push to complexity has isolated different strains of the disease ("cost-push") and "demand-pull" and business, labor and government have taken turns pointing accusing fingers.
Wage and price guidelines, or their logical extension, controls, are an attempt by politicians or unable or unwilling to cut spending to shift the blame for inflation from their policies to its victims, business and labor.
But inflation's reputation for complexity comes largely, undeserved, being the product of policy changes that have increased in the quantity of money and credit, usually caused by government policies that create money to finance budget decisions. Its chief concern is pricing prices.
TO CONQUER inflation, government spending must be reduced at the earliest possible moment, not in some sweet by-and-by. That has proved to be a politically attainable goal, but one the Carter man played prominently in their 1976 campaign.
Instead of the balanced budget promised
Different reasons lure Americans to guerrilla conflict in Rhodesia
By SARAH WEBB BARRELI N.V. Times Feature
SALBURSY, Rhodesia—Ed Wandel is a rugged, deep taned 33-year-old from Connellsville, Pa. He wears a brown leather jacket over a .357 Magnum stuck in the waistband of his jeans, Clint Eastwood style. Most of the time, however, the American blue jeans are substituted for the brown and grayed coat of a corporal in a command unit of the Indian army.
Wandel, who came to Rhodesia almost two years ago, stresses that he is not a professional soldier. After his tour in the Marine Corps in Vietnam, he had a variety of civilian jobs in the States—passenger service work for American Airlines, selling cars, even owning a small restaurant—before deciding to join the Rhodesian army.
"I'm an average American—and at heart I am a cvvy. Sure, I'd rather be back home in a nice, comfortable apartment," she said. "I can do anything I'm interested in, and I spend in the bush. 'But I feel that a short time, if things go wrong here. What happens in Africa is going to affect our American lifestyle just as communism has already affected Europe. Eventually we are going to be standing by."
WANDEL SAYS he decided to Rhodeia after listening to Prime Minister Ian Smith in an American television interview.
"I was impressed with his honesty, his magnatism and how he spoke of the country and the people," Wandel said. "Rhodesians have an old American spirit about them. Like in World War II, when we used to be patriotism."
Maj. Darryl Winkler, whose quintessentially American middle-class face, blue eyes and plain-speaking honesty can't be disguised by the Rhodesian camouflage he wears, is the highest ranking American in the Rhodesian security forces. Although Winkler is a career soldier who has been in military hectes, he, too, came to Rhodesia because of political motives.
"I LEFT THE American army because I became disenchanted with the system in the States. Vietnam let the whole world down. If we couldn't win in a small country like Vietnam, people are thinking we can't stand up to Russia," he said.
Winkler, who is 34 years old and from New Orleans, makes 750 H迪兰美元 ($1,087.50) a month as a first-year man.
"It is an adequate salary for Rhodesia. We don't have to pay so many taxes. And we have a nice house, we get a good education."
fourths of an acre—all for $H120 ($U. $174) a month. You wouldn't be able to touch that in most parts of the world."
Tom is an American in his early 20s from a small town in Pennsylvania. He has a curious softly, unmarked face and sports a toothbrush moustache. He has been serving in the Rhodesian army for 14 months. His reasons for coming Rhodesia are different than Winker's on Wanda's hey-eyes because he prompts him to prompt his decision—and he has asked that his last name not be used.
"I like the country. I like the people. I think they have a
spirit of 100 years ago. Americans. It's like the American
spirit was 100 years ago."
Tom, the lost adolescent who came for adventure, Wandel, the loner, and Winkler, the professional soldier who came for political reasons, are part of an American fighting force in Rhodesia that Washington sources believe numbers between 300 and 500. The Americans form a contingent of foreign soldiers second only to the British.
Rhodesian military authorities in Salisbury deny this, saying that there are less than 100 Americans in the Rhodesian
Capt. Vc. Thackway, a second-generation Rhodesian who commands the Fifth Engineer Support Squadron in Redcliff, said "The Americans who are here now have to run a gantlet up the hill in order to reach our border of Americans we had here in the past were completely wrong. Many of them arrived thinking it was the same sort of war as Vietnam. Basically they were fighting a jungle war outside their country. We're fighting in our own country against terrorists, we're being work for you by day, and picking up arms by night."
THACKRAYW SAID The Americans who had stayed and proved themselves were excellent—"bloody good soldiers." He spoke of an American medic under his command, who, if fire tried to rescue two wounded Rhesian soldiers. The Army
"If Rhodesia would stay as Rhodesia, I'd settle here without questions," Wandel said. "But if the new Zimbabwe turns out to be like Mozambique, Zambia, Zaire or Botswana, I'll leave."
Like their white Rhodesian colleagues in the security forces, both Winkler and Wandel looked forward to Dec. 31, when black women would face another day of violence.
Winker, who, along with his wife, has applied for Rhodesian citizenship, said: "I forsee a hell of a good future here. There's a group of people who are determined to make this country work, and I'm one of them."
by their boss, however, the Carter economic advisers have perpetrated a great hoax. Guidelines and controls camouflage the effects of inflation, but they cannot stop it or even slow it down. What they will do is harm the economy, wipe out profit margins,
Voluntary controls were tried, with modest success, in 1961. But they will not win the fight against inflation now, when the federal budget deficit is 10 times greater than it was during the Kennedy Administration.
disrupt and misdirect production and lead to bottlenecks and abortions...
ANNUAL DEFICITS as high as $66 billion, for which politicians must be held responsible, have saddled the economy with a significant deficit spending has exceeded $200 billion.
since 1975 and it is that, above all else, that drives prices upward.
Because they are cosmetic and because they deal with the effects, not the cause, of inflation, any guidelines issued by the Carter Administration are sure to fail.
And next year, when it becomes apparent they will not work, a president weighing his prospects for re-election will be tempted to take the next step, mandatory controls, and increase the unhappy experience with wage and price controls under Richard Nixon in 1971.
Charles Carney
Wichita junior
Movements lumped together unfairly
To the editor:
Emmeshed in Whiteside's 'assault on pro-life groups is the accusation that the movement is responsible for withholding abortion funds from the mothers of those who want to have a child she neither wants nor can afford.' But the author does not mention that pro-life groups suggest alternatives to abortion such as adoption and foster care home. So she woman who wants nor can afford, she neither has to keep nor support that child.
Pro-users reject abortion because it is in fact a destruction of human life. But they are much more sympathetic to women expecting illegitimate children than Whiteies would be facing if there were an insensitive people in the world, it is a gross oversimplification to condemn the entire pro-life movement and its intentions because of these people.
John Whiteides' September 6 editorial, which lashed out against pre-life groups, was almost as close-minded as Whiteides' claims the "anti-abortion" groups themselves are. To start with, Whiteides lumps ERA movements, calling them "sister movements." Why he would want to include the conservative anti-gay and stop-ERA movements in an article about abortion is beyond me, unless he wished to imply that the same people who also hate women's libbers and gays.
When Whitides does get to the main point of his article, he makes a sweeping generalization about pro-life people. He writes: "While professing deep compassion for the unborn child, their compassion (the pro-life people's) for the living is so great that in all Whitides separates the unborn child from the living, as if the unborn child is not alive at all. He fails to recognize that although the unborn child is not yet born, he or she is very much a living and growing human being. Then, in an incredible twist, he makes a pro-life people as having very little compassion for the living human beings who have been born.
Granted, the pro-life movement has its share of rotten oranges, as all groups do, but to classify all its members in this way is ridiculous. The pro-life movement is full of sensitive people who are working hard for a valid cause. Only a small minority of the pro-life people have an interest. Furthermore, the people whom Whitesides accuses of harassing women in the abortion clinics are not representative of the true purpose of pro-life. This movement does not wish to restrict people's freedom of choice, but to convince people through reason that abortion is wrong. If some pro-life people go overboard in their efforts it is unfortunate, the primary reason of pro-life is positive, not negative. It wants to promote and insure life and pro-life attitudes much more than it wants to stop abortions without changing attitudes.
But let it be made clear that the stop-ERA and the anti-gay movements are completely different and separate from the pro-life movement. These are not sister movements. Pro-life people have varying views when it comes to ERA and homosexuality, may vary their stance, but a great number of pro-life people are also pro-ERA. The author only confuses the issue at hand by mentioning these two other topics.
UNIVERSITY DAILY letters KANSAN
To the editor:
Graham uses money for religious work
In Brian Settle's recent article, "Graham's pocketbook runneth over," I was left confused as to what it was that he was trying to communicate. He carefully explained many figures concerning the financial part of Mr. Graham's ministry, and he reader sees him violate some of the most basic rules of responsible journalism.
I found it disturbing that Mr. Settle would begin his story with a lead that points out revelations and disclosures which are the product of routine reporting belonging with the rest of the trappings of gaslight jour-narratives remain in the files of the Kansan's morgue.
I find it even more disturbing that while M. Settle did present accurate financial facts that have been readily accessible to the public for months, he would infringe upon our rights as readers to hear the news and not his personal opinion. I refer to his writing in *The American Express* money to be accumulated while spreading the gospel to the public? I think not."
Is the issue here that Mr. Settle thinks that it is unnecessary to accumulate that much money, or is it whether or not it is necessary to accumulate that much money? To inject personal points of view while attempting to tell the news is neither interpretive nor investigative reporting, but irresponsible journalism.
Did Mr. Settle bother to investigate what it costs to produce a prime-time television program, without advertising during the program to help pay for it? Did he think of ending the Education Ministries? Did he know that in the program there is advance literature, radio, and follow-up material to be mailed, free for the asking? Does Mr. Settle know who and how many people write in for this material, and how much to get to the material to those who request it?
Did he find out what it takes to produce their high quality Decision magazine? Did he find out how to make a product?
How then can Mr. Settle tell us, "What these figures mean is that Billy Graham and the United States are really very important."
The ancient writer of the Old Testament, Iain, said. "Learn to do good. Seek wisdom."
Mr. Sette has presented to his readers already public facts, and his value judgment, without investigating whether or not it indeed takes all that money to accomplish what Mr. Graham is doing. Is this interpretive reporting? I question not. Is this investigative reporting? I think not. Is this irresponsible journalism? I think so.
Mr. Settle, please, for your readers, learn to do well. Tell us whether or not it indeed costs millions to produce a Graham crush and all that is involved with it. Seek justice and prove to us that it is unfairly forrore, for reprove Mr. Graham, and call him ruthless.
Douglas Bower
Merriam juniot
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